From AP:

Secretary of State Condoleezza said Monday it was “time for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” and described Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the most serious in years.

Let’s see. In the seven years since the last great lame-duck presidential push to create a Palestinian Arab state, what have the Palestinian Arabs done to make them more deserving of a state?

Have they decided to compromise on land? No.
Have they decided to give up on their demands to destroy Israel demographically? No.
Have they done any concrete moves to stop terror attacks against Israel? No.
Have they stopped terrorists from taking over Gaza? No.

In fact, since 2000, they launched a major terror war against Israel, they’ve launched hundreds of rockets and thousands of mortars, they’ve killed thousands of Israelis and each other, they’ve freely elected a terrorist government, they’ve cheered Israeli and American deaths, they showed allegiance to Saddam Hussein, they’ve smuggled thousands of weapons into Gaza, and they’ve increased their anti-Israel rhetoric. They’ve watched their justice system collapse, they’ve hired thousands of terrorists to be their “security forces,” they’ve fought each other, they’ve circumvented democracy, they’ve threatened and kidnapped journalists. The relative peace that Israel enjoys now is entirely because of Israeli actions, and not at all because of the PA. Hamas still has great influence in much of the West Bank outside Ramallah. Fatah still exists as a terrorist organization behind many terror and rocket attacks, despite being part of the “government.” Palestinian Arab heroes are those who managed to kill the most Jews. Their universities churn out terrorists; their imams broadcast incitement against Israel and America on TV, every official from the President on down continues to extol the “resistance”.

So, Condoleeza, why exactly is now the time for them to get their own state? I’d love to know what they’ve done to impress you so much since 2000. Installing (probably illegally) a well-respected prime minister who is too scared to speak against terror publicly seems to be their greatest accomplishment from your perspective.

From their own perspective, however, their greatest accomplishment had been to get the Secretary of State to respond to all of their 7 years of terror and incitement with a statement that now is the time to establish a Palestinian Arab state.

How else can this be perceived besides being a reward for terror and hate? If there is another way to interpret this, please enlighten us, Condi. I must be too dense to figure it out.

(crossposted on Elder of Ziyon)

Steven Edwards in the National Post writes an opinion piece saying that sometimes it is best to ignore racist and bigoted acts because publicizing them plays into the hands of the haters. The example that he brings, of a Jewish/Israeli colleague brushing off such an incident, seems to imply that someone at the UN made a threat against a Jew there:

A Jewish colleague recently returned to his desk at the United Nations to discover someone had anonymously dropped off a full-colour map showing Nazi-controlled Europe in 1942. An Israeli, he had days earlier been among journalists Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the anti-Israel Iranian President, had approached after giving a press conference.

Ahmadinejad had no idea who any of the journalists were as he sought to charm them with a handshake, and quickly withdrew his hand when my colleague announced he was a “proud Zionist.”

The colleague could have made all sorts of fuss about the appearance of the Nazi map, suggesting there had been a connection between that occurrence and the handshake with Ahmadinejad, or even other anti-Israel sentiment at the UN, of which there is much.

To my surprise, he did not dwell on the incident, saying only he wouldn’t mind knowing who exactly left the map and why.

It seems likely the map depositor was trying to make some sort of negative — even threatening — point. My colleague’s reaction disempowered that person.

With all due respect to Mr. Edwards and his friend, an explicit anti-semitic act at the United Nations should be exposed. This is not the same as a random swastika in a public place, which is bad enough, but this implies that an employee or associate of the organization that is supposed to be a major upholder of peace is guilty not only of misoziony but also of naked Jew-hatred. That is, by definition, newsworthy.

It is arguable whether the Jewish victim disempowered his attacker by ignoring him, or it is entirely possible that his ignoring it could empower that person to do something worse later, but what cannot be denied is that this event is something that should have been exposed.

For that matter, so should the handshake incident between this Israeli and Ahmadinejad. I could find no record of this, from any of the hundreds of journalists that covered the Iranian thug’s visit, just as they ignored Karnit Goldwasser’s encounter with Ahmadinejad - witnessed by dozens of reporters and academics.

What the hell is wrong with journalists when they argue that they should be reporting less, or when they accept invitations from a dictator for dinner and refuse to report it, as Brian Williams and Christiane Amanpour evidently did?

Journalistic bias should be towards more news, not less, especially in an era of unlimited Internet bandwidth. Imagine the outcry from journalists if a politician would argue that they shouldn’t have covered the Columbia bias cases last week.

These stories not being reported seem to indicate that the mainstream media is an old-boys club as opposed to a group of people dedicated to exposing real news.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

The rumor spreads through the media like a bushfire. To start with, a somewhat ridiculous item in CNN:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been told about a plot to assassinate him during a visit to Iran this week, a Kremlin spokeswoman said Sunday.The spokeswoman, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity, refused further comment.

If it is a “Kremlin spokeswoman”, how could she be anonymous? Bizarre.

BBC (an others) adds that:

The Interfax news agency cited sources in the Russian special services saying a gang of suicide bombers would attempt to kill Mr Putin in Tehran.

So, the modus operandi is established. Not that it is new to the region.

Al Jazeera adds a strong Iranian denial:

But Tehran has described as “totally baseless” the report, which said Russian security services had been told suicide bombers and kidnappers were training to kill or capture Vladimir Putin.

Of course. There is a glut of willing volunteers that many Iranian luminaries brag about. Just find a cause and point a finger, and the easily combustible youngsters are ready.

According to this Russian source, Putin dismissed the news.

On Sunday evening, Vladimir Putin had a dinner at the restaurant “Adler Wirtschaft” with Angela Merkel. Before the meal, asked about the forthcoming (sic!) assassination attempt, President waived it off, saying: “Later.”

Did he mean to say that the assassination is planned for later? In any case, he is quite good in keeping that stiff upper lip.

The interesting part of this story is the lack of comment from Iranian official media. Fars tells about the visit:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to pay a visit to Tehran on Monday to attend a summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states.

No mention of the assassination attempt rumors. The only worthy hint on possible friction between Moscow and Tehran could be found in another Fars article:

Vice-Speaker of the Iranian parliament Mohammad Reza Bahonar called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to take a deeper approach when dealing with Iran’s issue.

Whether the remark refers to the depth of the Caspian or some other issues between Iran and Russia is unclear, there is no further development of the subject. On the other side, it could be the Iranian way to shout out to Putin: “Duck!”.

Clearly, Putin is not the most popular figure in the Muslim world due to Russian unending (and so far unsuccessful) attempts to “pacify” Chechnya. His maneuvering on the Iranian nuclear issue raises hackles on both sides of the barricades. Russia is consistent, though, in its relentless arms sales drive - to the Iranians or any other bearer of ready cash.

It will be kind of funny if the Semtex used for that bomb…

Update: But of course, it is the Zionists:

According to news sources in Central Asia, Tehran’s foes are engaged in extensive lobbies to throw obstacles in the way of the Caspian Sea states summit in Tehran.

These sources claim that the Zionist regime’s intelligence service and those of western countries have jointly launched a psychological warfare to cancel Putin’s visit to Tehran.

It is becoming boring…

Hat tip: Judeopundit.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

A row has broken out in Italy over the wearing of the burka after the prefect of a city in the north-east announced he was permitting it, despite legislation outlawing any clothing that stops the wearer being recognised.

In a front-page article in yesterday’s Corriere della Sera, the paper’s Egyptian-born deputy editor, Magdi Allam, attacked Mr Capocelli’s counter-initiative as symptomatic of an attitude that was “leading us straight to the suicide of our civilisation”. Were it endorsed at national level, he argued, Islamic women “could soon be going to school, taking jobs and going around freely, completely veiled”.

I am not sure about the suicide of civilization, hoping it still has a few months to go. Nor am I worried very much about women being completely veiled. I am more concerned about Islamic men using burka for their own nefarious purposes. Including going to school.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

William Arkin will soon be publishing a book about the Israeli-Hezbollah war of last summer. According to the New York Times. the book will be “critical” of Israel.

A study of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war commissioned by the United States Air Force and to be published this month concludes that Israel’s use of air power was of diminishing value as the fight dragged on because it was used without enough discrimination.Although the war was widely criticized in Israel and abroad for relying too heavily on the air force, the study argues that air power remains the most flexible tool in fighting groups like Hezbollah, because ground forces alone could not have achieved Israel’s aims. Israel’s error, the study concludes, was insufficient discernment in its airstrikes.

By bombing too many targets of questionable importance for its aims, and not explaining why it bombed what it did, Israel lost the war for public opinion, according to the author of the study, William M. Arkin, an expert in assessing bomb damage. “Israel bombed too much and bombed the wrong targets, falling back upon cookie-cutter conventional targeting in attacking traditional military objects,” Mr. Arkin wrote. “Individual elements of each target group might have been justified, but Israel also undertook an intentionally punishing and destructive air campaign against the people and government of Lebanon.”

(h/t Backspin)

Steven Erlanger, the Times’s Israel correspondent who wrote the review, doesn’t explain to what degree Mr. Arkin changed his mind. Last year, after touring Lebanon, Arkin wrote:

Israel may have made a grave error in attacking Hezbollah as it did, it may have used the wrong weapons and hit the wrong targets, it may have completely misread the enemy, it may have made its security worse for years to come.But the fact that one can drive a short distance from Dresden-like south Beirut and return to modern life itself should signal that this is something very different: Israeli bombers did not fly over Beirut and unleash loads of bombs. Each individual building was the quarry; the intent was there, and the technology existed, to spare the rest.

(See also here.)

I would argue that the review should have been called “Book Faults Some Aspects of Israeli Air War in Lebanon” (emphasis mine.)

I’m wondering how critical Arkin was of Israel. If his columns from last year are any indication, he wasn’t critical that Israel struck back against Hezbollah. He wasn’t critical of Israel’s use of airpower either. (Even Erlanger’s review says that.)

Clearly the title of the review wasn’t accurate. I suspect that Erlanger’s reading of the book wasn’t entirely accurate either, unless Arkin changed his views significantly from last year.

UPDATE: More via memeorandum.

OpFor looks at Arkin’s record (as more than an “expert in assessing bomb damage”) and wonders why the Air Force would trust his analysis. LGF provides links to more background.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Three Americans will share the Nobel prize for economics.

Americans Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for work that “laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.” The three researchers were honored for their work that helps find the optimal mechanism to reach certain goals such as social welfare or private profit.

Hm. Those names, they sound familiar… whatever could the ethnicity of those guys be?

Okay, the real question is: Is it two out of three, or three out of three? I’m guessing Jewish on Maskin and Myerson.

Us crafty Jews. Controlling the world’s money pays off.

I think Ann Coulter is ridiculous. I cannot stand her political views, or frankly, almost everything of hers I’ve ever read or heard. I think she’s a buffoon. I think she says outrageous things deliberately to provoke reactions. I don’t think she deliberately provoked the reaction to her latest shocker, though. This one was Coulter Foot-in-Mouth Disease.

People are all over her for her saying that Jews will be “perfected” if they convert to Christianity. Some Jews are defending her.

You want my opinion? Honestly, I couldn’t care less what Coulter thinks about Jews, for two reasons. First, because Omri is right about one thing: If you are secure in your own belief, you don’t care much what people from other religions think about yours. Mind you, I don’t like it when my religion is insulted or denigrated—but to tell me that I’d become “perfect” if I would only cease being Jewish? Shyeah. Pull the other leg, Annie. Because in my world, you’re the one who’s following the wrong religion. (And yes, I would be happy to discuss it with you, but not in a church or even in a synagogue. Just a discussion, bubelah, and I know enough about my religion to show you where you’re misquoting our Torah in your Testament.)

But the second, more important reason I don’t care what she said about Jews; In the grand scheme of things, there are far more dangerous people than Ann Coulter. On my “Worried About Attitude Towards Jews” scale, Coulter doesn’t even make an appearance. She does not have a grand following of believers the world over who will take her words, absorb them, and then act upon them. She hasn’t got that kind of power.

Who does have that power? Muslims like the ayatollahs in Iran, or the religious leaders in the Middle East who have been poisoning the minds of their followers against Jews for decades (if not centuries). The Pope has that power, though it hasn’t been used in some time. Christian religious leaders have that power. In fact, the reason Jews the world over have a knee-jerk reaction about this is because in the past, when Christians have declared that Jews needed “perfecting,” that statement was generally followed by pogroms, murder, forced conversions, and the destruction of Jewish life and property.

There will be no such consequences over what Ann Coulter said. She is not any kind of religious scholar or leader. She’s a writer who makes money by writing controversial books and columns. Really, I’m not worried in the least. I am far more worried about the words of hate from Iranian leaders, as they try to perfect the technology to give them a nuclear bomb. The Mad Mullahs and Ahmadinejad aren’t worried about the “perfection” of Jews. They want us all dead. Even their so-called “moderates” have called to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons.

Really. Coulter is a demagogue. She said something offensive. I’m missing the actual news in this story. I think I can go to bed safely tonight without worrying that Ann Coulter is going to work on “perfecting” me.

Which is not to say that she isn’t a schmuck for thinking it. She is. But we already knew that.

There are bigger fish to fry out there. Coulter doesn’t rate the attention.