Omri writes about the next step towards gamma ray lasers.

You know what this means, don’t you?

We’re that much closer to the creation of the Hulk.

I’m happy to volunteer myself for the Hulk experiments. I’ve always wanted to get stronger as I get angrier. Because I can get very, very angry.

Science is now one step closer to my dream of being dictator of the world.

If I were the dictator of the world… the mad mullahs would be very, very, VERY unhappy. And if I were the Hulktator of the world: They’d be splotches on the pavement of Qom.

Even though I have been busy with other stuff, I continue to research for the next installment of my Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs series. In August I found a fantastic article by Martha Gellhorn written in 1961 where she described in detail her visits to many UNRWA refugee camps, and more recently I found a short follow-up she wrote for The Nation after the Six Day War (not available for free.)

In this 1967 article, Gellhorn talks about the mindset of the Palestinian Arabs, in camps and outside of them:

In 1961, I had made a long tour of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) Palestinian refugee camps m Lebanon. West Jordan and the Gaza Strip, and I had been at this camp near Jericho before. It is disheartening. The world believes, because it is constantly told, that the Palestinian refugees have lived in physical misery for nineteen years. Middle-class refugees will confide, in private, that their poorer compatriots, those who remarn in the camps. owned nothing at home and are no worse off now than before. The majority of refugees, educated, skilled, semi-skilled, live outside the camps and manage like any other Arabs.

The refugees’ misery is in the head. They are sick in their minds from a diet of propaganda, official Arab dogma and homemade fantasy, which they have gobbled for nineteen years. Schooled in self-pity, encouraged to believe they are the worlds unique vlctims of mjustice, they have never been allowed to forget the daydream past or to settle for the real future. Since the third Arab-lsrael war hardly touched them, they learned nothing from it.

…Then, as on remembered cue, we went into the fantasy phase of conversation. It consists of recounting how many acres of fine fields and orchards, what splendid houses, were left behind in Palestine and stolen by the Jews. There is competition in fantasy ownership: if you add up the lost acreage claimed by the inhabitants of any camp you usually arrive at a total larger than the whole recovered arable land of Israel. One very nice man in another camp told me that he had owned 11,000 acres of citrus groves: legend has it that once the Sultan of Turkey owned that much land in Palestine and sold it to the Rothschilds. But I think this ownership fantasy is the real human core of the Palestinian refugee problem, as opposed to the unreal Arab propaganda problem.

Gellhorn uncovered a basic fact that nobody else noticed. UNRWA created a welfare state for Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants, and while the ambitious and successful ones managed to get out of these camps on their own, the ones who stayed - the lazy ones - are quite happy being on the dole, spinning fantasies about how successful they were in old Palestine while they partake of free food, housing and education.

A hint that this is true can be found, of all places, buried in the “tourism” section of the Palestinian National Information Centre website:

Before its withdrawal from Gaza strip, Israel tried to dismantle some camps and transfer their inhabitants to settlement projects as; Al Sheikh Redwan project. Others tried to do the same procedures before but the refugees insisted to stay in their camps rejecting to leave them without a just political solution to their problem.

Besides the idiotic idea that people who have the opportunity to move their families into new houses would turn it down for political reasons, what is written here is not quite true - Israel did manage to move some willing Palestinian Arabs out of the camps and into brand new housing projects, as the UN itself admitted (A/43/653 30 September 1988, from Google cache):

11. The Israeli authorities, according to information available to the Commissioner- General, have to date allocated a total of approximately 3,914 plots of land in the Gaza Strip for housing projects. A total of 2,583 plots have been built on by 3,653 refugee families comprising 22,732 persons, buildings on 257 plots are under construction, 937 plots are still vacant and 137 have been built on by non-refugee families. In addition, 3,034 refugee families consisting of 18,823 persons have moved into 2,666 completed housing units consisting of 5,893 rooms.

12. Refugee families are continuing to purchase plots of land at subsidized rates for the construction of houses in the projects developed by the Israeli authorities in the Beit Lahiya, Nazleh and Tel-es-Sultan areas. The construction of multi-story apartment blocks in Sheikh Radwan, sponsored by Israeli authorities and offered for sale upon completion, as reported last year (A/42/507, para. 12), continues.

While some PalArabs took Israel up on this offer, the vast majority did not.

The Gaza City Website adds:

The quarter of Sheikh Radwan was established to the north of the city so as to evacuate Shati Camp and resettle the refugees whose houses were demolished by the Israeli occupation authorities, in the first stage. In the second stage, anyone else who wanted to move from Shati Camp to Sheikh Radwan Quarter had to demolish his house in order to obtain a house there. The goal behind this project was to resettle the refugees and put an end to their case, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

Even Palestinian Arabs admit that Israel wanted to help them move out of camps and into houses, but they will twist the facts to make it sound like this was a bad thing:

Since the Gaza Strip is distinguished by a huge concentration of dispossessed Palestinian refugees maintained in large camps, the Israeli authorities, from the early stage of the 1967 occupation of the area, have devoted major effort to breaking up the camps and relocating their inhabitants elsewhere. The Israeli authorities have applied a clear policy of systematic destruction of refugee shelters and initiation of resettlement schemes, aimed in the short run at making the refugee camps less congested, while in the long run, the policy appears designed to remove these camps from the landscape entirely, since they remain a constant reminder of Palestinian uprootedness and exile. To date (1990), the Israeli strategy of demolishing the entire refugee camp network has failed to achieve its final objective.

In general, the Arab leaders have wanted to keep as many people in the camps as possible because keeping them in misery helps their political goals, and it has been no secret that Arab leaders have vied with themselves to use Palestinian Arabs as pawns for decades. But what was not clear was that a large percentage of Palestinian Arabs are willing to perpetuate the problem of being stuck in camps themselves - because it is a free ride. The fact is that their so-called “leaders” will happily exploit this, as will UNRWA in its attempt for self-preservation.

No better proof is needed than the fact that since Israel left Gaza, the camps are still there, along with the free UNRWA handouts. This benefits everyone: the UNRWA stays embedded in Gaza and feels like it is useful, the PA/Hamas can point to “refugee” camps as examples of Israeli cruelty, and the camp residents themselves get all the UNRWA benefits without having to actually try to work for a living.

The United Nations sent UNIFIL troops to Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from re-taking South Lebanon and making it into an armed camp from which terrorists could fight Israel.

As is usual for all things UN, UNIFIL failed in its mission. Hezbollah is now, gee, re-taking South Lebanon and making it into an armed camp from which terrorists will fight Israel.

[...] Hezbollah is also getting ready. No longer only to the north of the Litani River in the eastern part of the Bekaa Valley, where a rearmament has been observed since the beginning of the year, but - and this is new - in South Lebanon, in the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force, reinforced after the summer 2006 war between the IDF and Hezbollah) zone.

Lately, truck convoys have been sighted at night, as well as trenches dug amid the palm groves and immediately recovered; suspicious explosions have been heard: so many indications that strangely recall the 2005-2006 preparations, when, in anticipation of a conflict with Israel, Hezbollah dug tunnels, fortified bunkers and secured its radio communications. “The Lebanese Army has been informed, but for the moment, it does nothing,” deplores the French military expert.

And it’s getting worse.

This summer, Hassan Nasrallah talked about future “big surprises.” The Hezbollah leader insinuated that his party, allied to Tehran and Damascus, holds longer-range missiles than the Iranian models the IDF destroyed during the 2006 war: Zelzals capable of striking Tel-Aviv, or even further south in Israel.

The only good news in all of this is that Israel now has a Defense Minister who knows what he is doing, and how to direct the IDF to combat Hezbollah and Hamas. The bad news, of course, is that Israel is likely to be fighting a multi-front war. Hamas has smuggled 200 tons of explosives into the Gaza Strip. Egypt is allowing known terrorists to enter Gaza freely. And of course, Iran is funding all of Israel’s enemies: Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ, and probably Fatah as well. Not that it matters. European nations are going to hold a fundraiser for Fatah—sorry, the PA—in a few months. The money for weapons, incitement, and Jew-hatred will never dry up.

It seems to me that if George W. Bush can’t get the UN to agree to harsher sanctions on Iran, and the U.S. does attack the Iranian nuclear facilities, rockets will be raining down on Israel from Gaza, from Syria, from Lebanon, and from Iran itself. The casualty rate will be much higher than that of the Lebanon war. Israel can’t launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s rocket installations, and there is no missile defense shield extant that can stop 100% of incoming missiles. The 90% rate that Ehud Barak is looking for will still allow hundreds of missiles to find their mark. An all-out war would be horrible. This has to be stopped before it can happen.

I have no idea how.

In the course of reviewing an exhibit on the Dreyfuss case now appearing at the Yeshiva University Museum Edward Rothstein gives an excellent overview of its history in “A century old court case that still resonates.”

The Affair begins with seemingly simple facts. In 1894, when France’s 1870 defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War still rankled, a document was discovered showing that a highly placed French officer had been passing military secrets to the Germans. The traitor was identified as Alfred Dreyfus. He was convicted, using the testimony of handwriting experts, along with assertions by military officers who boasted confidential proof. He was publicly stripped of his military ribbons, his sword was broken in two, and he was exiled to the rocky hell of Devil’s Island.In 1899, after fresh discoveries, Dreyfus was returned to France for a retrial. He was again convicted.

The problem, though, was that Dreyfus was innocent. The evidence was circumstantial at best. His accusers in the War Ministry ignored exculpatory evidence and contradictory testimony. They ultimately forged incriminating documents and prevented another officer from revealing Dreyfus’s innocence.

In addition, of course, Dreyfus was Jewish. From the start this was essential to the ways his accusers shaped the evidence and judged his character. Right-wing newspapers featured anti-Semitic caricatures. The public greeted Dreyfus’s humiliation with cries of “Death to the Jews!” In the French colony of Algeria, there were pogroms and the destruction of Jewish property. (Some photographs of those acts are on display here.)

In the end Dreyfuss was cleared.

In his book Mr. Burns points out that the very notion of an “intellectual” grew out of the Dreyfusard alliance of writers and politicians on the left. There are photographs here of such figures, ranging from Anatole France to Genevieve Straus (Bizet’s widow). Their political agitation eventually led to Dreyfus’s pardon in 1899 and to the annulment of his guilty verdict in 1906.In 1906 Dreyfus was also awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor, on display here, citing “a soldier who has endured an unparalleled martyrdom” — modest recompense for having a golden braid and red ribbon publicly ripped from his uniform in 1895. (The pieces are shown here as well.) There is also a reproduction of the document used to convict Dreyfus; the original is lost.

After quoting from some of Dreyfuss’s letters, Rothstein concludes:

The strange thing about Dreyfus is that he did not seem to suffer the crisis of faith that scarred so many others who took up his cause, and with which we still live — a skepticism that turns nearly every trial into a potential Dreyfus Affair. His self-effacing idealism at times seems inspiring, at other times woefully naïve.

Finally Rothstein leaves us with this footnote.

At least some of his ideals were apparently passed on, though without comforting consequences. One of his granddaughters, Madeleine Lévy, shown here in a photograph, joined the French Resistance in the 1940s, along with her sister and two brothers. She was captured and in 1944 died of typhus before she could be murdered — in Auschwitz.

The article is accompanied by a slideshow of some of the artifacts at the exhibit.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

While the Bush administration focuses its hopes for peace in the Middle East on a peace of paper, David Schenker writes of the disturbing developments to Israel’s north in Lebanon’s government by murder

Presidential elections — which began on Sept. 25 and run through Nov. 25 — have only increased the threat to the majority. The president in Lebanon is elected by parliament, and the majority has made clear that although it would prefer to choose by consensus, it will elect the chief executive by a simple majority if no acceptable compromise candidate can be found. The Hezbollah-led, Syrian-backed opposition says it will not recognize a non-consensus president. For its part, Damascus has stipulated that the next Lebanese president should be moqawam, i.e., a supporter of Hezbollah, and “of Arab belonging,” i.e., pro-Syrian. Should the Syrians and the opposition succeed in either toppling the government by attrition or installing a crony like outgoing President Emile Lahoud, the tribunal could be delayed if not derailed. The tribunal, convened at the behest of the U.N. Security Council, appears to be a train that has left the station. But election of a “compromise” president — someone more sympathetic to Damascus — could weaken Beirut’s commitment to and undermine international support for the tribunal. Syria could also scuttle the tribunal by ending March 14th’s control of the government.

How to fight this? Schenker recommends:

For Washington, the key will be to craft a policy to prevent Syria and its Lebanese allies from subverting the government in Beirut. One possibility is to deploy, at Lebanon’s request, international forces — under the auspices of already-in-force U.N. Security Council resolutions — to protect targeted politicians. A more effective but politically difficult option would be to hold Syria accountable for all future political murders in Lebanon.

Notice that his recommendations don’t include signing another treaty or an Israeli retreat from Shebaa Farms or the Golan. Rather, he recommends enforcing existing resolutions. What a novel concept! Still the stakes are high for Lebanon.

Regardless of how Washington proceeds, immediate action is required. The ongoing thinning of the majority raises the very real specter that the results of the 2005 parliamentary elections in Lebanon will be reversed by terrorism. Should this trend of assassinations continue unchallenged, the pro-Syrian opposition, led by the Iranian-sponsored Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah, waits in the wings.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Let us compare and contrast two news articles with a similar subject, and see the differences.

First, the headline: Israeli Troops Kill Hamas Fighter

Compared to: Palestinian infighting in Gaza kills 4

Note that Israeli troops killed the Hamas “fighter,” while the Palestinians killed by other Palestinians were killed by the vague cause of “infighting.” It’s a perfect example of the language used to describe what Israel does, and what the Palestinians do, in nearly every case. I swear the AP must have it in their Middle East stylebook.

Now let’s look at the ledes. First:

Israeli troops killed a Hamas gunman early Wednesday in a battle in southern Gaza, Palestinian officials said.

The gunman was hit by tank fire near the town of Khan Yunis during an Israeli military incursion, according to Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of Gaza’s Health Ministry. Hamas, the Islamic group that rules Gaza, confirmed that one of its fighters had been killed.

Three other Palestinians were wounded, Hassanain said. It was not immediately clear if they were civilians or militants.

Compared to:

A clash between Hamas security forces and members of a large Gaza clan affiliated with the rival Fatah party left four people dead on Wednesday, a Hamas official said.

Two of the dead were Hamas security officers and two were from the Heles clan. More than 20 people were wounded from both sides, said Ihab al-Ghusain, a spokesman for the Hamas security forces.

The violence erupted when clan members opened fire at the security forces, al-Ghusain said. The force later arrested a number of “outlaws” who were on their way to send reinforcements to the clan, he added.

Do you see the difference in language? The Hamas/Fatah battle that led to four deaths and 20 injuries is a “clash.” The Israeli battle was a “battle.” Israeli troops “killed” the Hamas “fighter.” The “clash” didn’t kill four Palestinians—it “left four people dead.” The wounded were not identified as civilians or “militants” or “clan members.” In the article about the IDF, the AP specifically said they didn’t know if the wounded were civilians, thus implying that civilians may have been hurt in the “battle.” They did not point out any such information about the wounded in the Hamas/clan “clash,” only that “more than twenty people” were wounded “from both sides.” (We’ll come back to that in a minute.)

And yet, the bias keeps on building.

Local residents said rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns were used in the clashes. Ambulances were heard whizzing throughout Gaza city.

In a heavily-populated city, filled with civilians, Hamas and Fatah used RPGs and machine guns. Twenty-plus people were wounded in the action. And the AP couldn’t identify whether or not some of those twenty people (from both sides!) were civilians.

I was going to guess that a large majority of them were. But wait, I don’t have to guess! Ma’an News (a Palestinian news service that has its own amusing bias) has the answer:

The battle began when members of the family threw explosives and fired at the police, immediately killing one officer and injuring two others. In the ensuing fighting, two civilians were killed and 30 people were wounded, including 14 police officers.

Muawiya Hassanein, director of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian Health Ministry, said that some of the injured were in critical condition, including a woman named Dalia Hillis and a man named Ahmad Abu Ni’ma.

Isn’t that interesting. The AP didn’t report any civilian injuries, nor did they report that two of the dead were civilians. And if you subtract the fourteen police officers from the number of wounded, that leaves sixteen wounded civilians.

Let me repeat that: Sixteen wounded civilians. And the AP couldn’t determine whether any of the casualties of the Hamas/Fatah clan “clash” were civilians, nor could AP so much as hint that there might have been civilian casualties.

This is how Israel gets its horrible reputation in the world. The mass media play up every single Israeli-caused casualty, and play down all of the Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence. All of it. The news media refuse to correct stories even after they are proven false. I seriously doubt the Mohammed al-Dura hoax exposure will get any publicity after the judge in France makes a ruling (assuming he is a man of honor and that France 2 actually gives him the full, unedited tape of the incident).

Because that doesn’t fit the narrative. The narrative is that the evil, cruel, racist, violent Zionist army is callously killing and wounding Palestinian civilians while going after “terrorists.” Palestinians killing Palestinians, murdering civilians with RPG and heavy machine gun fire—well, that just doesn’t get noticed much.

Except by us.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was in Bethlehem to meet with religious leaders yesterday. The Washington Post has two reports on the trip, the first is Rice Draws on ‘Spiritual Passion’ in Push for Peace

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice broke away from her diplomatic meetings here to sit down with the top religious leaders — Christian, Jewish and Muslim — of this holy city Monday night. According to people present, she heard about the failure of Israeli authorities to recognize the Greek Orthodox patriarch, a top Muslim cleric’s lack of access to Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque and other complaints. Rice responded by recalling her upbringing in segregated Birmingham, Ala. “She spoke with a spiritual passion about the need for peace and overcoming pain and grievance,” Rabbi David Rosen said. “She said to us, ‘You all have your legitimate grievances, but there’s a moment in history for an inexorable change.’ And she believes this is the time for the Israeli and Palestinian conflict to end.”

I’m not certain what Jewish leaders there are in Bethlehem. And no doubt there are fewer Christian leaders than there were 14 years ago. But those aren’t issues that are mentioned. It’s interesting that she apparently didn’t hear any grievances say about the desecration of the Temple Mount under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. Rabbi David Rosen isn’t from Bethlehem, he’s from Jerusalem and he’s with the American Jewish Committee. The problem is the difference in approaches of the Israeli and the Palestinians.

The Palestinian side and supporters in the Arab world are pushing Rice to lean on the Israelis to be as specific as possible in writing this document. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit urged Rice on Tuesday to insist on a firm deadline. “We cannot negotiate and carry on negotiating until the end of history,” he said after Rice met with him and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, by contrast, is resisting such timetables and details, nervous that making too many compromises at this point could bring down his shaky government. The suggestion recently that he might be willing to turn over to the Palestinians some Arab-majority neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, triggered protest from some of the most hawkish and religious parties in the governing coalition.

Another reason that PM Olmert might be unwilling to commit to “timetables and details” is because demands are only going one way. This, however, concerns me:

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said in an interview that Rice’s diplomacy “is completely different” in tone and timing than that of the four previous secretaries of state with whom he has worked. “There has also been a realization by the administration that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the core of many of their problems in the Middle East,” he said. “I think she realizes that American interests in the region can no longer be served by backing Israel alone.”

Does Erekat know something? The New York Times gives a quick overview of the trip to Bethlehem.

On Wednesday, the secretary traveled to Bethlehem, a city hemmed inside the West Bank by the barrier the Israelis have built. Ms. Rice, a daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers, visited the Church of the Nativity, built on the biblical birthplace of Jesus Christ, where she spoke of her own faith. “I think I could spell Bethlehem before I could spell my name,” she said. She added that a largely Muslim city like Bethlehem, which also includes Rachel’s Tomb, a sacred site for Jews, was a model for reconciliation. As she visited, Israeli jets roared overhead.

What was Dr. Rice thinking? Rachel’s Tomb has, by necessity, become a protected compound because the Palestinians made it a target during the beginning of the “Aqsa intifada.” And the Christian population of Bethlehem continues to decline.

The town’s Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006. There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs.

Israeli jets are not the problem. Today’s Washington Post had a bit more on the Bethlehem meeting, in a piece titled “Rice hears Palestinians Grievances.”

Rice wrapped up four days of intensive diplomacy in the Middle East amid conflicting signs of how much progress she was making. At a Washington news conference, President Bush said he was encouraged by reports he was getting from Rice and alluded to Palestinian frustrations. “The Palestinians that have been made promises all these years need to see there’s a serious, focused effort to step up a state,” Bush said. “And that’s important so that the people who want to reject extremism have something to be for.”

But it’s also true that Palestinians have made promises all these years and it’s only right that Israel starts to see some of them be fulfilled. Fighting terror isn’t a confidence building measure. It’s a necessary action to make peace possible.

Rice described the current negotiations as the most serious effort at settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in seven years. She also said that listening to Palestinian civic leaders’ complaints was “sometimes sobering,” but added that every one of the people present endorsed a two-state solution to the problem. She refused to be drawn into criticizing Israel over the barrier. “Let’s be real — there is a security problem,” Rice said. “No one wants to have barriers, but there is a security barrier there. We have been told many, many times — and have been assured — that it is not a political barrier and it cannot be a political barrier. I look forward to the day when security is brought about in a different way.”

It’s good that she acknowledges the security problem.

Residents of Bethlehem are deeply frustrated by the economic devastation their small city has suffered since previous peace-making efforts collapsed and Palestinian violence surged. Tourism has declined precipitously. Even the landmark Jacir Palace Hotel, where Rice met with the civic leaders, is only 20 percent occupied. There are far fewer paying visitors, a hotel official said, than needed to break even.

Well that surge in Palestinian violence is important. That’s where the security problem comes from. And it’s the failure of the Palestinian leadership, not the wall, that is responsible. (If the hotel cannot even break even, how is it still open? My guess is that it’s getting funding from elsewhere.) But finally we get a sense of the real problem.

Hazboun said the secretary was “listening very carefully” to the group but had made no promises. He made clear that the Palestinians are counting heavily on Rice and Bush. “The United States is responsible for the peace process,” he said. “This is the most important request from us, that they have a successful conference.”

The United States is not responsible for the peace process. The two sides negotiating are. If one is negotiating in bad faith there will be no peace. What Hazboun and Erekat (quoted above) are saying is that it’s necessary for the United States to press Israel. But until the Palestinians take control of their responsibilities it makes no difference how much the United States pushes Israel and how much Israel accedes to those pressures. Peace will not come until the Palestinains do their part. The statements about the November talks demonstrate that the Palestinians still want their state handed to them. Because of that, there’s no reason to expect any breakthroughs in November.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Tig just came inside. He wanted a snug, which is my picking him up and petting him while he purrs. I found what I thought was a bit of pine needle on his fur, and picked it off. It wasn’t pine needles. It was a mosquito. Only it wasn’t a mosquito. It was two mosquitos. Humping.

Seconds later, it was two dead mosquitoes. Still in hump position.

I cannot tell you how grossed out I feel right now. I do not like pine needles moving on me, and turning into insects.

Ew. Ew. Ew. I hate bugs.

Well, at least I just stopped a few hundred more mosquitoes from coming into the world.