Sabba Hillel has sent a few more Chanukah videos. Here’s one that holds a more spiritual bent, yet still has a beat you can dance to:

A very pretty songfest by a choir in Edwardian dress singing a Chanukah medley (all two songs) plus Shalom Aleichem. Go figure.

I love this.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon slammed on Thursday Israel’s plan to build more than 300 new homes in an East Jerusalem neighborhood.”This new tender for 300 new homes in eastern Jerusalem, so soon after the Annapolis Middle East peace conference, I think is not helpful,” Ban said, noting that the United Nations had a consistent position on the illegality of such settlements.

The new housing would expand Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in an area Palestinians claim as capital of a future state. The Palestinians call the area Jabal Abu Ghneim.

So what is helpful?

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Private mutterings aside, the world press was inundated a few days ago with photos of the Saudi king, Abdullah, strolling hand-in-hand with President Ahmadinejad of Iran at the yearly Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Qatar. This year was the very first time since its inception in 1981 that the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by the Saudis, invited Iran to the love fest.

(via Deja Vu)

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Muslim persecution of Christians is the major cause of the dwindling population of Christians in towns like Bethlehem.

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Notice a pattern here? Abbas pretends to embrace the roadmap, but he utterly rejects any part of it where the PalArabs are asked to take any responsibility whatsoever. He knows that if the Palestinian Arabs need to pass any test whatsoever before reaching the next stage they will inevitably, invariably fail using any objective criteria. So this is why he insisted on skipping past Phase I and now phase II - he wants a state to be handed to his utterly incompetent, infantilized people on a silver platter.

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It’s hard to figure out who is more incompetent here. The Palestinians, whose lionization of Hitler extends to glorifying his conquest of their European benefactors–or Europe, which is likely to give the perpetually corrupt PA the $6 billion it is requesting.

Every Arab rejection of moderation is ignored. Israel’s supposed to continue handing over land to people who publicly call for its destruction. But the moment Israel plan to build anything it’s not helpful. At some point don’t you have to ask if the premise of the peace process is mistaken?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

A Syrian legislator has decided to give us all something to giggle about.

Syrian MP Dr. Muhammad Habash warned Israel not to attack his country in an interview with the Israeli-Arab news paper Ma’a al-Hadat published on Thursday saying Israel’s nuclear reactor might be hit in retaliation in such a situation.

The Syrian official said that his nation is considering its response in the case of an Israeli attack.

And what, pray tell, will the Syrian reaction be? Could it be, say, the silence that greeted the Israeli attack earlier this year? No. This time, the Syrians say, Israel better watch out. They mean it!

Dr. Habash, one of the more prominent Syrian spokesmen in the media, was asked if Syria would be able to impede Israeli aggression. He answered saying: “The Dimona reactor is located within range of our missiles. Nothing will stop the fervor of the Syrian solder and the Syrian warrior in this situation.”

Shyeah. I’m sure that the IDF is petrified.

As they get older the chances that old Nazi war criminals will escape earthly justice increase. The Simon Wiesenthal center is making efforts to find some of the surviving few to bring them to justice, especially in South America.

In recent decades the rate of such discoveries has slowed, though there are still sporadic sightings. The Wiesenthal Center hopes one of the next to be found will be Aribert Heim, an Austrian-born doctor wanted for killing hundreds of prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria by performing lethal operations without anesthesia.Heim has a daughter in Chile and is believed by Zuroff and others to be alive in either Chile or Argentina. Although Heim’s family has said he is dead, German authorities have discovered a bank account with more than $1.5 million that could be claimed by his children if they were to offer proof of his death. They haven’t, and now, believing that the account might still be financing Heim, Germany has created a special task force to track him.

“There’s now a prize of 310,000 euros on his head — 130,000 offered by the German government, another 130,000 offered by us, and this July the Austrians added another 50,000 euros,” Zuroff said.

But even if Heim is found, trying him in court could prove difficult, if not impossible. The extradition process can take years. The Wiesenthal Center’s leaders met last week with government officials in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay to plead for cooperation if any war criminals are found.

While old Nazis are still protected by governments, it is especially perverse that now Israelis like Avi Dichter have to fear traveling abroad lest they be arrested as war criminals.

If the Geneva conventions were being observed, the blame for the civilian deaths when Salah Shehada was killed rested with Shehada. As Ralph Peters wrote 5 years ago:

Earlier this week, Israel succeeded in killing Salah Shehada, a savage Hamas mastermind, and one of his top aides. A dozen Palestinian civilians died in the attack, including members of Shehada’s family. The civilian deaths may be lamentable, but they also were justifiable. A terrorist leader used his relatives and neighbors as shields, and they died with him. Their deaths were Shehada’s fault, not Israel’s.

The Geneva conventions specifically address a case where a combatant hides among non-combatants. Hiding in that fashion does not render the combatant immune from attack. Yet there are those who would twist the meaning of the conventions and argue that Dichter, involved in killing someone who targeted non-combatants is a war criminal.

Meanwhile some old Nazis continue to go free.

International law is an …

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.