This one’s audio only, but so worth it. Melvin and the Chipmunks sing a Chanukah song.

The Syrians are making sure their kids don’t get Jew cooties. They’re blocking Facebook.

Syrian authorities have blocked Facebook, the popular Internet hangout, over what seems to be fears of Israeli “infiltration” of Syrian social networks on the Net, according to residents and media reports.

Residents of Damascus said that they have not been able to enter Facebook for more than two weeks. An Associated Press reporter got a blank page when he tried to open Facebook’s home page Friday from the Syrian capital.

Syrian officials were not available for comment Friday because of the Muslim weekend, but some reports have suggested that the ban was intended to prevent Israeli users from infiltrating Syrian social networks.

Lebanon’s daily As-Safir reported that Facebook was blocked on Nov. 18. It said the authorities took the step because Israelis have been entering Syria-based groups.

Ohmigod, no! They’re not—writing Facebook comments to each other! Ew! Jew Cooties! Ew!

Heaven forfend the Syrians should find out that Israelis aren’t really the devils that Baby Assad’s spin machine makes them out to be. Score one more for the Dorktator.

Let’s do a little reading between the lines here. The AP has a three-hanky story on how the mean ol’ Israelis are shutting off the Gaza fuel supply, just because Hamas is allowing terrorists to fire over 2000 rockets into Israel over the past twelve months. Witness the horrors:

Service stations across the Gaza Strip shut off their fuel nozzles. Tens of thousands of people have no fresh water because pumps can’t run. Hospitals parked ambulances, and bicycles are the new favored form of transportation.

A month-old Israeli reduction in fuel shipments to Gaza is hitting the seaside territory hard. And things could get worse - seeking to punish Gaza’s Hamas rulers further, Israel is waiting for court approval to reduce the electricity supply as well.

The measures are the latest in a series of sanctions that Israel has imposed since the Islamic militant group violently seized control of Gaza in June and allowed near daily rocket attacks on Israelis. Israel, which considers Hamas a terrorist group, has declared Gaza a “hostile entity” and closed the borders, halting almost all trade.

Okay. That’s the lede that makes it into everyone’s World News section in the local paper. Here’s what didn’t make it in:

The gasoline and diesel reductions, from 15 percent to 75 percent of normal supplies, have hit Gaza’s water system as pumps run out of fuel. The shortages have been compounded by Gaza’s 30 private fuel companies, which halted deliveries this week to protest the Israeli cutback.

Fed up with the finger pointing, Gaza’s gas station owners this week stopped serving the public, saying they were caught in the middle.

Gas pumps were covered in blankets, plastic bags or signs declaring: “No fuel. No diesel.”

“We are the ones who are suffering the beating and the losses,” said Mahmoud al-Shawa, a member of Gaza’s association of station owners.

Did you catch that? The Gazan fuel dealers deliberately shut down their pumps and stopped fuel deliveries. But that’s not all. The Gazan oil companies refused to accept shipments of Israeli fuel as a “protest” against Israel cutting supplies.

Palestinian petrol distribution companies refused to receive the amount of fuel from Israel’s Dor company as a form of protesting the Israeli reduced its fuel supplies to Gaza.

Palestinian said on Sunday that most of the service stations in Gaza Strip have run out of fuel, especially the diesel as Israel started to reduce Gaza fuel deliveries.

The Union of petrol stations owners said in a statement that the Gaza Strip needs 350 thousand liters of diesel everyday while Israel wants to allow only 90 thousand liters in.

And what, exactly, is the reasoning behind this “protest”?

The union said the local petrol companies have refused to receive what Israel is sending “in order not to be partners in punishing the Palestinian people because these quantities are insufficient.”

The Palestinians have never refused to cut of their noses to spite their faces, and this is a prime example of that. But more to the point, there is no such thing as a spontaneous protest in the Palestinian territories. There is no way the union would refuse to accept fuel shipments on their own. Count on it, this is Hamas trying to make the world weep for Gaza.

I think the world seems to be getting a bit tired of the game. Only about 60 versions of this story were on Google News. The Misery Of The Gazans seems to be slipping in popularity.