The IDF has videotape of Egyptian border guards either turning a blind eye to the smuggling between Egypt and Gaza, or actively aiding and abetting it. The tape has been given to members of the Pentagon. It was not supplied to Congress. Based on the tapes and other reports of Egyptians aiding weapons and explosives smuggling into Gaza, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the Knesset that Egypt was doing a “terrible” job on the Philadelphi corridor. (Those of us who follow such events are not surprised. We predicted this.)

“The need to dramatically decrease the amount of arms that are being smuggled into Gaza is an Israeli strategic goal, and of course this affects our relations with Egypt,” she told the committee.

“The Egyptians played a positive role at the Annapolis Conference, but that does not contradict the fact that what they are doing at Philadelphi is deplorable and problematic,” Livni told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

So what do the Egyptians do? Well, first they tell Livni to sit down and shut up, and go back to her knitting or something.

Egypt on Tuesday strongly rejected criticism by Israel’s top diplomat that Cairo is doing a “terrible” job of securing its porous border with the Gaza Strip against smugglers, saying Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni did not understand the issues and should have remained silent.

[..] Livni infuriated Egyptian officials on Monday by accusing Egypt of doing a ”terrible” job in securing the border, saying this stands in the way of Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians because it strengthens extremists in Gaza.

”It is better for the Israeli minister to concentrate on negotiation efforts with the Palestinians, instead of speaking randomly about issues she should not be dealing with if she is not fully aware of the situation,” a statement from the ministry here said.

Why would the Egyptians allow smuggling into Gaza? There are many reasons. Money, for one. Bribes have to be sky-high with this much cash flowing both ways.

The defense official went on to say that if Egypt wanted to take control of the smuggling into Gaza it would have done so by now. The remark came despite a Post report on Tuesday that Cairo had bought advanced tunnel detection systems.

He claimed there were some one hundred tunnels, allowing for a tremendous amount of weapons and other goods to be moved from the Egyptian side of Rafah Crossing to the Palestinian side.

The official added that the tunnels had turned into a massive source of profit and a “real industry.” He explained that smugglers paid $3,000 a day to Hamas for the use of the tunnels and recounted how a month ago, the group closed one of the tunnels after smugglers refused to pay the fee.

There is also the fact that if the arms are being smuggled into Gaza to fight Israel, they’re not being smuggled into Egypt to arm their own terrorists.

And that’s just the beginning. Egypt then tried to blame Israel by saying agreements between the two nations forbid Egypt from having enough guards to adequately police the border. This does not, of course, answer the question of the videotape evidence of the guards that are on the border turning a blind eye to the smuggling. Or aiding it. Israel has no intention of allowing Egypt more armed guards on their border, having learned a lesson decades ago about what happens when too many armed Egyptians approach Israel. So Egypt tried another tack.

Now, Egypt is blaming “the Israel Lobby” for causing tensions between Egypt and the U.S. It doesn’t matter that they have been caught in the act. It’s all the fault of the Jews.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Wednesday accused the Israeli lobby of aggravating its relations with the United States by using the issue of smuggling across the Gaza border as an excuse to cut Washington’s military aid to Cairo.

[...] “The latest months have seen the Israeli lobby’s efforts to harm Egypt’s interests with the Congress,” Aboul Gheit told reporters, adding that since Hamas took control of Gaza in June, Israel has been trying to pressure Egypt.

And here’s the part that always makes the top of my head blow off. It’s perfectly fine, you see, for Egypt to criticize Israel.

Egypt criticized Israel’s renewed efforts to build settlements around Jerusalem, calling them damaging to the peace process, in talks between President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on Wednesday.

Mubarak echoed Palestinian demands that Israel cancel a project to build 307 homes in Har Homa neighborhood announced earlier this month, describing it as damaging to the peace talks, according to presidential spokesman Suleiman Awwad.

“This settlement activity will hijack the only outcome of the Annapolis conference, which was the re-launching of peace negotiations,” he told reporters following the meeting.

Got that? Israeli “settlement activity” is what is preventing peace. And Egypt gets to have a say in that, because Egypt wants to have peace in the region, as they tell us over and over again. But when it comes to Israel objecting to the tons of weapons being smuggled into Gaza, aided and abetted by Egypt’s crappy border guards? That’s when Egypt says to Israel: MYOB.

“We will not allow a third party to interfere in the Egyptian-American relations which is bilateral and includes one regional power and one international power that try to discuss all issues openly and in cooperation,” he said.

Egypt on Tuesday strongly rejected criticism by Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that Cairo was doing a terrible job of securing its porous border with the Gaza Strip against smugglers. Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement said Livni did not understand the issues and should have remained silent.

So you see, it’s perfectly fine for a third party to interfer with Israeli building activity, but it’s not okay for Israel to object that Egypt is in breach of the agreement signed during the withdrawal of Gaza. Nor is it the only breach of the Egypt-Israel agreement.

On Monday, for the first time since Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in June, Egypt unilaterally opened the Rafah border terminal and allowed 700 Palestinians, who claimed to be religious pilgrims on their way to Mecca, to pass through. On Tuesday, another 1,000 crossed through the terminal.

“This is a clear breach of agreements we have made with the Egyptians,” a senior diplomatic official said Wednesday, in reference to the November 2005 agreement under which the Rafah Crossing was opened. The official said the unilateral opening of the border had been preceded by another breach of agreements in October, when Egypt allowed 85 Hamas operatives to cross back into Gaza after cutting a hole in the border fence.

Egypt is failing on many counts to keep its word regarding policing the Gaza Strip border. And when Israel has the gall to ask Egypt to actually stick to the agreement, Egypt tries to cloud the issue by jumping on the Walt-Mearsheimer bandwagon and blaming “the Israel Lobby.”

And the Israel Lobby as scapegoat for the world’s ills continues its way down the slope. The pebble is not a pebble any longer. It’s definitely a rock. This was the title of the AP article on the subject:

Egypt: Israeli Lobby Harms US Relations

And this:

Egypt criticizes pro-Israeli lobby ahead of Mubarak-Barak meeting

The story is all over the wires now, complete with the Israel Lobby smear. Thanks, Walt. Thanks, Mearsheimer.

Yeah, I saw this coming, too.

Glenn links to an article about police in Wisconsin trying to get kids to wear helmets while sledding. But I don’t think they’re going far enough.

I chipped a tooth sledding. I was 13, hit a bump at the bottom of the hill. The metal part of the Flexible Flyer hit me in the chin, my tooth chipped, and I had to have a root canal.

I say add mouthguards to sledding protection as well. The ones that boxers use would probably work.

If you’re going to have a nanny state, make sure you do it right, dammit!

And then, come to think of it, we should have eye protectors too. You never can tell what’s going to fly in your eye as you sled down a hill at the horrifying speed of 17 mph. Goggles for sledders. And perhaps we should start a movement to get all bicyclists to wear goggles, too. Helmets are not enough.

Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers. You don’t need a helmet to check out the rest of this site. Yet.

Michael Jackson’s kid accidentally punched him in the mouth. And his lip fell off.

Michael Jackson reportedly underwent emergency surgery after his young son accidentally punched him in the face.

The Thriller hitmaker - who has undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries on his face in the past - was recently photographed in a Los Angeles bookstore wearing numerous bandages around his mouth.

But sources tell Finditt.com the singer’s son, Prince Michael II, caused the injury: “He was whacked in the face accidentally by his younger son Prince Michael II while playing around and part of Jackson’s upper lip collapsed.

“That mishap led a hysterical Jacko to make a beeline for the plastic surgeon for a bit of quickie repair work.”

Let that be a lesson to you: If you’re going to have enough surgery to become a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster, don’t play with kids.

Some might call this karma.

Exit question: How the hell does your lip “collapse”? What, he’s got balloons for lips now?

If any of my readers are plastic surgeons, please don’t tell me the truth. I don’t want to know.

In 80 years on, massacre victims’ kin reclaims Hebron house, Nadav Shragai reports:

Ten months have passed since the settlers entered the three-story building, which covers an area of over 3,000 square meters. The $700,000 to buy the house came from people in New York who originally wished to remain anonymous. But they are nurturing a grudge against Israeli bureaucracy, and this week, they decided to speak out: The buyer’s son, a religious Jewish businessman from New York who agreed to be identified only as B., spoke with Haaretz about his plans for the house and his motives for buying it.”My paternal great-grandfather lived in Hebron before the riots and the deportation of 1929,” said B., referring to the murder of 67 Jews that summer by Arabs incited by false rumors of Jewish-orchestrated massacres of Arab Jerusalemites. “Part of my mother’s family also lived there. They experienced the horrors of the massacre and knew many of the victims.”

The carnage, 19 years before the creation of the state, had a deep effect on the Jewish community. The survivors were forced to flee Hebron, and their property was seized by local Arabs and occupied until after the Six-Day War of 1967.

Notice that Jewish Hebron was occupied for 38 years! Yid With Lid did. Peace Now didn’t.

In fact Peace Now seemed not at all concerned with the Arab occupation of Jewish land. It also isn’t concerned with the legality of the purchase or even the threat of death faced by the Arab seller of the property.

It is interesting that despite this purchase, someone sees Hebron as becoming an example of co-existence.

So if Jews legally purchased land in Hebron and peace hasn’t been derailed, exactly what is so upsetting to Peace Now?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Stories like this happen all of the time. An Israeli gets lost and winds up in an Arab city in the West Bank, and the “peaceful” Palestinians—who only want peace and their own state, side-by-side with Israel—nearly murder him.

The Bat Yam resident recounts the horror that followed. “I ended up at an army checkpoint…and they let me through even though I was wearing a kippah and had Israeli license plates… I ended up in the center of Ramallah, stuck in traffic and surrounded by Arabs,” he says. “I still didn’t realize where I was because I relied on my GPS.”

Soon, however, Ochana was spotted by the local Arab residents. “One Arab merchant came up to my car and started rapping on my window….He asked me if I was Jewish and I answered ‘yes’. I immediately knew that something was wrong.”

The Arab merchant then entered Ochana’s vehicle through the window, punched him in the testicles and stole his cellular phone. “He began to yell ‘a Jew, a Jew’ and other Arabs soon approached me. They stole my GPS and my other cellular phone, “said Ochana.

This mugging, however, was soon the least of Ochana’s problems, as a near-lynch ensued. “An entire mob approached me and began to throw rocks at my car….they broke both the front and back windows….I began to cry and ask ‘why me?’” Ochana recalled.

Well, according to all of the pro-Palestinians, it’s because you stole their land, you see. And you’re oppressing the Palestinians with checkpoints and the separation fence. Therefore, you deserve to die.

Just as Ochana began to fear the worst, however, help came from an unexpected source. “Two Arabs came out of nowhere…One of them pulled me out of the car and asked me if I was insane. They ran with me to the Qalandiya checkpoint while we were chased by rock-pelting Arabs the entire way, and handed me over to Israeli soldiers,” he recounted.

Those would probably be the twenty percent of Palestinians who don’t think that suicide bombings are the way to get a state. Interesting, though, that the Arabs asked the Israeli if he was insane for having the nerve to show his face in an Arab town. This is the Palestinian state to come: Open to everyone but the world’s Jews. Watch for it.

The largest group - since the time of Shah - of Jews from Iran just arrived in Israel. Ha’aretz reports:

A group of 40 new immigrants from Iran touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Tuesday, the largest since the fall of the Shah and Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.The immigrants, from Tehran, Shiraz, and Isfahan, each received a $10,000 grant from international Jewish organizations.

Relatives screamed in delight and threw candy at the newcomers as they emerged into the airport reception hall after a long bureaucratic procedure.
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Two brothers, Yosef and Michael, said they were glad to be in Israel. They declined to give their family name in order to protect relatives.

“I feel so good,” said Yosef, 16. “I just saw all of my family. You can’t put that into words.”

Two paragraphs at the end of the article are worth noting:

In 2000, Iranian authorities arrested 10 Jews, convicted them of spying for Israel and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from four to 13 years. An appeals court later reduced their sentences under international pressure and eventually freed them.No comment was available Tuesday from the Iranian government or the country’s Jewish lawmaker.

The freeing of the ten Jews was somewhat gradual and it was rather uncertain for the men’s relatives. And yes, there is a token Jew in Iran’s parliament.

I don’t know that a lot can be read into this aliyah. Even if this is the largest group of Iranian olim in 30 years, there are at least an estimated 25,000 Jews left in Iran.

Though they’re receiving $10,000 each, the new olim stand to lose their assets in Iran. According to the Jerusalem Post:

Iranians who choose to leave Iran can appoint legal custodians to manage their assets, but if they don’t, their assets are transferred to the state. However, according to sources familiar with their immigration process, the 40 new arrivals - 10 families and three singles, mostly from a middle to lower-middle financial bracket - have not appointed any such custodian. Some will lose those assets entirely.

The immediate danger facing Iranian Jews seems to be uncertain.

According to well-informed sources, imposing a travel or immigration ban on Iran’s remaining 25,000 Jews would not be in the interests of the Iranian government, which is trying to show the rest of the world that despite its problems with the US and Israel, there is a humane regime in Teheran that treats its Jewish minority well.Similarly, the Iranian authorities, fully cognizant of the latest group of 40 Jewish emigrants, can point to the relatively small number and say that the vast majority of the country’s Jews have chosen to stay.

However, not all of the Iranian expat community or those still residing in Iran are happy about the slow trickle of Jews to Israel; some say this phenomenon endangers Jews who choose to stay in Iran.

An Iranian Jew who immigrated to Israel six years ago, however, said that families continued to communicate with each other by phone without too many problems. From Israel, one can dial directly to Iran, and from within Iran, many families are using VoIP technology to communicate with their relatives in Israel via the Internet.

From what I’ve heard, freedom of movement for Iranian Jews is not as easy as the Jerusalem Post reports here.

Boker Tov Boulder asks (and answers) a related question:

That’s funny, only 25,000 and it’s the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East? Hmmm, how could that be? Why so few Jews, when Jews have been all over the Middle East for ages? I guess that’s another truth disappearing into the black hole that Dhimmedia has become.It’s estimated that in 1945 more than 870,000 Jews were living throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Read the rest, for the answer.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

A few weeks ago Caroline Glick reported that Israelis had to enter the conference area through separate entrance. Ms. Glick is now retracting that claim.

Of course as Daled Amos who noticed the retraction pointed out:

There is plenty to criticize about what happened at Annapolis.
Now, there is one less thing.

UPDATE: At the suggestion of Daled Amos, I’m including a few paragraphs from Caroline Glick’s “Lies and Deceits” to clarify.

Even when independent media outlets use their best efforts to report the facts in a credible way, they sometimes get it wrong. For instance, on November 27, the Jerusalem Post reported a quote made by an Arab diplomat to AFP news agency in Riyadh claiming that the Bush Administration had bowed to the Arab demand to force the Israeli delegation at the Annapolis conference to enter the conference hall through a separate entrance from the Arabs. In the diplomat’s words, “The Saudis told Washington that they do not want to meet anyone from the Israeli delegation, either by chance or by prior arrangement. Hence it was decided that … delegations would enter into the meeting room from different doors.”His assertion was made credible by statements from US officials regarding the Saudi demand for segregation between the Arabs and the Israelis at the conference. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, “As the Saudi foreign minister put it, nobody’s interested in these uncomfortable situations where there are theatrics for the sake of photographs. We’ll of course be respectful and mindful of that as we’ll put together the various events.”

It was these twin reports that informed my own decision to begin my Nov. 30 column “Apartheid not peace” with the story of the separation of Israeli representatives from Arab representatives at Annapolis. Happily, after my column was published, both the State Department and Israeli officials denied that the US had enforced the Arab demand for segregated entrances.

YET WHILE the Bush administration did not bow to the Arab demand for segregation at Annapolis, it is moving to advance the Arabs’ bigoted demand for apartheid rather than peace in the Middle East.

That the request was made appears to be confirmed. However it was also clearly rejected by the administration.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.