If you haven’t been following this story, it’s pretty funny.

Dear Iranian Mullahs! While our satirical website and your Propaganda Directorate deal in the same trade of making up facts and exaggerating reality, we are different in that we can recognize a spoof - but you apparently can’t. On Dec. 27, 2007 you used our spoof image on your propaganda website to illustrate a “true” statement that Jews are welcome in Iran and that Western reports about mass emigration of Iranian Jews are “lies spread by the Zionist hegemony.”

The spoof image in question first appeared in 2005, in our parody called Israel Dismantles; World’s Problems End, which revealed the absurdity of demands to dismantle Israel, with various nations, including Iran and Germany, celebrating the return of their long-missed Jews.

It gets better. Our Iranian friends tell us that the original Farsi-language placard says “Nuclear power is our absolute right,” which means that you, dear Mullahs, used that image as a propaganda tool to advance your nuclear program - so you could threaten and maybe even annihilate the Jews in Israel. In our spoof, we changed the message of the placard to the complete opposite, making it appear improbable. To be fair, your story about Iran’s love for the Jews was just as improbable, so it would seem only logical to put them together. It would, we repeat - if your goal were to publish a self-parody. That wasn’t your intention, however. You only did it because you didn’t know better.

Let’s call it self-inflicted poetic justice.

Click on the link to see the pictures. Really, really funny.

Israeli “human rights” organization, B’tzelem issued its report for 2006.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in 2007 has fallen by almost two-thirds compared to the figure for 2006, the human rights group B’Tselem reported Sunday.According to the figures published in the organization’s annual report, 131 Palestinian civilians were killed this year - 36 in the West Bank and 95 in the Gaza Strip. Last year, Palestinian civilian fatalities numbered 283 in the Gaza Strip and 65 in the West Bank, for a total of 348.

The drop mirrored a decline in overall hostilities this year compared to last. One hundred eighty-eight illegal Palestinian combatants were killed in 2007, compared with 292 the previous year.

The figures also paralleled a drop in the number of Israeli civilian fatalities in 2007. Seven Israeli civilians were killed in 2007, compared with 17 in 2006. Four soldiers died this year, compared to six last year.

But still

“The figures, nevertheless, still give cause for concern,” wrote B’Tselem, which blamed the civilian deaths primarily on Israeli policy allegedly determined by the army’s top echelon. The policies include allegedly illegal easing of the military’s rules of engagement, faulty transmission of these rules to soldiers in the field, approval of operations that cause disproportionate harm to civilians and failure to independently investigate most cases in which Palestinian civilians are killed.

Forgetting for a moment that according to the Geneva conventions positioning oneself near civilians does not render a combatant immune from attack, is Btselem certain that all of the innocents were necessarily innocent. Do they use the same criteria as the IDF?

Of course B’Tselem doesn’t count the number of Palestinians killed by other Palestinians, which has passed 600 for the year.

And as Elder of Ziyon has been noticing recently, the IAF really has been avoiding civilian casualties in its recent attacks on illegal combatants. Or as Meryl has summarized, 97% of the attacks on illegal combatants in 2007 have resulted in no civilian casualties.

Of course, for Israel’s critics, B’Tselem included, Israel must maintain an impossible standard in fighting its enemies or be judged in the wrong.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It appears that I have missed a huge brouhaha lately.

A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers’ committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.

The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that “the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals.”

You can guess that all them pro-Israeli bloggers jumped on the poor Tal as proverbial flies on the proverbial… no, this is not the metaphor I need… well, let’s say they have just jumped on her and not in order to rape the poor aspiring doctoral candidate in sociology.

Now it is up to me, I am afraid, to straighten the pro-Israeli side in the dispute. Because you happen to be wrong, ladies and gentlemen!

So, our doctor-to-be claims that our soldiers don’t rape Palestinian women because of a political/racial imperative, which is apparently very simple: the fear that the offspring of this union will not be recognized as Jewish.

The other (pro-Israeli) side claims that the soldiers don’t rape for the following reasons (different reasons from different sources):

• Moral probity
• Coming from a culture that forbids and condemns rape
• Being under strict orders and fearing a possible court martial on the spot
• Etc.

Of course, such preposterous claims could come only from the members of academy who have never observed an IDF soldier in his natural environment. It is widely known that the moment an Israeli dons the uniform, he immediately transforms into a hungry, horny and cruel creature whose ability to rape the defenseless population is matched only by his blood thirst. And don’t make me laugh with your funny court martial. The only possible court martial for an IDF soldier could be caused by him raping the brigade commander’s secretary (keep dreaming, soldier…)

And of course, Tal Nitzan is absolutely right: the only thing that could stop this frenzied rapist a fraction of a second before the dastardly deed is carried out and, indeed, make him totally disabled (from this specific point of view, we mean) is the thought about the consequences. Indeed, only the knowledge that the fruit of his loins will be considered an Arab is sufficient to deny the colonizer and oppressor the mere ability to reach this ultimate pleasure.

So cool down, please.

Now, I don’t want to be blamed for purely destructive criticism. This wasn’t the purpose of my post. In fact, to satisfy Dr Nitzan on one hand and the pro-Israeli crowd on the other, I have a proposal that will create a bridge between the warring sides. Since in that research something named “organized military rape” was mentioned, it gave me the idea.

From now on military rape will become organized indeed. Every soldier in the field will be accompanied by an Orthodox Rabbi. The rabbi will guide the soldier to the most desirable object of the next rape, assist him in the execution of the said act and perform a special short military ceremony converting the freshly raped person into Judaism. The said ceremony* to be developed by the Chief IDF Rabbi without undue delay.

Clearly this measure will have a lot of positive effects:

• A solution for the precarious demographic balance in the region
• An increased motivation to serve and lowered frustration level of IDF soldiers
• Compliance of the new IDF with Dr Nitzan’ thesis = calm in the academic circles and, eventually:
• Expedited peaceful solution of the Israeli/Palestinian crisis (after all, it is said “Make love not war”)
• The last, but not the least - drastic reduction in frequency of sexual offenses in Israel

To be carried out immediately - by the authority of the Elders.

(*) A special version of the conversion ceremony to be developed for the adherents of the Conservative and Reformist fractions each in short order.

(**) I have really read (part of) the learned opus by Tal Nitzan. Being schooled in precise sciences, I wonder more and more what kind of “research” is being done by some branches of science at the expense of the tax payer. The paper, while not as bad as the linked above INN article is trying to show, is full of pseudo-scientific jargon to the brim and is hardly readable by a normal person. Well, I guess, this is the purpose of people who are in need of a degree… However, the quote by INN, while taken out of context, is precise. And mind-boggling.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is telling Palestinians to put up or shut up regarding the removal of checkpoints:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Israel would not take any security risks in its gestures to the Palestinians until the Palestinian Authority begins taking the necessary actions against terrorist groups.

“As long as the Palestinian Authority does not take the required measures, with the required intensity, to fight terror groups, the State of Israel cannot make any changes that may expose it to dangers and create security hazards,” said Olmert, at the outset of the weekly cabinet meeting.

“We do not intend to compromise on this, and it will be an inseparable part of any dialogue between us and the PA,” the prime minister added. Olmert’s comments came in the wake of Friday’s deadly West Bank shooting attack, in which two Israelis were killed.

The Palestinians have no intention of stopping terrorism, in spite of the platitudes you see their leaders mouth from time to time. It’s obvious when you read quotes like this, and realize the duplicity behind the Palestinian leadership’s empty promises about peace.

Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said Abbas’s government was committed to meeting its security obligations under the road map.

He said Israel should not create obstacles in the way of the negotiations by expanding Jewish settlements and by carrying out “assassinations” in the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas Islamist group seized by force in June after routing Abbas’s secular Fatah forces.

You see the backwards logic of the Palestinian leadership. The deaths of terrorists on their way to and from shooting rockets at Israeli civilians are “assassinations.” Rocket attacks that kill terrorist leaders who are responsible for the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Israeli civilians are “assassinations.” And they are “obstacles” to negotiations with the Palestinians. But rockets falling on Israel? Well, that’s Hamas’ fault. The PA can’t control that. And shooting attacks, firebombing, thwarted suicide bomb attacks, knife attacks on Israelis? Funny, but the PA leadership never really says a thing when a boy is stopped at a checkpoint and found to have a suicide bomb vest hidden in his bags.

But the larger fraud is the one the wire services always perpetuate on the world: When they insist that Palestinian leaders “condemn” the deaths of Israelis. Here is what Reuters considers a “condemnation.”

“We mourn the deaths of the two soldiers. Every death is a senseless one,” Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Saturday evening in a meeting with President Shimon Peres in Herzliya.

“We are working to end the bloodshed, to create a better future,” said Fayyad and extended his condolences to the families of Cpl. Ahikam Amihai and Sgt. David Ruben, two off-duty soldiers on a hiking trip who were killed in a shooting attack south of Hebron.

I’ll give you a hundred bucks for any word of condemnation in those quotes. But that doesn’t stop Reuters from claiming he “condemned” the deaths of two Israelis. The fact that the Palestinian prime minister actually said he mourns the deaths of the soldiers (and I believe that about as much as I believed that Arafat was concerned about Palestinian Christians, whom he allowed to be driven out of Bethlehem and Nablus) is astonishing in and of itself, but I suspect that if the reporter had managed to stick around afterward, he would have found Fayyad laughing his ass off with his buddies at having managed to pull off such a great PR move.

Here’s another so-called condemnation that is not a condemnation, carried by the Jerusalem Post, whose editors should know better:

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki strongly condemned Friday’s shooting attack near Hebron which claimed the lives of two Israelis.

“The group that carried out the attack seeks to sabotage peace negotiations and the Palestinian Authority’s plan to increase security in the Palestinian territories,” he was quoted as saying by Israel Radio on Saturday.

Malki added that severe steps would be taken against those responsible for the terror attack.

You see what is condemned? The group’s actions in trying to “sabotage peace negotiations.” The PA’s “plan to increase security.” In other words, the PA is upset that their cover is being blown. As far as the “severe steps” to be taken, I expect they will be similar to Yasser Arafat’s revolving door policy for captured terrorists. Pick them up, imprison them (all the while allowing them full access to phone, TV, visits from relatives and other terrorists), then release them the next time Israel takes out a terrorist or three and blame Israel for it.

Adding to the theme are the words of Marwan Barghouti, convicted Palestinian terrorist that some people think is Fatah’s the PA’s last, best hope for leadership:

“Israel has not made a strategic decision to make peace with the Palestinians,” Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti said in an interview with the Saudi paper Al Wattan on Sunday.

“What is demanded of Israel now is that it announce clearly that it is ready to end the occupation, retreat from occupied territories, remove settlements and checkpoints, stop seizing land, release prisoners, stop the siege of the Gaza Strip and stop killing and destroying operations,” he added.

These are the operations that stop Palestinian terrorists from killing Israelis. Every Palestinian leader, including the so-called “moderates,” insist that Israel must stop targeting and killing terrorists. In an earlier post, I pointed out how the IDF is now so careful to avoid civilian casualties that 97% of all casualties in targeted killings in 2007 were terrorists. In the last few weeks, 40 terrorists have been killed by the IDF with zero civilian casualties, and only three wounded IDF soldiers.

And there you have the real reason why the Palestinians want Israel to stop the “assassinations” and the “killing and destroying operations.” Because they are successful. PIJ leaders have been killed and arrested. The Hamas leadership have all gone to ground for fear of a Hellfire missile knocking at their door. The PA/Fatah/Tanzim leadership doesn’t have to do that, because Israel—and the world—are pretending that Fatah has moderated its stance, and that it wants peace with Israel.

The words of their leaders prove they do not. But the fraud will continue, at least for now.

I really do wonder what is going to happen when the Palestinians eventually get their state. Because I think they will. And I don’t think that terrorism will stop when that happens. Nor will the world condemnation of Israel when she defends herself against the murderers.