Yesterday, Elder of Ziyon noted that Israel was being charged with Real Slow Ethnic Cleansing. In response to the charges that Israel is carrying on genocide or similar smears, Elder of Ziyon writes:

According to the CIA Factbook, there are 1,482,405 people in Gaza. The mortality rate is 3.74 deaths/1,000 population and the birth rate is 38.9 births/1,000.This means that this year one can expect some 5500 Gazans to die, and over 57,000 to be born.

The upshot is that even if 50,000 additional Gazans died this year - ten times their normal rate - their population would still be higher next year.

To kill that many Arabs, Israel would have to adopt the methods of Syria or Saddam’s Iraq or Jordan or Iran or Egypt (with that nice chemical weapon touch in Yemen) or….

Nope, when it comes to killing Arabs, Israel is out of its league.

Ah but, the Zionist have now hatched a new nefarious plot attacking Palestinians with sharp objects.

Israeli authorities fear that along with the new influx of livestock will come a wave of diseases not indigenous to Gaza, among them foot-and-mouth disease and the avian flu that are known to exist in Egypt. Because of the proximity between Gaza’s population to Israeli towns, the diseases could easily spread into Israel.Those fears fueled Israel’s decision to send thousands of vaccines into Gaza beginning next week, said Shadi Yassin, a spokesman for Israel Defense Forces unit in charge of contacts with Gaza.

That’s one of the complications of circumventing customs. And Israel is taking the initiative to ensure that it doesn’t cause problems in Gaza. That’s a funny kind of “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” going there, isn’t it?

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

The latest brouhaha in the British parliament clearly shows that some conservatives still cannot figure out the power of PCS (Politically Correct Speak). The new invention of the Home Secretary that will ease the task of isolation and extermination of terrorism is beautiful in its simplicity: if you don’t like it - just call it “anti-Islamic”. And you are home and dry.

Of course, the dreary conservatives who always like things just as they are would vastly prefer to call a terrorist “terrorist”, a bomb “bomb”, a wife-beater “wife-beater”. They just don’t get it.

I, on the other hand, fell in love with the new idea immediately and have been vigorously applying it in my personal life. Here are some results I am happy to share with you.

1. Spouse. Definitely Islamic - pure as snow and so good I may even splurge on a burqa as a sign of my appreciation.
2. Children. Mostly Islamic, but sometimes showing signs of anti-Islamic behavior (like asking for money, refusing to behave, etc.)
3. Male cat. Definitely anti-Islamic, esp. when stealing food, breaking things and pissing in randomly chosen corners.
4. Female cat. Generally Islamic, excluding the tendency to cry out loudly at nighttime.
5. The Japanese car. Superbly Islamic.
6. The French car. Violently anti-Islamic and may have to be beheaded. Publicly.
7. Friend #1. Mostly Islamic but doesn’t hold his drink. Er… anyway…
8. Friend #2. Generally Islamic, but doesn’t return books. May have to chop off his hand.

Etc. You got the principle now, unless you are thick as… Don’t you see how amazingly simple life became? And how orderly and easy to understand the world really is?

If not, you are anti-Islamic and have to be dealt with. Watch out.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Egypt snagged five Palestinian terrorists, complete with suicide bomb belt, trying to get over the border into Israel. And where were the Palestinians found? In the Sinai. Where did they come from? Gee, let’s think. What Palestinian territory just had the wall keeping Palestinians out of Egypt blown up?

Egyptians security forces arrested five Palestinians in Taba, across the border from Eilat, who were in possession of a bomb belt which they planned to use in a suicide bombing in Israel, according to a report in al-Ahram on Wednesday.

And then they caught some more.

The newspaper, which is considered a mouthpiece for the Egyptian government, also mentioned that an additional group of Palestinians was caught in possession of a map indicating openings and troop concentrations along the Israeli-Egyptian border. The Palestinians were also found with a large explosive device and some sophisticated weapons including sniper rifles.

Gee, what would they be using sniper rifles for?

Crafty like a fox, that Hamas. So many different goals, so little time.

Michael Oren argues in Israel’s Lebanon Disaster that it’s imperative that PM Olmert resign in the face of the final Winograd Commission report in order to restore the country’s faith in its leadership.

In another country, perhaps, such blunders might result in the resignation of senior officers but not necessarily elected officials. In Israel, though, no one is above blame. Accountability for decision making is a tenet of the Zionist ethos on which the Jewish state is based and, unlike most nations, Israel has a citizens’ army in which the great majority — politicians included — serve. Most uniquely, Israel confronts daily security dangers and long-term threats to its existence. Israelis can neither condone nor afford a prime minister who passes the buck to their army or shirks the onus of defense. The person who sends us into battle cannot escape responsibility for our fate.

Jewish Current Issues (who linked to the Oren article) emphasizes the findings of the first Winograd report.

While the Winograd Commission report is expected to lay out the political and military failures of the war in Lebanon in 2006, don’t expect it to affect PM Olmert much. With his party circling the wagons the political consequences will probably be minimal.

On Tuesday night, bracing for the publication of the report, cabinet ministers from Kadima came to the prime minister’s defense, saying that it would be wrong to call elections with the government acting to further the peace process with the Palestinians. “The state of Israel will pay a high price if it goes to election,” Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On said at a meeting of Kadima activists in Tiberias. “The prime minister is determined on this score, and no system of pressure will make a difference. For the first time in seven years there is an attempt to create a diplomatic process, [and] the economy is growing.”

The IDF is concerned that a majority of the blame could fall on the military leadership.

The IDF braced itself Tuesday ahead of the scheduled publication Wednesday of the Winograd Committee’s final report on the Second Lebanon War.

Senior officers told The Jerusalem Post that the IDF top brass was preparing for a “worst-case scenario,” in which the military - and not the political echelon - would be blamed for most of the war’s failures.

Probably the biggest mistake was having Amir Peretz as Defense Minister. While it obviously was hard to deny the leader of the second largest faction his choice of portfolio, that was Olmert’s responsibility. With a military ignoramus in control of the army, there was no effective oversight of the military. But Peretz is gone, not because of his incompetence (at least not directly) but because he lost the post as leader of his party.

Contentions.David Hazony observed

The Winograd report has the potential to tip any of these over the edge. The report will probably lay heavy blame on then-IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who failed to prepare the military for war and failed to run the war while it was happening; and on the mustachioed then-Defense Minister Amir Peretz, whose breathtaking ignorance of military affairs raises serious questions about the merits of parliamentary democracy. But the real questions will rise about Olmert, who laid out major objectives for the war, none of which were achieved; and who ran the war as if he were still trading favors at Jerusalem City Hall.

The problem, Hazony alludes to is the nature of Israel’s parliamentary democracy. It could be that all the pressures brought to bear will force Olmert to resign and take his government with him. Still, I don’t detect a lot of interest in getting rid of Olmert. At least not where it counts. The country’s political leadership is very insulated.

Contrary to what Oren wrote, the Left very much wants Olmert in place, because he is committed to the exact same thing they are: the peace process. And for the Israeli Left, the peace process takes precedence over all else; even over democracy and accountability. Also, many Israelis, while they may dislike their leadership, are generally content.

In Ehud Olmert’s Israel, Peter Berkowitz writes:

So ask Israelis about the state of the nation, and they will tell you that things are grim and growing worse. But, observes political strategist Eyal Arad, chairman of the Euro Israel Group and former adviser to Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert, ask Israelis about their personal prospects and many will tell you they have never had it better. In fact, since recovering in 2003 from the Second Intifada, the Israeli economy is booming, particularly in high-tech industries. The stores are stocked with the latest European fashions and electronic gadgets from around the world. Newer, taller, more glistening buildings distinguish the Tel Aviv skyline. In addition, the health care system boasts excellent facilities, superb physicians, and universal coverage. Literature, music, theater, and filmmaking flourish. Radio and TV feature lively, loud, and nonstop discussion of issues great and small.

And combine that with the fact that PM Olmert’s two most likely opponents, MK’s Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu, are former Prime Ministers themselves with lots of baggage and the necessary “perfect storm” just doesn’t seem to be there to force the fall of the government.

Last June, PM Olmert showed some remarkable resilience in the face of adversity. He demonstrated his political survival skills then. Barring a criminal indictment, I don’t believe that Olmert will step down or that the necessary pressure will be brought to bear to make that happen.

He’s like the cartoon character happily strolling along oblivious to and untouched by the massive catastrophes occurring around him.

He’s Ehud the Teflon.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Isn’t it interesting. Hamas has been busy blowing up the wall between Gaza and Egypt, then maintaining crowd control, and now policing the border. And the kassam rockets—over which Hamas insist they have no control—suddenly stopped raining on Sderot for a few days.

Why is that?

The terrorists fired rockets even during the lockdown, though not as many. But suddenly, the rockets have stopped—even though supplies have been brought in from Gaza.

My guess? The terrorists are busy stocking up on new weaponry and bomb-making ingredients. They don’t have time to fire rockets.

In his latest article* Hamas’s Phony Victory professor Barry Rubin of GLORIA Center tells the story of Hamas’ latest failures:

Imagine a very secret meeting held somewhere in the Gaza Strip. Around a table sit various Hamas bigwigs and their leader makes the following speech:

“Ok, here’s the plan. We’ll wage war on our stronger neighbor, Israel, and lose; destroy our economy; make our people suffer; ensure international sanctions continue against us, and alienate almost all Arab regimes. Then, when things can’t seem to get any worse, we’ll turn out all the lights and get international sympathy!”

And he is right on all five counts. And yet…

Hamas indeed seems to be losing its war. The economy, what there was of it before the putsch, is thoroughly destroyed, leaving room for progress only for rocket science, Gazans suffer grievously indeed (a good part of them undeservedly), international sanctions (or at least the official attitude to those) are in place and the last meeting of Arab leaders was largely critical on Hamas.

But while prof. Rubin acknowledges (more or less) the inroads Hamas’ propaganda made in the Western press, he sees this success as unimportant. Unfortunately, I have more than just gut feeling telling me the opposite.

Arafat’s Fatah learned to use the language of images - fake or otherwise - to their advantage, and their Gazan “heirs”, Hamas, do their best to improve on the technique. To use the “easy” example, the poster boy Muhammad Al Durah that was (still is) one of the main exhibits on the totem pole of the Intifada, but many others as well. Of course, the messages were sown in the fertile soil of generally anti-Israeli Muslim world and the Western fellow travelers, but no mistake about their potency.

The images are not addressed to the powers that be (also even the powers are influenced by their undeniable impact). The images are not aimed at a short-range goal. And the images don’t even have to be true.

Hamas learned that the reasoning, the truth and the logic are all unimportant in the long run. They know that the images stay in our memory long after the logic, the reasoning and the truth are forgotten. Images, like nothing else, consolidate the myths, and there is hardly a social entity - well, a nation, that is not based on myths.

In the latest round of images: the insidious candles, the children trying to study in the darkness, the hungry people breaking through the border for food (that they succeeded to empty the Egyptian stores of electronics as well is a lesser matter), the queues for bread - all this has already entered the “treasure” of Palestinian and, indeed, Muslim folklore to stay there for years to come. And eroding whatever there remains of skeptical and realistic outlook.

Hamas is not in a hurry. They know very well that it takes years to sway the public, especially in the West and to make the public to fully accept their version of reality (or unreality, no matter). Even when the public and many of the media outfits seem to lap up their story quite readily. As a reminder - see the review by Soccer Dad.

So, while Hamas is in trouble, the wench is far from being dead. Hamas is kicking, and quite vigorously. To disregard this aspect of its activities would be a folly.

(*) I know that Soccer Dad has already addressed the same article in this post, however…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

The UN Security Council won’t be condemning Israel for Gaza anytime soon. Libya lost.

The United Nations Security Council will not discuss the proposal to condemn Israel over the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip by the Jewish state, following an adamant battle held by the Israeli delegation to the UN and backed by the United States.

[...] Senior diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said Tuesday that Libya had withdrawn its condemnation proposal which it has been advancing over the past two weeks, after Israel opposed any negotiations on the wording of such a proposal.

Sources in Livni’s office said that Israel’s insistence, backed by the US, was what caused Libya, the Security Council’s chair this month, to go back on its demand that the discussion be held.

[...] At first the Arab states demanded a one-sided condemnation against Israel on the backdrops of its operations in Gaza. Libya and other Arab countries claimed that the blockade imposed by the Jewish state was causing a severe humanitarian crisis.

The international community, however, responded by demanding that the rocket attacks on Israel be denounced as well.

Foreign Minister Livni instructed the Israeli delegation not to enter negotiation on the resolution’s wording. Despite additional attempts by Libya to hold such talks, the Jewish state refused to compromise and was backed by the US.

Foreign Ministry officials welcomed the Israeli achievement, estimating that this would not prevent a discussion on the matter by the UN General Assembly.

Of course not. Expect a rousing anti-Israel resolution from the General Assembly, with European nations abstaining, as usual.

Nabbing a rat: The IDF got a major PIJ POS in Bethlehem. That would be the town that the world’s anti-Israel crew gets so up in arms about every Christmas. Funny, I don’t think they’re going to be all upset that this terrorist leader was operating out of Jesus’ birthplace.

Palestinians get shown the love: Egyptian Bedouins are firing at Gaza Palestinians to scare them back into Gaza.

Armed Egyptian Bedouins opened fire in the air to warn away Palestinians, highlighting growing anger over food shortages and price rises triggered by the breaching of the border wall with Gaza, witnesses said.

Israel’s Fifth Column to attend terrorist funeral: Arab members of the Knesset will attend the funeral of terrorist George Habash, Palestinian POS who died of natural causes instead of via an injection of several pounds of metal traveling at high velocity. Habash is responsible for, among other horrific acts, the Lod Massacre.

Iran’s running scared: In spite of have received hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel from Russia to speed the implementation of their nuclear weapons program nuclear power plant, Iran foreign minister said “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah” to Israel’s successful test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile.

“Israel is too weak to confront Iran. The leaders of this illegitimate fake regime know well would happen in the region in response to an attack (against us),” Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Monday in response to a successful Israeli ballistic missile test.

In a press conference in Tehran, Mottaki said that “If Israel’s nuclear missile warheads could have helped, she would have won the (Second) Lebanon War.”

Coming next from the Iranian FM: I’m rubber, you’re glue.

Liked this post? Link it. Send it to your friends. I may write more of them.

Barry Rubin writes in “Hamas’ phony victory”

Imagine a very secret meeting held somewhere in the Gaza Strip. Around a table sit various Hamas bigwigs and their leader makes the following speech:”Ök, here’s the plan. We’ll wage war on our stronger neighbor, Israel, and lose; destroy our economy; make our people suffer; ensure international sanctions continue against us, and alienate almost all Arab regimes. Then, when things can’t seem to get any worse, we’ll turn out all the lights and get international sympathy!”

“Brilliant!” is the response as the Hamas leaders leap to their feet and chant: “Just 100 more years of this and Israel will be destroyed!”

Not such a great strategy, you say? Then why should anyone think Hamas won some big public relations’ victory by shutting off Gaza’s electricity and blowing up the border wall with Egypt? Â True, that’s what Hamas’s heads think. They are boiling over with pride at having put one over on Israel, as if this is some huge triumph. Some Israelis seem to agree.

Dr. Rubin goes on to explain that every since it took over the Gaza strip, the residents of Gaza have only seen increased misery, Israel is doing well and residents of the eastern section of the PA must be wondering if they want the success that Gazans enjoy.

He concludes:

Even from a radical perspective, Hamas’s policy of permanent offensive is a big mistake. It would have been better advised to pretend moderation, make a deal with at least Fatah–or perhaps even Israel–then break it in a bid for total victory. If it opted for quiet, Hamas could end the sanctions, gain some Western support, build up Gaza’s economy and social institutions, and train a future generation for all-out war. Â But Hamas also rejects this cleverly cynical extremist approach. Of course, Arafat made that same error.So while Hamas will never give up it also will never win. To portray its latest antics as some kind of success is simply wrong. It is a disaster for Hamas and the Palestinians. To understand this reality is to comprehend the central blunder plaguing the Palestinian movement’s strategy since its inception, ensnaring the PLO, PA, Fatah, and Hamas alike.

But is it a mistake or is the logical conclusion of their ideology? If Palestinian nationalism really is about building a state, then this has been a terrible way to go about it. Prof. Rubin is arguing that it isn’t even a good strategy if the goal is the destruction of Israel.

Still this isn’t just about Gaza and Israel, there’s another player immediately involved: Egypt. Bret Stephens writes in the Gaza Breakout

As Middle Eastern power plays go, Hamas’s decision to dismantle the Gaza-Sinai border was a masterstroke. Gaza’s economic woes are almost wholly self-inflicted, but they are real. Dynamiting and bulldozing the border of a neighboring country is legally an act of war, but it was made to seem like a humanitarian necessity and a bid for freedom. Flooding that neighbor with hundreds of thousands of desperate people is a massive economic burden on Egypt, but one that it shirks at its political peril.Above all, Hamas exploited the myth of pan-Arab solidarity with the Palestinians in order to explode it. Having whipped itself into its usual frenzy over Israel’s “siege” of Gaza, it was a delicate matter for the state-run Egyptian press to make the government’s case for deploying truncheon-wielding police to turn back the Palestinian human tide. It’s an equally delicate matter for the Egyptian government to arrest Brotherhood protesters peacefully demonstrating “for Palestine,” even if the Brotherhood’s real target is Hosni Mubarak’s regime and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that it supports.

For Palestinians who have spent squalid decades in the refugee camps of Lebanon (which forbids Palestinians from owning property or having any sort of gainful employment), or have been systematically abused as laborers in the Gulf sheikdoms (Kuwait expelled its Palestinian population en masse following its 1991 liberation from Iraq), or have had a country denied to them by a Hashemite regime in Jordan, the lies of the Arab world are well known.

Stephens argues that the border breach engineered by Hamas strengthens Egypt like-minded Muslim brotherhood, potentially damaging the long term viability of a somewhat moderate Egypt. He notes with satisfaction that despite the Qassams, more and more Gaza is becoming an Egyptian, not Israeli, problem.

Presumably Stephens means that a strengthened Muslim Brotherhood would provide a long term boost to Hamas.

So did Hamas win?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Peace Now head: Barak should stay in gov’t to protect peace process

Labor should not quit the coalition following the publication of the Winograd report Wednesday, because such a move would endanger the peace process with the Palestinians, Peace Now Director-General Yariv Oppenheimer said Tuesday.

State approves W. Bank radio station

Gush Shalom spokesman Adam Keller said that Radiosh violated the specifically non-political character of state-licensed commercial radio.”This station will broadcast messages in favor of settlement, and that’s a radical departure from the state policy for regional radio stations. If licenses are being given by the state to the extreme Right for the creation of political radio stations, then the Left should get a license, too.”

Peace Now spokesman Yariv Oppenheimer agreed with Gush Shalom’s position that the creation of Radiosh was illegal, because the station would advance an inherently political agenda and added that Peace Now backed the petition.

Nice to know that Peace Now, in the service of foreign governments favors creating (what will be) a non-democratic state, but favors restricting freedoms in Israel.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Iran is offering to help Egypt control the Gaza border. Apparently, Iran’s agents (that would be Hamas) aren’t getting enough men and materiel across the border fast enough.

Iran on Sunday offered to help Egypt deal with growing chaos on its breached border with Gaza, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said.

[...] Mohammadi offered Iran’s “cooperation with Egypt to provide help to the Palestinians,” said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki. He did not give details of the Iranian offer, but said Egypt welcomes cooperation between the two countries through their Red Crescent branches.

I’m betting the “help” would come in the form of, say, materials for EFPs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel to teach Hamas how to create and plant them.

Steven Erlanger reports Israel Vows Not to Block Supplies to Gaza. So apparently in an attempt to help control the chaos on the Gaza-Egypt border Israel intends to keep a steady flow of necessities going into Gaza so that Gaza residents won’t be inclined to cross the border en masse in search of luxuries and necessities in Egypt.However, Israel intends to supply lesser amounts of diesel for Gaza’s generator than it had before. It will provide enough to keep the generator going, but not continuously.

The article notes toward the end.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt met in Cairo with the appointed Palestinian prime minister based in Ramallah, Salam Fayyad, and said Egypt would soon take “necessary actions and measures” to control the border. Mr. Fayyad, an Abbas ally, wants the Palestinian Authority to be given control of the crossings and the Palestinian side of the border, with the supervision of European Union monitors, as it was before June, when Hamas routed Fatah to take control of Gaza.But a senior Israeli official, who demanded anonymity because of the delicacy of the topic, said: “As far as we’re concerned it doesn’t seem to be such a strong idea, given the weakness of Abbas. And given that Hamas is there, one can assume it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to take de facto control.”

The European Union monitors? Yes what were they doing all this time?

I refer you to some research that Elder of Ziyon did. (This is the sort of thing any reporter worth his salt ought to have done. I suspect that most Israel correspondents did not.)

Elder of Ziyon contacted the monitors. The response he got suggested (if I’m reading it correctly) that the EU monitors were there mostly for show. Additionally, Egypt was not a part of the agreement, meaning that Egypt and Hamas could circumvent the EU monitors.

Three weeks ago, during the Hajj episode, Elder of Ziyon noted:

According to a report in London Al-Quds al-Arabi, Israel has written letters to Washington and the EU requesting taking over Rafah again and giving the EU observers control again over people crossing over.

Perhaps unstated was a concern, not only about the hajj and the personnel and materiel that could be sneaked through at that time, but about the status of the border fence. Clearly Israel couldn’t do anything about it with the arrangement as it was then, even if Israel knew about it. The parties that could and should have been aware of the sabotage going on didn’t lift a finger to stop it. (The EU in Gaza has been as effective as the UN in Israel’s north.)

If Israel is skeptical of an arrangement of EU monitors partnered with PA security officials, that skepticism, borne of experience, is well warranted.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

When the going gets tough, the tough get—cat pictures.

Nothin’ but Tig for now.

This one is from yesterday. Sarah and I gave Tig 100 ml of sub-q a day after he got 200 ml of sub-q fluids. He seems to be acting more like his old self. His meow is louder and firmer. He ate all the tuna (he gets his phosphor-binding powder with a forkful of Sheba tuna fillet), instead of just licking the gravy off it. And strangely, he tried to go through the railing and walk on my Chinese screen, which would have been an utter disaster. The screen is an inch thick, and Tig is too ill to be able to balance on that. It’s also six feet tall. And, uh, an antique, and the last thing I want is a cat grabbing it all the way down, particularly when that cat hasn’t had his claws trimmed in, hm, let’s see, how long have I lived in Richmond? Right. More than six years, probably.

I can’t decide for sure if he’s feeling better. The signs are there, but I thought he was feeling better last week, and he went right back down again. I can tell you he that his eyes seem more alive. I can tell you that he’s eating more. I can tell you that he seems stronger. But I told you all that last week, and then he seemed like he was at death’s door. I suspect it’s going to be an up-and-down thing, but Tig is in pretty bad shape by the numbers. If he continues to eat more, he’ll have a chance. But if he keeps losing weight, it’s only a matter of time before I call the vet for that final shot.

That being said, here’s a picture hot off the presses, taken just a few minutes ago:

You can’t see it from the image, but his eyes are more alert than they’ve been. He’s currently lying in his “nest,” the foliage right next to the AC unit. It’s been a little less than 24 hours since his last injection of sub-q fluids. Sarah’s coming over later this afternoon.

And let me take the time right now to tell you how great this woman is. The reason she’s coming over every day is because her husband just had major surgery and is recovering in a hospital in the West End. She passes right by my apartment complex on the way, but still, she’s going out of her way to spend an extra few minutes helping me give Tig his sub-q fluids. Yesterday, she had all four kids with her (probably today, too) on their way to visiting their dad. It’s service above and beyond the call, when a friend takes time out from a stressful event in her life to help you through a stressful event in yours. Even when you’re so loopy from just waking up from a nap that you see her children at the door and say, “But they’ll scare Tig!” without thinking that Sarah can’t leave them out in the cold in the van. (I put on Cartoon Network, they were happy, Tig was happy, we were all happy. Except Gracie, who ran away.)

Anyway. Larry is recovering nicely, and we’re very happy with that. But Sarah deserves a kol hakavod for this week. What a great friend.

George Habash is dead.The New York Times had this interesting tidbit.

A number of accounts say Mr. Habash was born in 1925 in Lydda, Palestine, which is now Lod, Israel. The son of a well-to-d0 grain merchant who was Greek Orthodox, he was known as a hard-working and serious student who was introverted in his youth. He studied medicine at the American University in Beirut, but his studies were interrupted in 1948 when he left school to help his family flee Palestine as violence deepened between Arabs and Jews.That experience of the nascent Israeli Army driving the Palestinians from their homes had a profound effect on the young medical student, who began organizing Palestinians as soon as he returned to medical school, graduating first in his class in 1951. In 1953, Mr. Habash was among the founders of an organization in Jordan called the Arab Nationalists’ Movement. Backed with financing from Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, the group established a medical clinic in Amman and promoted the broader goal of a unified Arab superstate.

In 1957, however, the Arab Nationalists’ Movement was implicated in an attempt to overthrow King Hussein, and Mr. Habash and his followers were fled to Syria. But the group was also forced from that country in 1963, two years after Syria withdrew from a political union with Egypt.

Ignore the “driving the Palestinians from their homes,” but note that Habash, before starting the PFLP helped found Arab Nationalists’ Movement. The following is from the article, I probably quote more than any other, “How Important is the PLO?” by Daniel Pipes. It’s almost 25 years old, and still as valuable as ever.

Pan-Arabism then transformed what would have been an obscure clash over territory into one of the greatest, most significant land conflicts of the age. If not for the Arabs’ impulse to engage in one another’s affairs, the Palestinian cause would probably have remained as peripheral to world politics as that of the Armenians or the Eritreans. But the pan-Arabist focus on Zionism as the paramount enemy made the fate of the Palestinians a matter of direct concern to every government between Libya and Iraq. As the unifying element in pan-Arabism, the cause of the destruction of Israel acquired a symbolic importance out of proportion to the issues at hand. With time, it even took on independent existence, bearing its own mystique.As the principal goal of pan-Arabist politics, the destruction of Israel also became a way for government to assert their legitimacy; many rulers - Jamal ‘Abd an-Nasir of Egypt, the Syrian and Iraqi Ba’thists, and, especially, Qadhdhafi - made their involvement in the “Palestinian cause” a leading warrant of their worthiness to rule. Conversely, the credentials of Arab rulers who did not hew to the standard line on Israel were brought into question (indeed it was expected that any Arab leader who accepted Israel would pay with his life, in the manner of King ‘Abdallah of Jordan, Anwar as-Sadat, and Bashir Jumayyil).

The conflict with Israel thus came to bear on the authority of Arab regimes; giving aid to the Palestinian cause strengthened rulers against challenges from within or meddling from abroad. With the years, Israel’s military prowess rendered the idea of destroying it increasingly senseless - yet the failure to find other sources of political legitimacy meant that Arab rulers continued to depend on anti-Zionism.

In understanding Palestinian nationalism, it’s important to recognize its relationship with pan-Arabism. Palestinian nationalism is less about the dispossession of the Palestinians - if that were the case, it could have been solved easily by now - than it is about non-Arab encroachment on Arab land: Israel.

It’s telling, of course, that the “moderate” leader of the PLO sees the need to honor Habash. (via memeorandum)

PFLP founder George Habash died at age 83 in his home in Amman. His terror gang massacred dozens of Israeli adults, children and babies, assassinated Minister Ze’evi and plotted to kill Rabbi Ovadya Yosef.PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced three days of mourning following the death of George Habash, the founder of terror gang PFLP. All PLO flags will be at half mast and there will be an official “house of mourning” in Abba’s Ramallah office.

The Democracy Project emphasizes an aspect of the NY Times obituary:

For those who argue America’s retreat from Vietnam had no ill effects:Mr. Habash later remarked that the Arab defeat that year [1967] convinced him of the need to adopt a strategy like that of the Marxist guerrillas in Vietnam. “By 1967, we had understood the undeniable truth, that to liberate Palestine we have to follow the Chinese and Vietnamese examples,” he said in an interview in 1969.

JammieWearingFool notes that Habash’s death was announced by Leila Khaled. For those of you with long memories, she wasn’t just a member of the PFLP but a hijacker. Theodore Dalrymple had a nice summary of her career:

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, so perhaps it is petty to complain that the presence of the Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled in Britain, to address a meeting of students at London University’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies, undermines Britain’s claim of iron commitment to the anti-terrorist cause.For a time, Khaled was the most famous airplane hijacker in the world. In 1969, she took part in the hijacking of a TWA flight that was diverted to Damascus. She escaped by sneaking on to the same bus that carried away the hijacked passengers. She did not give up after her escape. In 1970, she attempted to hijack an El Al flight, which made an emergency landing at London’s Heathrow Airport. Authorities arrested her, and she spent four weeks in prison but was then freed in exchange for a hostage held by the Palestinians.

Now Khaled is back in England’s green and pleasant land. To do her justice, she is not a turncoat to her cause. She told the meeting at SOAS (packed, of course, as you’d expect) that there were no suicide bombers, only freedom fighters. The fact that freedom is not a conspicuous aspect of the political culture of the part of the world from which she comes seems to have escaped her.

JudeoPundit slams the BBC’s “eulogy” for Habash and reminds us:

He was a pioneer in the use of the airline industry for terror-purposes. That makes the 9/11 operation part of his vile legacy.

Unfortunately, most people - especially media folk - don’t have memories that long.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

via memeorandum.Gazan masses foil attempt to seal off Rafah border

Some Egyptians were also worried that Israel would exploit the situation to try to “drag” Egypt back into the Gaza Strip.Husam Sweilem, a retired Egyptian army general, voiced concern that Israel was planning to push Egypt to annex the Strip and to hand the West Bank over to Jordanian control, thus “ending the dream of establishing a Palestinian state.”

In Ramallah, Palestinian Authority officials said Hamas was using the crisis to extract concessions from the Egyptians on the issue of the Rafah border crossing. The officials expressed “disappointment” over Mubarak’s call for unconditional talks between Fatah and Hamas.

Of course, President Mubarak has the solution to the chaos:

Mubarak proposed in a newspaper interview that representatives of the two movements come to Cairo for talks. “I want this language of violence to stop,” Mubarak was quoted as saying. “Peace could be achieved on the basis of international resolutions and agreements that demand the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

In case he hasn’t been paying attention, Gaza is the Palestinian state for now. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, in accordance with “international law”. And it hasn’t led to greater peace or stability.

Mubarak is pushing for reconciliation between “moderate” Fatah and the terrorist Hamas organization. A Blog for All thinks that this proposal is Egypt’s way of becoming relevant again.

As I’ve predicted in the past, Egypt is now trying to push its own diplomatic efforts after watching the Saudis proffer their own last week. They want to mediate between Hamas and Fatah. The Palestinian civil war continues to simmer as both sides are unwilling and incapable of conceding on basic issues.

From its side Egypt hasn’t shut down the border leading to increased commerce.

You will also note that the Egyptians did not succeed in shutting down the border at 3:00 yesterday like they said they would. In fact, they still haven’t shut it down. Rafah has become one massive shopping mall in which the supposedly ‘penniless’ ‘Palestinians’ look for bargains, just like Massachusetts residents do in New Hampshire and Illinois residents in Wisconsin…. Well… sort of….

The Weekly Standard explains Egypt’s fears in detail:

The breakdown of the Gaza border also exposes the rift between the moderate government in Cairo and the Palestinians. While Arab governments delight in Palestinian attacks on Israel, they are wary of the violence spilling over. The Kuwaitis despise the Palestinians for backing Saddam Hussein during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Palestinians wore out their welcome in Baghdad after some were connected to terror attacks following the U.S. invasion in 2003. And the Palestinians in Lebanon are treated like third class citizens, unable to hold jobs outside the refugee camps. The Fatah al Islam uprising in the Nahr al Bared camp in northern Lebanon claimed the lives of 122 Lebanese troops while the Ein al Hilwah camp is essentially a no-go area for government forces.

And Israelly Cool! continues to liveblog the whole thing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It’s odd writing this when I had nothing to do with it. Haveil Havalim #151 is UP at Jack’s Shack. He’s got a great array of posts on topics ranging from personal reminisces to Israel to the presidential campaign to Anthrax (the rock group, that is.) Check it out!To submit a post about Judaism or Israel for the next edition click here. If you’re a blogger and wish to host let Jack know here. And please, especially if you have a post featured in the current edition, PUBLICIZE IT!

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

I believe now that I can find a silver lining in anything, so I am not absolutely lost to humanity. Here comes an example of a tragic story, idiocy and yes, some silver lining. Plus a superb writer, person and blogger who was too het up to spend a few more minutes in an investigation. Writes Ami Isseroff:

Media bias is apparently an immovable fact of news reporting on the Middle East. I am not talking about doctored photos, use of hate words like “Israel Occupation Forces” and “Apartheid Wall” in more more extremist publications. I am referring to a pervasive standard of more subtle mendacity that we have come to accept. Like people condemned to live near a pigsty or a chemical plant, we have become so used to the stench that we hardly notice it. In the same way, Jews in other times became accustomed to wearing a yellow star, and black people in southern United States understood that they must ride in the back of the bus.

Difficult to disagree, especially on the background of the Western MSM recent surrender to the Hamas’ propaganda. In this instance Ami describes a specific and truly disgusting Reuters piece.

Yesterday, two terror attacks took place in the West Bank. In one, Palestinian Arabs attacked border guards at a checkpoint and killed a border policeman. In another, Palestinian Arabs entered a civilian Yeshiva in the community of Kfar Etzion and tried to kill students there. The students were armed though, and they overcame and killed their attackers.

The Reuters report of this incident is below. It is not outstandingly anti-Israel, just biased and hateful in an ordinary pedestrian way. A casual reader might not notice much bias unless it was pointed out. What do we see here? The headline tells you that two Palestinians and one Israeli was killed. Clearly it is another case of the Israeli Goliath victimizing the oppressed Palestinian David. That is how those lopsided casualty figures pile up - incident by incident.

The lede paragraph tells us that “Jewish settlers shout dead two Palestinians” - without telling us why. It also tells you that “gunmen” (of unidentified origin - maybe Jewish) Killed an Israeli Border Guard (religion and ethnic affiliation unspecified.

Etc. Well, I have invested about 5 minutes to study the author of this dreck. One Ori Lewis, a Jerusalemite, most probably an Israeli. A quick google shows that Ori is mainly a Reuters sports hack with very few articles on other subjects. Now the provenance of the offensive headline “Two Palestinians, Israeli killed in W.Bank incidents” should be clear. Think “Brazil - Uruguay 3:1″. And the further development of the story is a typical report on a sports event.

Small fry and not very professional, in other words. The editor of the story, one Tim Pearce, is quite another matter. Seems like a seasoned editor, having his fingers in lots of pies. But a bit of low level anti-Israeli coverage probably doesn’t bother his majesty. Unless it’s Mr Pearce himself that arranged the article in this way…

In any case: Reuters - Ami 0:1. Easy game, too.

Do you see the silver lining now?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

JP was on top of this story:

In a protest organized by a coalition of left-wing movements, over 1,000 people demonstrated at the Erez border crossing on Saturday in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the residents of Sderot, under the slogan: “Stop the siege on Gaza: A demonstration for Gaza and for Sderot.”

I, however, just heard on the radio (on the wireless for you Brits) the bit they missed:

The protest dispersed after a Qassam rocket, followed by a few mortar shells, landed in the vicinity of the Erez border crossing.

Yep…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Update from Meryl: The JPost seems to have withdrawn this aspect of the story. It’s no longer in the article.

Update from STG: The JPost didn’t have this tidbit at all, sorry for misunderstanding. As I have mentioned (not clear enough, as it appears), the Qassam + mortar shells were reported via radio (Army Radio around 19:00), while the JP article timing is 14:50.

Update from Meryl: Oh. Never mind.

You know, that last photo makes it look like Tig’s at death’s door.

Not quite. It was a bad angle.

Here he is in his usual spot of late: Lying on the cat carrier, about four feet away from me. The bars are the bottom of my microwave cart. Sometimes he lies on the bottom of that cart which, of course, has been given over to him. When he was healthy, I did not allow him to set foot in the cart. But now’s a different story. And I’d rather have him where I can see him than where I can’t.

When he’s feeling really poorly, he sleeps inside the carrier these days. I take it as a win that he’s been outside it most of today.

I caught a major Tig goofball moment by sheer accident the other day. He jumped on my chair, which is currently covered in a fleece blanket with pictures of cats that I picked up somewhere for like, ten bucks. He hasn’t gone near a blanket or anything resembling a blanket in weeks and weeks. For some reason, he’s afraid of them now. But he checked out my chair once I got out of it, something he also used to do on a regular basis and doesn’t anymore (Gracie has picked up the ball with a vengeance; she gets into my chair half a dozen times a day when I get up to get a drink of water, or a snack, or just to stretch my legs).

This is what I got: Tig the Goofus.

Sarah came over and helped me get 200 ml of fluid into Tig today. He picked up quite a lot in the next few hours, including going outside for long enough to make me realize I didn’t see him any longer and get off the phone to go search for him. He came when I called. He usually does. He doesn’t run any longer, but that’s understandable. I also have a little movie of him that I’ll get up in the next week or so. I have a busy weekend planned, and a busier work week.

Anyway, considering that his uptick always follows an injection of sub-q fluids, I called the vet and asked if I can give tig 100 ml a day instead of 200 ml every other day. He said yes. Sarah’s in the neighborhood tomorrow anyway, so we’re going to see if getting fluids every day makes a difference. He barely ate at all yesterday, and he ate a couple of times today. Plus, he purred. I couldn’t get him to purr yesterday.

I suspect my readers who aren’t interested in my cat posts are going to get mighty tired of these updates. Scroll past if you’re one of them, because they’re going to be a part of my blog until Tig is no longer a part of my life.

In a fascinating article “The fallacy of Grievance based Terrorism” author, Melvin Lee writes of the centuries old conflict between the West and Islam. Toward the end he observes:

One of the greatest challenges facing strategic leaders today is objectively examining the centuries-old roots of Islamic jihadism and developing a strategy that will lead to a lasting solution to the Western conflict with it. Many Western policymakers fail to assess realistically why Arab and Islamic governments have been unable to improve the condition of their populations, especially in contrast to the West. This inability to grasp the root of Islamic jihadism is the result of a moral relativism prominent in modern Western liberal thought. For example, over the last few decades, it has become common to value diversity and multiculturalism above societal well-being and improvements in the human condition. 

It is not, as Thomas Friedman argues in The World Is Flat, that the fruits of the American experiment—free markets, property rights, tolerance, democracy, and the rule of law—have left Islam behind.[39] On the contrary, it is Islam that has opted out of progress by allowing, promoting, and embracing centuries of reactionary and retrospective reforms that rejected the idea that humans can indeed improve their condition through reason and rationality. Muslim clerics and leaders within the impoverished nations of the Islamic world need to understand that they are responsible for the condition and grief of their people. It is Islamism’s rejection of religious tolerance, democracy, and the rule of law, in conjunction with its embrace of anti-Semitism, theocracy, and sectarian strongmen exempt from law and privileged by the authority they have usurped, that is the real enemy in the Islamic world’s centuries-long interaction with the United States. While Islamists skillfully manipulate the Western mass media to enunciate an à la carte menu of grievances, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century interactions show these are not the root cause of jihadi terror. Indeed, a U.S. intelligence assessment, published two years before Israel’s independence and any subsequent jihadi grievance, already highlighted Islamist terrorism as a long-term threat.[40] So long as Western officials adopt a nearsighted, grievance-based view of the roots of Islamist terror, they will embolden jihadis through appeasement.

Indeed one of the great accomplishments of Palestinian nationalism was to couch an anti-Western movement in terms that appeal to Western liberals. After all, who can argue with a notion of national self-determination?

Lee’s article is an important antidote to many of the assumptions underlying what’s often called the “realist” approach to foreign policy. It also is a reformulation of aspect of two earlier articles.

Back in 1999, Bernard Lewis wrote “The Roots of Muslim Rage” in the Atlantic. He views things somewhat differently from Lee, but still understands that the source Islamic hatred of the West isn’t anything we’ve done, but how our society is viewed.

Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States. The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood. 

There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equalled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country—even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion—to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.

More recently, in the Philosopher of Islamic Terror, a biographical sketch of Said Qutb by Paul Berman, Berman wrote:

That was Qutb’s analysis. In writing about modern life, he put his finger on something that every thinking person can recognize, if only vaguely — the feeling that human nature and modern life are somehow at odds. But Qutb evoked this feeling in a specifically Muslim fashion. It is easy to imagine that, in expounding on these themes back in the 1950’s and 60’s, Qutb had already identified the kind of personal agony that Mohamed Atta and the suicide warriors of Sept. 11 must have experienced in our own time. It was the agony of inhabiting a modern world of liberal ideas and achievements while feeling that true life exists somewhere else. It was the agony of walking down a modern sidewalk while dreaming of a different universe altogether, located in the Koranic past — the agony of being pulled this way and that. The present, the past. The secular, the sacred. The freely chosen, the religiously mandated — a life of confusion unto madness brought on, Qutb ventured, by Christian error. 

Sitting in a wretched Egyptian prison, surrounded by criminals and composing his Koranic commentaries with Nasser’s speeches blaring in the background on the infuriating tape recorder, Qutb knew whom to blame. He blamed the early Christians. He blamed Christianity’s modern legacy, which was the liberal idea that religion should stay in one corner and secular life in another corner. He blamed the Jews. In his interpretation, the Jews had shown themselves to be eternally ungrateful to God. Early in their history, during their Egyptian captivity (Qutb thought he knew a thing or two about Egyptian captivity), the Jews acquired a slavish character, he believed. As a result they became craven and unprincipled when powerless, and vicious and arrogant when powerful. And these traits were eternal. The Jews occupy huge portions of Qutb’s Koranic commentary — their perfidy, greed, hatefulness, diabolical impulses, never-ending conspiracies and plots against Muhammad and Islam. Qutb was relentless on these themes. He looked on Zionism as part of the eternal campaign by the Jews to destroy Islam.

In the end, the Islamist hatred of the West is not a grievance we can address. Attempting to accomodate the demands of Islamists only encourages them. For there to be peace between Islam and the West, there needs to be a change of heart in Islam. Anything else is useless.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Gee, nothing could go wrong with Israeli prisoner releases planned with the Palestinians, eh?

The two terrorists who were killed Thursday evening after breaking into a yeshiva in the settlement of Kfar Etzion were released from an Israeli prison last week, Palestinian sources in Hebron told Ynet.

According to the sources, the terrorists were identified as relatives Muhammad and Mahmoud Sbarana, both 20-year-old Hamas members from the village of Beit Omer, near Hebron.

The terrorists, armed with a gun and a knife and dressed in uniform, threatened the students and the instructors with the weapons before being shot to death by the yeshiva’s instructors, two of whom were lightly injured while struggling with the terrorists.

Palestinian security officials told Ynet Friday morning that the two were imprisoned in Israel for the past two years for attempting to steal weapons from an IDF base in the Gush Etzion area.

They don’t even need “blood on their hands” to try for blood on their hands.

Another Israeli was killed by a Fatah—excuse me, Al Aqsa Martyrs group—terrorist.

A Border Guard police officer was killed and three people were injured Thursday evening in two simultaneous terror attacks which took place in the Jerusalem area.

Two Border Guard officers were shot at the northern entrance to the refugee camp of Shoafat, north of Jerusalem. Twenty-year-old Lance Corporal Rami Zuhari of Beersheva was critically injured, and later died of his wounds despite paramedics’ attempts to resuscitate him. Another female officer sustained moderate to serious wounds and was evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in the capital.

And oh yeah—they’re going to keep on killing.

Fatah activists belonging to the “Brigades of Return” and to “Black September” claimed responsibility for carrying out the shooting attack in Shoafat Thursday evening. The attack left one Israeli dead and another one seriously wounded.

A spokesman on behalf of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah’s military wing, told Ynet that the attackers “returned to their base safely.”

[...] “This is our proof that we are no longer committed to the calm and that we do not intend to continue handing over our weapons,” the spokesman said. “We are only committed to resistance against the Israeli occupation. The next attacks are already underway, we promised a response within a few days and this is the first operation in a series of operations.”

These are Israel’s “partners in peace.” And the head of Fatah is: That’s right. Mahmoud Abbas, the man who called the deaths of Hamas terrorists a “massacre.” You know, I’ve searched in vain to find a single reference to Mahmoud Abbas condemning the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. Huh. It’s almost like he, well, doesn’t actually care that terrorists are murdering Israelis.

Go figure.

I think it is time for my readers to tell me elephant jokes.

I love elephant jokes. I never get tired of them. I can hear the same ones over and over again and still laugh at them.

I could use some laughter in this house these days.

Tig barely ate a thing today. He spent most of the day sleeping in the cat carrier. He likes it a lot since I cleaned it and put a fresh towel in. I think I’m going to look in one day soon and find him sleeping his final sleep.

Busy helps. So do elephant jokes.

Calling all Hebrew scholars who read this blog: I would like, once and for all, to know what the word “rabbi” means. Some people say it means “teacher,” but I have been told by more than one person that that isn’t accurate.

Could my learned readers and Hebrew scholars give me a little help here?

That “spontaneous” response to Israel cracking down on terrorists in Gaza? Not so much.

Hamas has used the border breach - which was carefully planned, with militants weakening the metal wall with blow torches about a month ago - to push its demand for reopening the border passages, this time with Hamas involvement. Such an arrangement would in effect end the international sanctions against the Islamic militants.

Ynet has more:

Meanwhile, The Times quoted a Hamas border guard as saying that the Islamist group had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall along the Philadelphi Route using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

“I’ve seen this happening over the last few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that nobody would see,” he told the London-based newspaper as saying.

The Philadelphi Route was supposed to be controlled by Egypt. Israel is using the border breach to say that Egypt should take Gaza back.

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said Israel wants to relinquish all responsibility for Gaza, including the supply of electricity and water, now that Gaza’s southern border with Egypt has been opened.

Egypt immediately rejected the idea.

Egypt says NFW. Big surprise.

A top Egyptian official responded by saying Egypt’s border with Gaza will go back to normal, and strongly rejected Israel’s suggestion that it might relinquish all responsibility for troubled Gaza.

“This is a wrong assumption,” said Hossam Zaki, the official spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry. “The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons,” Zaki said. “The border will go back to normal.”

In other words, the Egyptian guards will continue to turn a blind eye to all the weapons smuggling, and this will play out all over again at a later date.

Hamas won this one, big-time.

I’ve argued in the past that when a newspaper gives a platform to Hamas it is strengthening an organization whose values are at odds with the values that a newspaper stands for.

This week we saw something much worse. Newspapers actively aided Hamas in its effort to open the Rafah crossing this week.

Yesterday, the Times of London reported that the plan to knock down the Rafah wall was underway for months. (via memeorandum)

Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

Given the amount of time that was clearly invested in the effort to collapse the wall, it’s not surprising to learn ‘Hamas staged some of the blackouts’ (via memeorandum)

In the first case, journalists who were invited to cover the Hamas government meeting were surprised to see Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his ministers sitting around a table with burning candles.In the second case on Tuesday, journalists noticed that Hamas legislators who were meeting in Gaza City also sat in front of burning candles.

But some of the journalists noticed that there was actually no need for the candles because both meetings were being held in daylight.

(I really don’t think that you needed a news story, anyone with half a functioning brain could see that candles were often not needed but were mere props used for effect.)

Not only did international pressure help Hamas accomplish this goal of opening the border with Egypt, it also weakened Israel’s attempt to prevent rockets from being fired at its cities.

The New York Times remains clueless, an editorial Trapped in Gaza starts:

The neglect and mistreatment of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip is a disgrace, and a very dangerous one. They are pawns in the struggle among Hamas, which controls Gaza and uses the territory to bombard Israel daily; its rivals in the Fatah movement that run the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank; and Israel. If something isn’t done quickly to address the Gazans’ plight, President Bush’s Annapolis peace process could implode.

It isn’t the Gazans plight that works against the peace process. It is the failure of the Palestinians to accept Israel. If the Palestinians accepted Israel, they’d turn their energies and resources to creating a civil society that would live in peace with Israel. As long as Palestinian grievances are nurtured there will be no peace and the terror against Israel is justified. The Palestinians voted for Hamas, so they’re not exactly innocent either.

It’s also worth noting that the Qassams increased in freqency after Israel withdrew from Gaza. Moves designed to bring peace often backfire. Without Israeli troops around to hinder them, rocket makers flourished in Gaza. The problem isn’t misery, but opportunity.

The Times continues:

It is no wonder that tens of thousands of Palestinians rushed out of Gaza into Egypt on Wednesday after a metal border wall was toppled. Life for Gazans, never easy, has been worsening since Hamas seized control last summer, and most international aid — except humanitarian assistance — was cut off. Hamas has turned a deaf ear to the Gazans’ plight, refusing to negotiate peace or accept Israel’s right to exist.

The logic here is baffling. Poll after poll shows support among Palestinians for violence against Israel. Hamas has heard Gazans (indeed all Palestinians) quite well. They don’t accept Israel’s right to exist (neither do members of “moderate” Fatah for that matter) and Hamas represents those views quite effectively.

The Washington Post (h/t Backspin) gets a lot closer to the truth.

THE HAMAS movement provided a dramatic illustration yesterday of its ability to disrupt any movement toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As tens of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip surged across the border into Egypt, Hamas security forces directed traffic; earlier, they stood by as organized groups of militants blew up the fence along the previously sealed border. As Hamas no doubt expected, the government of Egypt greeted this illegal invasion with a quick surrender: President Hosni Mubarak announced that Gazans would be allowed to shop in Egypt because they “are starving due to the Israeli siege.”In fact, as Mr. Mubarak well knows, no one is starving in Gaza — though food, fuel and cigarettes are much cheaper across the border. Israel closed its border with the territory and disrupted power supplies over the weekend in response to a massive escalation of Palestinian rocket launches from Gaza at nearby Israeli towns — between Tuesday and Saturday last week, some 225 rockets were aimed at the town of Sderot, where more than 20,000 Israelis have been relentlessly terrorized. Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the “humanitarian crisis,” then by daring Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel’s victims. Its ultimate goal, stated publicly yesterday by Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, is to force Egypt to permanently reopen the border in cooperation with Hamas; that would greatly diminish Israel’s ability to respond to rocket attacks with economic sanctions, and it would undermine the rival Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas.

My one quibble with this is singling out the “sympathetic Arab media” for blame. The international media - including the Washington Post - were complicit in assisting Hamas achieve its goals.

So maybe you could argue that the media were duped. Maybe. But Israel Matzav and Elder of Ziyon figured out the goal of the riots a day before Hamas knocked down the wall. My guess is that reporters on the ground at least heard whispers from their sources about what was to happen. Even if they didn’t have definite knowledge of that action, it’s hard to believe that they couldn’t have put things together. Still they promoted the “blackout” myth without regard to the possibility that it was a cover for something else.

Elder of Ziyon is right when he writes:

So when the media talk about how Hamas won the PR war with Israel, it is a bit disingenuous of them not to admit their own responsibility for that victory - the news organizations are not only susceptible to obvious staging, they welcome being manipulated if they can get a good picture or story out of it.

Similarly Simply Jews observes:

Somebody should tell the august leader writer of The Guardian that when the “leader” starts with a lie, the featured article becomes just merchandise sold at a loss in order to draw customers.

In this whole sorry chapter, the media have played a shameful role as accomplices to Hamas. I don’t expect any introspection from them, which is a shame. Philip Graham famously said that newspapers were the “first rough draft of history” acknowledging the role of the media in reporting on events. I don’t think he meant that newspapers would have a role in staging the events that would eventually become history. But that’s what the media is doing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

You simply cannot invent a thing like this:

Leader:

A featured article of merchandise sold at a loss in order to draw customers

You shall see in a second which of the two meanings above is applicable when you read the first sentence of the Guardian leader of January 24, 2008:

If you bottle up 1.5 million people in a territory 25 miles long and six miles wide, and turn off the lights, as Israel has done in Gaza, the bottle will burst.

Somebody should tell the august leader writer of The Guardian that when the “leader” starts with a lie, the featured article becomes just merchandise sold at a loss in order to draw customers.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

One of the things that’s causing Tig’s quick downslide is that he’s not eating much. So the vet had me try him on a quarter-pill of pepcid. I managed to get one down him this morning. And I think it’s working. Because Tig just ate his dry food twice in the last hour. And he ate nearly all of the Sheba tuna (which had the phosphor-binding powder mixed in). He’s just been licking the gravy off it lately.

And he’s showing an interest in chasing that wadded-up napkin.

I think I’m going to have to hold off on the eulogy.

He’s eating!

For that, we get a mid-week cat picture.

That was before the vet visit yesterday. I cleaned out the cat carrier and was airing it out. Tig, of course, had his own ideas of what “airing it out” consists of.