Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress, is retiring due to illness.

U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), the only Holocaust survivor elected to the U.S. Congress, is retiring because he is suffering from cancer.

Lantos, one of the most powerful members of Congress and the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement Wednesday he will serve out his term, which ends at the end of this year.

“Routine medical tests have revealed that I have cancer of the esophagus,” he said. “In view of this development and the treatment it will require, I will not seek re-election.”

Lantos most recently led the battle to substantially expand sanctions against Iran, a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House and is under consideration in the Senate. Considered a go-to lawmaker on many Jewish issues, he also is a strong advocate of reaching out to rogue states, even Israel’s most dire enemies. He played a role in swaying Libya to give up its own weapons of mass destruction program in 2003 and has said he is willing to meet Iran’s leadership.

The IDF took out another half dozen terrorists in Gaza, including four Hamas members, who were probably one of the groups on patrol that the Times profiled.

Six Hamas and Popular Resistance Committees gunmen were killed in a pre-dawn Israeli operation in the Sajaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City on Wednesday, Hamas and Palestinian medical officials said.

Four of the men killed were Hamas members – including Ahad Shimali, a senior commander of the organization’s armed wing in the area, and two belonged to the PRC.

The Israeli army confirmed that troops were operating in the area near Gaza City and that they had fired, together with Israeli aircraft, at gunmen who approached the soldiers.

At the end of the article, there is a quote from a Hamas spokesman:

A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades vowed that the group would retaliate against Israel. “The day will come when we shall avenge the deaths of our shahids who were killed by the Jews, murderers of the prophets,” he declared.

Does anyone really think that these people want to live in peace with Israel?

Trying to find out what happened in the Middle East is often difficult.

Israelly Cool! shows us again. Snapped Shot likens it to a game of Clue.

The other day I noticed that a Palestinian woman had been killed. The AP reported:

Palestinian relatives of Khaldiyeh Hamdan react at the family house during her funeral in Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 31, 2007. Hamdan, 45, was shot and killed on Sunday on the Gaza-Israel border while waiting for relatives to return from a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, Palestinian officials reported. She was waiting on the Palestinian side of the Erez passenger terminal when Israeli soldiers in a nearby watchtower opened fire, killing her and wounding four others, witnesses said. The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.

A picture accompanied this report:

Reuters reported:

A Palestinian relative of Kaldiya Al Tilbani mourns during her funeral in the Gaza Strip December 31, 2007. At least one Palestinian was killed and four others were wounded by gunfire while crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip on Sunday after completing the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca, Palestinian medics said.

Note that the family name of the woman is different and that Reuters makes no mention that she was shot by an Israeli soldier.

Finally there was a short AFP photo and caption that accompanied a longer AFP article published in the Middle East Times:

Relatives of Palestinian woman Halbia Altibani, 30, mourn during her funeral in the central Gaza Strip refugee camp of Maghazi. Altibani was killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire later yesterday on a group of Palestinians awaiting returning Hajj pilgrims at the Erez Crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. (AFP Mohammed Abed)

This also had a photograph accompanying it.

It is quite similar to the first photograph, though not identical. (The two photographs are credited to two different photographers too.) Still it’s pretty clear that it was taken in the same place. And yet the details about the woman killed are entirely different. This leads me to conclude that the photographs were staged. (I’m not saying that no one was killed, but read on.)

Another oddity with this report is that when you search for images in Yahoo! using the name “Halbia Altibani”, you get a cached version of the picture because the news item has been removed with no explanation. (The AFP story on Yahoo! News - along with the photo - is still there and other older photos have not expired yet.)

And while the Israeli army admits that it’s soldiers fired during the rioting, it doesn’t - as a number of news organizations claim - admit to killing the woman. Ynet, though, unfortunately draws that conclusion, though it presents no (conclusive) testimony that the woman was killed by Israeli gunfire.

But the preliminary findings of the probe indicate that the soldiers manning the crossing felt threatened by the volume of the crowd amassed at the scene and fired warning shots that had not been intended to cause injury. Some 700 Palestinians attempted to cross through Erez that evening.Palestinian reports claimed that several more pilgrims were wounded in the incident, the IDF report maintains they were hit by ricochets.

High ranking military officials stressed that it is clear that it was not the troops’ intent to target innocent civilians and said investigators would continue to pursue the case until the circumstances surrounding the incident are brought to light.

From all this two red flags emerge:
1) The radically different details of the incident. That includes two reports from apparently the same location that agree only that the woman was killed by Israel.
2) A report that disappeared with no explanation.

There are three possibilities as to what really happened.
1) The woman, whoever she was, was killed by Israeli gunfire.
2) The whole incident was staged and no one died.
3) Something in the middle, whereby a woman died but from other causes.

I believe that the third is most likely. When someone dies there’s a body and that’s hard to hide.

My initial speculation was that perhaps she had been trampled as the crowd moved. But buried in a Jerusalem Post story there’s this:

Ayman Taha’s threat came a day after some of the pilgrims housed in temporary shelters in northern Sinai burned mattresses and broke windows in protest of Egypt’s refusal to let them enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing. A Palestinian woman died of a heart attack during the protests.

It seems odd for a 45 or 30 year old woman to die from a heart attack. And I’m not saying that this report is conclusive either. Still it supports my speculation that while a woman died the cause of death was not Israeli gunfire.

Again this demonstrates the difficulty of getting news straight when your sources are accuracy challenged.

Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for his help in trying to decipher these conflicting stories.

UPDATE: It looks like I was correct.

But Hamas members among the pilgrims feared arrest if they tried to return to Gaza through Israel. Pilgrims staged angry protests, setting fires in makeshift camps, to demand passage through Egypt. Three Palestinian women died of natural causes while waiting, Palestinians said.

(Washington Post)

Many of the returning Palestinians complained of harsh conditions and the bitter cold in Sinai. The Egyptian authorities put them up in a stadium and provided food and medicine, the returnees said. But two of the pilgrims died of heart attacks during the wait in the desert town.

(NYT)(Emphases mine.)

While the numbers of the dead differ in each account, both accounts attribute the deaths to natural causes. The charge that Israeli soldiers killed a woman appears to be discredited.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Dissident Saudi Blogger Is Arrested

Farhan’s is the first arrest of a blogger in Saudi Arabia. Two Egyptian bloggers and one Tunisian are currently behind bars, according to Sami ben Gharbia, advocacy director for Global Voices, an international research group focused on the Internet and founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

I may attach a self-importance to myself for publishing my own blog. But I do so without risk of arrest. Others are not so fortunate.

Mike the Actuary’s Musings muses

Note to self: be nice if I should ever decide to blog about life in Saudi Arabia.

One man’s Blog observes that though the Saudis are holding out for an apology and that

If someone arrests you for excercising free speech and then you apologize for doing so, you’re clearly lying through your teeth.

Another great affront to the Saudi regime are ringtones

About 70 “Muslim dignitaries and scholars” met for a week to deal with vital moral issues, including those raised by technology. They concluded, for example, that the use of verses from the Koran as cell phone ringtones should be BANNED “because it impinges on the sacred character of the the Holy Book” and not, surprisingly, because it’s super annoying. However, uploading or recording such versions for private listening is “a virtuous act.”

Things must be great in Saudi Arabia if the greatest threats to the regime are bloggers and ringtones.

More at Instapundit.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The big lie of the Palestinian “security forces” continues. That lie is the pretense that if only Mahmoud Abbas (and before him, Yasser Arafat) were allowed to use Palestinian security forces in the territories, terror would cease.

The problem is, the security forces are made up of the very people that carry out terrorist attacks. This has been proven time and time again. But the evidence is continually ignored.

Two of the terrorists who shot dead off-duty IDF soldiers Cpl. Ahikam Amihai (20) and Sgt. David Ruben (21) as they were hiking near Hebron last Friday were members of Fatah’s security forces and are on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll, Israeli sources said.

One of the terrorists was identified as 26-year-old Hebron resident Amar Taha, a Fatah member and a member of the Palestinian national security forces. The other terrorists was named as 24-year-old Hebron resident Ali Dandanes, a court clerk and Fatah member with links to the Palestinian general intelligence.

The two turned themselves in to the Palestinian Authority’s general intelligence custody immediately following the attack, fearing being captured by Israeli security forces.

Why is that? Because they know that they’d serve life sentences for murder in Israel, but they’ll be out in a matter of weeks or months after the kanagaroo court that is the PA. And get this: The PA had them in custody and didn’t mention that fact until the Shin Bet came knocking.

The PA did not immediately inform Israel that the terrorists were in its custody, but did so only after Shin Bet officials approached Palestinian officials on the matter.

And the PA lied about the terrorists from the get-go.

An Israeli security official said Palestinian statements claiming that the attack was criminally-motivated contradict the evidence the shin Bet has gathered and the admission of the terrorists themselves during their interrogation by PA security forces.

“These statements were issued in an apparent attempt by the PA to evade responsibility in light of the fact that the attack was carried out by members of Fatah and the Authority’s security services,” the official said.

This is the security force that Olmert is allowing to import 50 Russian armored personnel carriers. No way that move can backfire.

President George W. Bush is finally paying a visit to Israel, after not doing so for seven years. He’s been all over the Middle East during his presidency. So yes, it’s a snub. But at least he’s not going to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Jew-Killing Mass Murderer, like so many others have done.

Palestinian Authority officials on Monday expressed deep disappointment after learning that US President George W. Bush, who is expected to visit Ramallah soon, does not intend to lay a wreath at Yasser Arafat’s tomb.

Bush, who is also expected to visit Jericho and Bethlehem, does not even plan to pass near the tomb.

My heart bleeds for them.

Bush would not stop by Arafat’s newly-built mausoleum during his visit to Ramallah, a source in the US Consulate in Jerusalem told The Jerusalem Post. The PA has invested millions of dollars in building the mausoleum in the Mukata “presidential” compound.

“I’m not aware of any plan to lay a wreath at Arafat’s tomb,” the source said. “This issue was not raised during preparations for President Bush’s tour and I doubt if he would do so.”

To avoid embarrassing the Palestinians, Bush may meet with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem or at the Prime Minister’s Office in Ramallah.

In response, a senior PA official said, “Of course we are very disappointed, although we weren’t surprised.”

The official said the PA leadership had decided not to make a big issue out of the visit to Arafat’s mausoleum to avoid creating a crisis with the US.

Oh, please do make a fuss out of it. Please.