The Hubble found where Sauron’s hiding.

And I found the picture at NASA to bring to you. The news articles weren’t polite enough to link back, but I am.

It isn’t like it’s a surprise, or anything, but you’d think Israel would get tired of warning the terrorists when to hide. Of course, there are those of us that think people who insist their greatest wish is to fall in battle with Israel would actually, you know, fight Israel instead of going into hiding when the hostility level rises beyond what Ehud Olmert (and the idiots who think peace with the Palestinians should come before, gee, real peace) can reasonably ignore. You know, like long-range missile strikes on a city that is eleven miles north of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli leaders warned Friday of an approaching conflagration in the Gaza Strip as Israel activated a rocket warning system to protect Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people, from Palestinian rockets.

Ashkelon was hit by several Grad rockets fired from Gaza on Thursday, a sign of the widening scope of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. One hit an apartment building and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.

Located 11 miles from Gaza, Ashkelon had been sporadically targeted in the past but never suffered direct hits or significant damage.

“It will be sad, and difficult, but we have no other choice,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense mister, said Friday, referring to the large-scale military operation he said Israel was preparing to bring a halt to the rocket fire.

“We’re getting close to using our full strength. Until now, we’ve used a small percentage of the army’s power because of the nature of the territory,” Vilnai told Army Radio on Friday.

Israel does not intend to launch a major ground offensive in the next week or two, partly because the military prefers to wait for better weather, defense officials said. But the army has now completed its preparations and informed the government it’s ready to move immediately when the order is given, the officials said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

And this is brilliant. Hamas thinks that having a protest rally is going to affect world opinion. Not this time. Their PR guys are off. After yesterday’s propaganda bonus of pictures of a dead six-month-old child—which the wire services sent round the world, while utterly ignoring the cell-phone video of an eight-year-old Israeli girl screaming for her mother while her ten-year-old brother lay bleeding on the floor of a shop. And oh, yeah. An Israeli infant was hit by shrapnel in that attack, too. Didn’t know that, did you? Just like you probably didn’t know that a two-year-old and two four-year-olds were murdered by kassams.

And the IDF missed a high-value target. Probably didn’t want to cause any civilian casualties. Haniyeh came out of hiding.

Thousands took to the streets across Gaza on Friday in funerals for the dead of the past days. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, addressed a crowd of around 2,000 Hamas supporters at Friday prayers, his first public address after nearly a month and a half during which he and other Hamas officials have largely remained out of sight because of fears Israel could assassinate them.

“You are mistaken if you thought that targeting buildings, ministries and police stations is going to stop our work,” Haniyeh said, directing his comments at Israel. “We will work under trees, in tents and in the streets.”

And, apparently, while hiding, running, and wearing women’s clothing. Terrorists are good at hiding. Especially among civilians.

Since Wednesday, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 15 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian officials. The youngest was a 6-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held Thursday.

The army said it was targeting rocket squads, and blamed militants for operating in populated areas. AP photos showed rockets being launched from densely populated areas in northern Gaza.

That link won’t last long, but it’ll be there for a few weeks. Look at the AP evidence of Hamas war crimes, and wonder why the AP spins so anti-Israel when it provides such evidence.

The trail of smoke is seen as rockets fired by Palestinian militants head towards Israel from Gaza City, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008.

And oh, yeah. The Sec-Gen of the UN found a reason to speak again. He was silent last week when an Israeli child nearly lost an arm. He was silent weeks ago when an Israeli child lost a leg. But he spoke up when Israel fought back and launched missiles into Gaza.

The Secretary-General is deeply concerned at the loss of civilian life in Southern Israel and Gaza, and at the escalation of violence that has taken place today.

The Secretary-General condemns rocket fire against Israel by Hamas, which intensified today and killed an Israeli civilian in Sderot. He calls on Hamas and other militant groups to cease such acts of terrorism.

The Secretary-General also condemns the killing of four Palestinian children, including an infant, in Gaza in IDF strikes. He calls on Israel to exercise maximum restraint and ensure respect for international humanitarian law so as not to endanger civilians.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Meet the new war, same as the old war. Except I think the IDF has learned—oh. And I have just figured out why the rockets are raining down. Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have prepared the battlefield. We’ll find out exactly how much they’ve learned from Iraq and Lebanon if the IDF goes in in force—and how much Israel and America have learned from them.

Expect to see EFPs in Gaza.

And, of course, expect world condemnation no matter what Israel does.

Time to find out who learned more from the Second Lebananon War, Israel or her enemies. Because it looks like the IDF is finally going to go into Gaza in force. Apparently, even Olmert can’t ignore Iranian-made Grad rockets landing in Israeli cities.

Over the past few days the IDF has positioned an artillery battery near Kibbutz Beeri, located about three kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Gaza border, and dozens of tanks have made their way to an assembling area just north of the Strip.

Forces from the Givati Brigade, the Armored Corps’ 9th Battalion and the Engineering Corps have already entered the Strip ahead of a possible large-scale ground incursion.

The reinforcements, while limited, appear to indicate increased readiness on the part of the IDF.

Meanwhile, during his flight back from Japan Friday morning, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was updated on Thursday’s Grad and Qassam rocket attacks on Ashkelon and the western Negev. The political-security cabinet is scheduled to convene Wednesday to discuss the escalation in the south.

Yeah. Even he can’t ignore this:

On Thursday a total of 10 rockets hit the beachside city of Ashkelon leaving growing anxiety in their wake. Two long-range Grad rockets fired from the northern Strip hit the city that was previously considered out-of-range of the rockets. One of the rockets landed near a school in the center of town. A 17-year-old girl suffered light shrapnel wounds in the latest attack and several other people suffered from anxiety.

Meantime, the kassams are hitting—again and again and again. Funny, isn’t it, how after the border breach with Israel, suddenly, the kassams are nearly all hitting something? A house, a factory, a person—it doesn’t matter what, Hamas is happy with any destruction.

Palestinians fired three Qassam rockets Friday morning from northern Gaza into Israel. Two of the projectiles landed in Sderot and caused some damage to a few houses. A woman sustained light injuries during the attack and was evacuated to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. Four people suffered from shock.

Three more rockets landed in an open field outside of the rocket-battered town.

The Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, claimed responsibility for the Qassam rocket fire.

A fifty percent hit rate. Imagine that. Used to be they would launch six, and six would miss, or maybe one would land in the street and damage some cars. I wonder how many Iranian Revolutionary Guards got into Gaza after the border breach. I wonder how many of them are launching the rockets, or spent the last few weeks teaching the jihadis how to aim them better. I’m thinking a lot.

I’m also wondering why the news services, with its layers of editors and experience reporters, don’t seem to be picking up on this angle. Say, AP editors who read my blog: Go for it. You don’t even have to give me credit. You never do.

Griff Witte is quickly becoming my favorite Middle East correspondent. He adds to his impressive debut with an excellent sophomore effort, Strikes in Gaza Kill 18 Palestinians; Hamas Rocket Barrage Injures 2 Israelis. (That’s facetious.)First he writes that Israel is now under attack from Grad missiles.

Seven rockets have landed in the city of Ashkelon in the past two days, prompting accusations from Israeli officials that Hamas is using more formidable rockets than it has in the past. Ashkelon, a coastal city of about 120,000 people, is six miles north of Gaza. Israeli officials said the rockets that landed there have been Iranian-made, Grad-style rockets, which have a longer range and are considered more lethal than the relatively crude Qassam rockets that Hamas has traditionally used.”What we saw today was really an escalation,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel, asserting that the greater range of the Grad rockets means that “a quarter of a million Israeli citizens are in danger.” Mekel indicated that a stronger Israeli response may be in the offing. “Israel left Gaza not in order to return to it. However, the continuation of terror may put Israel in a position where we have no choice,” he said.

Nowhere does he provide the background that the Hamas breach of the border with Egypt is the reason that Hamas has been able to upgrade its capabilities. Then he follows with this.

Israel pulled its settlers out of Gaza in 2005. Last June, Hamas seized control, ending a power-sharing deal with the secular Fatah party, which favors negotiations with Israel. Since then, the volume of rocket fire has increased and pressure has grown on the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to topple Hamas, a radical Islamic movement that has both a military wing and a network of social services and that seeks to eradicate Israel.

(Yes Fatah favors negotiations. What about Abbas’s comments yesterday?)

Why “topple?” Why not defeat? When someone’s trying to destroy you it’s a war not politics. Or is politics just war by other means? But at the end of the paragraph he seems incapable of calling Hamas a terrorist organization. It’s an “Islamic movement” with a “network of social services” that by-the-way “seeks to eradicate Israel.”

Let me try.
“Since then the number of attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas on Israeli civilians has made ti imperative for the Israeli government to defeat Hamas.

Nice direct and to the point.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I recently commented on the closing arguments of the Enderlin/Karsenty case in France. Based on the information I had, I questioned how France 2 could have alleged that King Hussein visited Jamal al-Dura. After checking back with my source, he figured that he had been mis-informed about the incident. So I shouldn’t have gone ahead with writing what I did, as it was so outlandish, I should have waited for confirmation. My mistake.

Here’s a puzzle for you: What happened in the last few weeks that would have changed the effectiveness of the “crude, homemade rocket” attacks from Gaza?

Here’s a hint: The destruction of the Egyptian border.

Here’s another hint: The entrance into Gaza of hundreds (if not thousands) of Iranian-trained terrorists, replete with more, better rockets.

The result? The rockets are killing and wounding more Israelis in one week than they have in the past several months.

Katyushas and Grad rockets have landed in Ashkelon.

Several rockets were fired at Ashkelon earlier Thursday, one directly hitting a house. Several people suffered shock; Magen David Adom paramedics were sent to the scene.

One of the rockets reportedly landed, for the first time, in the city’s north. The third rocket was located in the city’s south.

More are probably on the way. And even better news—kassam development is improving.

Hamas will likely be able to expand the range of its homemade rockets to 20 kilometers by the end of the year, an Israel security official said Thursday.

So they won’t need to import their rockets much longer.

Where would Hamas have gotten Russian-made rockets? Gee, let’s think. Starts with I and ends with RAN.

Police said five foreign-made Katyusha rockets reached Ashkelon, a city of 109,000. One rocket went through the roof of a crowded apartment building, but no one was hurt. An 17-year-old Israeli girl was slightly wounded by the second rocket.

Not that the Russians have any problem with helping to murder Jews. They’ve done it for centuries.

But the big question is: What is it going to take for Olmert to order some kind of action that will stop the rocket attacks? Why is it that Hamas gets to hold their rallies out in the open, without fear, between planning attacks on Israel?

They should never be allowed to show their faces in public again. Screw public opinion. The Hamas anniversary celebration was an opportunity to take out their entire leadership with one blow. Perhaps Israel should start thinking seriously about doing that in the future.

This used to be my daily view from my kitchen during warm weather. Or, for that matter, during cold weather.

Not any more.

I miss my Tig.

Busy up at Company In Northern VA today. No time for posting. Just for scheduling this.

Daled Amos recently commented on the implications of Egypt supplying electricity to Gaza.Now Jordan is set to start supplying electricity to Jericho. Jordan, of course, claims that only humanitarian concerns are involved.

Jordanian officials insisted the Jericho hookup is only to help Palestinians and has no hidden political goal. “It’s meant to meet Palestinian power needs,” said Nasser Judeh, the minister for information.

Maybe, but one observer sees a little more:

But Jordanian political analyst Saleh Zaytoun said the new supply does carry “political overtones.” He called it “reminiscent of the custodianship the countries (Jordan and Egypt) once provided” for the Palestinian territories.

“[C]ustodianship?” Between 1948 and 1967 Egypt and Jordan were holding onto Gaza and the west bank of the Jordan River as custodian for the Palestinians? So that means during those nineteen years the Arabs supported the cause of Palestinian independence and were just holding onto the lands for the benefit of the Palestinian people.

Give me a break. They didn’t care about Palestinian statehood any more then than they do now. Palestinian statehood is a cause that only had resonance once it could be used against Israel. Create a Palestinian state and there’s no need to hate Israel. Of course that hate is important than the state. Even now.

On a side note: The reporters name is Jamal Halaby. Does anyone know if he’s related to Queen Noor?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The New York Times reports on yesterday’s violence in southern Israel, Hamas and Israelis Trade Attacks, Killing Several (via memeorandum - the headline, BTW, is much better than one that appeared in South Africa. It’s a problem in Australia too.)Not much remarkable about the article.

Palestinians said two of the militants killed in the first Israeli strike were Abdullah Edwan, a rocket engineer, and Muhammad Abu Aker, a rocket squad commander. Residents said the men were going to a training camp in southern Gaza. Two were masked, they said, and returned from Iran three weeks ago.Relatives of Mr. Edwan, who was said to have been the main strike target, said he was trained in Syria and Iran. Two other militants were wounded, medical officials said.

The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, told Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that Gaza militants had undergone intensive training in Syria and Iran and had taken advantage of the recent 11-day breach of Gaza’s border with Egypt to return to Gaza.

“Rocket squad commander” and “rocket engineer?” It makes them sound like civil service positions. Given that Hamas rules Gaza, maybe they are. My preferred term would be “terrorists.”

But what’s also revealing is that the Israeli fear that the breach in the border fence would allow terrorists and materiel to enter Gaza has been confirmed. ArabNews reported the same thing.

The one Israeli killed in the qassam attacks, was killed at the Sapir College, leading Backspin to wonder:

Expect those sniveling UK academics to speak out?

And though a Qassam landed in the parking lot of a hospital, I doubt that we’ll hear a lot of outrage that a hospital was attacked.

To keep track of the latest see Israelly Cool!.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Roger L. Simon is correct when he writes:

I was up early this morning to help with PJM’s ongoing coverage of the Al Dura Trial in Paris. We seem to be almost alone in the US media bothering with this trial, yet it has arguably tremendous historical significance.

Of course the U.S. media, and, I suspect the media around much of the world are incapable of introspection. The Enderlin/Karsenty case reflects badly on the media and their capacity to remain objective observers.

From what I’ve read of the case so far, France 2 has been incredibly arrogant in its approach. Back in Novermber its behavior led observers to believe that in an American court, the network would have been held in contempt for its correspondent’s blatant falsehoods on the stand.

According to Backspin that same old arrogance was evident today:

“It was a fight of the institutional thinking,” said Mozes. “The strongest argument France 2 could come up with is that Charles Enderlin is an institution in this country. They said that [Jamal] Al-Dura was visited by King Hussein, which shows how important this case is. France 2 wanted to show how respected personalities participated. They hardly challenged the facts and preferred to play up the players and institutions involved.”

This is beyond belief. The event in question occurred at the end of September 2000. King Hussein died February 1999, about 20 months earlier. So his visit to Jamal al-Dura was really important: either he was divinely prescient or he returned from the grave. I’m surprised that no one called France 2 on that.[see below for an update]
Regardless, Phillippe Karsenty isn’t out of the woods. Backspin’s correspondent writes:

Mozes said the French TV network’s lawyers also sought to discredit Karsenty with handwriting analysis, treating him him as lightweight. “They ridiculed him, like, how dare he criticize an institution like France 2″ Mozes said.Will the three-judge panel break from the conventional wisdom? That’s the million dollar question. “It’ll require a lot of courage,” Mozes said, crediting Judge Laurence Trebucq for giving Karsenty time and leeway to show all the material he wanted.

Although Mozes described Karsenty’s presentation as “cool and articulate,” Mozes suggests Karsenty may have overprepared. “There are so many strong arguments showing that something isn’t right with the video. Karsenty got lost in a huge number of arguments, rather than hammer home at three or four.”

For more background see this video interview with Tom Gross.

UPDATE: Originally Backspin reported that it was King Hussein. When I pointed out that King Hussein had already died at that time, my contact realized that the problem might have been in the transmission of the information. In an NYT story on the subject, it mentions Jordan’s king. It’s possible that France 2 used the same designation and the correspondent accidentally substituted the name of the longstanding monarch.Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the salvo of kassam rockets that killed a man who was committing the crime of sitting in his car.

A Israeli college student was killed on Wednesday after a Qassam rocket landed in a parking lot near the Sapir College campus in southern Israel. Medics alerted to the scene also treated two more Israelis for minor wounds.

The 30-year-old student who was killed reportedly died shortly after sustaining massive wounds to his chest.

The rocket attacks were proudly claimed by Hamas.

A total of 23 Qassam rockets were fired by Palestinian groups from Gaza on Wednesday afternoon, hitting a factory in an industrial zone and striking in and around the town of Sderot and other Gaza vicinity.

The last barrage included 11 rockets which were fired successively over the course of several short minutes. Hamas has claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks.

Watch for the non-Israeli media to use the “cycle of violence” motif and justify the kassam attacks because of this:

Five members of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were killed Wednesday morning after an IDF aircraft fired missiles at a bus and another vehicle carrying the group’s operatives west of the Gaza town of Khan Younis.

According to local sources, the bus was hit by several missiles as it was approaching a naval force post near Gaza’s coast. Several people were wounded in the strike.

Three of the men killed were reportedly senior commanders of the group’s rocket unit. Palestinian sources estimated that the bus had been under surveillance since it left the Jabalya area.

Gee, that was fast. Reuters wins the blame-Israel-moral-equivalence game.

Israel and Hamas violence spikes on Gaza border
A Palestinian rocket launched from the Gaza Strip killed one person in Israel on Wednesday, the first such fatality in nine months, after Israeli forces killed eight militants in the Hamas-controlled territory.

Note the headline, equating Israel’s striking terrorists who murder Israelis with terrorists, gee, murdering Israelis. Nice little moral equivalence game, Reuters. They’re absolute apologists for Hamas and other terrorist groups’ murderous attacks on Israel.

Earlier in the day, five militants, senior members of Hamas, were killed when the van in which they were travelling was attacked from the air near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, medical officials said.

[...] Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip in June, struck back by firing more than 25 rockets at southern Israel, and two other militants were killed in an Israeli air strike on a launching site in the northern Gaza Strip, medical officials said.

But wait. There’s even more. Reuters may as well be Hamas’ PR company.

Hamas says attacks from the Gaza Strip, including rockets fired by its own militants and others, are a response to Israelimilitary operations in the territory and the occupied West Bank and would end if Israel stopped all such activity and lifted its blockade.

No one had been killed in Israel by a Palestinian rocket strike since May 2007.

Like that makes a difference. Two days ago a ten-year-old boy nearly lost his arm. A few weeks ago, a boy lost his leg. Nearly every single day, the residents of Sderot are forced to drop what they’re doing and run to a bomb shelter. The people of Sderot have no normal lives. But hey, nobody’s been killed in nine whole months, so that makes it all better.

Effing morons. Make the Reuters editors work from Sderot and see how fast the bias of the articles changes.

The other day the Jerusalem Post reported on some comments Sen. Obama made (via memeorandum):

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel,” leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.”If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress,” he said.

He also criticized the notion that anyone who asks tough questions about advancing the peace process or tries to secure Israel by anyway other than “just crushing the opposition” is being “soft or anti-Israel.”

(A complete transcript is here.)

Matthew Yglesias is encouraged by the comments:

This is music to my ears and, frankly, very much the attitude that’s Israel’s long-term future requires. Still, in some quarters the man may as well have just festooned himself with swastikas.

Elder of Ziyon disposes of this nonsense efficiently

It is curious that Obama is adopting an apparently anti-Likud stance. Likud, after all, was responsible for Camp David and the surrender of the Sinai to Egypt; and Likud was in power when Gaza was abandoned.Obama’s statement seems even more naive when the latest polls in Israel show Likud handily beating Kadima and Labor. As Shmuel Rosner asks, does this mean that a President Obama would not support a Likud prime minister?

Also, as The American Thinker observes, the word “Likud” has turned into a generalized anti-Israel term by the far left, pretty much their equivalent to “Taliban.” It is hard to read Obama’s comment as anything but influenced by the strong anti-Likud stance of people who clearly are anti-Israel.

As far as Rosner’s question goes, if a hypothetical President Obama is anything like former President Clinton, the answer is “yes.” As this article reminds us:

In the last two months, Mr. Arafat has traveled Europe and the Arab world extensively, from Finland to Bahrain. At his meeting on Tuesday with President Clinton, the second in recent months, it is highly unlikely that the President will promise to recognize a Palestinian state in the future. The Clinton Administration has long insisted that both Israelis and Palestinians refrain from taking any unilateral action on the issues — like statehood — that are supposed to be hammered out in the final status negotiations between them.But Mr. Clinton gives Mr. Arafat a kind of international recognition just by meeting with him — especially given what the Israelis have dubbed the American ‘’snub diplomacy” toward their Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Actually “snub diplomacy” was an American term mentioned in a Washington Post article a year earlier.)

This is how President Clinton acted and it undermined Netanyahu and brought Ehud Barak and the Labor Party to power. Prime Minister Barak was a lot more cooperative with President Clinton and withdrew Israeli troops from Lebanon and continued negotiating with Yasser Arafat, including an attempt to give Arafat nearly everything he wanted at Camp David in July 2000.

We now know that the withdrawal from Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah and led to the eventual war with that terrorist organization. Clinton’s failure to side with Netanyahu and challenge Arafat to comply with signed agreements led to the so-called Aqsa intidfadah.

I know, as Elder of Ziyon observes, that “Likud” is an insult meant to dismiss a political opponent as ideological and impervious to reason. President Clinton worked against the Likud Prime Minister during his presidency and Israel paid a very high price.

If that’s what Sen. Obama advocates by his pro-Likud statement, then I think it’s safe to say that he doesn’t have Israel’s (or frankly, America’s) best interests in mind.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In When Jihad came to America, Andrew McCarthy sketches a brief history of the blind Sheikh and his followers, especially El Sayyid Nosair, who killed Rabbi Meir Kahane, and the failure of authorities to tie them to the larger evil that they served. Still at the end McCarthy asks:

Would a successful interdiction of Kahane’s murderer, or swift and thorough investigation of Abdel Rahman’s circle in its aftermath, have prevented the monstrous deeds of subsequent years? That is of course unknowable. But an aggressive effort by United States authorities would have indicated a seriousness of purpose toward the threat of Islamic terrorism that itself might have changed the story of our times for the better. We still live, and will continue to live, with the consequences of our own blindness.

It is unknowable. It also recalls an article by Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who observed that information from the terror trials of those who blew up the American embassies in Africa told us that:

In the often long waits between terrorist attacks, Al-Qaeda’s member organizations maintained operational readiness by acting under the cover of front-company businesses and nonprofit, tax-deductible religious charities. These nongovernmental groups, many of them still operating, are based mainly in the U.S. and Britain, as well as in the Middle East. The Qatar Charitable Society, for example, has served as one of bin Laden’s de facto banks for raising and transferring funds.Osama bin Laden also set up a tightly organized system of cells in an array of American cities, including Brooklyn, N.Y.; Orlando, Fla.; Dallas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Columbia, Mo., and Herndon, Va.

This was written at the end of May, 2001. That date makes it almost prescient. Again its unknowable whether or not a more aggressive approach towards Al Qaeda operatives on American soil would have prevented 9/11. My suspicion was that the American based cells likely helped provide logistics for the 19 terrorists, but that has never been established.

So it’s interesting to read this article, Imam From Va. Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al-Qaeda in light of the knowledge of the degree to which Al Qaeda cells were operating on American soil.

The FBI also learned that Aulaqi was visited in early 2000 by a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the blind sheik, who was convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and that he had ties to people raising money for the radical Palestinian movement Hamas, according to Congress and the 9/11 Commission report.But the bureau lacked enough evidence to bring a case, and closed its investigation. Around the same time, two future Sept. 11 hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, fresh from an al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia — turned up at Aulaqi’s San Diego mosque in early 2000.

Witnesses later told the FBI that Aulaqi had a close relationship with the hijackers in San Diego. “Several persons informed the FBI after September 11 that this imam had closed-door meetings in San Diego with al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and another individual,” the Joint House-Senate Inquiry reported. In press interviews at the time, Aulaqi denied having such contacts.

This doesn’t prove my suspicion, but it suggests that my suspicion was correct.

Taken together all three articles illustrate that the possibility of more terror on American soil was very real. One thing that the Bush administration deserves credit for is keeping the homeland safe. I don’t think after 9/11 it was obvious that we wouldn’t be struck again.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The first viewpoint: A Ynet article on the number of African refugees in Israel, and their effect on the country. The lede:

More than 7,400 refugees from African countries have infiltrated Israel through Egypt over the past year, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter estimated Sunday during a special discussion initiated by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

During the discussion, it was decided to make a distinction between refugees in need of aid and infiltrators arriving in Israel to look for work, and to ask the Egyptian security forces for help in blocking the wave of infiltrators.

Another article details the number of refugees over the years:

An unusual number of 1,000 African refugees have infiltrated Israel over the past two weeks, official sources told Ynet on Monday.

According to police and IDF estimates, some 10,000 people have entered Israel from Africa over the past five years through the Egyptian border. The breached border has made the infiltration very simple.

And the reason:

Shmuel Rifman, head of the Ramat Hanegev Regional Council, told Ynet that the large majority of the refugees came to Israel became the average monthly salary in Egypt is $10, while in Israel it stands at $1,000.

And now, the AP article:

Israel: No Promised Land for Africans
Sitting on a thin mattress in an underground bomb shelter that reeked of urine, Tasfa Mara said he’s happy where he is. The 24-year-old Eritrean escaped forced conscription, beatings and a treacherous trek across three countries before reaching his promised land.

“Only Israel safe,” he said in patchy English, his hands and feet heavily bandaged from lacerations he suffered on the barbed-wire barricade between Egypt and Israel when crossing last week. “All African countries the same.”

Mara may not have a safe haven much longer. This week Israel plans to begin deporting thousands of African migrants who have slipped in through the porous southern border with Egypt. It remains unclear how the expulsions will be carried out and where Israel will send them.

Founded six decades ago in the wake of the Nazi genocide, Israel finds itself torn between a sense of duty to help people fleeing persecution and fears of an onslaught of illegal immigrants. The result has been a confused policy.

That’s one of the most biased headlines I’ve seen since—oh, Christmas, and the usual “Jesus wouldn’t make it through the wall” stories. And while some of the story is positive—it does show the enormous difference between they way Africans are treated by Israel, and the way they are treated by Egypt, it’s an overall negative piece.

And of course, the great unasked questions hover over the entire article: Where is the UN Commission on Refugees in all this? Why does the UN spend so many hundreds of millions of dollars on UNRWA, which tends only to Palestinian refugees and the descendants of refugees, when it’s obvious that there are thousands of real refugees in dire need of help? Is the UN providing food, shelter, clothing, and medical care to the Eritreans and Sudanese refugees in Israel? Well, no. Check out their budget for Israel. It’s a whopping $232,138. I’m assuming that includes salaries. So nope, Israel is S.O.L. on the UN supplying any bucks for the African refugees. But the UN is providing assistance in declaring refugee status for the Africans.

As usual, though, where the world falters on humanitarian needs, Israel does not.

Tel Aviv has embraced them warmly. Most Darfurians now live in apartments, enjoy the city’s welfare services and their children attend its schools. Volunteers have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and helped arrange thousands of work permits.

“They have been through such traumas. Their motivation is not to come here, it is to escape their fate at home,” said Yael Dayan, deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. “Whoever gets here, we take them in, but the government has to decide on a policy … It will not happen by itself.”

No, it will happen by inches. And you know that racist, apartheid state? Well, it’s taking in thousands of non-Jewish Africans that Egypt doesn’t want.

Yassin Moussa, 30, arrived in Israel from Darfur 2 1/2 years ago. After spending 16 months in detention, today he coordinates relief efforts for the new migrants, arranging housing and employment.

Moussa witnessed the execution of his father and uncles and was separated from his mother, sisters and wife when he fled Darfur. He does not know their whereabouts, or if they survived.

Today, he navigates the streets of Tel Aviv with ease, cell phone in hand, communicating easily in Hebrew. “I feel like an Israeli,” he said.

Sounds like he acts like one, too. Hey, who knows? Maybe they’ll decide to convert to Judaism. Then what will Israel’s critics say?

This one goes out to a very dear friend of mine.

Okay, not really. But it’s been on my mind a lot the last few days for some reason.

A ten-year-old boy nearly lost his arm in a kassam rocket attack yesterday. A mother and one-year-old infant were also hurt. Bet you didn’t know either of these facts. Because the wire services choose not to highlight Israeli casualties of war, except when their ignoring the Sderot victims makes them look like they’re being negligent in their duties. Oh, oh, I don’t know, when their editors get tired of writing the same-old, same-old whitewashing of terrorism.

The facts are there. You just have to find them.

Ha’aretz has video of the aftermath of the kassam attack that wounded a 10-year-old boy. It’s as heart-wrenching as any video you’ve seen on ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN of Palestinians. But you won’t see it there. Why? Good question.

In fact, although the kassam attacks that occurred after the so-called “peaceful” protest (which included a riot, described in the same articles that call the protest “peaceful”) yesterday, the attack barely rated a blip on the wire services’ Israel radar. You have to dig deeply into any of the AP stories to find that a child was severely wounded. You have to dig even deeper to find that a grown woman and her one-year-old infant were wounded. Well, deeper in the fact that the AP stories never carried that information. Hell, it took the AP eight paragraphs in their worldwide Hamas protest story before they acknowledge that anyone in Israel was hurt by the “crude, homemade missiles.”

Later Monday, militants fired 11 rockets at southern Israel, the military said. One seriously wounded a 10-year-old boy in the battered town of Sderot, just across the Gaza border.

Doctors said shrapnel cut through the boy’s shoulder, but surgeons were able to save his arm. Earlier this month, an 8-year-old boy in Sderot lost a leg in a rocket attack.

AFP put it in the next-to-last graf in a 26-graf article.

Meanwhile, an Israeli youth was moderately wounded when a rocket fired from Gaza hit the entrance to a housing complex in the southern city of Sderot, officials said.

And they justified it.

That attack came after four Palestinian militants were killed by Israel raids overnight.

I’d be outraged, but these are the same people who are blaming Muslim “youths” nightly rioting and torching of cars on poverty and failure to assimilate. The French are always ready to justify evil actions. The Vichy government wasn’t created in a vacuum.

I couldn’t find a word about it in Reuters, the BBC, or CNN. Guess it wasn’t their turn to publish the news of Israeli casualties of terrorists.

Omri found a mention in the LA Times, which uses the execrable phrase “parallel protest” when describing the kassam attack that nearly killed two children.

As Israelis watched nervously from across the border, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip staged parallel protests Monday against the Jewish state, placing a few thousand placard-waving demonstrators along the main highway and firing 11 rockets into Israel.

Sick. Twisted. That’s the only way to describe an article that calls firing weapons of death into a civilian town, hoping to randomly murder as many people as possible, a “protest.”

Here’s the story from a source that actually cares about reporting the news:

But less than two hours after the Gaza protest ended, three more Kassams reached their targets, all landing in Sderot itself. Ten-year-old Yossi Haimov, who was playing with his eight-year-old sister, Maria, in the courtyard of the apartment building where they live, was struck by shrapnel, and almost a dozen other people were treated for shock.

Eyewitnesses gathered outside the ramshackle apartment block said shortly after the strike that the boy had heard the “Color Red” siren and tried to take cover near a large cement structure. When the rocket landed nearby, it sent chunks of concrete and glass from nearby buildings flying, some of which hit the boy in his shoulder.

Maria said after the attack that the two had returned home together from school, dropped their backpacks off at home, and then left the house again to meet friends in the sandy courtyard, which is dominated by a bomb shelter and a large concrete block. Although the two tried to take cover, she soon realized that her brother had been hit.

“I saw his arm was covered in blood, but he didn’t cry,” the eight-year-old recalled, describing how she and her brother screamed for the owners of a nearby corner store to call an ambulance. Both of the children’s parents were at work when the rocket struck.

Well, he did afterwards. They were brought into a local store, and someone took cellphone images of the scene. That’s at the Ha’aretz link above. Heartache warning: Hearing an eight-year-old child scream for her brother and her mother may be hazardous to your mental health.

Magen David Adom teams managed to stop the boy’s severe bleeding, but doctors at Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital, where Yossi was hospitalized, said that his shoulder was shattered.

They did manage to save his arm. Not that it matters to anyone but the Israeli or Jewish media.

Really. Just when you think the MSM can’t sink much lower, they manage to make you think again.

We all know that in journalism it is the job of the reporter to answer 5 W’s - Who, what, where, when, and why. Usually some combination of nouns and verbs - with perhaps some articles, adverbs and prepositions - will suffice. So when you start seeing a proliferation of adjectives you need to ask, “what else is the reporter telling me?”For our first edition of “Find the adjective” we will explicate In Israel, Some See No Option but War
By Griff Witte of the Washington Post.

Here’s the setup:

SDEROT, Israel — Aharon Peretz has spent most of his 51 years in this cactus-fringed, working-class town, and he would like to stay.But his wife and six children feel differently: Daily retreats to the basement during rocket strikes from the nearby Gaza Strip have frayed their nerves, and an attack that cost an uncle both his legs has convinced them it’s time to go.

Peace will return for his family, Peretz has decided, only if Israel chooses to go to war with his neighbors.

Now here’s the next paragraph:

“There is no other option,” he said. “Israel must enter Gaza and deal seriously with those who are launching these Qassams,” as the crude rockets are known.

What’s the only adjective that the reporter uses? Did you say “crude?” Why that’s 100% correct! Excellent. So what is the reporter telling us? Why he must be telling us that the threat of the Qassams is not that great because it’s a “crude” rocket. See how enlightening this exercise is!

OK. Ready for the next paragraph?

That sentiment is gaining currency across Israel, and the political rhetoric is growing more bellicose. With each new barrage of rockets, the government comes under greater pressure to conduct a massive military operation that might improve conditions in Sderot, but could also entail heavy casualties on both sides and further undermine the already anemic U.S.-backed peace process.

Hmm. Let’s see there’s “bellicose” and “massive” and “heavy.” So immediately after minimizing the threat to Israel, the reporter uses words to show that Israel’s response would be “massive.” Implicitly, he’s saying that a response from Israel will necessarily be out of proportion to the threat.

Another paragraph and more adjectives:

The government has so far resisted the calls for a wider war beyond its present Gaza strategy of intense political pressure, a crushing economic embargo and frequent military strikes targeting those suspected of responsibility for the rockets. A full-scale invasion, officials say, could backfire and benefit Hamas, the armed Islamic movement that controls the territory. Israel also insists it does not want to be drawn back into Gaza less than three years after it withdrew its settlers and troops.

Now this paragraph is a bit trickier, because some of the adjectives are hidden as participles. So let’s have at it: “intense” and “crushing” and “frequent” actions are taken against those “suspected” of attacking Israel. So again Israeli plans are described with certainty and intensity whereas the actions of Hamas are given a level of deniability.

I’d also argue that after the Gazan shopping spree in the Sinai, it’s hard to say that the economic embargo has been all that “crushing.”

There is of course one adjective missing: “terrorist.” In describing Hamas, the reporter can’t even call it “militant,” it’s “armed.” The NRA would fit that description too.

We’ll skip a few paragraphs to:

Still, Dror said, the cost of an invasion would be high. Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated places, with likely military targets scattered throughout civilian areas. The military estimates that in a full-scale invasion, about 100 Israeli soldiers and 1,000 Palestinians would die, he said.

OK, here my beef is with an *adverb*: “likely.” Military targets are scattered throughout civilian areas. That’s part of what makes Hamas a terrorist organization. Instead the reporter qualifies this Hamas strategy. No qualification is needed.

The Qassams have made life difficult in Sderot, a desert town of 20,000, and other areas near the Gaza border. But so far, casualties have been limited.By contrast, over the first two months of the year, Israeli military operations involving both ground troops and airstrikes have resulted in the deaths of 126 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza. The Israeli military says that in the past three months, 180 Palestinian fighters, as well as 13 civilians, have died during its operations.

The key adjective in these two paragraphs is “difficult.” Qassams that could land anywhere are not dangerous, just difficult. On the other hand, Israel’s killed quite a few Palestinians. That the vast majority of them were indeed involved in terrorist attacks against civilians doesn’t seem to play into the reporter’s moral calculus. And again, the deaths of the civilians would seem to be a function of the Hamas tactic of placing weapons and terrorists in civilian areas against the rules of international law.

“What’s coming out of Gaza is not a strategic threat,” said Shalom Harari, a former top Israeli military intelligence official. “It’s terrible. It puts political pressure on the government. But it’s not a strategic threat.”Harari is concerned it could soon become one, however, as Hamas gains military strength through support from Iran. That assistance could in time mean rockets with much longer range and far greater accuracy and lethality, he said. The government’s critics on the right raise the same concern in arguing for the Israel Defense Forces to go into Gaza as soon as possible. The number of Israelis under threat from the rocket fire, they say, is bound to grow unless the military acts.

“Soon enough, they’ll also threaten Tel Aviv if we do nothing to stop them,” said Yuval Steinitz, a lawmaker from the Likud Party, which advocates a hard-line policy in dealing with the Palestinians.

Steinitz said the military would have to occupy Gaza for, at most, a few months. In that time, he said, Israeli forces could eliminate Hamas’s weapon stockpiles, destroy the rocket launch sites and reassert control over the Egyptian border, where explosives are smuggled in. The casualties may be high, he said, but the operation would save lives in the long run.

“I’m not saying it will be easy. The world, at the beginning, might condemn us,” Steinitz said. “But this is the only real solution. This war of attrition is not good for us. No state would tolerate daily rocket attacks on its soil.”

So first an expert with no ideological is interviewed (this is a case of a missing adjective) who says that Hamas doesn’t present a “strategic” threat to Israel. Then a counterpoint is provided by Yuval Steinitz (who, by the way, is a former member of Peace Now, but came to his senses) who is described as “hard-line.” It’s not clear that Dr. Steinitz’s judgment is any less valid, but the political qualification serves notice of the reporter’s disapproval of Steinitz.

There is no guarantee, however, that a major military operation would succeed in stopping the attacks. It could increase them. Military analysts and government officials also worry that Israeli troops would get stuck in Gaza, locked in urban warfare with a guerrilla force that has been preparing for just such a fight.

OK, here there are no “adjectives” I could point to. Still the thought that a major military operation would increase attacks is pure speculation. Arms and terrorists don’t spontaneously generate. Destroy enough of both and the enemy won’t be able to respond with the same frequency as it did before.

Matti Steinberg, a former adviser on Palestinian affairs to Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, said there is a far less costly way to stop the attacks: a cease-fire.Without one, Steinberg said, Israel is on a path toward war, which could have disastrous consequences for the U.S.-backed peace process that began in Annapolis late last year. “The entire rationale of Annapolis would be doomed,” he said.

An invasion, he said, would ultimately strengthen support for Hamas and undercut Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the more secular Fatah movement.

Here’s another expert without an adjective attached to his name, so it’s not hard to figure out that he will be against an invasion. Why ceasefires have worked so well in the past, let’s try another one. Why the “rationale’ of Annapolis isn’t damaged by continued terror against Israeli civilians is not explained.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum agreed. He said the group was expecting a major Israeli offensive and warned that it would only lead to more armed resistance. “Any military operation against Gaza will not give security to the occupation,” he said. “It will just increase the popularity of Hamas.”

And in case we didn’t understand that an invasion would be bad, the reporter gets an opinion from a Hamas spokesman. Would any degree of self-interest be involved? Perhaps his statement betrays a fear of serious Israeli military action?

Again I have no adjectives to criticize here, just noting that a Hamas spokesman is not exactly a disinterested observer. But the adjective “hard-line” is missing.

Israel’s Gaza policy has already drawn intense international criticism, particularly for its reliance on economic pressure, which U.N. and European Union observers have warned could lead to a humanitarian crisis.

So here’s another problem helpfully identified by the reporter, Israel has been subjected to “intense” criticism because it uses “economic” means that could lead to a “humanitarian” crisis.

Now we saw above that war crimes (Qassams aimed at civilians) make life “difficult” in Sderot. And we’ve seen that the reporter has established the inadvisability of a military response. Now, the rather restrained Israeli response is being described as extreme. So apparently our intrepid reporter believes that the only reasonable response to terror is to allow civilians to remain targets and only employ passive protection to Sderot’s population.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel’s response has been “proportionate and, within the confines of international law, what is considered justifiable self-defense.”But it has not stopped the rocket fire.

No it hasn’t. And “confines of international law” don’t particularly confine Hamas do they?

On Friday, thousands of Israelis demonstrated their solidarity with Sderot’s residents by streaming into the city to shop. Despite the threat, the cloudless winter day took on a carnival-like atmosphere, with DJs spinning dance music and shoppers walking the streets seemingly unconcerned by the possibility of an attack.”We don’t have many days like this,” said Michael Amsalam, 58, a town councilman. But he was not optimistic there would be many more.

I have no beef with these paragraphs, and the final two are fine too.

When a nearby motorcyclist unexpectedly revved his engine, Amsalam flinched, then described what it was like to hear a rocket fall on his town, with nothing to do afterward but brace for the next one.”Only the ones who live here know the feeling of the Qassam, the feeling of fear,” he said.

Maybe the Post’s reporter should live in Sderot for a week and he won’t be so quick to dismiss Israeli fears and possible plans to strike back. I don’t know that a full scale invasion is a good idea; however a news story should make an effort at balance. It was very clear how this reporter felt from his generous use of adjetives.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Shire Network News features the second part of Tom Paine’s interview with Ezra Levant, the Canadian Human Rights Commission gadfly who is now going to really have his day in court (check out his latest post, and the newest lawsuit against him).

I’ve got a contribution this week. As usual, you can find my podcasts in the usual place. But really, if your’e not listening to all of SNN, you’re missing some superb interviews, and some funny blog news, as well as podcasts from my fellow essayists. You don’t need an iPod. All you need is an mp3 player (Windows Media Player works just fine).

Before the Hajj started, Elder of Ziyon noted:

Now, Palestine Press Agency reports that Hamas is planning to embarrass Egypt into opening Rafah by demolishing the wall near the crossing and forcing Egypt to directly stop the pilgrims from going to Egypt - or forcing Egypt to let them through. PPA says that Hamas plans to demonstrate on Friday and demolish the wall on Saturday. Whether this is true or not, Hamas is clearly playing political games with their devout Muslim population.

Now in Gaza, Hamas might be planning to do the same at the Israeli border. (via memeorandum)

Israel has put paramilitary police on standby and boosted surveillance along the Gaza border in case Palestinians try to break through into Israel as they did in Egypt last month, security sources said on Sunday.A pro-Hamas group said it would hold a peaceful protest on Monday in which it estimated that 40,000 to 50,000 women and children would form a “human chain” stretching the length of the Gaza Strip. Organisers said they had no intention of breaching the border.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli Defence Forces said: “The IDF is preparing based on reports from the Palestinian media.” She declined to elaborate.

Like Elder of Ziyon noted a few months ago, the intelligence about what’s going to happen was in the Palestinian media.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured across the Rafah border breach into Egypt to stock up on goods in short supply in the coastal enclave because of an Israeli blockade.

This is the short version. Residents of Gaza flush with cash bought quite a few luxury goods also. And Israel is pretty certain that terrorists and materiel also crossed the border at that time.

LGF observes:

And they’re releasing children from school so they can be on the front line.

Powerline suggests:

Hamas’s stage managers in Iran must think the time is ripe for the usual misdirection that accompanies international attention to their nuclear weapons program.

Or it might just be now that the dry run worked so well in Egypt they want to breach the Israeli border to increase the ease with which terrorists could slip into Israel again.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Dr. Reuven Pedatzur, a person whose opinion one should certainly respect in all matters military, writes in Haaretz on the amazing discovery: the much touted Iron Dome anti-rocket system will not be able to protect Sderot from the Qassams. He demolishes the whole idea using simple arithmetics, so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand it:

The distance from the edge of Beit Hanun to the outskirts of Sderot is 1,800 meters. Therefore, a rocket launched from Beit Hanun takes about nine seconds to hit Sderot. The developers of Iron Dome at Rafael Advance Defense Systems know that the preparations to simply launch the intercept missiles at their target take up to about 15 seconds (during which time the system locates the target, determines the flight path and calculates the intercept route). Obviously, then, the Qassam will slam into Sderot quite a number of seconds before the missile meant to intercept it is even launched.

But besides not being able to protect the border communities, Iron Dome will also not be able to cope with rockets that are launched much farther away. According to data available from Rafael, the average flight time of the intercept missile to the point of encounter is another 15 seconds. In other words, to intercept a rocket using Iron Dome requires at least 30 seconds. This is the time it takes a Qassam to cover six kilometers.

Pedatzur adds:

The disturbing question is why no one bothered to apprise the prime minister of this simple calculation, to make it clear to him that Iron Dome, in the development of which his government decided to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, will not be able to protect Sderot.

The article was published on February 22, and today (February 24) Olmert continued touting Iron Dome as the ultimate solution:

Olmert said the protection of Gaza-area communities will include a combination of solutions such as the Iron Dome defense system, an early-warning system, new school buildings in addition to the partial fortification of homes.

Strange, ain’t it? And there are more disturbing questions, such as the cost of each intercept missile (about $100,000), its ability to tackle mortar shells (about 0), but most of all the curious (to say the least) rejection of all and any US-made protective systems. It looks like a pathological case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome:

Part of the explanation for the opposition to the laser system may lie in remarks made by Shimon Lavie, from the R&D directorate, who was the officer of the Nautilus project in the United States, on the “Fact” TV program, broadcast on Channel 2 last December. “We in the directorate are responsible for developing blue-and-white [Israeli-made] systems, which the Nautilus was not. We had hoped for intense cooperation with Israeli firms. If that had happened, it might have had an influence [on the decision about whether to acquire the laser system].”

Bingo. There is no need to add anything, is there? The article mentions other strange items, such as the fate of the (initially) joint US-Israeli development of the laser defense system Nautilus / Skyguard, and much more - worth reading in its entirety.

It is also worth mentioning that while the citizens of Sderot remain unprotected and crying for help and while mandarins fight their turf wars, several anti-rocket and anti-mortar systems are coming to maturity and being used in the field, protecting US troops in Iraq.

Another expert claims that the solution to Qassams already exists.

Farber’s suggestion is to deploy American artillery batteries called Phalanx around the Qassam-battered town of Sderot, to intercept the rockets fired by Palestinians.

The U.S. army has been successfully operating the system in Iraq, where it provides its bases with protection from rockets and mortar shells.

Something definitely smells fishy in the whole business.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Hamas isn’t getting the results they wanted after they kidnapped Gilad Shalit. So they’re going to kidnap more soldiers until Israel gives them what they want.

Hamas will abduct more IDF soldiers if Israel does not answer its demands for freeing Gilad Schalit, a Hamas official said in an interview published Saturday.

“Abducting soldiers is not a purpose in and of itself and is not a hobby,” Osama al-Zeini, the Hamas official in charge of the “Schalit file,” told Palestine - a newspaper affiliated with Hamas.

“The issue is the issue of prisoners. If the Schalit deal does not meet its objectives and the enemy will not answer our demands, there is no doubt that more pressure must be exerted on the enemy so that it complies. [Our] goal is to free the prisoners and we insist on it.

“If we don’t see compliance from the enemy, abductions will continue until every single prisoner is released,” he stated.

Funny, Hamas keeps on saying they didn’t kidnap Schalit, and that they have no power over Schalit’s kidnappers. Guess al-Zeini didn’t get the memo.

If you’re really geeky, all episodes of the original Star Trek series are available for download at CBS. (h/t Crossing the Rubicon3)BTW, why is this on CBS and not NBC, as you might recall.

Mr. Spock: Here is the readout, Captain. The computer has identified the alien vessel as a 1968 Chrysler Imperial with a tinted windshield and retractable headlights.Captain Kirk: And the little blue and orange numbers?

Mr. Spock: That’s called a “California license plate”, and it’s registered, or was in 1968, to a corporation known as “NBC”. Wait.. there’s something more.. The computer isn’t sure, but it thinks this NBC used to manufacture cookies.

So my best guess is that CBS has a hand in the producing the upcoming Star Trek movie so it’s hoping that making the original show available will generate interest in the movie. (Though CBS and Viacom have split there’s still a production company called CBS Paramount.)

(The main post is about the Church of Spock, which Daled Amos figures is one of the more mainstream tourist sites in Lynchburg.)

If you’re super geeky here are Star Charts of the whole Trek Universe. So if you want to trek through the Romulan Empire or vacation on Bajor, here’s all the info you need. (h/t Colossus of Rhodey)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There’s going to be a demonstration in Gaza tomorrow. And under cover of that demonstration, Hamas may try to use the weapons it smuggled through the downed Rafah border fence—against Israel.

Palestinian officials on Sunday announced that they intend to protest the ongoing economic sanctions and blockade of the Gaza Strip on Monday morning by forming a human chain which will span from the Rafah Crossing in southern Gaza, to the Erez Crossing in the north.

In response, the IDF is weighing potential solutions for a scenario in which the a mass of unarmed civilians will try to break through the crossings and into Israel, Army Radio reported.

The main fear is that residents of the Strip will force their way through the crossings and that IDF attempts to contain the crowd will result in massive casualties.

These fears have been stoked by comments made by Hamas officials which have hinted towards the possibility of a confrontation.

“The next time Gazan residents protest the ongoing siege, they will do so on the border with Israel, and not on the border with Egypt,” Israel Radio reported one senior Hamas as saying on Sunday.

Another Hamas official said that any attempt at a border breach would be spontaneous, and not preplanned by the Islamic organization.

Yeah, just like the Rafah border breach was “spontaneous.” Except it wasn’t.

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.

If it’s an attack, Hamas is going to try to use the civilians in Gaza for cover while it launches an attack on Israel. It’s a win-win situation for Hamas. If the IDF kills civilians while trying to stop them from entering Israel—no matter whether or not they’re actually firing at terrorists with rifles in their midst, which has happened before—it’s a PR disaster for Israel. And if the IDF doesn’t fire, and thousands of Palestinians force their way into Israel, guaranteed that hundreds of them will be terrorists. I’m betting that the IDF is going to have several rings of soldiers around the area—but that doesn’t mean some won’t get through.

The PR disaster is assured. The world doesn’t ignore the deaths of civilians by the Jewish state the way it ignores the deaths of civilians by, gee, just about every other nation in the world except for America.

Egyptian border police shot and killed an African woman Sunday who was trying to cross illegally into Israel with a group of other migrants, a local medical official said.

I have yet to hear of a U.N. resolution condeming Egypt for the murder of so many African refugees. But oh, watch the speed of the U.N.’s condemnation of Israel should Hamas try to breach the border tomorrow.

I hope and pray that Hamas is just planning to give the wire services a photo op. But I worry that the long-talked-about offensive is near. So does the IDF.

Over the weekend, the military scrambled large forces to the Gaza border in anticipation of civilian unrest following the end of fuel supplies.

Immigration Absorption Minister Ya’acov Edri (Kadima) said Sunday that the government was ready for any scenario resulting from Palestinians trying to breach the border crossings.

I suppose we should be thankful UNIFIL hasn’t managed to get itself in the way on Israel’s Gaza border yet. They’d be more cover for Hamas terrorists.

Tomorrow will be interesting.

Ynet has the latest excuse the terrorists are using to launch rockets at southern Israel: They’re not just in response to Israeli “crimes.” They’re also a response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

The Salah al-Din Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees’ military wing, claimed responsibility for firing the rockets. The organization’s spokesman, Muhammad Abed al-Aal, told Ynet that the firing operation, dubbed “the lines of fire”, was a response to the “crimes of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinians,” but also “in response to the cartoons published in Denmark degrading the memory of Prophet Muhammad

“The Palestinian resistance has committed to respond to the cartoons, and this is our initial response,” he added.

Asked why the residents of Sderot and the Negev should pay the price for cartoons published in Denmark, Abed al-Aal responded, “The Jews have also hurt Islam and have also hurt the Koran in their prisons, as part of the plot to harm Islam and the memory and status of Prophet Muhammad.

“The Palestinian resistance will not let Israel’s crimes and the smearing of Islam’s symbols go unanswered,” he said.

In other words, they’re going to fire a rocket because it’s a day that ends with a “y.”

But here’s the real kicker. The mayor of Sderot recently expressed a willingness to talk to Hamas in order to get the rocket fire stopped. Ynet’s reporter asked about this suggestion.

Addressing Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal’s willingness to reach a ceasefire with Hamas, Abed al-Aal said that the only way for the residents of southern Israel to feel safe is to leave their houses and the entire area.

“We won’t give them peace and security as long as they fail to stand up against their government and its aggressiveness, as long as one Palestinian child is suffering, and as long as there is one Zionist soldier on the land of Palestine,” he said.

There is the reason the mayor of Sderot is wasting his time. You cannot negotiate with terrorists. You can only kill them.

In Gaza’s Culture of Self-Destruction Yael Kaynan writes (via memeorandum):

The people in Gaza need to stop and take a good look at the culture and society that they are creating and begin to think hard about how they might begin to undo the damage to their social fabric that is, with every day that passes, increasing. They should begin their social re-engineering not for the sake of their Israeli enemies across the border, nor to increase their standing on the world stage, but rather for their own sakes because inculcating blind hatred, with a murderous twist, against another group has some unintended side effects for the culture that does the inculcating.When children are raised on a steady diet of hatred, disrespect for human life, and violence, those children grow up to be violent and with no regard for the life, or well-being, of others. And not just for “those” others but for all others, including those within their own society.

Of course when you live in a world more than 70 people get injured in a non-violent demonstration, that realization is pretty far away.

I find the Israeli demonstrations of non-violence a lot more convincing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Judeopundit, observed an under-noticed story in the New York Times the other day, Arab Leaders Say the Two-State Proposal Is in Peril. In the Perils to Two-State Pauline, by way of introduction he provides some background, in fine factious fashion:

Back in the days when Hamas lead the Enemies of Peace on Both Sides Inc., Palestinian Division, Israel negotiated the beginning of a two-state solution. They negotiated in good-faith, and together with Yassir Arafat, who was negotiating in bad faith, there was some implementation of the solution. Some of that implementation still stands: that is why Israel recognizes something called the “Palestinian Authority,” although the former enemies of peace, now friends of Hudna, have since seceded from it.Back in 2000 (aided and abetted by famous advocates of Apartheid Dennis Ross and Bill Clinton) the