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 Zionist Entity made a serious final status proposal. It was met with an increase in terror. Then, of course, Israel created further obstacles to peace in 2005 by putting Gaza, some of the territory offered in 2000, into Palestinian hands anyway. The non-achievement of Palestinian state viability, we learn, threatens more “radicalism,” but if that is where the radicalism comes from then what did the Saudis spend their money on, anyway?

Surely it makes the Times article easier to swallow when you recall that despite the righteous calls of Saudi leaders for “peace” they used to hold telethons to raise funds for the families of suicide bombers.

Israel Matzav working off a different version of the news observes:

‘Our friends the Saudis’ are threatening to withdraw their ‘peace initiative’ in which they have offered ‘full recognition’ of Israel (but not diplomatic relations - contrary to what the al-AP article quoted below implies) in return for Israel returning to the pre-1967 Auschwitz borders and allowing the country to be flooded with ‘Palestinian refugees’ that will make it into another Arab state. Unless, of course, Israel accepts it immediately.

My Right Word looks at the elements of the so-called peace offer and rejects them:

The Arab League’s plan’s main operative section reads:- I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Those are unacceptable. They deny the history of the conflict, ignore Arab agression, rewards Arab terror, inadequately provides for Israel’s future security and existence and Jewish character.

He also links to a more detailed analysis of the “Saudi peace offer.”

Last month Joshuapundit noticed something else disconcerting about the Saudi plan.

Price Turki al-Feisal, a senior Saudi prince and the former ambassador to the US and the UK was unintentionally revealing today in an interview with reuters as to what Israel’s Jews can expect if they acept the Saudi `peace’ ultimatum.Prince Turki, who was previously head of Saudi intelligence, said that if Israel accepted the Arab League plan “one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity….We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis,” he said.

Or, in simple terms, Israel will be `absorbed’ into the Arab world and it’s Jews will become dhimmis, living at the sufferance of the Arab majority…just like in the good old days,when Jews knew their place, took care to keep their heads from ever being higher than a Muslim’s and mostly lived under conditions that make the old Jim Crow South look positively beneficial.

Getting back to the NY Times, we read:

Egyptians and Jordanians say that the way events have evolved, there is no likelihood that a real Palestinian state would be formed. A truncated entity, one dotted with Israeli settlements and divided by internal Palestinian conflict, would in the end be no state at all, and would serve only to empower radicals and fuel the conflict in perpetuity, Arab political analysts and government officials said.

The “internal Palestinian conflict” is whose fault again?

That despair is accompanied by anxiety and fear that momentum is moving in favor of the more radical players, like Hamas and its patron state, Iran.“Hamas is going to be fortified,” said Mahmoud Shokry, a retired Egyptian ambassador to Syria who serves on the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, a government advisory group. “Not only Egypt, but all the Arab countries have to think about this.”

A few months ago Egypt conspired (with Iran) to allow a group of Hamas affiliated participants go on hajj to Mecca from Gaza, preferring that group over a group of Fatah affiliated participants approved of by Israel. So for an Egyptian official to lament about the strengthening of Hamas (and Iran) is sheer hypocrisy.

Egypt worries that absorbing Gaza would seem to extinguish the rallying cry of Arabs for a Palestinian state. It would also be a financial burden and create a potential for spreading throughout Egypt the kind of Islamic extremism promoted by Hamas, which is an offshoot of Egypt’s homegrown Muslim Brotherhood, a group that is banned but tolerated.Jordan sees the prospect of having to take responsibility for the West Bank as a financial burden and an existential threat to its very identity. “There are fears a federation will be forced on Jordan and the Palestinians,” said Taher al-Adwan, editor of the Jordanian newspaper Al Arab Al Youm. “This is completely rejected by the Jordanians and by the Palestinians as well. Jordan is already half-Palestinian.”

There is also the broader fear, that absorption would make permanent the fight over the land Israel is on, giving radical groups a cause to rally around, and moderates nothing to point to.

A financial burden for Egypt? Well let’s just say that during the recent wall breach, the disparity in wealth between Gaza and the Sinai, was on display. Residents of Gaza came off rather better.

And why would say, Jordan taking on the responsibility of the West Bank threaten it existentially? Why does the reporter fail to inform that the majority of Jordan’s population are Palestinians and having control over more Palestinians might make the population restive against control of the Hashemite occupiers. (The Hashemites originate from the Arabian peninsula.)

An of course there’s still the problem that even the moderates, by advocating resolution 194, aren’t really all that moderate either.

And please make sure that you read Judeopundit in his entirety, especially the sections that put into bold. They’re very telling.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.