Okay, I don’t watch the TV news very often, and I didn’t last night. I don’t listen to the news on the radio much, either. And, well, I completely missed out on a very important fact. Like, moving the clocks forward an hour.

So this morning, I am up before the alarm goes off (mostly due to going to bed at a reasonable hour and, well, being tired enough to sleep). While I’m deciding whether or not to get up, the phone rings. It’s a familiar voice asking if I’m someone else. “Nooo,” I tell him, and try to continue as he apologizes. “Michael… Michael, it’s Meryl!” (It’s another member of my congregation, who had my number written on a piece of paper and thought it was the other one.) We chat a bit, he apologizes for calling so early, I tell him I’m already up, he says his daughter has an 8 a.m. basketball game, and I’m wondering why he’s talking to me at 7:45 when he should be driving to the game. We hang up, I do my morning routine, get downstairs, can’t figure out how my computer got to 9 a.m., change the clock, start writing a post as I have a ton of time. 8:30 rolls around, and I get a phone call. It’s my madrich.

“Um, Ms. Yourish, did you forget to set your clocks back last night?”
“What?”
“Did you forget it’s Daylight Savings Time?”
“Holy crap! It’s 9:30?”
“Yes. But it’s okay, we have a Purim lesson we can do until you get here….”
“No, wait. We have music at 9:30. Take the kids to music class and I’ll get there as soon as I can. And tell someone.”
“Okay.”

I no longer have a leisurely breakfast (but I have breakfast), get to school at about five to ten, sign in, and discover that no, the kids don’t have music class, because the music assistant is not in today. I hurry to class and find the principal monitoring my madrichim, who are teaching the children abour Purim. I thank her, we finish the lesson, and go on with the day. Of course all the kids had to ask me why I was late.

Well, that was embarrassing. But at least I know my assistants have really moved forward in giant steps. They were scheduled to have a Purim lesson later in the day (crafts and games plus the story of Purim), and they just pushed the story part into the first half hour of class. They did a great job, the principal told me.

I feel guilty. But I feel well-rested. It evens out.

If you’re not watching Jericho, you’re not watching one of the best shows on TV.

CBS has full episodes. You can catch up.

Go. It’s worth it.

I just caught up on the last episode.

Wow.

This is an amazing essay from the pilot of an SR-71 (the Blackbird familiar even to X-Men comics fans).

In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi’s terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111’s had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a ‘line of death,’ a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra, swearing to shoot down any intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph.

I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world’s fastest jet, accompanied by Maj Walter Watson, the aircraft’s reconnaissance systems officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane’s performance.

Read the rest.

Thursday night a terrorist entered the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem and killed 8 young men who were students there. According to Ha’aretz:

The Shin Bet security service said the gunman was not known to them. Major General Ilan Franco, the commander of Jerusalem’s district police, told Channel 2 that the attacker was “not known to the security forces.”

In other words Israel’s security services hadn’t seen any activities by Ala Abu Dhaim that raised suspicions about him.

The same article also tells us:

So far no Palestinian or Arab organization has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Palestinian sources have said that the attack had been planned by a Hamas network in the West Bank acting on orders from its leaders in Damascus. Hamas’ leadership in Gaza was not privy to the plan, which was drawn up in coordination with Hezbollah, the sources said.

Still something about the article is curious.

An initial police investigation has revealed that the shooting was not a spontaneous attack, but had been planned in advance. Police also learnt that Abu Dhaim had personally chosen the location and time for the shooting. To this end, he carried out extensive reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering work on the yeshiva.The gunman had also stockpiled weapons and ammunition, only some of which he took to perpetrate the attack - an AK-47 assault rifle, two pistols and a few magazines.

Since Abu Dhaim, an East Jerusalem resident, had a blue identity card, and since he transported people in the area, he was able to move freely in the city’s western part, too, and seems to have been well-acquainted with the attack site. The key question is where he obtained his AK-47 assault rifle, which he used to attack the yeshiva.

(More details from Meryl.)

That is key. That and how did he train with the weapon. According to other reports he fired hundreds of rounds and changed clips during the massacre. That requires some level of training. Together that’s very troubling.

If he had regularly been meeting with Hamas personnel, he’d have drawn attention to himself. There’s one other possibility. And it’s not a new one. He got his weapons and training from the Palestinian police.

Here’s Newser from this past October.

EU and United States rules forbid either Smith or Dayton from supplying the Palestinians with weapons or giving them firearms training.The result, Smith says, is a police force ill-equipped to face down often better-armed criminals in an area awash with automatic weapons. He would like to see them stripped of the grab-bag of guns they now carry and issued with modern, efficient and properly registered sidearms.

“They carry pistols, but there’s a variation,” he said. I’ve seen some old Russian pistols around, they’ve got some really old AK 47 (assault rifles)…They need re-equipping.”

Smith wishes the PA police had more recent AK-47’s but as other news stories inform us, antiquated or not, it is the main weapon of the Palestinian police. Shortly afterwards, Israel approved the transfer of AK-47’s from Jordan. If Abu Dhaim was meeting with Palestinian police it likely would raise lesser concerns than if he was meeting with members of Hamas.

But shortly after the AK-47’s were received Ido Zoltan was killed by members of the PA Police force.

But this also could explain why Israel has been somewhat restrained in its response so far. If the PA Police who are affiliated with Fatah were providing the logistics for an attack planned by Hamas and Hezbollah, it would be impossible for Israel to continue talks with Abbas. For Abbas would be shown to be no less a double talker than his mentor Arafat.

The timing of this attack, too, must be judged in light of a recent statement Abbas made to a Jordanian newspaper.

In an interview with Jordanian newspaper Al-Dastur last week, Mr. Abbas spoke with pride of violence he had waged in his past, suggested that terrorism could start anew in the future, and essentially backed away from repeated statements that he “recognizes” Israel’s right to exist. A top congressional appropriator, Foreign Operations Chairman Nita Lowey, said flatly, “President Abbas’ recent statements cast doubt on his willingness to take the steps necessary for peace with Israel.”But Mr. Abbas’ comments alone likely would not have sparked this fracas. Just one day after news of the interview shocked key legislators and staffers, who learned of it last Thursday when it was translated into English by watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), the administration sent over its request for $150 million in direct cash assistance to Abbas’ PA.

“What were they [administration officials] thinking sending over the request the day after Abbas announces he’s open to re-starting terrorism and doesn’t really recognize Israel’s right to exist?” asked one miffed Hill staffer.

(Daled Amos on how this aid request is rubbing in the salt.)
Good for Representative Lowey for calling the administration on this request. And if the Merkaz Harav murderer is tied to Abbas, it should force the United States and, of course, Israel to take a much tougher approach with Arafat’s successor. It is becoming clearer that not only has been unable to stem anti-Israel violence, he has been uninterested in stopping it. More likely, he has been active in promoting it.

For more on Palestinian firepower, here’s an analysis by the late great Scott Shuger.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

To answer Israel Matzav’s (and others’) questions: A friend forwarded me a translation of an article from Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper. The article states that the terrorist spent many hours planning his attack. From the translation:

The preliminary investigation’s findings show that Ala Abu Dheim used to come to the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva by car and watch its routine carefully. In this way, for hours, day after day, he sat and planned the terrible massacre that he perpetrated last Thursday night.

[...] A preliminary investigation shows that Abu Dheim drove of late to the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in order to park his car near the yeshiva for hours and study its routine. It appears that Abu Dheim reached the conclusion that in the evening the yeshiva is filled with people and active and that he could arrive there easily under cover of darkness. On the evening of the attack, the terrorist set out with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, seven magazines, two handguns and a commando knife. He used his vehicle, a Ford Transit van belonging to his family’s company, Pearl Transportation, which he drove in order to transport pupils from Jabel Mukaber and villages in East Jerusalem.

The terrorist parked the van two hundred meters away from the yeshiva, hid the two handguns and commando knife on his person, cocked the Kalashnikov rifle and hid it in a television carton. At the entrance to the yeshiva, he encountered three students from its youth division, one of whom asked him jokingly: “What, you’ve brought us a television?” The terrorist did not answer, but put the carton on the stone wall, took out the gun and fired at them. He succeeded in killing two of them, but the third escaped. Afterwards, the terrorist entered the yeshiva and began firing at the students while confirming his kills.

The wire services played up this bullshit:

Abu Dheim’s relatives said they did not know of his plot, but were not surprised. He had been transfixed recently by the bloodshed in Gaza, and “he told me he wasn’t able to sleep because of the grief,” said his sister, Iman Abu Dheim.

Looks like Gaza wasn’t the cause. Just the excuse. Not that I expect the AP and Reuters to mention the above facts. Gee, they’d have to have someone read Ma’ariv in Hebrew to find that out. Or maybe talk to the Israeli security services.

Fresno Zionism noticed an interesting item in the news. One Arab country took action against boasting about the massacre at Merkaz Harav, Jordan.

The relatives [of Ala Abu Dhaim, the murderer], who live near Amman, tried Friday to erect a large tent to receive mourners, but were ordered by Jordanian security officers to dismantle it immediately…They were also instructed to remove Hamas and Hizbullah flags that were hanging on rooftops and electricity poles…

Israel’s now followed suit:

The gunman who murdered eight students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem last Thursday was acting on instructions from Hamas leaders in Damascus, in coordination with Hezbollah, Palestinian defense sources said.Over the weekend, eight East Jerusalem residents were arrested in connection with gunman Ala Abu Dhaim’s shooting attack. Abu Dhaim’s father, two of his brothers and two cousins are among those detained.

The father also removed Hamas and Hezbollah flags from a mourners’ tent the family had erected, after being instructed to do so by police

Israelly Cool! asks:

Why do we allow people who openly support our destruction be citizens of Israel, and obtain the benefits citizens enjoy?

While no one has explicitly taken responsibility for the atrocity, Palestinian sources attribute it to a joint operation between the Hamas leadership in Damascus and Hezbollah.

So far no Palestinian or Arab organization has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Palestinian sources have said that the attack had been planned by a Hamas network in the West Bank acting on orders from its leaders in Damascus. Hamas’ leadership in Gaza was not privy to the plan, which was drawn up in coordination with Hezbollah, the sources said.The Palestinian Authority believes this was the first of a number of planned attacks by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, independent of each other.

Is this accurate? Clearly this attack was well planned.

An initial police investigation has revealed that the shooting was not a spontaneous attack, but had been planned in advance. Police also learnt that Abu Dhaim had personally chosen the location and time for the shooting. To this end, he carried out extensive reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering work on the yeshiva.The gunman had also stockpiled weapons and ammunition, only some of which he took to perpetrate the attack - an AK-47 assault rifle, two pistols and a few magazines.

Since Abu Dhaim, an East Jerusalem resident, had a blue identity card, and since he transported people in the area, he was able to move freely in the city’s western part, too, and seems to have been well-acquainted with the attack site. The key question is where he obtained his AK-47 assault rifle, which he used to attack the yeshiva.

Another thing, is that he was pretty familiar with the weapon. According to reports he changed magazines during the attack.

Israel Matzav asks some other questions:

I wonder how Abu Dhaim knew the Yeshiva’s routines so well if he didn’t work there. Thursday night is the most crowded night of the week for many yeshivas. It’s the first night of the weekend, and not only do the regular yeshiva students tend to stay later, but also outsiders - like people from the neighborhood or alumni of the yeshiva - will come to study on Thursday night. Second, most yeshivas (and synagogues for that matter) have little or no security. During the bad years of the Oslo War, that’s how restaurants were attacked and eventually all of the restaurants got security guards (and most of them still maintain them). Will yeshivas and synagogues need armed security guards as well?

(via memeorandum)

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon

So what would you do? I think I am basically a hothead and would not exercise restraint. Tonight I think, if I were the Prime Minister of Israel, I would sat to the citizens of Gaza “You want a state? From today, you’ve got one. Behave like one.” And when the inevitable katyushas came, I would do to them what the United States did to Dresden….

and In Context

Will there come a day when the righteous rage of the Jewish people will reach critical mass and boil up in a conflagration the likes of which the world has never seen? Or will we just continue nursing it and smothering it and keeping it in check, hoping it will recede again, hoping against hope that we can prevent an event that will ignite it again. It had been 1,261 days since the last major terrorist attack in Jerusalem, so …. Never mind Sderot. And Ashkelon. And the summer of 2006. Where, exactly, is that fuse?

both contemplate the point when Israeli patience is exhausted.In an article that seems almost prescient, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote last week (before the terror attack on Merkaz Harav, of “The end of the ‘guilty Israeli.’”

The result of all this is that today the guilty Israeli has become nearly extinct. Just as we came to realize during the first intifada that the occupation was untenable, so we have now come to realize that peace is impossible with Palestinian leaders for whom reconciliation is a one-way process.So far, the rockets aimed at Israel have been primitive and mostly terrorize and wound rather than slaughter. But it is only a matter of time before Hamas’ allies in Iran and Hezbollah upgrade the rockets’ lethal effect.

The government now has been restrained in its response to the attack on Merkaz Harav. Part of it no doubt is that the terrorist managed to work undetected Israel’s radar. I can only hope that the silence indicates that plans are afoot to hit back and hard. Better a surprise retaliatory attack on terror masters than a counter attack that fails to meet its stated objectives.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Here are a couple that Paul Simon didn’t think of.April Wormly threatened to blow up the plane her (soon to be ex-)boyfriend was boarding.

A woman who called in a bomb threat to an airport in an attempt to break up with her boyfriend was sentenced to two years in prison, the U.S. attorney’s office said Wednesday.April Wormly, 36, of Hobbs, N.M., also was ordered to pay $19,761 in restitution for phoning in the threat to San Antonio International Airport.

(h/t Betsy’s Page)

Finland’s PM text messaged his “Dear Susan” note.

It was a Nordic fairytale that began with an internet date, developed between the shelves of Ikea, and ended when the Finnish Prime Minister texted “that’s it” to his lover on his Nokia.Now it is payback time for Susan Kuronen, a 36-year-old divorcée. Only days before the Finnish general election on Sunday, she has published a kiss-and-tell book designed to embarrass Matti Vanhanen, who was once dubbed “the sexiest man in Finland” by Jacques Chirac.

BTW, those Finns are really handy with text messaging, they’ve written novels with them and unlock public toilets too!

Consequences: jail time and tell all book. No wonder Paul Simon didn’t recommend them.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Soccer Dad has almost all the facts in his post on the so-called “council of elders” that want to help “ease tensions” in Israel. He forgot their name here on Yourish.com: The Transnational Old Farts Israel-Haters Club.

In my post (which has tons of links to their anti-Israel actions and statements), I said this:

I suppose the best thing I can say about this new “council of elders” is that with any luck, they’ll be dropping like flies due to their advanced ages.

Say, Israel-hating old farts: Take a leaf from the Yourish.com mantra, and take a long, long dirt nap. Soon, so you can’t muck up Israel any more than you already have.

A few years ago, Michael Lerner wrote about his discomfiture with certain elements of the Left.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that I am banned from speaking at a peace rally here this Sunday. As editor of Tikkun, the largest-circulation liberal Jewish magazine in the world, I have been an outspoken critic of the proposed war in Iraq. I have also unequivocally condemned Saddam Hussein’s brutality and called for the world community to bring him to justice for crimes against humanity. But we at Tikkun do not believe that this war–in which thousands of Iraqi civilians are likely to die–will bring democracy to the Middle East. Instead, it is bound to increase the threat of terrorism to American citizens and provoke more violence. It will also fuel American fantasies of world economic and political domination.So why was I being blackballed over the peace rally?

My sin was publicly criticizing the way that A.N.S.W.E.R., one of the four groups sponsoring the San Francisco demonstration, has used the antiwar demonstrations to put forward anti-Israel propaganda. An A.N.S.W.E.R. spokesperson, speaking on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC, said that they didn’t want a “pro-Israel” speaker at their rally.

He was blacklisted for protesting “anti-Israel propaganda.”

He wrote further:

There is a huge difference between criticism of Ariel Sharon’s repressive treatment of the Palestinian people and a refusal to accept the fundamental legitimacy of Israel’s existence. For years, those of us who want democratic rights for Palestinians have been dubbed “self-hating Jews” by right-wingers in the Jewish world. Now, some on the left insist that if we support human rights we must also uncritically support the violence of some Palestinian “freedom fighters” who make no secret of their desire to overthrow the Zionist enterprise.That’s why we recently created a new national organization supporting a “progressive middle path” that is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. We call for an end to the occupation, the creation of a Palestinian state and reparations for Palestinian refugees. But we also call for reparations for Jews who fled Arab states, and for Israel’s admission into NATO–or some other equally powerful military alliance–to give the Jewish state genuine security.

Now Judeopundit has found out how “Rabbi” Lerner really feels. (He wades through the bilge so I don’t have to.)

[...] We at Tikkun feel equally grieving for the people killed by vicious and immoral terrorists at the Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav (the ultra-nationalist religious center that developed the ideology which inspired religious Zionists to believe that they had a God-given right to settle and hold on to the territories without regard to the consequences for the Palestinian people already living there) as we do for the victims of Israeli terror (which in the past week killed 120 people, many of them children, many of them sitting in their homes when Israeli troops randomly fire-bombed and murdered them, as documented by the same international human rights organizations that today condemned the attack in Jerusalem by terrorists). We understand that these killings can only be understood in the context of the 60 year old struggle between these two communities, and that nothing short of a full peace accord that will require a new open-heartedness on both sides can possibly break this horrible cycle of violence. [...]

When the “politics of meaning” proponent writes such stuff, doesn’t he realize that he’s handing ammunition to the very people who excluded him from speaking at an anti-war rally? Doesn’t he really believe those “human-rights” organizations take one-sided reports or judge Israel from afar? Does he credit with “open-heartedness” for withdrawing from Gaza, which was reciprocated for by turning the territory into a rocket launching platform?

Speaking of human rights groups, a high-powered one is headed to the region to help. Ex-president Jimmy Carter, ex-secretary general Kofi Annan, and Irish ex-president Mary Robinson are headed to the Middle East to “help.” (sources: Mere Rhetoric, Boker Tov Boulder)

Let’s go through some of their contributions to world peace, shall we?

Jimmy Carter - As an international election observer, certified as legitimate elections of Hugo Chavez (Sources: Times Online via Secular Blasphemy; WSJ) and Yasser Arafat (Source: Azure).
Kofi Annan - As head of United Nations peacekeeping operations he dithered while mass killing went on in Rwanda and in “Srebrenica while under the protection of U.N. soldiers.” (Source: Heritage Foundation) Protected Hezbollah from Israel after the terrorist organization violated the UN sanctioned border between Israel and Lebanon and kidnapped and killed three Israeli soldiers. ( Source: Daled Amos)
Mary Robinson - As President of Ireland funneled money to the PA that fueled an increase in terror against Israel. As head of as the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights she was the force behind the viciously anti-Israel and antisemitic Durban conference. (Source: NRO)

Like Lerner, this unholy trinity is so taken with their own virtue that they can’t see the damage they’ve done. And as all four are continually uncritically lauded by the press their efforts to do good will continue - with disastrous results.

Fausta’s blog is also excited! And if you’d like to work against the success of such visionaries you might want to keep atop of Durban Watch.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.