I was watching TV a few minutes ago, and I kept hearing a noise like something was boiling. But I wasn’t cooking anything, and it wasn’t coming from outside. I had no clue what the noise was, but it didn’t stop. So I got up and checked. And found this:
Sigh.
This Ynet headline is worth keeping for posterity. The change in the health ministry domain of responsibilities is nothing short of revolutionary.
I shudder trying to imagine what kind of tasks are now under the umbrella of Hamas tourism ministry…
Cross-posted on SimplyJews.
The Telegraph commissioned a poll, and gee, Europeans don’t like America (via Glenn). I know, readers. You’re all shocked to hear this news. But Europeans don’t get us, haven’t gotten us in well over 200 years, and don’t seem about to get us yet—not even those that are relatively positive about America. For instance, the Telegraph editorial opines:
Nor is the poll particularly good news for John McCain, showing as it does overwhelming European and Russian support for his Democrat rival Mr Obama.
It is to laugh. Americans have never given a damn what Europeans think about our presidential choices. Wait, that’s not true. We get very contrary when Europe tries to mess with us. Does anyone remember the Guardian’s attempt to defeat George W. Bush in the last election? The backlash was so high, it may actually have helped Bush win in the Guardian’s chosen battleground. The Brits still haven’t gotten it: We’re not their colony any longer.
Even the director of Clark County’s board of elections got into the debate. She was widely quoted as saying: “The American Revolution was fought for a reason.”
The Telegraph goes on:
Regardless of who wins, there will be a need to project a more positive light of the United States in Europe, but without ditching America’s vital global role.
Well, in order to do that, the European media would have to stop slanting so many stories anti-American. Sorry, boys and girls, but we have no control over what Europeans think. Nor do we want to have that kind of control. This isn’t a matter of Americans cozying up to Europeans. It doesn’t matter if our president is Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Europeans have never really cared for Americans, overall. Well, the ones that stay in Europe, anyway. The ones that come here like us just fine, and so do their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren….
What I find most strange about that fact is that so many Americans have European ancestry. It’s like Europe hates its own descendants.
There’s a longer essay in there. I think I’ll work on it for July 4th.
Some twenty years ago a Palestinian soda company started hiring students from the nearby Yeshiva in Beit El to certify that the soda was Kosher for sale in Israel. It seemed like a good idea at the time but then reality intervened. The first intidfada started and, as far as I know, that sunk the project.
I don’t know if the project in this article – Israelis and Palestinians Launch Web Start-Up – will last any longer. Maybe it will:
Nibbling doughnuts and wrestling with computer code, the workers at G.ho.st, an Internet start-up here, are holding their weekly staff meeting — with colleagues on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.They trade ideas through a video hookup that connects the West Bank office with one in Israel in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Start with the optimistic parts, Mustafa,” Gilad Parann-Nissany, an Israeli who is vice president for research and development, jokes with a Palestinian colleague who is giving a progress report. Both conference rooms break into laughter.
If some sort of co-existence is possible it will have to come from the ground up, where practical concerns weigh more heavily on the parties than politics.
I have no doubt that cooperative efforts such as this will be more productive than international conferences pledging billions to the Palestinian Authority. Such conferences have only fed the corrupt, irredentist government in the past, and I have little hope than those in charge have the authority to change the culture of corruption.
A better indication of whether (or when) there will be peace will not be by the dollars pledged but by the proliferation of joint business ventures or other private (non government and non NGO) cooperative enterprises.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
If anyone can figure out why I’ve had Brahms’ Hungarian Dances running through my head all morning, I’d appreciate it. Because it took me a while to figure out that no, it isn’t Slovanic Dances, and no, Sorena’s orchestra did not play it at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday, and, well, I haven’t heard it in an age, so I have no idea why this music refuses to exit my brain.
Four and a half years ago three Americans were killed as they crossed into Gaza:
From the wreckage, it appeared that the explosion had occurred directly beneath the driver’s seat of the second of three American vehicles, ripping off the engine, as well as the front axle and wheels. The blast, which left a crater about 15 feet wide and 5 feet deep, threw the vehicle into the air and cast it to the ground upside down, in a tangle of crumpled steel. Debris, blood and human tissue were spread over a wide area, with the bodies of one of the Americans thrown nearly 40 feet away, according to witnesses at the scene.The Americans who were killed were identified by the State Department as John Branchizio, 37, from Texas; Mark Parson, 31, from New York State; and John Martin Linde, 30, from Missouri. The three men were employees of DynCorp, a Virginia-based defense contracting company, who were assigned to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. The men were traveling in the same car as the wounded diplomat, who was not identified. The diplomat was taken to the Soproka University Medical Center in Beer Sheva, where hospital officials said he was in stable condition after surgery.
But these Americans were traveling in Gaza to help Palestinians:
He said the Palestinian Authority should give its prime minister control over all of its security forces to suppress further violence, but noted that a change in control was being blocked by Mr. Arafat. Ahmed Qurei, the new prime minister, threatened to resign last week over a dispute with Mr. Arafat over who would be interior minister and control the security forces.”The failure to create effective Palestinian security forces dedicated to fighting terror continues to cost lives,” Mr. Bush said. ”The failure to undertake these reforms and dismantle the terrorist organizations constitutes the greatest obstacle to achieving the Palestinian people’s dream of statehood.”
He noted that the Americans who were attacked were not on a military mission. American Embassy officials were visiting Gaza to interview young Palestinian candidates for Fulbright scholarships to study in America.
”This is another example of how the terrorists are enemies of progress and opportunity for the Palestinian people,” he said.
In the next year the Palestinians had failed to take any decisive action in the case.
The attack occurred near a manned Palestinian checkpoint. Immediately after the attack, journalists photographed Palestinian police officers standing by as onlookers cheered and roamed the crime scene, destroying critical evidence.Adding insult to injury, Musa Arafat, the head of Palestinian military intelligence in Gaza and a cousin of Mr. Arafat, announced last month that Palestinian authorities know the killers — “some Palestinian factions,” in his words — but would not arrest them because “clashing with any Palestinian party under the presence of occupation is an issue that will present many problems for us.” According to him, “the Americans have started recently to understand our position.”
A State Department spokesman called Musa Arafat’s comments “totally unacceptable and outrageous,” adding, “If it’s true that the PA knows the identities of the murderers, we expect immediate action to be taken to arrest, prosecute and convict them.”
Beyond such protestations, the United States has done little to press the PA to cooperate with the FBI in the investigation. In addition to the $5 million reward offer, the State Department banned travel to Gaza by U.S. officials and suspended funding for two water development projects there. Unfortunately, these meager actions incurred little cost for the PA — certainly not enough to compel Palestinians into action on an issue they appear keen to avoid.
To the best of my knowledge the investigation is proceeding at the same pace as OJ’s to find his wife’s killers.
Flash forward another three and a half years and the news story is: U.S. Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Gaza (via memeorandum)
The article doesn’t mention anything about the events of 2003.
The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.
And lest anyone be lulled into thinking that this isn’t Israel’s fault.
A letter was sent by e-mail to the students on Thursday telling them of the cancellation. Abdulrahman Abdullah, 30, who had been hoping to study for an M.B.A. at one of several American universities on his Fulbright, was in shock when he read it.“If we are talking about peace and mutual understanding, it means investing in people who will later contribute to Palestinian society,” he said. “I am against Hamas. Their acts and policies are wrong. Israel talks about a Palestinian state. But who will build that state if we can get no training?”
Some Israeli lawmakers, who held a hearing on the issue of student movement out of Gaza on Wednesday, expressed anger that their government was failing to promote educational and civil development in a future Palestine given the hundreds of students who had been offered grants by the United States and other Western governments.
“This could be interpreted as collective punishment,” complained Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Parliament’s education committee, during the hearing. “This policy is not in keeping with international standards or with the moral standards of Jews, who have been subjected to the deprivation of higher education in the past. Even in war, there are rules.” Rabbi Melchior is from the Meimad Party, allied with Labor.
Yes, there are rules in war. One is that a country isn’t obligated to allow its enemies free passage. Then there’s this:
But when a query about the canceled Fulbrights was made to the prime minister’s office on Thursday, senior officials expressed surprise. They said they did, in fact, consider study abroad to be a humanitarian necessity and that when cases were appealed to them, they would facilitate them.
It’s interesting that the State Department made its decision before consulting with the Israeli government. But then you wouldn’t necessarily have a conflict or an excuse for claiming that Israel was preventing the flourishing of the best and brightest from Gaza.
The article is seasoned with plenty of criticisms of how Israel is handling the situation. I’m skeptical that this was an intentional Israeli effort to stifle promising young men and women. It also appears that had the State Department bothered to consult with the Israeli government, Israel might well have allowed the Fulbright scholars safe passage. Instead it handled the issue in a way to embarrass Israel.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
How many anti-Israel stories can one news service publish in a week?
Depends. How many stories on Israel or the Palestinians did the AP publish that week?
Here’s a new one: Mean, horrible Israel is causing eight Gazan students to lose their Fulbright scholarships because they can’t get vias from Israel to leave Gaza.
Hadeel Abu Kawik was supposed to spend next year in the United States on the prestigious Fulbright scholarship program, but now it appears she will remain trapped in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli blockade.
Word that the U.S. State Department was canceling her scholarship came after Abu Kawik, 23 and a computer engineering student, went through a lengthy process for the scholarship that included interviews, exams and an English test.
“I was building my hope on this scholarship,” she said Friday.
There you go, the three grafs that usually wind up in your local newspaper’s “world” section. In the next two paragraphs, you find out why Israel is refusing to grant visas to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Seven other Gaza students also lost their grants. The decision was made because they would not be able to get exit visas from Israel, according to State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
The teeming coastal territory and its 1.5 million inhabitants have been controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas for nearly a year. Israel has kept its border crossings closed to everything but humanitarian aid in an attempt to weaken the group and end frequent rocket barrages aimed at Israeli towns.
Oh, yeah. Those crude, homemade rockets that rarely do any damage. The ones that killed two Israelis in the last few weeks. The ones that are still falling on Israel every day. The ones that Hamas refuses to stop firing, or allowing others to fire. Gee. Why is it that Israel refuses to give anyone visas out of Gaza? Could it be because when they do, Hamas takes advantage of it and tries to get terrorists into Israel using medical excuses and the like?
Meanwhile, a Hamas publicity stunt turned violent (I know, shocking to hear that). Hamas has been threatening to force the crossings into Israel for quite a while now. Also from the AP:
Seven Palestinian protesters were wounded Friday when they were shot by IDF troops during a demonstration at Sufa border crossing, Palestinian doctors reported.
More than 10,000 Palestinians waving Hamas flags approached the crossing calling for an end to the blockade imposed on Gaza. The demonstrators burned tires and chanted anti-Israeli slogans.
How much you want to bet those “anti-Israel slogans” included “Death to Israel”? The AP never seems to elaborate on those anti-Israel slogans the Hamas uses to get its crowds into a frenzy, but they all include calling for the end of the Jewish state. (Which is why, of course, the AP will never quote them directly. Can’t change the narrative and make the Palestinians out to be the villains.)
Hamas had called the protest march, which began following Friday prayers, and several protesters got within yards of the border fence.
The IDF confirmed troops were on the scene at the demo but did not immediately comment on whether they fired.
The army had issued a directive to soldiers to prevent Palestinian penetration of the Sufa terminal at any cost, even the cost of using live ammunition.
Of course there’s no confirmation. Most AP stories publish Palestinian eyewitness accounts, or quote Palestinian “medics,” while never truly confirming the accusations. And they have been caught more than once lying about what happened. For instance, when a kassam rocket falls in Gaza and hurts or kills Palestinians, the “medics” immediately blame Israeli shelling, and the AP dutifully reports it. Witness:
Meanwhile, a 65-year-old woman died of her wounds a day after she was shot along the Gaza-Israel border, a Palestinian health official said.
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said the woman was near her home around 300 yards from the border fence when she was shot on Thursday evening.
Hassanain said the gunfire came from an IDF border position, but the army said it had no record of any shooting in the area at the time.
Uh-huh.
Whoa.
I was about to give up on Lost at the end of last year. It really came back strong in the third season. I’m looking forward to the fourth.
Maybe I’ll get to do an episode summary this weekend. That was a lot of episode to summarize, some good, some bad, some “I knew it!” moments, some “Huh?” moments. And one big giant “Awwwwwwww.” So yay for that, at least.
I didn’t know LBJ rescued Jews from the Holocaust.
Unwilling to stand by idly while Nazi henchmen murdered the “People of the Book,” Johnson met with Jewish leaders and said simply, “We [must] do something to get Jews out of Europe.”16
Straightaway, the congressman enlarged the scope of “Operation Texas.” Using methods sometimes legal, sometimes illegal, and cash supplied by men like Jim Novy, Johnson smuggled hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. After getting to such places, Jews would then make Galveston Island their only port of call.
Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration [NYA], a task made easier because LBJ’s longtime friend Jesse Kellum was the Texas State Director of the NYA. Although it was illegal to harbor and train noncitizens in the NYA programs, the refugees were nevertheless temporarily housed in various sites scattered around the Lone Star State.
Novy bankrolled the effort, reimbursing the NYA for all expenses, including room and board. He also covered the cost of classes for those who did not speak English and classes to retrain the Jews so that they could meld into American life. Johnson funneled many men into NYA welding schools because welders were in high demand both during the war-preparedness campaign of 1940-1941 and during the war itself. Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more.17
Worth reading in full, and kol hakavod to Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his family that taught him so well. Via Lenny Ben-David.
My contempt for Larry Derfner goes back a ways. In the 90’s he was one of the Israel correspondents for every Jewish American weekly. As an extreme leftist, he used that platform to present Israel in the worst possible light.
But with is critique of the al-Dura case he’s hit a new low (h/t LGF linkviewer).
Yet while it’s pure Jewish paranoia to claim that Enderlin and his co-conspirators knew all along that the Palestinians killed al-Dura, and it’s way beyond paranoia to think the Palestinians killed the boy deliberately or that he never died at all, there is an apparent element of truth in the outcry. Aside from the paranoids and the politically self-interested, there are credible, impartial investigators who have also concluded that the IDF did not kill that poor, terrified boy.THE MOST authoritative is James Fallows, one of America’s most prominent journalists. After coming here and talking to a lot of Israelis and Palestinians and seeing a lot of evidence, he wrote in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly that Mohammed al-Dura and his father, Jamal, could not have been shot by IDF soldiers at Netzarim junction – as Enderlin and many others reported – because they were completely shielded from IDF fire by a big, impenetrable concrete block. The al-Duras had to have been shot from another direction, or directions, Fallows writes, and while he doesn’t suggest who did shoot them, the people doing the shooting from those other directions were Palestinians.
But as for the conspiracy theories, he [Fallows] writes: “The reasons to doubt that the al-Duras, the cameramen, and hundreds of onlookers were part of a coordinated fraud are obvious.” Referring to Nahum Shahaf, one of Yom Tov Samia’s investigators and the fountainhead of al-Dura conspiracy mania, Fallows continues: “Shahaf’s evidence for this conclusion, based on his videos, is essentially an accumulation of oddities and unanswered questions about the chaotic events of the day.”
As I’ve pointed out before, shortly after the supposed killing of Mohammed al-Dura, Israel’s Foreign Ministry put out an annotated view of the scene. Not a single news organization looked at that picture and concluded that the IDF could not have seen the al-Duras and could not have hit them. They took France 2’s report at face value. (The Guardian published a diagram of the intersection too, but it is so out of proportion that it looks like that al-Duras were only a few feet from the IDF.)
There was a conspiracy and it was one of silence. It goes to the use of stringers by every single news organization. The stringers are inherently unreliable. Any news organization that would question its own reporting of the al-Dura case would have to review its news gathering procedures. None has an interest in seeking or publicizing the truth because it would open up its credibility to too many questions.
In a subsequent blog post, Fallows wrote:
My general experience in life makes me skeptical that large-scale conspiracies can be pulled off — and kept secret for seven years, which is how long it has been since the original event. So based on what I have personally seen (not having devoted myself to the story for the last few years), I am not ready to say: Yes, for sure, this was a huge, big-lie, blood-libel, conspiratorial hoax. But Landes et al seem more fervent about turning up all available evidence and getting to the bottom of things than their antagonists do, which tells me something.
Yes, he does express skepticism of the conspiracy, but he also notes that France 2 and its allies were very keen on keeping all the information from getting out. From a commenter at the Augean Stables, (h/t In Context) the translation of the verdict is a lot more damning than Derfner claimed. (I also expressed some doubts initially based on less than comprehensive summaries of the verdict.)
So while Derfner may mock, there is no news organization in the world that wants any level of scrutiny into the way they gather and present news in Israel. Their credibility would be shot. So instead of looking to apportion the blame appropriately, Derfner chose to shoot the messengers (metaphorically). He is incapable of escaping his leftist cage.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Desmond Tutu, having bypassed Israel by sneaking into Gaza via Egypt like the rest of the weapons used by Hamas, has finished his “investigation” into the deaths of Palestinians in Beit Hanoun. Of course, it was the usual by-the-book investigation, the book being, of course, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the blame being put onto the Jews.
UN envoy Archbishop Desmond Tutu, concluding a fact-finding mission to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Thursday, condemned as a “massacre” the killing of 18 members of a Palestinian family by Israeli shelling in 2006.
At a news conference, Tutu said Israel’s contention that a technical fault caused the shells to hit two homes in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, a border area where militants fire rockets at southern Israel, “fell short of accountability”.
And here’s what the crackerjack investigator used as evidence: The famed Palestinian eyewitness testimony.
“We are at the stage of shock… by what we subsequently heard from the survivors of the November (2006) Beit Hanoun massacre,” Tutu said.
Since Israel refused to cooperate in the investigation, Tutu has investigated only one side of the story and now declared the subject closed.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate planned to present a report about the incident to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva at a session in September.
[...] The South African cleric said a main aim of the visit was to “make recommendations to protect Palestinian civilians from further Israeli assaults”.
Funny, I thought his job was to determine what happened and make recommendations to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The phrase “to protect Palestinians from further Israeli assaults” makes it sound like Tutu thinks that Israelis deliberately shelled Palestinian civilians.
Shyeah. I know. He does. But screw him, and the UN Human Wrongs Council. Which, I’m sure, will condemn Israel once Tutu makes his report.
And oh, while he was there, just to prove he’s not a total dick, Tutu scolded Ismail Haniyeh. I understand he frowned mightily.
“We told Mr (Ismail) Haniyeh that firing rockets was a gross violation of human rights,” Tutu said, referring to the Gaza-based Hamas leader.
And it really worked.
Three Qassam rockets and three mortar shells were fired from northern Gaza towards Israel on Thursday. No injuries or damage were reported.
Thanks, Tutu! Give my regards to your friend Doudou!
Say, kids, what time is it? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time, the time when the UNHRC sends an investigator to determine why Palestinian civilians were killed by shells that went off course, but does not send an investigator to do anything about Israeli civilians deliberately targeted by Palestinian terrorists. But no worries. IDST only happens on days that end with a Y.
In order to show the progress that the Palestinian police are making, news services often provide pictures of them in amusing physical poses and give a caption that they’re undergoing training.
There were a couple of pictures yesterday, that defied categorization. The recently trained (in Jordan) Palestinian police just returned to Jericho and were demonstrating their “martial arts skills.”
First we have this guy. I’ll call him the perfectly parallel Palestinian policeman. (Or in relation to his sparring partner perfectly perpendicular Palestinian policeman.) I’m no expert in martial arts, but I’ve never seen a move like this.
And then there’s this guy. The spreadeagled guy in front, specifically. What happened? Did he spreadeagle too far? I see Paris, I see France …
(see also Elder of Ziyon.)
Speaking of ripping and the Palestinian police, one Steven Smith who was involved in the training really ripped into them in the pages of the IHT.
Many of the Jordanian instructors were pressed into service and simply didn’t have the expertise, equipment, or the time to provide good instruction. A first-aid instructor teaching CPR had never taken CPR himself and taught his students to give chest compressions on the abdomen of a retail store mannequin instead of a CPR dummy.The firearms training failed to include failure drills, discretionary shooting, the use of cover and concealment and weapons cleaning. Only a few students demonstrated skill at assembling and disassembling their firearms. Students firing just 60 rounds of ammunition at close range who could hit the target were pronounced qualified.
The congressional investigators and journalists I saw were steered clear of any training that was substandard as well-rehearsed students put on demonstrations of police skills designed to impress laymen.
(h/t My Right Word)
Well I hope that you laymen were impressed.
I’ll remind you that Gen. Kenneth Dayton was in charge of the training. The Muqata provides a sobering reminder of past accomplishments of the Palestinian police.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
This week’s Shire Network News features the return of Tom Paine. If you’ve never heard him present SNN, well, go listen.
The feature interview? Tom scored an interview with Philippe Karsenty, who just won the appeal of his libel case by France 2 over the Mohammed Al-Dura hoax.
My contribution this week does not make fun of Doudou Diene’s name, but only because I couldn’t think of a way to sneak it into my essay on the Eurovision contest.
You don’t need an mp3 player to hear it. Just a media player on your computer.
See this? It’s one of the first pictures of Tig3 and Gracie together.
And Gracie isn’t very happy about it. Tig just wants to be near the big cat, but he’s had a very, very tough day. See, this weekend I put the two of them together by allowing Tig to come downstairs at will during the daytime. He drove Gracie nuts. At first, she kept to the high ground—the sofa, the kitchen chair next to mine, or the shelf in between the living room and kitchen. And Gracie growled. A lot. Pawed at Tig when he got too close, and let him know he was not very welcome. But I figured they had to learn to live together, so I mostly let them be. I was waiting for Gracie to smack him around once or twice and settle things.
Be careful what you wish for. Because shortly before noon today, there was a hiss and a growl and suddenly Tig was running towards me, with his right eye closed—and dripping blood. I grabbed him, brought him upstairs, put him in the cat carrier, threw on a pair of jeans and my sneakers, called the vet and moved my four o’clock appointment with them to five minutes from the phone call, and rushed over. Poor Tig suffered one further indignity—I was so worried and driving a bit faster than usual, and didn’t pay attention to the carrier. It fell off the seat and wedged in between the dash and the seat. By the time we got to the vet, Tig was a bit terrified.
The good news is that by the time we got to the vet, I was pretty sure Gracie hadn’t hit his eye. The vet checked him out and confirmed my suspicion. Gracie’s claw caught Tig’s inner eyelid. He’s going to be just fine. But boy, did he have a tough day, because after that, he got two shots, as today he was scheduled for his next series of vaccinations.
So we went home, and I locked him in my office. He fell asleep fairly quickly, and slept all afternoon. I let him come downstairs after he woke, but he was very, very cautious around Miss Gracie. Who didn’t growl at him, satisifed that she showed him who was boss.
Well, he decided that he’d stake out his spot on the sofa. She tried to bully him out of it. I told her who was the REAL boss in this house, and she shut up and settled down. Which is good, because he has every right to his spot on the sofa.
Yeah, rough day for Tig. For me, too. But we’re better now.
I found a new blog today, the Bookworm Room. It is blogrolled. Check it out: Israel, politics, books, and dogs. I think Harrison would like this blog a lot.
Come to think of it, use the comments here to recommend blogs that I may not have read yet. Time to add some to the blogroll.
Via Glenn, Mars is adding a scientific division.
All the talk about chocolate being good for your health is starting to get serious. Mars Inc., of chocolate bar fame, has established a scientific division.
And a group of researchers, some in Germany, others with the new Mars division known as Symbioscience, has just published a report showing that an enriched hot cocoa beverage can improve blood flow in people with type 2 diabetes.
“The study is the first of its kind in terms of its rigor, as well as the population studied,” said Harold Schmitz, chief science officer of Mars. “Diabetics treated as well as they could be treated with pharmaceutical intervention did see, on average, a 30 percent improvement in vascular function.”
Out of the goodness of my heart—and purely in the interests of advancing science—I am hereby offering myself to join any and all of Mars scientific testing. Particularly the ones involving Milky Way bars.
Please, Glenn. Let Mars know that I’m with them, 100%.
From the Times of London (h/t Backspin)
Some Israelis object to this program. They remember that Saddam Hussein fired Scuds into Israel during first Gulf War and find it offensive that Iraqis now seek their help but had no objection when the late Iraqi leader was trying to kill them.
Well no, that’s not how the article was written. It was written from a different troubling perspective.
Shatha’s friend, an Iraqi Kurd from Kirkuk who was too afraid to give her first name, also travelled to Jordan so that her son, Ahmed, could be assessed for a heart operation. She too turned down the free treatment offered by SACH.“Now I can sleep with a clear conscience. I’m able to hold my head up high and not be ashamed by having my son treated in Algeria,” she said.
Think about that, the hatred for Israel is so strong that some Iraqis would rather risk their children’s lives than seek treatment in Israel.
Save a Child’s Heart has a list of results from the organization. What’s interesting is that 2007 ( the last year that they have results from) the number of successful operations on Iraqi children was up - by a lot – in 2007. Twenty five Iraqi children were save by the organization last year. The previous high was 8. Maybe the reporters were finding a handful of parents whose hatred of Israel was so great that they’d risk their children’s lives. But SACH’s statistics show that more parents are agreeing to having the surgery done in Israel.
Egypt’s Culture Minister Faruq Hosni, a candidate to head UNESCO but under fire from the Jewish state, said on Tuesday he “dreams” of normal ties with Israel once it has made peace with the Palestinians.Hosni has drawn fire from Israel and the Wiesenthal Centre for saying he was prepared to burn Israeli books.
“I’d burn Israeli books myself if I found any in libraries in Egypt,” the minister said in parliament on May 10 in reply to questioning from an opposition MP.
Since UNESCO is a cultural institution that wouldn’t be good form for its leader. (Of course, it’s also an institution of the UN, so anti-Israel sentiment should be expected.) Mr. Hosni offered an explanation though.
Hosni says he only used “a popular expression to prove something does not exist”: Israeli books in Egyptian libraries.On Tuesday, he went a step further, telling AFP it was “a big mistake that Israeli books have not yet been translated (into Arabic). I have officially asked for it to be done. If people protest, I don’t give a damn.”
I’d like to think that’s sincere. More likely he’s weaseling out of responsibility, as he adds this.
But he opposed a normalisation of cultural ties with Israel before it has made peace with the Palestinians.”It is a dream. We must wait for the right moment to come when Israel will have signed peace with the Palestinians. If it happens tomorrow, I will be in the front row the next day for this normalisation,” he said.
If that’s his view, then there probably was no nuance to hs statement about burning Israeli books. His clever excuse was just an exercise in post-facto posterior covering.
And this week, we have another Nobel Laureate making nice with an organization devoted to Israel’s destruction. Jimmy Carter’s fellow addled “elder,” Bishop Tutu embraced Ismail Haniyeh, the man whose forces fire rockets at Israeli civilians and at the fuel depot that supplies Gaza.
Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu on Tuesday held talks with a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip where he led a UN fact-finding mission into the killing of 19 Palestinian civilians in an 2006 Israeli artillery attack.Tutu met Palestinian former prime minister Ismail Haniya, who was dismissed by moderate president Mahmud Abbas last June when Hamas seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to the president.
The dispatch informs us:
The army said it had been aiming its artillery at an area from which Palestinian militants were firing rockets at Israel, but due to the technical problem the shells instead hit two homes.
Which, of course, is why it’s against international law to launch attacks from civilian areas. But I don’t suspect that either Tutu or the UN is interested in the law; they’re both interested in bashing Israel. Else maybe they’d be investigating who’s been attacking Nahal Oz.
And finally, when Israel deported Norman Finkelstein, Finkelstein was allowed to argue that Israel was violating his academic freedom by deporting him. But as HonestReporting UK points out, Finkelstein was deported for his actions not his ideas:
Israel, however, did not deport him for his political opinions. It deported him because his activities – which include meetings with Hezbollah leaders – make him a threat to Israel’s security.Any democracy, including the UK, US and Israel, has the right to refuse entry to foreign nationals whose presence may not be conducive to the public good. Israel has every right to consider Finkelstein’s presence to be a security threat and thus to prevent his entry into the country. The Guardian’s report minimises this to create a false context behind the incident.
In these various news stories we see the way Israel is still demonized fifteen years after Oslo. For all the talk of Israel freeing terrorists or otherwise sacrificing its security as confidence building measures, there’s precious little talk about how the international community might build Israel’s confidence by isolating those who seek its destruction.
If the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was simply about building a Palestinian state, it would have been done by now. Rather it is just as much about destroying the existing Jewish state. The propaganda war, actively joined by the media and international organizations, is one front in that war for Israel’s destruction.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
A source says that Israel and Syria agree on 85% of the issues they need to agree on to give Syria back the Golan. What’s part of that 15%? Well, besides Syria trying to grab land it never had to begin with, a teeny, tiny problem: Syria’s support for terrorists.
The paper reported that according to the source, 85% of the issues standing between the two countries on the way to a peace deal have already been agreed. One of the issues which have yet to be discussed is Israel’s demand that Syria detach itself from Hamas and Hizbullah and break its strategic alliance with Iran.
“I am optimistic,” the source told the newspaper reporter. “This does not mean that Syria will have to sever its ties with Iran and its followers in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, but it will join those influencing them in a positive manner – in accordance with the peace relations between Israel and Syria.
“We have a clear example for that – the relations between Syria and Turkey, just like Damascus withdrew its support for the PKK (Kurdish militant organization fighting for independence from Turkish rule).”
Except that once again, let’s be clear: Syria has no intention of making peace with Israel.
Syrian President Bashar Assad dismissed on Tuesday Israeli demands for Syria to abandon an alliance with Iran as a requirement for a peace deal.
Assad told British MPs that the Baath Party government intended to maintain its “normal relations” with Iran while it conducts indirect talks with Israel to regain the Golan Heights, a source familiar with the meeting told Reuters.
[...] “The president said Syria has normal relations with Iran. He made it clear that any suggestion to drop them was not a reasonable request,” the source said.
“He said if Israel could question Syria’s relations with Iran then Syria could question Israel’s ties with other countries, particularly the United States,” the source added, referring to Israel’s main ally.
Yeah, because American is just like Iran. Oh, wait. We’re the polar opposite. My bad.
Thankfully, Olmert is going to fall soon, and these discussions will be moot.
This time, he’s not going to manage to stay in office. Ehud Barak is calling on Olmert to step down.
“The prime minister must detach himself from the daily management of the government. He can do so in a variety of ways: Suspension, vacation, resignation or leave of absence. This will not be determined by us,” Barak said.
Maybe then Israel will think about revising its parliamentary system, which protects incompetents and corrupt politicians who know how to play the game. Really. Imagine if Bill Clinton’s sin wasn’t having sex with an intern and then lying about it. Imagine if he took half a million dollars in cash bribes. He’d be gone in an instant. But this is at least the beginning of the fraying of the coalition keeping one of the weakest, most corrupt, least accountable Prime Ministers in Israel’s history in office. The man didn’t have the courage to take the blame for the failures of the Second Lebanon War. He blamed his generals instead.
The defense minister noted that “Olmert cannot deal with the challenges Israel faces, like Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, Iran and the kidnapped soldiers, and run his personal affairs at the same time.”
He added that “the Labor Party will not hold a stopwatch in Kadima’s face, but things have to happen as soon as possible… The State deserves stability, and therefore we must have a government in the Knesset. I am not afraid of elections. The public will decide and we will win.”
[...] A source in the Labor faction told Ynet following Barak’s press conference that if a new government is not formed within two months, his party will work towards pushing up the elections.
The source said that the timetable Barak intends to work by is limited by the current Knesset term.
I’m sure Ehud Barak thinks he’s going to be PM again. Tzipi Livni thinks the job is hers, especially after the poll saying that Kadima would take the election. But I think Israel is going to go Likud. There are too many rockets pointed at Israel, from too many directions.
Besides, it would be the biggest slap in the face to Israel’s critics. They call all Israelis who are interested in self-defense Likudniks. May as well make them right about it, for a change.
Richard Landes comments on the court’s decision in the Karsenty/Enderlin case.
Generally speaking, I think this is a devastating decision. The judges go out of their way to criticize everyone involved on the side of France2 (including some backhanded swipes at the lower court), but especially to point out the pervasive “incohérences” not only in Enderlin’s initial broadcast, but his subsequent explanations and actions. In particular, after emphasizing the sharpness of both Karsenty’s language and his accusations — which indeed are defamatory and strike at Enderlin’s and France2’s honor and reputation — the judges assert that, given the evidence he had every right to make these statements, in particular given the importance of the case, the damage it did worldwide, and the fact that Enderlin, as a professional of information with a high public profile has to expect to be subjected to this kind of criticism from co-citizens and colleagues.
(h/t Daled Amos)
In Context’s (in new digs) had a somewhat more limited feeling of vindication.
So the French court has vindicated (for the time being) the right of Karsenty and, presumably, anyone else to bring those facts to light. Nevertheless (and until the written opinion is released tomorrow it’s not entirely clear), it sounds as if the court did not base its ruling upon a finding that Karsenty was or likely was telling the truth. Rather, the court appears to have held that Karsenty had the right to voice his opinion, whether it was true or not, because and only because he was able to demonstrate that he had conducted a sufficiently thorough investigation and assembled sufficiently convincing evidence to establish that he thought he had a reasonable basis for making the claims he did.
(In Context was working off a summary of the verdict, not the whole verdict. So it’s possible that she’ll change her view. She did express what I thought. The seemed less a victory for Karsenty specifically and more for free speech in general. Thus – at least the preliminary summary of – the verdict didn’t seem to be the repudiation of Enderlin that I would have like to see.)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
I’ve been trying to figure out how not to drive to the Kennedy Center tonight. I was planning on, say, driving to Fredericksburg, leaving my car in the Park & Ride, and taking the train into DC and the Metro to the Kennedy Center. Well, that would be all well and good if I wanted to get to Sorena’s concert at 6 and leave about fifteen minutes later, because the last trains south out of Fredericksburg are at the wee hours of 8 p.m.
This is unbelievable. Not a single southbound or outbound train line gets me anywhere but to the outskirts of DC.
The New York City train and bus lines ALL have last trains out ranging from 11:30 to 1 a.m. to the surrounding states. And it’s not like Richmonders don’t work in DC, nor haven’t for years.
So instead of saving the gas (and carbon footprints) by not driving into the DC area, I’ll be heading to work for a 1:30 meeting after all, and taking the Metro from a northern VA suburb of DC.
If anyone has a better suggestion, I need to be at the Kennedy Center by 6 p.m. tonight, and I’d like to get back home afterwards. I don’t want to drive into metro DC. Did that a month or two ago, and it sucks.
From the NYT.
Soccer’s world governing body suspended Iraq’s national soccer association on Monday, leaving the players on Iraq’s national team who had united a divided country fearing that they will not be able to participate in the 2010 World Cup.The diverse national squad of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, which overcame daunting social and athletic odds to win the 2007 Asian Cup, came off the field after an exhibition match in Thailand to find itself caught up in political wrangling at home.
What’s the reason?
The suspension by soccer’s governing body had its roots in a decision last week by the Iraqi government to disband the Iraqi Olympic Committee. The cabinet determined that the committee was operating illegally, because it lacked a quorum and had failed to hold new elections, a government spokesman said.Government officials also accused some Olympic committee members of corruption and of reneging on a promise to hold new elections. The committee has been replaced by a temporary organization appointed by the Minister for Youth and Sports. Iraqi Olympic athletes were not the only ones affected by the decision.
The international governing body for soccer, which is known internationally as football, announced Monday that its executive committee had suspended the Iraqi Football Association because the Iraqi Olympic Committee and all other national sporting federations had been disbanded.
So an organization devoted to unifying the country of Iraq was suspended because the Iraqi government took steps to clean up corruption. Astounding.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the FIFA has acted politically.
Israel is used to being singled out for unjust criticism and subjected to startling double standards by the United Nations, the European Union, much of the Western media and numerous academic bodies. But now FIFA — the supposedly nonpolitical organization that governs the world’s most popular sport, soccer — is getting in on the act as well.FIFA has condemned Israel for an air strike on an empty soccer field in the Gaza Strip that was used for training exercises by Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. This strike did not cause any injuries. But at the same time FIFA has refused to condemn a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli soccer field last week which did cause injuries.
Just try and remember what Iraqi sports used to be like. (graphic descriptions of torture follow.)
In 1997 FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, sent two investigators to Baghdad to question members of the Iraqi national team who’d allegedly had their feet caned by Uday’s henchmen after losing a World Cup qualifying match to Kazakhstan. The investigators spoke only to people whom Uday had selected. The result: a report exonerating Uday.”Did the torture of those players happen?” asks Sharar Haydar, a longtime Iraqi soccer star who participated in 40 international matches for the national team and was a teammate of many of the victims. “Absolutely. But when you interview athletes who are under Uday’s control, what else do you expect them to say?
“I know what they went through,” adds Haydar, who escaped from Iraq in 1998 and now lives in London. “I was tortured four times after matches. One time, after a friendly [match] against Jordan in Amman that we lost 2-0, Uday had me and three teammates taken to the prison. When we arrived, they took off our shirts, tied our feet together and pulled our knees over a bar as we lay on our backs. Then they dragged us over pavement and concrete, pulling the skin off our backs. Then they pulled us through a sandpit to get sand in our backs. Finally, they made us climb a ladder and jump into a vat of raw sewage. They wanted to get our wounds infected. The next day, and for every day we were there, they beat our feet. My punishment, because I was a star player, was 20 [lashings] per day. I asked the guard how he could ever forgive himself. He laughed and told me if he didn’t do this, Uday would do it to him. Uday made us athletes an example. He believed that if people saw he was not afraid to beat a hero, that they would live in greater fear.”
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Syria has no intention of giving up ties with Iran, no intention of giving up support of terrorist groups in and out of the Palestinian terrortories[sic], and therefore, no intention of the much-touted “land for peace” solution to the Golan Heights. Olmert is grasping at straws, trying to keep his miserable, corrupt political carcass in office just a little while longer for the most mystifying of reasons. Except, of course, selfish ones. Power. Money. Ego.
Syrian Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani said on Tuesday that his country was prepared to increase its military cooperation with Iran.
[...] “Iran and Syria share the same viewpoint regarding regional issues and efforts will be made to strengthen our shared interests and bilateral relations,” said Turkmani, who was dispatched to Tehran to reassure the outraged Iranian leadership following the resumption of negotiations with Israel.
The defense minister confirmed the statement released by the Iranian defense ministry regarding Syria’s intent to increase military cooperation with its chief ally.
The Iranian strategy of surrounding Israel with thousands of rockets continues unabated.
Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin said during the weekly government meeting on Sunday that since the breaching of the Philadelphi Route Hamas has succeeded in smuggling very advanced weapons into the Gaza Strip, and that there are certain indications that the organization now has rockets able to surpass Ashkelon, and possibly even to hit Ashdod and Kiryat Gat.
“There has been cooperation between Hamas and Iran, and the Shin Bet has already recognized Iranian-made rockets that have a range far greater than the Gaza Strip. Time favors Hamas and the rest of the terror organizations, and the threat on the State of Israel is steadily rising,” Diskin warned.
Some in Israel’s Military Intelligence thinks that Syria wants to move forward on the “peace process.”
The head of the research division of Military Intelligence, Brigadier-General Yossi Baidatz, attended the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting on Monday, and said that Syria was interested in advancing the peace process with Israel.
“It is our understanding that the Syrians are interested and want to see the diplomatic process move forward,” he told the committee members.
Baidatz noted, however, that Damascus was simultaneously working on bolstering the Hizbullah terror organization in Lebanon.
I’m sorry, but what? You do not want peace if you are simultaneously supplying Hizbullah with weapons to harm Israel. You only want to get your land back.
Ahmadinejad is predicting continued good relations with Syria, and the continued encirclement of Israel.
The FARS news agency reported that Ahmadinejad told Turkmani that he is “confident the Syrian leadership will handle the arena wisely and not desert the front line of the struggle until all the threats of the Zionist regime are completely removed.”
Iran is also promising to keep up its support of Hamas even if Syria were to stop as a result of the truce. (And by the way, how is it that Jimmy Carter can’t acknowledge that Hamas has no intention of ever living in peace with Israel, but he can give away classified information and betray an American ally?
Really, reading these, and all the other articles available, how can anyone pretend that Syria is willing to come to a peace agreement with Israel? There will be no peace, only another piece in the encirclement strategy. Once again, Israel will be fighting an all-front war, only this time, the civilian population will be under as much threat as it was in 1948. No, more. The rockets will make every inch of Israel unsafe.
And meantime, Olmert fiddles while Israel’s enemies build up their weapons.
The NYT citing a Reuters report doesn’t seem to feel that this is any big deal.
Former President Jimmy Carter said Israel held at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a current or former American president had publicly acknowledged the Jewish state’s nuclear arsenal.
Eldoer of Ziyon points out that it’s a big deal from Carter’s standpoint:
This is not some investigative reporter coming up with these numbers, this is an ex-president. As such, they appear to have more inside information behind them.If a former Israeli prime minister would tell a public venue about US spies found in Israel, or perhaps about US military capabilities and weaknesses discovered during joint exercises, what would be the US reaction? If Tony Blair announced the exact location of US submarines when he was prime minister, what kind of an uproar would that cause? Because this is exactly what Jimmy Carter just did to Israel.
He just gave priceless information to Iran about Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Heads of state are privy to many state secrets. Perhaps Carter’s betrayal of that trust ought to lead to the drafting of laws specifically criminalizing such betrayals and making them subject to enforceable penalties. Carter is not and should not be above the law.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
A break from the usual. I have many pictures of Tig, including a close-up of him enjoying the bag that Herschel’s donation bought for him:
It was a week for close-ups. You can see his Maine Coon paws in this one.
Here’s part two of Tig in the Bukkit.
And here’s a quiet moment in my lap. Believe me when I tell you the quiet moments are few and far between, and I have the scars to prove it.
Here’s one that looks like he’s standing in front of an odd watercolor. It’s the trees through my window, and the way the camera processed them.
He’s yowling to be let out now, but he was out most of the morning and afternoon. He scared himself when he leaped onto my foot massager and accidentally turned it on. He decided to go after Gracie’s tail, which was hanging down from the chair next to me, and she let him know that was never going to happen. There were many growls and hisses today and yesterday, as we are trying to merge the cat populations of the Yourish household. And I went running upstairs earlier thinking that Gracie was after Tig, only to discover that the hisses and growls I heard were Tig himself. Gracie was on the sofa downstairs, watching me curiously and wondering why I just ran up the stairs.
He’s yowling now, and I’m off to Sarah’s for a relaxing afternoon and evening with kids and dogs. There will be barking, but probably no hisses or growls.
There’s something that’s missing from the latest AP stories on the negotiations with Syria about the Golan Heights.
Israel captured the strategic plateau in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the area. Many Israelis are reluctant to relinquish the Golan, which overlooks northern Israel and borders the Sea of Galilee, a key source of drinking water.
No, that’s not it.
In the most recent talks, conducted by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Israel reportedly offered to withdraw from the Golan, but the talks broke down because Syria wanted Israel to pull back several hundred yards more to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
No, that’s not it.
Israel and Syria have fought three wars, their forces have clashed in Lebanon, and more recently, Syria has given support to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip. Israel is also concerned about Syria’s close ties to Iran.
No, that’s not it.
The Israeli public opposes giving up the Golan, home to a thriving tourism and wine industry. An opinion poll last week found that only 19 percent of Israelis are willing to cede the entire plateau – even in exchange for peace.
Nope. That’s not it, either. But hey, way to make Israelis look like warmongering, selfish scumbags, AP. No, Israelis don’t want to give back the Golan, even in exchange for peace. And by the way, how is that not an editorial statement? The “even” makes it seem that Israelis want war, no matter what. Nice little bit of yellow journalism there.
Perhaps we can find out why 81 percent of Israelis don’t want to give back the Golan. Maybe we can dig around a bit and see what the AP thinks is not important enough to mention about the Golan when describing why so many Israelis are reluctant to give the Heights back. In fact, we can find it in the AP factbox that was released on May 21st, so we know they had the ability to relay this information only five days ago:
Soldiers shelled northern Israel from the Golan Heights between 1948 and 1967. Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed it in 1981. No country recognized the annexation.
Ohhhhhh. Syria regularly bombarded Israeli communities from the Golan Heights for nineteen years. Say. I wonder if that has anything to do with why 81 percent of Israelis don’t want to give back the Golan.
The AP description above makes it seem like Israelis want to keep the Golan for their own personal pleasure and profit—not because it’s a strategically important plateau used to launch deadly attacks on civilian communities. (Gee, that sounds familiar. The Arab ways have not changed in sixty years.) The shelling stopped on June 10, 1967, when the IDF captured the Golan Heights.
After the 1948-49 War of Independence, the Syrians built extensive fortifications on the Heights, from where they systematically shelled civilian targets in Israel and launched terrorist attacks (in gross violation of Article III of the Israel-Syria Armistice Agreement of 20 July 1949). 140 Israelis were killed and many more were injured in these attacks between 1949 and 1967; heavy property damage was also inflicted. During the 1967 Six-Day War, the IDF captured the Golan Heights — in response to Syrian attacks — in just over 24 hours of intense fighting on 9-10 June. Nearly all of the Golan’s Arab inhabitants fled as a result of the war; four Druze villages remain, three on the slopes of Mt. Hermon and one in the northern Golan.
Funny how you never see mention of Syria being in violation of the Armistice Agreement—for nineteen years—by shelling northern Israel, and yet you always see drek like the AP boilerplate about how no one recognizes Israel’s annexation of the Golan.
Another sterling example of your objective media at work. Another example of why I’ll keep blogging, as long as the media keep on defaming Israel.
In his column today, William Kristol writes in Remember to Remember:
One retired general I know urges civilians to go out of their way to say thank you to servicemen and women they happen to encounter. At first I thought such a gesture might be intrusive, or awkward, or unwelcome. I was wrong. When civilians walk over to express appreciation to men and women in uniform, in airports or restaurants or the like, the recipients seem a little embarrassed — but grateful. So perhaps we all should be less shy about thanking our troops for their service.The men and women in the military know their fellow citizens are grateful to them. Many of them say, though, that they’re not confident their countrymen are aware of what they’re accomplishing.
Airports?
How about this?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
If you have not yet seen Iron Man, go. Sarah and I went last night, and we thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was also great to be in a half-empty theater with choice of seats. And a definitively metal soundtrack… totally fitting, but I thought they should at least have had the lyrics during the end credits.
This one’s a keeper. I may even buy it on Blu-Ray and I don’t even have a Blu-Ray player.
Looking forward to the new Hulk movie next month, too. I’m taking two of my first-year students, who I took to see the X-Men film six years ago. I suspect that they won’t have to peek through their fingers during the really violent parts this time, though. They’re fifteen by now.
Marvel characters really do seem to get the better movies. The only DC movies that have been truly great are the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies and Batman Begins.
I really like that we have movie producers, writers, and directors who have grown up reading comic books. It makes the difference between a great comic book movie, and a piece of crap like the 1980s Swamp Thing. Ew. Now a Swamp Thing movie that was faithful to the Alan Moore series…. brrr. That’d be scary. I probably wouldn’t watch it. The comic books used to freak me out to the point that I wouldn’t read them at night. It’s not that I’m a chicken. It’s that I get really involved in whatever I am reading or watching. I have a hard time remembering it isn’t real. That’s why I can’t watch horror films. That, and the fact that they give me nightmares.
Anyway. Go see Iron Man. It rocks.
This can’t be true. Please tell me that this isn’t really true. The IDF is evacuating a base near Gaza because they’re afraid soldiers will be kidnapped? Whatever happened to the idea that soldiers, you know, protect and defend?
For the first time since the disengagement plan, soldiers are being evacuated from a base near the Gaza Strip due to the security situation in the area, Ynet has learned.
Major-General Yosef Mishlav, the coordinator of the government’s activities in the territories, has instructed the army to temporarily relocate the soldiers serving in the Coordination and Liaison Authority near the Erez crossing to the Julis base, located about 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) away from the Strip.
This unprecedented decision sparked a great deal of criticism in the IDF. “(The decision to evacuate the base) is an admission of our failure to protect the lives of our citizens and soldiers,” an army official said.
“The army and members of the security establishment should be at the front and serve as a buffer between the enemy and our civilian population. It is wrong to evacuate them because of a threat. What will the residents of Netiv Ha’asara, who live near the base, say? They will justifiably demand that the State evacuate them as well.”
The decision to evacuate the base was reached prior to last week’s attempt to launch an attack at the Erez crossing with the use of a truck bomb.
Oh, well that’s good then. It won’t look like they’re doing it because they’re afraid or anything discouraging like that.
Countdown to Hamas and Iranian bragging in five, four, three, two….
This picture and caption is infuriating:
Bassam Kantar, the brother of Samir Kantar, the longest-held Lebanese in Israel, imprisoned since 1979 for killing three Israelis, gestures as he holds a picture of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah during a rally to commemorate the prisoner’s day in the southern town of Khiam, Lebanon, Friday, May 23, 2008.
The caption tells us is that he’s the “longest held Lebanese in Israel” but gives no detail about his crime, other than he killed three Israelis.
Read the whole thing, but let me just quote the worst part of his crimes:
As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.
Any normal country would place such a monster behind bars for the rest of his life. (Most countries that don’t reward such activities also don’t have the death penalty, which is what Kuntar so richly deserves.) To somehow make an issue of the length of the times he’s served mocks the severity and depravity of his crimes as well as his victims. AP is simply engaging in misplace mercy.
Shrinkwrapped adds perspective about Kuntar – from two years ago. I also looked at how Kuntar was whitewashed by the Washington Post two years ago.
I saw the following story at NRO’s media blog. Israelis discovered that the Barzilai medical center in Ashkelon was build on a site that was holy to Shi’ites. So how did the Israeli authorities deal with that discovery? Why they built a prayer area for pilgrims to pray.
In case you don’t remember, an Iranian made Grad missile landed near that hospital two months ago.
Think about it Israel keeps a brutal murderer in jail and some observers consider it unfair. Israel, on the other hand, respect the religion of those terrorizing it and it barely merits a mention. The asymmetry between the two stories is amazing.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
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