Ha’aretz reports on a new Israeli startup that has developed technology to detect terrorists:

Quietly, even stealthily, this unknown company has been working for five years now on one of the more interesting technological innovations to be created in these parts.WeCU (”We see you,” in case you are unaccustomed to SMS-speak) promises an automated system to detect people with mayhem on their minds. The system integrates methods and doctrines from the behavioral sciences with biometric sensors.

According to the company’s founders, in under a minute it can screen an individual, without his or her knowledge or cooperation and without interfering with routine activities, and disclose intentions to carry out criminal or terror activity. It can identify subjects who are not carrying any suspicious objects, do not demonstrate any suspicious behavior, do not fit into a predefined social or other profile and do not arouse any suspicion.

Unlike systems currently in use, such as polygraphs or biometric systems based on identifying an individual under emotional pressure, WeCU does not attempt to determine whether the subject is lying, concealing information, under stress or feeling guilty. Instead, it seeks to identify concealed intentions by uncovering an associative connection between the subjects and defined threats.

What isn’t clear is if this system would be deployed in public spaces or if it would utilized in interrogations. On the one hand the company’s saying that it can screen suspects “without interfering with routine activities” on the other hand the CEO goes on to explain:

How does it work? Givon explains: “The technology is patented. We take advantage of human characteristics, according to which when a person intends to carry out a particular activity or has a great acquaintance or involvement with a particular activity, he carries with him information and feelings that are associated with the subject or activity. In effect, his brain creates a collection of associations that are relevant to the subject.”When this person is exposed to stimuli targeted at these associations - such as a picture of a partner to the activity, items from the scene of a crime that he carried out, the symbol of the organization in whose name he is acting or a code word - he will respond emotionally and cognitively to these stimuli. The response is expressed with a number of very subtle physiological and behavioral changes during the exposure to the stimulus,” Givon said.

If the system exposes the subject to “stimuli” how does it do that effectively unless it’s in a controlled environment (such as an interrogation)?

The Guardian’s technology blog wonders (where I first saw the story):

There’s not much info on WeCU Technologies Ltd, but it is a Microsoft Partner and was “incorporated in August 2003″. The partner page has a summary of the approach, but the link to its web page doesn’t work.

While there are some questions about WeCU, one of the founders of the company, Prof. Shlomo Breznitz was previously involved with another startup, Mindfit Technologies that also focuses on cognition.

The trial was conducted at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center of Tel-Aviv University in Israel, where researchers are taking a leading role in the study of age-related disorders. During the two-year clinical trial, doctors conducted a prospective, randomized, double-blind study with active comparators of 121 self-referred volunteer participants age 50 and older. Each study participant was randomly assigned to spend 30 minutes, three times a week during the course of three months at home, using either MindFit or sophisticated computer games.While all study participants benefited from the use of computer games, MindFit users experienced greater improvement in the cognitive domains of spatial short term memory, visuo-spatial learning and focused attention. Additionally, MindFit users in the study with lower baseline cognitive performance gained more than those with normal cognition, showing the potential therapeutic effect of home-based computer training software in those already suffering the effects of aging or more serious diseases.

“These research findings show unequivocally that MindFit, which requires no previous computer experience of users, keeps minds sharper than other computer games and software can,” said Prof. Shlomo Breznitz, Ph.D., founder and president of CogniFit. “In fact, the same cognitive domains that MindFit keeps sharp are also central in most daily activities-including driving-that enable aging independently.”

Breznitz continued, “These findings support CogniFit’s belief that if you exercise your brain just as you do your muscles, you can build the speed and accuracy of your mental functions, significantly. ‘Working out’ with MindFit three times a week from the comfort of your home will yield similar results for your brain as exercising at the gym with that same frequency does for your muscles.”

In unrelated news Prof Breznitz was saved from the Holocaust by being hidden at a Catholic orphanage.

In somewhat related news Japan is considering fielding a facial recognition device to determine if a person buying cigarettes from a vending is of legal age (20 in Japan) to do so.

Cigarette vending machines in Japan may soon start counting wrinkles, crow’s feet and skin sags to see if the customer is old enough to smoke.The legal age for smoking in Japan is 20 and as the country’s 570,000 tobacco vending machines prepare for a July regulation requiring them to ensure buyers are not underage, a company has developed a system to identify age by studying facial features.

By having the customer look into a digital camera attached to the machine, Fujitaka Co’s system will compare facial characteristics, such as wrinkles surrounding the eyes, bone structure and skin sags, to the facial data of over 100,000 people, Hajime Yamamoto, a company spokesman said.

And infra-red sensors give the Air Force an opportunity to detect and eliminate a threat to soldiers on the ground.

The sniper never knew what hit him. The Marines patrolling the street below were taking fire, but did not have a clear shot at the third-story window that the sniper was shooting from. They were pinned down and called for reinforcements.Help came from a Predator drone circling the skies 20 miles away. As the unmanned plane closed in, the infrared camera underneath its nose picked up the muzzle flashes from the window. The sniper was still firing when the Predator’s 100-pound Hellfire missile came through the window and eliminated the threat.

The airman who fired that missile was 8,000 miles away, here at Creech Air Force Base, home of the 432nd air wing. The 432nd officially “stood up,” in the jargon of the Air Force, on May 1, 2007. One year later, two dozen of its drones patrol the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan every hour of every day. And almost all of them are flown by two-man crews sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of a “ground control station” (GCS) in the Nevada desert.

I suppose that there are those who will see in this increased use of video and recognition technology a manifestation of Big Brother. In the limited use they’ve been deployed so far, it doesn’t seem that governments are getting too intrusive. Then again maybe it would be reassuring if governments limited this technology for really important stuff instead of (unsuccessfully) saturating society with it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Jimmy Carter in the Guardian’s Comment is Free section:

The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.

Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.

As I’ve commented in the past, Jimmy Carter’s say-so that elections are “honest and fair” is worthless as he’s covered for elections stolen by Yasser Arafat and Hugo Chavez.

Still Carter, is not a lawyer and knows nothing about international law. However, David B. Rivkin and Lee Casey specialize in the subject and outlined Israel’s rights and obligations according to international law.

It is because an occupying power exercises effective control over a territory that international law substantially restricts the measures, military or economic, it can bring to bear upon this territory, well beyond the limits that would be applicable before occupation, whether in wartime or peacetime.The Israeli military does not control Gaza; nor does Israel exercise any government functions there. Claims that Israel continues to occupy Gaza suggest that a power having once occupied a territory must continue to behave toward the local population as an occupying power until all outstanding issues are resolved. This “principle” can be described only as an ingenious invention; it has no basis in traditional international law.

The adoption of any such rule (designed to limit Israel’s freedom of action and give Hamas a legal leg up in its continuing conflict) should be actively opposed by the United States. Its adoption would suggest that no occupying power can withdraw of its own volition without incurring continuing, and perhaps permanent, legal obligations to a territory. This issue is particularly acute regarding territory not otherwise controlled by a functioning state — failed states or failed areas of states where the “legitimate” government cannot or will not exercise effective control. Such places — call them badlands — were once rare. Over the past 15 years, though, there has been an explosion in the number of such areas, notably parts of Afghanistan, Somalia and portions of Pakistan.

I suppose that Jimmy should be flattered, they called his declaration that Israel should not be allowed to defend itself “ingenious.” I don’t think they meant it in a complimentary fashion though.

Furthermore restricting Israel’s right to defend itself, has implications in relation to the United States.

Unduly handicapping states that intervene in such badlands — whether to protect their own interests, those of the local population or both — is unrealistic and irresponsible. Requiring agreement by the “international community” (whatever that may be) as a precondition for extinguishing such a designation is equally unproductive if the goal is saving lives. Consider the example of Darfur.Even worse is pretending that groups such as Hamas are merely criminal gangs that must be dealt with as a local policing problem — just one of the potential side effects of imposing an “occupied” status on a territory. This implicates U.S. interests directly, since America’s ability to use robust armed force against al-Qaeda and similar non-state actors remains critical to defending our civilian population from attack.

Perhaps rather than lecturing us about international law, Jimmy ought to sit down and read a book or two on the topic before spouting off.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

One of the thing conservatives like me marvel at is the way the supposedly objective media will describe a conservative politician who adopts liberal positions as having “grown” in office. It doesn’t really mean that the politician became more flexible, because a politician moving in the other direction would be described as “having become more conservative.” What “grown” means is “he’s become more like us.”

That’s how to approach the Washington Post’s U.S. Jews’ Relationship With Israel Evolves. “Evolves” in this case means the same thing as “grown” in the context mentioned above.

Growing up at Congregation Olam Tikvah, Michelle Pearlstein remembers how Israel was taught at religious school: “Black and white — you can’t trust anyone, and it was a united front in support of Israel.” Today, Pearlstein, 35, is the Israel specialist at the Fairfax synagogue, where she teaches what is now the mainstream approach: “We call it ‘Israel, warts and all.’ “The change in curriculum is but one manifestation of the changing relationship between American Jews and the Jewish state, even as the country celebrates its 60th birthday this week.

Multiple new polls show that younger American Jews feel less of a connection to Israel than older Jews. And while there is heated debate about some of the polls’ methodologies and conclusions, most Jewish leaders are very concerned about the data. The leaders see them as a long-term byproduct of intermarriage, assimilation and controversial Israeli policies, including settlement expansion in the occupied territories.

I’d put that last bit differently, “… growing ambivalence, reflecting attitudes seen in the media, towards such non-controversial Israeli policies as defending itself against terrorist organizations.” But of course emphasizing “settlements” as “controversial” underscores the reporter’s belief that American Jews are becoming more like her.

Then there’s this:

What affect would a weakening of the emotional link between Israel and American Jews have on U.S. policy toward the Middle East? Last month, a group of left-leaning Jews established a lobbying group hoping to counter the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has often lobbied U.S. governments to maintain a tough line toward Israel’s adversaries.

J-Street is of course not the result of the “weakening” of an “emotional link,” rather it is the expression of contempt by a segment of Jews towards Israel. Though masquerading as a leftist “pro-Israel’ lobbying group, it features the likes of Henry Siegman who has made a career of ripping Israel and apologizing for the likes of Hafez Assad, Yasser Arafat and Hamas.

Experts in Jewish education describe replacing mushy classic ballads like “Jerusalem of Gold” from the 1960s with tracks from Israeli rappers who sing about immigration and sexuality, or jettisoning lessons about pioneering kibbutzim and replacing them with ones about Israel’s technology wunderkinds.

While I can’t disagree with the later sentiment, the first one is offensive. “Jerusalem of Gold” (”Yerushalayim shel Zahav”) is not mushy. It’s beautiful. At least to my (untrained) ear. More likely the problem with it is that it was written Naomi Shemer an Israeli who was associated with the political right and who was proud of her country. And those who wish to see the American Jewish relationship with Israel “mature” have no place for for feelings of nationalism and pride.

Pearlstein said much of the teaching material about Israel is outdated. Either it sticks to Biblical Israel and does not go beyond 1948, or it ends at 1967 — the Six-Day War. “I think that’s because recent years have been so negative,” she says. Her main goal is to teach students to have a connection with Israel, “to show that Jews have always been in this land, we can see it in the Bible and we can see it today.” But you have to do it frankly, she says, by showing “shades of gray, Israel’s challenges as well as its achievements.”

I don’t have a problem with the “shades of gray.” Israel is a country run by people, so obviously it won’t be perfect. The problem is that those who see the importance of adding the “shades of gray” are looking for opacity; they’re looking for for a really dark gray that will block out all light of achievement. (Pardon the cheap metaphor.)

Read (most of the articles in) the Forward or read James David Besser in most American-Jewish weeklies. I would argue that neither of them are pro-Israel. The problem isn’t that they present shades of gray. It’s that the image of Israel that they project is almost unremittingly negative. The problem isn’t that education about Israel in the Jewish community is overly romanticized; it’s that many of the public forums in the Jewish community unfairly criticize Israel.

The evolution hailed by the Washington Post is, in reality, a step back.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The woman killed by a kassam rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the terrorist group that Sami al-Arian was convicted of raising money for, has a name: Shuli Katz.

She leaves behind her 90-year-old mother. Her mother is in a retirement home.

She leaves behind four children. One of them, her son, was with her during the attack, and probably saw her die.

She leaves behind five grandchildren. None of them will see their bubbe again.

None of these facts will find their way into the AP, Reuters, or AFP stories about Shuli’s death. The AP finally updated its story, but the focus is still on the Hamas truce demands. And they still have Katz’s age wrong, and no name, nor quotes from family, nor even circumstances of her death. From Ynet, with an update time of 00:33 Israel time (17:33 Eastern time):

Qassams claim another victim: Shuli Katz, a 70-year-old resident of Kibbutz Gvaram was killed early Monday evening from a Palestinian Qassam rocket which crashed into the backyard of a residential home in Yesha – a small community belonging to the Eshkol Regional Council.

A widow, Katz is survived by four children, five grandchildren and her 90-year-old mother, who lives in a retirement home.

She sustained critical injuries from the impact and MDA paramedics alerted to the scene fought to resuscitate for some time before ultimately calling the time of death. Medics also treated a 50-year-old man for shock.

It doesn’t say if the 50-year-old man is Shuli’s son. But note the time: 5:33 p.m. Eastern standard time. Now look at the AP lede, with a timestamp of 6:10 p.m. Eastern standard time.

A rocket fired by Palestinian militants killed a 75-year-old Israeli woman Monday, just as an Egyptian mediator was winding up truce talks in Israel - underlining both the urgency and complexity of working out a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

The rocket hit a house in the village of Yesha, about four miles from the Gaza Strip. As recently as Friday, a fatal rocket attack drew reprisal Israeli airstrikes that killed five Palestinians in Gaza.

That’s it. No name, nothing about the survivors—all information that Israeli reporters managed to get. Compare this with the reports of Palestinian civilian casualties. Two weeks ago, the news was filled with stories about the Palestinian family that was killed “while eating breakfast” by a supposed Israeli tank shell. (It was subsequentlly shown to be the explosives on terrorists hiding outside the house.

And if the media do acknowledge Israeli victims, you usually get the terms “settlers” or “ultra-Orthodox” appended to the victims.

Welcome to Israeli Double Standard Time. It occurs on days that end with a “y.”

A 70-year-old woman was murdered by a PIJ kassam rocket, aided and abetted by the terrorist government of the Palestinians.

There is almost no notice of it in the major media outlets.

The AP barely mentions it in the lede of a story about Egypt’s intelligence chief coming to Israel to badger Israel to bow to Hamas’ demands. (More on that later. Here’s all the AP has to say:

Egypt dispatched its powerful intelligence chief to Israel on Monday in an attempt to mediate an end to months of violence in the Gaza Strip, but Israeli leaders said there would be no truce unless Gaza militants release an Israeli soldier they have held captive for nearly two years.

As mediator Omar Suleiman completed his talks, militants fired a rocket from Gaza that struck a house in an Israeli village, killing a 75-year-old woman, the military and rescue services said. Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets at the time of the fatal attack.

The rocket hit a house in the village of Yesha, 9 miles from Gaza, farther away than the usual targets of rockets fired by Gaza militants.

It’s buried in Reuters’ fourth paragraph about Suleiman’s trip. And blamed the Israelis for the lack of urgency regarding the death.

Shortly after Suleiman met Israeli leaders, Islamic Jihad militants launched a rocket which killed a 70-year-old Israeli woman at an agricultural community close to the border with the Gaza Strip, security and emergency services said.

But Israeli officials focused on Shalit’s fate — a hot domestic issue for an embattled Olmert as he fights for his political survival in the face of bribery accusations — in summing up the prime minister’s meeting with Suleiman.

You have to go to the U.K. to find the death of an old woman by rocket fire as the main angle of a story:

A 75 year old Israeli woman was killed yesterday by a rocket fired from Gaza as Israel suggested any truce in the Strip depended on the release of the Army corporal seized almost two years ago.

The woman died after the rocket struck a house in Yesha, nine miles from Gaza’s eastern border and further than the usual targets of Qassam rockets. Islamic Jihad said it had fired rockets at the time of the fatal attack.

Reuters finally focused on the killing, but nobody’s picking it up. And gee, look at the headline. Then look at the bolded line above from the Independent.

Rocket kills Israeli woman near Gaza border
MOSHAV YESHA, Israel, May 12 (Reuters) - A rocket launched by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip killed an Israeli woman on Monday as she walked towards her house, Israeli emergency services and the army said.

The woman was the second Israeli to be killed by rocket and mortar fire from the Hamas-controlled territory in less than a week. Medics said the woman was hit by a fragment and died instantly.

Really? Nine miles is “near the border”? Really? And the range of the kassam, according to Wikipedia, is 10-12 kilometers. But Reuters is busy whitewashing the attack by minimizing where the rocket fell. And oh, of course Reuters has to add this boilerplate to the end of the story:

Such rocket attacks rarely cause death or injury but sow panic in border towns. An Israeli army spokeswoman said militants had launched seven rockets on Monday and a total of 2000 missiles since the start of the year.

Two deaths in the last week, plus multiple injuries, but they “rarely” cause death or injury.” All they do is panic the inhabitants. In this case, to death. Along with metal shrapnel tearing into her body.

Gotta love the objective, unbiased media, whose only job is to tell the truth and inform the public. Right? Right? Right?

Riiiiiight.

The “crude, homemade” kassam rockets murdered another Israeli, a 70-year-old woman.

A 70-year-old Israeli woman was killed early Monday evening from a Palestinian Qassam rocket which crashed into the backyard of a residential home in Yesha – a small community belonging to the Eshkol Regional Council.

The woman sustained critical injuries from the impact and MDA paramedics alerted to the scene fought to resuscitate for some time before ultimately calling the time of death. Medics also treated a 50-year-old man for shock.

The al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

And the rockets keep on coming.

Earlier in the afternoon two Qassams were fired from northern Gaza towards the Erez border crossing. No injuries or damage were caused.

Hamas is now threatening to kill more Israelis if they don’t accept the Hamas surrender truce terms.

“If Israel rejects the agreement it will carry the burden of compromising its citizens’ security,” said a senior Hamas official to Ynet, referring to the message relayed to the Egyptian Chief of Intelligence Omar Suleiman in Israel.

Gaza is threatening that if Israel rejects the agreement presented by the factions for a calm an escalation in the clashes will be unavoidable.

That’s funny. I thought Jimmy Carter said we needed to Hamas’ point of view. It seems their point of view is one of murder and more murder, on top of threats, rockets, and terror. Oh. And more kidnappings.

According to him, Hamas demands that each agreement will include the opening of crossings: “An agreement that doesn’t contend with this issue is not an agreement and as far as we are concerned will not be carried out at all or in part. The significance is that we are able to use all our cards, or part of the ones at our disposal. Rejection of the initiative will bring Shalit a lot of playmates from the ‘army of occupation’.”

Think Jimmy Carter will have something to say about this?

Yeah, me neither.

May her name be remembered.

Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who organized the rescue of some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis and was later honored by Yad Vashem memorial, has died.

Sendler’s daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, told The Associated Press her mother died at a Warsaw hospital Monday morning. She was 98.

Records show Sendler’s team of some 20 people saved almost 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles that the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem honored for wartime heroics. Poland’s communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel, and she collected the award only in 1983.

Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler largely remained forgotten in her homeland. Only in her final years, confined to a nursing home, did she finally become one of Poland’s most respected figures, with President Lech Kaczynski and other politicians backing a campaign that put her name forward for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Funny, isn’t it, how the Nobel Peace Prize goes to thugs like Arafat and smugs like Carter, but not to true heroes of humanity like Irena Sendler?

The earliest reference I can find to the term “Nakba” (or “Naqba”) in the New York Times is this article, from Israel’s 50th birthday, a decade ago.

So for 50 years, the NYT didn’t see fit to use the term to describe the Arab reaction to Israel’s independence. It’s only recently that the terms has come into widespread use.

My problem though is why is “Nakba” commemorated at the same time as Israel’s Independence Day? Palestinians are largely Muslim, so why doesn’t Nakba follow the Islamic calendar. By my estimation, the 60th anniversary of Nakba would have occurred in 2006 and this year’s celebration would be about a month and a half away. (A strictly lunar calendar loses eleven days a year with respect to a solar calendar.)

So the recent introduction of naqba as a significant Palestinian day, is a PR move. It’s a way of casting a shadow on Israel’s celebration. If it were a true Palestinian observance it would be observed in another 40 days. Of course if the nakba was observed all around the year, as a regular Muslim observance would, it wouldn’t have the same propaganda value than if it was always observed at the same time of the year for the rest of the world.

(Similarly, Abbas - and Arafat before him - would celebrate the first Fatah terror attack January 1, in honor of the event that occurred January 1, 1965. It’s much better propaganda for those outside the Middle East if the observances are in familiar times.)

In the end, the absurdity of the situation shows the degree to which the Palestinians identify themselves with Israel, instead of aspiring to their own nationalism.

Stephen Plaut recently discovered that the term naqba, was originally used to denote the Palestinians loss of dependence, not their loss of (nonexistant) independence. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

The authoritative source on the origin of “nakba” is none other than George Antonius, supposedly the first “official historian of Palestinian nationalism.” Like so many “Palestinians,” he actually wasn’t – Palestinian, that is. He was a Christian Lebanese-Egyptian who lived for a while in Jerusalem, where he composed his official advocacy/history of Arab nationalism. The Arab Awakening, a highly biased book, was published in 1938 and for years afterward was the official text used at British universities….

On page 312 of The Arab Awakening, Antonius writes, “The year 1920 has an evil name in Arab annals: it is referred to as the Year of the Catastrophe (Am al-Nakba). It saw the first armed risings that occurred in protest against the post-War settlement imposed by the Allies on the Arab countries. In that year, serious outbreaks took place in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq.”

Yes, the answer to our little quiz is 1920, not 1948. That’s 1920 – when there was no Zionist state, no Jewish sovereignty, no “settlements” in “occupied territories,” no Israel Defense Forces, no Israeli missiles and choppers targeting terror leaders, and no Jewish control over Jerusalem (which had a Jewish demographic majority going back at least to 1850).

The original “nakba” had nothing to do with Jews, and nothing to do with demands by Palestinian Arabs for self-determination, independence and statehood. To the contrary, it had everything to do with the fact that the Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as Syrians. They rioted at this nakba – at this catastrophe– because they found deeply offensive the very idea that they should be independent from Syria and Syrians.

Naqba then is less a commemoration of a vanished past than a ploy for sympathy. No doubt the Arabs of Palestine suffered as a result of Israel’s War of Independence. But had their Arab brothers not sought to maintain a grievance against Israel, the Palestinian refugee problem would have been solved long ago.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I’m disappointed that Charles Krauthammer hasn’t acknowledged Israel’s 60th anniversary. 10 years ago, he produced one of the best articles on the meaning of Zionism and its importance, At last Zion.

Two columnists recently have celebrated Israel’s 60th. First there’s Jeff Jacoby who’s scheduled to speak at my synagogue tomorrow night, who wrote the Triumph of Life and Hope.

THE BIRTH of the state of Israel 60 years ago this week was an astonishment. It is not unheard of for a nation to vanish from the map and later reappear. Poland, for example, was partitioned out of existence in 1795 and regained its independence in 1918. But the restoration of Israel was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
more stories like thisJews had been deprived of their homeland for nearly 2,000 years, ever since the Roman devastation of Judea in the first and second centuries A.D. That upheaval had been cataclysmic. By the time the fighting ended in 135, half of Judea’s population was dead. Of those who survived, hundreds of thousands were sold into slavery or expelled. Not until the Holocaust 18 centuries later would the Jewish people experience a more shattering catastrophe.

Yet through all the generations of dispersion that followed, the Jews never lost their self-awareness as a nation or their connection to the land of Israel. They expressed their longing for it in daily prayer and turned toward it when they worshiped. They collected charity to support the minority of Jews who had never left the land; and over the years others made their way back as well, often in response to Christian or Muslim persecution. By the 1860s, a majority of Jerusalem’s population was Jewish once more. Zionism - an organized movement to renew Jewish independence in the Jewish homeland - was formally launched in 1897. Five decades later, against steep odds and every historical precedent, Israel was reborn.

Despite all this Jacoby acknowledges the irony:

Under siege since the day it was born, Israel has never known a day of true peace. It is the only nation in the world whose legitimacy is routinely called into question. It still has enemies who want it wiped off the map. Uniquely, the Jewish state came into being with the imprimatur of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Yet time and again it is told it has no right to exist. Of course that is fatuous; few nations can present a birth certificate as storied as Israel’s. Nonetheless, Israel’s fundamental right to exist doesn’t derive from UN votes, or promises in the Bible, or its own Declaration of Independence.

It’s ironic too, that though the sympathy accrued to the Jewish people due to the Holocaust was one of the factors that enabled the acceptance of the new Jewish state, the ones whose leaders allied themselves with the Nazis now claim that the founding of Israel is a catastrophe rivaling that of the Holocaust. Of course they choose to stake their claim to the land not by building a parallel state but by trying to destroy the Jewish one. (Unfortunately, many, in the name of peace, see parallelism between the two aspirations.)

Bill Kristol weighs in with The Jewish State at 60. Though the essay revolves around a number of wonderful quotes, Kristol’s conclusion is simply:

Still, even though the security of Israel is very much at risk, the good news is that, unlike in the 1930s, the Jews are able to defend themselves, and the United States is willing to fight for freedom. Americans grasp that Israel’s very existence to some degree embodies the defeat and repudiation of the genocidal totalitarianism of the 20th century. They understand that its defense today is the front line of resistance to the jihadist terror, and the suicidal nihilism, that threaten to deform the 21st.

via memeorandum

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Yesterday, Hamas nearly hit a schoolbus.

Three children suffered shock and were treated by Magen David Adom paramedics. The bus’ windows were shattered and a fire broke out nearby

Today, they just missed a kindergarten—in Ashkelon.

One rocket hit a southern neighborhood in the seaside city and another in the Ashkelon National Park south of the city. The first rocket landed near an elementary school in an area where several schools and kindergartens are located. One woman suffered from shock and several houses sustained damage.

Haim Asokar, who lives nearby, told Ynet, “I was just making coffee on my way to leave the house. We heard the siren, but we have no fortification here and our bomb shelter is closed. I then heard a very loud explosion. The entire house shook.

“My mother, who looked out the window, noticed something flying right in front of her and falling near the building. A great miracle occurred here, although had the rocket landed several minutes later, children would have already arrived in the area and many people would have been walking around here.”

The rockets struck at 7 a.m. It was sent there at that time to try to hit children on their way to school, and people on their way to work. Let me repeat, this is not Sderot. This is Ashkelon. But then, the terrorist have been getting away with it so far, so why not fire into more Israeli cities? In the meantime, what does Condi Rice say? That Israel needs to “show progress” in peace talks.

The Bush administration has told Israeli and Palestinian leaders they will need to show progress in their secret talks soon, or risk a potentially fatal erosion in public support for a process now in its sixth month without any obvious successes.

[...] Rice mentioned borders prominently, suggesting she thinks it is the best chance for progress in the near term. Twice during her most recent trip, Rice urged that the sides draw a final map soon, in part because it would help settle other disputes.

Yes, because knowing that Hamas is firing rockets over legitimate borders is so important for peace.

Meantime, Olmert says he’s doing everything he can. No, really.

“I am doing everything so this country will be able to defend itself against its enemies and so that our children and grandchildren won’t live their lives filled with the suffering prevalent here,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday evening during a Jewish National Fund (JNF) conference held at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum.

Addressing the incessant Qassam rocket fire emanating from Gaza and the internal crisis in Lebanon, Olmert said, “We must deal with enemies from the north and the south that are looking to wipe us off the map, but we will always be prepared. You can count on it.”

And the Israeli public believes him so much, 59% of them say he should resign as Prime Minister. Unfortunately, they also indicate they will continue to vote for Kadima.

The prime minister is also perceived by the public as paralyzed in his ability to lead. Sixty percent of the public state that he is incapable of leading diplomatic moves due to the investigation against him.

[...] The survey shows that it is too early to pronounce Kadima dead. Should Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni head the party, she would defeat the Likud headed by Benjamin Netanyahu with 27 Knesset seats, compared to 23 Likud seats and 15 seats for the Labor Party.

And the Egyptian who has been trying to broker a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel met with Ehud Barak today with Hamas’s demands.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that “Israel views (kidnapped soldier) Gilad Shalit’s release and the progress made in the talks for his release as having a key role in resolving the security situation in the Gaza Strip.”

Speaking during a meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Barak said, “Israel cannot continue exercising restraint over the ongoing terror from the Gaza Strip.”

Suleiman said before the meeting that he had “high expectations” that the outline of a truce between Israel, Hamas and the armed organizations in the Gaza Strip would be implemented.

The only positive news I get out of that is that I’m positive that Hamas will not release Gilad Shalit, because they’ll demand the release of convicted murderers. Olmert hasn’t the political capital to make such a deal, and even he has said he won’t release the murderers Hamas is asking for.

The soldiers want to go in and take care of the terrorists. Perhaps Olmert should let them. Because the terrorists are deliberately firing mortars because they think that the IDF won’t retaliate, as the mortars are “less effective” than kassams. And yet, a mortar killed Jimmy Kdoshim on Friday.

The longer Israel lets rocket fire on her citizens remain unanswered, the more rockets will be fired on her citizens. It’s as simple as that. Terrorists have sworn to make Sderot a “ghost town.” They are succeeding. Unless Israel acts, more Israelis will die in this latest version of the War of Attrition.

The world will stand up and howl when Israel responds to these attacks on her people and on her soveriegnty. So what? But this time, Israel should have a PR campaign ready to respond. This time, the IDF should release pictures and video of terrorists hiding in mosques and schoolyards and firing from among civilians. Not that I think they will. Israeli PR is made up of morons who couldn’t sell blankets to an Eskimo. I had an argument with the Israeli ambassador to Washington years ago. A member of my synagogue and I were asking him why Israel doesn’t respond to the horrible anti-Israel publicity in the press, and he told us, over and over again, that polls show Americans believe Israel is the good guy in this battle. That may be true, but the bad publicity is scoring many, many hits. Witness the number of anti-Israel articles on her sixtieth anniversary, even in the American press.

Well. President Bush is due in Israel next week. The last of the so-called truce offers is being made as I write this. Things should start moving along soon. God help the Israelis, and save them from the inevitable rocket barrage that will happen when the IDF moves in. (Although if they do it fast, Hezbullah will be too busy fighting the Lebanese to help.)

Jeffrey Goldberg (h/t Instapundit)

It’s been a tough year already for Hezbollah’s apologists; the assassination of Imad Mugniyah, the terrorist many of Hezbollah’s friends denied existed until Hezbollah gave him what amounted to a state funeral, hurt the cause of those on the left, in particular, who wanted to whitewash Hezbollah’s violent, anti-democratic program.

And that’s not to mention the news that Hezbollah has been caught re-arming in defiance of Resolution 1701.

The apologists are still hard at work, I was astonished the other day by the AFP reports.

A blindfolded pro-government detainee begs Hezbollah gunmen for mercy in west Beirut on May 9, 2008. Hezbollah fighters, their guns blazing, seized control of west Beirut after three days of street battles with pro-government foes pushed Lebanon dangerously close to all-out civil war. The sectarian fighting had eased by early afternoon and the army and police moved across areas now in the hands of Iranian-backed Shiite opposition forces who routed Sunni militants loyal to the Western-backed government.

(emphases mine)

That was one of a series of pictures with varying first sentences followed by the “Hezbollah fighter” boilerplate. Yes the heroic fighters with their “guns blazing” routed the “pro-government foes.”

Snapped Shot puts it nicely:

Does that mean that Agence France-Presse is against the lawfully-elected Lebanese government?

Perhaps that was the cost of reporting from occupied west Beirut.

When Hamas is involved we get to hear how awful it is to ignore the folks who won an election two years ago. So what’s the excuse for cheerleading for Hezbollah who’s fighting a democratically elected government? Oh, I get it the problem is that the government is “Western backed.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Having listened to 70s music for the past twenty minutes, it astonishes me that the cowbell ever went out of fashion.

We should hope for a comeback.

And now it’s working.

I did nothing.

The wrappers are back on Hot Air, and since I didn’t get around to recreating my Firefox profiles, well, I did nothing.

It wasn’t working yesterday. It’s working now.

Go figure.

Score another one in my continuing list of “Why computers will NEVER take over the earth a la Colossus and Skynet.”

The AP, which claims it is unbiased, objective, and simply reporting the facts, has a very interesting take on the mortar attack that murdered a 48-year-old Israeli civilian, and the IDF response. First, the unbiased headline:

Attack from Gaza kills 1, Israeli retaliation kills 5

Now the unbiased lede from yesterday’s article:

KFAR AZA, Israel (AP) - Gaza attackers sent mortar shells crashing into a border community late Friday, killing an Israeli in his garden and wounding three others, officials said. Israel retaliated with missile strikes that left five Hamas militants dead.

The surge in violence added pressure on Egyptian-led attempts to halt clashes between Gaza militants and the Israeli military.

Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement claimed responsibility for the deadly mortar fire on Kfar Aza, a communal farm in southern Israel.

Hours later, Israeli aircraft fired missiles that slammed into two Hamas police stations in southern Gaza, killing five militants, Hamas and Gaza health officials said. The Israeli military confirmed the airstrike and said it was responding to attacks on Israel, including the deadly mortar fire on Kfar Aza.

That was, as I said, yesterday’s unbiased article. Now let’s look at the updates today. First, the unbiased headline:

Hamas Militants Fire Rockets Into Israel; No One Injured

Isn’t that nice. The AP is finally noticing that Hamas fires rockets on a daily or near-daily basis. (It’s been daily this week. There has been no “lull.”) But pay attention to the headline, because it goes with the unbiased lede:

Hamas fired rockets at southern Israel on Saturday, hitting a house and a Jewish seminary just hours after five Hamas policemen were killed in Israeli air strikes.No one was hurt in the strikes.

Hamas militants said they fired 15 homemade rockets at Israel. The Israeli military said five of them landed, one directly hitting a house in the border town of Sderot, a frequent target for militants. Another landed next to a Jewish seminary and another in the courtyard of a local college.

Nobody was hurt in the barrage, which came after Israel fired missiles at two Hamas police stations late Friday, killing five militants.

For some reason, the context of the Israeli response to a terror attack—the mortar bombardment of her civilians—is no longer evident in the unbiased AP lede. Not if you’re one of the local newspapers that publishes only the first three paragraphs of the wire stories in your “WORLD NEWS” section. Here’s the fourth graf:

The newest round of cross-border attacks began earlier Friday when Hamas militants fired mortar shells that killed a 48-year-old Israeli man in a communal farm on the border with Gaza. Three others were wounded.

By the way, here’s an interesting item from yesterday’s story that I’ve never seen before in an AP article, regarding the identity of Jimmy Kdoshim, the man killed while working in his garden:

Dozens of residents milled around the tidy lawn where the 48-year-old Israeli’s body lay. Shrapnel pocked the front of his house. His identity was not disclosed because one of his four children had not yet been notified of his death.

Why—does this mean the AP is going to actually humanize an Israeli victim of Hamas terror? Are we going to get his name, his age, and quotes from his family tomorrow?

No. Look above, at the quoted fourth graf. Jimmy Kdoshim has no name in the AP, even though the story was written long after his name was released. Israeli victims of Palestinian terror almost never are named in either the main story, or subsequent updates. But Palestinian victims are nearly always named, aged, and have quotes from family members added to the story.

In the meantime, 18 rockets and five mortars have fallen on Israel so far today, and the AP can’t muster up an article that deals solely with the barrage. One just missed a synagogue. Another hit a house. But of course, Israeli will be blamed for the “cycle of violence” in the media.

And the world tut-tuts and thinks that it’s perfectly natural for Hamas to fire rockets at civilians in “retaliation” for Israel killing Hamas terrorists—who are firing rockets at civilians.

Welcome to Israeli Double Standard Time.

All of those fools who are touting talking to Syria, and giving back the Golan Heights to achieve peace with Syria can stop now. (Oh, they won’t, but they should.) Bashar Assad has said quite clearly that even if he gets back the Golan, he won’t be dumping his patron-in-terror, Iran, and he will never give up funding the Iranian proxy army in Lebanon, Hizbullah.

Syrian President Bashar Assad rejected Israel’s demand that Syria cut its ties with Iran and Hizbullah.

He said that detaching his country from the two was “irrelevant” to reviving peace talks.

So the point in talking to Syria would be…?

Uh-huh.

Yesterday David Ignatius wrote:

The game-changing events in the 2008 campaign are issues of war and peace. Both may be in play between now and November, in ways that add extra volatility to the presidential race.

And of course the “game changing” event in the Middle East that he refers to is peace:

The other wild card in the campaign is, happy to say, the possibility of Middle East peace negotiations. Bush administration officials continue to insist they have a chance of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement while Bush is in office. By this, they mean an agreement on paper — one that would codify the outlines of the two-state solution that was negotiated but never finally concluded during the last days of the Clinton administration. This “shelf agreement” could be endorsed by the U.N. Security Council and provide a baseline for continuing talks next year about implementation.A peace agreement — even one that has no practical effect on the ground — would be a feather in the cap for President Bush. But its political benefits for the GOP would be limited. Even a full-fledged peace treaty between Egypt and Israel failed to save Jimmy Carter from defeat at the polls in 1980. In that election, as perhaps this year, the Iranians played the role of spoilers.

Finally, there are noises offstage from Israel and Syria about a possible peace treaty. This would be the ultimate pragmatic bargain — Israel likes the stability that Bashar al-Assad’s military regime provides in Damascus, and it regards Syrian hegemony in Lebanon as an acceptable and perhaps desirable price. An important feature of the Syrian-Israeli dickering is that they have used Turkey as the key intermediary. If Turkey can broker peace between these two, it would reattach Ankara firmly to the Arab world for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

Why Syria’s hegemony over Lebanon is acceptable to Israel, Ignatius doesn’t bother to explain. Still the visions of an Israeli surrender of territory really excites him.

Daniel Pipes thinks a little caution is in order.

The Middle East’s deep and wide political sickness points to the error of seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict as the motor force behind its problems. More sensible is to see Israel’s plight as the result of the region’s toxic politics. Blaming the Middle East’s autocracy, radicalism, and violence on Israel is like blaming the diligent school child for the gangs. Conversely, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict means only solving that conflict, not fixing the region.

To David Ignatius and many other Middle East navel gazers, an Israeli-Arab peace treaty (no matter how useless) will be a transformative event. To Daniel Pipes it is the transformation of the Middle East that is a prerequisite for peace.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There’s a group called Follow the Women that’s organized a bike ride through the Middle East in the name of peace. Here’s what a participant wrote last month:

Nearly 250 women, representing 30 nationalities from mostly Europe and the Middle East, but also the United States and Canada, arrived in Beirut last week for the third “Follow the Women” bike tour, which winds through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and - Israeli government permitting- the Occupied Palestinian Territories.Started in 2004. One of the founders is a British woman named Detta Regan, “Follow the Women” is not a race, but a bike tour where women ride in the name of female empowerment and the aim of expressing solidarity with the Middle East. It is also a good place to break down cultural stereotypes and experience woman-to-woman diplomacy, away from official government positions and media hype.

Most of the Western women I cycled with expressed surprise at how calm Beirut is, and how beautiful. “It’s nothing like how it is in the news,” the British woman next to me exclaimed.

Note that the group didn’t plan to show solidarity with the women of Israel. And also note that now that they are in Syria, things aren’t so calm in Beirut anymore. And it’s their current host who’s fomenting the violence.

The utter cluelessness of these women was described nicely recently by Bret Stephens:

For reasons both telling and mysterious, Israel has become unpopular among that segment of public opinion that calls itself progressive. This is the same progressive segment that believes in women’s rights, gay rights, the rights to a fair trial and to appeal, freedom of speech and conscience, judicial checks on parliamentary authority. These are rights that exist in Israel and nowhere else in the Middle East. So why is it that the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?

How welcome do you figure this woman would be in Tehran or Gaza?

But let them ride their bikes and give cover to the tyrants who are fomenting the strife in the Middle East.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Anyone out there using Firefox and NoScript?

I installed it earlier this week, then got really tired of having to pick and choose what sites I would let show scripts, so I uninstalled it. Now it doesn’t show the proper display for Hot Air, and only Hot Air. The javascript wrapper is completely gone; only the raw (and ugly) html is displayed.

For the hell of it, I tried reinstalling and uninstalling it. No dice.

Anyone? I’m pretty sure there’s something resident in Firefox from the NoScript installation, but I don’t know where to begin to look. I’m using the latest release, 2.0.0.14.

The Washington Post’s Griff Witte, takes a device from Reuters and focuses on two men who, like Israel, were born in 1948. One is Israeli and one is Palestinian. In Born at the dawn of a new state

Witte is careful to emphasize the success of the Israeli with the haplessness of the Palestinian. But I guess it comes to the final two paragraphs:

With Nablus under Israeli military siege, Zaharan rarely leaves the city, and he has not been inside Israel since 1980. But if he had the chance, he knows exactly what he would say to any of his former Jewish neighbors about the past 60 years.”I would say to him, ‘Your life hasn’t changed in the way my life has. You’ve made it. You’ve succeeded,’ ” he said. “And I would want him to say back to me, ‘I recognize your rights.’ “

As if Israel hasn’t recognized his rights. Maybe not to return to Jaffa from where his family fled as it waited for the mighty Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state so it could return. But certainly Israel has made greater efforts to create a Palestinian state than any other country in the world, only to find its efforts dismissed as not enough.

In the end there will be no Palestinian state unless the Palestinians choose to create a functioning government and society.

Update: The article contains the words “checkpoints” and “siege” but not “terror.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Making up somewhat for yesterday’s insult, The NYT today reported on At 60, Israel Redefines Roles for Itself and for Jews Elsewhere.

The conference seems like an extravagance:

But there is another form of celebration planned, and its sponsors believe it says something about the national character: a three-day conference of some of the best minds from around the world on some of the biggest challenges facing humankind — and especially the Jews — in the coming decades