I was up and working an hour earlier than usual today, thanks to Tig3.0, who is no longer happy being confined to my office. He yowled to be let out at five. Then again at six. Then again at 7:30, when I finally gave up and got up. I am just now able to have breakfast, at 10:30.

I have a new setup that makes Tig less noisy and annoying while I’m working. I leave the office door open, my bedroom door shut, and the bathroom door open. This has necessitated emptying the bathroom trash bin and making me realize I have to get one of those closed-top trash cans for the bathroom, as Tig has decided he likes all forms of papers, and is trying to fish out used tissues from the trash. And may I say: Ew.

I blocked the stairs with a large, cardboard trifold display that was eventually going to wind up with my school pictures on it. That, plus a standing dustpan to fill the corner is more than enough to keep a 12-week-old kitten from coming down the stairs. (Actually, he came halfway down the stairs—twice—while I ate breakfast, and this post was scheduled, so it remained unedited for a while.) He is currently running around like a mad thing from room to room, leaping in and out of the bathtub, yowling little kitten yowls of pleasure, sounding like a herd of cats instead of just the one kitten, and utterly confusing Gracie.

One result of the new setup seems to be that Tig wants to nap in my lap now. It’s cute, but annoying when I have to work, because either he makes my legs fall asleep, or I move and then he wakes up and decides to play, or launch himself onto my shoulder, where he then attacks my hair. He’s turning into quite the shoulder kitty. This is also not necessarily a good thing. If I’m sitting on the floor playing with him, he will sneak up behind me and launch himself onto my shoulder, and of course, claws must be involved to maintain balance.

Tig has learned the word “No” very well. Well, he knows what it means. That doesn’t mean he agrees with it. He’s not unlike most kids in that respect.

Suddenly, there is quiet upstairs. I think he’s sleeping. Of course, the minute I go upstairs he wakes up and hits Kitty Crazy Mode again, instantly.

Well, I’m getting less and less allergic to him. I think I’m going to give him the run of the house this weekend, except for my bedroom. It’s been suggested to me not to let him sleep in my room as a way to keep my allergies further in check. We’ll see if he lets me close the door on him. I really don’t like being awakened every hour on the hour from five o’clock on.

Often you’ll hear Palestinians complaining that Israel was founded due to European guilt over the Holocaust, but since they had nothing to do with the Holocaust, why should the Jews be allowed to create a state that dispossesses them? The Holocaust was European and the Palestinians argue they’re paying the price.

While there were many forces at work to allow the return of the Jews to Israel and the (re-)creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East, certainly sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust played a role. The status of the refugee demonstrated the need for a Jewish homeland. (A point that was emphasized by the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Arab lands after the UN approve the partition plan.)

The political leader of the Palestinians, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, lived in Nazi German during WWII, trying to enlist the Nazis to impose their final solution on Palestine once they swept through Africa.

Finally there’s proof that the Mufti not only wanted the destruction of the Jews of Palestine, but was fully aware of the destruction of the Jews of Europe.

According to Wisliceny, at the beginning of 1942 Eichmann made a detailed presentation to al-Husaini on the “solution of the European Jewish question.” The presentation took place in Eichmann’s “map room” in Berlin: “where he had collected statistical graphics on the Jewish population in the various European countries.” The Grand Mufti, Wisliceny recalls, was “very impressed.” Furthermore, al-Husaini is supposed to have put in a request to Himmler to have Eichmann send one of his assistants to Jerusalem after Germany had won the war. The representative of Eichmann was to serve as the Grand Mufti’s personal advisor: i.e. when the Grand Mufti would then set about “solving the Jewish question in the Middle East.”We can infer from other documentation that this was not just a vague idea. A declassified document on Nazi war crimes from the National Archives in Washington indicates that as of mid-1942 a special SS commando unit had plans to liquidate the Jews of Cairo following the capture of the city by German forces. (See detail below.) Gen. Erwin Rommel was supposedly disgusted by the proposition. The head of the SS unit, Walter Rauff, had earlier been involved in developing vans that served as mobile gas chambers. It should be noted that he was a German and not a Pole, as suggested in the U.S. government document.

In his memoirs, however, the Grand Mufti feigns astonishment at Himmler’s remark. On his account, Himmler asked him how he would solve the problem of the Jews in his country. Amin al-Husaini says that he answered that they should go back to where they came from. To which Himmler is supposed then to have replied: “Come back to Germany — we will never allow them to do that.” But the Grand Mufti is here white-washing his own role in history. After all, in Berlin on November 2, 1943, he publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example of the Germans, who had found a “definitive solution to the Jewish problem.”

So when the Mufti was enlisting Nazi help for the Middle East, he knew full well that they were capable of. His wasn’t just an idle dream.

When a Palestinian is accused of helping Israel he’s called a “collaborator.” Even though he’s been working to fight terror, the media uses the Palestinian term in order to cast a pall on his noble deed. The term “collaborator” is an obvious reference to those who helped the Nazis against their own countries.

This is more proof that the real Palestinian collaborator was the father of modern Palestinian nationalism. It is also revealing that despite the lofty rhetoric of independence and self determination, Palestinian nationalism is, at its root, a genocidal ideology.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

via memeorandum

A Grad missile hit a shopping mall in Ashkelon yesterday injuring 15.

Israel believes Islamic Jihad is getting the Grads from Iran. “It’s part of the Iranian war against Israel,” former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh told Israel Radio.

That’s pretty clear. And it’s been with Egypt’s connivance.

Israel Matzav observed:

Peres is now speaking in front of Bush. The part about “we’ll respond at the right time” and wishing a speedy recovery to the wounded was said in Hebrew, not in English.

A Blog for All adds:

Number of days since last Israeli injured by rocket/mortar fire: 0
Number of days since last Israeli killed by rocket/mortar fire: pending updates.

The Washington Post barely covered the attack, focusing instead on President Bush’s visit to Israel.

Four Palestinians were killed in Gaza during clashes with the Israeli military. Medical officials said that two of the dead were civilians. Later, a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a busy shopping mall in the coastal city of Ashkelon. Sixteen people were wounded, three of them seriously, including a mother and her daughter, according to Israeli hospital and police officials. A group affiliated with Hamas took responsibility for the attack.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the attack “entirely intolerable” and said Israel will “take the necessary steps so that this will stop.”

The violence was a reminder of the obstacles facing negotiators as they attempt to cobble together a peace deal — one that Bush has said he wants completed by the end of his term in January.

By this account, a firefight between the IDF and terrorists is as much a problem as a terror attack against civilians.

President Bush did make a nice statement.

“I suspect if you looked back 60 years ago and tried to guess where Israel would be at that time, it would be hard to be able to project such a prosperous, hopeful land,” Bush said after meeting with Peres. “I doubt people would have been able to see the modern Israel, which is one reason I bring so much optimism to the Middle East, because what happened here is possible everywhere.”Bush elicited a raucous standing ovation from a crowd that included other world leaders and prominent Jewish figures at a ceremony Wednesday night marking the U.S.-Israel alliance.

And I suspect that if you went back 15 years and anticipated what the nascent Palestinian state would look like it would look like you wouldn’t necessarily be surprised. It was foolish to trust Arafat. The changes necessary in the Palestinian world for their to be peace have yet to take place. As long as Palestinian nationalism is motivated more by the destruction of Israel than the building of a society, that society won’t be built.

The New York Times focused more on the terror attack and picked up this amusing bit.

The timing, though, has been difficult for Mr. Bush, in part because Mr. Olmert is the subject of a corruption investigation that some say could cost him his job. When Mr. Bush arrived in Tel Aviv Wednesday morning, Mr. Olmert’s banter with the White House national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, was picked up by a sensitive microphone.“Holding on, holding on. Don’t worry,” Mr. Olmert was overheard telling Mr. Hadley.

No word if Secretary Rice accepted DM Barak’s invitation.

See Meryl’s post from yesterday.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

As the successor to Scott Wilson, the Washington Post’s Israel correspondent Griff Witte had some mighty low expectations to meet in terms of reporting objectively. Witte has very quickly managed to establish himself the equal of Scott Wilson in terms of adopting the Palestinian narrative. A recent Q & A about Israel’s 60th birthday is very revealing.

The first question he actually handled quite well.

Silver Spring, Md.: Mr. Witte, you write that “Israel remains an unfinished project” and I am frankly glad that it is. Can any nation on the face of this earth truly be deemed a “finished project”? Wouldn’t that mean stasis and stagnation? But please do not attribute this status of Israel to the lack of a constitution — Israel is far from alone among the nations of the world to operate without a constitution. Great Britain, for one, comes to mind.

Griff Witte: An excellent question, so thank you. You’re right that no nation ever truly is finished, but I think there’s more debate in Israel than there is in most places about the nature of the state. What are Israel’s borders? How does Israel handle the Palestinian territories? Are its neighbors friend or foe? Is Israel just for Jews, or is it multireligious? Within Judaism, how does Israel balance the needs of the ultra-Orthodox against the needs of the secular?

All of these are questions I hear being batted around this Independence Day. Of course, Israel’s relative youth may account for a good part of the uncertainty.

Another possibility is that Israel has a very strong and vocal left wing that has its own newspaper.

But then we get to the second question.

Oslo, Norway: A common complaint against Israel is that they “kicked out the Arabs.” Not only do Arabs still live in Israel, but there are more Arabs living in Israel now than in any other time in history. What is the reason for the continuation of this myth?

Griff Witte: I don’t know that this is a myth. It has been well established by historians that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes — either directly or through intimidation from the advancing Israeli forces. They ended up in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and many other places beyond.

It’s also well-established, and hardly a secret, that there’s a significant Arab minority still living in Israel. About 20 percent of Israel’s population is Arab.

No mention that most of the Arabs left on their own accord or were encouraged by their leadership to leave their homes.
(more…)