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.

Bradley Burston in The Palestinians’ time is running out.

You have justified every last claim and prediction of the Israeli right.

Ponder that for a moment.

Let me digress. Say that you hear tha a friend of yours, Smoky Joe, a smoker for 40 years has lung cancer. You’d of course be sad. But would your reaction be “It’s a shame he justified the prediction of the Surgeon General?”

If you were callous enough, wouldn’t it more likely be “It’s a shame he didn’t heed the Surgeon General’s warnings?”

Burston demonstrates that he is unable to admit what is obvious: the Israeli right’s assessment of the Palestinians was correct. They said don’t trust Arafat. Israel did and brought him into Gaza and then Ramallah.

They said don’t give territory to our enemies. Israel did in 1995, 2000 and 2005 and in doing so strengthened Fatah/Hamas, Hezbollah and Hamas, again, leading to increased terror from each area.

(What did work? The military solution as Moshe Arens recalled last week:

But once the Israel Defense Forces and the security services began to seriously tackle Palestinian terror, following the massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya in the spring of 2002, it quickly became clear that terror could be defeated by force. As a matter of fact, it could be defeated only by the use of force. The terrorists view any hints of Israeli willingness to give in to a portion of their essentially limitless demands as a sign of weakness, which only serves to encourage further acts of terror.

Noah Pollak, who linked to Arens, observed:

The extent to which Israel’s military victory in the intifada is simply not acceptable for discussion in enlightened quarters is amazing as a matter of cultural psychology. But this refusal also has a crippling effect on Israeli politics, as the military option against Hamas is continuously framed as a foreordained failure.

Operation Defensive Shield, did roll back the terror capabilities of Hamas and Fatah. It also was very costly in terms of lives. But that doesn’t mean that it was a failure; the actions that necessitated Defensive Shield were the problem.)

Worse than acknowledging that his political opponents were correct, by dismissively referring them as “the right” Burston shows that he’s learned nothing.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who cited Burston, isn’t much better (h/t Instapundit):

I’ve been writing recently about the existential threat that Israel will face if a Palestinian state isn’t created. What I neglect to note is that the Palestinians already live in a state of national non-existence.

So Israel’s fate is dependent on the Palestinians creating their own state, a task they have refused to engage in over the past 15 years. And yet Goldberg has been arguing that Israel has a moral necessity to see that such a state gets created. Why should Israel’s legitimacy be subject to veto by its enemies?

If Gaza under Hamas were functioning, Goldberg would have to acknowledge that since Gaza was essentially a Palestinian state, the questionable demographic threat he fears, would at least be delayed. (In fact David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue that Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza anymore.) But Goldberg will have none of that. The Palestinians claim that Gaza is still occupied and he apparently accepts that.

By tying a Palestinian state to Israel’s legitimacy, Goldberg has given Fatah and Hamas and their related thugs the final say in whether or not Israel should exist.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The next time someone tries to tell you how culturally superior Europe is to us, send them to YouTube to see the entries in this year’s Eurovision contest.

Pay particular attention to the Russian entry. It won.

Snoopy, if you can enlighten me as to what on earth the ice skater is supposed to represent, I’d be grateful. If you want to see the Russian entry in its entirety, feel free. I’m thinking there isn’t a single straight man in that video, but hey, book, cover, etc.

As for the rest, well, check out Estonia and Belgium. Oh. My. God.

I’ll be discussing the Eurovision contest in my upcoming Shire Network News contribution.

Oh, I almost forgot: I have something in the recent SNN, which is actually hosted from the Shire this week. I’ll split out my essay later this weekend.