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.