A few weeks ago Hamas engineered a blackout of Gaza, apparently for propaganda purposes. Now its latest stunt is to deny pilgrims from going on Hajj to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia sets quotas to different regions for the number of pilgrims they can send to Mecca each year. Gaza is allowed to dispatch about 3,000.

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority and Gaza’s Hamas rulers each submitted separate lists of Gaza pilgrims to the Saudi authorities for visa approvals, but so far Saudi Arabia has rejected the Hamas list.

Hamas officials were defiant on Sunday, saying nobody would leave until those who applied through the Gaza government are given visas by Saudi Arabia.

“The priority is for those who registered with us,” said Hamas official Abdullah Abu Jarbou. “It is not for those who bypassed the legitimate government. They didn’t go through the legal channels.”

This is priceless. And remember that Egypt is at peace with Israel.

In a sign of a widening rift with regional Arab countries, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said the ban damaged “the reputation of (the) Islamic movement.”

So firing rockets at civilians and Israel doesn’t damage Hamas’s reputation, but preventing pilgrims from travel does. And if it were Israel that was stopping the pilgrim, I imagine that Egypt’s Foreign Ministry would have been a lot more emphatic.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

This time, it’s not a badly-sourced bunch of rumors from a discredited journalist. This time, there’s a mortar attack from Hamas to respond to, and an Israeli soldier who has lost his leg due to the attack. But it’s starting to sound like Israel is getting closer to a large operation in Gaza to clear out terrorists again.

Israel is nearing a wide-scale operation in the Gaza Strip, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said Saturday, several hours after eight Israel Defense Forces soldiers were injured in a mortar shell attack on the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel.

“There’s no doubt we’re getting closer to a wide-scale operation in Gaza, but it will be different from what took place in the past,” Vilnai said during an event in the southern city of Beersheba.

Of course, you have to take a look at the reasons behind the second mortar attack. It’s pretty evident:

The deputy defense minister rejected the possibility of evacuating the soldiers from the Nahal Oz base following the mortar attack, as the army did with the Zikim base last week. “We won’t vacate every place,” he said.

That’s right. Evacuate soldiers after Hamas attacks their base, and what does Hamas do? Attack more bases. It’s a pretty simple formula, one that’s been followed again and again in Israel, with the exact same result each time. You’d think they’d learn.

Some Israelis have the right idea. I like this solution a lot:

Likud Knesset members also addressed the Nahal Oz mortar attack Saturday. MK Gilad Erdan even came up with an original solution, saying the defense minister must set up a temporary detention facility in the Gaza vicinity and jail Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners there.

Erdan demanded that the new facility won’t be fortified. “It’s time for Israel to initiate creative solutions and prove to the world that it’s determined to do anything in order to stop the terror and rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Not that it will happen. But it would rid the world of terrorists, a little at time.

Israel’s foreign minister has asked the UN to take a stand against the continued rocket fire from Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni demanded in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday that the world stop ignoring attacks on Israel by Gaza militants.

Livni “demanded that the international community stop applying a policy of ignoring acts of terror aimed at hurting innocent people,” her office said in a statement.

“The international community must sound its voice and influence more clearly and decisively,” she said.

Yesterday the UN just commemorated International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People - as if having at least 12 organizations devoted to (perpetuating) the “Palestinian problem” isn’t enough. Mahmoud Abbas recently elected “President of the Palestinian State” gave a speech at the event yesterday that included a graphic (.pdf) - in the upper right hand corner - portraying all of Israel as Palestine.

Let’s remember of course that even if the UN and Palestinians complain about the lack of goods in Gaza, there’s one commodity that doesn’t suffer: rockets.

Inside this storage hold, the walls and windows had been decorated for our visit with the group’s black flags emblazoned with emblems and Arabic script. The Al-Nasser Brigades are an armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, indoctrinated by generations of Gaza’s Islamic resistance, and these days loyal to Hamas.

The room bristled with rockets in varying sizes and stages of readiness that three faceless men in balaclavas quietly choreographed in a showcase of firepower. There was even a spotlight to afford better lighting for the camera. Large red warheads filled with explosives were screwed into place atop black metal tubes and hoisted onto their launching stands.

Each rocket was labeled by hand with white paint to identify its brandname and strength: According to the group, the al-Nasr 2 reaches a distance of four kilometres. The slightly better al-Nasr 3 rocket can go nearly three times as far. t is the al-Nasr 4 — at a daunting two-plus metres in length — that is the triumph of their development efforts.

The rocket has a range of 20 kilometers, proven last May when one of them careened into a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. It happened to coincide with a visit to Israel by US president George W. Bush.

The famous tradeoff of guns and butter has been altered to today’s Gaza where the new paradigm is flour and rockets. From what I can tell, the rockets are winning.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Say, remember last year, when the news media took pictures of Hamas members sitting around a table in the dark, without telling us that the picture was shot in the daytime, with the curtains drawn, to make it seem like the Israeli refusal to ship more fuel to Hamas was actually affecting them?

Well, they’re doing it again.

“There’s no shortage of fuel in the Gaza Strip and the Electricity Company is continuing to function normally,” said a PA official. “Our people in the Gaza Strip have told us that the blackouts are all staged as part of the Hamas propaganda.”

Another PA official noted that Hamas’s lies reached their peak last January when its legislators held a meeting in a darkened hall of the Palestinian Legislative Council - while light could be seen coming in through the curtained windows.

If that’s not enough, Elder of Zion has more. These shots of Palestinians shopping in the Rafah bazaar—at the same time the UN is screaming to Israel that the poor, poor, pitiful Pals are starving—don’t get any public airing by the news services. Only shots of empty shelves and sad stories.

Elder of Zion also notes that the Palestinian press is reporting that Israel is allowing in food aid, including aid for UNRWA. So what do we see in the news today? UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon calling Ehud Olmert and telling him he needs to open the Gaza border crossings. Why?

“The secretary-general today telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to express his deep concern over the consequences of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza,” the UN press office said in a statement.

“He strongly urged the prime minister to facilitate the freer movement of urgently needed humanitarian supplies and of concerned United Nations personnel into Gaza,” it said.

Olmert’s response:

Olmert denounced the continuing rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, but “agreed to look seriously into the urgent matter” raised by Ban, the statement said.

The prime minister made it clear to the UN chief that Hamas was responsible for the violations of the truce deal. According to Olmert, Hamas is attempting to present an extreme picture of the Gaza crisis in order to renounce its responsibility.

“Israel has prevented and continues to prevent a humanitarian crisis, but as long as Israeli lives are threatened on a daily basis, Gaza’s residents can only address their complaints to the Hamas government,” he added.

Let ‘em smuggle goods from Egypt. Shut the crossings from Israel entirely. They’re doing just fine on their own.

Pictures posted on a Hebrew website specializing in Arab news showed a bustling market in Rafiah (Rafah) filled with goods of all kinds, from food to electronics, apparently belying the claims of dire shortages. Rafiah is located in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt.

Not that the world and Ban are going to let facts get in the way of their certainty that Gazans are sitting in the dark. Starving.

I bring your attention to the following three recent news summaries from the NYT as visible through Bloglines.

November 14, 2008

Deadly Gaza Border Clash Threatens Truce

By By ISABEL KERSHNER
on Hamas

Four Hamas gunmen were killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border, testing a shaky truce.

November 16, 2008

Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel

By By ETHAN BRONNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
on Olmert, Ehud

Hamas officials said the attack was revenge for the deaths over the past 11 days of 11 militants and the recent increased Israeli closing of Gaza crossings.

November 17, 2008

Israel Kills 4 Militants in Gaza Strip

By By ISABEL KERSHNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
on Terrorism

Israel’s leaders ratcheted up their rhetoric Sunday after an Israeli airstrike killed four Palestinian militants in Hamas-run Gaza, leaving a five-month truce in tatters.

Notice that the one action that’s described as leaving the “truce” in “tatters” is Israel’s response. But let’s not forget that Israel didn’t target or kill innocents as Elder of Ziyon observes. (Warning graphic photo.)

No matter how many mortars or rockets were fired into Israel, the usual MSM report would be that it “endangered” - never “violated” - the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. It’s important to remember what Hamas sought to achieve with the Tahdiya:

The cease-fire grants Hamas a golden opportunity to expand its military build-up for the next round of terror and violence. Emulating Hizbullah’s strategy, Hamas is striving to acquire longer-range and more destructive missiles to be used for deterrence and as a sword on Israel’s neck.

Israel has acknowledged Hamas, albeit unwillingly, as the de facto ruling power in Gaza. Israel’s acceptance of the cease-fire is a blow to the international war on terror and gives immunity to Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza, including al-Qaeda affiliates.

Another diplomatic consequence of the tahdiya will be increasing pressure on Israel to accept a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah in the future. That could lead to increasing demands on Israel to negotiate a permanent status arrangement with the joint Hamas-Fatah government, while Hamas remains committed to its political program for the elimination of Israel. It is important to recall that the entire Israeli-Palestinian negotiating track since the convening of the Annapolis conference was premised on the exclusion of Hamas and the ultimate achievement of an agreement between the Israeli government and the government of Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah alone.

Another important point to recall is that the ceasefire was for six months. Given that Hamas was using the opportunity to build its fortifications, build up its armaments and shore up its supplies. Israel is striking now, not to end the ceasefire, but because the ceasefire is about to end and the threat from giving Hamas six months to prepare mostly unharassed, making the threat of attacks from Gaza imminent.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Palestinians have fired more than 100 rockets during the eight months of the so-called cease-fire, including dozens of rockets in the last two weeks. But let’s just start with the order of recent events.

Israel discovers a tunnel that Hamas intends to use to kidnap more Israeli soldiers. The IDF goes in to destroy it, meets opposition from Hamas. There is a gunfight. Terrorists die, one soldier is wounded. Israel destroys the tunnel and the building it was dug from. Hamas responds by firing 35 rockets into Israel on November 4th.

Israel closes the Gaza crossings and refuses to allow in fuel and supplies. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 6th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 7th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 8th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 9th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 10th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 11th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is a brief mention of Gaza from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon during a press conference.

We were acutely conscious of the distressing conditions in Gaza. I call for Hamas and all Palestinian factions to respond positively to Egypt’s unity efforts. I call for the calm to be respected. And I call on Israel to ease the severe closure of Gaza by allowing sufficient and predictable supplies to reach the population, ensuring access for humanitarian workers, and facilitating stalled UN projects.

There is no mention of the rocketing of Israel’s civilian population.

On November 12th, more rockets are fired into Israel. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 13th, more rockets are fired into Israel. Israeli FM Tzipi Livni meets with Ban Ki-Moon and protests the barrage of rockets into Israel’s civilian areas. There is silence from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

On November 14th, more rockets are fired into Israel. The UN says they have to close down their food banks in Gaza (in spite of the fact that the very article on closing down the food bank says they have enough food to feed another 130,000 people for four weeks). Finally, after ignoring the dozens of rockets crashing into Israeli civilian areas in cities and towns, Ban Ki-Moon speaks. Or, well, issues a statement, anyway.

He calls for both sides to “exercise restraint.” Israel is killing only terrorists. Not a single Palestinian civilian has been harmed. Two Israeli civilians have suffered shrapnel wounds, and hundreds have suffered the terror of rocket attacks. And Ban Ki-Moon says that Israel should open the Gaza crossings, and supply her enemies with fuel and goods—including, I presume, the cement that Hamas is using to build the tunnels.

The Secretary-General is deeply concerned at the deterioration of the humanitarian and security situation in Gaza and southern Israel, and at the potential for further suffering and violence. He calls on all parties to uphold international humanitarian and human rights law.

The Secretary-General reiterates his condemnation of rocket attacks. He calls for an end to such attacks and urges full respect by all parties of the calm that has been in effect since 19 June 2008. The Secretary-General is concerned that food and other life saving assistance is being denied to hundreds of thousands of people, and emphasizes that measures which increase the hardship and suffering of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip as a whole are unacceptable and should cease immediately. In particular, he calls on Israel to allow urgently, the steady and sufficient supply of fuel and humanitarian assistance. He also calls on Israel to resume facilitating the activities of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and all humanitarian agencies, including through unimpeded access for UN officials and humanitarian workers.

The “calm that has been in effect” is the calm that included dozens of rockets fired, one or two or three at a time, since June. It includes the re-arming of Hamas, the digging of tunnels, the import of weapons and ammunition, and the continued holding of Gilad Shalit as a hostage, without any regard to Geneva Conventions or the human rights of the prisoner. Ban Ki-Moon swore when he was first elected that he would work tirelessly for Shalit’s release. Yeah, how’s that coming, Ban?

Once again, Jewish blood is cheap. The world simply doesn’t care that Jews are at risk. Only that their precious Palestinians might have to use the supplies that Hamas has been smuggling in via the tunnels from Egypt.

Apparently, now Israel doesn’t even have the right not to arm and supply her own enemies with the very fuel that they use to make bombs to drop on her own citizens. That now falls under the rubric of “disproportionate response.”

Not a single Palestinian civilian has so much as chipped a fingernail this time around. And still, the world calls for Israel to stop killing terrorists and reopen their supply routes.

Screw the world. And most especially, the UN, led by Ki-Moon.

Hamas has resumed full-scale attacks on Israel, complete with wounded Israelis in Sderot, and the headline to the AP story is this:

Gaza violence continues with airstrike, rockets

Notice the order of events in the headline. Airstrikes come first, even though they are in response to the rocketing of Israeli cities. But according to the AP, the rockets are in “response” to the airstrikes.

Palestinian militants attacked a major city in southern Israel with rocket fire on Friday, a serious escalation of widening violence that has all but buried a five-month-old truce.

Hamas fighters launched rocket barrages at Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza, causing panic but no casualties. They also unleashed rockets at nearby Sderot, where rescue services said one person was lightly wounded by shrapnel. Several rockets hit open areas.

The Israeli military warned residents of communities near Gaza to remain in their homes, and police and rescue services went on high alert in preparation for more attacks.

Friday’s barrages followed an earlier strike by Israeli aircraft targeting militants firing rockets in northern Gaza. Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of Gaza’s Health Ministry said two gunmen were moderately wounded.

Do you see the deliberate anti-Israel slant of the AP reporting? The barrage was in response to airstrikes, which were carried out because of an earlier rocket barrage—and somehow, the AP manages to place the blame squarely on Israel’s shoulders, once again, for defending herself against terrorists launching rockets at the civilian population. And notice the attempt to play down the damages by the rockets.

And in upside-down world, even the AP is noticing that maybe—just maybe—the truce is over.

Hamas, like Israel, said it wants to continue the truce, but events signaled the opposite is happening.

This is after they already published this in the article:

Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, and said it fired deep into Israel to demonstrate the price the Jewish state would pay if the truce collapsed.

“The resistance…is able to hit the Zionist depth,” said Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri. “Either there’s full commitment to the truce and all its conditions, or the resistance will have a position on every Zionist crime.”

And what would an AP article be without pointing out that Hamas rocket barrages are mostly harmless, but Israel’s kill Palestinians. The fact that they mostly kill terrorists? Irrelevant.

The Egyptian-mediated truce has largely halted a cycle of Palestinian rocket attacks and deadly Israeli reprisals.

Funny how the actual toll of Palestinian rocket attacks never makes it into the AP articles. Well, no, not really. The AP bias is pretty well known here.

But there’s worse to come. Stay tuned.

The short version.

A longer version.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The guy being promoted as the great “moderate” hope of the Palestinians remembers his maximum leader quite fondly.

During the memorial, held at Abbas’ Mukataa compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian president said, “The path of the shahids - Arafat, George Habash (founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and (assassinated Hamas spiritual leader) Sheikh Ahmed Yassin - is the path that we cherish; it is aimed at upholding the Palestinians’ nationalist and sovereign resolutions.”

Elder of Ziyon notes that Abbas’s hankering for dead terrorists, is nothing unusual.

But Ynet also notes:

The memorial underscored the growing divisions between the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank is ruled by Arafat’s successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Gaza is run by the Islamic militant Hamas which seized the territory in 2007.

You could say that. It was illegal to commemorate Arafat’s passing in Gaza.

The first event was scheduled for Monday in Rafah and was supposed to combine three issues: Arafat’s memory; a protest over the siege of Gaza and the closing of the border crossings; and support for rapprochement talks between Hamas and Fatah being held in Cairo. Officially, all the canceled demonstrations were not under Fatah auspices but were being arranged by a coordinating committee of all PLO member organizations. In any case, the organizers of the Rafah rally were summoned by the police, held for a few hours and then asked to sign a statement they would not organize any activities or they would be fined. Some signed and others refused. The organizations have canceled all their demonstrations, though Fatah made no official announcement.Printers were also ordered not to print any material related to Arafat or his pictures without approval.

When will the international Palestinian sympathizers start protesting this blatant effort to stifle the nationalist feelings of the Palestinians?

Other cherished memories of Arafat are at Israelly Cool, Elder of Ziyon, Scrapple Face (h/t Elder of Ziyon), and Boker Tov Boulder.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Interesting take on today’s attempt by the IDF to stop terrorists from violating the Israeli border and attempting to murder Israelis. From Ynet:

IDF forces thwarted an attempt by a Palestinian terror cell to infiltrate Israel through the Gaza border fence Wednesday noon. The cell, which included four or five members, was apparently planning to place explosive devices in the area.

According to military sources, gunmen approached the fence in an area east of Khan Younis and were about to enter Israeli territory when a paratrooper force identified them and opened fire at them.

Four Palestinians were killed in the clashes and several were injured. One soldier was lightly injured in his hand and was evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

The force uncovered Kalashnikov rifles and grenades on the gunmen’s bodies.

From the AP:

Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought with missiles and mortars along the Gaza-Israel border on Wednesday, raising new concerns that an increasingly shaky five-month-old truce might collapse.

Four Hamas militants were killed in the exchange, and the Hamas military wing said it would retaliate.

And the AP’s attempt at balance:

The Israeli military and Palestinian militants gave conflicting versions of how the fighting started.

Israel’s military said it began when Israeli forces spotted armed militants approaching Gaza’s border fence, near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. The men were trying to lay an explosive device near the fence, the military said.

An exchange of fire erupted. The militants set off an explosive device and fired three mortars at troops, the military said. Israeli soldiers hit four militants and an Israeli soldier was slightly injured, the army said.

Later, Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at open fields, the army said.

Palestinian militants said the battle began when they spotted Israeli forces crossing into Gaza and fired upon them.

The military would not say whether Israeli forces entered Gaza.

Take a look at the words in bold. The AP claims this was a battle of missiles and mortars. And yet, the IDF did not use missiles in the battle with the terrorist cell. They fired missiles at an empty field (?!). But it’s a battle of “missiles and mortars,” making it sound like the IDF fired missiles at the terrorists, instead of what it actually was: Terrorists firing mortars at troops, a tactic used to great extent by Hezbullah during the 2006 Lebanon war. One IDF soldier was lightly injured on his hand. It seems the IDF has figured out those tactics by now, and thankfully, Hamas is still fighting the last war.

But the media is still the anti-Israel media that we know and hate.

Something bothered me about this picture of a Palestinian girl in Gaza protesting the latest Hamas imposed blackout.

How old is she? Two?

Crossposted at Yourish.

Yesterday’s Qassam attack against Ashkelon didn’t yet make it into the NY Times report about the fighting between Israel and Hamas, but this did:

Military officials said that the initial army raid was a “pinpoint” operation aimed at thwarting a specific threat, and that Israel remained committed to the truce.

The truce has largely held so far, despite some sporadic rocket and mortar fire by Gaza renegades and complaints from Hamas that Israel has not gone far enough in easing the economic embargo on the area.

Note how the violations of the “truce” are attributed to “renegades.” It’s as if Hamas couldn’t stop the attacks if they wanted to. And then without qualification there’s the mention of Hamas’s complaint against Israel, with no context.

How about this:

Hamas, the dominant faction in the Palestinian government, is building its military capacity in the Gaza Strip, constructing tunnels and underground bunkers and smuggling in ground-to-air missiles and military-grade explosives, senior Israeli officials say.

The officials, including a top military commander who spoke in an interview on Friday, said that Hamas had learned tactics from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, which brought in and stored thousands of rockets in bunkers near the northern Israeli border before its war with Israel last summer.

So that was before the truce? Fine, this example have been since the truce.

Everything that goes into Gaza, either from Egyptian tunnels or from Israel, gets taken by Hamas. Hamas takes everything it needs first and then places the rest on the market, heavily taxing it to ensure that the “international boycott” against that terror organization is meaningless.

Cement is a major item that Hamas covets. As the Shin Bet’s Yuval Diskin testified yesterday, Hamas is using the cement it is receiving to build fortified bunkers and tunnels to transport and store weapons.

And why is this relevant? The end of the Times’s report tells us:

On Tuesday, a World Bank delegation opened a sewer project, long delayed by the standoff between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza to prevent raw sewage from spilling into residential areas, The A.P. reported.

The $63 million project is the initiative of Tony Blair, the international envoy for the Middle East, and the opening brought the highest-level World Bank delegation to visit Gaza in three years.

The delegation met with representatives of the Palestinian Water Authority, but not with members of Hamas, which has run Gaza since it seized power in June 2007.

But it doesn’t tell us the rest of the story. Backspin though, didn’t forget.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is neither capricious nor arbitrary. It may not be airtight, but it is designed to prevent Hamas from building up its capacity to attack Israel. Hamas has shown that it will use anything to build up its fortifications or to attack Israel. The “truce” has simply been downtime as Hamas prepares to attack Israel again. What’s remarkable (if somewhat unwise, in my view) has been Israel’s forebearance.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Yesterday, the IDF went a few yards into Gaza to destroy a tunnel that was going to be used to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Hama terrorists are really good at scurrying like rats underground, blowing up roads and parking lots on the Israeli side of the border, and popping up to grab any soldier that they haven’t killed so they can hold him in violation of all Geneva Conventions (because rules are for suckers, unless they’re Hamas rules) and try to use him as a pawn in getting thousands of their terrorists out of Israeli jails.

Hamas fought the IDF. The IDF won. Then Hamas did what Hamas does, and fired rockets at the Israeli civilian population as a “result” of the IDF operation. And the world media, of course, blamed Israel for breaking the truce.

Israel airstrike imperils Gaza truce with Hamas
Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers scrambled Wednesday to contain fallout from the worst fighting since a truce was declared five months ago, but a flare-up later in the day threatened to unravel it anew.

Gaza militants pounded southern Israel early Wednesday with dozens of rockets to avenge raids a day earlier that killed six militants, but the guns quickly fell silent with neither side appearing to have much to gain from renewed hostilities.

“We have no intention of violating the quiet,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on a tour of areas bordering Gaza. “But in any place where we need to thwart an action against Israeli soldiers and civilians, we will act.”

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the group fired deep into Israel to demonstrate the price of continued aggression. At the same time, he said, Hamas had contacted Egyptian mediators to find ways of keeping the truce intact.

But late Wednesday night, Israel launched another airstrike, killing a Palestinian militant in northern Gaza. The army said it was targeting a rocket launcher, whom the Islamic Jihad group identified as its own. The group had fired two rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot and one of its leaders, Khader Habib, declared the truce over.

Hamas, which agreed to the Egyptian-mediated truce, said Israel was breaching it.

Please note that the the second-to-last paragraph reads as follows:

Sporadic rocket attacks on southern Israel have persisted since the truce, but the attacks were carried out by smaller groups seeking to embarrass Hamas for preserving a truce with the Jewish state.

The AP presents the Hamas line completely, by insisting that Hamas had nothing to do with the rocket attacks, knowing full well that nobody sneezes in Gaza without asking Hamas’ permission. So the Hamas truce violations never “imperil” the truce.

The Guadian actually outright blamed Israel for violating the truce, but I refuse to link to that rag today. It’s too enraging, and, well, the British bias against Israel has been going on since before the modern state of Israel was created. In fact, British Arabists are largely responsible for the problems in the Middle East today. Had they not put the Sauds in place—if they had, for instance, put a moderate Islamic group on the Saudi throne—the world would be a very different place today.

But the media would still hate Israel. It’s a Jewish thing. Let’s be honest.

A “work accident” killed a Hamas terrorist—sorry, “policeman”—in Gaza yesterday. But read the article with me and watch the mysteries unfold.

A Hamas policeman was killed and several Palestinians were wounded Thursday night when an explosive device went off in a police station in Gaza City.

Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said the device was found earlier in the day in the Hamas-controlled territory and was taken to the police station to be dismantled.

The bomb was put there, possibly by Fatah loyalists. Then again, there are so many terrorist groups wandering about Gaza these days, who knows who put the bomb in “Hamas-controlled territory” (which I thought was the entire Gaza Strip).

Here’s one of the things that makes you go Hmm:

While security men were taking the bomb apart, it exploded, causing several secondary blasts, Shahwan said.

“Several secondary blasts” indicates that there were other explosives at this “police station.” Now, I understand that the world is not all like America, but still, explosives aren’t generally kept in a police station where you’re attempting to disarm a bomb.

But here’s the other thing that makes you go Hmm:

Moaaya Hassaneen, director of the Health Ministry’s emergency department, told AFP named the policeman killed as Alaa Jihad al Ajna, 30, and said the incident occurred in a passport office in the center of Gaza City, and not in a police station.

So a “police officer” takes the unexploded bomb to a passport office in downtown Gaza—why, we’re not sure; perhaps he was going to get it papers so it could travel to Israel—attempts to disarm it, and it explodes. Causing “secondary explosions” at this, ah, passport office.

Really, is there truly anyone out there that doesn’t understand what a nest of terrorism Gaza is?

Oh. Wait. Yes, yes, there is.

In fact, there are lots of fools out there. A whole boatload of ‘em.

A boat loaded with international protesters has arrived in the Gaza Strip to bring attention to Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory.

The 27 passengers, coming together from 13 different countries include Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead McGuire, Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, and Israeli leftist Gideon Spiro. Israeli MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) who was reportedly supposed to join the voyage, was not present on the boat.

They are scheduled to remain in Gaza for four days.

The boat chartered by the US-based Free Gaza group sailed from the nearby island of Cyprus on Tuesday and arrived in Gaza in pouring rain early Wednesday.

I wonder if the ship of fools is aware of the incident at the “passport office.” After all, they’ll need passports if they want to get into Israel. I hope this doesn’t impact their ability to get out of Gaza, like it did Tony Blair’s sister-in-law. (Well, of course that was sarcasm. I hope they get stuck there for months.)

Interesting story from the Jerusalem Post, but how should I feel about it?
Should I be encouraged by this?

The 150-meter-long tunnel was discovered by Palestinian Authority security forces on Monday and was immediately reported to the IDF, which sent an Engineering Corps force to destroy the structure.

IDF sources and defense officials said Tuesday that the tunnel had been found empty and that it was unclear what its purpose was.

Or discouraged by this?

The Post learned on Thursday, however, that several hundred kilograms of explosives and arms were found in a branch of the tunnel and that the PA security forces confiscated it before informing the IDF of the discovery.

Israel Matzav says I should be discouraged:

Let’s stop right there for a minute. WHERE did all of those weapons go? Obviously, back to the ‘Palestinians’ who put them there, which shows us all the limits of ‘Palestinian’ cooperation with the IDF and the security forces

Plus he shares some informed speculation what the purpose of the tunnel was.

This is the second recent escalation in the business of tunneling. Hmm, will the PA follow the lead of Hamas and start regulating them?

Seriously though, this suggests that Hamas is exporting its tunneling technology to PA areas.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

One of my biggest complaints about Palestinian demands for a state, is that they’ve never set up the institutions of government. Well now, in Gaza, Hamas has taken the first step. Call it P-OSHA. (h/t Daily Alert)

Gaza’s smugglers are going legit: Owners of the scores of tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border have registered with the Hamas authorities, pledged to pay workers’ compensation and hooked up their operations to the electricity network.

The once clandestine business has come out into the open. In one place, dozens of large tents, each marking a tunnel work site, were pitched just yards from an Egyptian watchtower beyond the border wall.

Elder of Ziyon who follows the tunnel industry actually had this story first.

Mere Rhetoric puts things a little differently from the way I did.

First of all: there are economists in Gaza, which is just how it was in Auschwitz right? More to the point: combine this with Hamas’s new online terror course and you kind of have to admit that they’ve gone from being a ragtag bunch of genocidal lunatics to being a well-organized cadre of genocidal lunatics:

I wonder if these new safety rules will apply to the north Gaza tunnels too?

Somehow, I don’t think that Hamas is building tunnels to smuggle in supplies from Israel. It sounds more like they want another few Gilad Shalits.

This news coming on the heels of Khaled Meshaal’s comment that Israel is “unreliable.” Of course, Hamas is suffering from a decline in popularity, so perhaps Hamas is demanding more for Shalit and Israel is balking, which would be motivating Hamas to up the ante.

All speculation of course. But it would seem to fit recent events.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

See if you can find the most interesting viewpoint in this article. Yes, you’ll have to read it through first. But here’s the basics: The AP is detailing how Hamas will refuse to recognize a change to the Palestinina Basic Law that extends Mahmoud Abbas’ term as president.

Hamas will cease to recognize Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president after Jan. 8 and replace him with one of its own leaders, according to a resolution approved by the Islamic movement’s legislators Monday.

The Hamas resolution demands that Abbas issue a decree by Wednesday to hold new presidential elections within three months, to coincide with what Hamas says is the end of his term.

[...] If Hamas does withdraw recognition from Abbas, it would sever another link between the two sides and also undermine Abbas’ legitimacy in the eyes of many Palestinians.

Okay, got the gist of it? Hamas, the terrorist group that took over the Gaza Strip in a wave of violent attacks that included throwing bound Fatah members off buildings, rocketing civilian homes, and resulted in over 100 dead Palestinians, including, of course, women and children—yeah, that Hamas is pretending to care about the legitimacy of a law that they never followed in the first place except to put their people in place to take over. And the AP repeats their lies uncritically. Get a load of how they describe the Hamas takeover. Remember, over 100 Palestinians were killed. Think about how they’d describe an action in which over 100 Palestinians were killed by the IDF, and then read this:

Hamas has been in control of Gaza since its violent takeover of the territory in June 2007, leaving Abbas only in charge of the West Bank.

Media bias? Media bias? What anti-Israel media bias? Whitewashing Palestinian terrorism? Come on. You’re imagining it.

All of this is prelude to Hamas’ attempt to take over the West Bank and encircle Israel. I know they want to try. I don’t think they’re going to be allowed to succeed. The IDF may have removed a few checkpoints in the West Bank, but the West Bank isn’t Gaza. Hamas won’t have such an easy time of it. The really sick thing is that I can see Israeli soldiers being put at risk to effectively save Fatah’s collective ass. Then agian, it is in Israel’s interest not to let the West Bank fall to the terrorists. The overt terrorists, anyway.

The Supreme Court refused to hear Sami al-Arian’s appeal. Countdown to expulsion or prison can begin.

The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from a former Florida professor once accused of being a top Palestinian terrorist.

The high court’s decision means that Sami Al-Arian, who once taught at the University of South Florida, is a step closer to facing trial in northern Virginia for refusing to testify to a grand jury.

Al-Arian struck a plea bargain in 2005 admitting that he conspired to assist the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He argued that the terms of the deal barred the government from demanding his testimony in other terror cases.

But a federal appeals court disagreed, and now the US Supreme Court is refusing to intervene. A judge in Virginia had wanted the appeal to be resolved before trying Al-Arian for contempt of court.

MEMRI’s enemies keeps on accusing the organization of cherry-picking quotes, or pulling them out of context. I’d like to know what MEMRI’s enemies can possibly say to excuse this excrescence, who has managed to both steal and warp one of the best concepts of all of Judaism—which was, of course, copied by Islam. The Jewish concept is that when one takes a life, it is as if a whole world has been destroyed. Islam borrowed that concept. Radical Islam appears to have changed it for the much, much worse:

Hamas Parliament Member Fathi Hammad tells Al-Aqsa TV, the television station of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip, that Allah hates the Jews more than anyone and that the 15 million Jews in the world are worse than the 4.5 billion infidels in the world. Hammad adds that killing one Jew is like killing 30 million Jews in the eyes of Allah.

Click on the link to watch.

An exact quote: “Allah has chosen you to fight the people he hates most—the Jews.”

And displaying the murderous math of the jihadi mind, dividing the number of infidels in the world by the number of Jews—and when he says Jews, he doesn’t mean “Zionists”—gives you a jihadi sum on which to base each murder. 30 million.

Disgusting. Depraved. Despicable. These are the people that Jimmy Carter defends as the free-and-fair elected representatives of the Palestinian people, while ignoring the hatred spewed out on a daily basis.

And these are the members of the organization that the EU and the UN seem to think Israel should sit down with and negotiate. Because this is just rhetoric, right?

Wrong.

Ehud Olmert, not content with leaving Israel in a near-shambles, manages to make things even worse on his way out by declaring that Israel needs to surrender entirely to the Palestinians, or there will be no peace.

In the farewell interview, published Monday, Olmert also said Israel would have to leave the Golan Heights to make peace with Syria.

In the interview, Olmert said, “We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, one meaning that we will withdraw in practice from nearly all of the territories, if not from all of them,” Olmert said.

Olmert said Israel would keep “a percentage” of the West Bank but would have to give Palestinians the same amount of Israeli territory in exchange, “because without this there will be no peace.”

He also said Israel would have to leave parts of east Jerusalem, saying Israel couldn’t hope to maintain its control of the more than 200,000 Arab residents there.

Did I say “surrender entirely to the Palestinians”? Because what I meant was, “Surrender entirely.” Give up the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. And what, pray tell, will Israel get in return? Peace? You mean like the peace that exists for the residents of the Negev? The peace that exists in Sderot?

Israel will have peace, even thought Nasrallah is saying that there will never be peace with Israel because Israel doesn’t “belong” in that fictional nation known as “Palestine”?

“Jerusalem and Palestine, from the sea to the river, belong to the Palestinian people, the Arabs and the Muslims, and no one has the authority to concede a grain of earth, wall or stone from the holy land,” Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said Friday evening.

You mean peace with the Iranians even as they constantly predict the end of Israel?

You mean peace with Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that is calling for renewed waves of suicide bombings? The Hamas that’s looking to take over the West Bank, which Olmert says Israel “must” give back to the Palestinians?

It’s simply unbelievable to me that he’s managing to try his best to take the ship of state down with him as he drowns. He’s definitely Israel’s Jimmy Carter—trying to make deals where he has no authority, no mandate, and no business making those deals.

He can’t leave office fast enough for me.

Notice what’s missing from this headline from the NYT?

Hamas Strikes at Gaza Clan Known for Criminal Activity

Well, let’s look at the first paragraph of the story:

Eleven members of a large Palestinian clan, including a 1-year-old, were killed along with a Hamas police officer late Monday and early Tuesday, when Hamas forces clashed with gunmen at the family’s compound here, witnesses said.

The number of dead. If Israel had targeted a Qassam launching site and it had been close to a home and the resulting explosion killed eleven people including a baby, what would the headline have read?

Israeli raid in Gaza kills baby, ten others

Now notice what’s missing from my hypothetical headline. I didn’t include the reason for the Israeli raid, but the headline defending a Hamas assault on a residential neighborhood mentions “criminal activity.”

Elder of Ziyon, points out that the Doghmush clan was hardly innocent.

To be fair, the Doghmushes are hardly innocent. According to the usually anti-Hamas Firas Press, the Doghmushes fired rockets and mortars from their compound towards Mahmoud al-Zahhar’s house in Gaza City during the fighting as well. So both sides have wanton disregard for civilian lives.

Still that doesn’t change the implication of the headline. No headline about an Israeli raid that killed eleven people in Gaza would contain the phrase “to halt terror attacks,” or “to halt militant attacks.”

Israeli raids that kill Palestinians are reported by identifying the number killed as if the death toll by itself stands as an indictment of the Israeli action. But it’s not just that the headline that justifies the Hamas attack. Here’s the second paragraph:

The assault on the powerful Dagmush clan, notorious for both militant and criminal activity, signaled an apex in the campaign by Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, to impose internal order, and it was welcomed by many people here. The Dagmush family was considered the last large clan challenging Hamas authority in Gaza, after Hamas cracked down in early August on the Hillis clan, which is loyal to Hamas’s rival, Fatah.

Again phrases like “impose internal order” and “welcomed by many people here” would not be found in an article about an Israeli raid. The clan is described as “notorious” and “criminal.” In an article about an Israeli raid, we’d get the term “militant” but never “terrorist” even if the actions precipitating the raid fit the dictionary definition of a terror attack.

Also the terror activity that Israel was defending against would have been qualified with “Israeli military sources say,” instead of described in definite fashion as the “militant and criminal activity” was presented here.

The headline and second paragraph were both written in exculpatory fashion. If Israel had been defending civilians in Sderot the tone would have been accusatory.

More from Israelly Cool and Meryl.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Say, how many headlines you think this would create if it had been the IDF that killed a baby?

Baby among 11 dead after Hamas raids criminal gang’s Gaza base
Forces from Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of Gaza, attacked a compound belonging to a powerful criminal gang yesterday in a heavy street battle that left 11 dead, including a baby boy.

The fighting began on Monday when a Hamas policeman was killed with a shot to the head while Hamas forces were trying to arrest a wanted member of the Doghmush clan inside the headquarters of the Gaza municipality. After the shooting, Hamas mounted a major raid on the clan in al-Sabra in eastern Gaza.

The attack lasted until dawn yesterday, with heavy fighting in the streets of the city. Another Hamas policeman was killed along with 10 members of the clan, all young men apart from two children, a boy aged one and a 16-year-old, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. A further 42 people were injured.

Hamas said its forces had been involved in an operation against “fugitives”.

But it’s not Israel, it’s Hamas, so the AP doesn’t bother putting out hourly updates. The AFP doesn’t even mention the dead baby. Reuters barely mentions it. But there are no breathless updates, no constantly circulating death and casualty updates, no quotes from mourning relatives, no pictures of the bloody child held out to dozens of screaming Palestinians.

Funny, that.

I guess dead Palestinian babies don’t count when Palestinians are causing the deaths by virtue of not caring that they’re sending RPGs into a house. Funny how Desmond Tutu doesn’t come out and call those war crimes.

Well, actually, no, not really. We all know about Israeli Double Standard Time. This is just more evidence of the media bias.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad manages to make yet another anti-Semitic remark while pretending that he has nothing against the Jews.

Iran’s official news website reported that the Iranian president called Haniyeh on the occasion of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and expressed his support for the Palestinian people.

“Today, the resistance in Palestine is a source of pride for all Muslims and freedom lovers in the world,” Ahmadinejad said. “The Palestinian nation is fighting against the most despicable people on the face of this earth…the resistance, which is burning in the faith of the Palestinian nation, is shaking up the Zionist enemy.”

Of course his apologists like Juan Cole will insist he means “Zionists,” not Jews. But we know better. And by the way, the people who keep saying that if only Israel would talk to Hamas, things would get better?

I’m thinking not.

“The Palestinian nation will never recognize Israel, and the banner of resistance will never be put down,” he said, while slamming the Gaza Strip siege.

I have lost track of exactly how many times Hamas leaders have said they will never recognize Israel, even immediately following Jimmy Carter’s sit-down with them last year. How many times does a terrorist group have to say it wants to destroy Israel before the rest of the world will believe that it wants to destroy Israel?

In recent years there have consistent attempts in the Western media to portray Hamas as just another political party.

Ahmad Ayyad, candidate No. 3 on the Islamic bloc’s slate, ran down a list of what he considered to be Abu Dis’s most pressing needs: new roads, services for women, public parks, a central slaughterhouse that would abide by health codes.

His full beard signaled his affiliation with a radical Islamic movement that rejects the existence of Israel, but Ayyad also sounded like a garden-variety grass-roots policy wonk who said he wanted to “bridge the gap between the citizens and the local authorities.”

And a year later there was this:

The mayor won a landslide victory from the inside of an Israeli jail, and still sits there today. The city banned a cultural festival from its grounds, in no small part because singing, dancing and the mixing of men and women reflects “a Western mentality.”

And yet, the budget deficit has been tamed, city employees are getting raises and more roads are being paved courtesy of the new party in power - Hamas.

In the months leading up to the 2006 Palestinian election that brought Hamas to power there were plenty of articles portraying the rejectionist, terrorist group as a bunch of good government moderates.

And yet what has happened since Hamas has come to power in Gaza?

Well Hamas has looked after its own financial well being:

The ceasefire has also been detrimental to Hamas, because the underground border traffic is one of its key revenue sources. The Islamists are believed to collect about $10,000 (€6,450) a day from the tunnel owners in the form of “usage fees,” as well as “value-added taxes” — all payable in cash to armed money collectors who wait at the tunnel exits. If a pack of cigarettes costs 74 cents in Egypt, it goes for €1.85 ($2.87) in Gaza, with half of the profits going to Hamas. And a lot of people smoke in the Gaza Strip.

The Islamists also control the distribution of gasoline. Anyone who wishes to buy gas must first buy an “insurance policy” from Hamas, for about €170 ($264), in return for a coupon that entitles its holder to buy 20 liters (5.3 gallons) once every two weeks — even now, with Israel allowing 1 million liters (264,000 gallons) of fuel for cars into the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, many residents still drive with a mixture of vegetable and used deep-frying grease. As a result, the Gaza Strip smells like a French-fry stand.

Its heavy handed politicization of medicine has led to a doctors’ strike.

The medical official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said Hamas-run security forces had started rounding up doctors and health workers and taking them to hospitals by force.

The doctors went on strike Saturday to protest the sacking of some 50 doctors and other health workers by the Hamas-run health ministry, saying the decision was politically motivated.

They’ve cracked down on the teachers’ union too:

According to the organizers, several protesters were arrested. The teachers claimed that about a quarter million students are suffering from disruptions in their studies caused by the struggle between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

The teachers, members of Palestinian Authority’s professional unions, called for the strike at the beginning of the school year in Gaza.

The unions identifying with Fatah, including the teachers and their colleagues in the medical field, are protesting what they call illegal appointments made by the Hamas government.

(h/t Solomonia)

They’ve desecrated a mosque:

CBC News recently entered what is, theoretically, a closed military area in the grim Shejaiya section of Gaza City. This was the stronghold of the Hilles clan, one of Gaza’s well-armed mafias, and it was recently the scene of the worst violence in Gaza since the Hamas takeover.

All the dead were Palestinian. Hamas used the minaret of the local mosque as a firebase in a bloody assault on the Hilles clan, many of whom are allied with the secular Fatah movement.

Eleven Hilles men were killed. Dozens of others ran for the border — the Israeli border. In a humiliating scene, wounded and terrified Hilles clansmen begged the Israelis to save them from Hamas. They were strip-searched, interrogated and treated in Israeli hospitals before being shipped to a refuge in the sweltering West Bank town of Jericho.

Not surprisingly, support for Hamas in Gaza, where they have complete control is eroding:

Someone says that Hamas is firmly in control.

“No, Hamas does not control Gaza,” she cuts in. Waving her finger, surrounded by children, she issues a challenge. “All our young men will be back. The children will grow up and fight for revenge. The most important thing is to take revenge.”

Considering the neighbourhood is full of Hamas gunmen, it’s a gutsy statement. But she is not alone in voicing opposition. In Gaza City’s market square, a crowd gathers as people pour out their own anger about the siege to the CBC crew. Essentials are in short supply, they say.

“We have no jobs, no fuel,” says one man, “and the borders are closed.”

More here.

In the meantime plenty of news organizations highlight Lauren Booth’s adventures in Gaza ignoring the tyranny of her sponsors. Though we hear comparisons to Darfur - and though Hamas supports Sudan! - there’s no evidence of mass starvation in Gaza. And yet the petty tyrannies of Haniyeh and company go largely unreported.

One would think that, in the name of due diligence, news organizations that were so keen to claim that Hamas stood for good government would want to report that the reality has not matched the promise.

Apparently keeping the illusion of a pragmatic Hamas alive is more important than exposing their corruption.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Time after time the Palestinians try to evade responsibility for terrorism. Now they’ve been nailed in court and they’re still trying to evade justice:

A federal judge awarded the family a default judgment of $192.7 million in damages after the P.L.O. and the Palestinian Authority refused to defend the suit on the merits.

But now the Palestinians, holding themselves out as a partner in the Middle East peace process, have changed lawyers, and asked the judge for a second chance. The judge, Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has agreed to set aside the judgment and give them that chance.

But there’s a catch. He is requiring the Palestinians to post a bond of $192.7 million so that if they lose again, the damages would be paid.

So Abbas and Fayyad have sworn that they can’t afford to pay the judgment. But this leads to another problem:

Another expert, Beth Van Schaack, an associate law professor at Santa Clara University, said that the legal process, if the Palestinians do participate fully, could allow an inquiry into Palestinian finances, and whether money went to support terrorism.

“The Abbas administration has gotten themselves in a little bit of a bind,” Professor Van Schaack said. “If they are claiming, ‘We can’t put up the bond because we don’t have the money,’ ” she said, “that opens the door to do some level of discovery about money.”

As Elder of Ziyon who has done more reporting on the subject than the NYT notes, the PA has been spending most of its budget in Gaza, effectively using those funds to help Hamas. (And yes, unfortunately, this is going on with Israel’s acquiescence.)

No wonder, then, that the attorney for the plaintiffs, David Strachman says:

Mr. Strachman argued in court papers that the descriptions of Palestinian finances had been “woefully incomplete and frankly disingenuous.”

“The issue is: What assets do they have?” he told the court in July.

And where are they spending them?

UPDATE: I’d forgotten this item from two months ago:

The international community has paid out nearly a billion dollars in direct aid to the Palestinians in six months, officials of the International Donors’ Conference for the Palestinian State said here late Monday, while hitting out at Israeli restrictions on movement by Palestinians.

The Palestinians are receiving plenty of aid. The main question is what they’re doing with it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Medical professionals and paramedics from 18 countries will be competing in a lifesaving “Olympics” hosted in Israel.

The first MDA Olympics, initiated by MDA director-general Eli Bin and medical division director Dr. Zvi Feigenberg, took place in 2006 around the Kinneret and the Western Galilee. But this year’s competition will bring more medical teams - 40 - from more countries and will open on the top of Masada.

The competitions are aimed at testing the professionalism and capabilities of the medical teams - in saving lives. Medics and paramedics from MDA, the IDF and international emergency services from Turkey, Canada, Ireland, England, Holland, Norway, the US, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Jordan and Poland will participate.

On the two consecutive days, the teams will go through 11 stations of treatment and safety, including one at night, during which they will have to deal with various scenes that will test their capabilities for giving proper treatment responses, medical response for “victims” of a mass casualty incident, treatment for conventional and non-conventional incidents and also giving life-saving treatment to patients and victims with problems in the fields of trauma, cardiology, pediatrics and respiratory emergencies.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, medical professionals are engaged in a different kind of lifesaving Olympics. They are running as fast as they can to get away from the Hamas authorities in order to save their own lives.

Speaking from Ramallah, Zakarnah told Ma’an, “De facto government police on Tuesday arrested Maysarah Fayyad, a nurse who works at Mubarak Hospital, Dr Kamal An-Namlah, head of surgeons at Nasser Hospital, Dr Abdul-Halim Al-Masri, from Ash-Shifa Hospital, Wisam Karim, administration employee at Muhammad Ad-Durrah Hospital, Usamah As-Sa’idi and Muhammad Lafi from Muhammad Ad-Durrah Hospital.

He added that de facto government security assaulted the arrestees, beating while them in detention at Al-Mashtal prison in order to pressure them to end strike.

“The one who supervised interrogation of the arrestees was Salih Kaheel, director of de facto government detectives in Gaza City,” Zakarnah added.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Tony Blair’s sister in law and other “peace activists” sailed to Gaza to express solidarity with the Gazans who are under “siege.” Neither Israel nor Egypt will let Ms. Booth leave by land, so currently she’s been trying to stay busy. She wanted to go shopping, but the shelves at the grocery store were bare due to the Israeli siege.

No they weren’t.

British journalist and peace activist Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of former British premier Tony Blair who is now an international Middle East peace envoy, shops at a grocery store in Gaza City on September 3, 2008.

No words of concern from her about the plight of Gazan doctors or of the patients who can’t get treated. But she’s awfully chummy with the guy who ordered the crackdown. Apparently her concern for Palestinians only extends as far as the camera’s lens can reach.

(Despite the impossibly high concentration of photographers in Gaza, there are relatively few pictures of people waiting for health care and none of the violence against doctors. But there are plenty of Booth with or without chief Gaza thug Haniyeh.)

Tim McGirk of Time seems more interested in promoting the legend of Lauren Booth than the plight of Gaza’s doctors.

Booth’s two young kids started school on Tuesday and she frets about how they’ll handle their mother’s absence. “When they ask: ‘Mummy when are you coming home?’ I have to say ‘I don’t know.’ And that’s a frightening answer for a child.”

Given that she’s smiling in at least half of the available pictures of her, I find it hard to believe that she’s suffering all