Yes we’ve heard of the terrible siege that Israel has laid against Gaza. Mere Rhetoric catalogues all of the charges against Israel and shows them to be bogus.

The latest to fall is how Israel’s blockade harmed the sick and injured in Gaza. Israel actually allows the vast majority of those who apply to leave for medical treatment to get treatment in Israel.

Elder of Ziyon has more.

Which means that during this horrible “siege,” Israel has been doubling and re-doubling the number of patients allowed from Gaza to Israel or the PA for treatment.

Additionally as the JCPA - the source for these figures - points out

# The facts are that Israel has provided ever increasing numbers of approvals of permits since the Hamas takeover of Gaza, despite increasing rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population, including mortar and terror attacks directed at the Erez crossing used by patients.
# At the same time, there have been at least 20 incidents where Palestinians used medical missions to attempt terror attacks.

Reading things like this makes me wonder if Israel actually cares more about Palestinians than the Palestinian leadership does. The most recent medical efforts we saw from Hamas was its persecution of Fatah affiliated doctors, making health care in Gaza even less available. Yet it’s Israel that will be in the dock, accused by the likes of Amnesty International of preventing access to health care and other crimes:

Amnesty International raises concern over human rights violations entrenched in the normative and institutional structure of the Israeli state: the failure of Israel to recognize the applicability to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) of humanitarian and human rights law; the unlawful settlements in the OPT; the construction of a fence/wall mostly within the OPT; the demolition of Palestinian homes in the OPT and of Arab Israeli homes in Israel; policies which undermine the rights of the occupied Palestinian population to health, education, housing, work and an adequate standard of living in the West Bank and, in particular, in Gaza where Israeli authorities have imposed a stringent blockade; torture or other ill-treatment of detainees;

This goes beyond irresponsible. There exists no charitable explanation for AI and the other NGO’s who will be doing the will of the Arab world next year at Durban II and demonizing Israel. This isn’t about helping the Palestinians but about hating Israel and the Jews.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In an editorial, the Washington Post writes:

AFTER ISRAELI Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was voted out of office in 1992, he gave an interview in which he revealed he had never been serious about peace negotiations with the Palestinians. His real intention, he said, had been to drag out the talks for a decade while settling hundreds of thousands more Jews in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Well actually, that wasn’t the context that Shamir meant his comments. It was, of course, par for the course at that time that Shamir’s comments were construed like that.

According to a translation in an article published in the Jerusalem Post this is what Shamir said:

“I would have conducted autonomy negotiations for 10 years, and in the meanwhile we would have reached a half million people in Judea and Samaria,” Shamir said in an interview in Ma’ariv. Currently, an estimated 120,000 settlers live in the territories.

(Source:SHAMIR PLANNED TO DRAG OUT TALKS UNTIL ISRAELI CONTROL OF AREAS WAS IRREVERSIBLE, David Makovsky. Jerusalem Post. Jerusalem: Jun 28, 1992. pg. 01. Yes that title perpetuated the myth of what Shamir had said.)

Does that mean that his intent was to drag out negotiations or that that’s how long he expected that they’d take? There was at least one other person at that interview, the interviewer himself. And this is his take:

The Maariv journalist, Yosef Harif, said the remarks were made, but he added that he did not think Mr. Shamir was trying to drag out the peace talks to avoid autonomy.

What Shamir was saying was that he expected talks on autonomy to last at least ten years, not that he sought to drag them out. Given that more conciliatory successors have failed to satisfy Palestinian demands over the past fifteen years, Shamir’s observation looks accurate, if not a little optimistic.

Now, of course, in 1992 the talk was about autonomy,not statehood. And remember at the time that even the late PM Yitzchak Rabin, sounded a bit like what would be called a right wing extremist nowadays.

Mr. Rabin has repeatedly refused to be drawn into discussions about which specific settlements he defines as “political” and which he would continue to support as necessary for Israel’s security. In general, he has defined security zones as the Jerusalem area, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.

The point that the Post was making was to compare Shamir’s comments with those of Ehud Olmert last week.

Last week, Ehud Olmert, who served in Mr. Shamir’s cabinet and believed in his dream of a “greater Israel,” gave a similar truth-telling interview at the end of his own stint as prime minister — only the message was very different.

“We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories,” Mr. Olmert told the newspaper Yedioth Aharonot. Of his long record as a supporter of keeping and settling those lands and Arab East Jerusalem, Mr. Olmert said, “For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth.”

The Post is willing to acknowledge that Israel has changed a lot in the intervening years.

Mr. Olmert’s words are one measure of how far Israel has changed politically in 16 years. Before 1992, acceptance of a Palestinian state or even direct negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization were unacceptable to the parliamentary majority; now a former leader of the right-wing Likud party can say that Israel must withdraw from all but a small part of the territories captured in the 1967 war.

But the editorial is dishonest when it claims:

Mr. Olmert’s position is pragmatic: He says that the territorial concessions are necessary to prevent Israel from becoming a “binational state,” with an Arab majority. Judging from polls, a majority of Israelis agree with him.

It’s as if Israel had never withdrawn from Gaza or from any cities in Judea and Samaria. The question since 1996 or so hasn’t been whether Israel will maintain control over millions of Arabs, but what the final shape of the Palestinian state will be. By taking this approach, the Post is giving a “peace veto” to the Palestinians. (Olmert is too, for that matter.) By the Post’s reckoning, as long as negotiations do not satisfy the Palestinians, Israel is still occupying them.

And it’s hard to find what poll shows that a majority of Israelis agree with Olmert. Here’s a recent poll that shows that only 26% of Israelis consider the “demographic” threat significant. Here’s another one showing that only 7% of Israeli Jews consider that there’s a demographic threat. And this shows a majority of Israelis - apparently having learned from Gaza - opposing further disengagement from Judea and Samaria.

However polls of Palestinians continue to show a rejection of the idea of a Jewish state.

Finally the Post takes the approach of any number of Olmert’s detractors:

What’s changed in Israel is the willingness of the political mainstream to accept, in theory, a Palestinian state along territorial lines that most of the world (including most Arab states) would accept. What hasn’t changed is the steady pace of settlement construction that is slowly but surely making that solution more difficult to carry out — and the unwillingness or inability of Israeli leaders to stop it. Mr. Olmert tried to make history with his parting words; sadly, they were deeply at odds with his actions.

So Israel has changed politically but the “settlements” remain the single biggest obstacle to peace. Aside from the fact that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza has strengthened Hamas and encouraged terror, what makes the Post’s editors think that Israeli “occupation” is the primary obstacle to peace? (The same could be said about Lebanon and Hezbollah.)

Isn’t the biggest problem that the lack of change on the Palestinian side?

The Post’s editors dredge up and misconstrue a statement made by Yitzchak Shamir in 1992 to make their point, but they’ve been awfully incurious about comments and actions from the Palestinian leadership showing a lack of commitment to peace.

For example right before he died, highly regarded “moderate” Faisal Husseini didn’t sound so moderate:

Similarly, if we agree to declare our state over what is now only 22 percent of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza — our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.

In short, we are exactly like they are. We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure. If you are asking me as a Pan-Arab nationalist what are the Palestinian borders according to the higher strategy, I will immediately reply: “from the river to the sea.”

Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation, a land no one can sell or buy, and it is impossible to remain silent while someone is stealing it, even if this requires time and even [if it means paying] a high price.”

And before that (but after Oslo) there was Arafat’s famous speech in a Johannesburg mosque:

This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.

And what about Arafat’s incitement ahead of the ‘tunnel riots” in 1996?

And there is ample documentation that the “Aqsa intifada” was not a spontaneous outburst of violence, but planned by Arafat in advance.

Event the current “moderate” hope of the peace processors, Mahmoud Abbas has gotten in on the act.

In her press conference yesterday with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Israeli-Palestinian talks would continue, despite claims of a boycott by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas’s boycott came after he accused Israel of committing “more than a holocaust” in Gaza.

The Abbas boycott and his reprehensible accusations follow a pattern established well before the current escalation in Gaza. Last month, for example, Abbas’s Palestinian Authority declared a three-day mourning period for PFLP leader George Habash, who was associated with the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and with the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

In case anyone might think that the PA is only remembering past “glories,” Fatah, the faction that Abbas heads, issued a poster displaying a map of “Palestine” that included all of Israel, a machine gun and a picture of Yasser Arafat. Incitement against Israel, including the glorification of “martyrdom,” continues through Abbas-controlled PA television, and PA educational institutions, such as schools and camps.

Last month Abbas showed even more chutzpah as he sought a meeting with convicted child murderer Samir Kuntar.

It’s remarkable that the Post has two data points - a misinterpretation of a statement by Yitzchak Shamir from 16 years ago and the continued existence of settlements - to show that Israel is dealing in bad faith with the Palestinians, but ignores mountains of evidence that Israeli concessions over the past 15 years have done nothing to moderate the Palestinian population’s antagonism towards Israel. So while the Israeli position regarding the Palestinians has changed dramatically, there’s been no reciprocal movement on the part of the Palestinians.

And of course that escapes the notice of the sharp eyed editors of the Washington Post.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I shall never stop envying people educated and gainfully employed in one of the modern vaguely defined “sciences”. Like the case of learned Dr Lentin here:

Dr Ronit Lentin was born in Haifa prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and has lived in Ireland since 1969. She is a political sociologist and a writer of fiction and non-fiction books and is the director of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Department of Sociology and coordinator of the Global Networks project, Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS), Trinity College, Dublin. Ronit has published extensively on racism in Ireland, Israel and Palestine, gender and genocide, and gender and the Holocaust.

Political sociologist in Ethnic and Racial Studies - this must be a golden mine for anyone strong in scientifically-sounding terminology only a few selected peers could understand and share. Still, some of it spills to the media sometimes and then we have pearls like this:

Launching her latest book on Thinking Palestine on Wednesday evening, she said Israel was a racial regime but was not based upon colour nor ethnicity.

Now try to figure it out: a racial (sic!) regime that is not based upon color nor ethnicity. No worries, here is the answer:

It was based on military force, security and intelligence, the author told an audience of academics and journalists at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

I think I can translate it for the laymen in a simple Leninist format:

Military force + security + intelligence = racial regime.

If you don’t get it, you must be taken to the Sociology dept. of Trinity College for re-education.

Anyhow, thanks deity for journalists, otherwise it would have been much more difficult. Still, even in this, relatively simple wording, these two quotes may cause you some mental turmoil. Let’s get to a simple and straightforward part:

Lentin defended the actions taken by the Palestinian people in their struggle to regain their homeland, saying that resistance is legal and even suicide bombings against Israeli military targets could be justified.

Cool. Now everything is clear. Another AssaJew. Move on, nothing more to see here.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Some background first.
From the The Winograd Commission report:

a. The Prime Minister bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of ‘his’ government and the operations of the army. His responsibility for the failures in the initial decisions concerning the war stem from both his position and from his behavior, as he initiated and led the decisions which were taken.

b. The Prime Minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also, his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front or of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel. He made his decision without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the IDF, despite not having experience in external-political and military affairs. In addition, he did not adequately consider political and professional reservations presented to him before the fateful decisions of July 12th.

c. The Prime Minister is responsible for the fact that the goals of the campaign were not set out clearly and carefully, and that there was no serious discussion of the relationship between these goals and the authorized modes of military action. He made a personal contribution to the fact that the declared goals were over-ambitious and not feasible.

From the summary of “Releasing Terrorists: New victims pay the price”

* The Israeli Cabinet approved on August 17 the release of almost 200 Palestinian security prisoners as a “goodwill gesture” to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. The list includes several prisoners “with blood on their hands,” who, by definition, were involved in the murder of Israelis.

* According to an informal estimate by Israeli security bodies, about 50 percent of the terrorists freed for any reason whatsoever returned to the path of terror, either as perpetrator, planner, or accomplice. In the terror acts committed by these freed terrorists, hundreds of Israelis were murdered, and thousands were wounded.

* Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners and five other prisoners in return for Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was held captive by Hizbullah, and for the bodies of three soldiers kidnapped on Mount Dov. According to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, from the date of the deal on January 29, 2004, until April 17, 2007, those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis.

Keep those two bits of information in mind when parsing Ethan Bronner’s Olmert Says Israel Should Pull Out of West Bank:

In an unusually frank and soul-searching interview granted after he resigned to fight corruption charges — he remains interim prime minister until a new government is sworn in — Mr. Olmert discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine and called for radical new thinking, in words that are sure to stir controversy as his expected successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, tries to build a coalition.

Let’s just say, as demonstrated above, this wouldn’t be the first time that Ehud Olmert has “discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine” and the earlier times cannot exactly be called resounding successes.

In the past Israel has, of course, believed in deterrence and no releasing prisoners with blood on their hands. These are doctrines that Olmert (and other Prime Ministers) has (have) discarded and they haven’t made Israel any more secure or brought it closer to peace. I suppose you can package it as “radical new thinking” but that’s not the same thing as it being a good idea.

Dion Nissenbaum thinks that Olmert’s right but that it’s too late and that he should have made this speech last year.

Yes, a year after degrading Israel’s deterrence and with the results of the withdrawal from Gaza flying into Sderot on a regular basis, the Israeli public would have been quite receptive to the idea of more withdrawals.

Tim McGirk is similarly cynical.

But for all those who think that Olmert’s thinking is in any way new, how does it differ from the past 15 years since the Oslo accords were signed? Since then even Binyamin Netanyahu ceded land to the Palestinians. As I’ve written before, what’s now the mainstream Right for Israel, is roughly where Israel’s Left was twenty years ago. Netanyahu, if he’s elected, isn’t going to recapture Gaza - he might bring the fight to Hamas - but no Israelis will be staying there. And Netanyahu isn’t likely to reverse any facts on the ground in Judea and Samaria either. He may not be willing to cede as much land to the Palestinians, but that’s a far cry from saying that he’d be making the “occupation” irreversible.

And it takes a real naif - or knave - like McGirk or Nissenbaum to heap sarcastic praise on Olmert for saying the right thing too late, when in fact it is the Palestinians who haven’t changed over the past fifteen (or twenty) years. As Jonathan Spyer recently wrote after outlining the phony Palestinian efforts to codify their “commitment” to a two-state solution:

The advocates of the one-state solution then maintain that since Israel has chosen to sabotage the possibility of partition, there is no longer any possibility for the realization of this, and since Israeli settlement activity has de facto created a single entity west of the Jordan River, the appropriate–or perhaps sole possible–response of the Palestinian national movement is to accept this fait accompli and to begin a campaign for integration of the entire population of this area into a single state framework. This case has been made in myriad publications in a variety of languages over the previous half decade.[25] It is hard to find mention of the fact that this position was in fact the PLO’s official stance until 1988. Rather, the impression given is that after a long period of commitment to partition, the Palestinians and the international community must now abandon this position, because Israel’s actions have made it an impossibility.

More generally Barry Rubin writes that he premise of Olmert and his admirers have it all wrong:

The reality is that the Palestinians–albeit living off large-scale, though poorly spent, global subsidies–for whom time is an enemy. They face bad conditions; Fatah’s decline continues; the chance to have their own state slips away because their leadership pushes it away. Arab regimes face Islamist challenges that may be defeated but waste resources and stunt their progress. The chance for democracy, moderation, and stability has been lost for another generation.

Peace is preferable but much of what makes it so is that it must be a good peace, one that makes things better and is sustainable. Peace is possible only when the other side wants it. Today’s peace process mania is like a cartoon character whose legs windmill in a blur but which never advances.

But whether or not Olmert is correct, his statement causes mischief.

The Yedioth Ahronoth wrote that Olmert’s comments would complicate Livni’s job even before she takes over.

“He places on the doorstep of his successor a foreign policy doctrine, the likes of which has never been spoken by an incumbent prime minister,” commented his interviewers.

It should be no surprise that the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas intends to pocket this for future negotiations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he hopes the statements made by Prime Minster Ehud Olmert regarding sovereignty over Jerusalem, the territories and the Golan Heights will serve as a “deposit” for the next government.

And when lame duck Ehud Barak negotiated with Yasser Arafat, “under the gun” of the “Aqsa intifada” in early 2001, the Palestinians accepted all of his concessions as a starting point for future negotiations. Another example of defense doctrine disregarded, at great cost to Israel.

Ehud Olmert can’t help learning the the wrong lessons.

See also Daled Amos, My Right Word, Israel Matzav and Meryl.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Noah Pollak notes that now a majority of Palestinians object to a two-state solution and observes:

If a poll found that the majority of Israelis rejected the two-state solution, it would make headlines around the world. Yet when repeated polls of Palestinians find solid majority support for terrorism against Israel and rejection of peace with Israel, nobody even has the chance to bat an eye, because nobody hears about it.

Actually I’ve read news articles lately that mention that Palestinians are despairing of the two state solution. But the media doesn’t see this as outrageous because they - blame Israel. So I’m not sure the fact that it’s bad that this news hasn’t been widely reported.

Take a look, for example, at this opinion piece by Sari Nusseibeh:

Israelis have long described their West Bank settlements–long fingers of territory that stretch along the north-south and east-west axes, serviced by highways, electrical networks, etc.–as organic extensions of the Israeli community. But Israeli construction has (again according to Peace Now) increased by 550 percent in the past year. This building, combined with that of the nearly complete separation wall or barrier, and reports that Israel wishes to maintain security control along the eastern edge of the Jordan Valley, sends another message: that Israel plans to hold onto the land for good. Combine this with the still unaddressed refugee problem, and it’s no wonder many former two-staters are giving up hope.

It is important to remember that the Palestinian national movement only began to endorse the idea of a two-state solution 20 or 30 years ago, as a practical compromise. Realizing that Israel wasn’t going anywhere, moderates decided that their best hope for a state was one alongside Israel, not one that sought to replace it. Yet the 15 years of negotiations that have followed have produced little, and thus it’s no surprise that faith in this supposedly pragmatic option is waning. The lack of progress, as well as the unmistakably expansionist reality on the ground and the growth in popularity of Hamas, have left little room for anyone seeking a positive future for Palestine. Except, that is, to rejuvenate the old idea of one binational, secular and democratic state where Jewish and Arab citizens live side by side in equality.

Nusseibeh, a leading “moderate,” says that advocates of the bi-national state have come to their conclusion as a result of frustration that they’ve gained nothing in the past 15 years.

It’s a common refrain, and if the media picked up the results of the poll, that’s exactly how they’d frame it.

But what Nusseibeh ignores is that in 15 years Israel’s come quite far where what’s now considered mainstream was, back then, the view of the far left. (Rabin never endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state.)

And where are the Palestinian after 15 years. Here’s Shmuel Rosner explaining a recent article by Mahmoud Abbas:

A guide to the perplexed:

Enormous historic compromise: We already did our share, and we’re done compromising. It’s now Israel’s turn.

further erodes this tiny territory: No 93%, no 96%, not even 99%. Abbas wants 100% of the West Bank.

repackages the occupation: No settlement blocks should remain in Judea and Samaria.

sovereign, independent and viable: We will not accept an agreement that will limit our sovereignty. Thus, the Palestinians will reject Israel’s demands to have a demilitarized Palestinian state and will refuse to give Israel security rights along the border with Jordan. Security arrangements are the least debated part of the Israeli-Palestinian future agreement– most commentators tend to focus on the more sexy problems of territory, refugees and Jerusalem. However, reaching an agreement on security matters will be crucial to any future agreement, and it seems as if Abbas has just raised the bar.

Understand that first one. The historic compromise was accepting Israel’s right to exist. In other words the Palestinians as represented by their “moderate” political leader, considers that a compromise. But in any other set of international negotiations the legitimacy of your partner is an assumption of those negotiations. But to the Palestinians, that is a compromise.

Thus anything that fails to meet Palestinian demands justifies violence.

And there are those who continually equate the building of “settlements” with terrorism, as if the former justifies the latter. These people, of course, aren’t helping the cause of peace but the cause of Palestinian irredentism.

The peace process since 1993 has always been subject to the Palestinian veto. The premise in most of the diplomatic, academic and journalistic worlds is that Israel’s legitimacy depends on remedying all Palestinian grievances, thus all concessions from Israel are good for Israel, never mind the cost. Of course without making any serious demands on the Palestinians, all this has done is to cause the Palestinians to treat the peace process as a one-sided giveaway.

The poll showing the lack of Palestinian interest in a two state solutiono will be treated the same way as all those polls showing Palestinian support for terror: as proof that Israel has failed to make the necessary “sacrifices for peace.”

Maybe there hasn’t been much about it so far, but more will be reported. And when it is reported it will be used to show that Israel hasn’t done enough. Any suggestion that this poll just reflects the deeply held Palestinian belief that Jews have no right to the land of Israel or never have been interested in peace won’t be reported.

It’s just the state of mendacity of the Palestinians and their allies.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

First his two sons were murdered. Now he faces prosecution. The reason for Mithal al-Alusi’s troubles? Visiting Israel and advocating peace with the Jewish state - something Iraq’s leaders refuse to consider.

The Iraqi is at the center of a political storm after his fellow lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel - a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law. Such a fate is unlikely for al-Alusi, though he may lose his party’s sole seat in parliament.

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume the maverick legislator was the real target of the assassins who killed his sons in 2005 while he escaped unharmed.

The State Department in its infinite fecklessness refuses to get involved, claiming that this is an internal Iraq matter.

Israel Matzav covered this first, so let’s quote him:

Is this what hundreds of American troops died for in Iraq? To create yet another Arab country that lives in the 8th century in eternal hatred of Jews (and rest assured that Christians will be next on the list).

Powerline seems resigned to the State Department’s refusal to say anything:

Meanwhile, the US Embassy has nothing substantive to say on the subject. This “is an issue for the Iraqi parliament, not the US Mission to Iraq,” said spokesman Armand Cucciniello. That’s not an unreasonable response, I suppose, as long as all we’re talking about is expulsion from parliament.

via memeorandum

But as Max Boot observed last week:

It is hard not to be a little awed by extreme courage like this. Some may say that Alusi is being foolish and counter-productive, and there is perhaps an element of truth to that charge, but every nation needs a few people like him who are willing to risk everything in the name of a higher cause without the slightest regard for self-preservation. In this case, his cause is our cause: He wants Iraq to be a Western liberal state that would be closely allied with the United States against Sunni and Shiite extremists. Although he may be a lonely voice in Iraq, he is hardly alone, as seen from the fact that he did manage to win a parliamentary seat as the only representative of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation which he leads. It is imperative that the U.S. government do what it can to help and protect him.

By assuming that the lesser punishment will be removal from Parliament is what’s being discussed and being quiet, the State Department is doing more damage than it (or Powerline) realizes. As Boot points out, Alusi was elected to a seat in Parliament. What does it say to those who support his party that the United States isn’t willing to speak up for them?

Israel Matzav also refers to the story of an Egyptian boy, who’s being denied medication on account of: that it will have to be imported from Israel, with much the same reaction:

Israel signed a ‘peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, and completed the turnover of every last inch of the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. As a result of that treaty, Egypt is now the third largest recipient of American foreign aid after Iraq and Israel. One has to wonder about the purposes for which the Americans are spending their foreign aid money, and what advantage is to be gained by Israel out of making peace with an Arab country (let alone the ‘Palestinians’) if this is the result.

Nearly 30 years later, Egypt despite the fact that it receives plenty of aid from the United States for making peace with Israel, still, in many ways treats Israel as an enemy. The United States remains quiet, not attaching any conditions to its aid. And this doesn’t even gain the United States goodwill on the Egyptian street.

If the United States really wants to see change in the Arab world, when will it start insisting on a change of attitude towards Israel instead of simply accepting Arab hatred of Israel as the natural order of things?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In-fighting in Gaza:

Hamas forces, responding to the killing of one of their policemen during an arrest raid on Monday, raided a clan stronghold in Gaza City before dawn on Tuesday in search of a suspect in that slaying, officials said.

Ten clan members, including an infant, and a Hamas operative were killed in ensuing clashes that went on for hours and continued into Tuesday morning. Dozens of people were injured on both sides.

This is interesting:

The exchanges of fire included the use of mortar shells, and according to one report one of the mortars landed near the home of senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar. This report has yet to be confirmed by Hamas officials or by the movement’s security officers.

Mortars in a residential neighborhood?

Anyway it’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for the clan involved:

Some clan members, allied with al-Qaeda, were involved in the March 2007 abduction of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who was held hostage for four months before being released.

Others in the clan are divided between supporters of Islamist Hamas and those who back Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, whose fighters were defeated when Hamas seized control of Gaza last year.

It’s between thug and thugger. And it’s about having a monopoly on force. Hamas has gotten used to targeting Israeli civilians with impunity, so now it turns its guns on its own. No doubt Bishop Tutu will return to Gaza to investigate.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

No, I don’t plan another example of fisking per se. Just a vague mealy-mouthed vignette on the general lines of how some unscrupulous journos use sleight of hand to deceive and mislead the reader, especially one that desires to be mislead and confused or just doesn’t give a flying donut. Here is a quote from Fisk’s recent piece, and I am not even going to talk about the general thrust of that piece:

And I am reminded now of how Benjamin Netanyahu released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison after two of Israel’s Mossad would-be killers tried to murder Khaled Meshal of Hamas in Amman. King Hussein had angrily demanded the antidote to the poison they gave Meshal – which is how Yassin obtained his release. Then, after Yassin had been greeted by his Palestinian followers and gone ranting on about the need to avoid recognition of Israel, praising suicide bombers into the bargain, an Israeli pilot fired a missile into his wheelchair – not exactly a noble act since the old man was a cripple – and once again we heard about the barbarity of the now dead Yassin.

The master (some call him venomous professional hate pedlar, but this is not my point), takes two true incidents: 1) release of the Sheikh by Bibi and 2) Sheikh’s demise by metal poisoning.

Fisk conveniently forgets that the first incident (release) happened in 1997, while the second (demise) in 2003. Thus creating an impression that the Sheikh was released just to be cruelly cut down in prime of his free life.

And of course, he doesn’t mention several hundreds of murdered and several thousands wounded and traumatized for life (during this period) Israelis, and the much higher numbers of Palestinians sharing the same fate as a result of our response. A major part of this feast of death was inspired by the poor, paraplegic, nearly blind and confined to a wheelchair monster.

But why should Fisk mention all this? After all… but see above re the mislead and confused.

And re “venomous professional hate pedlars” - yeah, let’s leave it alone for now. After all, you have to do something with your spare time.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Seth Freedman as an apologist - this sounds strange, no matter what entity he is supposed to apologize for. The opposite was believed to be true - as one of the main contributors of the Guardian political cesspool called Comment is Free, he became rather prominent as an attacker. His attacks are directed against the Zionist Entity - which happens to be precisely what is expected from him by his editors and the shoal of his faithful followers that cheer him as kind of a new Guardian Messiah.

Frankly, a terrible disappointment. Some years ago, with appearance of his first articles, my friends and I had high hopes for the youngster. Not afraid to decry injustice of his own side, he was not blind to the behavior of Palestinians. No more - the guy clearly figured out which side his bread is buttered. And this side has no trek with criticizing Palestinians, obviously.
(more…)

A fairly standard battle cry on the Israeli roads is: “The person that gave you a driver license has to be killed!”. I don’t need to describe the situation relevant to this cry, do I?

The first thought I had reading the Haaretz article Jews attacking Jews by Antony Lerman wasn’t totally dissimilar to that battle cry: who the heck is the editor that published this one? He definitely needs some killing. On the other hand, it could have been a slow day in the office of Haaretz, and this thing just happened in the inbox - who knows, let’s be charitable.

One cannot, of course, keep a straight face and blame the author - he is too daft, it looks like, to be held responsible for the drivel he spouts. For example:

When Jew-hatred is identified, it’s mostly in the form of what many call the “new anti-Semitism” - essentially, anti-Zionism. Others (this writer included) fundamentally dispute that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are synonymous.

“Many” usually say that the new anti-Semitism is using anti-Zionism as a cover - not that all anti-Zionists are automatically anti-Semites. So “others” (Antony Lerman included) could go and screw themselves vigorously, instead of “fundamentally dispute” the false strawman these “others” created to publicly destroy to their own satisfaction.

Another good one:

Anything from strong criticism of Israel’s policies, through sympathetic critiques of Zionism, to advocacy of a one-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, is defined as anti-Zionism, when none of these positions are prima facie anti-Zionist.

So the advocates of a one-state solution are not anti-Zionist? Yeah. But in this passage Antony Lerman makes his dimness outstandingly clear:

The new EU-approved definition fundamentally subverts the term because to warrant the charge of anti-Semitism, it is sufficient to hold any view ranging from criticism of the policies of the current Israeli government, to denial of Israel’s right to exist - without having to subscribe to any of the elements that historians have traditionally regarded as constituting an anti-Semitic view. And it puts out of bounds the perfectly legitimate discussion of whether increased anti-Semitism is a result of Israel’s actions.

Notice the last sentence, which is a final giveaway: these pesky Israelis are making Lerman’s life hard by their ill-considered behavior. Repeating many an anti-Zionist (and many an anti-Semitic) “thinker”, starting with incomparable Seumas Milne who several years ago claimed that Jews in Europe would feel much better were Israel to behave…

More detailed debunking of this stupid article by Ben Cohen here.

Another definitive piece by David Hirsh on linking Israel’s behavior and the anti-Semitism here.

>Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

In his Memo from Cairo today, the NYT’s Michael Slackman writes about Egyptian attitudes towards 9/11.

“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.”

It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

The premise of the article is that the United States hasn’t done a sufficient job of making its case to the Muslim world. But that ignores that the United States isn’t alone in this battle for hearts and minds.

Slackman then lectures:

Americans might better understand the region, experts here said, if they simply listen to what people are saying — and try to understand why — rather than taking offense. The broad view here is that even before Sept. 11, the United States was not a fair broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it then capitalized on the attacks to buttress Israel and undermine the Muslim Arab world.

Slackman is doing the talking here. “Experts” provide him with suitable cover to claim that this isn’t his own opinion. But this is a common device in “journalism.” If you want to say something, there’s always an “expert” who’ll say the same thing and “confirm” that you’re correct.

Perhaps, though, there are other forces. From a State Department blog:

Conspiracy thinking has grown, especially since the September 11 attacks, says Mohamed Abdel Salam, Head of the Regional Security and Arms Control Program at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt. His article, “The Modes of Arab Conspiracy Theories,” says “markedly non-scientific modes of thought prevail throughout the Arab world,” one form being conspiracy theories.

My Right Word makes a similar observation (the one quoted above comes from an Arab source):

But that’s what I and many others have been sounding out for years (okay, in my case, decades). There is something called a mindset. There is nothing racist in this. It is a fact. And the MiddleEast/Arab mindset is such that logic and rationality play much less a role in political education and wisdom than in other regions.

he also refers to Bernard Lewis:

Well, I can’t subscribe to it since the terrorists themselves claim to be acting in the name of Islam. There was one Muslim leader who said, not long ago, that it is wrong to speak about Muslim terrorism, because if a man commits an act of terrorism, he’s not a Muslim. That’s very nice, but that could also be interpreted as meaning that if a Muslim commits it, it doesn’t count as terrorism.

When a large part of the Muslim world was under foreign rule, then you might say that terrorism was a result of imperialism, of imperial rule and occupation. But at the present time, almost the whole of the Muslim world has achieved its independence. They can no longer blame others for what goes wrong. They have to confront the realities of their own lives at home. A few places remain disputed, like Chechnya and Israel and some others, but these are relatively minor if you’re talking about the Islamic world as a whole.

Lewis also points out that the entrenched tyrants of the Muslim world have a reason to resent the invasion of Iraq: the current Iraqi government is an imperfectly functioning democracy. If the government in Iraq is successful, it will signal to the rest of the Arab/Muslim world that change is possible. Not that Lewis expects quick political change, but he believes it possible over the long term.

Slackman also doesn’t acknowledge the role the official (and unofficial) media in the Arab world plays in perpetuating these myths.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories that are so prevalent in the Arab world result not from a rational assessment of the situation. (Amazingly Slackman’s article never mentions that Egypt is the second largest recipient of American aid; that the United States and the West, continually provide the Palestinians with much more money than the Arab/Muslim world does.)

The Arab world thinks its grievances are real. But instead of shining a light on reality and asking why these grievances persist in resistance to fact and reason, Slackman lectures the West that we ought to understand and accommodate the mindset.

Opinion Dominion writes about the 9/11 “truthers”:

In short, they encourage conspiracy belief in the Middle East, and that cannot possibly help achieve peace there.

Unfortunately articles like Slackman’s effectively legitimize and entrench these beliefs, making them even harder to dispel. So that’s how the New York Times celebrates the 7th anniversary of 9/11, by making the ideology that led to the terror more sympathetic to its Western audience.

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 that much. Neither does Israelly Cool!

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Without passing judgment the NYT reported on the Hezbollah Shrine to Terrorist Suspect Enthralls Lebanese Children

The dead man being shown such veneration is Imad Mugniyah, the shadowy Hezbollah commander. Until his death in a car bombing in Syria in February he was virtually unknown here, his role in the militant Shiite group clothed in secrecy. But since then Hezbollah has hailed him as one of its great military leaders in the struggle against Israel.

Now, the group has opened an exhibit in this southern town in honor of Mr. Mugniyah, who is widely accused in the West of masterminding devastating bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in the 1980s and ’90s. His stern, bearded face towers over the transformed parking lot where the exhibit is taking place, along with banners exalting him as “the leader of the two victories” — the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and the 2006 summer war with Israel.

The presentation, which opened Aug. 15, is Hezbollah’s most ambitious multimedia exhibit to date, meant to dramatize the group’s bitter conflict with Israel on the second anniversary of their latest war. Schoolchildren pour in throughout the day, absorbing the carefully honed message of heroic resistance. At night, light and laser shows illuminate the weaponry and tanks, and overflow crowds have been keeping it open until after 1 a.m.

There are two points to note about the article.

It was conceived by the architect Ahmed Tirani and built in just three weeks by a staff of 290 working around the clock. In addition to an extraordinary array of weaponry and martyrs’ paraphernalia, it includes a large indoor room that was remodeled to resemble “what we believe the martyrs’ heaven is like,” according to one of the guides on duty.

“[W]eaponry and martyr’s paraphernalia?” Wouldn’t the word “terrorist” or, at least, “militant” be more appropriate? Or did this article have to pass muster with Hezbollah?

And the article ends with this positive note:

“I came here to teach my kids the culture of resistance,” said a visitor who gave his name only as Ahmed, as he stood with his wife and two children. “I want them to see what the enemy is doing to us, and what we can do to fight them, because this enemy is not merciful.”

Hezbollah’s unmerciful enemy just traded a child killer for the corpses of two soldiers who were kidnapped and killed in violation of international law. The child killer was celebrated by Hezbollah and its supporters. This fellow, whose views go unchallenged has a strange idea of mercy.

The short story:

Here’s what they’re teaching the kiddies in southern Lebanon: Revere terrorist masterminds.

Similarly Elder of Ziyon writes:

A society is truly twisted when it sends hundreds of children to venerate - and emulate - a bloodthirsty killer.

Israel Matzav adds:

Mugniyah was likely the pre-eminent terror tactician of his generation. I don’t know who killed him, but I’m happy he’s gone. For those who are interested, the Times has more pictures and a slide show at the link above. Personally, I found it sickening.

What’s also sickening is the casual way this museum is described without a trace of judgment or outrage. Hezbollah has threatened revenge against Israel and Jewish targets worldwide as revenge for the killing of Mughniyeh, something that needs to be taken seriously in light of yesterday’s arrests in Canada.

Hezbollah isn’t just a bunch of religious eccentrics who have a problem with Israel, but an international terrorist organization targeting Jews all around the world. This article served to distract from that reality.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

For some of you who may be puzzled by that “AssaJew” combo: you may have noticed that many a “Jewish anti-Zionist” has this incurable habit of starting her/his anti-Israeli harangue by a sentence along the general line of “Being a Jew myself…” or “As a Jew, I protest…”. The latter gave an easy and natural birth to AssaJew.

For some reason the morons believe that the purely coincidental fact of a Jewish egg serving as a carrier for the future peculiar anti-Zionist being gives them some added authority in Israel - related matters. You just cannot disabuse them of that stupid notion.

One of the more rabid and vile carriers of AssaJew rank, Amy Goodman, and her lair, the perfectly putrid Democracy Now, are bashed here. Enjoy.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

In a recent article, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times wrote the following about Israel’s security fence:

Israel started building the barrier in 2002 with the intent of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities. Consisting mostly of wire fence but also, in parts, of high concrete walls, much of the barrier, which is about 57 percent complete, has been constructed on land east of the 1967 boundary, inside the West Bank, leading Palestinians to characterize it as a land grab.

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion describing the routing of the barrier inside the West Bank as a violation of Israeli obligations under international law.

Israel’s Supreme Court, in response to petitions, has ordered several sections of the barrier route to be moved closer to the 1967 line, but most of the alterations have not yet been carried out.

There are several important things to note about these paragraphs.

Nowhere does Kershner write that since the fence has been built terror against Israel has decreased.
She mentions the ICJ’s ruling but doesn’t explain that the ruling is political not legal.
Even the Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t ignore the security issues involved.

When the Israeli High Court of Justice (or Supreme Court) ruled on the route of the fence in 2004, it wrote:

56. From a military standpoint, there is a dispute between experts regarding the route that will realize the security objective. As we have noted, this places a heavy burden on petitioners who ask that we prefer the opinion of the experts of the Council for Peace and Security over the approach of the military commander. The petitioners have not carried this burden. We cannot - as those who are not experts in military affairs - determine whether military considerations justify laying the Separation Fence north of Jebel Mukatam (as per the stance of the military commander) or whether there is no need for the Separation Fence to include it (as per the stance of petitioners’ and the Council for Peace and Security).

Still it concluded:

60. Our answer is that there relationship between the injury to the local inhabitants and the security benefit from the construction of the Separation Fence along the route, as determined by the military commander, is not proportionate. The route disrupts the delicate balance between the obligation of the military commander to preserve security and his obligation to provide for the needs of the local inhabitants.

Understand what’s going on here. The court admitted that it could not determine whose security credentials to trust: Whether to trust those then currently in the military or the partisan ex-officers. In the end, it ruled that the security question was moot, but determined that the damage caused by the fence was too great to justify any lessening security that might result from rerouting the fence.

Israel’s high court didn’t ignore the security issues it just ruled that they were irrelevant.

Now contrast that report with that about another recent court ruling.

On Sunday night, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected a petition from an organization of terror victims, Almagor, against the release.

Among those freed Monday were two men whom Israel says have “blood on their hands,” meaning they had been convicted in attacks that harmed Israelis. Said al-Atabeh, 57, who had been in custody since 1977, was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner.

Now Almagor had empirical evidence that prisoner releases were dangerous. Nadav Shragai recently provided the details of how released prisoners end up committing more terror.

I have no idea about the nature of Almagor’s petition. But if they provided proof that many of the terrorists freed in previous releases had indeed returned to terror and the court rejected that petition, then it showed once again that it deems the security of Israel’s citizens unimportant. It has demonstrated that inconveniencing Palestinians is worse than risking Israeli lives.

The media as demonstrated by the NY Times’s reporting also shows that their concern for the very real risks taken and negative rewards reaped by Israel is less important than that a process not leading to peace takes place. And, of course, Israel’s judicial system’s concern for Palestinian inconveniences at the expense of Israeli lives is met with Durban II.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

UN Watch has another report on the upcoming UN anti-Israel and Democracy Conference The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. It seems that not only is Durban II going after Israel, but it’s really going to try to codify anti-Islamic blasphemy.

UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer, a modern-day Don Quixote who bangs his head against the windmill called United Nations, spoke against the declaration.

The declaration makes only one reference to a country situation, “reiterat[ing] its concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupations.” Neuer asked, “Why is a non-African situation mentioned in a declaration about Africa, one that references neither Sudan’s racist killings, nor any other country in Africa?”

“The special reference to the Palestinian issue implies that Israel is practicing racism. This reverts to the discredited rhetoric of the UN’s 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution, sponsored by the Soviet and Arab blocs, which was repealed by the United Nations in 1991, and which has since been repudiated by its highest officials,” said Neuer.

But the UN representatives were unimpressed.

“It is only one paragraph that mentions the Palestinians, so the interest of Israel was never badly damaged,” Ibrahim Wani, from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told Reuters, after the 3-day talks in Abuja.

Durban II is part of a strategy developed long ago by Israel’s enemies to dehumanize her in every forum available.

[...] the “Durban strategy” — a two-pronged tactic launched at the ‘01 conference to paint Israel as a “racist, apartheid” state and isolate the Jewish nation through boycotts, divestment and sanctions.

The Ford Foundation is still funding the Jew-haters. Henry Ford would be proud.

The Ford slice of funds to anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations may pale compared to that provided by Europe and its myriad governmental agencies. But the Ford funding enables the groups to wage low-key, diplomatic and economic warfare against Israel, dragging the Palestinian conflict from the battlefield into international forums, media, the Internet and college campuses.

[...] Despite the revised guidelines, Ford appears unable — or unwilling — to prevent some of its grantees from lending support to the movement that was launched in Durban.

The new JTA investigation, which examined a large cross-section of Ford grantees that speak out on the Middle East conflict, finds that several signed a major 2005 boycott and divestment petition against “Apartheid Israel.”

Signatories agreed they were “inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression.”

There is an organized, well-funded movement to discredit and dehumanize Israel in every aspect. The world media ignore the daily attacks on Israel by the terrorists on her borders and within, while holding up every injured Palestinian as an example of Israeli cruelty or negligence—unless those Palestinians are harmed by their fellow Palestinians or Arabs. Egypt is murdering Sudanese refugees for the crime of trying to enter Israel, and the world media barely touches upon it—or on the cruelty and lack of compassion by Egypt for the refugees within its borders that forces these people to risk their lives to enter Israel.

The only true democracy in the Middle East is demonized and hated. Europeans use the Palestinians as an excuse to rid themselves of the guilt of nearly destroying European Jewry—as poll after poll shows how much Jews are still hated in the countries that the pro-Palestinian left say that Israelis should “go back to” (utterly ignoring the 50% of all Israelis who are descended from the Jews of Arab countries who were forced out after 1948).

As always, Jews are the canary in the coal mine. Because the second great aim of Durban is to strangle democracy’s most precious posession: Free speech.

The new text calls upon states to avoid “inflexibly clinging to free speech in defiance of the sensitivities existing in a society and with absolute disregard for religious feelings.” Other provisions in the text on “incitement to religious hatred,” said Neuer, “mirror efforts by Islamic states at the UN Human Rights Council to insinuate Islamic anti-blasphemy prohibitions into international law. Yet UN expert on religious freedom Asma Jahangir and other international human rights experts have expressly opposed ‘defamation of religion’ resolutions, which seek to alter international human rights law by defining religions — instead of individuals — as the bearers of rights.”

The declaration’s attack on free speech contravenes the Article 19 guarantee of freedom of expression of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Durban II: Bigger. Badder. Bolder. And full of bull.

Never mind that Israel allows large quantities of goods into Gaza and the Palestinians themselves smuggle even more in via tunnels from Egypt. But a bunch of anti-Israel activists decided to make some PR and “run” Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

Two wooden boats carrying dozens of human rights activists reached the Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon after the Israeli navy decided not to hinder the challenge to Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian enclave. Thousands of Palestinians turned out to welcome the group, which brought token humanitarian aid, including hearing aids and balloons.

The Post’s headline proclaims that the boats “broke” the blockade, but Israel let them pass unhindered.

(In some of the early publicity - it wasn’t news, it was unvarnished PR - it was noted that a Holocaust survivor was going to be on the boat. The Post’s PR release doesn’t mention her among the celebrities on the boat. Did she change her mind or was the Post just unaware of her presence.)

Meryl points out that since the ship of fools didn’t meet any resistance they charged that Israel jammed their instruments to prevent them from reaching Gaza.

However Backspin points out that the activists may not have such an easy time leaving Gaza as they did arriving.

And despite the crowds cheering their arrival, left unreported by many organizations was

once it turned out these boats contain too little food and mostly activists…some people left the beach disappointed.

(h/t Judeopundit - read the whole thing! )

Funny but there was a whole lot else going on in Gaza this weekend that somehow the Post’s Linda Gradstein failed to report:

Hamas stormed Al Azhar University in Gaza and the ensuing riots saw many injuries, including professors and a vice president of the university.

A teachers’ union in Gaza decided to go on strike to protest these sorts of attacks against teachers by Hamas. Hamas responded by abducting a Rafah school principal, one of the leaders of the union.

So a bunch of self promoting dweebs shilling for the Hamas government go sailing and that’s news. But when the government they’re supporting suppresses academic freedom that’s not news.

If the sailors wanted to do good, why couldn’t they go to the Sinai find some smuggling tunnels, stand in front of them and demand that the Palestinians not smuggle weapons into Gaza? Or at least insist that the Palestinians build tunnels that meet OSHA standards?

Crossposted on Yourish.

I don’t know about you, but I am feeling nostalgic about the years when there was some rich fisking material in the works of Fisk. When one could sink one’s teeth into some juicy fact-shuffling, ignorance or the usual passion for things un-Western (or, rather, anti-Western).

I realize that it is over for a long time since that infamous beating. Whether it caused some neurons in that brain to go boing (or whatever the neurons do when knocked about) or the impact was more of psychological nature, I wouldn’t presume to guess. Still, one could only hope, even in vain, for the return of the good old Fisk.

So I confess freely to taking a shufti at the pages of Indy now and then to see whether there is some fisking to do on Fisk. Shame, I know, but old habits and all that. And of course, one couldn’t really fisk something like this:

Robert Fisk’s World: A region boiling with tales of kings, gangs and war

So, according to the anonymous editor of Indy’s online pages, there is already a whole world belonging to Fisk. It makes sense, actually, since the man has been cooking on another planet for quite a long time, and obviously by now it’s a fully populated world.

What is encouraging, however, that the Master is again sticking the word “Israel” into his texts. In this one it appears four times, even when the article is not about Israel as such - OK, here I am being wrong - in that world of Fisk Israel is over every table and under every bed, so there…

Let us dispose of the mentions of Israel first:

1. …American reporters are so fearful of being criticised by Israel that their work is bland to the point of incomprehension…
2. …David Petraeus, the US commander who has turned anarchic Iraq into a tourist paradise with just one surge and a lot of walls (or “fences” as we would have to call them if they were built in Israel).
3. Since 2006, the US has given about £170m in military assistance to Lebanon – Israel, of course, gets £1.5bn year – which includes Humvees, ammunition and lots of new blue police cars.
4. Yet still the Middle East debates whether Israel or the US will bomb Iran. Personally, I don’t believe this will happen…

I don’t see any special need to comment on the above, aside of that last one: I was quite sure that this wouldn’t happen till I read it. The man is a walking reverse prophet. Take his prophecy and bet all your money on the opposite - you can’t go wrong.

Well, so what is the article about after all? Here is my attempt to gather some points:

• Two groups from Moscow fought it out with Kalashnikovs amid Dubai’s architectural masterpieces.
• [news items are] bursting into the papers when I’m on holiday or flying back to Beirut from Los Angeles, or, most awful of all, when I’m marching into The Independent office in London for a rare visit.
• …journalists are often more interesting to talk to than to read.
• The Middle East is currently boiling with rumours about the state of the monarchy in Morocco.
• Engineers in Dubai have apparently noticed that the carriages on the largely overhead track will be so narrow that passengers will not be able to carry baggage on them.
• Petraeus saw Lebanon’s new President, Michel Sleiman, and the acting commander of Lebanon’s army, General Shawki el-Masri…
• Less than a week after Petraeus’s visit, Sleiman was to pay his first presidential visit to Damascus, Did the American general perhaps have a few requests to make of President Bashar al-Assad via Sleiman?
• Well, if America bombs Iran, the Islamic republic’s missiles are likely to come hissing towards US forces in Qatar [do you hear that zipper opening sound?]
• I received a letter last week from an old friend whose son has just returned from military duties in Iraq. And he’s been wandering the Pisgah mountains in the US with a group of schoolkids in an area where he noticed a lot of military training going on a year ago…And I looked carefully through my friend’s snapshots of rocky mountainsides and thick forests. And, darn me if they didn’t remind me of the Elborz mountain chain just outside Tehran.

This is it, more or less. Reach your own conclusions from the above. The man is not known for any outstanding acts of gratuitous violence, rather the opposite - he is always ready to be beaten, as long as the beating is administered by some anti-American element, if possible of agricultural persuasion. So there is no urgent need to see him off to a funny farm.

But no, nothing to fisk here… move on, people…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

The ink has barely dried on that post where I have dared to dispute Norm’s statement on limits of stupidity, and here comes more proof that I was right. Stupidity is unlimited.

This proof comes from the same (possibly inexhaustible) source of morons - the Comment Is Free of The Guardian. This time the author is one Richard Silverstein, a good example of the “assaJew” species.

As an appetizer (or an introduction to ease your way into the situation and to avoid trauma), here is a sampler (no links, look it up yourself if you don’t believe) of Richard’s feverish brain activity. The post in question is titled:

IDF JUSTIFIES KILLING JOURNALISTS*

And the first sentence of the post starts with:

The IDF has formally exonerated the tank crew which killed Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana…

Well - exonerated, justified - who cares, especially if you are an idiot in a hurry to throw more shit at the darn Israelis.

(More on the subject here.)

There is more in the story quoted above, it’s definitely worth your attention, but I judge you now ready for the main course - that CiF article linked above, which includes the following gem re Mahmoud Darwish and his Israeli colleague Yehuda Amichai:

In the US, you might have to go back to either Robert Frost or Ezra Pound to find someone of comparable stature.

Bingo. Yehuda Amichai, a dovish and gentle leftist whose poetry rarely, if at all, hurt anyone and Ezra Pound - while a genius, also a raving anti-Semite, a fascist and all around dirty character.

Comparable statue, indeed… See, Richard, you are an imbecile. “Imbecile” means that the problem is not with your upbringing, education or lack of thereof. It is the (rather unfortunate) fact and associated vagaries of your birth and as such cannot be alleviated. So make peace with your imbecility and smile.

Richard smiles…

Many thanks to DT for the tip, and many thanks to Will for this essay on stupidity that I’ll be enjoying shortly - as soon as I click “Publish” on this post.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

(*) The habit to shout in upper case is beyond my comprehension. It must have something to do with abusive or repressive parents. Or some other childhood trauma, like falling on one’s head from one’s chamberpot. Who knows… But, on the other hand, who cares?

Get a load of this Bizarro World UNIFIL general:

Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano on Thursday accused Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an end to the Second Lebanon War.

In contrast, he said that the UN enjoyed excellent cooperation with Hizbullah and with the local Lebanese people.

And he isn’t joking.

During a press conference at the United Nations headquarters n New York, Graziano cited the IAF forays over Lebanon and the dispute over the village of Ghajar.

Graziano asserted that apart from UN troops, Lebanese soldiers and hunters, no one was armed south of the Litani River.

Nope. Not joking, just effing stupid. Blind. And oh yeah—let’s find out exactly why this paragon of asshole-ism thinks that there aren’t any weapons south of the Litani:

He conceded that his soldiers were not trying to prevent weapons smuggling from Syria as demanded by the UNSC because the Lebanese government had not requested such action.

Because he’s not looking for them. Well, gee. If you don’t look for something, of course you won’t find it. By the way, this schmuck has been blaming Israel for months. No wonder, when the Italian FM shills for Hamas, and UNIFIL doesn’t act on incidents like, say, Hezbullah threatening UNIFIL troops at gunpoint.

He’s supposedly on his way out. Buh-bye, moron.

In the early 80’s Saturday Night Live had a recurring character, Tyrone Green, played by Eddie Murphy who was a “poet” whose most famous work was “Cill my landlord.” In one sketch, Tyrone shows his versatility, he’s not just a poet, he’s a conceptual artist too.

And of course the all white crowd loves him. They shower Tyrone with self indulgent adulation for his work, imbuing it with a non-existent profundity. And he repays their praise with scorn.

The dilettantes see themselves as sophisticates for embracing and understanding the noble savage. But Tyrone is not so noble.

Man #1: Tyrone, now everyone here knows that you’re most famous for writing “Kill My Landlord.” Do you suppose that you could recite that for us?

Tyrone: No! Shut up! I will recite my latest poem that I wrote about you bougie white trash scum. It’s called “I Hate White People” by Tyrone Green.

They want to be enlightened by Tyrone but are too blind to see that the enlightened artist holds them in absolu