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.

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.

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.

It will be short but sweet: Independent reports on the terror attack in Jerusalem (September 22):

Police said the incident was a “terror attack”…

A rescue worker said the group of pedestrians was about to cross a road near the so-called Green Line separating the Arab and Jewish areas of Jerusalem when a black BMW struck them just before 11pm.

That’s it, nothing more to see or to add. Comments will be unnecessary.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Yesterday, the President of Iran gave a speech to the United Nations that was, of course, widely quoted in the wire services and mainstream media. However, the words below were not widely quoted by the wire services, particularly not the words in bold. Reuters featured some of the language—in a story headlined “Iran vows to resist U.S. ‘bullying’,” then updated to “Ahmadinejad rails against Zionists, US bullying.” The first story features almost none of the quotes. The second story is barely making the rounds, and was updated after many newspapers that carry Reuters have already had their world news pages designed. The Associated Press barely noted the naked anti-Semitism displayed by Mad Mahmoud.

The lives, properties and rights of the people of Georgia and Ossetia and Abkhazia are victims of the tendencies and provocations of NATO and certain western powers, military agreements, and the underhanded actions of the Zionists.

[...] The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.

This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.

[...] The thoughts and deeds of those who think they are superior to others and consider others as second-class and inferior; who intend to remain out of the divine circle, to be the absolute slaves of their materialistic and selfish desires, who intend to expand their aggressive and domineering natures, constitute the roots of today’s problems in human societies. They are the great hindrances to the actualization of material and spiritual prosperity and to security, peace and brotherhood among nations.

There is no air whatsoever between Ahmadinejad’s words, and the words of Adolf Hitler and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. No, wait. There is one major difference. The one word missing from his speech is “Jew,” and it is missing deliberately—because then the Iranians can pretend that when they say “Zionists,” they don’t mean “Jews.” They can say that they’re not against the Jewish people. Only the “Zionists.” And yet, the use of classic anti-Semitic phrasing and imagery is near-letter-perfect. Let’s take a quick recount:

• Deceitful? Check.
• Materialistic? Check.
• Controlling world finances and media? Check.
• Superior attitude? Check.
• Selfish? Check.
• Controlling other nations? Check.
• Causing wars? Check.
• Preventing world peace? Check.
• Godless? Check.

And last, but not least on the checklist: Not published in any major media report on the speech?

Check and mate.

Loved the BBC headline from yesterday’s terror attack in Jerusalem:

Jerusalem car ‘attack’ hurts 15

Here’s how the story starts:

At least 15 people have been injured in an apparent attack in Jerusalem, Israeli police say.

They say a man drove his car into a group of people at a busy intersection, before being shot and killed by an armed bystander.

Rescue services took the injured to local hospitals. Police described the incident as a “terror attack”.

Here’s how Batya remembers a similar attack:

I remember noticing a badly driven car approaching, but I didn’t think he’d mount the sidewalk and run over us. I turned my back on it and planned on telling a neighbor that “Even if he’s going to Shiloh, we’re not getting in.” She looked up and then saw him ram into me and I was knocked down. She was unharmed, as he had turned sharp left on my foot and mowed down people the length of the sidewalk. I was still on the ground when I suddenly heard shooting.

Even then news reports tried to play down the terror angle. But the people at the receiving end of the attack knew what it was.

Here’s another classic of the genre:

Four hurt in ‘acid attack’ at West Bank checkpoint

Look, if the reporters were unconvinced of the substance, put “acid” in quotes, but it was a clear attack. But this was serious in that the soldier attacked has lost sight in one eye.

An IDF soldier has lost sight in one of his eyes after a Palestinian woman attacked him with acid at the Hawara checkpoint on Monday afternoon. The checkpoint is located south of the West Bank city of Nablus.

It’s also worth pointing out to those who wish Israel to remove checkpoints, that the assailant took advantage of the humanitarian lanes for quick passage through the checkpoint.

However this story remarkably had absolutely no scare quotes:

The cash-strapped Palestinian government on Monday received pledges of nearly $300 million in new aid on top of more than $7 billion promised last year, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

So let me rewrite that paragraph with some appropriate scare quotes:

The “cash-strapped” Palestinian “government” on Monday received “pledges” of nearly $300 million in new aid on top of more than $7 billion promised last year, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

The Palestinians likely have more cash than they admit. They receive the highest amount of foreign aid per capita in the world. They’ve received plenty and they’ve squandered it.

They ought to first turn to the estate of Yasser Arafat instead of to the international community. Then they ought to start turning to their top official who have been embezzling foreign aid for years. And the PA ought to stop paying the salaries of the Hamas thugs in Gaza.

Except for some limited areas there is no effective Palestinian government. About the only thing Fayyad does well is ask for handouts.

And finally, most of those pledges (often from Arab countries who care so much for their Palestinians brothers) are not fulfilled. The article later on notes:

At a Paris conference last December, donors pledged $7.7 billion in aid over the next three years, but the Palestinians say only a fraction of that money has been paid.

It’s remarkable the way the media will use scare quotes when dealing with terror against Israel, but when it comes to the phony (or at least self-inflicted) Palestinian financial crisis, they solemnly in pronouncing a crisis without the least bit of skepticism.

When will the media get serious about covering the Middle East instead of covering up for the Palestinians?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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.

Last week Michael Slackman of the New York Times wrote about how conspiracy theories about 9/11 dominated Arab political thought. He wrote:

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.

We’ve got to come to terms with these crazy conspiracies, is Slackman’s view. However Barry Rubin rejects this kind of thinking:

The only solution is to set different goals and interpretations of the world through rethinking, reform, and education. Western glorifications of the Middle East’s status quo-these are customs which must be preserved, how dare you criticize people’s beliefs and offend their sensibilities?-will merely ensure another century of bloodshed, dictatorship, and poverty.

And in fact Rubin argues that the willingness to accept these conspiracy theories speaks of the dysfunction of the societies that promulgate them, not the West.

Wild conspiracy theories were spread precisely because to confront the tragedy’s implications would require examining real problems “which Arab societies have been so assiduously avoiding.” The more Middle Eastern terrorism spread globally, “the greater was the rush to look the other way.” Five years later, that statement is all the more true.

We hear endlessly that the problem is the West doesn’t understand the Middle East. The truth is the exact opposite: the Middle East doesn’t understand the West and, by the same token, doesn’t understand what it needs to do to get out of the hole it has dug for itself.

The more the Arab/Muslim world lives in a state of denial the worse off it will be.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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.

They’ve asked the candidates the questions, and written many sneering op-eds on that yokel Sarah Palin, so I have a few questions for the media. Just to test their general knowledge of things I’ve been reading about lately.

1. How do you field dress a moose? Please be specific and tell me what kind of equipment is generally used, and why you would do so in the first place.
2. What is the Bush doctrine? Name the dates and times it was enunciated, and who was the first to describe it as such.
3. How old were you when you got your first passport? If you weren’t a reporter, do you think you would have gotten one? Be honest.
4. Do you go to church, synagogue, or any other house of religion on a regular basis?
5. If your teenaged daughter got pregnant, would you mind if your colleagues in the media investigated the story and threatened to leak it to the public? (This is mostly for nationally-known reporters; reporters from small towns can skip this question and move onto the next.)
6. Do you think all feminists must be pro-choice or they are not “really” feminists?
7. Are you a registered member of either party? If yes, which one?
8. Whom did you vote for in the past four (if applicable) presidential elections?
9. Did you contribute any money to a presidential campaign? If so, which one?
10. True or false: If you’re not voting for Obama in November, you’re a racist.
11. True or false: If you don’t think Sarah Palin is a good vice-presidential candidate, you’re a sexist.

Whoops. Looks like that’s eleven questions. But that’s okay. The media won’t be putting forth any such suggestion as the eleventh question. Because it’s not the narrative.

Click on the links to see how many reporters vote Democrat in November. (Or to learn how to field dress a moose. Being a city girl, I’ll just pass on that.)

Please hand in your responses to be graded. We will not be using a curve.

Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers. If you like this post, you’ll like the all-Sarah-Palin, all-the-time Shire Network News podcast, where my contribution is why a former Clinton/Gore/lifelong Democrat voter is going to vote for McCain-Palin.

One thing that reporters in the Middle East enjoy is irony. So that’s the angle Ethan Bronner takes about Jenin in A West Bank Ruin, Reborn as a Peace Beacon.

But a quiet revolution is stirring here in this city, once a byword for the extremes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2002, in response to a wave of suicide bombers from Jenin, Israeli tanks leveled entire neighborhoods.

From that rubble, now newly trained and equipped Palestinian security officials have restored order. Israeli soldiers have pulled back from bases and are in close touch with their Palestinian colleagues. Civilians are planning economic cooperation — an industrial zone to provide thousands of jobs, mostly to Palestinians, and another involving organic produce grown by Palestinians and marketed in Europe by Israelis. Ministers from both governments have been visiting regularly, often joined by top international officials. Israeli Arabs are playing a key role.

The aim is to stand conventional wisdom on its head. Instead of a shaky negotiated peace treaty imposing coexistence from the top down, a bottom-up set of relationships that lock the two societies together should, proponents argue, lead to a real two-state solution.

There are some positive aspects to this report and some negative ones. On the negative side, Bronner writes “Israeli tanks leveled entire neighborhoods.” Well did that really happen?

A JCPA issue brief gives the actual scope:

Still, the level of destruction was limited. Out of 1,896 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp, 130 buildings were destroyed — or less than 10 percent (Israel Defense Forces — Central Command). According to Fatah activist Mousa Kadoura, the area affected was the size of a large football field (Washington Times, May 1, 2002). Moreover, because of the large amounts of Palestinian explosives in the camp, it is difficult to discern what component of this destruction was caused by Israeli forces and what part was a result of Palestinian detonation.

But remember unlike Bronner’s language that suggests the destruction haphazard or disproportionate, Israel was fighting an armed enemy. Less than 10% shows restraint; “whole neighborhood” suggests a massive scale.

It’s good to know that there’s a place where there’s some level of cooperation going on and the Palestinians are taking control of their lives someplace. And Bronner hits on an important reason for that limited success may be due to the bottom approach being taken here. Unfortunately, the rest of his reporting shows that he doesn’t understand the reason why. When Bronner tries to explain why cooperation is occurring in the Jenin area, he gives these reasons:

Jenin, officials on all sides say, offers many advantages for a pilot project, an idea arrived at by American and European officials in February when they sought ways to build peace on the ground.

First, they said, Hamas, the main Palestinian militant opposition in the West Bank, is relatively weak in Jenin. Second, after the evacuation of four Israeli settlements in the region in 2005, the area is essentially free of settlers, a major source of friction elsewhere. Third, the barrier that Israel has been building causes little friction in this area because it is right on the boundary between Israel and the West Bank, not over it so there is little territorial dispute.

There is also a fourth reason. Gilboa, the Israeli region that abuts Jenin, is an unusual and unusually well-suited neighbor. Small and rural with 30,000 people, it is 40 percent Arab and 60 percent Jewish and the inhabitants have worked assiduously to create their own kind of model — of Arab-Jewish coexistence in Israel.

Do you notice what’s missing? Well how about Operation Defensive Shield that destroyed most of the terrorist infrastructure that existed in Jenin? Somehow acknowledging that killing terrorists helps bring peace seems to be beyond his understanding. But of course it’s important to mention that there are no more “settlers” there.

Then there’s this:

There are other concerns. The Palestinians have asked to base their newly trained battalion for Jenin in an abandoned Israeli settlement, a good spot in terms of location and infrastructure. But Israeli officials are worried about how it will play in Israel and have so far said no.

Israeli security officials say their Palestinian colleagues are good at law and order but not at stopping terrorist groups. They say that Islamic Jihad used to be strong here and is no longer because Israel spent years destroying its infrastructure and killing its militants, setting the stage for the Palestinian security takeover. But if they relax their vigilance, the Israelis say, the situation will deteriorate. Early on Wednesday morning, for example, Israeli soldiers and security men raided a home in Jenin and detonated a 30-pound pipe bomb.

The Palestinians complain that they are often urged to arrest someone just because he wears a beard. They add that as long as they are seen as puppets of the Israelis, the project is doomed. The key is for Palestinian security officials to be seen as agents of state building. Then the population will cooperate. This requires the kind of discretion that the Israeli Army has not been known for.

Notice how the Israeli claim that decimating Islamic Jihad played a role in the improvements is qualified by “they say.” The claims about settlers and the security fence are not qualified.

Also problematic is the idea that the Palestinians ought not to be seen as “puppets.” Well maybe that’s important in terms of their constituents, but if they don’t take responsibility to fight terror they’ll have no credibility among the Israelis. Why Israel’s concerns are given a short shrift here is a puzzle.

And the dig at the IDF is uncalled for. Again, if the IDF hadn’t unsubtly destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in Jenin, this experiment could not be taking place.

Finally we have Tony Blair:

“The intifada turned them into enemies in one day,” Mr. Blair said in an interview. “Now we are trying to recreate a sense of mutual confidence after seven years. It is a very slow process. But what is happening in Gilboa and Jenin is exactly the direction we would like to go.”

Blair here, presents the intifada as an independent force that just turned Jews and Arabs into enemies; the intifada, to Blair, just spontaneously generated causing destructive enmity between the two parties seeking peace.

Blair (and Bronner by quoting him uncritically) shows the same cluelessness that the late Scott Shuger described in a different context seven years ago at the start of the intifada:

The headline the Washington Post put over its lead Ramallah story was similarly misguided: “Grief, Anger Spurred Frenzied Crowd to Kill.” With its emphasis on external, even understandable, forces, this is classic responsibility-avoiding language. Note that there are no individuals in either the Times sentence or the Post headline. Even when presented with irrefutable evidence of personal culpability, all too often the papers still try to fuzz it over. Take that unbelievable picture of the guy with the bloody hands. The Los Angeles Times supplied a caption to the photo that managed not to refer to the blood at all. And in fact, neither the Los Angeles Times’ nor the New York Times’ lead story even mentioned the guy with the bloody hands.

The lynching of the soldiers didn’t just happen. It was the result of an orchestrated campaign of violence unleashed by Yasser Arafat a month earlier. The intifada didnt just happen, it was planned and executed by Yasser Arafat. The problem with the top down approach wasn’t in the details; it was in the fundamentally bad faith of the top of the Palestinians leadership. If the project in Jenin works, it will be because, at least in part it has circumvented the Palestinian leadership.

So while the idea of this little piece of peace working out is mildly encouraging, Bronner’s failures to acknowledge the success of the IDF and the perfidy of Arafat and the Palestinan leadership detract from the story.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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.

Brian Carney writes in the WSJ:

Meanwhile, 51% of those surveyed thought the press was “trying to hurt” Mrs. Palin with its coverage.

Perhaps most troubling for the press corps, though, was this finding: “55% said media bias is a bigger problem for the electoral process than large campaign donations.”

No doubt that’ the reason the editors of the Washington Post keep on harping on campaign donations. They hope the the public won’t scrutinize them too closely.

(via memeorandum)

Read Ocean Guy’s devastating attack on the media “cocoon”

Journalists are stuck on stupid and almost completely unable to realize that alternative news sources are accessible to a much larger percentage of the general public. And another fact that journalists and editors are seemingly oblivious to, is that the percentage of the general public that is routinely well INFORMED, is informed because they are using a wide variety of news sources. No longer are we only reading the NYT and Washington Post and paying attention to the network news.

For at least a decade, the most informed segment of our population, the neighborhood and office opinion leaders, have been using that entire spectrum of news sources to inform ourselves. We still read the “old media” but… as news junkies and internauts, we have a vast array of additional news sources right at our fingertips. The distributed intelligence and collective experience of the blogosphere alone is awesome, but blogs are only a small portion of the total information available. Meanwhile, Journalists have responded to this change in news distribution by covering their ears and eyes and loudly singing, “LaLa Lalala, LaLa Lalala…” in a futile attempt to ignore their pesky critical audience.

And as if you need proof the Counterterrorism blog reports:

I see one after another of the mainstream media outlets which have made important contributions to the factual underpinnings of the counter-terrorism effort dropping off that beat. Editors in the print media are shifting terrorism experts on their staffs towards investigations of political candidates. At least three such reporters at three major papers are now chasing Sarah Palin stories (I haven’t had time to chase down everybody in “the business”).

The CT blog notes that it is especially unfortunate that these specialists are being moved away from the counterterrorism beat at the same time that the Bush administration is acting ever more aggressively against terror organizations as its term approaches the end.

This leads Instapundit to note wryly:

SHIFTING RESOURCES TO FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY

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.

The approach to threats against Israel is one of those things that is taken casually. Here’s Secretary Rice on the regular but (relatively) infrequent Qassams that still get fired into Israel despite the ceasefire with Hamas:

QUESTION: How does the ceasefire in Gaza help matters? Has it endured better than you imagined?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it has its ups and downs, obviously. But look, I - we said early on that if there - that calm in Gaza would be a useful thing because it - the Egyptians, who - with whom we worked, have managed to keep what is a very fragile situation at least stable, and that’s certainly a help to any process of trying to move forward on the peace process.

Ultimately, though, Gaza has to be resolved and it has to be resolved on the basis of the - Abu Mazen’s program for it, which is that legitimate Palestinian Authority institutions have to be reinstated. I think we want to continue to look at what can be done at the crossings for regularization of those ultimately along the lines of the November 2005 agreement. So this is not, I think, a metastable situation, but it’s a situation that for now has seemed to allow at least people to - you know, the levels of violence to stay low, and that’s welcome.

(h/t My Right Word)

Nothing about the threat from Hamas’s building of fortifications and re-arming. Somehow Abu Mazen (she’s using his nom de guerre, how reassuring) is going to impose his authority on Gaza.

And how’s that Abu Mazen thing going? Didn’t Israel just build his confidence? Why yes they did. The New York Times reports:

Israel released almost 200 Palestinian prisoners Monday in a good-will gesture aimed at reinvigorating the faltering peace process. Hours later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the country to make her own push for a deal between the two sides.

And what does this “good will gesture” entail?

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.

“This is a great joy for our mothers and our people, but it remains a small step because we left behind us thousands of prisoners,” Mr. Atabeh said after his release, according to Reuters.

Mr. Atabeh had been convicted in bombings that killed one Israeli woman and wounded dozens of people.

A second long-serving prisoner was Mohammed Abu Ali, who had been jailed since 1980 for the murder of an Israeli settler in the West Bank.

However, most of those set free had been arrested for lesser crimes within the past two years.

“It’s not easy for Israel to release prisoners,” said a government spokesman, Mark Regev, according to The Associated Press. “But we understand the importance of the prisoner issue for Palestinian society.”

(h/t Boker Tov Boulder)

Note that “blood on their hands” is in quotes. Why not just write “who were convicted of murder in the commission of acts of terror?” (without the quotes, of course) Why is almost as much time spent describing the prisoners by the length of time served as by the crimes they committed?

By emphasizing the time served changes their status from terrorists to prisoners. Put another way Snapped Shot asks and answers a question about the coverage of the prisoner release:

How does our “impartial” press choose to represent them?

You guessed it: As heroes.

And as far as the release of prisoners being important for Palestinian society, Israelly Cool explains why it’s important.

These murderers are but two of the “prisoners” we freed today, as a “goodwill” gesture to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. And he reciprocated with a goodwill gesture of his own - a threat that unless all the “prisoners” are freed, there will be no peace.

Speaking of gestures, this one made by the released prisoners does not mean “peace.” It means “V for victory”, and is basically a promise that the terrorism will continue.

JoshuaPundit writes (regarding Condoleeza Rice but the general point holds) about what’s not important:

No mention of course on whether it might matter a lot to the Israelis to keep these killers behind bars.I doubt that matter penetrates her consciousness.

Nor does it matter to Mahmoud Abbas, who referred to the released terrorists as ‘heroes’ and made a point of saying that no peace agreement with Israel was possible until all of the terrorists are released.Nor did eithr he or Condaleeza Rice have the common decency to mention a single word about Gilad Shalit, who’s still being held incommunicado in the Gaza Strip.

And as noted before past experience shows that these prisoner releases will lead to more terror, not peace.

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.

The Washington Post describes the issue of prisoner releases like this:

Israel has periodically released Palestinian prisoners, whose fate is among the most politically and emotionally compelling issues for the Palestinian public, to shore up Abbas’s government. Abbas favors negotiations with Israel to create an independent Palestinian state, while the rival Hamas movement has advocated destruction of the Jewish state. The releases, although modest, are designed to show that Abbas’s approach yields rewards.

“Modest?” “yields rewards?” No mention that there’s a very good chance that a portion of the terrorist released will likely return to terrorism. So who receives the “rewards” other than terrorists who have seen their terms reduced, is not clear. No mention that the fellow who “favors negotiations” considers resistance (i.e. terrorism) to be peace. There’s something really Orwellian here.

And as a Blog for All writes:

It’s supposed to help bolster Fatah in their internecine struggle with Hamas, but all it does is provide more fodder for the terrorists to hold out hope that they can beat Israel for control over all territory West of the Jordan River.

Despite the romantic terms used to describe the prisoner release, they present a real risk to Israel. When will the world demand that the Palestinians take similar risks for peace?

Crossposted on Yourish.

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.

Someone didn’t get the New York Times editorial staff’s