This evening’s rocket, launched from northern Gaza, landed in an open area near a kibbutz between the Sedot HaNegev and Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Councils.

No injuries were reported and no damage was caused.

I guess since Hamas didn’t claim it, they’re not lying, right?

Wrong.

The Hamas terrorist organization proudly claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on western Negev communities Wednesday morning, a day after the United Nations officially released a report criticizing Operation Cast Lead.

The attack also came one day after The New York Times published an interview with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal, who claimed that the group had ceased its rocket attacks on Israel after the military operation ended.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, apparently. At least, you can fool the media. And some fools in government who are insisting on tying Iran’s behavior to the creation of a Palestinian state. Because it’s not like Iran regularly calls for the death of Israel or anything like that. Oh, and as for Meshaal telling the Times that Hamas would accept a two-state solution?

Shyeah, right.

The Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas will not accept a two-state solution as a means to end the conflict with Israel, the movement’s Damascus-based politburo chief Khaled Meshal said Saturday.

Meshal said that Hamas rejects the two-state solution but could still be part of a national unity government if a Palestinian state is established based on 1967 borders.

Meshal told the New York Times last week that Hamas has agreed with the rival Fatah movement to a state based on 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and a right of return for Palestinians. He said such a deal could be the basis for a long-lasting ceasefire. Some analysts saw the remarks as an indirect recognition of Israel.

If the media ever get tired of being played for suckers, they might get some of their readers back.

I think it has top 40 potential. But then, I’ve had a soft spot for these music videos ever since I first discovered them. I think they’re all silly and fun.

Of course, the usual anti-Israel venom is in the comments, but let’s stop and think about relative death tolls of wars and terror attacks by Islamic nations, and wars by Israel. I do believe the death toll of Islamic nations utterly dwarfs the death tolls of sixty years of war with Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors. But that’s a post for another time.

The first time the name of the youngster comes up in the Palestinian chronicles is an article (_adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/04_05_03nl.php_) on the Adalah site:

Most recently, on 15 April 2004, the Israeli military used Mohammed Badwan, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Biddo, West Bank as a human shield. Mohammed was taking part in a demonstration against the construction of The Wall in Biddo.

Not nice, agreed. But obviously the boy made a lasting impression on the Zionist aggressors, because a week barely passed, and he is used again – and in the same capacity (but now he is an year older). Electronic Intifada (_electronicintifada.net/v2/article2614.shtml_) knows the details:

According to the same sources, on 22nd April 2004, a 13 year old boy called Mohammed Said Essa Badwan/Badran was used as a human shield. Mohammed was peacefully taking part in spontaneous demonstration…

It becomes a habit with IDF (or with young Mohammed) apparently. Or, you can say, an innocent mistake in the date – nothing special.

But the amazing career of young Muhammad is only budding, just wait a bit. He is used again, now, according to Amnesty International (_amnestyusa.org/annualreport.php?id=ar&yr=2005&c=ISR_) report for 2005:

In April, Israeli soldiers used 13-year-old Muhammed Badwan as a “human shield” during a demonstration in the West Bank village of Biddu. The soldiers placed the boy on the hood of their jeep and tied him to the front windscreen to discourage Palestinian demonstrators from throwing stones in their direction.

Notice that he is still 13 years old. Again, it could be a clerical mistake, but the boy shows resilience and is highly reusable in his role of a human shield. This is probably why the Zionists decided to put him in some (hitherto secret) suspended animation machine. Apparently his age plays a critical role in their nefarious plans, since the next record of his appearance relates to 2007 (_lists.resist.ca/pipermail/onthebarricades/2008-April/000480.html_):

Palestinain children as young as 11 were used as human shields during an Israeli military invasion of Nablus in March 2007. 13 year-old Mohammad Badwan was tied by the arm to an Israeli military jeep…

It is Nablus now and three years later, but he is still 13 years old! And March of 2007 sees his return to Bidou in the same role. According to the Live Leak (_liveleak.com/view?i=76d_1173007758_)

Israeli human rights activists have accused border police of using a 13-year-old Palestinian as a human shield. Rabbis for Human Rights say that Mohammed Badwan was tied by police to a jeep during a recent demonstration in the West Bank village of Bidou.

This was posted in March 2007 too. Surely our boy gets around. Besides, is it possible that he’s developed some affinity for a specific border police jeep? Because the picture used is usually the same, sometimes cropped and sometimes not.

And if you thought for a moment that the wretched semi-existence of Mohammad, which could be described as frozen – woken up – tied to a jeep – frozen again, has a happy end, you are mistaken, because he was activated again recently – in 2009, according to Pakistani Scandals (_pakistaniscandals.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/palestinian-child-used-as-human-shield-by-israel_):

This is what happened to a Palestinian child who joined Teenagers throwing stones at Israeli border police. Muhammad Badwan was grabbed by officers and tied by an arm to the grille covering the windscreen of their security vehicle. Last night the 13 year olds father said the police had illegally used his son as a human Shield to try to stop the demonstrators throwing stones at them.

There are more events with different dates where Muhammad participated, but I hope you have got the picture by now.

Anyway – do you remember Fatima the Scarface?

How about the omnipresent Green Helmet?

Looks like a good time to start a new line of PR accessories – a flat Mohammed Badwan modeled after the Flat Fatima (no, not that Mohammed).

Way to go, boy – and you are only 13…

Afterword: As a matter of policy, I don’t provide direct links to anti-Israeli sites, but if you feel you just have to visit these places, remove the “(_ ” and “_)”, add “www.” and here you are.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Yes, that’s right. The people writing the Opinionator can’t tell that Neo-neocon and I are two wholly separate blogs and bloggers. I guess all of us female Jewish bloggers just look alike.

I posted a comment asking them to correct the error at 11:00 this morning. It is still in the moderation queue. Twelve other comments have been approved.

Way to go, New York Times. Not only can’t the Times correct errors in the print edition in a timely, equitable manner, but they can’t fix errors on a blog—which doesn’t have to wait for the print run to be published.

And the funniest thing of all? I never posted on the Jeffrey Goldberg post under discussion.

Update: It’s been fixed.

Welcome, Instapundit readers. Have a look around for all the Israel news (with snark) you can handle.

Latest hasbara weapon: ‘Army of bloggers’

The article is going on about that army, its potential, blah blah blah…

“Israel’s newest weapon on the public relations front is “an army of bloggers,” according to a statement issued by the Absorption Ministry Sunday afternoon.”

And Absorption Ministry is on top of this task too, so everything is cool. But my point is that to illustrate the article they’ve used the following screenshot:

Cool. Although – how do they count Meryl as a success case for the Absorption Ministry is left unclear…

Anyhow – congratulations!

Read more here, and many thanks to Andrew Ian Dodge.

Also – read the whole linked article in The London Daily News.

(Warning – after laughing and crying comes a puking session).

P.S. But the picture of F-16 is undeniably nice. Here it comes:

Mmm… still, cutting a piece of that missile on the right. Oh well…

Update by Meryl: Snoopy put the article’s headline as this post title. Yes, that’s a headline in a British newspaper. Damn Israel and its own selfish security concerns! Can’t they think about someone else for a change?

Wow. Just—wow.

(Glad to have you back, Snoopy!)

Jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 16-year high

They’re right. Financial crisis, credit crunch, homebuying down, construction down, Circuit City going into Chapter 11, auto dealers going out of business—who would have thought that the number of people registering for unemployment benefits would go up?

New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market expected to get even worse next year.

The government said new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 from a downwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That’s much higher than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 505,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

I see that they changed the headline to one much less, well, stupid.

Stocks point lower after jobless claims jump
Investors list of worries is growing following a government report that weekly unemployment claims have unexpectedly increased.

Stock futures contracts have wavered Thursday as investors worry about the fate of Detroit’s big automakers and juggle broader fears about the struggling economy. But a jump in new claims for unemployment benefits to a 16-year high has added to investors unease.

The Labor Department’s report has reported that new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 last week. Thomson Reuters says analysts expected 505,000.

But this is bad. Get ready for Dow 7,000. Oil’s down around $50 a barrel, too (which is not bad for consumers). Gas is down to $1.62 in the Richmond area.

I wanted to believe the worst of the Obama campaign. I wanted to believe that they had released the note that the candidate had place in the Kotel (Western Wall) to two newspapers.

There was some indication that the paper making the claim, Ma’ariv was being honest.

Not anymore.

The New Republic’s blog that had previously accepted Ma’ariv’s story, has dug a little deeper and found:

I just got off the phone with a Ma’ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is “completely false,” and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma’ariv. “No official spokesman for Ma’ariv told this to any of the papers.” I’ve got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I’ll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that “the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing.”

Hot Air writes:

Something’s fishy with Ma’ariv, though. TNR notes that unnamed “spokesmen” pushing the “Obama approved it” line were quoted by three different Israeli papers last night. And today?

Last October Ehud Asheri wrote in Haaretz:

Ofer Nimrodi, owner of the mass-circulation daily newspaper Ma’ariv, has been experiencing something unfamiliar these days: rare esteem and praise is greeting the appointment of the editors-in-chief Doron Galezer and Ruthie Yuval, the likes of which the battered publisher has never enjoyed.

Fifteen years after he bought the newspaper, there appears at long last the possibility that he will be extricated from his outsider position in print journalism and will earn equal status in the exclusive club of the veteran publishers who, unlike him, were born into the industry.

The change in the way the wind is blowing can be attributed first of all to what Galezer and Yuval represent: traditional, independent, investigative journalism that is not linked by umbilical cord to wealth, does not habitually hobnob socially with politicians in the places they frequent, and is not tainted by obsequious populism.

Both of them grew up in the solid school of the Haaretz group, and both have proven that it is possible to maintain the values of classical journalism even in the commercial environment of the mass circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth, and television’s Channel 2.

Those “values of classical journalism” were on full display during the recent controversy over Sen. Obama’s note in the wall.

I’m sorry I fell for it.

See also Rubicon3.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

So what gives, New York Times? Why the reluctance to cover this new twist in the al-Dura story that you have used so many times in the past to support Palestinian terrorists? You have used this tale to beat the Israelis up for 8 years, now. But, we have final proof that this is a faked video. The Jews didn’t kill little Muhammad al-Dura.

( via memeorandum )

Instapundit answers (with a question):

Because it opens the door to suggestions that this wasn’t an aberration, but the norm in Mideast coverage?

It’s a topic I wrote to the Times’s public editor about two months ago. At the time I wrote:

As I’ve shown above the Times accepted a narrative that shaped a lot of its reporting at the time. One piece of that narrative was exposed quickly. In another case a Times reporter used a highly suspect statement of an interested party to support the narrative. Now another part of the narrative has been shown to be suspect. At least in the name of accuracy one would hope that the Times would look into the case and what it implies.

In addition to the immediate issue of the origins of the “Aqsa intifada”, the case calls into question the widespread use of local stringers who may be more interested in promoting an agenda than in accuracy. The Times’s lack of curiosity in this case reflects poorly on its commitment to getting the story correct.

I still have not received a response from Clark Hoyt. I don’t think that accuracy is the main goal of the NYT.

This failure doesn’t just apply to the NYT but to nearly every major media outlet in American.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

If anyone ever deserved the title “baby-killer,” it is Samir Kuntar. Yet his freedom has been a popular demand in Lebanon and the cause of Lebanon-based gunslingers for almost three decades. Abbas’s gang hijacked the Achille Lauro in 1985 in a failed effort to win Mr. Kuntar’s release. After Abbas faded into semi-retirement in Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad, Hezbollah took up the Kuntar cause, attempting to get Israel to swap him for bodies of Israelis killed in Hezbollah raids.

That’s correct, however, I’m a bit troubled by the conclusion:

Great changes must take place across the Middle East before a lasting peace can be achieved. Israel must make territorial compromises and foster a dignified future for the Palestinians. But attitudes among Israel’s enemies must be transformed as well. A good place to start would be to declare that people such as Samir Kuntar deserve to rot in prison, no matter what the religion or nationality of the children they kill.

I’m not bothered by their wish that Kuntar rot in jail instead of seeing him executed; the Post’s editors don’t believe in the death penalty. It’s the mantra about great changes and how Israel must make “territorial compromises” and “foster a dignified future,” these are both programs that Israel has been engaged in for the past 15 years. For the Post’s correct complaint about Lebanon and Hezbollah it ignores the bigger problem: Kuntar and terrorists like him are heroes even to the so-called Palestinian “moderates.” For there to be peace in the Middle East great changes are necessary, but the greatest change is the acceptance by the Arabs generally, and the Palestinians specifically, of the Israel’s right to exist. Fifteen years of peace processing and Israeli concessions have not changed that fundamental problem.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.