Olmert is going to beg the Russians to stop doing what they’ve done for, oh, fifty, sixty years now: Sell weapons to Israel’s enemies.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, traveling to Russia this week on one of his last diplomatic missions, said Sunday he would urge Moscow not to sell sophisticated weapons to Israel’s enemies.

Iran is interested in buying anti-aircraft missiles that could cripple any military strike against its nuclear program. Israel is also afraid Moscow would sell Syria the same missile defense system.

In an overture before the trip, Israel’s Cabinet voted Sunday to recognize Russia’s claim to property in downtown Jerusalem. Russia laid claim to the site, named for the son of a Russian czar, on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Yeah, that’ll help. The country that originated the forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”—the one that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cribs from today, and that is still cited as proof of ZOG by the Jew-haters worldwide—they’re going to not sell Israel’s enemies weapons because, um, let’s see—because Olmert asks nicely?

I think not.

Iran says it plans to buy from Russia advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles that could detect aircraft sent to destroy its nuclear facilities. Syria, which backs Hezbollah guerrillas who battled Israel in Lebanon in 2006, reportedly has asked to buy them, too.

Russia has not confirmed the reports. But recently, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said his government was prepared to sell Syria arms with a “defensive character.”

Then there’s the fact that the Iranian nuclear program is going full steam ahead, thanks to Russian assistance. But sure, Ehud. Go to Russia with your hat in your hand. See what happens. My guess: Nothing.

This post is triggered by that post by Neil of A Cloud in Trousers. In which Neil joins the crowd of bleeding hearts demanding the release of five Cubans arrested by FBI in 1998 and put on trial for quite a few offenses (notice the source of the following quote, please):

There are a number of minor charges, including acting as agents of a foreign government without being registered with the US authorities (which the Five admit to), but the two main charges which three of them have been condemned to life sentences for are related to spying and murder.

I can agree with much of what Neil says: yes, Cuba is far from being a socialist heaven. Yes, the infamous US embargo on Cuba is stupid and only helps to perpetuate the Cuban regime. Yes, there is a strong possibility that the trial was partly rigged and the sentences dished out by the court were influenced by the venue.

However - the five never denied that they were Cuban intelligence agents, unlawfully operating on the territory of another country:

But the Five pointed out vigorously in their defense that they were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.

(You will have to scroll down a lot in the linked site or search for “Who are the Cuban Five?” on that page to get to that quote). Without resorting to legal terminology (which I cannot do anyway), these people were spying, no matter what legal term is fitting to their occupation while in Miami. No matter what the previous source (a Marxist one, to be sure) tries to prove. The verbal trickery of the “agents of foreign government” and “monitoring the actions of terrorist groups” kind is really pathetic. Imagine a USA spy caught in Cuba “monitoring the activities” of something.

They may have gotten harsher sentences than were due to them. That is, if you rely solely on Granma - sourced propaganda and decide to believe that every other charge but spying is false. That is if you forget what exactly it is DGI, the Cuban foreign intelligence service, does for living. That is if you look at Desmond Tutu’s and Harold Pinter’s backsides as a sole source of that redeeming ray of hope.

In short - if you are ready to buy one-sided crap in unlimited doses.

Now ask yourself how many of the celebrities that join hands protesting the bitter fate of the Miami five have ever joined their manicured hands in protesting the fate of the jailed Cuban journalists, dissidents, the whole people? Does the name of Rev Tutu or that of Reb Pinter appear on one of these protests?

Yeah, but it’s hardly relevant to the case we discuss here. Or is it?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

A Russian religious group called Union of Russian Orthodox Citizens proposed promoting the Saint Alexander Nevsky to the role of the patron saint of FSB - the Russian federal security service, the main successor of KGB. Here is Alexander:

When you stop laughing at the mere idea of a saint overlooking the essentially dirty business of the (not so) august organ, consider the following:
(more…)

Three young Jewish men were hospitalized after being attacked by French “youths.”

Three Jewish youths on their way to the Paris branch of the Bnei Akiva movement were attacked by a group of teens on Saturday, a short while before the end of the Sabbath. The three youths were hospitalized for a day due to the facial fractions caused by stones that were thrown at them by the attackers.

The boys were walking through Paris’ 19th Arrondissement, home to 20,000 of the French capital’s Jews. Raphi Zeush, a Jewish Agency and Bnei Akiva envoy to the city told Ynet, “Five Muslim and African youths came and threw chestnuts and cobblestones at them.

“One of the Jewish boys asked them to stop, and the French teens started cursing at him. He responded with curses and they called their friends. Another 10 teens came, some of them wielding brass knuckles, and a fight broke out.”

Raphael Haddad, the student group’s president, said that one of the Jewish youths suffered a broken nose and another a fractured cheekbone, while all three had considerable contusions.

But it’s not anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Zionism.

And oh yeah, France doesn’t have an anti-Semitism problem.

A year-and-a-half after the critically-acclaimed film Undercover Mosque was first screened, Dispatches goes undercover again to see whether extremist beliefs continue to be promoted in certain key British Muslim institutions.

So what is the verdict? Here:

A female reporter attends prayer meetings at an important British mosque which claims to be dedicated to moderation and dialogue with other faiths. She secretly films shocking sermons given to the women-only congregation in which female preachers recite extremist and intolerant beliefs. As hundreds of women and some children come to pray, a preacher calls for adulterers, homosexuals, women who act like men and Muslim converts to other faiths to be killed, saying: “Kill him, kill him. You have to kill him, you understand. This is Islam.”

More of that choice Islamophobia? You bet.

Hat tip: Tom Carew.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Israel has evidently decided that she is alone on the world stage. Actually, she’s always known it, but not it’s been codified:

Israel will not agree to allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons and if the grains start running out in the proverbial egg timer, Jerusalem will not hesitate to take whatever means necessary to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear goals, the government has recently decided in a special discussion.

According to the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, whether the United States and Western countries will succeed in toppling the ayatollah regime diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether an American strike on Iran will eventually be decided upon, Jerusalem has put preparations for a separate, independent military strike by Israel in high gear.

While this is the stuff that conspiracy nutjobs live on, and the fodder for the fever swamps that are the lefty blogs, it’s also the best thing I’ve read in quite some time:

Sneh also visited Switzerland and Austria last week in an attempt to lobby those two states. Both countries have announced massive long-term investments in Iranian gas and oil fields for the next decade.

“Talk of the Jewish Holocaust and Israel’s security doesn’t impress these guys,” Sneh said wryly.

Hearing his hosts speak of their future investments, Sneh replied quietly “it’s a shame, because Ido will light all this up.” He was referring to Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, the recently appointed commander of the Israeli Air Force and the man most likely to be the one to orchestrate Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, should this become the necessity.

“Investing in Iran in 2008,” Sneh told his Austrian hosts, “is like investing in Krups Steelworks in 1938, it’s a high risk investment.” The Austrians, according to Sneh, turned pale.

There’s a lot more at the link. Recommendation: Read in full.

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.

Since the name of “peacekeeping” Russian operation against Georgia - “Принуждение к миру” - was first published, I had one heck of a trouble translating it into two other languages I claim to be more or less familiar with. The literal translations - “Coercion to peace” or “האלצות לשלום” sound so outlandish that people whose (respective) mother languages are English and Hebrew just goggle stupidly, and no explanation penetrates.

Thankfully, the Russian authorities haven’t been deaf and/or blind to the issue of translation. To help out the curious foreigners, they have decided to offer several examples that will definitely make you grok the above:

• Coercion to generosity = robbery
• Coercion to a vacation = firing (sorry, it’s “downsizing” these days)
• Coercion to better health = beating
• Coercion to change of scenery = arrest
• Coercion to a wedding = rape
• Coercion to friendship = raising natural gas price to $500

Capisce?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Reuters has a puff piece that pretends to be reporting about the “liberalization” of Saudi Arabian cities. Let’s take a look.

The Saudi government has a project to develop at least four “economic cities” where many expect the religious establishment will be kept at a distance from social life, the workplace and education.

Women will be able to drive in them and there may even be cinema houses.

There are already some spaces in the country of 25 million people where the religious police — charged with maintaining “public morals” — are nowhere to be seen.

Premise one: Saudis (and by extension, foreign nationals) will be able to live normal, mostly-Sharia-free lives in at least four places.
Premise two: Women will be able to drive.
Premise three: There may be movie theaters. (Hoo-boy, the Saudis are going to join the twentieth century!)
Premise four: Areas already exist where the religious police “are nowhere to be seen”.

Now let’s take apart these premises, using the rest of the Reuters piece.

Jeddah carries the slogan “Jeddah is different” and Riyadh residents spend summer holidays in the Red Sea city, where local women with uncovered faces swan through shopping malls or sit in late-night shisha-pipe dens.

“Uncovered faces” is not exactly able to drive, work, and relax in public without fear of the religious police beating them and hauling them off to jail. And we discover that the zealots are chomping at the bit to take down these dens of iniquity.

Islamists constantly fulminate against the situation in Jeddah as if it was Sodom and Gomorrah.

The religious police generally also avoid the diplomatic district in Riyadh and Dhahran in the Eastern Province that houses Aramco.

Residents of the Eastern Province say the vice squad generally also leaves the city of Khobar alone, but has a strong presence in the neighbouring city of Dammam.

Please note the words in bold. If the religious police “generally” avoid areas, that means that there is a presence, and that they are not “nowhere to be seen.” So these women are at risk of being arrested pretty much at any time.

Premises one, two, and four have all been disproven by the very words in the rest of the Reuters article. As for premise three, again, well, gee, movie theaters. That’s so 1900.

Way to shill for the Saudis, though. Yes, that liberalization of Saudi Arabia continues apace. How long before the new, and highly touted coed university is attacked by either terrorists or the religious police?

My father used to say that the Italians were the only country in the world that fought on both sides in World War II. Well, they’ve just admitted that they’re also not beneath making deals with terrorists to keep Italy safe from harm—at the expense of the rest of the world, but mostly, of course, Jews.

It’s official: The Italian government allowed Palestinian terror organizations to act freely within its territory in exchange for their commitment to refrain from targeting national and international Italian sites.

In an article written by former Italian President Francesco Cossiga for the national newspaper Corriere della Sera he confesses, “I always knew, though not by official documents and information kept from me, about the existence of an agreement based on ‘don’t harm me and I won’t harm you’ between the Italian Republic and organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the PLO.”

According to Cossiga the agreement was approved and directed by former Italian Premier Aldo Moro, who “was awarded an extraordinary capability for the direction of Italian intelligence agencies and special forces after he received approval for the deal.”

It gets worse.

“According to the deal, the Palestinian organizations could establish bases in Italy, enjoyed freedom of movement when entering and exiting the country, and could move around without undergoing mandatory security checks because they were protected by the secret service,” Cossiga explained.

“During my time as interior minister I learned that PLO people were holding heavy artillery in their homes and protected by diplomatic immunity as representatives of the Arab League. I was told not to worry and I managed to convince them to lay down their heavy artillery and make do with light weaponry.”

This makes the Italians complicit in PLO terror attacks throughout the years, and explains utterly how Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking, managed to slip away after his plane was forced down by US fighters.

The Italian prime minister at the time, Bettino Craxi, persuaded President Ronald Reagan to hand the terrorists over to Italy on the ground that the crimes had been committed on an Italian ship.

The U.S. administration was deeply angered when the Craxi government immediately released the mastermind of the Achille Lauro operation, Abu Abbas, who was later convicted in absentia. The Craxi cabinet fell in the ensuing uproar.

And this also explains how three of the four convicted terrorists just walked away from their prison terms.

Italy’s decision to furlough a Palestinian terrorist who murdered an elderly American passenger aboard the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise liner threatened to chill Italian-U.S. relations Tuesday after the man failed to return from a leave given “for good conduct.”

[...] Privately, U.S. officials appeared to be flabbergasted and trying to figure out what to say and how to say it after learning of his flight — particularly since Mr. Molky was the third of four convicted Achille Lauro terrorists to have walked out of Italian jails in such circumstances.

This was in 1996. I think it’s safe to say that the Italians were still abiding by the agreement they made with the murderers.

So. How do you say “Eff you” in Italian, hm? Because Italy, eff you for making deals with murderers to keep yourselves a tiny bit safer. But it didn’t work all that well now, did it?

But the agreement did not always run smoothly. On August 2, 1980 an explosion shook Bologna’s train station; 85 people were killed and 200 more were injured in the blast. Cossiga believes it is entirely possible that the explosion was due to a “work accident” and that explosive materials handled by the Palestinians were responsible for the incident.

The fable of the frog and the scorpion comes to mind. Only an idiot trusts the scorpion.

Have I mentioned lately how thankful I am that my grandparents on my father’s side, and my great-grandparents on my mother’s side, left Russia and Latvia and came here?

“Mother Russia” my ass. “Master Russia” is the only fitting title. Mark Twain figured out the Russians a century ago. He wrote this in 1905:

We have the flies and the Russians, we cannot help it, let us not bemoan about it, but manfully accept the dispensation and do the best we can with it. Time will bring relief, this we know, for we have history for it. Nature had made many and many a mistake before she added flies and Russians, and always she corrected them as soon as she could. She will correct this one too — in time. Geological time.

[...] Even in our own day Russians could be made useful if only a way could be found to inject some intelligence into them. How magnificently they fight in Manchuria! With what indestructible pluck they rise up after the daily defeat, and sternly strike, and strike again! how gallant they are, how devoted, how superbly unconquerable! If they would only reflect! if they could only reflect! if they only had something to reflect with! Then these humble and lovable slaves would perceive that the splendid fighting-energy which they are wasting to keep their chipmunk on the throne would abolish both him and it if intelligently applied.

I think if he were writing today, he would not say much different about the Russians, who replaced their inherited Czar with an “elected” one.

Thanks again, Great-grandparents and Grandparents. When we meet in the world to come, I will do the equivalent of buying you a drink there.

The UN is really, really worried about the economy of the Gaza Strip. UNRWA workers claim poverty is at “unprecedented” highs.

The number of households in the Gaza Strip below the poverty line has reached an unprecedented high of nearly 52 percent, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a report published recently.

“The number of households in Gaza below the consumption poverty line continued to grow, reaching 51.8% in 2007, despite significant amounts of emergency and humanitarian assistance,” UNRWA said in a statement late last week. Meanwhile, poverty rates in the West Bank fell to just over 19%.

The report, based on figures provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), said that “the real average unemployment rate in the occupied Palestinian territory (as a whole) remained amongst the highest in the world at 29.5%,” with Gaza reaching “an unprecedented high of 45.3%” during the second half of last year.

Phew. Those are some pretty bad statistics. Why, you’d think the Gaza economy was on the verge of collapse or something. Well, you might—except it was declared just that a year ago:

Gaza’s already weak economy could collapse unless the main commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel is reopened, Gaza businessmen and United Nations officials said today.

The Karni crossing has been shut since June 12 because the Fatah-affiliated Palestinians who operated it fled after Hamas took over Gaza in bloody fighting. But both Israel and the Fatah leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, have been in no hurry to help Hamas by working to regularize Gaza’s economic life.

Karen AbuZayd, who is the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which deals with Palestinian refugees, said in an interview: “Without Karni the Gaza economy will collapse unless it is opened for exports and not just for imports, so we don’t punish this whole people.”

Huh. Imagine that. The economy was on the verge of collapse a year ago, and yet, it survived. So the Chicken Littles at the UN are declaring it at the height of poverty, instead.

Say. Why is it, exactly, that the Gaza economy is so crappy, do you think? Let’s take a trip back through time to 2005, after the disengagement, to see what happened.

Amid the rubble of the former Jewish settlements, Palestinians have sown the first seeds of a modest economic revival.

Less than three months after the Israelis departed, Palestinians have repaired scores of greenhouses left by the settlers, planted an autumn crop and are preparing to harvest an estimated $20 million worth of strawberries, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, and an array of herbs and spices. The produce is intended mostly for export to Europe, but some will also be headed to Israel, Arab countries and the United States.

So. Whatever happened to those greenhouses that they needed repair in the first place, I wonder?

Palestinian police on Tuesday blocked off abandoned Jewish settlements and chased after scavengers in a first attempt to impose law and order after chaotic celebrations of Israel’s pullout from Gaza, but the overwhelmed forces were unable to halt looting of the area’s prized greenhouses.

Egyptian guards, meanwhile, failed for a second straight day to control a rush across the Gaza-Egypt border, which was a formidable barrier when still patrolled by Israel. With the Israelis gone, Gazans dug under walls and climbed over barriers to get to Egypt where they stocked up on cheap cigarettes, medication and cheese.

Oh, yeah. That happened.

So. Why is it, do you think, the Gaza Strip is suffering from unrelenting poverty? Oh, that’s right. It’s Israel’s fault. Blockade, yadayada, etc., etc. Never blame the actions of the residents of the strip. Don’t blame Hamas. Don’t blame the Gazans support for terrorism. Blame Israel’s blockade.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, I’m not buying it.

One of the shining examples of peacemaking in the Middle East always comes back to the 1978 Camp David Accords. Peace between Israel and Egypt is held up as the prize package, even though no other Arab country has waged war on Israel in the intervening years, in spite of not having a signed peace treaty.

But the peace between Egypt and Israel is full of stories like these reported by Commentary’s Eric Trager:

For the most part, tourism between Israel and Egypt has long been a one-way affair. In this vein, Israeli tourism to Egypt peaked in 1999 at 415,000 visitors, whereas Egyptian tourism to Israeli reached a high of merely 28,000 visitors in 1995.

[...] But even for those Egyptians who are financially able to visit Israel and ideologically undeterred, the Egyptian government has done its fair share to build additional barriers to Egyptian-Israeli contact. According to an Egyptian evangelical pastor who asked that his name be withheld, Egyptians who wish to travel to Israel must apply for special single-use passports - a process that automatically places them on an official government register. Upon returning to Egypt, they are frequently questioned by state security officials and closely monitored. Egyptian friends who have expressed their desire to visit Israel have confirmed this account.

Moreover, even when Egyptians seek to interact with Israelis without visiting the Jewish state, Egyptian security services may intervene. One Egyptian academic, who asked that his name be withheld, shared the following story. Recently, he had been invited to an event sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, and intended to attend. Shortly before the event, however, Egyptian security services contacted him, “advising” him not to attend - the implication being that there would be retribution if he did otherwise. Apparently, Egyptian security had learned of his intention to attend the event by monitoring his mail.

If there were truly peace between Egypt and Israel, the Egyptian government wouldn’t be preventing its people from so much as attending an event at the Israeli Embassy.

And it is stories like these that are completely ignored by Jimmy Carter and the rest of the Camp David cheerleaders.

I might point out that there has also been this sort of peace between most other Arab nations and Israel since Camp David. And we’re not paying the other countries the $2 billion a year we pay Egypt in aid.

Some British MPs think it’s just dandy to talk with an organization that is working for the end of the Jewish State:

After a long period of politically sequestering the Hamas government ruling the Gaza Strip, a group of British statesmen are willing to reestablish official relations with the group.

According to a report in the British Guardian, a cross-party group has called on the Quartet’s Middle East envoy Tony Blair to open a dialogue with Hamas, saying “until now there has been no engagement between the Quartet and Hamas, but now we think it is time”.

No it isn’t.

The international community, said the Members of Parliament, should “seize the opportunity” presented by the ceasefire reached between Israel and Hamas to try and include thelatetr [sic] in the peace process.

Really? The opportunity presented to Hamas to rearm and regroup?

A member of Hamas’ military wing was killed Tuesday morning and two others were severely injured in an explosion which took place east of Gaza City, the Palestinian news agency Maan reported. The man was hurt by shrapnel in all parts of his body.

Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, declared that the man, 24-year-old Halil Ibrahim Jundiah, was killed “while on a special jihad mission.”

Two weeks ago, two Palestinians were killed and two were injured in a blast at a Hamas training base near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis. A source in the Strip said that a facility in the base collapsed following the explosion. The IDF said the incident was a “work incident”.

Is that the opportunity you’re talking about?

Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce said that MPs believed it was time for the Quartet – which is made up of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN – to allow Hamas to be heard.

The MPs noted that Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza Strip was “neither justified nor acceptable”, but added that including the group in the peace talks was imperative, urged the Quartet to use the opportunity provided by the truce to try and facilitate a solution to the rift between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

Yeah? The “rift” included throwing each other’s members off buildings. While still alive. I’m thinking it’s going to take more than singing Kumbaya.

But I digress. Eff you, British members of Parliament. Keep your noses out of Jewish affairs. Every single time you’ve stuck them in, Jews are the worse for it.

Russia is not only arming Iran, and not only investing heavily in Iran, but also trying to make sure that the West can’t take out Iran’s nuclear sites.

Iran is set to receive an advanced Russian-made anti-aircraft system by year-end that could help fend off any preemptive strikes against its nuclear facilities, senior Israeli defense sources said on Wednesday.

First delivery of the S-300 missile batteries was expected as soon as early September, one source said, though it could take six to 12 months for them to be deployed and operable – a possible reprieve for Israeli and American military planners.

Of course, the good news in all of this is that Syria had supposedly the most modern Russian defenses—and the IAF swept right past them. Some reports indicated that Israel had hacked into the computer system that runs the defenses. And then there is this:

“There’s no doubt that the S-300s would make an air attack more difficult,” one defense official said. “But there’s an answer for every counter-measure, and as far as we’re concerned, the sooner the Iranians get the new system, the more time we will have to inspect the deployments and tactical doctrines. There’s a learning curve.”

According to the official, it would take a year for Iran to deploy the S-300s and man them with trained operators. The US was also optimistic on this count. “Based on what I know, it’s highly unlikely that those air defence missiles would be in Iranian hands any time soon,” U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said in a July 9 briefing.

Good to know. Better if they didn’t get them, well, ever.

Way to go, United Nations. What a crop of peacekeepers: Rapists, pedophiles, extortionists, and now—those who salute dead Hezbullah terrorists.

Israel is calling for removal of two United Nations soldiers from Lebanon after photographs surfaced of the soldiers saluting the coffins of Hezbollah terrorists during a prisoner exchange Wednesday.

Associated Press photographer Mohammed Zaatari captured an image of the troops paying homage to fallen Hezbollah fighters as trucks bearing their coffins drove through the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.

And what does the UN say?

But a UNIFIL spokeswoman said the salute was nothing out of the ordinary.

“It is customary in most armies for military personnel in uniform to salute whenever a coffin passes in a procession,” UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane said. “They were merely following this customary military tradition and saluted coffins draped in Lebanese national flags at their own initiative.”

The identity of the troops wasn’t certain, but Getty Images reports they were from Italy.

Despicable. These are the jackasses that are not allowed to enter Lebanese towns unless escorted by the Lebanese Army—who tip off Hezbullah to hide their weapons until the inspectors are gone. Enforcer, my ass. Enablers, more like.

The United Nations rejected the suggestion that its troops favored Hezbollah and told FOXNews.com that UNIFIL troops were doing their job and remained an unbiased force.

“They are impartial with regards to the forces on the ground,” Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman, said. “(UNIFIL) is an impartial source — it doesn’t show a bias for either side.”

Yeah. That’s why the UN accused Israel of violating UNSC 1701, but has yet to notice the arms buildup in Lebanon right under their noses.

Ban Ki-Moon is hailing the exchange of live prisoners for dead Israeli soldiers as the “completion” of part of UNSC 1701.

The secretary general conveyed his heartfelt condolences and said he is deeply satisfied that the humanitarian aspects of Security Council Resolution 1701 have finally been met.

Really? Because just a few months ago, he said that any conditions on the release of Regev and Goldwasser were “outside the scope” of 1701.

“Hezbollah continues to refuse to provide any information on the release or fate of abducted soldiers, and places conditions and demands for the release that are far outside the scope of resolution 1701,” Ban wrote in the report, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz.

The secretary-general also cites Israeli intelligence reports of Hezbollah’s rearmament drive since the end of the Second Lebanon War. The militia is said to have replenished its arsenal of rockets and missiles - including 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range projectiles - which are now deployed on both sides of the Litani River.

“The reports of Hezbollah rearming are a cause of great concern posing serious challenges to the sovereignty, stability, and independence of Lebanon and the implementation of resolution 1701,” Ban wrote in the report.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the world’s memory fails at every instance of Arabs and Muslims breaking UN resolutions, and yet, they hold Israel responsible for breaking resolutions that are nonbinding, or that she never broke in the first place.

The Exception Clause, in all of its wonder.

Richard Gold of Engage made an amazing discovery when, as a youngster, he thought he is joining an anti-fascist demo, and it appeared that in fact the fascist side is represented (oh the horror of it!) by the socialist British SWP. What can I say? Some of the neuron connections in my brain, created during the intensive brainwashing over there behind the Iron Curtain, are still reacting the way young Richard’s did. Nothing to do about it, probably. Even when the avowed socialists shout “We are all Hezbollah” and dreck like this.

I suppose one can even find some humorous side in this unsurprising amalgamation of the BNP - type Nazis, Islamofascists and the ones that are supposed to be the purest of the pure, the progressivest of the progressive - the socialists. Especially when the reason for this touching unity is Jooz.

But then one stumbles on something that could be enlightening. Something that shows where the leaders of the modern British version of socialism are taking their brethren. Something like this:

To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate, conservative, superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically).

I don’t want to sound apocalyptic, but there is no way to pass this message but starkly, as comrade Molyneux likes it: if and when the time comes, and comrade Molyneux and his faithful finally join hands with their Nazi and Islamofascist colleagues and come to sort out the educated liberal atheist Zionist supporters and their sympathizers, you better be ready.

You better have the necessary wall to put them up against and the necessary implements to dispatch them. There will be no other way, I am afraid.

And let’s put paid to the endearing British penchant for understatement. Hocus pocus in definitely ain’t. Fascism it is - pure and simple.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Addendum by Meryl: I don’t normally break into my cobloggers’ posts, but I thought I’d mention two things here. One, I’m very thankful that I live in America. And two, I’m going to a gun show today, and may very well come home with a gun. If not today, though, I will certainly have one in the next few weeks. A well-armed Jewry is a Jewry that survives the next Hitler.

Israel is very well-armed.

Stop the presses. The AP has identified two of the three victims of the Palestinian terrorist attack. Of course, their identities are buried deep within the story, instead of in the lead, as they would be if they were Arab victims of an errant IDF shell, but hey—at least they’re finally named.

Three people were killed and 45 were injured, including two babies.

The mother of one of the babies hurled the child out of the car window to save her as the attacker bore down on their vehicle, and the mother was also injured. The mother of the other baby, Batsheva Unterman, 33, was killed in the assault. Social workers appeared on TV frantically trying to locate the child’s father.

A second dead woman was identified as Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, 54, a dual Austrian-Israeli citizen who had lived in Israel for several years, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said. The third victim was a man.

What next? Putting the names of the killed in the lead?

Naaah. Too much to ask, humanizing Israelis like that.

I rarely read Maureen Dowd anymore. I idolized her columns when I was in college.

Times change.

But she ends a column—ironically titled “The Wrong Stuff—about the current sniping about the candidates’ military experience, with this:

Maybe instead of refighting the Vietnam War while we’re still fighting the Iraq war, the candidates can figure out how to feed the world, find enough fuel for everyone, and, oh, yeah, catch that bin Laden fiend who’s running around free.

Funny, but I thought the primary duty of the president of the United States of America was running the United States, not feeding and fueling the world.

And let me tell you, even in my most liberal leftist college days, I didn’t think it was America’s responsibility to feed the world. I thought it was our responsibility to help the poorer nations figure out how to feed themselves. Or send famine-stricken nations food. But no, it’s not my president’s responsibility to figure out how to feed the world.

The world needs to learn how to pull on its big-boy pants and feed itself.

Le Monde has evidence that Mohammed El Baradei was lying when he declared yesterday that Syria didn’t have the knowhow to create a nuclear weapons site.

The website of the French news agency Le Monde reported that information originating in different countries other than the US and suggesting that Syria did indeed build a nuclear reactor in Al Kibar, was handed over to the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) recently.

This report contradicts the most recent statement made by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, in which it denied having any knowledge leading to the conclusion that Syria had the knowledge and means to build such a reactor.

According to the French report, the new information confirms earlier claims that North Korea had assisted Syria in its nuclear endeavors. This negates a speech made on Tuesday by IAEA Director General Mohammad ElBaradei, who said in an interview to Al Arabiya television that “we have no evidence that Syria has the human resources that would allow it to carry out a large nuclear program. We do not see Syria having nuclear fuel.”

Say, remember when I said just yesterday how I think we’re going to find out that El Baradei was in the Mullahs’ pockets all along?

I didn’t think it would be this soon.

Can’t wait to hear the spin from El Baradei and the UN. “No, we weren’t lying. Syria didn’t have the manpower. They had to bring in North Koreans.”

Wow. Just—wow.

Those famous words were spoken by British climber George Mallory in 1924 when he was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. I believe that this is as good an answer as any other - to an unanswerable question.

For some reason I recalled this while reading the CNN article about the book Human Smoke by one Nicholson Baker.

Even the staunchest opponents of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are loath to take issue with World War II, the quintessential conflict between good and evil that became the model of a morally just war.

This opening sentence of the article is faulty in my opinion: I wouldn’t characterize the WW II as good vs. evil. It was rather less evil vs. more evil, but both Mr. Baker and the author of the article are confined to the Western-centric view of the war - more about it later. Meanwhile, I have realized the reason for recalling Sir Mallory’s words. Baker, as many other revisionists of history, is most probably driven by the same motive - because the history is there. Of course, a strong political belief (pacifism in his case) and unerring 20-20 hindsight, selective to the point of almost total blindness, don’t cause any harm to this endeavor.

In fact, as many of history revisionists have discovered, the business definitely has its perks. Such as the 15 minutes of glory, lucrative publishing contracts and a shoal of supporters, no matter how small a fringe they belong to. Of the seven billions world population even a fringe is enough to create a considerable source of pride, glory and income. But this is less important - after all, the roads to stardom are not paved by model behavior - in most cases.

So what is the main point of the book, according to the CNN article?

Baker said he was surprised and shocked at the way Churchill responded to Hitler’s attacks on Poland and other neighboring states by launching a relentless bombing campaign against German cities as well as a blockade that was designed to starve the enemy into submission.

“He was acting like a bloodthirsty maniac during that period. That has to go back on the record in all of its unpleasantness. We can’t learn from a hero like that. It’s a mistake to say that because Hitler was bad, we have to clean up the image of Churchill. Churchill was also bad,” Baker said.

Baker maintains that Churchill’s bellicose actions and Roosevelt’s eagerness to supply Britain with ships and planes served only to prop up Hitler’s standing with Germans and strengthen his hold on the country.

Now, the point is not necessarily new. In fact, the “pacifist” movement that protested any attempts to curb the Nazis’ expansionist moves was quite strong in pre-war Britain and fairly sizable in US as well. That some of the “pacifists” were quite overt in their support of Nazi ideology is another point worth remembering. I don’t know whether Mr Baker touches upon it in his book.

So - the main, and not too revolutionary, point of Mr Baker’s book is: why, oh why, haven’t Churchill and Roosevelt talked to Hitler, why haven’t they tried to understand an pacify him?

Yeah. Indeed, why haven’t people tried to talk with Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Pol Pot, why don’t they talk enough to Kim Jong-Il, not to mention Sheik Nasrallah, Mugabe and myriad other tyrants and mass murderers throughout the history? Surely, given some frank and convincing talking-to, all these people could have been persuaded to become no more harmful than lambs. After all, Hitler has done no more than “attacks on Poland and other neighboring states”. That could have been a result of temporary indigestion which is an occasional burden for a vegetarian like Hitler.

Hmm… there must be some snag in the above logic. Somehow Mr Baker forgot that Poland and “other neighboring states” happened to become occupied as a result of these “attacks”. With well-known consequences. Unless, of course, Mr Baker thinks that the consequences could have been avoided as well by talking to Hitler in a right way. Or, as it may happen, Mr Baker just isn’t interested very much in the fate the befell all these Eastern heathens.

And this is the second important point: for some reason, as I have mentioned at the start of the post, Mr Baker focuses on Hitler - Churchill - Roosevelt trio, disregarding the Eastern side of the map. Whether it comes from ignorance or from some intentional oversight I wouldn’t know. The CNN article disregards the issue as well. But I couldn’t.

You see, my problem with Baker’s theory is of a practical nature. Given, for the purpose of the exercise, that by cuddling up to Hitler instead of confronting him, Churchill and Roosevelt could have prevented Nazis’ westward expansion, what about the Operation Barbarossa? Conceived and planned in meticulous detail long before the beginning of WW II, this operation eventually failed and was the ultimate cause of the downfall of the most evil regime in history.

But what if Baker’s villains, Churchill and Roosevelt, have decided to stay away from assistance they have generously provided to the Soviet Union, as Baker’s guidance would have been? What if the Red Army failed in its resistance? For me the answer is quite simple - I wouldn’t have been born and somebody else would have had to respond to Mr Baker’s well-meaning drivel.

On the other hand, both Baker and his readers would have been exemplary citizens of the Third Reich and a post like this one would have hardly be possible in the circumstances.

Oh well. The post is getting too long, the weather outside is getting too attractive. Time to forget Mr Baker and his crapola and deal with more pleasant matters.

Only… maybe later in the day I could raise Kim Jong-Il on Skype and talk him into stopping the starvation of his people and accumulation of all kinds of Dongs - medium or long range as they may happen to be. After all, he is so ronely, and a good talking-to may just be what the doctor recommends.

Peace…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Check out this statistic from a story in the Guardian, a decidedly anti-war newspaper:

Evidence of al-Qaida’s problems in Iraq is weighty and convincing. It has been badly hit by the fightback from the American-backed Sunni “Sons of Iraq” and the US troop “surge”. Western intelligence agencies estimate that the number of foreign fighters is down to single figures each month. The border with Syria is now harder to cross.

Iraq-watchers point, too, to financial strain caused by the arrests of al-Qaida sympathisers in Saudi Arabia, mafia-like disputes over alcohol licences and difficulties recruiting the right calibre of people. Last month, a sympathetic website carried a study showing a 94% decline in operations over a year. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed 334 operations in November 2006 but just 25 a year later. Attacks dropped from 292 in May 2007 to 16 by mid-May this year.

Only last year, Harry Reid told us the war was lost. The surge wouldn’t work. It was a waste of time, money, and lives.

Hm.

a 94% decline in operations over a year.

I’m thinking Reid may have been wrong.

So let’s see if I get this straight. Europeans shut down the U.S. SWIFT program to sift through European bank data to try to stop terror financing because it broke EU privacy rules. But when researchers at Northwestern University sought permission to track American cell phone users living in Europe, permission was granted.

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

[...] The scientists would not say where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Researchers used cell phone towers to track individuals’ locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week’s time period.

The study was based on cell phone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed.

[...] That type of nonconsensual tracking would be illegal in the United States, according to Rob Kenny, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission.

I’d like to know which cell phone company was so easy with its data. Because I will be sure to never patronize that company, ever.

Privacy? What’s that?

The really sad thing is that the EU notion of privacy—or the lack thereof—is slowly but surely becoming part of the American notion of privacy as well. And it’s pretty much unavoidable. If you want to take advantage of discounted items at your local supermarket, you have to swipe a membership card, which then transfers information on every item you buy into a database. The benefit to you, supposedly, is to offer you coupons for the items you buy regularly. And yet, the majority of coupons I receive are for rival brands to the ones I buy. Funny how that works. Every time I’m told that my privacy will be protected, I discover that it isn’t.

It’s such a topsy-turvy world that I pay for privacy. There’s a monthly fee to keep my telephone number unlisted. The phone companies like to tell you that it costs them money to remove your information from the data that gets printed. That’s a load of bull. I know programming. Writing that code is a one-time programming effort. The information is in a database, and the code to say whether or not my data is retrieved is written once, and executed every time after that. It doesn’t have to be rewritten every single month. It only needs to be rewritten if I change the parameters on them and tell them I want my number published. I’m paying a fee for work that was done, what, 25 years ago? Even if you count the three times I’ve moved since then, the Y2K code rewrite, and switching to a new provider, I’m still being ripped off. My new phone provider charges two dollars less per month than Verizon. But they still charge that monthly fee.

But I digress. The authors of the study had some sleepless nights worrying about the privacy issues.

Barabasi said he spent nearly half his time on the study worrying about privacy issues. Researchers didn’t know which phone numbers were involved. They were not able to say precisely where people were, just which nearby cell phone tower was relaying the calls, which could be a matter of blocks or miles. They started with 6 million phone numbers and chose the 100,000 at random to provide “an extra layer” of anonymity for the research subjects, he said.

Barabasi said he did not check with any ethics panel. Hidalgo said they were not required to do so because the experiment involved physics, not biology.

That’s a nice little loophole to get around, but the ethics violations are still there. However, the authors of the study feel perfectly right to have invaded the privacy of 100,000 individuals—because they did it to make the world a better place.

Study co-author Hidalgo said there is a difference between being a statistic - such as how many people buy a certain brand of computer - and a specific example. The people tracked in the study are more statistics than examples.

“In the wrong hands the data could be misused,” Hidalgo said. “But in scientists’ hands you’re trying to look at broad patterns…. We’re not trying to do evil things. We’re trying to make the world a little better.”

Knowing people’s travel patterns can help design better transportation systems and give doctors guidance in fighting the spread of contagious diseases, he said.

You see? It’s for the children. So the fact that they invaded your privacy is secondary to the good that will come out of this. The end justifies the means.

I’m pretty sure someone is going to find out which cell phone company gave out that data. Will the backlash make a difference?

Here’s hoping.

It’s been driving me crazy all week. What is June 6th? What am I supposed to be doing on June 6th? Do I have an appointment? What the hell is happening on June sixth? What?

Oh. This.

Sixty-four years ago today, Allied forces swept onto the beaches of Normandy to liberate France and put an end to Nazi domination of Europe. The D-Day assault comprised American, Canadian, and British forces, but the Americans led, and for the most part the Americans bled, especially on Omaha.

There were 2,500 American deaths the first day. Kind of puts the AP daily Iraq military death count into a different light, doesn’t it?

The Telegraph commissioned a poll, and gee, Europeans don’t like America (via Glenn). I know, readers. You’re all shocked to hear this news. But Europeans don’t get us, haven’t gotten us in well over 200 years, and don’t seem about to get us yet—not even those that are relatively positive about America. For instance, the Telegraph editorial opines:

Nor is the poll particularly good news for John McCain, showing as it does overwhelming European and Russian support for his Democrat rival Mr Obama.

It is to laugh. Americans have never given a damn what Europeans think about our presidential choices. Wait, that’s not true. We get very contrary when Europe tries to mess with us. Does anyone remember the Guardian’s attempt to defeat George W. Bush in the last election? The backlash was so high, it may actually have helped Bush win in the Guardian’s chosen battleground. The Brits still haven’t gotten it: We’re not their colony any longer.

Even the director of Clark County’s board of elections got into the debate. She was widely quoted as saying: “The American Revolution was fought for a reason.”

The Telegraph goes on:

Regardless of who wins, there will be a need to project a more positive light of the United States in Europe, but without ditching America’s vital global role.

Well, in order to do that, the European media would have to stop slanting so many stories anti-American. Sorry, boys and girls, but we have no control over what Europeans think. Nor do we want to have that kind of control. This isn’t a matter of Americans cozying up to Europeans. It doesn’t matter if our president is Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. Europeans have never really cared for Americans, overall. Well, the ones that stay in Europe, anyway. The ones that come here like us just fine, and so do their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren….

What I find most strange about that fact is that so many Americans have European ancestry. It’s like Europe hates its own descendants.

There’s a longer essay in there. I think I’ll work on it for July 4th.

I think it’s time for some different news items.

You’ll never get me to talk, Copper: A lost parrot wouldn’t talk to the cops, but he talked to a vet.

Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor’s roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.

He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

“I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

Get your ass out of jail: In America, we jail Mexicans. In Mexico, they jail donkeys.

A Mexican donkey has been freed from jail after doing time for assault and battery. The Televisa network on Wednesday showed “Blacky” gobbling food from a bucket after spending three days in a jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances.

Blacky was jailed for biting and kicking two men near a ranch outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state.

Officials freed the donkey after its owner paid a fine of $36 and the $115 hospital bill of the men, who suffered bites to the chest and a broken ankle. Authorities say he also must pay $480 to each man for missed work days.

Zimbabwe economics: How to get a million the wrong-way. Ready for this? Inflation in Zimbabwe is now at one million percent. How do you even manage to set prices when inflation is that high? Can you imagine being the price-setter in a grocery store? Talk about your nightmare job!

Now there’s a headline you don’t see every day: Kasparov silenced by unidentified flying penis.

Yes, really.

While making a public plea for unity against nemesis Vladimir Putin, a mysterious dangling object from the ceiling distracted the room: an airborne penis with a helicopter attached to its testicles [video via sharenator].

Pictures at the link.

Yes, really.

Penis museum gets new members: Hey, don’t blame me. They wrote the headline. Apparently, you can find a lot by putting the word “penis” into the search box at Google News. Hell, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a penis museum. Pictures at the link.

Yes, really.

From an email I received today:

Philippe Karsenty gave the following statement regarding his victory:

“Today a French court ruled that I did not defame France 2 when I said that its news report was a staged hoax. Because I refused to be brainwashed, I was sued for defamation.

“Our victory today was a victory for freedom–the freedom to think and to speak one’s mind; the freedom to question what one is told; and the freedom to disbelieve the solemn pronouncements of others when the individual concludes that his reasoning is correct and that the state and the state-run media–and all of the institutions they represent–are wrong.

“The Al Dura lie is an assault on our ability to think, to criticize, to evaluate, and, finally, to reject information–especially the right to reject information on which we base our most cherished assumptions. One of Europe’s most cherished assumptions is that Israel is a viscious Nazi-like entity that deliberately murders Palestinian Arab children. Moreover, polls conducted in Europe have identified Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, greater than Iran and North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. The Al Dura hoax is one of the pillars on which these assumptions rely.

“It is ironic that I, a private individual, had to lecture one of France’s most influential TV stations in order to demonstrate that a child cannot move, lift his head, arm and leg, stare at the camera and still be considered “dead” a good 10 seconds after the newscaster tells us… ‘the child is dead.’ One need only look at France 2’s own footage to realize that the ‘death’ scene was faked.

“My only objective was to correct this error. However, on the part of the French media, it turned into a titanic battle against critical thinking and freedom of thought and expression. On my part, it became a battle for the right not to be brainwashed bythe French media. Only a few weeks ago, a French television station produced a documentary ‘proving’ that the Al Durah story is authentic. First, I was compared to a Holocaust denier, and then to the fringe elements that insist that 911 was an inside job. I, and others who share my opinion about the story, including Richard Landes, were labeled dangerous extremists and fanatics. All the while, viewers observed the ‘dead’ boy move exactly as I just described it. I can only conclude that, in France, it is critical thinking that is either dead or dying. Every French citizen should be complaining about this insult to our intelligence. In fact, very few complain because mass brainwashing works. Where are the angry letters to the station for its absurd documentary? Do the citizens of France now believe that a “dead” boy can move? Or have they merely forgotten how to think and draw their own conclusions?

The right to think, to speak, to evaluate, to accept and reject the conclusions of others goes to the very heart of what it means to be free.

Now it is time for France 2 to acknowledge that it created and is continuing to perpetuate the worst anti-Semitic libel of our era. It’s the responsibility of the French government and ultimately, the responsibility of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is, for all practical purposes, the chief executive of French public television, to finally reveal the truth.”

I agree, but I don’t think the world media will correct their mistake. Ever.

Sen. Lieberman on what’s wrong with the Democratic Party:

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy” and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

(This is adapted from the speech he gave at the Commentary Fund Dinner.)

John Podhoretz, yesterday, explained why Sen. Lieberman is not - as some of his critics assert - a hack:

By remaining steadfast on the war in Iraq when others in his party fled their vote and then blamed their inconstancy on the supposed “lies” of the administration. And by refusing to join the jackal-like feast on George W. Bush’s reputation, Lieberman earned the hatred of many fellow Democrats. That hatred caused a hugely rich man in his state to spend millions of his own money to oust Lieberman from his own party’s nomination after serving three full terms as senator.And yet there he remained, and remains, unbending. This is the opposite of hackery. It is the antithesis of hackery. It is the quality everyone says he yearns for in Washington — principled consistency, a willingness to work across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion, and a refusal to kowtow to the loudest voices merely because they are so loud. Last night, at the annual dinner of the Commentary Fund, Lieberman said he remained a Democrat precisely because he believes the strong foreign policy he espouses must have a bipartisan foundation.

California Conservative adds his thoughts. One nitpick though: He casts Clinton with other pacifists. Clinton, at least in the case of the NATO war against Serbia was willing to go to war to spread freedom. It was a stance that Sen. Lieberman praised in his speech.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Is anyone truly surprised that Egypt will not stand by its Gaza agreement with Israel? Really? You may recall that when the Gaza agreements were being ironed out, and Condi Rice forced Israel to give up the Philadelphi corridor and cede control to European monitors (who fled at the first signs of violence from Hamas), Egypt also agreed to keep the terrorists from smuggling in arms and bombs. Yeah, that’s working out so well, Hamas blew up the border wall and imported thousands of rockets (and Iranian trainers) while they were at it. Now, Egypt