Damned if you do… Egypt has gotten Israel to postpone for 24 hours a stronger response to the dozens of rocket attacks in the last seven days. Why? Why wouldn’t Israel bring down the hammer on the attacks, and make a statement that Hamas will not forget? So much for the “kill or be killed” speech by Bibi. And oh, the AP is finally getting the timing of the attacks right, and putting the blame where it belongs. Mostly.

The Islamic Jihad faction had led the rocket attacks that began last week, but on Sunday agreed to stop the violence if Israel also did. Rocket fire that drew retaliatory Israeli airstrikes persisted afterward, but it was claimed by a different militant group, the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Gaza’s ruling Hamas group, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in past violence, has not directly been involved in the attacks. But Israel holds Hamas responsible for all violence from the territory.

Just like in the days when Yasser Arafat ruled the Palestinians, and the media covered for him by insisting he had no control over Hamas. Yet Hamas attacks stopped whenever Arafat wanted them stopped. And Hamas can stop the terrorists it controls from sending rockets into Israel. It doesn’t want to. Because some of the rocketeers were Hamas terrorists. The media, as always, carry the water for the terrorists.

Your media bias in action: Sending email critical of Israel? That doesn’t mean you can’t write objectively about the Jewish State, according to Reuters. They see no reason to fire or even discipline a reporter who sent the European Jewish Congress an unsolicited email criticizing Israel.

Last September EJC sent a press release to media outlets during the buildup to the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations. In the statement, the Jewish advocacy group urged European governments not to support the initiative arguing unilateral measures were detrimental to the peace process.

Kranjc, who is listed as the head of the Reuters television department at its Amsterdam bureau, responded from his work mailbox declaring his support for the Palestinian bid.

“I am going to support it!” he wrote in a two-lined message. “You have your state but you don’t want others to have their state. So sad.”

Why on earth would that make you think the reporter might reflect more sympathy to Palestinians in his writing? Don’t be ridiculous. That’s like saying the New York Times is a liberal news outlet!

Someone check for a pod under Richard Goldstone’s bed: Really, he’s been taken over by the body snatchers. This New York Times op-ed, which states firmly and effectively that Israel is not an apartheid state, was written by the man who gave his name to the Goldstone Report, and then followed that up with insisting that everything in the report was true. Someone seems to have done some mighty hard repentance this Yom Kippur. Countdown to the outraged shrieks of the anti-Israel crowd in three, two….

But they’re ready for a state now: The Palestinians continue to demonize and disappear Israel in their textbooks. Can you imagine a “Palestine” next to Israel that continues to teach its children to hate Israelis? You probably don’t have to work very hard to do it, because there’s no sign that the money machine is going to stop anytime soon, and European and American donors are responsible for things like this.

We do not think that word means what you think it means: The Vanguard Leadership Group, a leadership development academy and honor society for top students from mostly-black colleges and universities in America, have sent a letter to colleges all over the U.S. telling them to stop using the word “apartheid” to describe Israel. (Here’s the full text of the letter.) In other news, heads exploded on the anti-Israel left as the Israel-haters tried to figure out a way of discrediting the letter without attacking the Vanguard Leadership Group. Blacks and Jews, together again. Kudos to the VLG. The letter is directed to the SJP. My prediction: The racism of their states of origin is going to come out in subtle ways against this. Arab states are notoriously racist towards their darker-skinned people, a fact that is almost always ignored by the media.

The AP media bias strikes again: Where in the first five paragraphs is there a description of Goldstone saying that he was wrong about Israeli deliberately targeting civilians? Paragraph five, which usually won’t make it into your local paper’s World News section. Paragraphs one, two, and three? Oh, they’re all about the Goldstone Committee striking back and insisting that Israel committed war crimes galore.

Gee, civilians complicate war? Who knew? France is finding out that it’s not so easy to bomb the bad guys when they hide among civilians. Libya, Gaza, gee, what are the commonalities? Let’s think. Hm… (Hint: Ruthless disregard for civilian life from only one side of the conflict.)

And the Keen Grasp of the Obvious Award goes to: The Associated Press, for this gem: It’s a gasoline world: Fuel connections everywhere. Oh, so that’s why prices are going up. Duh.

Oblahma: Peres meets Obama, blah blah blah, construction in Gilo is “disappointing,” blah blah blah, peace with Palestinians more urgent than ever, blah, blah, blah. Check out the body language in the picture. Obama is not a happy man around Israelis, unless they’re named Rahm Emanuel, apparently.

UNHRC to Goldstone: Nyah nyah nyah, it is too true! The execrable United Nations Human Rights Council says that Goldstone’s op-ed, where he pointed out the bias and lies of the commission report named after him, is not binding. Also that the only way to undo the report is by unanimous vote of all the countries in the UNHRC. In other words: Pound sand, Jewboy. We got what we wanted out of you: A veneer of respectability from a Jewish, South African judge. And if anyone thinks I’m exaggerating what they used him for, well, I have this bridge to sell you. Cheap. It’s in New York. Been in my family for generations.

The Goldstone Repentance Tour begins: He’s going to visit Sderot. As well he should. And if his repentance is sincere, we are commanded to forgive him.

What the media leave out: The AP carried a short piece on the Israeli-Arab actor murdered in Jenin. They missed a significant motive, however.

Residents of the refugee camp disseminated fliers in 2009 calling the actor a fifth column. “If words don’t help we will have to speak in bullets,” the fliers said.

What was it that angered the Arabs of Jenin? This:

However, the actor added, he was taking precautions. Of those behind the fliers he said, “It makes them crazy that a man who is half-Jewish is at the head of one of the most important projects in the Palestinian West Bank and it is just hypocritical racism.”

Stop for a moment and realize that every single time an Arab is wounded or killed and blames Israeli Jews, the AP runs wild with it (as does the rest of the world media). When Arabs murder Jews because they are Jews, the media ignore it.

Reuters missed it in the first article, but noted the anti-Jewish threats in the current one. The AFP missed it. There are most of the European news media outlets right there. And there is a primary example of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias of the major media. The man was murdered because he was Jewish. Not publishing that fact is tantamount to covering it up.

It’s okay, they’ll be the moderate Virtue Police: The Muslim Brotherhood is calling for a virtue police force along the lines of the Saudi Wahabist entity. That’s the one that caused the death of dozens of girls for refusing to let them flee a school fire without their hijabs. Yep. The Muslim Brotherhood is a totally secular, moderate force for the liberation of Egypt.

It’s okay, he’s the moderate Egyptian leader: Mohammed ElBaradei, late of the UN committee that swore that Iran was not trying to create nuclear weapons, says that he would declare war on Israel if the IDF attacks Gaza in force to stop the rockets from Hamas. In all seriousness, this means that the more radical candidates will not possibly say that they wouldn’t attack Israel. The bar has just been raised, and peace with Israel is at risk. Sure, it’s in the “just words” stage now. But let me remind you that the world keeps on insisting that Iran doesn’t really mean it when they clearly state they want to wipe Israel off the map.

A master of grownup scorn: If you read only one op-ed on the travesty that is Richard Goldstone, read David Horovitz.

Notwithstanding that absent formal cooperation, however, the truth about what happened in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 – the truth that Goldstone now disingenuously claims to have discovered only after he filed his malicious indictment of the IDF and of Israel – was readily available to him at the time.

Israel did informally make the necessary information available to his committee in the shape of detailed reports on what had unfolded.

If I were writing it, I’d be saying something like “Liar liar pants on fire!”

By the way, this was published by the WaPo on a Saturday, which is their least-read day of the week. Way to go, WaPo!

Jerusalem’s Old City was controlled by the Ottoman Empire for 400 years before the British captured it in 1917. It has been the site of countless battles.

I am so totally quoting that back to them the next time they try to rewrite Jerusalem’s history as some kind of Palestinian heritage.

Hamas turns up the heat, world yawns: Don’t expect international condemnations as Hamas rounds up “collaborators” and tortures and kills them. If Israelis aren’t the ones responsible for Palestinian deaths, the world mostly ignores it.

An exercise in futility: Israel is going to hand in a second response to the UN’s biased Goldstone report. It won’t matter. The world now refers to the Goldstone report as the gold standard for Israeli “abuses.” Evidence that disproves it? Well, it’s obviously false. Just ask any Israel, ah, critic. That’s right. They’re not anti-Semites. They’re not even anti-Zionists. They’re anti-Israel when it misbehaves. Really. Just ask them.

War never solves anything. Oh, wait: Palestinians are finally starting to see the uselessness of fighting with Israel. Sixty-six percent of them don’t want Hamas to resume firing rockets at Israel. As for those claiming that Hamas would win new elections, maybe not. The poll says Abbas would win. Funny how the world doesn’t seem to care nearly as much about democratic elections now that Abbas refuses to hold them again. One man, one vote, one time—that’s the Palestinian way, apparently.

… other ambassadors suggested that repeated resolutions with little effect was more likely to be a sign of the report’s slow, bureaucratic death.

(Israel has been investigating the IDF’s conduct during Cast Lead, the General Assembly just hasn’t acknowledged that.)

Normally I wouldn’t give a whole lot of credence to a throwaway line in a news report, but I read this interview with Nick Kaufman, who argues that the path forward to condemning Israel, is not as straightforward as Israel’s enemies believe.

“I don’t understand how the United Nations Security Council has made a decision to transfer the case to the international criminal court at The Hague, because I think in any event, the United States will veto the decision.”

“The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said he was satisfied with the investigation Israel has conducted, but the Arab League and other unidentified countries have insisted that a new investigation be conducted in the next 5 months. I don’t see it going beyond this.”

“On the other hand, I don’t believe the senior prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, will yield to the Palestinians request and order an investigation against Israel: For him to accept the Palestinian request to recognize their court authority to try and judge the violations committed on their land, he would first have to recognize the Palestinian Authority as an independent country, and I cant see him making such an extreme decision. I just don’t see it happening.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

They say that it’s impolite and generally politically incorrect to attack the messenger – one should concentrate on the message itself, proving or disproving its contents. The case at hand, however, is too glaringly absurd to follow that maxim. I am confident that this is a case where the messengers themselves are a message, loud and clear at that.

I offer you a snapshot of the front page of the report, with a video clip as its centerpiece, played and stopped at a point where I have ended up laughing my head off. Click on the picture below to see the details.

So who are the messengers? Lets’ start with the “sideboard”. Amira Hass and Gideon Levy – two Haaretz scribes that lost their last shreds of respect and credibility so long ago that no one (aside of the worst Israel bashers) would use their articles for anything having to do with facts. Norman Finkelstein – a pathetic individual that carries out some deep psychological trauma, expunged by academic community and living of the Holocaust memories in his own perverted way. Uri Avnery – a truly comical figure that passed into obscurity years ago, after his career in a yellow tabloid, friendship with late Yasser A. and other shenanigans. And these are the token Jews chosen to laud the Goldstone report? Pathetic.

Now to the principals:

Factual Findings narrated by Ross Vachon

Cannot say that I have been familiar with the name, but these two links: one to Vachon’s opus SEMITISM GONE WILD The Psychopathology Of Neo-Conservatism: A Clinical History and one to a person being harassed by Vachon: My Nasty Mailers, should suffice for everyone. And now: the crown jewel:

Factual and Legal findings narrated by Noam Chomsky

Mastermind of the Century, no less and no more… Well, Noam C. with his well known strict adherence to facts… no, it sounds sarcastic, and sarcasm doesn’t play well with this case of an unsmiling, pompous, self-important luminary. If you need someone to play loose with facts and to manipulate history to customize the results to your own ends, you can’t do better than recruiting Noam. Let’s say it shorter: the man is a liar. But now, I see, he is also credited with being a legal expert – will the wonders ever cease?

So this is the pair chosen to present the “factual and legal findings” of Goldstone report. Were these findings presented by Baron Munchausen and Hodja Nasreddin, we would have been at least entertained by the presentation, but no such luck.

And now to the centerpiece: the clip. As you can see, the hapless creators of the clip have used the famous crudely photoshopped Joozilla the Super Dozer, without any, no matter how feeble, attempt to check the veracity of the story. Here comes a better picture:

Of course, the picture of the whole sordid affair wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the three members of Mr Goldstone mission: Ms Hina Jilani – a Pakistani (sic!) judge who signed an open letter, published 16 March 2009, condemning Israel before the Goldstone committee was convened; a law professor Ms Christine Chinkin, who is “categorically rejecting” Israelâ€s right to self-defence against Hamas rocket attacks; and the last but not the least, quite an odious character, Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel, who rejected out of hand any evidence presented by IDF, is concerned with the devious Jewish lobby and claims that Israeli soldiers had “taken out and deliberately shot” Irish peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. Mr. Travers should become famous (but probably wouldn’t) for the following quote alone:

“Gaza is the only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies; closed-off from food, water, air” says Colonel Desmond Travers, co-author of the Goldstone report, in an exclusive MEMO interview.

I guess that Mr Goldstone didn’t check with Mr. Travers in advance in what hemisphere (or, indeed, on what planet) the good colonel thinks he (and Gaza) is located. Obviously, checking the mental state of his fellows committee members wasn’t in Goldstone’s brief. Too bad.

And this is how the history is made these days, ladies and gentlemen.

Afterword: about my own opinion on the Goldstone report and its aftermath. I still belong to the minority (I haven’t any statistical data, though) that considers it necessary to set up our own commission of inquiry. I think that it was a mistake to disregard the Goldstone mission to start with and that now we are paying the price. I am sure that the civilian casualties were inevitable in an urban combat situation when the enemy has done their considerable best to increase the number of such casualties. But if the commission of inquiry would have found cases where the casualties were a result of willful action by IDF, the guilty should have been punished. And no, I’ve no hope that the results of an Israeli commission of inquiry, had such commission been set up, would have been accepted by UN – I am not that naive about the automatically anti-Israeli setup of this august outfit. Still, there is some hope yet.

Hat tip: Laurence.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

A co-author of the Goldstone Gaza report, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of war crimes, claims the Gaza militant group fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last year’s winter conflict, according to a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

[…] Travers also rejects Israel Defense Forces photographs as proof that Hamas hid weapons in mosques during the conflict.

“I do not believe the photographs,” Travers said, describing the IDF evidence as “spurious.”

He also accuses “Jewish lobbyists” of influencing British foreign policy in the Middle East and says that efforts to block the Goldstone reports findings have failed.

“The court of world opinion seems determined to see the report prevail,” he said.

He dismisses any evidence that disproves his theories, and accuses Israel of setting out to commit war crimes. Say, that sounds exactly like the objective given to the Goldstone Commission that Goldstone said the commission ignored. Yeah, we bought that line, too.

Good to know that the court to try Israel is now the court of world opinion, not, say, an actual courtroom with, you know, rules, laws, things like that. Because after all, why on earth would we need such a thing in the kangaroo court known as the UN?