Israel denial in the Washington Post

Posted on 10/04/2010 by Soccerdad

I love the opening paragraphs of Glenn Kessler’s Defining ‘Jewish state’: For many, term has different meanings

Nine years ago, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a speech on the Middle East in which he briefly called on Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” Powell doesn’t recall how the phrase ended up in his speech, but David Ivry, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, says he persuaded an aide to Powell to slip it in.

From that small seed – the first time a U.S. official took sides on the issue – a significant and potentially insurmountable hurdle has emerged, one that could scuttle President Obama’s newly launched effort to promote a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

No. No. No. Declaring Israel a Jewish state is a fundamental necessity for any peace. The Palesitnian National Covenant explicitly denies the connection of Jews to the land of Israel. In order for there to be peace the Palestians need to stop denying history. Any American administration who believes in peace implicitly acknowledges Israel is a Jewish state. So no, the idea is not only nine years old.

The rest of the article paints the idea of Israel as a Jewish state as an Israeli belief with no strong support elsewhere, except in the United States. Effectively Glenn Kessler sides with the Israel deniers.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias | Tagged | 1 Comment

Freezing the Peace Process

Posted on 10/04/2010 by Rabbi Kaufman

Having spent most of the past year dealing with intransigence from the Palestinian side caused by a demand made in his Cairo speech that Israel halt construction in “settlements” and then suffering from damage from the fallout from the Ides of March implosion over an announcement about plans to construct housing in a suburb of Jerusalem (remember the whole Biden-Clinton reaction to Yishai?), the President recently went before the UN hoping to preserve peace talks by stating that Israel must extend a freeze that did nothing to promote talks in the first place! Not only that, in fact, the demand that it enact such a freeze resulted in a freeze in negotiations and the first preconditions to talks since 1993. For 17 years, talks occurred without preconditions. Beyond this incongruity in thought and action is the fact that there is a profound disagreement as to what constituted the “freeze” to begin with. Israel never included the environs of Jerusalem, nor did it wish to include the major “settlement blocs” which it believes will be part of Israel after any agreement with agreed upon territorial exchanges. Included in the “freeze” as far as Israel was concerned, at least this is my understanding, were those settlements and outposts that would likely be on the PA side after an agreement. The PA wants to see ALL of the pre-1967 West Bank frozen, including Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly freeze all construction in Jerusalem.

So what exactly is the US insisting upon? Without specification, the demand for an extension of the “freeze” is simply going to cause problems without helping at all. Those who wish to see Israel in breech of a promise will be able to do so, while the peace process languishes. If you oppose the peace process, you might like this situation. But it makes no sense for an administration that seems bent on promoting negotiations. Worse, as Barry Rubin recently pointed out, the administration is seeking an extension only through the US election! One might ask whether or not it benefits this administration to appear to be pressuring Israel right before the election when polls overwhelmingly support the opposite position, especially among Israel conscious Jewish Democratic voters who are frustrated, angry, and disillusioned to no little degree. This will not help the prospects for Democrats in the upcoming elections, so if indeed the demand for an extension of the freeze is timed to the elections, it would appear to be ill conceived.

Meanwhile there are continued calls for Avigdor Lieberman to resign so that Israel will be able to negotiate more effectively. I look at it this way, the primary goal of Kadima seems (seemed?) to be promotion of the peace process. If Kadima entered the government, instead of sitting in opposition while actually supporting the Netanyahu government’s promotion of negotiations anyway, Tzipi Livni would be leading the negotiations, not Lieberman. Those who would like to see Lieberman out, should be upset that Kadima has chosen to remain on the sidelines rather than entering the government and helping to marginalize those who would make an agreement difficult. Kadima is not helping to promote peace by remaining in the opposition. Just my two cents.

Posted in Israel | 4 Comments

The “disappeared” Gaza story

Posted on 10/04/2010 by Soccerdad

*** Important Update Below ***

The Daily Alert Blog recently linked to an article Under the Gun: How the People of Gaza Feel About Hamas.

Tried the link to the original article in the National, a paper published in the United Arab Emirates?

Guess what? You can’t get to the article through any link. Or any Google search. Not even the cache. It’s been scrubbed from the National’s website.

A copy of the article exists here. And, no it’s not exactly complimentary towards Hamas, with nuggets like:

I ask him if that means the human rights situation was better under Israeli occupation that it is today for residents of both the West Bank and Gaza.

“Why do you think I ask you not use my name? Yes, 100 percent yes,” he said. “At least the occupation had a positive effect of drawing the Palestinian people together instead of dividing them. I now fear that we’re seeing a systematic effort by Hamas and its religious backers to enter every component of society.”

And

Islamic Jihad, once the closest ally of the Hamas military wing, now refuses to call their former brothers-in-arms resistance fighters. According to Abu Musab, a top Islamic Jihad commander in the Rafah refugee camp, Hamas has failed at governance and resistance alike. “There’s no government in Gaza,” he said flatly. “We’re under Israeli and Hamas occupation.”

“They are as big harami as Dahlan,” he said, using the Arabic slang for “thieves”. “They used to be mujaheddin, but today they are fat millionaires with nice cars,” he added, pointing to his flat stomach. “Look, you can either be a millionaire or you can lead a resistance. But you if you take the medical aid sent by Europe to help the poor people of Gaza and sell it in your own pharmacies to make money for yourself and the government, you can’t have both.”

At this point he pulled a packet of antibiotics from his pocket; it is stamped: “A gift of the people of Norway. Not for resale.”

“I just bought this from a Hamas-run pharmacy here in Rafah for my son,” he said. “I had to go to a Hamas pharmacy to make sure the pills weren’t fake or made from poor materials in Egypt. If you want real medicine, you have to buy the aid Europe sends us.”

(Elder of Ziyon blogged about it at the time it was originally published.)

So why did “Under the Gun” disappear? Was it pressure from Hamas?

I did a little investigating and learned for example that the UAE supports sanctions against Iran. In a letter to the International Herald Tribune the ambassador of the UAE wrote.

The United Arab Emirates has taken more vigorous actions to enforce multilateral sanctions and tighten export control laws than the editorial suggests.

The United Arab Emirates fully supports and enforces all United Nations sanctions against Iran. In addition to freezing bank accounts and financial assets of persons or entities that support proliferation and weapons development activities, the United Arab Emirates has closed down dozens of international and local companies involved in money laundering and the transshipment of dual-use materials.

This is from September 19, about the same time as Under the Gun first appeared.

This was followed by (according to an “Iranian reformist” website) with a threat:

The commander of Iran’s navy admiral Habibollah Sayari threatened neighboring UAE in the Persian Gulf with “defense” and “retaliation”. His remarks two days ago were a response to comments made by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambassador in Washington regarding the inspection of Iranian ships. “The UAE is not significant enough to make such remarks,” Sayari told a reporter.

Sayari’s remarks are a direct response to the comment made by Yousef Al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US a few days ago when he spoke of the inspection of hundreds of ships carrying suspicious cargo to Iran by the UAE.

Did the National spike the story due to general or specific threats from Iran, perhaps out to whitewash its proxy?

UPDATE: I tried Google cache and an internal search on “Prothero” to find the article. I was unable to find it. However Barry Rubin was informed that the article’s URL changed to here. While it seems odd, the article wasn’t scrubbed, it was simply moved.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Gaza, Hamas, Iran | Tagged | Comments Off on The “disappeared” Gaza story

Monday briefly

Posted on 10/04/2010 by Meryl Yourish

I’m not an analyst, nor do I play one on TV, BUT: It seems to me that if the Taliban hits NATO convoys four times after Pakistan shut down a key border crossing, the Taliban is doing this with the full knowledge of the Pakistani security services. Put that under the “They are not our friends” category.

How do I bias thee? Let me count the ways. A nation is allowed to bar people for entering it for pretty much any reason under the sun. But not Israel. Israel banned anti-Israel propagandist Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who calls Israel an apartheid state and tried to break the Gaza blockade (the latter is what caused the ban). So what does the AP headline the story? “Israeli court scolds Nobel winner.” Here’s the lead:

An Irish Nobel peace laureate accused Israel of being an “apartheid” state during a deportation hearing before the country’s Supreme Court Monday, prompting a strong rebuke from a justice who told her to keep her “propaganda” to herself.

And she’s not just a propagandist. She’s a liar.

Jody Williams of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, which sponsored the delegation, denied they were aware of the ban. But earlier in the year, Israel’s foreign ministry denied the group’s appeal to ease the ban and let Maguire take part in the delegation that arrived last week.

Got it? They claim they weren’t aware of the ban, and yet, they appealed to the foreign ministry to lift the ban. Liars. Israel-haters. That about sums it up.

And the dog ate their homework: Speaking of liars, the Iranians are now saying that “a small leak” is what’s stopping Bushehr from starting—not the Stuxnet worm. (The worm is now becoming my daily “hmmm” while perusing the news.) In one of the articles I’ve read, the start-up date for Iran’s nukes is now 2014. Something sure as hell happened, and it wasn’t good for Iran. I salute the Stuxnet programmers, no matter who they were. And I also hope that the good guys have taken note and are now protecting their systems from the same thing happening. (P.S.: I don’t buy the “myrtus=Esther” line of whodoneit. It’s too much of a reach.)

Posted in AP Media Bias, Gaza, Iran, Israel, World | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Monday briefly

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! At Raceway Snarks!

Posted on 10/03/2010 by Meryl Yourish

We want the fox to guard the henhouse, too: Syria wants Turkey to mediate any new indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel. Said an Israeli spokesman: My, Grandma—what big teeth you have!

The anti-Israel media bias in bloom: When the Egyptians murder African refugees trying to flee into Israel by shooting them in the back, the AP barely writes two paragraphs. When a Palestinian is killed by a border policeman trying to sneak over the barrier, the AP puts an 800-word article with three authors over the wires. And the Israeli side of why he was shot appears in—wait for it—paragraph nine. Immediately following the Israeli spokesman saying that there was a struggle for the gun, the AP’s next paragraph is a quote from the cousin saying that never happened. Way to be objective, AP!

That’s why we call him Mad Mahmoud: Ahmadinejad is upping the ante in his rhetoric against the U.S. and Israel. Apparently, Israel is a rabid dog and the U.S. should be buried. Yeah, good luck with that, bubelah.

(The title to this post is a reference to a commercial I grew up listening to in NJ.)

Posted in AP Media Bias, Israel, Syria, Turkey | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Saturday quick snarks

Posted on 10/02/2010 by Meryl Yourish

Yeah, but are they going to allow human sacrifice? The Brits are officially recognizing Druidry (apparently, that’s what you call it) as a religion. Pardon me while I snicker.

The Obama Effect:The Palestinians are done with direct negotiatons. This would be ac issue if there actually were any negotiations, but thanks to The One’s stupid emphasis on Israeli “settlements,” the Palestinians have been able to successfully avoid negotiating for two years. Way to go, Obambi!

Baby Assad mocks Obama: Say, that outstretched hand to Syria? It’s just been slapped.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Saturday that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are aimed at bolstering Obama’s political image.

“There is no goal but to gain support for Obama within America,” he told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, adding that “there has been no change in the peace process in Palestine.”

So how do you figure Stephen Walt is going to spin this one? It’s all Israel’s fault that Syria is mocking Obama?

Posted in Israel, News Briefs, Syria, The One | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Friday briefs, now with more snark!

Posted on 10/01/2010 by Meryl Yourish

Oooh, I hope it’s true: Hezbollah is accusing Egypt and Jordan of arming its rivals. Hey, build up those opponents! If they’re busy fighting each other, they won’t have time to murder Israeli soldiers supervising the pruning of trees.

Norway to Germany: We won’t let you help the Israelis defend themselves. They’re banning test runs by German sub companies in Norwegian waters. Why? Because the subs are going to be sold to Israel. Can you say, “Israel Derangement Syndrome”? I knew you could. Now can you say, “Illogical hatred of the Jewish State?” Awesome. And what’s the so-called reason behind it? The blockade of Gaza. Apparently, Norway is totally down with rockets landing on Israeli children, but not with the deprivation of rocket materials to Hamas.

Palestinian Muslims: Now, with more medieval logic! Palestinians are willing to perform hysterectomies on mentally ill girls to assure that they never have children (like them, no doubt). Way to join the 21st century! And they got a fatwa for it, too.

The mufti of Nablus issued a decree approving hysterectomies “if they can put an end to a mental condition or social problem”.

Awesome! How much notice with the world media take of this? None. How much did they take of the Israeli Arab charged with sex by deception (because they couldn’t prove the rape charge)? Tons. Israeli Double Standard Time? You betcha!

We didn’t make no steenking promises! The Obama administration denies promising Bibi anything in return for an extension on the settlement freeze. Not that it matters. Name a promise that Obama has kept. It’s a far shorter list than the ones he hasn’t.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Lebanon, News Briefs, World | 3 Comments

The UN Anti-Israel Committee

Posted on 09/30/2010 by Meryl Yourish

The UNHCR has endorsed its one-sided report in which it refuses to use video evidence because it was “edited” by Israel, but it relies on eyewitness reports even while noting that those reports are untrue.

The U.N. Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to endorse the report of a U.N. fact-finding mission that accused Israeli commandos of summarily executing six passengers on a Turkish aid flotilla in May, among them a 19-year-old Turkish American dual citizen who was shot five times, including once in the face.

It sure was a great idea for the Obama administration to rejoin the UNHCR. It really changed things.

The United States, the only country to vote against Wednesday’s action, criticized the panel’s findings as unbalanced. But a U.S. official said that Washington has asked Israel to thoroughly investigate the killing of the Turkish American, Furgan Dogan, and to share the findings with the U.S. government.

After the vote, a senior U.S. official faulted the Human Rights Council for rushing the creation of the panel and failing to make adequate efforts to secure Israeli cooperation. “The report’s language, tone and conclusions are unbalanced,” said Mark Kornblau, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

Unbalanced? How can that be?

The panel’s chairman, Hudson-Phillips, acknowledged in a statement Tuesday that the original mandate handed to the panel indicated “a certain bias.” He said the panel rewrote the terms to “conform to absolute impartiality.”

“From the evidence of passengers and analysis supplied by a forensic pathologist and ballistic expert, six of the deceased were the victims of summary executions,” he said in the statement.

What is worse than the committee refusing to accept video evidence over eyewitness reports when the two are in disagreement? The way that the media reflexively reports the anti-Israel quotes and does not mention that the video evidence utterly refutes the eyewitnesses main charges, that the Israelis came down from the helicopters shooting. Even the report acknowledges that isn’t true.

The anti-Israel narrative: Nothing will stop it.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, United Nations | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The UN Anti-Israel Committee

Open auditions

Posted on 09/29/2010 by Meryl Yourish

This has been a really crappy 24 hours for me.

If any Israel-haters out there want to tell me what they think of Israel and my blog, now would be a perfect time to do it.

Perfect for me, anyway.

Posted in Evil Meryl | 15 Comments

The immodest hopes of J-Street

Posted on 09/29/2010 by Soccerdad

Essential to maintaining the fiction that it is a mainstream Jewish organization, J-Street was careful to pretend that received support from many sources. We see this in a press release news story that appeared last year in the Washington Post.

Last year, I noted a Washington Post article, New Liberal Jewish Lobby Quickly Makes Its Mark that celebrated J-Street’s first birthday:

When a group of Jewish liberals formed a lobbying and fundraising group called J Street a year ago, they had modest hopes of raising $50,000 for a handful of congressional candidates.

Instead, the group’s political arm ended up funneling nearly $600,000 to several dozen Democrats and a handful of Republicans in 2008, making it Washington’s leading pro-Israel PAC, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure records. Organizers say 33 of the group’s 41 favored House and Senate candidates won their races.

The article’s writer, Daniel Eggen, dutifully promoted Jeremy Ben Ami’s boasts, while giving relatively little attention to J-Street’s critics. Though, Eggen did observe:

But the group’s aggressive tactics have prompted criticism from many established Jewish advocacy groups, which say the project appears calibrated to grab attention and often goes too far in its critiques of Israeli policy. Critics also say J Street has drawn most of its financial contributions from a relatively narrow group of supporters, raising questions about the breadth of its appeal.

Of course no specifics are given. But the “questions about the breadth of [J-Street’s] appeal” should have been investigated. The questions were investigated recently but not by the Washington Post, rather by Eli Lake of the Washington Times:

Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times reveal that Mr. Soros and his two children, Jonathan and Andrea Soros, contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

The contributions represent a third of the group’s revenue from U.S. sources during the period. Nearly half of J Street’s revenue during the timeframe — a total of $811,697 — however, came from a single donor in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, named Consolacion Esdicul.

So in the year ending June 30, 2009 – covering about 9 months leading up to the Washington Post article – J-Street raised over $1 million from the Soros family and Consolacion Esdicul.

Note the claim of “modest hopes” was false. Ben Ami knew J-Street had plenty of cash coming his way from Soros and friends. Eggen wasn’t enterprising enough to investigate the sources of J-Street’s funding, which would have shown J-Street’s critics to be correct.

Jeremy Ben Ami is a con man relying on the credulity of a media ever anxious to show that being pro-Israel is something to be ashamed of. In fact Jeremy Ben Ami represents a fringe position, who only came to prominence due to his political connections and the wealth others spread around.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Wednesday snarks

Posted on 09/29/2010 by Meryl Yourish

Um… what? Baby Assad is asking Mad Mahmoud to tone down his anti-Israel rhetoric? To postpone his visit to Lebanon? This can’t be a true story. I am not getting this at all. Syria is not serious about peace with Israel, in spite of the many assertions by idiots in the journalism and diplomatic world. And this part is just a head-scratcher:

According to the report, the Syrian leader asked the Iranian counterpart why he wanted to visit the region, in light of the exchange of diplomatic messages between the two countries.

The Iranian president explained that the visit was important due to the strategic significance of the Marjayoun area, adding that he viewed the entire area as Iran’s border with Israel.

Is the Dorktator worried that Lebanon is more of an Iranian puppet than a Syrian one? Is it a struggle for dominance there? And will the mainstream media report on that quote by Mad Mahmoud about Iran’s “border” with Israel? (Of course not. They’re too busy blaming Israel for Hezbollah’s rearmament.)

The victims who remain nameless in the MSM: Speaking of Lebanon, Lt. Mar Harari, daughter of the officer who was murdered by Lebanese snipers in an unprovoked attack while on Israeli territory (but blamed by the MSM for being on the Lebanese side) spoke to IDF reserves about their value to Israel. Captain Ezra Lakia is still injured and unable to serve, and will require months or years more of rehab, but that doesn’t matter—it was all Israel’s fault for having the nerve to prune trees out of the sightline so they could prevent attacks from Lebanon.

Say, Israel, can you renew the settlement freeze that didn’t really get Abbas to negotiate anyway? Seriously, let’s look at the order of events. Obama demands Israel freeze settlements. Clinton demands Israel freeze settlements. Then Abbas says he won’t even sit down to negotiations unless Israel freezes settlements. Israel freezes settlement construction, but Abbas says since it isn’t a total freeze, he won’t talk to Israel. The Palestinians instead have “indirect” negotiations, which do nothing. Finally, mere weeks before the freeze is set to expire, Abbas sits down with Netanyahu. Once. Then he spends the rest of the time saying that if the freeze expires, he’ll walk away from the talks. So, what does the US do? Try to get Israel to commit to the same exact thing as before, which didn’t work in the first place. And the AP, of course, is all too eager to put the onus on Israel (as is the rest of the media and the world). Because it worked so well last time.

Posted in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, News Briefs, palestinian politics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Fake LinkedIn message attack alert

Posted on 09/28/2010 by Meryl Yourish

Be careful clicking on any LinkedIn email.

Starting on Monday, cyber criminals sent spam email messages targeting the LinkedIn social media community.

Victims are emailed an alert link with a fictitious social media contact request. These messages accounted for as much as 24% of all spam sent within a 15-minute interval.

Clicking the link, victims are taken to a web page that says “PLEASE WAITING…. 4 SECONDS” and redirects them to Google. During those four seconds, the victim’s PC is infected with the ZeuS data theft malware by a drive-by download. ZeuS embeds itself in the victim’s web browser and captures personal information, such as online banking credentials, and is widely used by criminals to pilfer commercial bank accounts.

Organizations should encourage individuals to delete such requests, especially if they do not know the name of the contact.

Posted in Computers | Comments Off on Fake LinkedIn message attack alert

Take us to your leaders

Posted on 09/28/2010 by Soccerdad

In the wonderfully titled Third world debating society elects itself world’s envoy in case of alien contact, Q & O speculated:

Can you imagine a worse institution to have represent humanity than the UN? And frankly, if intelligent aliens ever turned up here and were first greeted by representatives of the UN, my guess is we’d be a cinder fairly quickly after that, being deemed by the aliens as not intelligent enough to warrant further survival.

Well, it appears that there might be a real need for that ambassador, as Aliens have deactivated British and US nuclear missiles, say US military pilots (via memeorandum)

Aliens have landed, infiltrated British nuclear missile sites and deactivated the weapons, according to US military pilots.

The beings have repeated their efforts in the US and have been active since 1948, the men said, and accused the respective governments of trying to keep the information secret.

The unlikely claims were compiled by six former US airmen and another member of the military who interviewed or researched the evidence of 120 ex-military personnel.

Glad the UN is looking out for us. The alternative is frightening.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted in Humor | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Tuesday snark briefs

Posted on 09/28/2010 by Meryl Yourish

And the AP is so disappointed: Israel navy halts Gaza-bound boat without violence. If you read the article in full, you will note that the AP puts objectivity to ridiculous ends by inserting the new boilerplate description of the Mavi Marmara incident:

Israeli naval commandos violently clashed with activists wielding clubs and knives on board the Turkish ship. Both the military and the activists have accused each other of provoking the violence.

Because it’s not like there’s photographic evidence showing Turks attacking soldiers rapelling down to the ship or anything like that.

If you send me to Israel, I’ll stand on the other side and throw one back: Mad Mahmoud is going to throw a stone at Israel from Lebanon. See title.

Mahmoud Abbas wins the Oscar for best actor in a negotiator’s role: The Kabuki theater continues, as Abbas goes to the Arab League and the Arab League gives pretend cover to negotiate and absolutely no real negotiating goes on. The AP breathlessly reports that the negotiations will go on! And while jaw-jaw is better than war-war, the Palestinians won’t be going to war anytime soon anyway. It’s Hamas and Hezbullah that you have to worry about.

Posted in Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Monday morning briefs

Posted on 09/27/2010 by Meryl Yourish

So long, Turkey[s]! Israelis used to vacation in Turkey in the hundreds of thousands. Not anymore. They’ve shifted their tourist dollars to Greece. The irony meter is off the charts on this one: Turkey invaded, split, and colonized Cyprus, all while conducting the ethnic cleansing of the Greek Cypriot population. Sound familiar? Why, yes—it’s an occupation. So, the grand Mavi Marmara incident, the anti-Israel incitement, and the constant vilification of Israel by Turkey resulted in a 90% dropoff in Israeli tourism while Greek tourism is up 150%. That’s called “voting with your pocketbook.”

You stink, Ahmadinejad: I just like this one because it’s so weird and funny at the same time. It seems that the guests in Mad Mahmoud’s hotel didn’t like the odor of the food he had cooked for him by his Iranian chefs. So many jokes, so little time….

One if by land: Yes, the latest Gaza flotilla is composed entirely of people that are going to go overland to Syria, then sail to an Egyptian port, thus completely negating the Gaza part and [partly negating the flotilla part] of the protest. Now, there are those out there who may think that the protesters will be accomplishing their aims regardless. I will point out to them that in spite of the outcry over the Mavi Marmara, most activists have decided not to eff with the IDF. Hm. I guess we can call them Israel Defense Effers (and we mean that in the highest of praise).

Don’t hold your breath, Gul: Turkey’s president Gul Dukat (I’ve been waiting months to write that) says he’s waiting for Israel to apologize for the Marbled Marmalade incident. He also said that in olden days, it would have been considered an act of war. He’s wrong. It was an act of war, by Turkey, against Israel. Pardon me while I chortle at the thought of Turkey launching a war with Israel. They don’t have the money, the will, or the casus belli for it, and they know it. Can you say, “Bluster, bluster, bluster!” I knew you could.

Posted in Gaza, Iran, Israel, Turkey | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments