Haveil Havalim- The Jewish/Israeli Blog Carnival

Posted on 01/25/2009 by Jack

Friends I am pleased to let you know that Haveil Havalim, the weekly blog carnival of the Jewish/Israeli blogosphere is now live at SuperRaizy.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off on Haveil Havalim- The Jewish/Israeli Blog Carnival

Surprises in babysitting

Posted on 01/24/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Earlier this week, a parent of one of my former students called and asked if I’d be interested in taking care of her son today. And not just for a few hours in the evening, but how would I feel about having Andy stay overnight? Well, heck. I like kids, and we’ve become friends since he was my student last year, and of course, though I’m not supposed to have favorites… well, Andy’s one of them. Anyway, I called Sarah and asked if Nate, who’s about Andy’s age, had any plans for the weekend. Nope.

So right now I have a ten-year-old boy on the sofabed, and an eleven-year-old (last week!) in the guest room. It took them a little while to hit it off, but hit it off they did. They spent a lot of time playing Simpsons on the Wii, and then we tried to find something to watch that we’d all agree on. I had no idea Terminator 2 was rated R, so when they asked for that, I had to call Sarah to make sure it would be all right. But she was out picking up Eldest Boy, so we didn’t get a call back and it got later and they got bored. We watched something called Ninja Warrior, which is a Japanese game show. One of those feats of strength things. It wasn’t as dumb as some of the others, and the last thing the contestants had to do was climb a 50-foot rope in 30 seconds. None of them made it. Nate and Andy argued about whether or not Nate could do it. That got us on the subject of how good a climber Nate was. Which got us on the subject of the rock climbing gym. I told the boys that I know of more than a few climbers who could easily climb 50 feet of straight rope in 30 seconds, half of them using only their arms. And then I thought a little. It was about 9 p.m. I said, “Hey, what if we just run over to the gym right now and do a little climbing of our own?”

“Really?”

“Why not? I’ll give you an hour.”

So we went. I was a little rusty at first, not having tied a figure-eight knot since May, but I got it, and the boys climbed three party routes and a 5.6. Unfortunately, there was a lock-in, so I couldn’t get anyone to belay me for a climb. Next time.

It took me a while to settle them down, but I’m pretty sure they’re both sound asleep right now. If I can just keep Tig up here and not down there trying to get Nate to wake up and play with him, they’ll stay asleep.

I’m dropping them both off at religious school tomorrow. Then I have the rest of the weekend to myself. Although it’s going to be awfully quiet here after tomorrow morning.

Posted in Life | 1 Comment

Saudi Arabian Hypocrisy

Posted on 01/24/2009 by Jack

So that wacky prince thinks that he can lecture President Obama about the peace process.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN — Relations between Arab nations and the United States hinge on American leaders living up to their rhetoric about commitment to lasting peace in the Mideast, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told CNN Saturday.”President Obama, in his statement yesterday, said that he’s genuinely making the effort to accomplish a peaceful resolution,” al-Faisal, who served as Saudi ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2007, told CNN’s Nic Robertson in an interview Friday.

“We’ve heard this before,” al-Faisal said. “We need to see implementation. We need to see facts on the ground change. We need to see rhetoric change. We need to see presence on the ground.”

He said he was encouraged by Obama’s appointment of George Mitchell as Mideast envoy, saying, “Mitchell comes with a track record of success.” But he suggested Mitchell spend some time in the region to make real progress.

“American envoys, when they’ve dealt with the Middle East, have always come and gone,” he said.

“I think it would be wise for Sen. Mitchell … to pitch his tent in Ramallah or in Jerusalem, let’s say, and spend a year, two, perhaps three years on the ground dealing with the daily aspects of making peace there.” The United States’ backing of Israel, in light of the latest Israeli military operations in Gaza, does not improve its standing in the Arab world, he said.

“What happened in Gaza, people have called it a tragedy,” al-Faisal said. “I’d go further and say it was a catastrophe in all aspects of that word. The killing and the destruction was so barbaric by Israel, and unprecedented in a such a small area like Gaza.

Hmm…The Arabic expression for bite me comes to mind. The chutzpah it takes to say this sort of stuff with a straight face is incredible. To place all of the blame on Israel and to wave his finger in Obama’s face is unmitigated gall.

It is really hard for me take any sort of Saudia Arabian peace initiative seriously. They are morally bankrupt, two faced and exceptionally intolerant to people who do not practice Islam. So when I see them try to lecture us or anyone about what we should do I roll my eyes.

Let’s take a quick look at a recent story about child marriage.

(CNN) — The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom’s top cleric saying that it’s OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

“It is incorrect to say that it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,” Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. “A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she’s too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her.”

The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative kingdom in recent weeks.

Late last month, a Saudi judge refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.

This is sick and wrong. There is no justification for this. There is no spinning this to say that it is ok because it is culturally acceptable or religiously ok. Child sacrifiee and slavery once were considered to be acceptable and we don’t do that.

Want another example of their barbarism and why we cannot allow them to dictate morality. How about the time when the religious police murdered school girls fleeing a fire at their school.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

In a rare criticism of the kingdom’s powerful “mutaween” police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurredAccording to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam.

One witness said he saw three policemen “beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya”.

The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police – known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned “it is a sinful to approach them”.

The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.

Or what about the fact that 19 of the 911 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. The sad truth is that we can continue to cite chapter and verse about why the Saudis are among the last people to serve as arbiters of morality. Were it not for their oil money they would be a very poor and backwards nation with all of the relevance to the world that the Congo now holds.

If there is justice in this world we will witness the demise of the cash cow that has permitted these intolerant, small minded, bigots and promoters of terror to thrive.

Crossposted on Random thoughts- Do They Have Meaning?

Posted in Israel, Politics, Religion, Terrorism, World | 2 Comments

Stimulus envy

Posted on 01/24/2009 by Meryl Yourish

It’s a direct quote about Obama:

“You know, I’m concerned about the size of the package.”

—House GOP Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Posted in Evil Meryl, Humor, The One | Tagged | 2 Comments

About that Hamas “victory”…

Posted on 01/24/2009 by Meryl Yourish

The victors seem to be acting a little less like victors these days, in spite of their rhetoric. According to this, Israel is going to get at least some of what it wants.

Hamas is prepared to agree to the deployment of Fatah forces at the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel, London based newspaper Asharq Alawsat reported on Saturday morning.

The group’s delegation in Cairo apparently told diplomats that the group would authorize such a move with the opening of the Rafah crossing on the condition that the personnel of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were themselves residents of the Strip.

They only want Fatah forces who live in Gaza, presumably so they can threaten their families if they stray off the Hamas line. Of course, it’s still not good enough. Meantime, Europeans are promising to help.

But it all boils down to one thing: Egypt refuses to have foreign troops on her soil, and Egypt also refuses to truly stop the smuggling.

Egypt may be holding out on the nature of a foreign presence on its soil as a way to negotiate for increasing its own troops in Sinai; their numbers are limited by the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. For now, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and senior officials say a foreign presence on Egyptian soil is a “red line” they are not willing to cross.

No amount of help is going to do anything but reinforce the status quo. Europeans refuse to send in troops that will have the power to fire on smugglers if necessary—you’ll get exactly what you have in Lebanon, instances where Hezbollah threatens UNIFIL troops and UNIFIL runs away and then rarely bothers filing an official report.

Hamas violated the cease fire again this morning by firing a mortar at Israel that fell short.

Moshe Ya’alon says it will take Hamas only a year to restock its weapons. The tunnels are already back in operation. And Israel is considering letting some of the worst Hamas murderers go in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

So one has to ask: What was the war for, again? Because I’m starting to come down on the side of the cynics who say it was launched to keep Kadima in charge of Israel.

Posted in Gaza, Hamas, Israel, World | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Hamas re-establishes iron rule

Posted on 01/23/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Think the UN Human Rights organizations will notice these things happening?

Hamas has seized control of all the smuggling tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor in southern Gaza and has been moving additional arms into the Strip since Operation Cast Lead ended on Sunday morning.

[…] The tunnels in Rafah are usually run by local Palestinian clans, and Hamas’s decision to take control is believed to be part of the group’s attempts to reestablish its regime in Gaza. Hamas can now decide what is smuggled into the Strip and give priority to weapons and explosives.

[…] Also on Wednesday, Hamas commandeered the trucks carrying humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip as part of its effort to show that it is providing for the Palestinian people.

Defense officials told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that Hamas had also taken over a mental hospital in Gaza City and had kicked out the patients to use the facility as a jail for Fatah supporters.

Really, just when you think they can’t get any lower, Hamas manages to prove you wrong.

And of course, this is also a fact that won’t get very high play in the non-Israeli media:

Some of the tunnels were not destroyed – like the one that was filmed by foreign media on Wednesday – out of humanitarian considerations.

Several tunnels have pipes that transfer fuel from Sinai to Gaza. The concern in the IDF was that if it bombed such a tunnel, a huge explosion would result – possibly also on the Egyptian side – and civilian casualties.

The IDF was also concerned that if a fuel tunnel were bombed, Hamas would respond by attacking the Nahal Oz fuel depot where there are gas canisters and fuel tankers, which if detonated would cause major collateral damage in Gaza and Israel.

Of course they would have retaliated by attacking Nahal Oz. They’ve already tried to blow it up, and thankfully, failed.

If any of my readers finds a non-Israeli source that discusses the Hamas takeover of all the tunnels, send me a link. I’m betting this goes completely unnoticed by all the big guns in the MSM.

Posted in Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Will President Obama speak out?

Posted on 01/23/2009 by Soccerdad

Claudia Rosett on the prevalence of antisemitism at the UN:

The other hub is the United Nations, which, despite its own sanctions on Iran and its own 1945 charter which aims to avert such horrors as another holocaust, continues to dignify Tehran and some of its fellow anti-Semitic despotic states with a slew of important UN posts, while treating Israel as a pariah state.

Though a democracy, Israel has never been allowed to hold one of the 10 rotating seats on a Security Council that in recent years has welcomed such tyrannies as Syria and Libya.

Currently, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is fueling the problem–publicly condemning Israel’s battle to stop the terrorist attacks by Hamas, touring Gaza and demanding a probe of Israeli actions, while offering no viable protection to Israelis.

Don’t hold your breath for a UN inquiry into weapons and training supplied to Hamas by the same Iranian regime whose nuclear bomb program the UN’s leaky sanctions have failed to stop.

Rosett quotes a former diplomat Pedro Sanjuan on his experiences at the UN. In an interview this is how he described the atmosphere:

FP: How about the anti-Semitism at the U.N.?

Sanjuan: Anti-Semitism at the United Nations was nothing short of appalling. There was evidence of it everywhere you looked. Because of my descent from a convert Jew in the 15th century in Spain, I was confronted right off with two serious accusations: not only was I an American spy but a Jew as well. It was like Minsk in the 14th century, but in New York, a city of several million Jews in the second half of the 20th century. Israel (like every other member state) had a certain number of positions in the Secretariat allotted to it. For years they were not filled. It was not permitted. When the positions finally began to be filled, it was with Palestinian residents of Israel.

See Jeane Kirkpatrick (.pdf) on how else this was manifested.

Right now, if President Obama wants to fight antisemitism he ought to be making it very clear that he disapproves of the way the Durban II conference is shaping up and declare that he will not send a representative to the conference unless the vicious antisemitism is stopped. Still, I suspect that President Obama sees the UN as a solution to problems, not an institution that makes things worse.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | 2 Comments

Saudis threaten Obama on Israel

Posted on 01/23/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Saudi Arabia is working out the kinks of having a new American president that isn’t yet in their pocket. After sixteen years of Clinton and Bush, this has got to be a tough time for them. Did they manage to get enough of his attention with those untraceable donations for his presidential campaign? Or will they have to wait until Team Obama starts talking about the Obama Presidential Library? (I give that a month.)

In the meantime, they’re taking to scolding him in the foreign press.

Saudi patience is running out

Oooh, tough talking there, Turki.

In my decades as a public servant, I have strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Really? And how much blood money has Hamas gotten from the Saudis again? No, how much have they gotten recently?

According to two indectments served Monday, millions of shekels have been transferred from a Saudi organization to Hamas operatives in Jerusalem. The money was received as charity although, in reality, it was earmarked for terrorist activities.

Working for peace while contributing millions to the organization that was firing rockets into Israel—yeah, that’s the Saudis, the same nation that created al Qaeda, and that funds radical Wahabbi schools all over the world. So if by “promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process” you mean “funded the organizations that will destroy Israel so there will be Arab peace in Palestine,” well, then you’re being truthful.

King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens.

Yeah, funny thing about that fabled Arab unity. They walked away from the table last week without any kind of agreement.

The violence in Gaza split Arab countries into two camps _ one led by Syria and Qatar supporting Hamas hard-liners who rule the territory, and another led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia hoping to lure the Palestinian militant group toward more moderation.

Here comes the first threat:

If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.

I think the US will continue to play a leadership role in the middle east even without the Saudi oil ticks. (And that “special relationship” is exactly that: Oil, and oil only, gives Saudis a role in this world. Without it, they’re a bunch of nomads in the desert that raise fast horses.) But what we have here is a Saudi prince who does not know Barack Obama, who has never had Obama over to one of his parties at the Saudi embassy or his mansions in the area, and who greatly wants to groom the current president to go along with the Saudi view the way the previous three presidents have done. Remember, we had Bush 41, then Clinton, then Bush 43—all of whom played ball with the Saudis to a great degree. Now, we have an unknown.

I really would love to know how much money the Saudis managed to contribute to the Obama campaign. Alas, we never will.

Blah blah blah, Saudi peace plan, blah blah blah, 1967 borders, East Jerusalem, blah blah blah.

Now we get to the good part.

Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over “this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children” in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom’s primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni. Further, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed in the region.

The Saudis already are leading a jihad against Israel, through the act of giving Palestinian terrorist groups hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. They held a telethon to raise money to send to Arafat during Operation Defensive Shield. They raised over $100 million dollars. And they constantly send Hamas back to Gaza with suitcases full of cash.

Let’s not pretend that the Saudis truly want an Israeli state on Muslim land. This next part is rather telling, don’t you think?

Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel. Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: “I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more.”

And that’s the crux of the issue. Jihad demands that they recapture “their” land. Turki isn’t threatening jihad. He is already waging it, and has the backing of the Saudi petrodollars.

The question here is how effective those dollars will be on the Obama administration. Personally, I think they will be very effective. They’ve bought just about every president since Carter. (I haven’t researched enough on Ronald Reagan and don’t know what their influence on him was.) And Obama hasn’t given me any reason to think that he’ll be immune. After all, he has a legacy to commemorate.

Posted in Gaza, Israel | 1 Comment

An inflated toll?

Posted on 01/23/2009 by Soccerdad

A number of bloggers have pointed to the story of the Gaza doctor who reported that the death toll claimed by Hamas and swallowed by the MSM was significantly inflated.

Elder of Ziyon points out how difficult it would be to figure out the actual death toll. Jonathan Tobin asks if this death inflation is Shades of the al-Dura Case? Subsequently there’s been another report that the IDF is confirming that really over 1300 Gazans were killed the fighting. This leads Tobin to compare this case to the al-Dura case and wonder:

But whether that’s true or not, had the IDF been a bit more skeptical about the false claims made regarding the case, it’s possible that the story wouldn’t have become such a big propaganda success for the anti-Israel crowd.

But maybe the IDF believes that the death toll matches the higher figure and that they have an interest in letting Hamas know. The later report contained this information:

Israeli defense officials on Thursday said there were around 1,300 Palestinians killed during the fighting in Gaza and that a majority of them were Hamas operatives.

The IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration have already compiled a list with 900 names of Palestinians killed during the operation, out of which 750 are believed to be Hamas operatives.

Keep in mind that if Israel has a list that shows that 750 out of 900 killed were Hamas operatives that means that Israel hit the terrorists with an 83% accuracy rate.

Edward Luttwak wrote two weeks ago:

Consider: According to Gaza sources, until the ground fighting started some 25% of the 500 dead were innocent civilians. The Israelis claimed that 20% of the casualties from the aerial attack were civilians. Either way, this was an extremely accurate bombing campaign. (Even in the 1991 and 2003 U.S. air campaigns against Iraq, when most of the bombs were already precision-guided, gross targeting errors killed many civilians.)

A targeting accuracy of 75% — by the lowest estimate — cannot have been merely obtained by overhead photography from satellites or reconnaissance aircraft, because few Hamas objectives were classic “high-contrast” targets such as bunkers or headquarters. Most targets were small groups of people in nondescript civilian vehicles that blend in with traffic, or inside unremarkable buildings. Nor could telephone intercepts have yielded much intelligence, because all Palestinians know that the Israelis have long combined voice recognition with cellular-grid location in order to aim missiles very accurately at single vehicles in traffic, or even at individuals standing about with their cellphones switched off.

So how did Israel do it? The only possible explanation is that people in Gaza have been informing the Israelis exactly where Hamas fighters and leaders are hiding, and where weapons are stored. No doubt some informers are merely corrupt, paid agents earning a living. But others must choose to provide intelligence because they oppose Hamas, whose extremism inflicts poverty, suffering and now death on the civilian population for the sake of launching mostly ineffectual rockets into Israel. Hamas completely disregards the day-to-day welfare of all Gazans in order to pursue its millenarian vision of an Islamic Palestine.

If Israel has compiled a list of those it killed it shows an intelligence gathering capability in Gaza. Similarly after the 2006 war against Hezbollah, Yaacov Amidror wrote:

Hizballah is still functioning and was functioning during the entire war. We have identified by name and address 440 members of Hizballah who were killed during the war. From my experience, this figure is between half and two-thirds of the actual casualties, which were not less than 500 and may have reached 700 – a figure greater than all the casualties Hizballah has suffered during the last twenty years. It will take Hizballah at least two years to rebuild its capabilities and to recruit and train new people. This is why Hizballah is keeping the cease-fire.

Both the recent Jerusalem Post article and the Amidror article suggest that Israel knows who they are targeting. And if the 83% accuracy is correct, as Luttwak wrote, it suggests that Israel has spies on the ground helping them. Maybe the army has figured that the difference between the numbers don’t really matter, but that they have a way of telling Hamas that its support has been compromised. Maybe this is a warning to Haniyeh and company that they can claim victory, but that they ought not to rest too comfortably.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Tagged | 1 Comment

Another look from afar

Posted on 01/23/2009 by SnoopyTheGoon

Again from down under: an anti-Israeli* demo in Melbourne, as documented by Nilk. Two of my favorites:

I hope that kid didn’t get tired schlepping this one and done her Mom and Dad proud.

Nilk says: “I think this guy’s suffering from an unintended irony attack.” Who am I to argue?

(*) Could we stop already with that “anti-Israeli” crap? The familiar face could be clearly seen now, one would assume.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome | Comments Off on Another look from afar

New UN and Reuters standard for evidence: Feelings

Posted on 01/22/2009 by Meryl Yourish

If you can find a shred of hard evidence in this supposed news report, I will print out this post and eat it.

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said on Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

I do believe we’ve found the Andrew Sullivan of the UN. Let’s talk hyperbole, shall we?

Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes.

And what is that evidence?

“I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,” he told a Geneva news conference.

Excuse me. What is that evidence, please?

Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.

Once again, what is that evidence?

“In my view the UN charter, and international law, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense,” he said.

One last time. Can we see the evidence, please?

Falk said the entire Gaza population, which had been trapped in a war zone with no possibility to leave as refugees, may have been mentally scarred for life. If so, the definition of casualty could be extended to the entire civilian population.

I see. In other words, there is no evidence of war crimes, and Reuters is passing along a load of crap as news. But wait. What would a Richard Falk statement be without a reference to Godwin’s Law?

“To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

(Falk is not a Jew. He’s an Ex-Jew. There’s a difference. But you guys can have him. We don’t want him. Please. Take him.) To sum up: There is no physical evidence of war crimes. There is only the accusation of such by Richard Falk, who has already stated his complete revulsion for the Jewish State and compared Israel to the Nazis on several occasions. Once again, the demonization and delegitimization of Israel is carried out by the United Nations, its tools, and the ever-ready uncritical world media. If only Reuters would apply the same critical standards to stories about Israel as they do to, say, stories about George W. Bush. If only.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias, United Nations | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Evenhanded in an uneven situation

Posted on 01/22/2009 by Soccerdad

George Mitchell has been appointed an envoy to the Middle East. (via memeorandum) Apparently the conflict of interest in his report on steroid use in baseball has been forgotten.

Lefties are of course are hyping the fact that pro-Israel advocates worry about Mtichell’s likelihood to be “even-handed.” But as Daniel Pipes pointed out in his critique of the Mitchell report in 2001, this wasn’t exactly an even situation.

Not wanting to offend, in other words, creates an illusionary balance of blame (“Fear, hate, anger, and frustration have risen on both sides,” says the report) that makes it impossible to distinguish between aggressor and victim, between right and wrong.

In fact, the recent violence has a clear address, and it is the Palestinians. The Israeli government, hoping to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, made unexpected and startling concessions to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000, only to have these contemptuously rejected. Worse, in an effort to extract even more concessions than the Israelis had offered, two months later, the Palestinians began a round of violence that still continues.

This was clearly not a question of equal responsibility, but a plain case of one side aggressing against the other.

I’d like to think that Mitchell has changed, but since he’s being appointed with an eye towards accomplishing something, no doubt he will once again see a symmetry between Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense. Which means that he will excuse the terror and pretend that doing so will bring peace.

See more at Israel Matzav.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Tagged | Comments Off on Evenhanded in an uneven situation

Muammar’s second act

Posted on 01/22/2009 by Soccerdad

The NYT persisting in its misguided principle that debate is always good, today offers an op-ed written by Libyan dictator, Muammar Quaddafi, “The One State Solution.” I had not realized it, but apparently Qaddafi is making a second career out of writing op-eds, the Boston Globe, also owned (for now) by the New York Times recently published an op-ed of his too. (He’s been in the news too!) Apparently the Times confused him with Bono.

Qaddafi writes:

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.

I bring this up not because he sugarcoats the experience of Jews in Islamic lands. I bring it up because this implicitly undermines what he writes later.

It is an injustice that Jews who were not originally inhabitants of Palestine, nor were their ancestors, can move in from abroad while Palestinians who were displaced only a relatively short time ago should not be so permitted.

“[N]ot originally inhabitants of Palestine?” The Jews of Judea were persecuted by the Romans. It’s odd that Qaddafi acknowledges Roman persecution but disconnects it from its historical context.

Surprisingly, Qaddafi gets some things right.

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Here he’s saying that the Palestinian flight in 1948 was largely voluntary. He won’t get any argument from me. But if the flight was voluntary, why is justice dependent on settling those who left? Did he get Efraim Karsh to write that paragraph?

Still, in the end Qaddafi’s argument is that Israel must be dissolved. So the Times considers this a debatable proposition. Worse, the Times gives a platform to a tyrant who denies the right of free speech to his own citizens. Does the Times have any standards?

Slobodan Milosevic didn’t merit an op-ed in the Times. Neither did Joerg Haider.

European tyrants and extremists apparently do not have anything to say that’s worth debating, but Arab ones do. That’s the only conclusion I can draw.

Something’s rotten on 8th Avenue.

UPDATE: Please see Elder of Ziyon’s assessment (and yes, he emphasizeed the same paragraph I did):

It is certainly ghostwritten by someone who understands the Western mindset – it pushes all the right buttons for well-meaning but uninformed people to warm to the idea of a painless way to destroy Israel. It appears, in fact, to be written with a liberal Jewish audience in mind.

via memeorandum.

I also should add that the name Palestine derives from “Palestina” the name given Judea by the Romans after they brutally suppressed revolts by the Jews in the land. Again by acknowledging the Roman persecution of the Jews, Qaddafi is implicitly acknowledging the Jewish presence in the land 700 years before the Islamic occupation of the Middle East and northern Africa.

UPDATE II: Backspin gives six convincing reasons why a one-state solution won’t work. James Taranto points out the hollowness of Qaddafi’s concern for refugees, as he (and his country) was/were responsible for creating thousands of Jewish refugees. (He also references a source explaining all the different spellings of the Libyan dictator’s name.) Fausta notes that Qaddafi’s current entourage is missing 42.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Gaza doctor: Hamas is lying about death toll

Posted on 01/22/2009 by Meryl Yourish

I know you’re going to be shocked to hear this.

Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported Thursday that a doctor working in Gaza’s Shifa Hospital claimed that Hamas has intentionally inflated the number of casualties resulting from Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

“The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter,” according to the newspaper article.

The doctor wished to remain unidentified, out of fear for his life.

No kidding. And here’s a Palestinian who accuses Hamas terrorists of war crimes.

A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper’s reporter, “Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn’t do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes.”

This part, though I am doubtful about:

The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas’ exaggerated figures, “We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?”

These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. “Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men,” the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper.

I don’t buy that anyone contradicted Hamas “commanders.” Nor do I buy that the death toll will fall by that much. What I don’t doubt is that Hamas terrorists will be listed as civilians, that 17-year-old Hamasniks with guns in their hands had their guns taken from them after they died, and were counted as civilians and children, and that the UN will be wholly complicit with these lies, because the UN has shown that is exactly what it does, time and again, in this conflict. It ignores video evidence of Hamas using UN ambulances to transport and rescue Hamas terrorists. It ignores video evidence that the Palestinians fake funerals. It ignores all evidence that Hamas fires rockets and shoots at Israelis from civilian areas, denies that UNRWA properties are involved, turns a blind eye to the terrorists on its payroll, and manages to condemn Israel for every single Palestinian death, no matter what. This is why the death toll won’t come down:

According to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, on the first day of the war Hamas ordered its gunmen to take off their uniforms to avoid being detected by the IDF. The Hamas gunmen who participated in the fighting against the IDF were all dressed as civilians and the majority arrived at hospitals without their weapons or any other signs revealing their status as gunmen.

The UN will count them as civilians because Palestinian “medics” will count them as such. Because either those medics are part and parcel of Hamas, or there is a Hamas terrorist within earshot, putting that medic’s name down on a list to be taken care of later, when the UN representative is gone.

Remember this, when you read through the fever swamp of Jew-hatred in Snoopy’s Guardian links. It’s the side of Hamas that never gets much play outside the Israeli press. And it’s the reason for the death toll. If Hamas had not been firing rockets at Israel, the IDF would not have gone into Gaza. It’s as simple as that.

Update: The IDF denies the Italian report about the casualties, and confirms what I wrote earlier: That most of the dead are Hamas terrorists.

Posted in Israel | 2 Comments

It’s all about gas, stupid!

Posted on 01/22/2009 by SnoopyTheGoon

Via Sandmonkey (what would we all do without Sandmonkey, I wonder?): a earth-shaking discovery of the real reason for the Cast Lead. It’s… but see the headline of this post.

I cannot go on, its’ too funny – eventually the drama of Cast Lead brought forth something funny, and we all should be thankful to Bicyclemark (that’s his moniker), I suggest. Just read it yourself.

P.S. The author describes self as:

Portuguese-American, Amsterdam-based, alternative-activist-journalist, independent podcaster, rogue media theorist specializing in online journalism, social movements, and a healthy disrespect for journalistic conventions.

It is amazing, I could barely get to the end of the list – isn’t it a case of multiple personalities? And how does he know in the morning who he is going to be today?

And no, I will not call him names, and I wouldn’t use the g… word for any remuneration.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome | Comments Off on It’s all about gas, stupid!