Bitterly clinging to my proletarianism

Posted on 09/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

You know, I don’t think Obama has any clue how utterly elitist he comes off. From his speech to a crowd of Hollywood celebrities and money people last night, in a $28,500 dinner at a mansion we’ve all seen in the movies. Here’s what Obama told the guests who ponied up $57,000 a couple:

Obama asked the crowd to “keep steady”” in the remaining 48 days until Election day and to remember that his campaign “is about those who will never see the inside of a building like this and don’t resent the success that’s represented in this room, but just want the simple chance to be able to find a job that pays a living wage.”

And then he went to pay his respects to the Hollywood proletariats, who could only afford the $2,500 cost of the ballroom speech (although many stars, of course, went to both).

Please. If this guy ever felt the same pressures as the working man and woman in America, I have yet to hear about it. Obama never had to juggle the bills, deciding which could be put off and which had to be paid on penalty of getting them thrown to a collection agency. Obama never had to worry where the money for the rent was going to come from, or how to afford to feed his family after paying all the other bills. It shows every single time he tries to relate to “the common man” in his speeches. He constantly comes off as an elitist, out-of-touch snob complaining about the price of arugula. Hey, Obama? The working man and women, they mostly eat lettuce. Iceberg. Sometimes romaine. Arugula? That’s for cooking shows.

Keep on making speeches like this, and you’ll eventually stop wondering why your support is disappearing. This is America. Nobody likes a snob. Wait, that’s not true. Snobs like each other. But us working stiffs? We see right through you.

Posted in Politics | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Ehud’s no good very bad day

Posted on 09/17/2008 by Soccerdad

Today is the day that PM Ehud Olmert has dreaded for weeks. Today is the day when he might very well end his political career. The NYT reports:

The selection of a new head of the party, Kadima, was prompted by police investigations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on allegations that he took money illegally while he was mayor of Jerusalem and industry minister. Mr. Olmert has promised to step down, but is expected to stay on as a caretaker prime minister until a new coalition is formed.

Mr. Olmert is still keen to reach some kind of historic peace agreement with the Palestinians before he finally ends his term.

David Hazony expands on those last two sentences:

Two things make me wonder whether he is really leaving us after all. First, Olmert has continued making bold statements about the peace process, yesterday veering sharply to the Left, warning Israelis that a peace agreement with the Palestinians will require some kind of land exchange, in which Israel gets to keep large settlement blocs in exchange for territory on the pre-1967 side of the border, announcing that Israel would participate in some kind of international plan for the refugees, which really means agreeing to absorb some fairly small number in order to give the Palestinians the ability to say they had “returned” refugees to their 1948 homeland. He also apologized for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.

The second is that he yesterday told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who wished to give him an honorable farewell, that no good-byes are needed, since “I’ll still be here.”

Hazony suggests that Olmert is planning to stay on as long as he can, if not as Prime Minister then perhaps as a “special envoy” like Tony Blair (only on the Israel stage, not with the same international flavor that Blair’s role has.)

Maybe that’s why Shmuel Rosner doesn’t see much excitement in Israel. Check out his multiple choice quiz.

One more note about the Times article:

Class and ethnicity have entered into the contest, with Jews of Middle Eastern origin, the Sephardim, seeming to favor Mr. Mofaz while those of European origin, the Ashkenazim, who tend to be better off and better educated, preferring Ms. Livni.

The condescension towards Sephardim is pretty blatant isn’t it? Could you imagine a newspaper report in this country:

Blacks support candidate A but whites who tend to be better off and better educated prefer candidate B.

Think about it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Politics | Tagged | 2 Comments

Exculpating Hamas

Posted on 09/17/2008 by Soccerdad

Notice what’s missing from this headline from the NYT?

Hamas Strikes at Gaza Clan Known for Criminal Activity

Well, let’s look at the first paragraph of the story:

Eleven members of a large Palestinian clan, including a 1-year-old, were killed along with a Hamas police officer late Monday and early Tuesday, when Hamas forces clashed with gunmen at the family’s compound here, witnesses said.

The number of dead. If Israel had targeted a Qassam launching site and it had been close to a home and the resulting explosion killed eleven people including a baby, what would the headline have read?

Israeli raid in Gaza kills baby, ten others

Now notice what’s missing from my hypothetical headline. I didn’t include the reason for the Israeli raid, but the headline defending a Hamas assault on a residential neighborhood mentions “criminal activity.”

Elder of Ziyon, points out that the Doghmush clan was hardly innocent.

To be fair, the Doghmushes are hardly innocent. According to the usually anti-Hamas Firas Press, the Doghmushes fired rockets and mortars from their compound towards Mahmoud al-Zahhar’s house in Gaza City during the fighting as well. So both sides have wanton disregard for civilian lives.

Still that doesn’t change the implication of the headline. No headline about an Israeli raid that killed eleven people in Gaza would contain the phrase “to halt terror attacks,” or “to halt militant attacks.”

Israeli raids that kill Palestinians are reported by identifying the number killed as if the death toll by itself stands as an indictment of the Israeli action. But it’s not just that the headline that justifies the Hamas attack. Here’s the second paragraph:

The assault on the powerful Dagmush clan, notorious for both militant and criminal activity, signaled an apex in the campaign by Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, to impose internal order, and it was welcomed by many people here. The Dagmush family was considered the last large clan challenging Hamas authority in Gaza, after Hamas cracked down in early August on the Hillis clan, which is loyal to Hamas’s rival, Fatah.

Again phrases like “impose internal order” and “welcomed by many people here” would not be found in an article about an Israeli raid. The clan is described as “notorious” and “criminal.” In an article about an Israeli raid, we’d get the term “militant” but never “terrorist” even if the actions precipitating the raid fit the dictionary definition of a terror attack.

Also the terror activity that Israel was defending against would have been qualified with “Israeli military sources say,” instead of described in definite fashion as the “militant and criminal activity” was presented here.

The headline and second paragraph were both written in exculpatory fashion. If Israel had been defending civilians in Sderot the tone would have been accusatory.

More from Israelly Cool and Meryl.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Israel: too many prophets and no king

Posted on 09/17/2008 by SnoopyTheGoon

For the sake of brevity I have omitted the word “mad” in the headline, you might want to work out by yourself where it fits.

We are used to joke about that famous “three million presidents”* thing, about three Jooz having five opinions and more and more in the same vein. But every joke is half the truth, and the problem of our infighting is far from being a joke. United we stand, but united we are on very rare occasions, and rarely we take a breather from tearing the nation apart. I am never tired repeating this. But Ami Isseroff does it so much better in the latest piece The biggest danger to Israel.

The worst period in the early history of ancient Israel was the time of the Judges, of which the Book of Judges states more than once, In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The gift of men like Herzl and David Ben-Gurion is that they were able to overcome the futile, petty and egotistical quarrels of Diaspora Jewish life and rabbinical Judaism, and to produce a united people, ready to undertake sovereignty.

What happens when these elements are missing?

WYSIWYG, ladies and gentlemen – What You See Is What You Get, and it’s past time to stop and do something about it.

But read the whole article, please.

(*) The story goes more or less like this: in a meeting between Nixon and Ben-Gurion, the former complained about the burden of managing a country of 200 million citizens. Ben Gurion countered: “Imagine the problem of managing a country of three million presidents”.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel | 2 Comments

Hamas murders baby; world media ignores it

Posted on 09/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Say, how many headlines you think this would create if it had been the IDF that killed a baby?

Baby among 11 dead after Hamas raids criminal gang’s Gaza base
Forces from Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of Gaza, attacked a compound belonging to a powerful criminal gang yesterday in a heavy street battle that left 11 dead, including a baby boy.

The fighting began on Monday when a Hamas policeman was killed with a shot to the head while Hamas forces were trying to arrest a wanted member of the Doghmush clan inside the headquarters of the Gaza municipality. After the shooting, Hamas mounted a major raid on the clan in al-Sabra in eastern Gaza.

The attack lasted until dawn yesterday, with heavy fighting in the streets of the city. Another Hamas policeman was killed along with 10 members of the clan, all young men apart from two children, a boy aged one and a 16-year-old, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. A further 42 people were injured.

Hamas said its forces had been involved in an operation against “fugitives”.

But it’s not Israel, it’s Hamas, so the AP doesn’t bother putting out hourly updates. The AFP doesn’t even mention the dead baby. Reuters barely mentions it. But there are no breathless updates, no constantly circulating death and casualty updates, no quotes from mourning relatives, no pictures of the bloody child held out to dozens of screaming Palestinians.

Funny, that.

I guess dead Palestinian babies don’t count when Palestinians are causing the deaths by virtue of not caring that they’re sending RPGs into a house. Funny how Desmond Tutu doesn’t come out and call those war crimes.

Well, actually, no, not really. We all know about Israeli Double Standard Time. This is just more evidence of the media bias.

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

Jealous Arabs make the best peace partners

Posted on 09/16/2008 by Soccerdad

Guy Bechor writes about which Arabs Israel can hope to reach by their reaction to PM Olmert’s legal (and political) troubles:

The reformist group – Notably, most responses on the Olmert affair came from this camp. Members of this group are astonished not because of what’s happening in Israel, but rather, because the same thing will never happen in their own countries. In this group we certainly see jealousy of Israel, of its dynamic nature, and of its vitality. This group realizes that while in Israel the public controls its rulers, in the Arab world the rulers control the public. One surfer wrote: “If police in the Arab world could do what the Israel police did, then all the Arab rulers and their associates would be brought to court over bribery, corruption, and similar charges.” He added: “Transparency is the secret of Israel’s power.”

These reformists are the ones, according to Bechor, who

…will aspire to move closer to us, first and foremost in order to change its own society. It views Israel as a positive model for imitation and future cooperation. Indeed, even when it comes to such grave affair, there are still some rays of lights for Israel.

We’ll see.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Troofer vaccination

Posted on 09/16/2008 by Soccerdad

Last week Michael Slackman of the New York Times wrote about how conspiracy theories about 9/11 dominated Arab political thought. He wrote:

It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

We’ve got to come to terms with these crazy conspiracies, is Slackman’s view. However Barry Rubin rejects this kind of thinking:

The only solution is to set different goals and interpretations of the world through rethinking, reform, and education. Western glorifications of the Middle East’s status quo-these are customs which must be preserved, how dare you criticize people’s beliefs and offend their sensibilities?-will merely ensure another century of bloodshed, dictatorship, and poverty.

And in fact Rubin argues that the willingness to accept these conspiracy theories speaks of the dysfunction of the societies that promulgate them, not the West.

Wild conspiracy theories were spread precisely because to confront the tragedy’s implications would require examining real problems “which Arab societies have been so assiduously avoiding.” The more Middle Eastern terrorism spread globally, “the greater was the rush to look the other way.” Five years later, that statement is all the more true.

We hear endlessly that the problem is the West doesn’t understand the Middle East. The truth is the exact opposite: the Middle East doesn’t understand the West and, by the same token, doesn’t understand what it needs to do to get out of the hole it has dug for itself.

The more the Arab/Muslim world lives in a state of denial the worse off it will be.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Good government terrorists strike again

Posted on 09/16/2008 by Soccerdad

In-fighting in Gaza:

Hamas forces, responding to the killing of one of their policemen during an arrest raid on Monday, raided a clan stronghold in Gaza City before dawn on Tuesday in search of a suspect in that slaying, officials said.

Ten clan members, including an infant, and a Hamas operative were killed in ensuing clashes that went on for hours and continued into Tuesday morning. Dozens of people were injured on both sides.

This is interesting:

The exchanges of fire included the use of mortar shells, and according to one report one of the mortars landed near the home of senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar. This report has yet to be confirmed by Hamas officials or by the movement’s security officers.

Mortars in a residential neighborhood?

Anyway it’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for the clan involved:

Some clan members, allied with al-Qaeda, were involved in the March 2007 abduction of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who was held hostage for four months before being released.

Others in the clan are divided between supporters of Islamist Hamas and those who back Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, whose fighters were defeated when Hamas seized control of Gaza last year.

It’s between thug and thugger. And it’s about having a monopoly on force. Hamas has gotten used to targeting Israeli civilians with impunity, so now it turns its guns on its own. No doubt Bishop Tutu will return to Gaza to investigate.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Nothing succeeds like Abbas

Posted on 09/16/2008 by Soccerdad

Daled Amos focuses on one aspect of Dennis Ross’s latest, A Mideast Crisis to avert.

In a nutshell, Daled Amos points out that Ross’s argument that the West ought to bolster Abbas because he’s better than the alternatives, is a very weak argument. (Read the whole thing.)

Of course Ross believes this as a true believer in peace processing, which is premised on the outdated belief that Fatah is moderate regardless of the endless examples of terrorism, extremism, corruption, and bad faith demonstrated by Fatah over the past fifteen years. Daled Amos focuses on this paragraph from Ross.

She [Rice] should identify the options in advance, line up Arab support for Abbas staying in office — something that should not be hard to do since Arab leaders are likely to fear both a Palestinian leadership void and the prospect of Hamas filling that void — and then finalize the approach with Abbas.

Ross is a bit behind the times. Not only don’t Arab leaders fear Hamas filling the void they’re actively preparing for it:

For Hamas, of course, the Jordanian move is welcome toward dialogue, since it seems to represent the gradual acceptance by the Arab political mainstream of its growing power among the Palestinians. This acceptance derives not from ideological factors or sentiment: pragmatic, pro-Western, monarchical Jordan and Islamist Hamas with its links to Iran could not be more natural adversaries. Rather, the move points to a de facto acceptance of the fact that Hamas’s rivals in the Palestinian camp are too weak to dislodge it, and that no one else seems keen to take on this task.

I don’t advocate engaging Hamas, but propping up Abbas after his term expires will only reduce American influence. Better to leave bad enough alone and see if someone reasonable emerges to succeed Abbas. But there may be no good solutions here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Robert Fisk – see how it is done

Posted on 09/16/2008 by SnoopyTheGoon

No, I don’t plan another example of fisking per se. Just a vague mealy-mouthed vignette on the general lines of how some unscrupulous journos use sleight of hand to deceive and mislead the reader, especially one that desires to be mislead and confused or just doesn’t give a flying donut. Here is a quote from Fisk’s recent piece, and I am not even going to talk about the general thrust of that piece:

And I am reminded now of how Benjamin Netanyahu released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison after two of Israel’s Mossad would-be killers tried to murder Khaled Meshal of Hamas in Amman. King Hussein had angrily demanded the antidote to the poison they gave Meshal – which is how Yassin obtained his release. Then, after Yassin had been greeted by his Palestinian followers and gone ranting on about the need to avoid recognition of Israel, praising suicide bombers into the bargain, an Israeli pilot fired a missile into his wheelchair – not exactly a noble act since the old man was a cripple – and once again we heard about the barbarity of the now dead Yassin.

The master (some call him venomous professional hate pedlar, but this is not my point), takes two true incidents: 1) release of the Sheikh by Bibi and 2) Sheikh’s demise by metal poisoning.

Fisk conveniently forgets that the first incident (release) happened in 1997, while the second (demise) in 2003. Thus creating an impression that the Sheikh was released just to be cruelly cut down in prime of his free life.

And of course, he doesn’t mention several hundreds of murdered and several thousands wounded and traumatized for life (during this period) Israelis, and the much higher numbers of Palestinians sharing the same fate as a result of our response. A major part of this feast of death was inspired by the poor, paraplegic, nearly blind and confined to a wheelchair monster.

But why should Fisk mention all this? After all… but see above re the mislead and confused.

And re “venomous professional hate pedlars” – yeah, let’s leave it alone for now. After all, you have to do something with your spare time.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome | Comments Off on Robert Fisk – see how it is done

A blank slate

Posted on 09/15/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Okay, here’s the problem.

I can’t seem to find the desire to write about anything tonight. Not my commentary for the podcast, not a serious blog post, not nuffin’.

So we’ll just have to have an open thread. This is usually your cue to start talking, but since most of you don’t, I’ll just pretend you did it in, uh, invisible bits.

I know. I can talk about how happy I am in my new home. No, wait. Did that Saturday.

Aha! I can give you the useful tip that Sarah gave me: A hair dryer loosens the glue on contact paper so you can remove it in one continuous sheet (more or less) without leaving great globs of paper. But I have to tell you, it takes a great deal of patience to pull the paper slowly enough so it doesn’t tear.

There you go. We can trade household hints.

Your turn.

Posted in Life | 8 Comments

Busters!

Posted on 09/15/2008 by Soccerdad

Last week JTA’s Telegraph noted:

Ha’aretz has some details on some of the weapons it says the U.S. government denied Israel out of fear they’d be used to attack Iran. They include bunker-buster bombs, permission to use an air corridor over Iraq to fly to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes, the report said.

Now we learn that the United States won’t sell bunker busters but another advanced bomb to Israel.

The Pentagon’s announcement, which came on Friday, said the U.S. will provide Israel with 1,000 units of Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39) – a special weapon developed for penetrating fortified facilities located deep underground.

The $77 million shipment, which includes launchers and appurtenances, will allow the IAF to hit many more bunkers than currently possible. Although each bomb weighs 113 kilograms, its penetration capabilities equal those of a one ton bomb, according to professional literature.

So does this latest sale show a change of heart of the Americans? Or do we really know that the Americans really denied Israel permission to overfly Iraq?

MJ Rosenberg thinks that this signals a change of heart of Sec. Gates.

(via memeorandum)

At this point I’m not convinced of anything. I suspect that the real details of American-Israeli contacts about Iran are highly classified at this point. Many of the sources used in the media either don’t know what’s really being discussed or are deliberately misleading the media. There’s been too much variance in the reports for them all to be true, so they all must be discounted. We can’t know what’s true, except perhaps that the United States sold Israel some bombs for attacking hardened targets.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Iran, Israel | 2 Comments

Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitism on display

Posted on 09/15/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad manages to make yet another anti-Semitic remark while pretending that he has nothing against the Jews.

Iran’s official news website reported that the Iranian president called Haniyeh on the occasion of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and expressed his support for the Palestinian people.

“Today, the resistance in Palestine is a source of pride for all Muslims and freedom lovers in the world,” Ahmadinejad said. “The Palestinian nation is fighting against the most despicable people on the face of this earth…the resistance, which is burning in the faith of the Palestinian nation, is shaking up the Zionist enemy.”

Of course his apologists like Juan Cole will insist he means “Zionists,” not Jews. But we know better. And by the way, the people who keep saying that if only Israel would talk to Hamas, things would get better?

I’m thinking not.

“The Palestinian nation will never recognize Israel, and the banner of resistance will never be put down,” he said, while slamming the Gaza Strip siege.

I have lost track of exactly how many times Hamas leaders have said they will never recognize Israel, even immediately following Jimmy Carter’s sit-down with them last year. How many times does a terrorist group have to say it wants to destroy Israel before the rest of the world will believe that it wants to destroy Israel?

Posted in Hamas, Iran, Israel | Comments Off on Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitism on display

Hamas’s novelty wears off

Posted on 09/14/2008 by Soccerdad

In recent years there have consistent attempts in the Western media to portray Hamas as just another political party.

Ahmad Ayyad, candidate No. 3 on the Islamic bloc’s slate, ran down a list of what he considered to be Abu Dis’s most pressing needs: new roads, services for women, public parks, a central slaughterhouse that would abide by health codes.

His full beard signaled his affiliation with a radical Islamic movement that rejects the existence of Israel, but Ayyad also sounded like a garden-variety grass-roots policy wonk who said he wanted to “bridge the gap between the citizens and the local authorities.”

And a year later there was this:

The mayor won a landslide victory from the inside of an Israeli jail, and still sits there today. The city banned a cultural festival from its grounds, in no small part because singing, dancing and the mixing of men and women reflects “a Western mentality.”

And yet, the budget deficit has been tamed, city employees are getting raises and more roads are being paved courtesy of the new party in power – Hamas.

In the months leading up to the 2006 Palestinian election that brought Hamas to power there were plenty of articles portraying the rejectionist, terrorist group as a bunch of good government moderates.

And yet what has happened since Hamas has come to power in Gaza?

Well Hamas has looked after its own financial well being:

The ceasefire has also been detrimental to Hamas, because the underground border traffic is one of its key revenue sources. The Islamists are believed to collect about $10,000 (€6,450) a day from the tunnel owners in the form of “usage fees,” as well as “value-added taxes” — all payable in cash to armed money collectors who wait at the tunnel exits. If a pack of cigarettes costs 74 cents in Egypt, it goes for €1.85 ($2.87) in Gaza, with half of the profits going to Hamas. And a lot of people smoke in the Gaza Strip.

The Islamists also control the distribution of gasoline. Anyone who wishes to buy gas must first buy an “insurance policy” from Hamas, for about €170 ($264), in return for a coupon that entitles its holder to buy 20 liters (5.3 gallons) once every two weeks — even now, with Israel allowing 1 million liters (264,000 gallons) of fuel for cars into the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, many residents still drive with a mixture of vegetable and used deep-frying grease. As a result, the Gaza Strip smells like a French-fry stand.

Its heavy handed politicization of medicine has led to a doctors’ strike.

The medical official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said Hamas-run security forces had started rounding up doctors and health workers and taking them to hospitals by force.

The doctors went on strike Saturday to protest the sacking of some 50 doctors and other health workers by the Hamas-run health ministry, saying the decision was politically motivated.

They’ve cracked down on the teachers’ union too:

According to the organizers, several protesters were arrested. The teachers claimed that about a quarter million students are suffering from disruptions in their studies caused by the struggle between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

The teachers, members of Palestinian Authority’s professional unions, called for the strike at the beginning of the school year in Gaza.

The unions identifying with Fatah, including the teachers and their colleagues in the medical field, are protesting what they call illegal appointments made by the Hamas government.

(h/t Solomonia)

They’ve desecrated a mosque:

CBC News recently entered what is, theoretically, a closed military area in the grim Shejaiya section of Gaza City. This was the stronghold of the Hilles clan, one of Gaza’s well-armed mafias, and it was recently the scene of the worst violence in Gaza since the Hamas takeover.

All the dead were Palestinian. Hamas used the minaret of the local mosque as a firebase in a bloody assault on the Hilles clan, many of whom are allied with the secular Fatah movement.

Eleven Hilles men were killed. Dozens of others ran for the border — the Israeli border. In a humiliating scene, wounded and terrified Hilles clansmen begged the Israelis to save them from Hamas. They were strip-searched, interrogated and treated in Israeli hospitals before being shipped to a refuge in the sweltering West Bank town of Jericho.

Not surprisingly, support for Hamas in Gaza, where they have complete control is eroding:

Someone says that Hamas is firmly in control.

“No, Hamas does not control Gaza,” she cuts in. Waving her finger, surrounded by children, she issues a challenge. “All our young men will be back. The children will grow up and fight for revenge. The most important thing is to take revenge.”

Considering the neighbourhood is full of Hamas gunmen, it’s a gutsy statement. But she is not alone in voicing opposition. In Gaza City’s market square, a crowd gathers as people pour out their own anger about the siege to the CBC crew. Essentials are in short supply, they say.

“We have no jobs, no fuel,” says one man, “and the borders are closed.”

More here.

In the meantime plenty of news organizations highlight Lauren Booth’s adventures in Gaza ignoring the tyranny of her sponsors. Though we hear comparisons to Darfur – and though Hamas supports Sudan! – there’s no evidence of mass starvation in Gaza. And yet the petty tyrannies of Haniyeh and company go largely unreported.

One would think that, in the name of due diligence, news organizations that were so keen to claim that Hamas stood for good government would want to report that the reality has not matched the promise.

Apparently keeping the illusion of a pragmatic Hamas alive is more important than exposing their corruption.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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

Seth Freedman – an apologist for Hamas TV

Posted on 09/14/2008 by SnoopyTheGoon

Seth Freedman as an apologist – this sounds strange, no matter what entity he is supposed to apologize for. The opposite was believed to be true – as one of the main contributors of the Guardian political cesspool called Comment is Free, he became rather prominent as an attacker. His attacks are directed against the Zionist Entity – which happens to be precisely what is expected from him by his editors and the shoal of his faithful followers that cheer him as kind of a new Guardian Messiah.

Frankly, a terrible disappointment. Some years ago, with appearance of his first articles, my friends and I had high hopes for the youngster. Not afraid to decry injustice of his own side, he was not blind to the behavior of Palestinians. No more – the guy clearly figured out which side his bread is buttered. And this side has no trek with criticizing Palestinians, obviously.
Continue reading →

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | 4 Comments