What if it were palestine?

Posted on 02/18/2008 by Soccerdad

Three years ago I mocked a New York Times editorial that demanded that Kosovo show that it deserves its independence. I don’t know that Kosovo has demonstrated its worthiness or not. The Palestinian Authority – whether the Hamas section or the Fatah section – has not shown its worthiness despite the aid that the West continues to lavish upon it.So now that the NYT reports Kosovo declares its independence from Serbia.

The province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, sending tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians streaming through the streets to celebrate what they hoped was the end of a long and bloody struggle for national self-determination.Kosovo’s bid to be recognized as Europe’s newest country — after a civil war that killed 10,000 people a decade ago and then years of limbo under United Nations rule — was the latest episode in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, 17 years after its dissolution began.

It brings to a climax a showdown between the West, which argues that Serbia’s brutal subjugation of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority cost it any right to rule the territory, and the Serbian government and its allies in the Kremlin. They counter that Kosovo’s independence is a reckless breach of international law that will spur other secessionist movements across the world.

I have to wonder: what if it were Palestine?
What if it was Mahmoud Abbas who declared independence? (From whom would be a different matter.)

Would the Muslim world rush to recognize it? Would the West hesitate? Would Israel resist? It wasn’t that long ago the Arafat seemed to threaten that he’d declare independence if certain conditions weren’t met by a deadline.

Nowadays no one talks about Palestinian independence anymore.

In declaring independence, Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, a former leader of the guerrilla force that just over 10 years ago began an armed rebellion against Serbian domination, struck a note of reconciliation. Addressing Parliament in both Albanian and Serbian, he pledged to protect the rights of Kosovo’s Serbian minority.

We know that if it were Palestine there’d be no discussion of Palestine’s Jewish minority as the removal of Jews from Palestine has become a seeming precondition for peace.

Kosovo, a desperately poor, predominantly Muslim landlocked territory of two million, has been a United Nations protectorate since 1999, policed by 16,000 NATO troops. Its unemployment rate is about 60 percent and average monthly wage is $250.Electricity is so undependable that lights go out in the capital several times a day. Corruption is rife and human trafficking threatens to entrench a lawless state on Europe’s doorstep.

The Eastern half of Palestine would be landlocked though Gaza has a port.

Three years ago Daniel Pipes reported that foreign aid to the Palestinians was $300 per person. CAMERA shows that foreign aid has increased when the Palestinian declined, but can’t show if there’s a cause and effect to that relationship. However, a few weeks later CAMERA showed that there was a correlation between foreign aid and terror. Still it’s pretty clear that the Palestinian economy is better than Kosovo’s.

In an outpouring of adulation for the United States, the architect of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Serbian forces under President Slobodan Milosevic, revelers unfurled giant American flags, carried posters of former President Bill Clinton and chanted, “Thank you, U.S.A.” and “God bless America.”Hundreds of people, many waving Albanian flags, celebrated in Times Square. Revelers in cars drove in circles around the area, leading chants whenever they passed the crowds gathered on the sidewalks.

That spirit of exaltation contrasted sharply with the despair, anger and disbelief that gripped Serbia and the Serbian enclaves of northern Kosovo. In Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, as many as 2,000 angry Serbs converged on the United States Embassy, hurling stones and smashing windows.

It’s safe to assume that if Palestine declared its independence we wouldn’t see outpourings of adulation for the United States despite the aid and political support. The reaction in Israel would likely be mixed.

The Washington Post opines in Independent Kosovo:

This logical step toward completing a united and democratic Europe would have occurred years ago if not for the lingering and poisonous nationalism of Serbia and its encouragement by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Serbian politicians of all stripes have ardently declared they will never accept Kosovo’s independence, while Mr. Putin has prevented the U.N. Security Council from adopting the careful scheme a mediator worked out more than a year ago. European governments frightened by the prospect of Serbian-sponsored violence or a move by Russia to recognize breakaway provinces elsewhere in Europe dithered for months before agreeing to deploy the new E.U. mission.

If Abbas would declare independence would the Washington Post applaud the move? Would it attribute the delay to Israeli resistance?

So far it appears that the backlash against the new state will be containable, and the fears — which were echoed by some American conservatives — overblown. Both Russia and Serbia have backed down a little, swearing off the recognition of other splinter states or the use of violence. Up to 100 countries are expected to recognize Kosovo, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany and most of the other E.U. members. Serbian President Boris Tadic won reelection two weeks ago on a platform of moving Serbia toward the European Union despite its recognition of Kosovo.

I can’t see Abbas or any leader of Palestine running on a platform of reconciliation with Israel. And I can see Israeli leaders opposing an independent Palestine but resigned to it.

The Kosovo government of Hashim Thaci has promised “security for all citizens”; he will need to act aggressively on that pledge and prevent any incitement against the 100,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo. It is NATO’s job to prevent violence by either community; Western troops will be needed for the foreseeable future. In the end, though, a peaceful and prosperous future in the Balkans will depend on the Serbs. If they choose to break with their ugly history of nationalism and embrace a liberal democratic future inside the European Union, Kosovo’s course can also be smooth. If they choose endless and futile resistance to Kosovo’s independence, the Serbs will isolate themselves from Europe and likely become vassals of Russia. Now is the time for Mr. Tadic and other would-be modernizers of Serbia to match their convictions with courage.

I don’t think that this is just up to the Serbs. Still I’d expect that if this were happening in the Middle East, the Post would be placing the burden of success on Israel.

Hot Air (via memeorandum) makes the case for ambivalence.

… where I come down on Kosovo’s independence is to hope for the best but be aware that it’s likely to encourage some of the world’s worst actors and jihadist revolutionaries to get on with their own separatist schemes.

There’s also a related question: why didn’t Arafat and why haven’t Abbas or Haniyeh declared independence? From what I understand the difference could be what the end goal is. The Kosovar Albanians make up over 90% of what is the territory of Kosovo. They don’t seek any more territory (for now.)

The Palestinians are claiming that they are entitled to a lot more territory than they currently hold. (I’m not just referring to the lack of continuity they have in Judea and Samaria; they want all of what is now Israel.)

Declaring independence would necessitate settling for the current areas alone. Fatah and Hamas might be able fight Israel to a standstill if Israel’s goals are limited. But I doubt they have the ability to capture and hold territory.

But getting back to the beginning, much of the support for independent Kosovo comes from a sense of sympathy for the Kosovar Albanians who were subject to ethnic cleansing less than 20 years ago. Despite the popularity of the Palestinian cause in some circles, I suspect that the less than universal support for an independent Palestine follow from the association of Palestinian nationalism with terrorism. Terror might have successfully put the Palestinian cause on the map, but it also might be the brake that prevents the Palestinians from declaring independence.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Politics, World | 2 Comments

Status quo ante

Posted on 02/17/2008 by Soccerdad

Elaine Sciolino reported late last week, By Making Holocaust Personal to Pupils, Sarkozy Stirs Anger (Somehow the Times makes a stand on principle seem like a bad thing.)

President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.“Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew,” Mr. Sarkozy said at the end of a dinner speech to France’s Jewish community on Wednesday night. He added that every French child should be “entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust.”

Adding to the national fracas over the announcement, Mr. Sarkozy wrapped his plan in the cloak of religion, placing blame for the wars and violence of the last century on an “absence of God” and calling the Nazi belief in a hierarchy of races “radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism.”

Crunchy Con applauds the effort but wonders if it will help

France has a massive problem with these Muslim ghettoes and the children within them who are being raised as veritable Hitler Youth, and if Sarkozy thinks expanding Holocaust education is going to solve the problem, he’s dreaming. On the other hand — and this is why I support what he’s doing, with the same reservations that offend Simone Veil — I believe it is imperative to reach the hearts of the French majority, and inculcate within them from a young age an emotional identification with the victims of the Shoah.

He goes on to describe how the mini-series “Holocaust” affected him and hopes that President Sarkozy’s plan will have on the majority of the French population.

Contentions.Noah Pollak shows that this episode isn’t isolated, it’s part of a pattern with the new French President.

Have you heard what the French President has been saying lately?On Wednesday, he declared that “I won’t shake hands with people who refuse to recognize Israel,” a snub directed at Muslim leaders. On the same day he warned that France may join the U.S. and Canada in boycotting the UN’s anti-Israel hatefest (known officially as an “anti-racism conference”) in Durban, South Africa: “France will not allow a repetition of the excesses and abuses of 2001.”

He has pledged to attend Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations in May, and after the recent suicide bombing in Dimona, sent a condolence letter to Shimon Peres in which he went out of his way to declare that he will always stand with Israel against terrorism.

His rhetoric on Iran of late has surpassed President Bush’s in its spirit of determination: “Proliferation is a grave threat to international security. We cannot sit by and do nothing while Iran develops technologies which are in violation of international law.”

Sarkozy made some of the above comments at the annual dinner of the CRIF, the umbrella organization of the French Jewish community — it was the first time a French president had ever attended.

I can think of at least 3 ironies with the new French President.

1) His new wife comes from a world where Palestinian revolutionary chic is quite in fashion.
2) In another year or so it might be conservatives who are wishing that the American President was more like the French President, mirroring the distress of the Left over the past 8 years.
3) Depending on who’s elected President in November, France might return to its pre-1967 role as Israel’s chief ally in the West.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Holocaust, Israel, Politics | 1 Comment

Anti-terror fantasies

Posted on 02/17/2008 by Soccerdad

Did Israel do it?Who knows?

Uzi Mahnaimi claims to know. Uzi Mahnaimi claims to know lots of things, not all of them are true.

Mr. Mahnaimi is one of three reporters credited with “Israel kills terror chief with a headrest bomb.” (via memeorandum) None of the reporters is bylined in Damascus so how do they know:

At 10.35pm he decided to go home. Having exchanged customary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambassador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night. Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver’s seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge. Israel welcomed his death but the prime minister’s office denied responsibility. Hezbollah accused the “Zionist Israelis” of killing its “brother commander” but believed the explosive had been detonated in another car by satellite.

One witness said: “I held his head in my hands, kissed him farewell. His face was burnt but intact and he had received serious injuries to his abdomen.”

Other than the one item attributed to “Israeli intelligence sources” how could any of them have known such details not being in Damascus?

Israel Matzav expresses skepticism.

The only named source is described as “a former major in unit 504 of Israeli military intelligence who was in charge of Mughniyeh’s file.” If my google search of the source is correct, he is currently living in the United States and is not likely to be privy to the current goings on in military intelligence. In short, while I believe that the manner of the killing may be correct, I have serious doubts whether Israel really did it. And as to what Mugniyah had been up to in the last two years, anyone could have guessed that.

Blackfive expresses admiration.

I like Mr. Dagan’s style. I mean, what kind of sick and twisted individual would give a guy, who is an undisputed and unrepentant terrorist murderer like Mughniyeh the M-18 Claymore mine headrest he so sorely needed?

Maybe Israel killed Mughniyah, maybe not. I remain skeptical about the detail. (Even Mahnaimi writes “Whatever the truth about the bomb…” Certainly if all those terrorists have been killed by Israel, that is impressive and Meir Dagan deserves credit for rebuilding the Mossad’s effectiveness.

The manner of Mughaniyah’s death isn’t the only area where there’s been misinformation. We’ve also seen it from state and non-state actors who see his death as sign of moderation among non-moderates.

Martin Kramer scores the Hezbollah sympathizers who differentiate between the political and terrorist divisions of Hezbollah. JudeoPundit observes that the price for telling the truth about Hezbollah, is falling out of its favor.

I am reminded of the fact that when Human Rights Watch attempted to follow its reports criticizing Israel’s conduct during the Lebanon war with one critical of Hezbollah, its relationship with Hezbollah immediately soured. You have to wonder what price it paid for its previous access to South Lebanon.

The cost of maintaining an exclusive relationship with Hezbollah is a very short leash.

And Contentions.James Kirchik skewers the “hands-off Syria” crowd.

“Reasonably behaved with regard to Israel?” You’ve got to love how Clemons uses the construction “Seymour Hersh argues” as if it were de facto proof of the charge’s veracity. He then goes onto applaud Syria for its “restrained” response to Israel’s attack last year on suspected nuclear facilities, as the Baathists in Damascus held back from causing “domestic strife” in Israel, a terrific euphemism for terrorism I’ll remember the next time my younger brother and I get into a fight about playing X-Box or something. When Hezbollah inevitably retaliates for the murder of Mughniyeh at an El-Al airport counter or Jewish Community Center, perhaps Clemons will wag his finger at Syria for its “bad behavior.”

Dumb still looks free has related thoughts concerning the Presidential race.

Often actions that occur in the shadows end up getting shrouded in even more confusion than clarity.

UPDATE: Someone else questioned an aspect of Times story, Shrinkwrapped. (h/t Seraphic Secret)

Far be it for me to disparage the perspicacity of the intrepid reporters of the Times, but doesn’t it seem just a tiny bit unlikely that a headrest bomb could be so carefully constructed as to cause serious damage to the victim’s abdomen but leave his head, the presumed target of immediate interest, intact? Maybe its just my natural skepticism, but I would think the layers of editors about which the MSM is so proud, might have noticed the seeming anomaly.

Of course, as I mentioned before, how the reporters got a statement from an eyewitness in Damascus when none of them were located there, is a bit of question. So it’s not all that surprising that a manufactured witness would give manufactured testimony.Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Syria, Terrorism | 6 Comments

Happy kitty story of the day

Posted on 02/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

It’s time for a happy kitty story. One that makes you go, “Awww.”

A skittish kitten that scampered out of its carrier on a subway platform has been found after 25 days in the underground tunnels.

Transit workers tracked down 6-month old Georgia under midtown Manhattan Saturday. Police reunited her with owner Ashley Phillips, a 24-year-old Bronx librarian.

After hearing that the black cat might have been spotted below Lexington Avenue and East 55th Street, track workers Mark Dalessio and Efrain LaPorte went through the area making “meow” sounds.

Georgia responded, and they found her cowering in a drain between two tracks.

Georgia had lost some weight and scratched her nose but was otherwise unhurt. She had disappeared while Phillips was bringing her home from a veterinarian visit last month.

Awww. Go ahead. You know you want to.

Those were good men, to look for the cat three weeks later. And to find it.

See, Lair? There are a fair number of good New Yorkers out there, too.

Posted in Cats | 2 Comments

Kol hakavod

Posted on 02/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Last Friday night, for the sixth time in my teaching career, my fourth graders led services. Every year, they get better and better at singing the prayers and psalms in front of their parents and the congregation. I’d love to take all the credit for it, but it’s not just me. I’m only a small part of their improvement. It’s the program that was set into place by our former rabbi and education director, who were also responsible for the presence of over twenty-five children and young people at my adult bat mitzvah in November. And by “responsible for the presence,” I mean that the children came up eagerly when called on to assist me during services on Friday and Saturday. The older ones helped out with things like the Ashrey (which I still need to learn fully), and the younger ones came up for Mizmor l’David, fully prepared and able to lead the congregation along with me.

This year, I decided to teach my students the Hatzi Kaddish, which I used to think was too difficult for fourth graders. We also worked on Mizmor l’David, Mi Chamocha, and the Bar’chu. Believe it or not, that last gave them and me a world of trouble. They kept mixing up the melody of the lead and the response. But we finally got it right by the Tuesday before we were due to lead, and I went to services on Friday night feeling confident. The rabbi was out of town for the weekend, so the principal of the religious school and I ran the show. I had my students up for everything but the Amidah. The principal and I sang along sotto voce, but not to help the kids—they didn’t need our help at all. They were letter-perfect on just about everything, and when they sang the Hatzi Kaddish, I was prouder of my students than if they’d been my own kids. They were great.

Instead of a sermon, we played, “Are you smarter than a fourth grader?” and asked their parents and congregants questions about Judaism. If they didn’t know the answer, they picked one of the students, who did. Of course I skewed the questions to ones I knew the children could answer. But it was fun. When one of the congregants got a typical Ms. Yourish holiday question (“Tell me three things about Purim”), he answered, “Haman, Esther, Mordecai.” I had my students follow up after we all stopped laughing. Every year, they learn whether or not a holiday is a three-line holiday (“They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”). Then they go on to tell me who tried to kill us, and what special foods we eat.

Now here’s the really special thing about learning the Hatzi Kaddish this year. We have only one page in the Siddur with the transliteration, and it’s for the Saturday morning prayer service. My fourth graders are not fluent in Hebrew, and I believe in letting them use transliteration until they learn the words, then move onto the Hebrew. Not only does it help them learn their prayers, but I think it improves their Hebrew skills as well. So I brought in Post-It flags for them to put on the page with the transliteration, because it takes a nine-year-old child a lot longer than it takes you or me to turn to page 324 (and even with the flag, one of the students took a while getting to the page). They read from the transliteration, they did well, and that, I thought was that.

The next day in Sunday school, the third grade teacher asked me to help her students prepare for their turn to lead services at the end of the month. (We have our classes together the last 45 minutes of Sunday for another project, and we’re playing to each other’s strengths during that time.) So I asked them if they’d like to learn the Hatzi Kaddish.

“No! It’s too hard!” was the response.

“Tellya what,” I said. “Let’s just all do it—Daled class will show you how, and you can just listen if you like, you don’t have to sing along—and at the end of the prayer, you decide if you want to try it for your service.” We turned to page 324. My students led, third graders sang along, and by the end of the prayer, they decided yes, they would like to make the Hatzi Kaddish their special prayer for their service (they’ll be with the kindergarten, first and second graders due to a scheduling change).

But we’re still not at the punchline to this story. Third and fourth grade practiced the Hatzi Kaddish on Sunday and again on Tuesday afternoon early. Tuesday near the end of class, we met with the rest of the school (grades five through seven) for T’filah. The principal called for the Hatzi Kaddish. It was on a page without transliteration. I walked around the children, listening intently to the third and fourth graders. They were singing along. With all of it. They were looking at the book, at the Hebrew. All of them.

These are the moments a teacher lives for. The third and fourth grade can chant the Hatzi Kaddish in Hebrew, and they didn’t even know they could do it.

I am so moving on to Mizmor L’David for third grade on Tuesday.

Posted in Religion, Teaching | 6 Comments

The famous Muslim tolerance strikes again

Posted on 02/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Muslims in Gaza blew up the YMCA library. Why? To protest the Danish publication of the Mohammed cartoons. Because it follows, logically, that when Danes “insult” Mohammed, Gazan Christians must be punished.

Unidentified gunmen blew up the YMCA library in the Gaza Strip on Friday morning. No one was hurt, but the library was completely destroyed.

Sources in Gaza told The Jerusalem Post the attack was in response to the re-publication of cartoons “ridiculing” the Prophet Muhammad in a number of Danish newspapers last week.

The sources said at least 12 gunmen participated in the assault, the latest in a series of attacks on Christian figures and institutions.

“The attackers kidnapped the two guards before they stormed the building in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City,” the sources said. “Then they entered the library, where they detonated a number of explosive charges, causing heavy damage.”

One of the guards, Abdel Mu’ti Abu Khoussa, 52, said the attackers also stole computers and other equipment from the offices of the YMCA. Only some of them had masks on their faces, he said.

Issa Saba, secretary-general of the YMCA in the Gaza Strip, said all 8,000 books were destroyed. He said the gunmen also stole a vehicle belonging to the organization.

And of course, Hamas and Fatah are pointing the fingers at each other. Oh, come off it. It was probably a partnership deal. There are only a few thousand Christians left in Gaza. Who cares, right?

The Palestinian Christian population has dipped to 1.5% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, down from at least 15% a half century ago, according to some estimates. No city in the Holy Land is more indicative of the Christian exodus than Bethlehem, which fell under full Palestinian control last decade as part of the Oslo Accords. The town of 30,000 is now less than 20% Christian, after decades during which Christians were the majority. Elsewhere in the PA territories, only about 3,000 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, live in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, among a strongly conservative Muslim population of 1.4 million.

But every year, Reuters, the AP, the BBC, the New York Times, and the rest of the news media blame Israel for the lack of Christians in the town where Christianity was born. Why not? The world learned a long time ago that you can never go wrong blaming the Jews.

Posted in Gaza, Religion | 2 Comments

Still here

Posted on 02/16/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Yes, i’m still here. But it took me all week to shake my cold, and it’s not quite gone yet. Been resting. Now that I’m not working.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off on Still here

Torahs in the navy

Posted on 02/15/2008 by Soccerdad

I just received an e-mail about a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) that was rescued from Lithuania and is now being used aboard the USS Truman.
torah_truman.jpg
Truman Sailors listen to Sen. Carl Levin as he speaks during the Torah Dedication Ceremony in the hangar bay of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). The United Jewish Federation of Tidewater presented the Jewish Torah to Truman to be displayed for 41 years. The Torah is one of the few holy scrolls from Lithuania to survive the Holocaust. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Arturo Chavez (RELEASED)

torah_truman_2.jpg
USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) Commanding Officer, Capt. Herman Shelanski, left, and Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, bow their heads in prayer at the commencement of the Torah dedication ceremony in the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier’s hangar bay. The holy Jewish Torah in the background, one of the few scrolls from Lithuania to survive the Holocaust, was presented to Truman by the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, and will be on loan to Truman and displayed for 41 years, or the duration of the ship’s life. The smaller Torah in the foreground, known as the Truman Torah, was presented to President Harry S. Truman by Israel’s first President, Chaim Weizmann in gratitude for America’s diplomatic recognition of the state of Israel in 1948. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kristopher Wilson (RELEASED)

torah_reagan.jpg
Aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) Nov. 20, 2003 — Rabbi Michael A. Oppenheimer carries a 300-year-old Torah that was presented to the Navy’s newest nuclear powered aircraft carrier by the Oppenheimer family. The family heirloom is one of only 300 Torahs that survived the Holocaust during World War II. The ship will safeguard it during its 50-plus year life span, when it will then be returned to Oppenheimer’s grandchildren, who were in attendance and witnessed the ceremony. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Anthony Walker. (RELEASED)

It’s not clear if these Torahs will be used or just displayed. (The 50 year lifespan mentioned in the above caption is the ship’s expected lifespan.)

The Truman Torah was rescued by Project Judaica.

It seems that Project Judaica is similar in focus to Rabbi Menachem Youlus who has devoted himself to rescuing Torahs, especially from Europe.

(h/t Cousin Steven)

Posted in Holocaust, Jews | 5 Comments

Apparently the oppression didn’t kill her

Posted on 02/15/2008 by Soccerdad

MSNBC is reporting that the world’s oldest person is alive and living in Israel. Perhaps more surprising is that she’s an Israeli Arab.

Mariam Amash filled in the routine form with anything but routine information. Amash, who recently applied for a new Israeli identity card, said she was born 120 years ago — a claim, if confirmed, that would make her the oldest person in the world. The Guinness Book of Records currently lists 114-year-old Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Ind., as holding that title.Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Interior Ministry, confirmed that Amash, from the Israeli Arab village of Jisr a-Zarka, is listed in the population registry as having been born in 1888. “We’re just not sure it’s correct,” Haddad said.

The listing was based on a birth certificate issued by Turkish authorities who ruled the region at the time, she said. Ministry clerks in an Israeli city near Amash’s village found out about her claim this week when she came in to replace an identity card she lost.

Before Guinness will list her in its book of world records they will want more corroborating documents. Still it’s reasonable to assume that she’s probably more than 100.

If Israeli oppression were as bad as some of its critics claim, I doubt that there’d be many Palestinians living past their 70’s. Still people will decry Israeli oppression as if it’s so unique it deserves special mention. It may not be true, but it does pay well.

(I see via technorati that someone aged 116 recently died.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | 2 Comments

Saudis to execute woman for witchcraft

Posted on 02/14/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Now there’s a modern state for you. The Saudis are going to kill an illiterate woman for, among other things, causing a man’s impotence.

A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom’s religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of “absurd charges that have no basis in law.”

[…] Falih later retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and said that as an illiterate woman, she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint.

[…] The Saudi court cited an instance in which a man allegedly became impotent after being bewitched by Falih, the rights group said.

Yes, and she caused their pets to die, their hair to fall out, and their crops to fail. We have witnesses.

Did I say the Saudis were fast entering the eighteenth century? Sorry, but it’s still the seventeenth century in that kingdom of backwards, Jew-hating misogynists.

Posted in Religion, World | 8 Comments

Condi Rice notices Egypt’s lack of Gaza security

Posted on 02/14/2008 by Meryl Yourish

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that Egypt isn’t policing the Gaza smugglers as hard as the IDF did. Actually, the big shock is that Rice is admitting there’s a problem.

Egypt is falling short in its efforts to stop Palestinians from allegedly trafficking weapons to the Gaza Strip through tunnels from Egypt, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.

“I think it is fair to say that we have not been satisfied with Egypt’s efforts on the tunnels, but that in fact those tunnels have been there for a long time and it has been hard to stop smuggling,” Rice said.

“We are in conversations with the Egyptians and the Israelis about how that might be done better,” Rice told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs during a hearing on US foreign policy.

Gee. Perhaps actually doing their jobs might be the thing, instead of turning a blind eye to smugglers.

Posted in Gaza | 3 Comments

The aftermath

Posted on 02/14/2008 by Soccerdad

Terrorwonk asks After Mughniyah: Will Hezbollah retaliate?

Taking these factors into account, this may have been an ideal time for the Israelis to remind their enemies of their capabilities and serve justice to one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. Nonetheless, the prospect of a retaliatory strike cannot be ignored. If it comes, it will probably be outside the region. Direct attacks on Israel from Lebanon could invite retaliations in Lebanon which would isolate Hezbollah even further in the current Presidential stand-off. Israeli institutions worldwide will undoubtedly be on high alert. Hopefully Jewish communal institutions and U.S. military bases (the other favored Hezbollah targets) will also tighten security. One thing is certain.

This attack does not put Hezbollah out of business and it will undoubtedly review its internal security carefully and identify how crucial information about Mughniyah’s whereabouts leaked. About 35 years ago, Fatah faced the same problem of protecting its leaders from Israeli assassins. The response was to establish an elite bodyguard that became known as Force 17. It was with Force 17 that a young Imad Mughniyah began his long and terrible career.

I had been speculating that perhaps with a critical leader taken out under Syria’s scrutiny, it might put a crimp in Syrian operations and perhaps lead to an opening in Lebanon. So TerrorWonk puts that idea to rest.

However, what if, as Time (and some others) alleges, Syria or Iran did it just to show that they were good guys? John Podhoretz doesn’t think they have anything to worry about.

Get it? Iran and Syria might have killed the terror master they created and ran in order to prove they will take care of bad terrorists — but you know, they won’t be willing to be so noble and charitable should the United States do something against them. This is one of the most embarrassing pieces of geopolitical analysis ever published. And in Time’s glorious tradition of doing everything it can to think the best of tyrannical Arab states. Well done, Time (rhymes with crime).

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Media Bias, Terrorism | 4 Comments

Mug shot

Posted on 02/14/2008 by Soccerdad

The Associated Press reported

One of the world’s most wanted and elusive terrorists, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed by a car bomb in Syria nearly 15 years after dropping almost entirely from sight. The one-time Hezbollah security chief was implicated in attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, a string of brutal kidnappings and bombings of Jewish sites in Argentina.The Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its top ally Iran accused Israel in the assassination, a charge denied by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

The United States welcomed the death of Mughniyeh, who was indicted in the U.S. over the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. The FBI had put a $5 million bounty on Mughniyeh.

“The world is a better place without this man in it,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “One way or the other he was brought to justice.”

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the agency was waiting for confirmation of Mughniyeh’s death and its circumstances. “If this information proves true, it would be considered good news in the ongoing fight against terrorism,” he said.

Michael Ledeen gives his assessment of what Mughniyeh was involved in:

His bloody arms reached into South America, both in the creation of Hezbollah bases and in the murderous operations in Buenos Aires in the mid-nineties that led to his indictment by the Argentine Government. And I have no doubt that he was involved in setting up terror cells in the United States. Remember that he was both the operational chieftain of Hezbollah and a high-ranking officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.

Elder of Ziyon reports on Mughniyah’s ties to Fatah, including his possible involvement in the Karine A affair and observes:

So the same “moderate” leaders of the PA were intimately involved in working together with this master terrorist – and murderer of hundreds of Americans as well as Argentine Jews.

The Counter-terrorism Blog has more along these lines, specifically his role with Force 17:

Mughniyah cut his teeth as a teenage gunman with Force 17 in Beirut in the late 1970s. Mughniyah’s links to Fatah are also not ancient history. While Hezbollah’s growing with relationships with the Palestinian Islamist groups has been well reported, Hezbollah has also worked to build connections within the ostensibly secular Fatah. Force 17 officers founded the very first Hezbollah cells in the Gaza and the West Bank. The strategic significance of the Palestinian terror groups moving into Iranian orbit should not be underestimated.

The AP makes the following observation:

Mughniyeh’s death was the latest in a series of blows to major terror figures in recent weeks. Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida leader, was killed in late January by a missile fired by a U.S. drone in western Pakistan. This week, Pakistani security forces critically wounded and captured Mansour Dadullah, a top Taliban figure, in a firefight also near the Afghan border.

Pajamas Media’s Meir Javedanfar looks at as another battle won against Iran:

The successful findings, tracking, and assassination of Mughniyeh come on the heels of a number of other major Western intelligence coups against Iran over the last several years.First was the elimination of Iran’s long-range Zilzal missiles by the Israeli air force, in the space of 30 minutes, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. These missiles, which were imported from Iran via Damascus, had been guarded carefully under the supervision of Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah intelligence operatives. The very fact that Israel was able to locate and eliminate them early on in the war showed that Iran and Hezbollah’s counter-intelligence operations were seriously compromised.

Then came the defection of General Ali Reza Asgari in March 2007. He was Iran’s former deputy defense minister and a senior contact man between Iran and Hezbollah. He was a highly valued Iranian asset. Despite that, Western intelligence agencies managed to recruit him and helped him defect while he was on a trip to Syria, without the Iranians being able to do much.

I was thinking along different lines, as is David Schenker

Mughniyah’s death raises some interesting issues. The fact that Mughniyah was killed in Damascus highlights the Asad regime’s increasing difficulties in protecting the terrorists they provide with “safe haven.” In 2004, another guest of the regime, Hamas leader Izzeddin Subhi Sheikh Khalil, was killed by a car bomb in Damascus. The Israelis bombed an Islamic Jihad training camp in 2003, buzzed Asad’s Latakia palace in 2006, and destroyed a presumed North Korean-supplied nuclear facility in 2007. As Mughniyah’s aunt told AFP earlier today, “We were shocked to learn that he was killed in Syria. We thought he was safe there.”In all of these cases, to put it mildly, the Syrian response has been remarkably restrained.

I was thinking more about the hit killing of Mughniyah, the destruction of the Syrian missiles and the destruction of the possible reactor building. If the reports about Israel having a mole in the nuclear facility were accurate and now this, it would suggest that Israel has rather advanced covert operations in Syria right now.

Noah Pollak also entertains the question, Did Israel do it? He doesn’t say conclusively but leans in that direction.

Daled Amos has an excellent roundup and wonders if this will lead to any questions about Sen. Obama’s campaign.

Finally, here are the thoughts of Lt. Col. Robin Higgins, widow of Col. Rich Higgins, one of the victims of Mughniyah.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Terrorism | 1 Comment

Peace whenever

Posted on 02/14/2008 by Soccerdad

Working from reports in the Jerusalem Post and on Arutz-7 as well as using some of her own detective work, In Context writes about the legal problems Peace Now is facing and speculates on how it might impact their fundraising.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off on Peace whenever

Not even chicken soup will do

Posted on 02/13/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Hey, you know that part of a virus infection that feels like a head cold and makes you stuffy and achy in the sinuses before finally getting to the stage where the virus has successfully conquered you and now is reproducing, causing you to sneeze and spread it everywhere?

Yeah, that’s where I am.

And I have hours left of work to do today.

That’s okay. I haven’t been sleeping well. I expect to be up around 2 a.m., sleepless again, doing the work I couldn’t do while napping this afternoon.

Of course, the joke is on my virus. Living alone means I have no one else to give it to. Evolutionary dead end, sucker!

I’m going to boil my toothbrush tonight.

Posted in Life | 6 Comments