The Hamas border breach: Planned for months

Posted on 01/24/2008 by Meryl Yourish

That “spontaneous” response to Israel cracking down on terrorists in Gaza? Not so much.

Hamas has used the border breach – which was carefully planned, with militants weakening the metal wall with blow torches about a month ago – to push its demand for reopening the border passages, this time with Hamas involvement. Such an arrangement would in effect end the international sanctions against the Islamic militants.

Ynet has more:

Meanwhile, The Times quoted a Hamas border guard as saying that the Islamist group had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall along the Philadelphi Route using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

“I’ve seen this happening over the last few months. It happened in the daytime but was covered up so that nobody would see,” he told the London-based newspaper as saying.

The Philadelphi Route was supposed to be controlled by Egypt. Israel is using the border breach to say that Egypt should take Gaza back.

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said Israel wants to relinquish all responsibility for Gaza, including the supply of electricity and water, now that Gaza’s southern border with Egypt has been opened.

Egypt immediately rejected the idea.

Egypt says NFW. Big surprise.

A top Egyptian official responded by saying Egypt’s border with Gaza will go back to normal, and strongly rejected Israel’s suggestion that it might relinquish all responsibility for troubled Gaza.

“This is a wrong assumption,” said Hossam Zaki, the official spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry. “The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons,” Zaki said. “The border will go back to normal.”

In other words, the Egyptian guards will continue to turn a blind eye to all the weapons smuggling, and this will play out all over again at a later date.

Hamas won this one, big-time.

Posted in Gaza, Hamas | 1 Comment

Complicit

Posted on 01/24/2008 by Soccerdad

I’ve argued in the past that when a newspaper gives a platform to Hamas it is strengthening an organization whose values are at odds with the values that a newspaper stands for.

This week we saw something much worse. Newspapers actively aided Hamas in its effort to open the Rafah crossing this week.

Yesterday, the Times of London reported that the plan to knock down the Rafah wall was underway for months. (via memeorandum)

Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.

Given the amount of time that was clearly invested in the effort to collapse the wall, it’s not surprising to learn ‘Hamas staged some of the blackouts’ (via memeorandum)

In the first case, journalists who were invited to cover the Hamas government meeting were surprised to see Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his ministers sitting around a table with burning candles.In the second case on Tuesday, journalists noticed that Hamas legislators who were meeting in Gaza City also sat in front of burning candles.

But some of the journalists noticed that there was actually no need for the candles because both meetings were being held in daylight.

(I really don’t think that you needed a news story, anyone with half a functioning brain could see that candles were often not needed but were mere props used for effect.)

Not only did international pressure help Hamas accomplish this goal of opening the border with Egypt, it also weakened Israel’s attempt to prevent rockets from being fired at its cities.

The New York Times remains clueless, an editorial Trapped in Gaza starts:

The neglect and mistreatment of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip is a disgrace, and a very dangerous one. They are pawns in the struggle among Hamas, which controls Gaza and uses the territory to bombard Israel daily; its rivals in the Fatah movement that run the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank; and Israel. If something isn’t done quickly to address the Gazans’ plight, President Bush’s Annapolis peace process could implode.

It isn’t the Gazans plight that works against the peace process. It is the failure of the Palestinians to accept Israel. If the Palestinians accepted Israel, they’d turn their energies and resources to creating a civil society that would live in peace with Israel. As long as Palestinian grievances are nurtured there will be no peace and the terror against Israel is justified. The Palestinians voted for Hamas, so they’re not exactly innocent either.

It’s also worth noting that the Qassams increased in freqency after Israel withdrew from Gaza. Moves designed to bring peace often backfire. Without Israeli troops around to hinder them, rocket makers flourished in Gaza. The problem isn’t misery, but opportunity.

The Times continues:

It is no wonder that tens of thousands of Palestinians rushed out of Gaza into Egypt on Wednesday after a metal border wall was toppled. Life for Gazans, never easy, has been worsening since Hamas seized control last summer, and most international aid — except humanitarian assistance — was cut off. Hamas has turned a deaf ear to the Gazans’ plight, refusing to negotiate peace or accept Israel’s right to exist.

The logic here is baffling. Poll after poll shows support among Palestinians for violence against Israel. Hamas has heard Gazans (indeed all Palestinians) quite well. They don’t accept Israel’s right to exist (neither do members of “moderate” Fatah for that matter) and Hamas represents those views quite effectively.

The Washington Post (h/t Backspin) gets a lot closer to the truth.

THE HAMAS movement provided a dramatic illustration yesterday of its ability to disrupt any movement toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As tens of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip surged across the border into Egypt, Hamas security forces directed traffic; earlier, they stood by as organized groups of militants blew up the fence along the previously sealed border. As Hamas no doubt expected, the government of Egypt greeted this illegal invasion with a quick surrender: President Hosni Mubarak announced that Gazans would be allowed to shop in Egypt because they “are starving due to the Israeli siege.”In fact, as Mr. Mubarak well knows, no one is starving in Gaza — though food, fuel and cigarettes are much cheaper across the border. Israel closed its border with the territory and disrupted power supplies over the weekend in response to a massive escalation of Palestinian rocket launches from Gaza at nearby Israeli towns — between Tuesday and Saturday last week, some 225 rockets were aimed at the town of Sderot, where more than 20,000 Israelis have been relentlessly terrorized. Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the “humanitarian crisis,” then by daring Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel’s victims. Its ultimate goal, stated publicly yesterday by Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, is to force Egypt to permanently reopen the border in cooperation with Hamas; that would greatly diminish Israel’s ability to respond to rocket attacks with economic sanctions, and it would undermine the rival Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas.

My one quibble with this is singling out the “sympathetic Arab media” for blame. The international media – including the Washington Post – were complicit in assisting Hamas achieve its goals.

So maybe you could argue that the media were duped. Maybe. But Israel Matzav and Elder of Ziyon figured out the goal of the riots a day before Hamas knocked down the wall. My guess is that reporters on the ground at least heard whispers from their sources about what was to happen. Even if they didn’t have definite knowledge of that action, it’s hard to believe that they couldn’t have put things together. Still they promoted the “blackout” myth without regard to the possibility that it was a cover for something else.

Elder of Ziyon is right when he writes:

So when the media talk about how Hamas won the PR war with Israel, it is a bit disingenuous of them not to admit their own responsibility for that victory – the news organizations are not only susceptible to obvious staging, they welcome being manipulated if they can get a good picture or story out of it.

Similarly Simply Jews observes:

Somebody should tell the august leader writer of The Guardian that when the “leader” starts with a lie, the featured article becomes just merchandise sold at a loss in order to draw customers.

In this whole sorry chapter, the media have played a shameful role as accomplices to Hamas. I don’t expect any introspection from them, which is a shame. Philip Graham famously said that newspapers were the “first rough draft of history” acknowledging the role of the media in reporting on events. I don’t think he meant that newspapers would have a role in staging the events that would eventually become history. But that’s what the media is doing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias | 1 Comment

Another short lesson in English

Posted on 01/24/2008 by SnoopyTheGoon

You simply cannot invent a thing like this:

Leader:

A featured article of merchandise sold at a loss in order to draw customers

You shall see in a second which of the two meanings above is applicable when you read the first sentence of the Guardian leader of January 24, 2008:

If you bottle up 1.5 million people in a territory 25 miles long and six miles wide, and turn off the lights, as Israel has done in Gaza, the bottle will burst.

Somebody should tell the august leader writer of The Guardian that when the “leader” starts with a lie, the featured article becomes just merchandise sold at a loss in order to draw customers.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media Bias | 2 Comments

Tigger update: He’s not dead yet

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Meryl Yourish

One of the things that’s causing Tig’s quick downslide is that he’s not eating much. So the vet had me try him on a quarter-pill of pepcid. I managed to get one down him this morning. And I think it’s working. Because Tig just ate his dry food twice in the last hour. And he ate nearly all of the Sheba tuna (which had the phosphor-binding powder mixed in). He’s just been licking the gravy off it lately.

And he’s showing an interest in chasing that wadded-up napkin.

I think I’m going to have to hold off on the eulogy.

He’s eating!

For that, we get a mid-week cat picture.

Tig in the carrier

That was before the vet visit yesterday. I cleaned out the cat carrier and was airing it out. Tig, of course, had his own ideas of what “airing it out” consists of.

Posted in Cats | 11 Comments

Israel resumes gas shipment and, oh, that

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Soccerdad

The NYT:

After widespread criticism of its decision to cut off supplies of industrial diesel oil required to run a power station that serves Gaza City and its hospitals, Israel resumed fuel shipments on Tuesday on what it said would be a temporary basis.The European Union, which pays for the fuel, called the cutoff “collective punishment,” but Israeli officials said they were simply trying to convince Gazans of the need to stop militants from firing rockets into Israeli towns and farms.

11 paragraphs down:

Israeli officials have made it clear, as one senior official said, that as long as rockets are hitting Israel, “the people of Gaza will be uncomfortable and know that life is not normal.” Israel, however, will not allow a “humanitarian crisis,” Mr. Olmert has said. About 13 Qassam rockets landed in Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli Army said, but did no damage.

Additional demerit: Mentioning the EU reaction without dissent. The Jerusalem Post observes:

Perhaps more European officials should visit Sderot before opening their mouths. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen did just that, and had this to say: “Hamas is deliberately intensifying the crisis in the Gaza Strip in order to create pressure from the international community on Israel.” The international community need not play Hamas’s game. If Western officials uniformly blamed Hamas instead of amplifying its propaganda, it might be forced to stop its aggression, ending the “humanitarian crisis.” As necessary as Israeli military and non-military measures are, the greatest pressure of all would be if the international community let it be clearly known that it was fed up acting as Hamas’s dupes.

The Washington Post:

Israel eased its blockade of the Gaza Strip for at least a day Tuesday, allowing the European Union and United Nations to truck in the first food shipments in five days, along with fuel to restart the Palestinian territory’s idled power plant.Gaza, which has a population of 1.5 million, had been cut off since Friday, when Israel closed entry points in response to an increase in rocket barrages from the strip last week. About half a million Gaza residents were without power for most of Sunday and Monday after the territory’s power plant exhausted its fuel reserves.

6 paragraphs down:

Israel has said since it began the blockade that it would allow in shipments only after individual review. Palestinians launched at least 17 rockets at Israel from Gaza on Tuesday, causing no damage, the Israeli military said.

Additional demerit: Including a slideshow that emphasizes Gaza without power but no views of damage to Sderot.

What’s clear is that when Israel tightened restrictions on shipments to Gaza the rocket attacks decreased. When Israel resumed shipments, the rocket attacks increased again. Idiots like Amira Hess excluded, sensible people would conclude that the fuel is being used not only for hospitals and other matters of public welfare, but also to fuel rockets.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the Palestinians were sacrificing the welfare of their population for the opportunity to attack Israel. Last year they were digging up sewage pipes to make Qassams regardless of the sanitation nightmare that it would cause.

But Hamas learned. The world would lean on Israel to avoid a “humanitarian crisis” and the terror could continue.

The NY Times and Washington Post have chosen, in the words of the Jerusalem Post to join the “Dupes of Hamas” and emphasize Israel’s reactions, portraying them in the worst possible light and all but ignoring the actions that precipitated Israel’s response and the success that could be credited to that response.

Special demerits to Secretary of State Rice:

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah. We have talked to the Israelis, yes. And I think that they are — they’ve said that they do not want a humanitarian crisis and that they understand the need to permit fuel and electricity in Gaza. So we will see. But my understanding is that they’ve said that they will try and respond in a way that will not allow a humanitarian crisis to unfold there. Ultimately, Hamas is to blame for this circumstance because if they were more responsible toward the international community, then there would be — Gaza would be connected to the outside world rather than cut off. But with that said, nobody wants innocent Gazans to suffer. And so we have spoken to the Israelis about the importance of not allowing humanitarian crisis to unfold there.QUESTION: But don’t you think it’s (inaudible) every time there is tension and (inaudible).

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think the Israelis are trying to deal with also an untenable situation from their point of view, which is the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel and the anxiety and the terror that that’s causing for the population. So I’m not surprised that this is a situation of tension. But I’m hopeful that perhaps people can look at different ways of dealing with Gaza. As you know, the Quartet has suggested that Salam Fayyad’s idea of allowing the PA to have more of a role on the — perhaps on the crossings might be something that could be examined. And I think people need to start to try to think creatively about how to deal with the situation in Gaza.

One wonders why the Old South comparisons fail her now? Would it be that impolitic to mention that armed extremists are keeping Israeli children from school as surely as armed guards once kept black children from school?

More from Boker Tov Boulder, Elder of Ziyon and Meryl Yourish.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias | 1 Comment

A funny story, a happy ending

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Meryl Yourish

A missing cat, a stowaway, the wrong suitcase, and a happy ending.

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Some kitty math: How many lives did little tabby Gracie Mae use up when she crawled into her owner’s suitcase, went through an airport X-ray machine, got loaded onto a plane, thrown onto a baggage belt and mistakenly picked up by a stranger far from home?

“She’s got to be at four or five now,” Seth Levy said after his 10-month-old pet was returned Sunday night by a kind stranger who went home to Fort Worth, Texas, with the wrong bag and Gracie inside to boot.

The last time Levy’s wife, Kelly, saw Gracie was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old went back to her house in Palm Beach Gardens late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie would usually be waiting, empty.

She tore the house apart looking for the cat, who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with “lost cat” signs.

Then she got a phone call.

“Hi, you’re not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband’s luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out,” Kelly Levy quoted the caller saying.

Rob Carter said he made it home with the suitcase before realizing it wasn’t his – and there was a big surprise inside.

“I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn’t my suitcase,” he said. “I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl.”

Carter said that he eventually was able to get the cat to come out from under the bed.

“In the morning, I got close enough to see its collar and the phone number on it,” he said. “So I called the number and got a hold of the crying wife of the traveler.”

I figure we can use a happy kitty story.

Posted in Cats | 3 Comments

Palestinian snipers fire on Israeli journalists

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Israeli journalists covering the death of an Ecuadoran worker by Palestinian sniper fire were attacked—by Palestinian snipers. It’s all on video, and it’s on YouTube. Thanks to Giyus for the heads-up.

I eagerly await the complaint from Reporters Without Borders.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media | 2 Comments

The real reason Gaza was sealed

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are passing back and forth freely into Egypt. Hamas and Egypt are both managing to slam Israel for keeping Gazans in Gaza, although Egypt has never wanted Gaza back, even when offered the Strip after the Six-Day War. They’ve blamed Israeli “oppression” over the past several years as the reason Gazans are “imprisoned” in the territory. But here, I think, is the real reason, the one that the AP editors let slip past:

In Egyptian Rafah, a market stall selling pistols and ammunition clips for Kalashnikov assault rifles had no customers Wednesday. Weapons are generally brought into Gaza through smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

An off-duty Hamas policeman, who only gave his first name, Abdel Rahman, said there was no need to buy weapons from Egypt.

“You can buy weapons in Gaza, guns and RPGs,” he said, adding that they were easier to find than cancer medicine or Coca-Cola.

Weapons are easier to find than Coca-Cola. And the UN is still talking about criticizing Israel over shutting down the Gaza Strip.

Posted in Gaza | 3 Comments

What the support says

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Soccerdad

The Jerusalem Post reports on the support that PM Olmert has:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received a boost from the far left of the political map Tuesday when former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, former Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni and Peace Now director-general Yariv Oppenheimer said he should be allowed to remain in power after the Winograd Report’s publication.Burg retired from politics in 2004 and has since made headlines by adopting increasingly extremist positions. He most recently made news six months ago when he obtained a French passport and wrote a book comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and suggesting that Israel should no longer be a Jewish state.
…
Aloni endorsed Olmert in an interview with Yediot Aharonot. She blamed the problems of the war on the IDF and said that due to his lack of military experience, Olmert could not have been expected to contradict the generals.

“Under the current conditions, I would prefer that Olmert remain,” Aloni said. “I have no trust in [Labor chairman Ehud] Barak. It could be that [Barak] is a wonderful pianist and he knows how to take apart and put back together watches, but I stopped liking him long ago. I would vote for Olmert.”

Oppenheimer sent a letter to members of Labor’s executive committee and the party’s branch heads calling upon Barak to keep Labor in the government in order to advance the peace process. Oppenheimer will host a rally with the same message on Sunday at Labor headquarters.

Perhaps PM Olmert’s support is broader based, but these three are saying that his failings, evidenced by his mistakes during the Lebanon war of 2006, ought to be overlooked.

Ari Shavit writes that there is another group that dissents, The company commanders’ outcry:

The dozens of company commanders who sent a warning letter yesterday to the prime minister are not all cut from the same cloth. Among them are residents of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Haifa and Modi’in, Kiryat Ono, Gedera and Eli. Among them are high-tech people and real-estate dealers, students and educators, engineers, programmers and tour guides. Among them are religious and secular people, leftists and rightists, urbanites, moshav members and kibbutz members. All of them are company commanders in the reserves. Combat companies in the infantry, the armored corps, paratroops and the artillery corps. And they are telling Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: Take responsibility. Acknowledge the value of responsibility.
…
The company commanders who signed the letter sent yesterday evening to Olmert are a significant part of the IDF assault command, and this group has said in its letter that it is no longer possible to continue in this way. That the way the prime minister is behaving has damaged the value basis of national security. That a supreme commander who does not know how to take responsibility for his actions loses the moral authority to send soldiers into battle.

According to Shavit, these commanders didn’t use their position to threaten to disobey orders – unlike more publicized similar letters – but simply asked that the political leader of their country accept responsibility.

The Jerusalem Post reports on another, more personal blow against the Prime Minister:

FORMER JUSTICE and finance minister Dan Meridor and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert go back a long way together. They were both second generation MKs raised in the Revisionist ideology of their fathers, and elected on a Likud ticket. When Meridor’s sons were bar mitzva, Olmert not only came to the party, but also to the synagogue service, indicative of a close friendship. It must therefore have been difficult for Meridor to speak out against Olmert at the opening day, in the Knesset, of the annual Herzliya Conference.Meridor was one of the panelists in the session on the Winograd Committee and National Security Decision-Making, and had to leave early, so he was spared the embarrassment of being asked at question time to elaborate on his remarks, which didn’t mention Olmert by name. What he said was that, “There are people who are capable of being elected but not of making decisions. The public should elect people who not only reflect their ideology, but who have the capacity to lead. The person elected should not devote time to getting re-elected, but to learning, so that he would never get to the stage of saying: ‘They told me, but what do I understand?'”

I won’t pretend that this will make a difference. It won’t. Unless enough coalition members decide that it’s worth jeopardizing their political futures, Olmert will remain in power. Unfortunately Israel’s political system is so configured that vanity is more important than integrity. A political leader who lost the public’s trust need not regain that trust to stay in power; he needs only to convince 61 people that he is indispensable to their ambitions and interests.

Still it’s telling that those who most publicly support the PM unconditionally are at the political margins. Maybe when he was elected, PM Olmert represented a centrist coalition; now he is the candidate of the Left.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Politics | Comments Off on What the support says

The UN anti-Israel bias

Posted on 01/23/2008 by Meryl Yourish

The Arab League is currently trying to get the UN Security Council to pass a resolution forcing Israel to reopen the Gaza Crossings. I wonder, I thought, whether the UN Security Council ever passed a resolution insisting that the terrorists in Gaza stop firing rockets into Israel. So I looked through the 2007 resolutions. Couldn’t find one. Checked in 2006. Couldn’t find one. Maybe back in 2005, after Israel left Gaza? Nope.

So it seems that the United Nations is silent, always, about rockets being fired into a member state from the territories that are ministered by UNRWA. But the UNSC is going to issue a statement condemning Israel for daring to close the crossings after terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli homes, farms, and schools.

NEW YORK – The UN Security Council is expected to issue a presidential statement Wednesday denouncing Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip.

The council held an emergency session yesterday on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, at the Arab states’ request, and the debate was expected to continue far into the night.

The initial draft circulated Tuesday demanded an immediate halt to Israel’s “illegal” actions against Gaza’s civilian population, expressed “grave concern” over the deteriorating humanitarian situation there and demanded that Israel honor its obligations under international law. However, Israel has been lobbying Security Council members to soften the language, arguing that the draft is utterly one-sided, and UN sources said that both the United States and Britain back Israel’s objections, while other council members are also uncomfortable with the current language.

Even more strange, Israel has modified the blockade to make sure that Gazans receive fuel from now on. But they’re not going to get luxuries. In fact, the fuel has already been sent. And Gaza’s thank-you note came with explosives attached. Hell, even the AP noticed the rockets and put them in its main Gaza story lede.

Israel sent fuel to Gaza’s power plant on Tuesday, easing its five-day blockade of the Palestinian territory amid growing international concern about a humanitarian crisis.

The U.S. warned Israel not to add to the hardship for ordinary Palestinians but blamed the problem on Gaza’s Islamic Hamas rulers. Israel imposed the siege in response to increasing rocket attacks on its border communities by Gaza militants.

Despite the easing of the closure, Palestinian militants fired 19 rockets toward Israel on Tuesday, the military said, up from just two on Monday.

When even the AP puts the rocket attacks in its lede, you have to wonder why the UNSC won’t put them in its statement. And then, of course, you remember that Libya has been elected to the rotating position on the Security Council. Libya is, in fact, the president of the UNSC. Imagine that. A terrorist state, pushing for a resolution condemning Israel’s actions defending herself from terrorism, and backed, of course, by the Arab League and the OIC. The Muslim bloc is pushing for an anti-Israel statement.

In New York, the UN Security Council adjourned until Wednesday talks on a statement that would urge an end to the Israeli lockdown while also slamming militants firing rockets into the Jewish state.

But a council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity after a heated emergency session, voiced skepticism that the United States, a staunch ally of Israel, would accept a compromise text sought by the 14 other council members.

“Fourteen members indicated (during Tuesday’s debate) they wanted a (compromise) text. One, the United States, expressed reluctance,” the diplomat said. “Therefore, it will be difficult to agree an acceptable compromise.”

Adoption of the non-binding text requires approval by all members.

Libya, the council chair this month, submitted a draft that would call on Israel to end its blockade of Gaza and ensure “unhindered access for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people,” according to a copy of the text obtained by AFP.

The text would also urge Israel “to abide by its obligation under international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and immediately to cease all its illegal measures and practices against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip.”

However, US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters the draft in its current form was “unacceptable” because “it does not talk about the rocket attacks on innocent Israelis.”

At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino expressed understanding for Israel’s dilemma.

“One of the reasons that Israel has taken the action it has is because it was sustaining upwards of 150 rockets falling on its territory a day. And so Israel is defending itself,” she said.

So the big question for tomorrow is: U.S. veto, or U.S. cave? And secondary question: How long before the General Assembly issues its own anti-Israel resolution?

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome, World | 1 Comment

Tigger update

Posted on 01/22/2008 by Meryl Yourish

I’ve been giving Tig sub-q fluids at home, but I was worried about him the last couple of days. He seemed to be doing poorly again. So I brought him to the vet today. The vet did more bloodwork. Tig’s red blood cells are up, but all of his other numbers are worse. He says if I just showed him the numbers and he didn’t see Tig, he wouldn’t believe it was coming from the same cat. I get the impression that my vet thinks that Tig should be lying feet-up on the ground about now.

He told me that he doesn’t think Tig is going to make it through the next month. It’s highly unlikely he’s going to turn eleven on March 15th. I’m finding it hard to think of coming home to an apartment that has only one cat in it. Gracie is my Sweetness, but she isn’t Tig. She doesn’t come into my arms for a “snug.” She doesn’t sleep on the pillow next to me and irritate the hell out of me at 3 a.m. by deciding it’s time for me to wake up and pet her. She doesn’t do goofy things to make me laugh on a daily basis.

Come to think of it, there hasn’t been much laughter around here lately. Tig’s been sick, and grumpy, and growling, and swatting and hissing. I tried to get him interested in a wadded-up paper napkin last night, formerly his favorite toy, and I couldn’t get much more than a single swat when I tossed it to him. Tig used to fetch them. I’d throw them across the room, he’d pick them up in his mouth and bring them to me. Or he’d drop them in my sneaker, push them to the bottom, and then leap on the sneaker and stick in his paw to fish them out.

There haven’t been many bellyrubs lately. One, last week. He doesn’t like rolling on his back anymore. He’s lost too much weight. You can feel every single vertebrae in Tig’s spine when you pet him down his back.

Well, at least he still naps on me when I’m sitting in my chair. He doesn’t roll down my belly and land, upside-down, in my lap. Instead, he climbs on me, takes about five minutes to decide if he’s going to settle down, and sort of lies vertically across me. Or he rests his head on my shoulder, sometimes, if I get too annoyed waiting for him to make up his mind whether or not he’s going to sleep on me. He spends a lot of time lying on the bookshelf behind my chair. For some reason, he no longer cares for the ottoman or the sofa. Or my bed. Or the kitty condo. Or anything else that’s soft, except for me, apparently.

I can’t decide if I want him to go fast, or to hope against hope that he hangs on. We’re not in a good place right now. His quality of life sucks about half the time, and is okay the rest. But he’s a pale shadow of what he used to be. I can pick him up with one hand. One hand. That’s how skinny—and light—he got.

But he’s looking at me right now with that loving expression. He’s blinking at me as he falls asleep. I really don’t want to say goodbye to my Tig. I want him back.

Update: Check out the latest. There’s hope.

Posted in Cats | 10 Comments

Jews were firing missiles from Warsaw to Danzig

Posted on 01/22/2008 by Soccerdad

According to this detestable post (and letter to the editor that inspired it) we may conclude:
1) In 1941, the Jews of Warsaw were firing rockets from Warsaw at civilians in Danzig.
2) European Jews had a history of killing thousands of people by blowing themselves up in crowded public places.
3) Nazi doctors were saving hundreds of Jewish children.
4) The world stood by while Jews were being attacked by their enemies.

Well 4 is accurate anyway. The other 3 must have occurred in some parallel universe that I am unaware of.

OK, this isn’t misguided. This is antisemitism. It’s appalling that the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald saw fit to print such garbage.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias | 7 Comments

Humanitarian considerations

Posted on 01/22/2008 by Soccerdad

In order to pursue its policy of deterring rocket attacks on its civilians Israel has to justify the military actions with the legal authorities to determine What exactly is a humanitarian crisis?

The officer of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories is government’s eyes and ears on this matter.The office includes several departments responsible for doing the job. For example, one section maintains contacts with international aid organizations and other groups that monitor Gaza, while another is responsible for maintaining contacts with Palestinian officials in charge of infrastructure in the Strip, including electricity and water.

This is the body that provides the cabinet with the relevant data and carries out research on questions raised by the government.

For example, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to reduce the Israeli supply of electricity to Gaza, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz asked for details about which power lines supplied power to hospitals and other humanitarian facilities, to make sure their supply would not be harmed by the measure.

As long as Mazuz is satisfied that a specific government measure within a range of measures that he has approved will not damage these fundamental humanitarian requirements, he will okay them.

That, at least, is the theory.

There’s no word whether Meshaal and Haniyeh discuss at what point Qassams cause a humanitarian crisis in Sderot.

Interestingly a Saudi editor comes close to getting it right.

Abdel Rahman Rashed, a Saudi national serving as general manager of the pan-Arab Arabiya news channel, said Hamas was responsible for the suffering of some 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.”Hamas committed a stupid act when it gave the Israelis an excuse to launch attacks in retaliation for a few antique rockets,” Rashed wrote in the London-based daily Asharq Al- Awsat.

“Prior to that, Hamas committed a big crime against the Palestinian people by overthrowing the Palestinian Authority [in the Gaza Strip]. The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have suffered a lot because of Hamas’s actions. Hamas is bringing Israel back into the Gaza Strip after it was liberated by the Palestinian groups.”

Rashed questioned the wisdom of firing rockets and mortars at Israel which, he said, was only increasing the suffering of the Palestinians, let alone that they were not causing much harm to Israel. He pointed out that “only” 10 Israelis were wounded in the recent attacks as opposed to the “huge disaster” that has befallen the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Rashed is regarded by many Arab journalists as an unofficial spokesman for the Saudi royal family. He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper and his writings regularly reflect the views of the Saudi establishment.

It would be nice if there was someone also acknowledging that the blackouts were staged. Still it’s true that if Hamas wasn’t attacking Sderot, Israel wouldn’t be restricting fuel shipments to Gaza.

Still, with the active complicity of the international media, Hamas is turning this episode into a PR victory. (H/T Backspin)

Some of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s top aides were convinced that the countdown to Hamas’s collapse would begin immediately after large parts of the Gaza Strip were plunged into darkness Sunday night.But the PA leaders were in for an unpleasant surprise.

Instead of seeing anti-Hamas demonstrators, the PA officials in the Mukata presidential compound got televised footage of children and women holding candles in the dark streets of Gaza City.

Al-Jazeera and other Arab TV networks carried live coverage of the peaceful protesters, many of whom blamed not only Israel, but the PA government and the rest of the Arab countries for their plight.

The pictures coming out of the Gaza Strip were so damning for the PA that some of its representatives accused Al-Jazeera of serving Hamas’s interests and inciting against Abbas.

(No, it’s just Al-Jazeera, go to Google News and search on “Palestinians candles” – currently 520 results – and then search on “Sderot damage” – currently 299 results.)

According to the New York Times, Israel has now resumed allowing some necessities into Gaza.

As aid officials warned that Gaza, gripped by fuel and electricity shortages, was two or three days from a health and food crisis, international alarm mounted and criticism of Israel intensified.Israeli officials said they had made the decision after reviewing the situation in Gaza, which they had insisted they would not allow to become a relief crisis, and after seeing a reduction in rocket fire. They denied that international pressure was a factor.

Mr. Barak ordered the closing of border crossings into Gaza on Thursday night, halting all imports, in response to last week’s intense rocket fire against Israel by militant groups in the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas.

No goods have been allowed in since, and Gaza shut down its only power station on Sunday as the industrial diesel needed to fuel it ran out.

And when rocket fire intensifies again, will we see the same interest in the daily travails of the residents of Sderot. Probably when Haniyeh and Meshaal start considering the humanitarian crisis in Sderot.

More here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias | 1 Comment

Palestinians get the message: Fewer rockets equals more fuel

Posted on 01/22/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Israel is sending in enough diesel and cooking gas to Gaza to keep Gazans in electricity for a week. As a thank-you note, Palestinians sent only nine kassams into southern Israel on Monday, and only four so far today. Reuters and the AP both buried and minimized the rocket attacks. And though Condi Rice called the Israelis and told them not to cause a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, there is no word whether she mentioned the rocket attacks, which caused the blockade to begin with. As an extra added bonus, Palestinian snipers are firing at Israeli farmers today.

Palestinians opened fire Tuesday morning at farmers working in a field near Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha in southern Israel. There were no reports of injuries. An IDF force fired back at the shooters, and the farmers stopped their work and were removed from the field.

An Ecuadorian volunteer was murdered by a Palestinian simper in the same area last week.

Seven Qassam rockets and one mortar shells landed in Israel since the morning hours. There were no reports of injuries, but damage was caused to crops in a kibbutz at the Sdot Negev regional council.

Two barrages were fired shortly before 8 am, as Sderot’s children were making their way to school.

That’s a regular tactic of the Palestinians. They deliberately fire the rockets when they know Israeli children are walking to school, in the hopes of killing them. So far, they’ve missed. So far. The world thinks that this is a perfectly fine result. And so, apparently, do Israeli ministry spokesmen.

Despite protests from the international community and aid agencies against the lockdown, the Israeli government said the policy had been effective in halting rocket fire.

“What we see is that the number of Qassam rockets was decreased dramatically,” foreign ministry spokesman Mr Mekel told the BBC.

“Last week there were about 200 rockets altogether. And now there was two today, and four yesterday… So since we are monitoring it we decided that at this time we could ease this blockade,” he said.

And the very last paragraph of the BBC story?

However another rocket struck the nearby Israeli town of Sderot on Tuesday.

Even Israeli defense officials think they’ve achieved something:

A senior defense official told Ynet Monday evening that the sharp decrease in rocket attacks from Gaza in the last couple of days proves that “the Palestinians got the message,” conveyed by Israel through the closure on the Strip.

“We got the message across. Hamas understood the equation: A continuation of the rocket fire would lead to Israeli pressure against armed groups and civilians.

“We do not plan to cause a humanitarian catastrophe and we will transfer diesel fuel to the power plant, as well as medicines, but not fuel for cars or other commodities, but they now realize they will not get fuel or other luxuries as well.

This is the message that the Palestinians received:

Two Qassam rockets fired from northen Gaza Tuesday landed near the Sdot Negev Regional Council.

No injuries were reported, but some of the council’s crops were damaged.

And this:

A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza Tuesday landed south of Ashkelon.

No injuries or damage were reported.

And this:

Palestinians opened fire at IDF forces near the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip, in two separate incidents.

There were no reports of injuries or damage in both incidents.

The message: Israel will not follow through with measures needed to stop Palestinian terrorists in Gaza from trying to murder Israelis.

And the world got the message, too: Any time Israel tries to defend herself from terrorists, slap her down, hard. Israel will cave.

The UN Security Council was to meet in emergency session Tuesday on the humanitarian crisis triggered by Israel’s crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, in response to the firing of rockets into the Jewish state.

The 15-member body was to meet at 10 am (1500 GMT) at the request of Arab UN ambassadors and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The decision to hold the emergency session was made during closed-door consultations late Monday amid a growing international outcry at what the European Union termed the “collective punishment” of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.

The strong international reaction and warnings of a humanitarian crisis led Israel Monday to ease its blockade of Gaza, allowing in some fuel and medicine.

Watch for a condemnation of Israel’s actions. And the UN Human Wrongs Council will be meeting on this issue as well. And probably another statement from Condi telling Israel not to cause hardship—sorry, a “humanitarian crisis”—in Gaza.

Looks like I was dead wrong last night. Israel loses another one.

Posted in Gaza, Israeli Double Standard Time | Comments Off on Palestinians get the message: Fewer rockets equals more fuel

Gaza gets fuel, Israel gets rockets

Posted on 01/22/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Hamas thanked Israel for allowing fuel into Gaza with another barrage of kassams and mortars.

Sderot residents found little solace in Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s call for Israel to exert “more and more pressure on the Gaza Strip” on Monday evening. Earlier in the day Barak consented to ease the near-complete closure imposed on the Hamas-controlled territory, authorizing the entry of humanitarian aid and a one-time shipment of diesel fuel to power Gaza’s electricity station less than a day after it was shut down.

Shortly after Barak’s pronouncements the relative respite in rocket attacks on southern Israel seemed over, with nine Qassam rockets and 13 mortar shells landing in and around communities in the western Negev.

I look forward to hearing the same people who have been whining about the “humanitarian crisis” for the past few days to come out against the rocket and mortars landing in southern Israel.

Mind you, I won’t hold my breath.

Posted in Gaza, Israel | 1 Comment