What’s new

Say, you know how every so often I get tired of the same-old, same-old and want to change things around a bit?

I’m tired of the same-old, same-old.

I may start blogging about politics after all.

Or my trip to look at condo complexes today. First one, eh, second one, wow, I think I found my home. Okay, not really, because it’s only the second one I’ve seen, but I really like it, and I already know someone who lives there. Mind you, I won’t be buying until next year for a variety of reasons, not least of which is paying down the debt I’ve accumulated through the years of under- and unemployment (and may I say again how incredibly happy I am to be gainfully employed, full-time, with a company that has a future).

But I’m adding a few grand to the cost of whatever I buy. That’s for my home theater system. I want a big-screen TV and speakers. I want my mini-movie theater in my home. And to think, it’s less than a year away.

Life is good right now.

Posted in Life, Site news | 1 Comment

Human rights and British hypocrisy

Britain has been slowly but surely refusing to sell Israel weapons over the past few years, claiming that the weapons may be used in violating Palestinian human rights.

The British government has blocked almost one third of British military exports to Israel this year, citing possible threats to regional stability and fears the equipment might facilitate human rights violations.

According to official figures, the value of UK military sales arms to Israel declined by one third last year, and has fallen by a drastic 75 percent since 2005.

And they are paying the legal costs of a Palestinian man who is trying to outlaw British weapons sales to Israel.

Outside of government, the opposition Liberal Democrat party has called for a rethinking of arms sales to Israel, while in May the UK’s Legal Services Commission, the state agency that provides funding for attorney’s fees for indigent defendants, agreed to underwrite the costs of litigation brought by a Palestinian man in a British court seeking a ban on arms sales to Israel.

The U.K. has no trouble selling weapons to Jordan. They don’t seem to be interested in Jordanian human rights policies.

Statistics published by the committee showed that arms exports to Israel totaled 14.5 million pounds last year (about $29 million), compared to GBP 22.5 million in 2005. Between 1997 and 2006 Britain granted Israel 1561 Standard Individual Export Licenses (SIELs) valued at GBP 113 million. During the same period it authorized 626 SIELs valued at GBP 136.5 million for shipment to Jordan.

However, over the last 10 years, 190 application for military sales to Israel have been prohibited, comprising 11 percent of all applications for sales of military equipment. During the same period, only two such applications were rejected for military and restricted goods bound for Jordan.

But they’re very interested in Israel’s human rights record:

The 14 rejected SIELs violated various “Consolidated EU and National Arms Licensing Criteria,” the Foreign Office stated, citing concerns the shipments would not respect “human rights and the fundamental freedoms in the country of final destination,” would worsen the “the internal situation in the country of final destination;” and would harm “regional peace, security and stability.”

One SIEL was denied due to the “behavior of the buyer country with regard to the international community; in particular its attitude to terrorism, the nature of its alliances and respect for international law,” while concerns the equipment would be “diverted” for non-approved uses or “re-exported under undesirable conditions” were cited in rejecting three SIELs.

VERY interested.

Testifying before the committee on March 15, foreign secretary Margaret Beckett stated that the Foreign Office kept a “close eye” on the uses made by the IDF of British military equipment.

The then-foreign secretary said: “If we discovered that equipment had been sold to Israel and was being used contrary to agreed terms, we would regard that with grave concern and we would make sure we did not issue licenses for such equipment in the future.”

But you know whose human rights record they are absolutely uninterested in?

Hamas.

Britain’s and the international community’s refusal to speak to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is doing more harm than good, a British parliamentary committee said on Monday.

Pursuing a “West Bank first” policy — where Britain and others deal with the West Bank, which is run by the more secular Fatah group, and isolate the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip — will further jeopardize peace, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in a report on the Middle East.

“The government should urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas,” the all-party group of lawmakers said.

The Foreign Office—the organization that authorizes weapon sales to Israel—thought that was a peachy idea. They don’t seem to be overly bothered by Hamas’ lack of respect for human rights. The beating of wedding celebrants, the clampdown on journalists—that doesn’t bother them at all. Not when Hamas does it, anyway.

Reacting to the report, Britain’s Foreign Office said in a statement: “We continue to make clear that we are ready to respond to any significant movement by Hamas.”

However, it said it was not unreasonable to expect that engagement should be based on the three conditions.

The Foreign Office is at least paying lip service to demands that Hamas end violence, recognize Israel, and adhere to previous peace agreements. But those human rights? Who gives a damn? It isn’t Israelis oppressing Palestinians. It’s Palestinians oppressing Palestinians.

Funny how the Brits also have no trouble at all selling the Saudis weapons, when you can’t even bring a Bible into Saudi Arabia. Or wear a cross. Where women can’t do much of anything, but since the Saudis aren’t actually using the British weapons on their women, I suppose human rights don’t come into the equation.

Yet another example of Israeli Double Standard Time. Yet another example of anti-Israelism, which looks a whole lot like anti-Semitism.

Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that my great-grandfather left Scotland for America in 1914?

Posted in Israeli Double Standard Time | 8 Comments

Shire Network News number 99

One shy of 100, our really big shew, coming up next. But this time, it’s Douglas Murray, the feature interview, and yes, I have a contribution this week. I’ll have one in number 100 too, and word is that Lair Simon is going to brush off his outrage and bring it.

Posted in Podcasts | Comments Off on Shire Network News number 99

Elie Wiesel’s assailant apologizes

The trial of the man who tried to kidnap Elie Wiesel to “force” him to recant his Holocaust testimony has begun with an apology.

A man charged with dragging Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel from a hotel elevator apologized in court Monday to the Nobel laureate over the attack.

Eric Hunt, 22, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking, elder abuse and hate crimes following the February incident at San Francisco’s Argent Hotel.

The apology came in the midst of a hearing to determine whether Hunt, who originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but later changed his plea, should stand trial.

Hunt raised a shaking hand and spoke up suddenly from his seat next to his lawyer just as Wiesel had finished describing his ordeal in Nazi death camps, where his parents and sister died.

“Mr. Wiesel, I’m sorry for scaring you and I’m sorry you experienced the Holocaust,” Hunt said. “My grandfather fought the Nazis and I’m sorry about what happened.”

Wiesel did not respond but went on to describe the Feb. 1 incident in which he said Hunt grabbed him from the elevator and demanded that the 78-year-old professor come to his room for an interview.

And here’s where my readers are going to be very surprised: I think there’s more to the story than a neo-Nazi stalking and frightening Elie Wiesel.

Hunt, of Vernon, N.J., has been in a San Francisco jail psychiatric ward since May, when he was flown to California to face the charges.

His lawyer, San Francisco defense attorney John Runfola, said in an interview Monday that prosecutors had “overcharged” his client.

Hunt is not an anti-Semitic stalker, but a man suffering from mental illness, Runfola said. When he confronted Wiesel, he was in the grip of a “manic episode” triggered by his grandfather’s death, he said.

The defense has sent the results of a psychiatrist’s evaluation to Wiesel along with 20 letters from Hunt’s family, friends and teachers describing the incident as deeply out of character for the high school honor student and college graduate, Runfola said.

I know a lot of people think that it’s easy to fake mental illness, but it’s not. And the single thing that is setting off my feeling that there is more to this story is the age of the perpetrator. He’s 22. Schizophrenia strikes young men in their twenties. They are perfectly normal until then, and suddenly become a complete stranger to what they were. And I know this because I know a family that has schizophrenia, and I was attacked by my friend’s sister, who was obsessed with a conspiracy of Jews trying to kill her (her ex-husband was Jewish). And because one of my closest friends is a psych nurse with more than twenty years experience. We talk about crazy people a lot.

Mind you, I’m not this kid’s doctor, or his lawyer—but I am willing to hear more about this case before signing off on Hunt being just another Jew-hater.

Posted in Anti-Semitism | 7 Comments

What’s more important than discussing Karl Rove?

Figuring out how to get rid of that damned “Jessica Alba bra-less” spam that’s been filling my mailbox this week.

This is why I could never be a political blogger. I could not care less that Rove is gone.

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments

Israeli Double Standard Time, Hamas version

It’s fascinating, really, to see how many editors across the world change news stories to make Palestinian terrorists look better than they are. Take this AP story, for instance, sent out hours ago with the following headline:

Hamas Militiamen Beat Protesters in Gaza

This is where I could use Lexis-Nexis, because a Google News search shows exactly seven stories with those words (or slight variations) in the headline. It’s in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian (surprisingly), the San Diego Source, the WaPo, ABC News (see above), the San Jose Mercury News, and two other small papers.

When you search Google News using the words “Hamas beat,” you still find very few instances of Hamas beating the crap out of protesters in Gaza.

Security men for Gaza’s Hamas rulers clubbed and slammed rifle butts into opponents staging a rare protest Monday, seizing the cameras of journalists covering the event and raiding media offices to prevent news footage from getting out.

The Islamic militant group claims it is willing to tolerate dissent, but the crackdown was the latest in a series of moves to squash opposing voices, including breaking up private parties Friday and Monday where people were singing songs of the rival Fatah movement.

What was it the people were protesting, exactly?

Buses carrying protesters were halted by Hamas guards who beat passengers, driving them away and confiscating Fatah flags. However, about 300 people got past the militia cordon and demonstrated for 20 minutes, shouting “We want freedom. We want to raise our voice!”

Security officers arrested several demonstrators and then confiscated equipment from news photographers and cameramen trying to cover the arrests, including an Associated Press still camera.

Hamas squads also raided the Gaza offices of media organizations, looking for material from the rally. Staffers at satellite broadcaster Al-Arabiyya said the militiamen seized a camera and videotape at their office.

Once again, may I point out that no journalists’ unions are sending out urgent press releases regarding the Hamas treatment of their fellow journalists. In fact, there isn’t even a breaking news on Reporters Without Borders’ website. But you can find this three-day-old story about a Palestinian journalist wounded—ostensibly by Israel, though the IDF said they could not confirm that—while covering a gunbattle between Hamas and the IDF.

I anxiously await their report on this incident. Or these two:

On Friday, rifle-toting militiamen roared up to a bachelor party where revelers were dancing to Fatah songs. Video showed the Hamas men firing in the air to break up the celebration, clubbing guests, hurling chairs around and leaving one man lying unconscious.

The images were repeatedly broadcast on Fatah-affiliated Palestine TV. The cameraman who took the footage, from the local Gaza Ramattan news agency, was detained and questioned by Hamas for several hours.

On Monday, the Executive Force was in action again, breaking up the wedding of a Fatah activist and holing five guests for several hours.

One of those detained, Zaid Salem, said wedding participants were singing Fatah songs but did not break a Hamas ban on celebratory gunfire and were not charged with any wrongdoing.

Not that I expect anything to happen. Hamastan has been established, though there are reports that Fatah fighters are slipping into Gaza and preparing to take it back. It would be nice to believe they can do it, but Fatah has proven its incompetence many times over.

Posted in Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias | 2 Comments

Supporting terrorism, one billboard at a time

Some of Windsor, Canada’s Lebanese community has decided that they speak for all Canadian Lebanese immigrants and have put up a billboard of Hizbollah featuring Hassan Nasrallah, and claiming that Hezbollah wants peace.

Members of the Jewish and Lebanese Christian communities in Windsor are outraged by the appearance of a billboard that appears to promote Hezbollah — an organization the Canadian government considers terrorist.

“That organization is banned in Canada,” said Harvey Kessler, executive director of the Windsor Jewish Community Centre. “How can that billboard be up in Windsor when it represents a terrorist organization which is banned under the laws of Canada?”

Located at the southwest corner of Marion Avenue and Wyandotte Street East, the billboard does not mention Hezbollah by name, but features a central image of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the controversial political and military group that represents Lebanese Shia Muslims and has clashed with Israeli troops for more than 20 years.

Kessler said he feels Nasrallah represents “the opposite of peace.”

“It should be offensive to all people living in Windsor. It should be offensive not only to the Jewish community, but to any Canadian.”

Emile Nabbout, president of the Windsor branch of the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb, said he also thinks Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and he feels the billboard creates a misconception of the views of Windsor’s Lebanese community.

“We really are not in support or in favour of that billboard and it should be removed ASAP,” Nabbout said.

The billboard’s sponsors defended their actions.

One of the people responsible for a controversial billboard depicting Hezbollah’s leader said he did it to honour freedom fighting families back home — and it’s their Canadian right to do so.

“In Canada we want peace,” said Hussein Dabaja, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah supporter. “We’re not trying offend anybody. We have freedom of speech. It’s a free country. We can do anything. Every Lebanese in Canada has somebody that died in Lebanon, the freedom fighters. Who is Hezbollah? Our brothers, our family, our parents, our friends. We came to Canada and they stayed there to fight.”

[…] Dabaja said the billboard was not meant to be an anti-Jewish statement.

“People who have something against the billboard don’t like Hezbollah and they don’t want peace,” he said.

Yeah, they’re lying about what the sign means.

“By just analyzing the picture, there is no doubt in my mind this is a Hezbollah activity,” he added.

Printed in English on the left side of the billboard are the words: “Lebanese and Arab communities in Windsor city congratulate the Lebanese people for their steadfastness and endeavor to establish peace in Lebanon.”

But Nabbout said that Arabic writing which appears on the right side of the billboard does not match the English translation. According to Nabbout, the Arabic writing makes a reference to fighting.

“What they mean by ‘fight’ is basically ‘guerrilla’ — using arms and weapons,” Nabbout said. “Basically, there is a very specific word… That is a definite difference between the Arabic and the English.”

And today, the sign has been removed.

The billboard depicting Hezbollah’s controversial leader, which caused an uproar across Windsor, was quietly replaced Monday morning with an advertisement for a car dealership.

So, about that peace thing… You mean like this?

Hizbollah is buying up large tracts of land owned by Christians and other non-Shias in southern Lebanon as the militant group rebuilds its defences in preparation for a new war with Israel, The Sunday Telegraph has been told.

The land grab is thought to be driven by the Iranian-backed guerrillas’ efforts to rearm themselves and fortify the strategically important ravines north of the Litani River, just north of the front line in last year’s 34-day conflict with its Jewish neighbour.

Here, Hizbollah has been free to press forward without harassment from the 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers and 20,000 Lebanese army troops who were deployed south of the Litani as part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the conflict.

Just south of the Litani, the UN is conducting hundreds of patrols each day in a bid to keep Hizbollah weapons out of the area, but the peacekeepers’ mandate ends at the river.

The Lebanese army, meanwhile, is about 50 per cent Shia and seems to be turning a blind eye to Hizbollah activities north of the river.

Yeah, that’s “peace,” all right. It’s known as the peace of the grave.

Posted in Lebanon, Terrorism | 2 Comments

The cursing professor non-apologizes

Snoopy isn’t the only one who was upset by Professor Hillel Weiss. But the professor has apologized for his outburst.

A week after sparking a row after he was caught on video by a Ynet cameraman cursing Hebron Brigade commander and IDF soldiers during the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Hebron wholesale market, Professor Hillel Weiss of Bar-Ilan University took back his harsh remarks Monday morning.

“From the remarks and the curses quoted in the media it may seem that I have bad feelings toward the soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the resurrection of the nation and the land,” Weiss wrote in a letter to IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen.

“Without going into the events and the many details of what happened, including before I even spoke, I am sorry for stooping to such a level of curses in the remarks I made, and I regret these remarks.

But wait. There’s more.

Weiss later explained in a radio interview that he apologized due to “terrorist Mapainic pressure exerted on the university.”

Talking to Ynet, he clarified, “Since the remarks were published, Bar-Ilan University President Prof Moshe Kaveh was forced to get down on his knees against his will. After Rabin’s murder they looked for the national religious Jews at the university, even though Bar-Ilan did not support the act and was not guilty of the murder.”

Here is my problem with the entire incident, in a nutshell:

“I am trying to wake the people up to face the real danger: The expulsion of Jews is a distraction from the real danger, which is the eradication of the Jews by our enemies.”

Israel had to give up Gaza. Sharon and Olmert didn’t do it right, but Gaza had eventually to go. But Israel should not have to give up Hebron, the city where Jews were massacred and expelled in 1929. It’s not an Arab city. It’s not a Palestinian city. It’s the city mentioned in the Torah, which describes how Abraham bought the land for the Caves of the Patriarchs, and where, as soon as we leave, the Arabs will do to them what they did to Joseph’s Tomb. This is our holy site, yet another site the Muslims are expropriating, and yet another example of the Exception Clause: The world will not allow Jews to worship at or keep their holy sites, not when the Muslims have managed to put their mosques atop them.

No, I don’t support Professor Weiss when he curses Jews. But he has a point about the expulsion of Jews from Hebron. We are doing our enemies’ work for them when we allow ourselves to be divided like this.

Posted in Israel | 3 Comments

Yet another professor

Snoopy wrote this

I write as a Jew and as a synagogue member.

If I had a dollar (no, make it shekel) for every article that starts with these words, I would be able… wait, let me make a quick estimate… to replace our old TV set by a new-fangled LCD flat screen with myriad of new features.

So you can understand my reluctance to post anything about the predictably dreary and rambling article by another connoisseur of high moral ground. But an Hasbara grunt must do what an Hasbara grunt must do…

So, it is Andrew Benjamin now, Professor of Critical Theory in the Centre and at the University of Technology, Sydney. And a philosopher to boot – go argue with a guy like this. Fortunately (or not) the article looks like a cheese that was depleted by mice in a major way. To start with – the famous straw man, as usual built by the author for the author’s enjoyment:

However what endures for many as an outrage is Israel hijacking the Holocaust for its political ends: the Holocaust is used to sustain a specific geo-political situation.

In general, this is eerily similar to the logical pirouette so beloved by modern anti-Semites: state of Israel defends its barbaric actions by accusing the critics in antisemitism, ergo we are not anti-Semites when we rightfully criticize Israel. This circular logic is used these days so frequently that the whole business of identifying an anti-Semite has become a new branch of science.

In particular, let us see how our professor illustrated his claim above – it is fantastic for a person with so impressive scientific credentials:

The other night in Sydney at the Great Synagogue a speaker defended the incursion into Lebanon on the grounds that it would prevent a further Holocaust.

You see: the state of Israel hijacks whatever it hijacks, because a speaker in a synagogue happens to be an idiot… sheesh. It truly looks like there are some nincompoops attending the Great Synagogue in Sydney, although it hurts me to say so. But it’s not all, look at this:

Until Jews are prepared to argue that the Holocaust and its legacy is not the province of a nation state, let alone a justification for Zionism, our responsibility in relation to the dead will continue to be betrayed.

Who is it exactly that argues thusly, our learned professor does not say. Nor does he know, apparently, that Zionism predates the Holocaust by a few years, but this could be helped by some easy-reading leaflets.

I could explain to Mr Benjamin that the Israeli officials and the whole officialdom, while mentioning Holocaust frequently*, normally do not make it a habit to justify their usual misdeeds by Holocaust. And if he hears one doing so, it is most probably an idiot (see above). I, personally, do not invoke Holocaust more than two or three times a day, and this mostly when trying to jump a queue abroad, because here it does not work for some reason.

But this was only for appetizers, let’s continue:

The consequence of this is that a critique of Zionism or a disagreement over the policies of Israel are taken at best as a criticism of Jews and, at worst, as anti-Semitic. The evidence is clear. Attacks on synagogues in Seattle and Parramatta underscore the results of this. These attacks are the result of the politics of a nation state.

Israel, in its present manifestation, sustains anti-Semitism.

You see, how easy it is? Another one of the “I do not support, but I understand” crowd. So, the attacks on the synagogues all over the world are not the deed of some Muslim folks, incensed by anti-Israeli (and frequently anti-Jewish) rhetoric of their leaders, but a sole result of the Israeli existence “in its present manifestation”, whatever is the (quite sinister) meaning of this utterance. An elegant attempt of back-assward logic (see “philosopher”, will you). But convenient to Israeli-haters and Jew-haters all over the world, just check the links to this article.

I could continue, but Mr Bagel here has already done a good enough mincemeat of the article, so I shall quote his reference to the article’s “main” point:

Mr Benjamin quite early in his opinion piece states: “The source of the feeling is simple: Israel claims that it continues to act in my name.” I’m sorry to burst your own self inflated bubble Mr Benjamin but I seriously doubt if the State of Israel has even any knowledge of you. Pray tell me where you find the evidence that Israel as a country acts on behalf of all Jews and especially of you?

The last worthy point is that “bulldozing houses” in Gaza. The last houses to be bulldozed were these of the leaving settlers (for some inexplicable reason this point has escaped many a bleeding heart). And we all know what is going on in Gaza and around it. Or do we? Probably the news have not reached yet some esoteric faculties in Sydney…

So, rest assured, dear professor: not in your name.

(*) Due to unhappy circumstances beyond my control, I have become a frequent visitor of a local cemetery lately. My (admittedly anecdotal) observation is that almost every other tombstone bears a text of the following contents: “In memory of … and … who perished in the Holocaust”. Since this is an internal Israeli affair, hardly meant for Hasbara purposes, I do not think the text is a work of some sinister power. So I suspect that many of these officials do have a justification for mentioning Holocaust, even if the learned professor cringes at it.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | 5 Comments

Haveil Havalim: Carnival of the Jews

This week’s Haveil Havalim is up. Go, read, enjoy.

Well? What are you still doing here?

Click! Click!

Posted in Bloggers, Jews | 1 Comment

Home again

After a fun-filled weekend at Chris and Janet’s in an undisclosed location in Northern VA, I am home, rather tired, and looking around at the housecleaning that will be postponed another day or two (at least).

It was a beautiful day yesterday, so we took the top off the Jeep and drove out to Leesburg, where I did not say a discouraging word in spite of the fact that there was a [eyeroll, please] channeling class going on in the New Age shop where we visited a mutual friend. The most negative thing I said was that if I’d found that shop twenty years earlier, I probably would have spent a couple hundred dollars for various dragony, glass-orb, and other fantasy objects, while still rolling my eyes at all the [kaff] supplies for witches and warlocks. One thing I did not take a picture of, or even comment on, was a sign saying “Black Salt–anti Jinx!” on plastic bags of, yes, black salt.

Boggles my mind that people actually believe this stuff.

I’m telling you, if I were less honest, I’d be a gazillionaire by now, because I would have started a religion that would make the scientologists look like pikers, and I’d have done it without the blackmail and the threats and the copyrighted materials and the killing people from neglect.

You don’t need to hurt people to screw them out of their money. You only need to give them a reason they find, well, reasonable.

People are starving for answers. Maybe I should start charging for them.

In any case. We had a lovely weekend, and I’m going to eat dinner made up of food I bought at Wegman’s yesterday, one of the places we stopped.

Oh. And go see the Simpsons Movie. If you like the Simpsons, or ever liked the Simpsons, or think you might like the Simpsons, you will love this movie. It is very, very funny (funnier if you’re a Simpsons fan). And stay for the credits. All of them.

Posted in Life | 5 Comments

Batsh*t crazy, again

It doesn’t matter where you turn, Arabs simply refuse to acknowledge the sins of their people when it comes to terrorism. Here we have an Arab Israeli man claiming that not only did his son not steal a gun from a security guard and use it to try to murder Israelis, but when confronted with incontrovertible video evidence, he says that the evidence is a fake.

Surveillance tapes showing Ahmad Khatib grabbing a weapon from a security guard and firing it repeatedly during a pursuit in Jerusalem’s Old City last Friday were doctored by the police, said father Mahmoud Khatib during a Sunday memorial service for his son.

Ahmad Khatib, according to videotapes, seized a gun from a guard of the Ateret Kohanim yeshiva and fired it repeatedly before being shot down by the security guard chasing him. But many of the shooter’s friends and family have asserted his innocence, some saying that the incident was a complete fabrication.

And who, pray tell, would be behind this fake video?

According to Mahmoud Khatib, it is significant that the incident took place next to the Ateret Kohanim yeshiva which he said is housed by “extreme people who try to take over Muslim Jerusalem by buying houses.”

Wow. “Extreme” Jews are taking over Muslim Jerusalem by the horrible act of buying houses legally! Oh. My. God. Quick, call the UN! And of course, there is the inevitable call for “justice.” Because it isn’t justice, you see, if the proof shows his son perpetrating a terror attack.

The shooter’s father claimed that the investigation into the incident was not conducted in a proper and unbiased manner, and demanded a new investigation headed by a neutral source. “I am only looking for justice,” he said.

What would be a proper and unbiased manner? What “neutral” source? Gee, let me think… Nope. Can’t get a better one than the Israeli police. The Shin Bet is taking over the investigation. Look for more whines of bias.

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome, Terrorism | 2 Comments

Honey, I’m not home

I went up to the office yesterday and had a couple of meetings, then got to actually work in an office instead of from my home, which felt very work-like. Seriously. I do the exact same work at home, yet it feels far more official when I’m doing it in an office. I wonder if that’s really why they make most of us work in an office.

Anyway, things are proceeding nicely via the job, and if all goes well, I should be an on-staff employee, working from home four days a week, and traveling to NorVA once a week. We’re trying to pick a day.

This morning I am the guest of Janet and Chris, who have four cats, three of which are on hand most of the time. The fourth is a bit shy.

We watched Babylon 5: The Lost Tales last night.

Wow, did it suck.

A full review will have to wait, but there was a first-season episode of the Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Rory were making fun of Father Knows Best, and the conversation went something like, “Do you remember the episode where Buddy lost his homework and nothing happened?” “Or how about the one where the dad came home late from work and nothing happened?”

Last night, Janet kept asking “When is the story going to start?”

That was because nothing happened.

I’m taking it off my wishlist. If you were thinking of buying it, I wouldn’t. The only good thing about the show was seeing the Bruce Boxleitner still looks great. Except he should dye his hair. He’s aging better than Tracy Scoggins, who reminded me how much I disliked season five.

There’s a reason this thing went straight to DVD, and it’s not because it’s good.

Posted in Life, Movies | 3 Comments

Is it the time to clip the wings?

Snoopy wrote thisI am writing this with a heavy heart. Having pen friends (and personal friends) on the left and on the right, I have come with time to one simple motto – my friend must be a mensch first. And last. Everything else is secondary. And I have consistently avoided fiery political rhetorics attacking this or other side, unless we are talking about absolute moral imperatives. It seems to me that looking for common ground is a better alternative.

But the last case, that of a learned professor* cursing a senior IDF officer, using words suitable for a souk brawl and expressing wishes more consistent with addressing an absolute evil the likes of which I can hardly imagine – this case just broke the seal.

Police opened on Wednesday a criminal investigation against Professor Hillel Weiss for his bombastic public statements against Judea Division commander Col. Yehuda Fuchs during Tuesday’s evacuation of the Hebron marketplace.

Weiss cursed Fuchs, saying “may his wife be a widow, his mother bereaved, and his children orphans.”

From another source:

The professor also said that the security officers who carried out the evacuation are “worse than the Germans.”

He said more, and I heard part of the recording of his hateful “speech” on the radio today.

Now, we can do what we have always done: ignore the hateful outburst from the mad ultra-right-winger as we ignore the hateful outbursts from the mad supra-left-wingers as relatively harmless (and don’t you just enjoy the similarity of the curses?) venting of steam by some really not dangerous minority moonbats. But can we allow ourselves this luxury? Could we continue ignoring the ugly face of the left and right moonbats cursing, spitting on, attacking our soldiers, our policemen, each other?

Our country is going through a difficult period, and I do not have to expand on this subject here. We can deal, as we have always done, with the dire straits of military and political realities. There is, however, a new dimension, hitherto untraveled and not even sufficiently charted – the tears being created in the delicate fabric of our nation by the above mentioned moonbats .

I shall start with the first symptom – the significant drop in the number of recruits volunteering for the battle units. This is the first in our history. And both wings of moonbats have made a contribution to this phenomenon. Both wings and our lack of attention and passivity are complicit in this “new wave”, when some of our children, brainwashed by the cheap slogans, are deciding that defending out country is secondary to serving the idols of an ideology or religion.

And the growing number of cases when our soldiers refuse to carry out an order – not because it is unlawful and even not because it may cause exceeding violence, but just because their ideological guru or their rabbi told them so; this is another symptom of the malady that should force us to ask ourselves – for how long we can continue ignoring the abyss we are coming to? Our nation was teared apart by internal forces twice in its history: will it allow the moonbats to do so again?

What bothers me in this specific case is the silence (mostly) from my friends on the right. Of course, the ultra-left and just left have a field day with the Weiss story. But I will be more than glad to hear some voices of sanity from the right wing now, when sanity is so necessary.

And to the moonbats: the silent majority, unfortunately, remains silent so far. But do not count on it to remain silent forever. The day of reckoning may come, and we may decide that this bird may do with some wing clipping. Painful as it may be…

(*) Addendum

(This post is not about Hillel Weiss, as you have gathered by now, but as a matter of interest, here some information about the character.)

Hillel Weiss is Professor of Hebrew Literature, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. In addition, our learned gentleman is a member of the Sanhedrin (a self-appointed bunch, to make sure).

Mr Weiss has some strong opinions on the role religion should play in my (and yours) lives:

PROFESSOR HILLEL WEISS, SANHEDRIN RELIGIOUS COURT: We are not serving the Christians or the Muslims, we are serving the only truth that is in the world, and it is the Jewish law and the Torah, and all the nations have to obey this law.

Does it sound familiar? His counterparts, the Ayatollahs, have a very similar formula – he may want to sit down with them to compare notes…

He is quite certain about the way to deal with people who do not heed his opinion:

…Yair Naveh, the general who issued the ban, is a religious man and the Sanhedrin summoned him twice to explain himself.

HILLEL WEISS: This general, personally, took decisions that destroy and enters the holocaust to the Jewish people again.

MATT BROWN: But the general ignored the rabbis and they branded him a Moser.

HILLEL WEISS: We told him that, according to the Jewish law, he’s like a Moser, one that delivers Jews to gentiles, one who delivers land, one who delivers property.

MATT BROWN: In ancient Jewish law, being a Moser amounted to a death sentence.

HILLEL WEISS: “It’s lawful to kill the Moser in any place, in any time.”

Mr Weiss and his friends have also some unorthodox opinions on the issue of 9/11 and others, but it is most interesting (and it meshes quite nicely with his strong opinion on the lawfulness of killing a “Moser”), he is one of the selected group of sickos denying the accepted version of Rabin’s murder. Anyone who knows where the sleaze that murdered Rabin came from, could trace the probable reasons for this specific insanity.

To add color to the above, the notoriously anti-Semitic Rense is using the material provided by Weiss and his friends, happily linking to it.

To add more reasons for worry: professor Weiss is not only a teacher in an university, he is a political figure to be aware of: recently his name appeared on a manifesto of the Jewish Leadership faction of Likud (having for its leader Moshe Feiglin). This is how deep the rot reaches.

And what was professor’s response to the critics after the latest revolting appearance?

…Weiss said “cursing is in the framework of the right to free speech. Rabbi Ovadia Yossef and soccer fans act in the same manner.”

“Nobody has the moral right to investigate me. The police and army would be better off taking a look at their recent actions instead of investigating me. I don’t care about this investigation,” Weiss continued.

Look who is talking about moral right. Merde.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel | 10 Comments

U.N. Chicken Little: Gaza is falling! Gaza is falling!

Yet another UN cry that Gaza is going to collapse in on itself due to the shutdowns of the crossings, and yet another article that manages to convey the dire warnings even while writing how needed food and goods are still being supplied to Gaza.

Israel sealed the main commercial crossing, Karni, in June after the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization. Although basic foodstuffs, medicines and other essential supplies have been taken into Gaza through smaller crossings, some Gaza factories have closed because of a lack of raw materials, and no agricultural produce or other exports have been allowed out. All goods passing in and out of Gaza have to pass through Israel.

I wonder how many articles about the impending doom of Gaza in the last two years this makes. Thirty? Forty? Fifty?

I’ve lost track.

Posted in Gaza, Media Bias | 1 Comment