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Monday morning briefs

Posted on 03/19/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Heroes all around: Two IDF soldiers “just doing their jobs” saved lives–one saved civilians, the other saved the soldier who stayed at his job, fixing the Iron Dome launcher, even at the risk of his own life.

Yes, and the Easter Bunny will bring them all pretty little colored eggs, too: The organizers of the March to Jerusalem insist that it won’t be violent. Sure. The fact that it’s sponsored by Tehran and counts Hamas, PIJ, and Hezbollah as sponsors or members makes it seem likely that another Mavi Marmara is in the making. And here’s what Mad Mahmoud has to say about it:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met on Sunday with participants of the Global March to Jerusalem where he said it was no longer legitimate for Israel to occupy any part of Palestine. “The Palestinians should be running the field and God willing that will happen soon.”

Oh, he also called Israel a “cancerous tumor” again. Totally peaceful. Right. Sure.

And yet, there is still a group called “Queers for Palestine”: A Muslim lesbian couple is asking for refugee status in Canada for fear they’d be murdered if they returned to Tel Aviv. And they probably would be. The police can’t protect them 24/7. And who are they afraid of? Not the Jews in Tel Aviv. The Muslims.

Speaking of Jerusalem: Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum held a discussion on the importance of Jerusalem in the Muslim religion. The upshot: Not very. At least, not until the Jews took it back.

The casus belli to attack Iran: Forget the nukes. Israel should attack them because Iran has been at war with Israel for decades, and it’s only getting worse now. Iranian military experts are operating freely in Gaza and the Sinai.

Seriously? Because I think he’s a total asshole: A.B. Yehoshua says that because I don’t live in Israel, I’m only a partial Jew, while he is a total Jew. Get a load of this awesome logic:

“… in no siddur is there a mention of the word ‘Jew’ but only ‘Israeli’. The name of our country and the territory is Land of Israel…”

That’s funny. I thought “Israel” was the name used for the Jewish people in the Siddur, but what do I know? I’m only a partial Jew. And not even an Orthodox one, at that.

Schmuck.

Posted in Iran, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Jews, Lebanon, palestinian politics, Religion | 3 Comments

When the media lie about “protesters”

Posted on 03/18/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Terrorists are planning a marching on Israel’s borders, with the intent of causing a media blitz in the manner of the Mavi Marmara. The world is going to call them “protesters”, not infiltrators, and yet, what will they be protesting? Let’s be honest: Israel’s existence. Here’s one of the organizers’ resume:

Amru was sentenced to seven life sentences in prison for his involvement in dispatching the suicide bomber who blew up at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem on September 9, 2003. Seven Israelis were killed and more than 50 others were wounded in the attack. Among the dead were Detroit-born Dr. David Applebaum, director of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center emergency room, and his daughter Nava, whose wedding was scheduled for the following day.

They’re deliberately using the language of South Africa, because they think it’s working. They’re calling people like him “political prisoners”. Because all political prisoners plan and sponsor terror attacks.

In the meantime, France is withdrawing troops from UNIFIL, so Hezbollah’s murderous scare tactics are working.

A roadside bomb wounded five French peacekeepers in southern Lebanon in December, in the third attack of the year on UN forces in the area.

Italy is going to follow suit. And UNIFIL is utterly useless, anyway–on its watch, Hezbollah has been rearmed even more strongly than before, and managed to launch an attack on Israelis in sight of UNIFIL officials that murdered an Israeli officer on the border in Israel.

And of course, the media will constantly lie in favor of the terrorists. NPR ignores utterly Hamas’ refutation of this phony story about how Hamas won’t attack Israel if Israel attacks Iran. The NPR article has a publish date of 14 March. The Hamas story came out in the Guardian on 6 March. It was denied on 7 March.

But after the revolutions in the Middle East, Hamas is not looking to Tehran anymore but to Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was founded as an offshoot of the brotherhood, and its leaders are looking to strengthen that relationship. Hamas now says it won’t intervene in any conflict between Iran and Israel over Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

Yeah, it’s all about the peace demanded by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is looking to break the Camp David Peace Treaty any way it can. The Brotherhood-dominated Egyptian Parliament just declared Israel to be its bitter enemy.

If this “protest” march comes off, look for the media to pull another Mavi Marmara on Israel. Here’s hoping Israel has learned its PR lessons from that, though judging from the last IDF response to Gaza rocket fire, I think they’re finally starting to catch on that they need to be proactive with the media blitz, not reactive.

Posted in Hamas, Israel, Media Bias, Terrorism | Comments Off

Still Caturday

Posted on 03/17/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Another Gracie picture, from her birthday. She had an exhausting day, what with getting skritched whenever she asked, tunafish for breakfast, and Mom paying attention to her all day.

All together now: Awwwww.

Posted in Cats | 3 Comments

Another look at why Jimmy Carter loathes Israel

Posted on 03/16/2012 by Meryl Yourish

I found this while reading a current piece on Huffpo. Jimmy Carter is deluded, and manages to lie and expose himself as a liar in the next breath. Also, the ego on the man is unbelievable, and now we see another reason why he hates Israel so much: Because Israel failed him.

Was there a role for faith when you were brokering peace with Egypt and Israel?
There was. When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land. And I was blessed with two other deeply religious persons, in fact Menachem Begin was the first religious Prime Minister of Israel. The rest of them were quite secular in their attitudes, particularly Golda Meier, who laughed when I brought that up when I met with her when I was governor.
Anyway, Anwar Sadat was a deeply religious Muslim and Begin was a religious Jew and the first thing we did was to provide a common prayer to the world that we would have peace there. And Sadat brought it up quite often and wanted to build a shrine on Mount Sinai that would be used by all three faiths. We would have done that, but he was assassinated soon after I left office, and the idea was dropped. But we talked about our common worship of God quite frequently while we were negotiating the peace agreement.
Did you actually pray together?
No, we didn’t have a chapel at Camp David but we used a little room and the Muslims used it on Friday, the Jews on Saturday and the Christians on Sunday. We were very assiduous in our worship.

So he says they found a common prayer, but then he says that each of them prayed on his own Sabbath, thus proving that Carter lied utterly about that common prayer. It’s like he’s not living in the same world he’s describing. In psychology, they call that a fabulist. But let’s face it: The real reason Carter hates Israel is because Israel didn’t do what he wanted. The peace failed, and since he can’t blame the terrorists, he blames the victims. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that he simply hates Jews, which I count as a strong one.) He is, and always was, an Israel-hating tool. We just didn’t know it back then.

Posted in Israel, Politics | 6 Comments

The I have today off briefs

Posted on 03/16/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Really? Even Israel calls it honoring the truce when terrorists are firing grad rockets into Israeli cities on a daily basis, as well as firing kassams? Southern cities are closing their schools today. Really? WTF, Israel? WTF!

Really? The British prime minister said the U.K. wouldn’t support an Israeli strike on Iran. Really? The Brits don’t support Israel? Who knew? How could you tell that the nation that stopped selling Israel vital military parts over the Gaza war wouldn’t support them in another war? The nation that let the Libyan bomber go over oil contracts won’t support Israel’s attack on an oil-exporting nation? The nation that refused to let Jews fleeing Nazi Germany find shelter in British Mandate Palestine? I don’t understand how they won’t support Israel. I’m totally flummoxed.

Really? Assad emails show that he was getting advice from Iran on what to say, and how to kill. Also how he got around sanctions. Someone here in New York was helping. And once again: Really?

Really? Two weeks after making a deal with the U.S. to freeze its weapons programs for food, North Korea is going to break it by testing ~~an ICBM~~ a satellite. Really, who could have predicted that?

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Terrorism, World | 2 Comments

A new Barry Rubin book

Posted on 03/15/2012 by Meryl Yourish

There’s a new Barry Rubin book out, which is always a good thing.

Israel: An Introduction written by one of the best writers on Israel around. Go buy it. You won’t regret it.

Posted in Israel, The Catmage Chronicles | Comments Off

Thursday EATAPETA Day briefs

Posted on 03/15/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Another terror attack? A female soldier was stabbed on a train by an Arab man. This part of the story may help you understand why Gilad Shalit was so important to Israel:

The victim has been put on the respirator machine and is undergoing a series of tests to see whether surgery will be necessary. Her mother is at her bedside.

I can’t think of many other newspapers that talk about having her family around her in quite such a personal way.

The non-truce daily rocket fire continues: Once again, when Israel retaliates for today’s rocket fire, or for the two grad rockets fired at Beersheba yesterday, the media will blame Israel for the “tit-for-tat” violence. Oh, look. They’ve already done that.

Israeli aircraft and Gaza rocket squads traded strikes across the border on Thursday as the Israeli prime minister blamed Iran for the violence from the Palestinian territory.

Note the equivalency. Israel striking terrorist squads who are firing rockets into Israel with the hope of murdering civilians is treated exactly the same by the AP. And the next comparison is equally as vile:

Thursday’s cross-border violence tested a shaky truce Israel and Gaza militants reached earlier this week to halt a four-day flare in fighting. Since then, sporadic rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes have persisted.

The AP is doubling down on the moral equivalency. Israel said quite plainly that the airstrikes will stop when the rocket attacks stop. The rocket attacks have not stopped. The terrorist groups know that Israel won’t go in without a much bigger cause than two or three rockets a day. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that they’re firing grad rockets on purpose to make Israel spend $40,000 per interceptor. Analysts are saying that Hamas is trying to rein in PIJ because the last thing they need right now is a war. If that’s the case, then Israel should go into Gaza and rid itself of Iran’s proxy terrorists once and for all. It would take a valuable tool from Iran. Hm. The thought just occurred to me: Israel will have to go into Gaza before any strike on Iran, and take out the missiles. Double hm.

Turks are outrageously outraged: Let’s be honest here, Turkey. Most Israelis don’t vacation in your country anymore, and it’s all your fault. So can the faux outrage. That’s what you get when you side with the terrorists.

Oh, yeah, like we were gonna let a craphole like Afghanistan try an American soldier: A nation that sentences apostates to death is angry because we won’t let them put on trial the U.S. soldier who killed 16 civilians. No thanks. We’ll try him here, and punish him according to our laws.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, Terrorism, Turkey | Comments Off

It’s International Eat an Animal for PETA Day

Posted on 03/15/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Happy tenth annual Eat an Animal for PETA Day!

Ten years? Is it really ten years that we’ve been urging people to piss PETA off by eating meat and posting about it?

Why yes, yes it has.

Posted in EATAPETA | 7 Comments

Happy 15th birthday, Gracie!

Posted on 03/15/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Today is Gracie’s fifteenth birthday. It is remarkable on several levels. She’s the oldest cat I’ve ever had, beating my first Tigger by a year and a half, now. And, well, I always thought it would be Tigger 2 who would still be here, and Gracie the one that was gone.

She has allergy-related asthma. She had it so badly in NJ that I used to give her pills and shots. In fact, she was diagnosed with it after another fruitless exam by the vet, just as we were leaving–because she had an asthma attack in her carrier as I was paying my bill. Worse, she seized. I spent 30 minutes with her in the part of the vet’s office where they don’t usually let you stay, watching as the vet fought to save her life. Shots, more shots, then oxygen for 30 minutes. I spoke to her while she purred at me, sitting in some kind of enclosure while pure oxygen was pumped in and her breathing changed from open-mouthed, shuddering gasps to the normal in-and-out. “So,” the vet told me, “I’ve figured out what she has now.”

Six years ago, many of you probably remember she was very ill. My then-vets couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. She couldn’t keep any food down. She lost a ton of weight. They did exploratory surgery and found nothing, because they were effing incompetent. They wanted to play with their new toys instead of, say, checking the medical books that had the classic symptoms of IBD. They didn’t collect samples while they were inside Gracie, so she had to have surgery twice thanks to their incompetence. As soon as she was positively diagnosed with IBD, my new vet gave me Prednosone for her, which cured her pretty quickly. Miss Bony Butt filled out again. She grew fur over her Frankenkitty scar (thankfully!).

She has a heart murmur. It’s getting a bit worse each year, but it doesn’t seem to bother her in the least. During her last exam, my current vet told me we’d have to discuss treatment if it gets any worse, and I told him there will be no treatment. No meds, no operations, no nothing. Gracie is a happy, happy girl. She’s going to live out the rest of her life naturally, and die of natural causes, I hope. But she’s fifteen years old, and for that, I am very, very grateful.

I will never forget how much help you all were during those awful weeks. My co-blogger, Snoopy the Goon, has a daughter who is an excellent vet and a wonderful person. She spoke to me on the phone and gave me good advice about how to proceed. And Ellen Carozza of AMCGLTD is the one who first suggested it might be IBD, which started me down the path to getting rid of my incompetent vets and getting a great new set of vets who I love to this day. (Just yesterday, I was talking to one of them, and when I mentioned Gracie’s birthday, he told me that he was worried she wouldn’t make it when I first brought her in. I’m so glad he never told me that six years ago.) And six years ago, many of you helped me financially, hitting the tipjar when I really needed it–for Gracie.

The picture in this post was taken yesterday morning. My Princess Gracie. And to think, I was originally going to take only Tig. I’m so glad I changed my mind. Happy birthday, Sweetness!

Posted in Cats | 6 Comments

National Potato Chip Day?

Posted on 03/14/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Apparently, today was National Potato Chip Day.

Dang.

I missed it.

Posted in American Scene | 2 Comments

Save my show!

Posted on 03/14/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Do any of you watch Cougar Town, the awfully-named comedy that ABC doesn’t seem to want to promote or give any help to make sure it survives?

It was created/produced by one half of the Scrubs team (and features a few of the Scrubs cast members), and it happens to be one of the sweetest and funniest shows on TV. It was a midseason replacement this year, and nobody seems to know it’s still around, so of course the ratings are tanking.

You know, you don’t even have to watch it. Set your DVR to tape Cougar Town on Tuesday nights on ABC. Costs you nothing, helps keep my favorite show on the air.

And if you’re a Scrubs fan, you’ll want to watch this week’s episode. You’ll see some familiar faces.

Posted in Television | Comments Off

Wednesday briefs

Posted on 03/14/2012 by Meryl Yourish

And the keen grasp of the obvious award goes to: The Asia Times, for a story titled “Iranian hand seen in Gaza escalation” Really? PIJ, which receives money and marching orders from Iran, was under Iranian orders not to stop firing rockets into Gaza? Really?

Palestinian spokesliar fail: OMG, the AP is telling the truth about the death of a Palestinian boy! They’re actually not taking the word of Palestinian spokesliars.

A Palestinian boy accidentally struck by a bullet when militants fired in the air during a funeral died of his injuries Wednesday, family members and witnesses said.
Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmia initially said that 8-year-old Barka al-Mugrahbi died of wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike on Monday.

Those brilliant jihadis evidently never learned about the principle of gravity while studying Bombmaking 101. Boy was hit in the head with a bullet that came back down to earth after being fired into the air. Go figure.

Palestinian war crimes? Really? But don’t worry, there won’t be a Goldstone Commission to investigate the Palestinians firing rockets from next to hospitals, just as there will be no UN condemnation of the 220 rockets fired at Israeli civilians by Palestinian “militants.”

The Obama Double Standard: When even Politico notices that the media and the left are in the tank for Obama even when he does things they excoriated Bush for, you know you’re not imagining things.

Posted in Gaza, Iran, Israel, The One, United Nations | Comments Off

I do not think that word means what you think it means

Posted on 03/13/2012 by Meryl Yourish

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of Iran’s proxy arms, held a victory rally in Gaza today.

Yes, really.

Thousands of Islamic Jihad sympathizers participated in the group’s victory rally celebrating the end of the current round of violence against Israel on Tuesday. The rally was attended by senior Islamic Jihad officials while the group’s secretary-general, Ramadan Shallah, sent a video message from Damascus.
Shallah boasted that this is the first time that the Palestinian resistance forced a new type of truce on Israel. He threatened that the Islamic Jihad’s military wing will extend its rocket fire deeper into Israel, in response to Israel’s threats to increase the scope of its attacks on Gaza. “They (the Israelis) know where they (the rockets) can reach,” Shallah said.

Let us recap: The Palestinian terrorist groups lost 21 members, including the head of the PRC and another senior member of that group. Not a single Israeli died, though several were wounded. They demanded that as part of the truce, Israel swear off targeted killings in the future. Israel refused. In fact, here is the PIJ demand from a day or so ago:

“The ball is in Israel’s court,” he said, adding that a truce would require the Jewish state to halt its aggression and pledge to refrain from assassinations against Jihad operatives.

Wow, what a victory! Israel did nothing that they demanded. So, what, they’re celebrating that they can drive Israelis into bomb shelters? That they can cause the IDF to bomb Gaza? That Iron Dome worked so well that only one missile did any damage to an Israeli city?

They’re effing insane. This is why Israel can’t deal with them. They’re simply. Effing. Insane.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Terrorism | 2 Comments

When is a truce not a truce? When it concerns Israel

Posted on 03/13/2012 by Meryl Yourish

A truce was declared, so naturally PIJ launched more rockets and Israel withheld fire. That’s a truce in the Arab world: They get to continue to try to kill Israelis, and Israel doesn’t react. This is also, of course, a “truce” as defined by the media.

Israel-Gaza violence ebbs as truce takes effect
Israel halted its airstrikes against Gaza Strip militants early Tuesday and rocket fire from the Palestinian territory ebbed as a cease-fire ending four days of clashes appeared to be taking effect.

This is what is considered a truce:

Six mortars fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza at around noon Tuesday landed in open areas within the Negev’s Eshkol Regional Council. One of the shells exploded inside a local community, but there were no reports of injury or damage.

The AP doesn’t see fit to put that in its lead. When do you find out that the “militants” are still firing rockets? Eight paragraphs down. Remember that only the first three to five paragraphs make it into the “World News” section of your local newspapers.

The military said it carried out no airstrikes after the cease-fire took hold. Rosenfeld said eight rockets and mortars were fired at Israel after that deadline, causing no injuries.

You do, however, find out whose fault it was in paragraph five:

Months of quiet along the Gaza-Israel border were shattered on Friday with Israel’s killing of a militant commander in Gaza whom it accused of plotting to attack Israelis.

Terrorists fired 222 rockets into Israel, and here’s how the AP describes their effect:

At least 24 Palestinians, including at least four civilians, died in the cross-border fighting that followed, with the cause of another civilian’s death in dispute. There were no Israeli fatalities, but the lives of 1 million people living in southern Israel were disrupted by frequent sirens warning them to take cover from incoming rockets.

You got that? Schools have been closed since Sunday. People aren’t going to work. And they’re sleeping in bomb-proof rooms, and making sure that they stay no more than a few seconds away from shelter. And what is it? A “disruption.” Here, have a look at the “disruption” of Israeli lives, and see how much the AP minimizes what it’s like to live under the threat of death by missiles from Gaza.

Reuters has never found an Israel story it couldn’t slant against the Jewish state. But even Reuters is more factual than the AP about the “truce“. Of course they maximize “militant” deaths and don’t tell you that 20 of the 24 were terrorists until the eight paragraph, but at least they’re honest about the “truce”.

Israel-Gaza truce taking hold
An Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and militant groups in the Gaza Strip began to take hold on Tuesday after four days of violence in which 25 Palestinians were killed and 200 rockets were fired at Israel.
The number of Palestinian rocket attacks dropped sharply after the ceasefire went into effect overnight, and no major towns in southern Israel were targeted. The Israeli military said six projectiles had hit, causing no casualties, and that there had been no Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
Previous ceasefire deals after earlier rounds of fighting have often got off to a slow start, with guns gradually falling silent within a day or two.

Just in case you were wondering, the AP’s use of the word “ebb” is probably what their editors use to justify their portrayal of the truce as a truce: It means “a point or condition of decline”. So yes, violence is declining. Firing six mortars instead of dozens is a decline. But it is not a sign of a “cease-fire taking effect.”

Your anti-Israel media, once more.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, Terrorism | 1 Comment

Monday briefs, rocket attack version

Posted on 03/12/2012 by Meryl Yourish

The IDF is learning: This time around, the IDF is immediately releasing videos of terrorists shooting rockets and drones hitting weapons warehouse. I don’t know why I can’t see the video on Ynet, though, as I don’t know what the Hebrew is telling me I’m missing. However, there’s an IDF YouTube channel where you can find the videos and see the secondary explosions of this PIJ weapons factory. “Metal shop” my ass.

No other nation in the world: Imagine that this was your neighborhood. Most Americans are no longer old enough to remember the weekly air raid siren, and the regular air raid drills schools held while I was growing up. Well, they’re not drills for Israelis. One million Israelis are under rocket fire, and have been for the last four days. No other nation would tolerate this, yet the world thinks Israel’s reactions are too harsh.

Let’s slant things even more anti-Israel! Like, say, this article in the Telegraph:

Middle East Quartet to meet as Gaza death toll climbs to 21

Got that? “Gaza death toll”–as if Israelis just decided to kill a bunch of Palestinians. The fact that all but two of them were terrorists? No biggie. You don’t get the news that 180 rockets have been fired at Israel until the tenth paragraph. This is a supposedly pro-Israel newspaper in Britain. Oh, and all of the pictures are of Palestinians. Not a one about rockets in Israel. Yeah, that’s some pro-Israel slant.

Now it’s “tit-for-tat violence”: Welcome to the new AP boilerplate.

A map of the rocket ranges: Rockets are landing farther north than ever, and here’s a good map depicting the areas in range.

Egypt warned the PRC beforehand: The new regime in Egypt told the PRC their leader was in danger of assassination, and that they couldn’t use the Sinai to stage terror attacks. Good to know that the Egyptians are so concerned about their own image. Of course they don’t care about Israeli lives. They never have.

An almost-balanced lead from the AP: Hold onto your socks. This lead reads almost right.

Israeli airstrikes killed two Palestinian militants and a schoolboy in the Gaza Strip on Monday and Palestinian rocket squads barraged southern Israel, in escalating fighting that has defied international truce efforts.
The cross-border violence, touched off by Israel’s killing of a top militant leader on Friday, has been the worst exchange of fire between Israel and the Hamas-ruled territory in months.
The fighting so far has killed 21 Gazans, including 18 militants, seriously wounded two Israelis, and disrupted the lives of 1 million Israelis living within the range of Gaza rockets.

The only thing they get wrong is blaming the violence on Israel. The cause was a terror attack in the making, not the IDF killing the terror cell–no matter how many times the media say it is.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, Terrorism | Comments Off