01/07 Links Pt2: Hillel Neuer on U.N. Commission of Inquiry; 2014: The Year of the IDF Soldier

From Ian:

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UN Watch: Hillel Neuer on U.N. Commission of Inquiry

In March 2015, the United Nations (U.N.) Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict will release its report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Read below for an in-depth analysis from leading expert, Hillel Neuer.
Q: On July 23, the U.N. Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) adopted a resolution to set up a commission of inquiry that accuses Israel of potential war crimes, hate crimes and indiscriminate attacks on Palestinians. However, the report fails to mention Hamas. Moreover, it only makes a passing mention of Israeli deaths from rocket fire during the recent fighting, without specifying who fired the rockets. Can a commission of inquiry with this mandate write a fair and balanced report of what is happening in Gaza?
NEUER: No, the commission was born in prejudice, and is shaped by it. The choice of William Schabas, a longtime anti-Israel activist, embodies this prejudice. The resolution that created the commission takes for granted that Israel was in breach of its international obligations. It created a commission of inquiry to investigate war crimes in Gaza "in the context of the military operations conducted since June 13, 2014,”which the preamble defined as being those by Israel, and which it condemned as "grave violations.” The context not chosen was the Hamas aggression against Israel. The EU refused to support the one-sided text, correctly saying it was "unbalanced, inaccurate and prejudges the outcome of the investigation by making legal statements.”

John Bolton: How the Palestinian Authority Could Stop Obama’s Penchant for Internationalism

On the other hand, since our assessed contribution was 22 percent of the agency’s budget, the loss of US funding was devastating to UNESCO. The Obama administration’s repeated efforts to weaken the legislative prohibitions have all failed.
The potential consequences for the entire UN system are enormous if PA memberships continue to grow. Many Americans already don’t want to be in the United Nations, or to pay our current assessment levels, and would welcome automatic defunding.
Even if Washington lost its UN General Assembly vote for nonpayment, it wouldn’t lose its vote — and veto — in the Security Council. America’s vote is written into the UN Charter, which can’t be amended unless (among other things) the United States itself consents.
As for the ICC, America is not a party. In my happiest moment of government service, I informed the United Nations that we were “unsigning” the Rome Statute.
And while the ICC thus faces no direct funding implications, the PA most definitely does. Under US law, America’s support to the PA (about $400 million a year) ceases if the PA presses to join the ICC.
On the other hand, ICC advocates have longed to persuade the Obama administration to reject the Bush position and re-sign the Rome Statute. But the Senate would then still have to ratify the treaty — and the chances of success there fall to zero if the PA becomes a party.
In short, these likely consequences of the PA’s efforts should spur the administration to intense efforts to prevent the Palestinians from marauding their way through the UN.
But who knows? The ultimate irony could well be that the obsessively multilateralist Obama administration winds up presiding over one of the greatest debacles for international organizations since the Senate rejected Woodrow Wilson’s Versailles Treaty.
And we’d have the Palestinian Authority to thank for it.

Inside Account: How Anti-Israel Resolutions Were Defeated at American Historical Association

The rejection of the resolutions also rested on a reassertion of the principle that the AHA is a scholarly, not a political organization and that there is a difference between scholarship and politics. Historians as citizens have multiple other forum in which to express our views on public matters.
The vote yesterday was, for me, an assertion that many of us oppose efforts to use academic organizations to promote political purposes. It was a vote against the politicization of the AHA.
The fight to oppose the politicization of the universities is not over.
Yet thanks to the efforts of many people, especially in the past year or two, the American Historical Association will not be issuing resolutions denouncing Israel in 2015.
In this effort two mid-career historians, David Greenberg of Rutgers University and Sharon Musher, of Stockton College in New Jersey brought courage and their talents as historians to bear. They played an especially important role.
HAW and BDS activists may learn not to repeat their tactical blunders of recent months. They are not going away. But after their defeat at the AHA, their task has become far more difficult.
In the AHA, January 4, 2015 was one case in which good arguments and careful preparation about matters of fact produced a result as welcome as it was unexpected.

Post-Liberal Europe and its Jewish Problem

Recently, an article titled “European Idea will Die Here and Survive in Israel” appeared under my byline in the London Jewish Chronicle. Transcribed from my conversation with a reporter, the article offered a cursory sketch of my views on the deeper forces at work behind such developments as the dramatic rise in the number of French Jews moving to Israel. In brief, I expressed my judgment that Jews feel increasingly insecure in Europe and may no longer have a home there. I attributed this insecurity to three sources: the failure of Muslim integration; the resurgence of right-wing anti-Semitism; and the metamorphosis of European liberalism, which, in its embrace of what I call a post-identity culture, has turned decisively against the state of Israel and, implicitly or explicitly, against Israel’s European Jewish supporters.
The article received quite a bit of attention. Among the respondents was Barbara Spectre, the founding director of Paideia, a fine Swedish organization dedicated to promoting Jewish identity in Europe. What a pity, she wrote, that I should be predicting the death of European Jewry when I might instead have extolled the efforts of Jews across the continent to revive and renew Jewish life in their countries.
This criticism misses the point completely. I am not trying to demoralize European Jewry. On the contrary, I am deeply appreciative of those who strive to maintain their identities in the lands of their birth, and the Jewish Agency has been working hard to encourage, support, and amplify their efforts. I know from personal experience how inspiring the process of discovering one’s identity can be. I also know that the miracle of Jewish rebirth is happening today in places where, until recently, it seemed that entire communities had either assimilated or been destroyed.
Rather, the point of my remarks was otherwise: to call attention to historical shifts taking place in Europe today, and in particular the ideological currents that are turning the continent into a very difficult place for Jewish survival.

“Some Consolation" In Anti-Israel Smears

The Palestinian attempt to join the International Criminal Court to pursue “war crimes” charges against Israel represents the sort of vile and groundless smear employed by Jew-haters throughout history. The Israelis didn’t begin last July’s “Operation Protective Edge” in order to inflict “genocide” on innocent civilians but to stop the rocket fire on their own civilians. Before the Hamas terrorists began their concentrated attacks on Israeli schools, homes and hospitals, relative quiet had prevailed; that quiet returned as soon as the rocket assaults ceased, and the Israel Defense Forces destroyed most of the terror tunnels designed to conduct jihadist killers into Israeli communities.
The very notion that the Jewish state launched an unprovoked war out of some atavistic bloodlust against helpless Palestinians reflects one of the oldest and most toxic anti-Semitic themes, and lessons from combating that earlier charge can assist friends of Israel in responding to the current accusations.
For nearly a thousand years, the enemies of the Jewish people aggressively pedaled the ancient “blood libel”: the notion that religious Jews slaughtered guiltless Christian or Muslim children and then, like vampires, drained their blood to bake into their unleavened bread for Passover. The first mass slaughter based upon these accusations occurred in England in the 1100’s, and within two hundred years this preposterous charge spread throughout Europe, bringing bloody pogroms, legal expulsions, rapes, pillage and, not infrequently, genocide. As recently as 1913, Mendel Beilis faced a Czarist jury on utterly baseless accusations that he had murdered a Russian lad for ritual use of his blood. In our own time, Islamist extremists have revived the ancient accusations and even created a popular mini-series for Arabic TV dramatizing the notion that Jewish observance requires butchery of gentile innocents.

Most Palestinians in Judea & Samaria were formerly Jews

Mandelbaum also noted in his article that Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland who visited the Holy Land in 1695 found that most of the communities had Hebrew names, with some Greek and some Roman. There were no Arabic Muslim names to any of the communities at that time period. He furthermore claimed that the cities were mostly populated by Jews, while the rest of the population was predominately Christian and Muslims constituted a minority of the population.
Interestingly, Reland reported this, even though Caliph El Hakim forced all of the Jews of the Holy Land to either convert to Islam or leave the country in 1012 and the Crusaders massacred numerous Jews in the Holy Land in the late medieval period. He maintains that until the British Mandate period, the influx of Muslims into the Holy Land was minimal and most of the locals had Jewish roots.
“When General Allenby, the commander of the British military forces, conquered Palestine in 1917/1918, only a few thousand Muslim Arabs resided in the Holy Land,” Mandelbaum writes. “Most of the Arabs were Christians, and most of the Muslims in the area either came from Turkey under the Ottoman Empire, or were the descendants of Jews and Christians who were forcefully converted to Islam by the Muslim conquerors.”
However, despite the massive influx of Muslims into the Holy Land during the British Mandate period, the Palestinian interviewed proclaimed: “I don’t know of a Palestinian family who does not have a Jewish story to their history. Just like Jews were forced to convert to Christianity in Spain, they won’t ever go back, but it would be helpful to remind us publicly of whom we were and what we were, to show that we must connect as humans.”

The guilt industry complex

They don't believe in the Israel Defense Forces' investigation mechanisms. "Let the IDF whitewash," they mocked (a parody of the popular call to "let the IDF win.") They called it "investigation theater."
We're talking about leftist organizations such as B'Tselem and Yesh Din, not to mention Adalah and other lovers of Israel. What do they know about how a military operation is conducted? What, do they know more than the army? That's just it -- they don't. They want to neuter and weaken the military through litigiousness that will bind the hands of the initiative and daring that have characterized our fighters.
It is absurd to be graded by B'Tselem, whose director, Hagai Elad, not long ago refused to call even Hamas a terrorist organization.
Researcher Jonathan D. Halevi has already pointed out the unreliability of B'Tselem's "inquiries." These groups are using the threat of an appeal to the International Criminal Court to exert leverage on Israel. While doing so, they create a despicable link between the IDF and "war crimes" in international public opinion. This strategy picked up steam beginning with the infamous Durban Conference in 2001, which dealt almost exclusively with Israel and its "crimes."

LA Times Editorial Putting Israel's name back on the map

Mapping the world is not as easy as it seems. Border disputes make it difficult to draw national boundaries that everyone can agree on. Countries come and go over time and maps must be redrawn, even reconceived. When Crimea is annexed by Russia or the West Bank is occupied by Israel, when Japan and China fight over islands in the East China Sea or India and Pakistan disagree over the status of Kashmir, complicated questions can arise.
But even within this often-gray world, some things are indisputable, and respectable cartographers have a duty not to distort reality in order to appease one audience or another. So HarperCollins should be ashamed of itself for wiping Israel off a map intended for English-language schools in the United Arab Emirates.
The outline of the country appears on the map, but the nation is not labeled, unlike all the surrounding countries. Even the Gaza Strip is labeled. HarperCollins has been forthright enough to acknowledge to Tablet, a Catholic magazine, that it left Israel off intentionally, as a nod to “local preferences,” because mention of Israel would have been considered unacceptable in the schools for which the map was intended.
That's a shocking admission. If certain Arab nations prefer not to acknowledge Israel's existence in their schools, there's not much that can be done about it, though it's a sad comment on the education their students receive and, even more, on prospects for peace in the Middle East. But it is wholly unacceptable for an international publishing house — in this case, HarperCollins' United Kingdom subsidiary — to set aside accuracy to make a few sales.

Labour Councillor Suspended Over Nazi Parody

A Labour councillor from Nottingham has been suspended for sharing a doctored Conservative election poster on Twitter which shows a photo of a Nazi death camp.
Rosemary Healy, who represents Nottingham City Council's Mapperley ward, has expressed "profound apologies" after sharing the image with more than 1,500 followers.
She said she did not realise the altered version of the Tory election poster had used an image of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
A Labour Party spokesperson confirmed: "Rosemary Healy has been suspended from the Labour Party."

Is this the end of Liberal Jewish support for the Palestinians?

Since the Gaza war, numerous articles have been written, in publications such as The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, discussing whether support for Israel is still compatible with liberal values. Israeli racism, occupation and undemocratic legislation have lead many Jewish liberals to conclude that they can no longer maintain their belief in Zionism, and their support for the State of Israel.
We can discuss whether these arguments are correct or not. But it seems surprising that there is no similar discussion going on among Jewish liberals about whether they can still maintain their support for the Palestinians. The case here seems very clear – the Palestinians are in breach of numerous liberal values.
1. Many parts of Palestinian society are explicitly racist
On Palestinian television and social media, explicitly racist images and videos are often shown. For example, in this video, a Palestinian children`s TV show explicitly encourages hatred against Christians and Jews. The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is a Holocaust denier, and he recently said that there would be life imprisonment for any Palestinian who sells land to Israelis.

Stanley Cohen off to prison, Hamas to the end

One chapter in the saga of Stanley Cohen has closed, another started.
Cohen was to report today to prison to begin serving his 18 month sentence, the result of a plea bargain, for concealing and failing to report large cash transactions and failing to file income tax returns for several years.
Cohen pledged during his criminal case that he would rather serve 18 months than dine with a Zionist.
Cohen left for prison with his supporters singing the tune that he was a political prisoner. Cohen still sees himself that way as well, with the last tweet from his Twitter account, as of this writing, showing him sharing the claim that he’s a political prisoner:

When George Galloway Shmoozed Gilad Atzmon

Galloway concurs with almost everything Atzmon says during their interview. Even when Atzmon mentions “the predominance of Jews within the Bolshevik Revolution” (on Russia Today, of all places!) Galloway, the man who described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the biggest catastrophe of my life“, does not demur.
The only moment of disagreement is when Galloway describes Atzmon as Jewish. Atzmon immediately looks uncomfortable: “I’m not a Jew any more”, he protests. Galloway insists, saying “I’m not sure you can resign it”. Galloway does seem to have a ‘blood and soil’ notion of nationhood. Later in the interview, when explaining that the man who was recently convicted of assaulting him in a London street plans to live in Israel after serving his prison sentence, Galloway says “he has no genetic connection to the land of Palestine at all” (his assailant had converted to Judaism prior to the assault).
The interview ends with Galloway promising that “we are going to have to continue this another time because we’ve run over.” This means, sadly, that they did not have time to discuss Atzmon’s recently-declared admiration for American neo-Nazi David Duke. But then if Atzmon is considered a suitable guest for Galloway to schmooze, perhaps David Duke will make an appearance himself in a future episode.

Has Anyone Seen Any Rockets?

We have said it before and we shall do so again. To write about the conflict without mentioning the rockets that presaged the Israeli military operation is simply a lie.
Before a single Israeli shot was fired into Gaza, Hamas began launching rockets aimed at Jewish communities near the border. These rocket attacks are a clear act of war and there is not a country on the planet that would not be justified in fighting back.
Yet the mere possibility that Israel was justified in its actions in Gaza simply does not fit the Times’ narrative of an out-of-control cycle of violence. So they pretend the rockets didn’t exist (much in the same way during the conflict they pretended that Hamas’ use of human shields and intimidation of journalists didn’t exist.)
Leaving out the rocket attacks is leaving out a crucial element of the conflict. But this is the New York Times, whose motto should be “all the news that — according to our bias — is fit to print.”

Hateful Screed Against Israel Listed As One of Toronto Star’s Most Popular in 2014

It says a lot about the Toronto Star and its readership, that the 9th most popular story published to its website in 2014 was a hateful screed written by Vancouver author Gabor Maté that compared the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw Ghetto.
On December 31, TheStar.com’s Natasha Grzincic reported that based on the number of page views for stories posted to the Star’s website in 2014, Matés commentary was the 9th most popular and one of the most popular stories on its Facebook page. Of course, popularity shouldn’t be construed as tacit approval or endorsement of the screed, but that the Star gave a platform for this hateful discourse was disturbing.
The Star’s Grzincic said in her post that: “Commentary on the Gaza conflict this summer rarely failed to cause a stir, but this one by renowned author and Vancouver-based speaker Gabor Maté was the most read of the bunch. Maté lamented “what the beautiful old dream of Jewish redemption has come to” and “the death of innocents.” He wrote, “In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach.” The conflict, which lasted for 50 days, left more than 2,200 people dead in the Palestinian territory and caused widespread destruction. It also paralyzed large parts of southern Israel.”

Guardian: Israel built security fence to “protect” (FULL QUOTES) Jewish settlers

First, note the bizarre use of quotes around the word “protect“.
Is the Guardian’s McGrath suggesting that Israel’s decision to build the security fence may NOT in fact have been motivated by the desire to protect its citizens from waves of deadly suicide bombings during the 2nd Intifada? As CAMERA has demonstrated, there’s simply “no shortage of statistics pointing to a drop in suicide bombings” following the construction of the fence. In fact, terrorist leaders themselves have openly acknowledged that the fence impairs their capacity to launch such attacks.
Note also, in the passage we’ve highlighted, the Guardian’s suggestion that the fence was built only to protect “Jewish settlers”.
Again, this simply is not true, as the fence around Bethlehem was built in large measure to address the disproportionate number of suicide attacks in Jerusalem (and other cities within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries) originating from Bethlehem. (Jerusalem’s city centre is a mere 8 km from Bethlehem.)
The “landscape” in the Guardian protagonist’s hometown was irrevocably changed during the first few years of the 2000s for one simple reason: Palestinian terrorists had exploited the previously “open Bethlehem” to launch murderous attacks against innocent Israeli civilians.

CiF Watch prompts correction to Indy claim that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital

Of course, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not (as the passage suggests) Tel Aviv.
(As we noted previously, other UK media outlets, including the Guardian and Times of London, have made that same mistake over the years.)
Following our communication with Indy editors, they revised the relevant sentence and deleted the claim that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital.

National Geographic Runs Correction on Judaism's Holiest Site

Judaism's holiest site is the Temple Mount, the site of the first and second Jewish temples which housed the Holy of Holies (the inner sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant was located). The Western Wall, a retaining wall of the Temple Mount compound, obtained its holy status due to its proximity to the Holy of Holies.
National Geographic editors have commendably corrected the caption, which now correctly refers to the Western Western wall as "the holiest place where Jews can pray."

Anti-Semitic arson suspected in France synagogue attack

Unidentified individuals started a fire inside a synagogue near Paris and drew a swastika on its wall.
The fire was started at the synagogue of the suburb of Garges on January 1, according to the National Bureau for Vigilance against anti-Semitism, or BNVCA.
Police were looking into the case, the report said.

Islamic extremists hack websites of primary school and church in Yorkshire and replace homepages with hate message against U.S. and Israel

Islamic extremists have hacked the websites of a primary school and a church and replaced their homepages with a hate message against the US and Israel.
A group calling itself X-saad hijacked the sites of Sowerby Community Primary School and the Danish Church of Hull, both in Yorkshire, and replaced them with a sinister Islamic-State style page.
Police have launched an investigation into the hacks that were believed to have taken place late last night.
The message that appeared on both websites included a picture of the US and Israeli flag with a red cross through it.

Archaeologists discover supposed new location of Jesus's trial in Jerusalem

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that indicates the trial of Jesus occurred near the Tower of David in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The newly-released information began to be uncovered 15 years ago with the plans to expand the Tower of David Museum in the Old City. As archaeologists began digging they uncovered what appeared to be the site of the famous biblical trial. After years of further excavations and delays, the site is finally open to the public for viewing.
Historians knew that the site had previously been used as a prison during the time of the Ottoman Turks and the British rule, but it wasn't until recently that they uncovered the site’s supposed original purpose.
According to New Testament scholars, the location of the trial of Jesus is where Jesus was just before he died. In the Gospels, Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate in a military general’s tent (known as a praetorium in Latin).

One Republic coming to Israel for May 28 show in Tel Aviv

American pop rockers OneRepublic, one of the world's most popular bands, will be performing in Israel as part of their 2015 world tour.
The band announced on their Facebook page Wednesday that "we added another date to the #Native Tour! We will be coming to Tel Aviv, Israel" at Ganei Yehoshua in the Yarkon Park on May 28th.
The group, led by prolific songwriter and singer Ryan Tedder, relied on post-music industry means to get their music to the public, originally rising to prominence via MySpace. Signed and dropped by Sony BMG, the Colorado-based band was later signed by hip hop producer Timbaland, and since 2007, through three albums and millions of downloads and YouTube views, they've established themselves as international stars with their tuneful, mainstream pop.

A eulogy to an inspiration, Joan Peters

Joan Peters died Monday night at her home in Chicago.
Her funeral will be on Thursday, January 8 at 10 AM at Anshe Emet, 3751 N. Broadway, in Chicago.
Joan was best known for her landmark book: "From Time Immemorial,” published in 1984, which caused unprecedented heartache to detractors of Israel.
Joan's book was the first academic study published in the modern era which documented how the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, perpetuates the refugee status of Arabs who were displaced, or left voluntarily, during the War of Independence.
Today, as Joan predicted would happen, UNRWA has become an integral part of efforts to undermine Israel's standing in the eyes of the world and in its own eyes.

Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra to Perform at UNESCO Headquarters, Mark 70th Anniversary of Auschwitz Liberation

The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra will perform at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on Monday, January 26, at the special opening concert of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year will mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The concert will be conducted by the orchestra’s music director, Maestro Frédéric Chaslin, a second generation Holocaust survivor who comes from France. Chaslin’s mother was hidden by a Danish fishing family during the war.
The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra was invited by UNESCO Secretary General Irina Bokova to perform at the UNESCO Headquarters. It will open with the world premiere of Maestro Chaslin’s “Ode to Peace,” which was composed in honor of the recently marked United Nations International Day.

Fading independence declaration given Dead Sea Scroll treatment

At almost 67 years old, she didn’t look so bad as the lights flashed and the camera snapped away. But the reason Israel’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, took a rare trip Tuesday to the Israel Antiquities Authority’s labs to undergo multispectral imaging was precisely because flaws had started to appear.
The document, which was hastily drafted and signed on May 14, 1948, is ordinarily stored at the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem, but was brought to the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library to be digitized and photographed by the IAA’s custom-designed hi-tech multispectral imaging technology.
Digitizing the Declaration of Independence is part of an ongoing project by the State Archives to document, monitor and preserve one of the Jewish people’s most significant single documents; appropriately, the government turned to the home of the most important manuscripts in Jewish history, the Dead Sea Scrolls.

2014: The Year of the IDF Soldier

Last year was the year of the soldier. This past summer during “Operation Protective Edge” our country found itself in the midst of yet another “War without choice” battling for our very hearth and home. Right across the political and religious spectrum we were all united behind the youngsters in the IDF. These brave boys and girls who were putting their life on the line for the safety of our homeland and the future of the Jewish people.
As the missiles rained down on Israel, politics (with the exception of Balad MK Haneen Zoabi) were put on the backburner as we prayed for and enveloped our soldiers with our love.
Troops around Gaza and manning Iron Dome batteries were swamped with supplies by a grateful nation. The face beneath the helmet of the selfless teens became the face of our Zionist dreams and hopes. I vividly recall listening to a new Olah (immigrant) from France being interviewed upon her arrival to Israel and asked if she was scared. She answered that everywhere Jews are threatened. The difference is that here in our own country we can fight back and defend Jewish honour and dignity.

PreOccupied Territory: God, Angels Laughing Riotously Over Muhammad Cartoons

The Heavens, January 7 – The LORD Almighty and His ministering angels are just tickled pink, as it were, by the hullabaloo surrounding cartoons and films mocking Muhammad, heavenly sources say.
“Thus saith the LORD: Thou canst not make this stuff up,” reported the archangel Gabriel, his seraphic cheeks ruddy from peals of hysteria. “For lo, not since Martin Luther’s earnestness have I seen thee worked up as the Euphrates doth churn in spring,” he continued, before collapsing in another fit. “Oh, LORD, thank Thee for not creating me with actual lungs, for they be deprived now of air,” he managed to gasp.
Heavenly computer terminals have been busier than usual in recent weeks as angels and departed souls watch the streaming video trailers and view the satirical cartoons to discover what all the fuss is about, and to join God in bouts of laughter. “It’s been unusually jolly here,” said the patriarch Isaac, whose name means “He will laugh” in Hebrew, and who knows a thing or two about the divine sense of humor. “The LORD has taken to looking over the shoulders of anyone watching and sharing the laughter with them as the train wreck unfolds on the screen and on Earth below.”
“It’s really only the Jews who get it,” mused Isaac. “They continuously get shafted throughout history, and they keep disproportionately producing comedians. Why do you think God chose them?” He then shuffled away, the victim of yet another divine stealth wedgie.
“Now that doth not get old,” the LORD was heard to say.