The survey and the MSM

The only mention of the Bir Zeit University survey mentioned in my previous article is in this dispatch from AP, by terror-apologist Mohammed Daraghmeh:

A new survey released Tuesday showed 77 percent of Palestinians would vote in favor of the proposal. The survey of 1,200 Palestinians was conducted by Bir Zeit University in the West Bank and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Here is a textbook example of how the media manipulates the news it spoonfeeds to the world to conform to its already pre-existing script.

The script is that Mahmoud Abbas, man of peace, is pressuring Hamas to change its wicked ways and accept Israel's existence. Using the sheer will of the peaceful Palestinian Arab people, he is going to force Hamas to realize that peaceful means are the only way possible, by having the people vote directly for a peace plan that recognizes Israel and supports the idea of living side-by-side with Israel.

The reality is what I wrote in my last posting: the "proposal" is not peaceful at all, it does not recognize Israel, and it even advocates Israel's destruction under the "right of return"; the poll showed that Palestinian Arabs themselves are almost unanimous in supporting terror against Jewish civilians to some extent, and the authors of the proposal who are idolized by Palestinian Arabs are convicted murderers and terrorists.

It is not like the survey results are only in Arabic - they are in English and available to any reporter or person with a web browser. While it may be argued that the poll is not strictly scientific (the questions appear to be somewhat leading,) if the results that adhere to the MSM script are news, one would hope that the lopsided results that rip the script to shreds are at least as newsworthy. 96% of them supporting terror(with a margin of error of 3%!) is as close to unanimous as you will ever find in any survey, and at some point the world needs to look at what the Palestinian Arab people truly want.

Even if the answers may be very, very ugly.

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Latest Peaceful Palestinian Poll: 4% oppose terror!

A recent poll released by Bir-Zeit University:

19. As to funding the Palestinian National Authority, which one of these two directions do you support?
1) Hamas continues to reject recognizing Israel, while reaching out to countries like Iran and the Arab world to get funding	60.8%
2) Hamas recognizes Israel and continue to receive funding from the international community	31.0%
Do you support the following statement: 37. Commitment to resistance with a focus in the occupied territories.
1) Yes	83.4%
2) To some extent	12.6%
3) No	4%
42. Do you support or oppose that the (Prisoners’ Declaration) be the basis for a national unity program?
1) Support	81.1%
2) Oppose	13.0%

Now, one might be surprised that the same people who do not want to recognize Israel in question 19 overwhelmingly support the "prisoners' declaration" which the media has portrayed as "implicitly" recognizing Israel in question 42.

The answer is obvious - nowhere does the "prisoner's declaration" recognize Israel except in the fevered minds of wire service reporters. As has been very well documented by Honest Reporting and Israel Matzav, the entire initiative is a smokescreen that the wishful thinkers of the West are more than happy to pretend is a breakthrough.

The poll result that will not make the mainstream media at all is the fact that only 4% of Palestinian Arabs reject terror altogether. The question is ambiguously worded, but what is entirely clear is that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs want to see continued attacks against Jewish civilians (what is euphemistically called "resistance.")

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French Black anti-Semitism - not only a Muslim issue

A scary piece of real reporting, from City Journal:

The Wrath of Ka

Black anti-Semites storm Paris’s old Jewish quarter.

by Nidra Poller
6 June 2006

On the last Sunday of May, 30 angry black men stormed into the heart of the old Jewish quarter, terrorizing residents, shopkeepers, and Sunday strollers. The self-styled militia of the Ka Tribe, a black separatist group originally connected to the no-longer funny black comic Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, embodied the worst fears of a Jewish community exposed, since January 2006, to a new rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

Three months after the torture-murder of Ilan Halimi, the intimidating incursion of the Ka militia into the narrow “Jewish” street of the Marais looks like an ominous sign of worse to come. The Ka Tribe is the lunatic fringe of a broad anti-Semitic movement originally inspired by Dieudonné, who has become a hero to a segment of black French society by focusing resentment on Jews. But Dieudonné, with a French mother and Cameroonian father, was not black enough for Stellio Capochichi, the Tribe’s leader, whose origins are Haitian and Ivoirian.

A self-serving interview with the college-educated leader, who calls himself Fara (pharaoh) Kemi Saba, appeared on the Ka website until the government shut it down two days after the rue des Rosiers incursion. Deftly manipulating the terms and gestures of French intellectual discourse, Kemi Saba, flanked by two husky bodyguards, lays out his latter-day ideology of “negritude,” a rehash of the worst of Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, born-again Africanism, and Malcolm X, served up with the nastiness of the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam. Though Kemi Saba preaches total separation from leucodermes (anything less than 100 percent pure blacks) and rejects both Christianity and Islam, he has a soft spot for Islamism. In a communiqué attacking “Sarkkkozy the Jew,” the Fara’s spokesman lashes out at “[whites] who make caricatures of the prophet of Islam.”

Kemi Saba’s resentment is all-embracing: the injustice that rankles him began with the very origins of humanity. The kémites (the term replaces leucoderm words like blacks, Africans, or Antilleans) are the true chosen people, destined to rule the world. Victims of oppression of mythical proportions, they will liberate themselves by returning to original sources of spirituality and social organization. Ka males—medzatones—are noble warriors; the females—Aset—are sublime beauties and perfect mothers; the children learn to be true kémites in the “School of Hor” (Horus).

Eyewitnesses concur about the incursion: 30 men in paramilitary formation stormed into rue des Rosiers, shouting threats and insults against Jews. Some wore boxer’s mouthpieces and leather gloves with brass knuckles. They burned with anger and itched for a fight. Frantic calls to the police met with laconic replies: “Yes, we have been informed.”

The men stomped and shouted for what seemed an endless 20 minutes. People who had seen the interview with Kemi Saba on the Ka website recognized him, protected by his bodyguards and visibly directing the operation according to plan. Some shopkeepers lowered their metal shutters as soon as they saw the hostile group round the corner at rue Vieille du Temple and march into rue des Rosiers. Others took people into their fragile boutiques. Men, women, and children felt totally defenseless, delivered up to a storm of uncontrollable rage. Some witnesses report seeing baseball bats, sticks, knives; others suspected their presence under thick black jackets; all believed that these men were capable of committing a massacre. The police did not come until the militia had left. They did collar some members of the group later, close to their Belleville headquarters; they questioned and released them.

The capture of Youssouf Fofana—leader of the gang of barbarians accused of the torture-murder of Ilan Halimi—and his extradition from the Ivory Coast had provoked the Ka’s wrath. They sent a message to various Jewish groups and individuals, threatening to kill other Jews if anyone dared to touch a hair on Fofana’s head; it has circulated on the Web since late February. Another communiqué warns interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy of dire consequences if Fofana does not get a fair trial. Can he possibly get a fair trial from a “leucoderm” court? Can he be guilty in the eyes of kémites?

Veiled threats led to aggressive action even before the incursion as the Ka went after real or imagined members of Betar (a group that provides security for Jewish events) and the Jewish Defense League, accused of persecuting blacks and Muslims who penetrate their turf—rue des Rosiers—and beating up kémites during the memorial march for Ilan Halimi. On May 19, the Ka militia stormed a gym in the 9th arrondissement, looking for Betar and Jewish Defense League “strongmen.” There they terrorized kids (non-Jewish ones, as it happened) who were learning an Israeli martial art. The Ka packaged the rue des Rosiers incursion as a pre-arranged showdown with the “Zionist extremists” and announced a knockout victory—because the “extremists” didn’t show up.

This fantasized warfare is no less outlandish than the esoteric Ka mythology, built around worship of Aton, a smattering of hieroglyphics, and imitation of Jewish identity. The French government has tolerated the Ka for years, but their hero worship of Fofana, the increasingly vehement threats against Interior Minister Sarkozy, and, now, this show of force in the Jewish quarter has provoked signs of severity. The interior minister visited the rue des Rosiers this Wednesday to show his support and promise results. He has called for a criminal investigation and eventual dissolution of the group. Greeted in Montfermeil with shouts of anger, he found himself welcomed to the Marais with hurrahs and “Sarkozy for President.”

Outside the ORT school, where the minister met with residents, a dapper gray-haired shop owner said, with dignified regret, “It’s over for Jews in France.” And added, “The police told me . . . they said it’s over for us . . . they can’t handle this problem. . . . It’s too late.”

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Who will be the Sderot sacrifice?

Seven Kassam rockets hit Sderot yesterday and, miraculously, no one has died in the latest barrage, even though some hit houses.

It is inevitable that one day the miracles will run out and people will die in Sderot from Kassam attacks. And it is inevitable that Israel will respond with a small-scale ground operation to Gaza followed by a quick withdrawal. And it is inevitable that there will be more rocket attacks, and soon Kassams will be replaced with Katyushas. And it is inevitable that Israel will have to go back into Gaza more permanently to stop these inevitable attacks.

The only problem is, Israel seems to want to wait until some of her citizens are dead first.

Even though the motives of the scum launching the rockets are identical to the motives of suicide bombers - to kill as many Jews as possible. Even though the PA has not the slightest interest in stopping the terror.

Still, Israel is responding with the occasional assassination and lots of tough words, rather than taking care of the problem in the only way it will be taken care of anyway. Inevitably.

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New JBlog aggregator

JBlogsphere.net (notice the spelling!) is a new aggregator page like JRants and Jewish Blogging. One nifty feature is the ability to mouse-over a posting and read part of the post.

Of course, the bad news is that some people can read this post without going to my site and I don't get any hits...

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The Refugees of Zer'in

During Israel's War of Independence, the Palestine Post published occasional dispatches from Dorothy Bar-Adon called "Emek Diary" showing the human side of the war from her perspective.

In this amazing article, Bar-Adon describes the close relationships between her village's Jews and the Arabs of Zer'in (now Jezreel), who lived in a town overlooking much of the valley. The town's strategic position made it ideal for shelling and sniping at the Jewish villages below, and for months the Jews lived in fear of being shot in their houses or fields.

An Iraqi general and his troops arrived in Zer'in and built up fortified positions to attack from. It is unclear when exactly the residents of Zer'in left the town; most of them apparently left when the Iraqis arrived and before the Jews conquered the hill. But as this article makes clear, the Israeli soldiers could hear the Arab women of the village - neighbors and friends of the Jews in years past - shout out war cries during the first unsuccessful attempt to take the town.

Bar-Adon shows that she is in a position to be far more sympathetic to the Palestinian Arab refugees of Zer'in than the international community who were (and still are) insisting on allowing the Arabs to return: she knew them intimately, she celebrated happy times with them, she ate with them. But, as she explains, to allow Arabs to go back to Zer'in is unthinkable, knowing that they chose their sides, they waxed lyrically hoping and expecting the deaths of hundreds of Jews around Zer'in, and that they would choose sides again against the Jews if they are given a chance.

(See Palestine Post-ings for a larger version of the article.)

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Aw, isn't he cute?

A Palestinian child holds a weapon during a a demonstration in support of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

A very large list of similar photos can be found at LGF.

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Latest Hamas "truce" news

Just another link to send brain-dead reporters and editors who insist on claiming that Hamas is holding by a truce:

From Ha'Aretz:

Hamas operatives in the West Bank have experimented with adding toxic chemicals to their bombs, security sources told Haaretz Monday.

The organization also is amassing large stocks of explosives so operatives will be ready to launch attacks immediately should its leadership decide to end the security "lull," the sources added.

Currently, Hamas' West Bank cells are focusing mainly on buying arms, training operatives, setting up explosives factories and conducting experiments. However, a few cells - mainly in the southern West Bank, around Hebron and Bethlehem - are continuing to carry out small-scale attacks. These cells are only loosely connected to the organization's leadership in Damascus and Gaza, and as long as they keep a relatively low profile and do not claim responsibility for their attacks in Hamas' name, the leadership does not interfere. One such cell was arrested early this year after murdering six Israeli civilians near Gush Etzion and Hebron.

In Gaza, Hamas operatives often assist attacks carried out by Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees. The rockets fired at Sderot last week, for instance, were made by Hamas, and "rebellious" members of the organization helped launch them. The Shin Bet security service also accused senior Hamas operatives of having helped the Popular Resistance Committees prepare a attack in April at the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel. That plan was foiled by PA security personnel.

There is also one type of attack to which Hamas' leadership has given its unequivocal blessing: attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers or civilians for use in negotiations over the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

The Shin Bet and police arrested a senior Hamas operative in Ramallah two weeks ago who was responsible for planning several "mega-attacks." The arrest was made public Monday.

Ibrahim Hamed heads Hamas' military wing in the West Bank. His planned attacks included attempts to blow up railway tracks and an attempted bombing of the Pi Glilot gas storage facility.

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Kudos to the IZW Cartoon Division

Prosecutors launched a criminal investigation Monday of two Azerbaijani newspapers that published collages featuring the heads of Iran's spiritual leaders placed on the bodies of two dogs.

The collages appeared just weeks after a caricature published in an Iranian newspaper, depicting Azeris as cockroaches, sparked deadly riots among Azeris in Iran.

The images, published in the newspapers 'Gun' and 'New Fakt' last week, also prompted an official protest from the Iranian Embassy, which called them offensive and blamed the United States and Israel.

'Such a move serves the dirty intentions and unlawful goals of America and its Zionist allies and is intended to promote division between religions, faiths and ethnic groups, as well as in the unity of the Islamic world,' the embassy said in a statement.

The Cartoon Division of the World Media Section of the International Zionist Web was once considered a place for slackers to relax and shoot spitballs at the Sports and Hollywood divisions, but ever since late last year the Cartoon Elders have stepped up to the plate and done their fair share around here. Kudos!

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Flaming hoop jumping, explained

I was always curious about why Palestinian Arab terrorists/policemen spend so much time practicing jumping through flaming hoops:


It finally hit me! It isn't, as I conjectured in February, that the "policemen" were staring a circus to cheer up the poor Palestinian Arab children and alleviate the humanitarian crisis.

But the real answer can be seen in another picture, variants of which have been published many dozens of times (כן ירבו):


Notice the relative sizes of the flaming hoops and the burnt out car window.

Palestinian Arab "police" are pursuing a skill that is very practical and much in demand in the territories: they need to practice quickly jumping out of the windows of flaming cars!

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Just your ordinary terrorist

In today's Newark Star-Ledger is an amazing article about the Gaza economy that effectively sympathizes with a terrorist:

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip -- Silhouetted by the late afternoon sun, a lone family of Palestinian bathers gathers around a table at Ibrahim's beach café to sip tea against the backdrop of the shimmering Mediterranean.

The scene easily could have been lifted from a marketing pamphlet for an exotic beach resort. But Ibrahim's actually is located in Shirat Hayam, a former Israeli settlement, and the beach is surrounded by rubble where militant squatters make their own law.

The beach had been off limits to Palestinians before Israel ended a four-decade occupation of Gaza in September. Now, a strip of Spartan yet rustic cafés like Ibrahim's has sprung up in anticipation of a busy summer.

"We are hopeful that the coffee shops will be crowded," says Sabri el Khidra, the 48-year old owner of Ibrahim's and a local militia leader who plunked about $15,000 into the renovation. "There are a lot of plans to make this a tourist area and to make Khan Younis the most beautiful beach in Gaza."

The reporter, Joshua Mitnick, is quick to describe his ideas of the source of the problems with building the Gaza economy:

The problems here begin with economic isolation and the desperation it has spawned.

Bracing for cross-border attacks, Israel's military has sealed key commercial crossings and lobbed thousands of tank shells into Gaza. At the same time, the refusal of Hamas (the country's ruling party) to recognize Israel after taking power in March has brought a suspension of international aid.

Nowhere does Hamas' and other Palestinian Arab terror aims have any part of the equation. Israel's closure of crossings is described in the active voice; everything else is in passive voice. No responsibility for Gaza's problems is ascribed to those that practice or advocate terror.

After talking about the "success" of turning Jewish schools into a branch of Al-Aqsa University, Mitnick concludes:

Still, Ibrahim's owner, el Khidra, is hopeful the financial crisis will end soon. He even believes tourists one day might discover Gaza.

"I am prepared to protect any tourist that comes here," he boasts.

Almost any tourist. Israelis, as el Khidra points out in a stark reminder of how little things really have changed, won't ever be welcome here.

"If I could get inside (their country) today and blow myself up, I would do it."

So in paragraph 30 of this long story, we find out that the person that the reporter is profiling as a bright shining star in rebuilding Gaza is in fact a would-be mass murderer.

An article that could have emphasized that terrorists are running Gaza instead implies that Gazan terrorists are just ordinary people who want to build up their country despite Israel's and international pressure.

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The Palestinian Arab people's responsibilities

In comments on this posting, VJ claimed that I was demonizing Palestinian Arabs. Although that was not my intent, to an extent he is right, and while perhaps I was not as careful in my wording as I should have been, it got me to thinking about the actual responsibility that Palestinian Arab people (rather than their leaders) have towards a peaceful Middle East.

I strongly feel that nations and peoples have a mass psychology similar to individuals. Sometimes they coincide with their leaders' psyches, sometimes not. These psyches can change over time but it is usually a slow process. Understanding global patterns and knowing how to act properly in any given situation depends on knowing how all the players think and are likely to react, and a fatal mistake that global leaders often make is the assumption that people are all the same and would all act the same way that their own people would.

In a previous posting, I laid out my analysis of the Palestinian Arabs' psyche:

Arab people just want to raise their families with dignity and pride.

The entire brief history of the Palestinian Arabs shows this to be true. The ones who lived in Palestine in the 1800s didn't care that they were under Ottoman rule, they didn't crave independence. After the Jews started coming in serious numbers and the economy boomed, many (I believe most) of the ancestors of today's Palestinian Arabs moved into Palestine from Syria and Jordan, because that was how they could best provide for their families. More moved in under British rule than under Ottoman rule, because economic concerns were far more important than political concerns.

If "independence" was the uppermost concern of Arabs, then why do over a million choose to stay in Israel rather than move to PA-administered areas? As the Clinton team famously observed, "it's the economy, stupid."

The people who have screwed the Palestinian Arabs the most have always been their "leaders." It was their leaders who decided to force them to boycott Jewish goods to their detriment, it was their leaders who kept them in "refugee" camps, it was their leaders who forced them to fight losing battles against the hated Zionists.

The "golden age" of Palestinian Arabs was during the "occupation" - this was when they had good paying jobs, when Israel built them an electrical and safe water infrastructure, when the Zionists used their devious Jewish expertise to dramatically increase the Palestinian Arab life expectancy and slash their infant mortality rates. During Oslo, tens of thousands of Jordanians moved illegally into the West Bank so they could raise their families in the comparative paradise that Israel built for the Palestinian Arabs.

The ordinary Palestinian doesn't care who his leader is or about Zionism or occupation or terror or democracy as long as his basic needs are met.

This is the background needed to understand the Hamas victory.

While I still largely believe this to be true, I did not mention a strong component to the current Palestinian Arab psyche: the effect of decades of government-controlled, institutionalized hate speech against Israel and Jews. Years of blaming Jews for every problem, as well as years of telling people that they should live in a welfare state and that they are owed jobs, money and a country, will have a slow but cumulative effect. Palestinian Arabs are slowly turning from the most creative, ambitious and hard-working of all the Arab people into whining babies. (It is no coincidence that when they were in daily contact with Jews and Westerners was when they have traditionally acted the most maturely.)

Given all this, given the cards they have been dealt by their leaders, by other Arab leaders and by Israelis, what are the Palestinian Arab people's responsibilities? How should they be acting?

No matter what one's situation, one must act like a moral, mature and responsible human being. Growing up in a terror environment no more justifies becoming a terrorist than growing up in a crackhouse justifies becoming a criminal. It may be harder but ultimately we must be held responsible for our own decisions. This is basic.

While I do not believe that the Palestinian people voted Hamas in power because of Hamas' desire to create a Jew-free Middle East, they are in the end responsible for that result. They were aware of Hamas' goals even if that was not the primary factor in their decision to choose Hamas.

If a US state would elect a governor who is a KKK member and who advocates racist laws, even if the people elected him on a "law and order" platform, we would do everything we could to blunt the effect of that election - legally, economically and socially. We would expect boycotts of that state's products, we would expect conventions to move to other states, we would expect the federal government to pass laws to counteract any state laws the governor manages to pass, we would expect ordinary people to react with disgust and horror. Some of these actions would inevitably hurt the people of that state and in the end that is wholly appropriate.

The Palestinian Arabs should be ashamed that the bigoted and murderous Hamas ended up in power. One does not discern any sense of shame, however.

So the first responsibility is to treat a genocidal terrorist group as pariahs and not as heroes.

There is another choice that Palestinian Arabs have: whether to remain pawns in the power plays of their leaders, or to actually work to build their state and their economy.

I mentioned here that Israel's existence was no more certain in 1946 than Arab Palestine's is today, and the circumstances that the Jews lived under were quite difficult. Even so, individually and without a central quasi-governmental plan, they built universities, they built industries, they started projects that would take years to bear fruit. A people who want to be treated as an equal among other nations must act as if they deserve that status - and if they need handouts to reach that goal, the handouts should come from their own people before they demand it from the world.

In other words, their second responsibility is to build things unilaterally, not destroy them.

This posting is already going on longer than I expected, but I must mention that there are many other responsibilities that Palestinian Arabs should be taking on but on a whole are not: protecting their children from violence and from indoctrination into terror groups, teaching tolerance for other people, protesting against the culture of death, protesting against honor killings, stopping the hero worship of terrorists. The lack of responsible actions on the "street" is not the fault of their leaders, but of the people themselves. Until one sees public protests that are against violence and for acting responsibly, until one sees a huge groundswell from the people and from their press to act like responsible human beings, it is not unreasonable to criticize the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

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European support for Palestinian Arabs "crashing"

From the Jerusalem Post:

New public opinion surveys conducted among "opinion elites" in Europe show that support for the Palestinians has fallen precipitously, according to a leading international pollster, Stan Greenberg, who has been briefing Israeli leaders on his findings in the past few days. There has not necessarily been "a rush to Israel" but there has been a "crash" in backing for the Palestinians, he noted.

Greenberg told The Jerusalem Post that the shifts in attitudes reflected in the surveys were so dramatic that he "redid" some of the polls to ensure there had been no error.

He singled out France as the country where attitudes had changed most dramatically. Three years ago, 60 percent of French respondents said they took a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of that 60%, four out of five backed the Palestinians. Today, by contrast, 60% of French respondents did not take a side in the conflict, and support for the Palestinians had dropped by half among those who did express a preference.

Greenberg said the figures were still being finalized, and so did not go into further details. But shifts such as these, he said, represented "an incredible pace of change," with significant consequences.

The Intifada combined with the Hamas victory in the elections has come close to ending Europe's love affair with Palestinian Arabs. Add to the mix the clear support among Palestinian Arabs for Al Qaeda, for the bombing attacks in London and Madrid, for Saddam Hussein and for Iran, and the Europeans are slowly realizing that they are backing people who want them dead.

Interestingly, this is not translating yet into support for Israel. Changing the anti-Israel attitudes will take much longer.

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Israel develops a second active protection system

From Defense Update.com, hat tip to Epaminondas.

Showing yet again who the good guys are.

Iron Fist Active Protection System (APS) Israel Military Industries (IMI)

In Eurosatory 2006 IMI is unveiling its new Active Defense System (ADS) called - Iron Fist. Until recently, the development of Iron Fist was shrouded in secrecy, as it was developed in parallel to a different Israeli developed ADS system - RAFAEL's Trophy, which entered full scale development in 2005. However, due to rapid development pace and successful testing, IMI expects to deliver the first systems for IDF testing and qualifications by mid 2007. Unlike competing systems, IMI's Iron Fist can be installed on light vehicles, including trucks and even Humvees, offering effective protection from RPGs. IMI conducted extensive testing against a full spectrum of threats, engaging various types of threats from stationary and moving armored personnel carriers. The system already demonstrated effective protection of light vehicles and heavy armored vehicles, from small rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and tank rounds equipped with shaped charge warheads as well as advanced kinetic threats (armor piercing tank rounds). The system uses a fixed radar sensor, mounted on the protected platform, to detect potential threats, measure distance and trajectory, providing the fire control system with data for calculates engagement plans. When a threat is identified as imminent, an explosive projectile interceptor is launched toward it. The interceptor, shaped similar to a small mortar bomb, is designed to defeat the threat even when flying in very close proximity. Unlike other systems, the Iron Fist uses only the blast effect to defeat the threat, crushing the soft components of a shaped charge or deflecting and destabilizing the missile or kinetic rod in their flight. The interceptor is made of combustible envelope, fully consumed in the explosion. Without the risk of shrapnel, Iron Fist provides an effective, close-in protection for vehicles operating in dense, urban environment. The use of close proximity, rather than "hit to kill" mechanism avoids complex interception techniques and contributes to reduced cost. One of the main advantages of the Iron Fist is its integration into routine operations. Its sensor provides essential input to situational awareness systems, based on ground radar surveillance, moving target detection, classification and tracking and motion detection. Furthermore, by loading other types of projectiles, such ass non lethal, anti-personnel, smoke or illumination, the system can be used in support of routine operation. Iron Fist is supported by Israel's MOD Defense Research & Development Directorate (DRDD). The program is designed to protect medium and light vehicles, but based on its performance, has the potential to be fielded on heavy armor as well. In future configurations, the system has a growth potential to protect sensitive elements of fixed installations or patrol boats, protecting from RPG attacks, frequently encountered in counter insurgency operations.

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Where kids are worth more dead than alive

In a twisted but not surprising story in today's Jerusalem Post:

A group of Palestinian children were sent towards the Gaza Strip border fence holding toy guns on Thursday in order to test the vigilance of the soldiers on duty.

From a distance, troops noticed four apparently armed Palestinians approaching the border north of the Kissufim crossing.

When the four were some 400 meters from the fence, the soldiers realized that they were children, who looked to be about 13 years of age, and that their guns were toys.

This is not the first time that Palestinian Arabs cynically played with their children's lives.

But in the sick world of the Palestinian Arab psyche, it makes sense. As has been pointed out many times, the actions of these Arabs are completely inconsistent with building a state and completely consistent with destroying Israel.

Dead kids that can be blamed on Israel get media attention, putting pressure on Israelis to be more careful as they try to come up with better ways to defend their own lives as well as the lives of Palestinian children. The mileage that Palestinian Arabs can get out of a dead kid (or pretend dead kid) can be enormous. Combine that with the culture of death that permeates the territories and you have a paradoxical situation:

Palestinian Arabs have a vested interest in having their kids be killed by Israel, and Israel has a vested interest in keeping Palestinian Arab kids as safe as possible.

So Israel spends more time and money and effort in protecting Palestinian Arab children than the Arabs do.

This reason alone demolishes the "argument" that far-left and pro-terror websites use that Israel is practicing genocide against Palestinian Arabs. Forgetting that Israel actually has some morals, unlike its enemies, even if Israel wanted every Arab kid dead she wouldn't do anything about it because it only ends up hurting Israel.

And yet, even when the two sides of a conflict have such diametrically different views of morality, the world insists on being "even-handed" in dealing with the conflict.

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