Post of the morning

Dave Bender brilliantly shoots down a clueless rich rock star.

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Another moronic professor

Being a professor in a California university is no longer a prestigious position - in fact, it appears to be about as related to truth and objectivity as being a propagandist in the Soviet Union.

Here is the latest example. I would say "jaw-dropping"but, alas, it is closer to typical.

On the Beach (Gaza Killing)

By Professor Ronnie D. Lipschutz

Wednesday , 21 June 2006

Bombs, rockets, and artillery shells don’t always go where you aim them or want them to go. Sometimes, however, where they go may serve a political purpose.

This past Friday, some sort of projectile went astray at a beach in Gaza, killing at eight people—six from one family—out to enjoy a day in the sun. We know who killed them; it is less clear what killed them or why. Some thought the wayward shells might have come from an Israeli gunship offshore or from an aircraft. Israeli military officials explained that the deaths were accidental—“collateral damage”— and that the wayward artillery shells were meant to deter the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel. Official sources regretted harm to any Palestinian civilians. But the damage was done. Eight people were dead and Hamas declared it would resume attacks on Israel. Perhaps this was not an accident.

One irony of this episode is that the Qassam rockets fired by Palestinians into Israel are made locally in workshops, notoriously inaccurate, short range and cause few, if any, casualties or damage. Mostly, they have nuisance value. Israel’s reaction, by contrast, is powerful and deadly. It has produced steady stream of Palestinian casualties, both “militants” in cars and houses and civilians who are merely in the way. Predictably, such killings cause resentment, anger and more rockets, all beyond the control of either President Abbas or the Hamas government. Israel can then argue that violence is all the Palestinians know and there is no one among them with whom to negotiate, even as it ensures, with its repeated attacks, that there will be no Palestinians willing to risk negotiations for fear of assassination.

Notice the date on the article - exactly one week after Israel showed voluminous and exhaustive proof that they were not responsible for the deaths, this "professor" willfully ignores that and quotes the earlier, mistaken assumption of responsibility. He adds, smugly: "We know who killed them," asserting a fact that is a lie. Then, predictably, he goes off on a wild and bizarre theory that blames Israel for all and downplays the danger from crude Kassams - merely a nuisance, that only kills a few people a year.

Ronnie D. Lipschutz is Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA (rlipsch@ucsc.edu)

One of his more interesting articles calls for the "peaceful" overthrow of the US government.

UPDATE: Apparently, he wrote this article on the 14th - still after Israel showed that they were not responsible. He didn't seem to work too hard from it being republished or corrected elsewhere, though.

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Just a thought

I have no evidence whatsoever for the following theory, but it sounds plausible.

Looking at the pictures of Palestinian Arabs getting their $300 from Hamas' fundraising tour:

Now, Zahar filled his suitcase with $20 million from visiting Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, China, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt. Most of these nations are not places one would expect to be flush with US currency, especially what appears to be mint-condition currency.

However, at least China is heavily suspected of being a major counterfeiter of US currency.

What are the chances that the Palestinian Arabs are being paid with bogus banknotes?

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Are pro-Israel blogs effective?

Dave at Israellycool has an interesting poll that I would encourage you to answer. I wonder myself whether I have ever made anyone more pro-Israel as a result of reading this blog.

Even if I am "preaching to the choir," I think that there is at least one side-benefit of maintaining the blog, and that is that some source materials are out there on the Internet for when people are searching. Many of my "hits" are from people doing Google searches and hopefully a few more posts that are pro-Israel can affect opinions, even subliminally.

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Widening the debate

Meryl Yourish points to a Jerusalem Post article about a "panel discussion" in London:

Informed, honest debate on the Middle East has been stifled because of a fear of being accused of anti-Semitism, according to the participants in a discussion hosted by the Islam Channel in central London on Thursday. The broadcaster is the largest Islamic television outlet in Europe.

The discussion, titled: "Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism," was filmed against a backdrop reading "Zionism: The cancer at the heart of international affairs."

The discussion was chaired by Alan Hart, a former ITN and BBC correspondent whose latest book, "Zionism: The real enemy of the Jews" was recently published. He said, "The anti-Semitism card is something the Zionists have exploited to suppress debate."

He said the mainstream media had concealed "the truth of history" out of fear of offending Jews and thanked CEO Mohammed Ali of the Islam Channel for "his courage in widening the debate."

I was always amused at the amount of projection that the terror-supporters use when they accuse Jews of doing something. Almost invariably, they are far more guilty of whatever they accuse Israel or Jews of doing than the accusees.

In this case, I would like to "widen the debate" about the Middle East as well. I'd like to see some honest, open discussion in the mainstream media about various topics that are taboo for fear of offending Muslims or Arabs:

• Why is it desirable to have a Palestinian Arab state altogether? How does it increase peace, or democracy, or world security? Answer with facts, not wild assumptions or wishful thinking.
• Why is it acceptable for Mecca and Medina to not allow any non-Muslims within? Isn't that "ethnic cleansing?"
• Can one be a believing Muslim and also not strive for a worldwide 'ummah under Sharia law?
• What percentage of ordinary Palestinian Arabs truly support a permanent, two state solution where Israel stays a Jewish state? What percentage support terror?
• What concessions have the Palestinian Arabs ever done for peace?
• Why, exactly, is it unrealistic to expect Jews to live freely in a Palestinian Arab state in the territories?
  
• Is Islam compatible with freedom and democracy?
• When the word "Jihad" is used, how do most Muslims interpret it?
• What is the real source of terrorism?

Yes, let's widen the debate. Please.

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Workshops, holy rockets and MSM

From AP:

Palestinian firefighters inspect the rubble of a metal workshop after it was hit by Israeli helicopters in Gaza city, early Tuesday, June 20, 2006. Israeli helicopters fired a missile into a metal workshop in downtown Gaza City, but no wounded were reported, Palestinian official said. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

From Petra (Jordan):

Gaza, June 20 (Petra)--Israeli aircrafts fired missiles on a metal workshop in Al Daraj neighborhood in Gaza, a Palestinian source said.

The source said that the missiles fired by Apache Helicopters destroyed the workshop and caused damage to a number of buildings.
No injuries were reported during the operation.

From the Bahrain News Agency:

Gaza, June. 20, (BNA) Israeli fighter planes conducted today an attack on a metal workshop located at Al Deraj, in Gaza's centre causing injuries to people.
Palestinian sources stated that the Israeli planes targeted the workshop using one missile which caused its destruction and which caught fire due to the attack. Material damages were also caused to neighbouring buildings by shrapnel's.

Just an innocent metal workshop, where presumably Palestinian Arabs are making souvenirs for tourists, or perhaps spare parts for their cars, right? The AP photo caption is the same as the Arab report on the missile strike - no context, just a random act of Israeli violence against some poor Palestinian Arab's livelihood.

At the end of a different AP report, there is a hint as to what could possibly been built at this workshop, but it is only a hint:

In cross-border strife, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a metal workshop in Gaza City early Tuesday. Residents said nobody was hurt. The military said the workshop was run by Hamas.

Palestinian militants have been pelting Israel with rockets fired from Gaza, and Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, met with angry residents of a town near Gaza that has been a frequent target, and pledged military action to put an end to the barrages.

It is unclear whether AP means to have any repationship between the two paragraphs.

Xinhua, in China, gives a tiny bit more context:

The Palestinian shelling coincided with an Israeli air raid at a metal workshop in Gaza that Israel said it was used to produce crude rockets. No injuries reported in the after midnight shelling.

Earlier, al-Nasser Saladin Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), said it had launched a holy rocket that landed near the car of Israeli President Moshe Katsav.

The only other news source I saw that actually mention context is, interestingly, credited to AP as well - but I saw it mentioned in no other story:

Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a metal workshop in Gaza City early Tuesday, residents and the Israeli military said.

The military said the workshop was run by Hamas and used to make rockets and other weapons. Residents said no one was hurt.

Maybe the reason that the wire services are so reluctant to mention that these "workshops" are meant to create terror weapons is because they could no longer refer to rockets as being "home-made." (At the moment of this writing, there are over 1300 mentions in Google News of "homemade rockets," and exactly the two mentions above saying the possibility that rockets are made in "metal workshops.")

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A Christian's arguments for a Jewish state, 1946

A fantastic and very long article, from the February 22, 1946 Palestine Post, that could have been written today. It was written by Raimondo de Ovies, "Dean of Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia" but I have not found out anything else about him. It is well worth reading in its entirety.

The author lays out the moral, logical, legal and historic reasons why a Jewish state should be established in Palestine, including how such a state helps the Arabs themselves. It shows how even in 1946, some of the most clearheaded and passionate Zionists were Christians.

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Demographobia (Yoram Ettinger)

From YNet:

Faulty population stats are driving Ehud Olmert to give up vital assets

Prime Minister Olmert's recent state visits once again brought to the fore demographobia– the illogical fear of Palestinian demographics – as the central claim for Israel to set final borders. But this fear is fundamentally flawed.

Again and again Olmert says that giving up geography is the only way to safeguard Jewish demography. Olmert's determination to pull out of Jewish land in Judea and Samaria – he, too, says these areas have historical and security significance – does not mean he has caved in to Palestinian terror or American pressure. He proved his willingness to bow to terrorism and pressure by supporting Netanyahu in 1996 and Sharon in 2001, as well as during election campaigns for the mayoralty of Jerusalem.

No, now he's inspired to pullout because of demographics. But he's using greatly exaggerated numbers provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics back in 1998. Israel accepted these numbers without benefit of any demographic, media or diplomatic research into their veracity, and they have since become the cornerstone of an intense campaign that has penetrated deep in to the consciousness of Israel's policy makers and public.

The reality, of course, is a bit different that Palestinian predictions of almost a decade ago: The Central Bureau of Statistics says there has been a rise in the number of Jewish births inside the green line, from 80,400 in 1995 to 105,181 in 2005. At the same time, Palestinian births have remained relatively constant at about 40,000 over the same period, and have dropped (particularly in the Muslim community) to around 36,000 since the start of 2006.

According to research conducted by the Gallup (USA) organization in March, 2006, the gap between Jewish and Arab fertility rates has dropped quickly because young Arabs are aspiring to fewer children, and young Jews are aspiring to more. Furthermore, research shows that fertility rates in practice are beginning to reflect this trend.

There is, however, a demographic threat, but the demographic sword is not hanging over the head over a long-term Jewish majority. For example, the annual percentage of Jewish population growth is greater than Arab growth in Judea and Samaria (2.1 percent to 1.8 percent from 1997 to 2004).

Of course, Muslim fertility inside the green line has dropped from 9.23 children per woman between 1960-64 to 4.36 children per woman in 2004. In the overall Arab community there are less than four children per woman.

The momentum of Jewish fertility grows when we weigh in immigration factors (a rise in immigrants, minus for émigrés), or some 20,000 people since 2001. But the prophets of demographic doom ignore this phenomenon, choosing to base their predictions on outdated fertility statistics.

Prime Minister Olmert is convinced that time is working against us, and that Jews will soon become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Therefore, he says demographic considerations take on greater significance than geographic or topographical concerns with regard to Israel's national security.

Paradoxically, Zionism pushed off demographobia when Jews were a minority of just eight percent (Theodor Herzl -1900), 33 percent (Ben-Gurion – 1947). Now that Jews have a 60 percent majority in the Land of Israel (67 percent not counting Gaza), we are caving in.

The demographic reality rebuts this demographic fatalism. It is testimony that the Zionist leaders were right in pushing to create a country despite the massive security, economic and demographic difficulties they faced at first.

Now, when the Jewish majority has reached a critical mass, and is backed up by unprecedented military, economic and technological strength, demographobia simply has no place. We certainly must not sacrifice valuable territories on a demographic altar that is flawed at the most basic level.

It is noteworthy that Muslims have vastly exaggerated their population claims consistently when it is in their interest to do so: They've claimed over 5 million Muslims in the US when in fact there are less than 2 million; they've claimed that they are the fastest growing religion in the world when in fact it appears they are losing ground to Christianity; and they routinely exaggerate the number of Palestinian Arabs worldwide as some 9.3 million, an absurd jump from the 1.35 million Palestinian Arabs in 1948 (or perhaps less than a million.) Very few people question the sources of these figures, and the Western mind tends to believe authoritative-sounding statistics.

It is in our interests to verify everything that is said and every number that is reported, because, frankly, the track record of truth is pretty poor.

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Update on Gaza beach blast

A brief update:

Three (anti-Israel) British newspapers claim that the explosion happened while Israel was shelling, not after.

A German newspaper claims it has proof that the shelling was staged. It raises good questions but proving a conspiracy would need much more than questions. At the very least, the cameraman at the scene "first" has no credibility whatsoever.

History News Network has a scoop of an email from the surgeon that removed the shell fragments who positively identifies them as being from Hamas bombs.

Great blog entries from Israel Matzav and Daled Amos.

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Another JBlog aggregator

Newest on the scene is JBlog Central, a promising JBlog aggregator with ratings. (As if we JBloggers weren't under enough pressure already!)

It allows readers to rate postings on a scale of 1-5. For some reason, it adds together all of those scores as well as averaging them. Averaging I understand, but the summation score just ensures that popular blogs get higher ratings. And they rank based on total score, not average.

It would be nice if they showed how many people voted for any particular article so viewers can get a level of confidence in the ratings they are seeing.

It also rewards blogs who syndicate their entire content and not just the beginning of the articles, because the page where you can rate blogs shows all the content that is syndicated. It is less likely that people will click to read the entire entry, go back to JBlog Central and then rate the article.

A corollary is that people can read the blog entries on JBlog Central and never click on the actual blog, skewing readership statistics.

And not to be nit-picky, but they need their own domain name.

The idea is very good; it is nice to surf through the JBlogosphere with a guide to quality, however flawed it might be. This is definitely worth watching, although I am frankly worried that it will affect my postings to be more oriented towards what's "popular" rather than what's on my mind.

Anyway, it is well worth checking out.
Hat tip Chaim

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A note about Palestinian Arab polls

I saw once again today that Westerners are saying that Palestinian Arabs consistently show a preference for a two-state solution in their polls - one a quote from a Georgia congressman, and one from an editorial in the Hartford Courant. Since I researched a recent poll from Bir Zeit University that showed the opposite:

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%

I decided to look at other polls and see what they said.

Besides Bir Zeit, the major pollster in the territories is JMCC. Their most recent poll from February 2006 had an interesting, relevant item:

Q17. Some believe that a two-state formula is the favored solution for the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, while others believe that historic Palestine cannot be divided and thus the favored solution is a bi-national state on all of Palestine where Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal representation and rights. Which of these solutions do you prefer?

Two-state solution: an Israeli and a Palestinian 57.9
Bi-national state on all of historic Palestine 22.3
One Palestinian state * 10.5
Islamic state * 2.7
No solution 3.9
Don't know 1.6
No answer 1.1
*These answers were not included as part of the options read to the interviewee

So while the Western media will jump on the "fact" that most Palestinian Arabs appear to support a two-state solution, the poll didn't even ask about whether they would prefer a single Arab or Islamic-only state! And 13% of those polled felt strongly enough about that being the solution that they expressed their opinion without it being one of the choices!

In other words - Palestinian Arab opinion polls don't even ask the right question. Given a choice of an Arab-only state side-by-side with Israel or a state where they have to live with Jews as equals, they would rather be separated from the Jews. But how many would choose that option rather than having a single Palestinian Arab state that replaces Israel?

Given the indoctrination that Palestinian Arabs have received since birth, of a map of "Palestine" that stretches from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, it seems that the polls that Westerners like to quote are seriously flawed at best.

The other relevant question is - why didin't the JMCC include these other options in their polls? This is not the first time that they asked that question. Their May, 2005 poll also showed that some 11% of Palestinian Arabs answered that identical question saying that they preferred an Arab or Islamic-only state without it being one of the choices given. It could be that they want to keep the poll questions consistent so they could do accurate trending, or it could be that they don't want the world to know the real answer.

Also relevant is how the Palestinian Arab public looks at negotiation with Israel. Consistently they will say that they favor negotiations. This appears superficially to be a good thing. But look again at how questions can be phrased:

Q15. Some believe that the negotiations are the best path to achieve our national goals, whereas others believe that the armed struggle is the best way to do so. Which option is the closest to your opinion?
Through Negotiations 38.8
Through armed struggle 17.9
Through negotiations and armed struggle 40.3

So how do Palestinian Arabs view negotiations? Not surprisingly, they regard negotiations as a tactic to get their state, not as a means to give any concessions. A plurality view negotiations as a parallel track to terror, not a replacement for it. And why not? Historically, negotiations have netted them much from Israel without them having to give up anything concrete.

But you will be hard pressed to find a Western commenter look at these numbers and conclude that a majority of Palestinian Arabs want to continue terror to acheive their "national goals" (a number that, when the question was stated a different way, showed 96% want to continue terror attacks.)

Either way, to say that Palestinian Arabs consistently want a peaceful solution to their conflict with Israel and a two-state solution living in peace is not at all borne out by any poll I have yet seen, when one actually looks at the real numbers and not at the press release that accompanies the poll results.

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Abbas and Peres in dreamland

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to continue a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel - denying Hamas ever broke it, after meeting Saturday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Abbas said the militant group Hamas, which holds a majority in the Palestinian parliament, had not discarded the truce in the past week.

“Hamas did not break the truce, although some violations have happened, due to the killing of the family (on a Gaza beach on June 9),” he told reporters.

The Palestinian leader vowed to uphold the cease-fire “in order to have people living in peace”.

Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Saturday that Israel and the Palestinians were closer to peace than they’ve been in past 50 years.

“The distance between us is the shortest it’s been for the last 50 years,” Peres said at one-day security summit in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan. “The distance is very short, but the speed is very slow.”

Two men whose careers are heavily invested in the illusion that they have actually made a difference towards peace during their tenures, steadfastly holding on to their fantasies. Hamas of course made it clear that they are not interested in a cease fire.

Meanwhile, Peres' fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate was proven to have ordered the kidnap and assassination of American diplomats in 1973 in newly released State Department documents. The power of wishful thinking is amazing indeed, and the ability of otherwise intelligent people to overlook the obvious in order to advance their agendas based on that same wishful thinking is even more amazing.

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How enlightened Iranians treat women's rights protesters

Activists and police at the June 12 protest

(kosoof.com)

PRAGUE, June 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian police violently dispersed a women's rights gathering in one of Tehran's main squares on June 12.

Activists said afterward that police forces detained more than 50 people shortly after the gathering started. One former reformist legislator, several students, and women's rights activists are reportedly among the detainees. Several activists were arrested and summoned to court ahead of the announced gathering.

Activists say several hundred demonstrators of both genders attended the peaceful gathering, which was held to protest legal obstacles for women.

They were planning to remain in front of a nearby park for one hour and voice their objections to discriminatory laws.

According to the interpretation of Islamic laws applied in Iran, a woman's testimony in court is worth half of a man's. Women's divorce rights are negligible compared with those for men. And women need the permission of their father or husband to travel.

Activists planned to call for equal legal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, and other areas.

They also said that they would read aloud a statement claiming that despite efforts to achieve equal status, women's most basic rights "have been ignored in the Iranian civil and penal codes.”

Authorities Were Prepared

But shortly after the gathering started, participants faced tough action by police forces, who dispersed the gathering within about an hour.

Keyvan Rafi, the spokesman of a newly founded group that calls itself Human Rights Activists In Iran, told RFE/RL that police and security forces outnumbered protesters.

He said they resorted to force to crush the protest.

"[Police] forces -- especially armed female officers with batons -- suppressed the protest," Rafi said. "Between 70 and 80 people were arrested -- former MP Mussavi Khoinia, women's rights activist from Amir Kabir University Leila Mohseninejad, and also members of Daftare Tahkim Vahdat [major reformist student organizations] are among those arrested -- in addition to many women whose name we have not been able to obtain yet."

Despite the clashes, some protesters managed to chant slogans urging that laws against women be abolished.

Some bloggers claiming to have witnessed the scene accused authorities of dragging women on the ground by their hair and savagely beating others. They say pepper gas was used against the activists.

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Why the long face?

I've been noticing a large number of pictures in the newswires of mourning Palestinian Arab women, such as these:



I was wondering - how come we'd seen so many relatives of past martyrs happy and handing out sweets, celebrating the entry to paradise of their terrorist kin, and now they are so sad? After all - they are certainly martyrs, they were trying to kill their enemies when they died, and they are certainly screwing lots of virgins right around now. What is different?

Then it hit me...

The suicide bombers that were celebrated in the past managed to kill some Jews while dying. The celebrations aren't for dying - they are for successful murder!

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Rachel Corrie and Caterpillar revisited

Yesterday was Caterpillar, Inc.'s annual meeting, and predictably the pro-terror crowd was out in force trying to force the company to not sell to Israel. The company rejected their arguments vehemently.

Over a year ago, the pro-terror crowd said they were suing Caterpillar, presumably for building bulldozers that could accidentally kill people.

If one goes through the Rachel Corrie website, for some reason one cannot find a single call for Arab nations or Palestinian Arabs to boycott Caterpillar! As the chairman pointed out yesterday, Arab nations themselves rejected the idea of a boycott, and the wonderful, warm Palestinian Arabs who Rachel was defending somehow manage to get their hands on some Cat bulldozers as well:

And now for today's gratuitous swipe at the MSM: It is widely believed and reported (in the article linked to above, for example) that Corrie was "crushed to death in 2003 by a Caterpillar tractor." In fact:

The army report obtained by the Guardian says Corrie: "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.

"The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved."

Finally, for all of the supposed human rights supporters calling for hurting Caterpillar, it is fun to once again see how its stock has been doing since Corrie's death.

On the day she died, Caterpillar stock was at $22.10 in today's terms, after splits and dividends. Today it is at $70.85, more than tripling its price in a little over three years. Not too shabby! Perhaps an anti-terror mutual fund should be created - it would probably beat the market.

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