Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 03, 2006

Cluster headache

Iran's IRIB news agency has an article decrying the use of cluster munitions worldwide, making a point of specifying Israel's use of cluster bombs in Lebanon. It skillfully implies that since 98% of the victims of cluster bombs are civilians, then the same percentage must hold for Israeli use.

Civilians, a quarter of them children, make up almost all the victims of cluster bombs over the last three decades, a humanitarian agency said on Thursday.

In a study of 24 countries and regions, handicap international said the controversial weapons, which scatter munitions over a wide area, had killed, wounded or maimed 11,044 people of whom 98 percent were civilians.

Cluster bombs were recently used by the Zionist regime in its month-long incursion into lebanon.

But on the same website, posted on the same day, one sees this:

The Islamic Republic of Iran started the second stage of a wargames named after the Noblest Messenger of Allah Hazrat Muhammad (A.S.) in the central Qom province by test launching of an array of indigenously manufactured missiles.

The missiles are capable of carrying cluster warheads.

So if Iran considers Israel's use of cluster munitions to be immoral, why are they developing and testing the same weapons? (IRNA confirms that missiles that actually held cluster munitions were fired.)

And since they are on the record as saying that nuclear weapons are forbidden, would the same logic apply?

And if Islam is a religion of peace, why would Muslims name a war game exercise after their prophet?

PalArabs flooded, blame the Jews!

There have been some heavy rains in Israel and surrounding areas over the past couple of weeks, causing some flooding.

In PalArab areas, flooding is especially dangerous because they often have open sewage ditches (the PalArabs haven't figured out how to build sewers, although they are excellent at building arms-smuggling tunnels.) So there is a higher possibility for disease when it floods.

But, the question remains - if something bad happens to PalArabs, somehow it must be the Jews' fault. How can they blame the floods on the Jews?

Luckily, our friends at the Palestine News Network (Arabic site, autotranslated) have found a way!

Qalqiliya / -A rubber boat in the western neighborhood in the city of Qalqilya north of the West Bank brings to mind the winter of 2005 when the racist wall detained in the western region and the rain water had risen to three meters and flooded homes, farms, livestock barns and forced the owners of boats used to transport Almahasseri n in the nearby houses of the apartheid wall.

Children in the neighborhood of al-Naqqar advantage of the opportunity to combine a depth of the water and brought high rubber boats and started swimming, exercising a hobby of them said : the occupation has prevented us from the sea and swim in it, Because praise in rainwater mixed waste water.

Mayor of Qalqilya, Wajeeh said Quas of the Palestine news : the municipality in the region setting up a giant project funded by the International Red Cross Society value of 200 thousand dollars. the drainage and waste water. It has been agreed with the Red Cross to begin soon in this vital project.

He added : Quas there was apprehension of the Israeli authorities prevented the project because it is close to the apartheid wall, There will accelerate the completion of the project in anticipation of the occurrence of disasters consequences in the event of heavy rains in the coming days.

So let's count the ways that we can blame Israel for the flooding:

The separation wall can act as a dam, stopping floodwaters from damaging the Zionist side and flooding residents who live nearby. At least that's what happened last year so it might happen again.
Children can't stop themselves from swimming in the contaminated water because the Zionists don't let them frolic in the Mediterranean.
The Red Cross will build a sewage system, but hasn't yet because of Israeli reservations, but they will, somehow. It doesn't make sense but the upshot is that the Israelis prevented them from building the sewers that they will be building.

It seems that the word "responsibility" is not in the Palestinian Arab vocabulary (they are not responsible for building their own sewers and drainage systems, for building their own swimming pools, or for keeping their children away from sewer water.)

Oh - my bad. They do know how to take responsibility for terror attacks.

Gaza: the most secure place on the planet

I've mentioned before that the PA has a higher ratio of security personnel to the general population than anywhere else. My last count had 90,000 "policemen" plus 3000 from Hamas being added.

Well, the IMF just released a report on how badly the PA mismanages its money, and the results are hardly surprising:

About 80 percent of the US$500 million (€394 million) in income in the past six months was spent on the ever-expanding government payroll and on fuel imports, leaving little for other budget items, such as welfare payments, the report said.

The report said the number of civil servants grew by 5,400 this year, to more than 142,000 in mid-June. Most of the hiring took place in the security services, and some 20,000 new recruits are currently being trained and could be added to the payroll in the future, the report said.

It now costs about US$100 million (€79 million) a month to cover salaries for government workers, compared to about US$80 million (€63 million) a month on mid-2005. The increase is also due to a generous across-the-board pay increase in late 2005.

"The government wage bill had already become unaffordable at the end of 2005," the report said. "Underlying the current fiscal difficulties is an increasingly unsustainable fiscal situation."

Hleileh warned that the current system of payments is setting back years of financial reform, carried out by former Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, who had set up a single Treasury account to clean up rampant mismanagement and corruption.

So if this is true, that means that there are now about 96,000 "security personnel" and they are planning to add another 20,000.

The grand total will then be 116,000 security people to protect 3.5 million people, or one policeman for every 30 PalArabs.

I am just completely mystified how in such a secure place, things like a soccer riot or the destruction of a radio station could possibly take place (just to take two examples - from yesterday.)

A suggestion for "divestment" supporters

Ah, autumn. The time that nutty leftists in Somerville, MA try to put anti-Israel resolutions on the ballot.

They failed two years ago, but the symbolic value of a non-binding resolution in a tiny town is apparently too much to resist.

If these moral midgets are so concerned about Palestinian Arab rights, wouldn't you think that they would be campaigning to invest in "Palestine" rather than divest from Israel? I mean, they cannot go a day without crying about how PalArabs are starving and oppressed, so wouldn't these elitists be doing much more good by actually trying to, you know, help?

But I think I know the answer:

The "Palestine Index" of the Palestine Securities Exchange is down over 50% this year.

Supporting your favorite oppressed people has its limits, you know.

The "Starving Palestinians" meme

Just in the past few days, we see:

Egypt's largest Islamic group accused the world of "aggressive starvation" of the Palestinians Friday, as about 500 people demonstrated against Israel in Cairo's main mosque. - AP

"Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians into submission as the reward for having democratically elected the party of their choice." - OpEdNews, quoting Alexander Cockburn in The Nation in June.

"We are starving. We want a solution, or else there will be a big explosion here," said Imad Abu Sabri, an officer in the Palestinian presidential guard Force 17, who celebrated the Eid festival with hundreds of colleagues by blocking streets and burning tires to protest the government's failure to pay its employees. - SF Chronicle

Given his staunch opposition to the ‘militarization’ of the Intifada it is strange that Abbas is now the recipient of foreign arms shipments. More absurd is the fact that the generous suppliers of these weapons are the same governments that imposed crippling economic sanctions against the elected government in Palestine because it refuses to dismantle its military infrastructure. How cynical that western democracies should prefer to supply guns to a starving people instead of food. - Palestine Chronicle, completely ignoring the irony of Hamas acquiring tons of new weapons rather than food.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is defiant: "They used every conceivable act of inhumanity and cruelty, including starving our people and sowing divisiveness in our ranks, but have failed to bring this government down." - Al-Ahram Weekly

And here's one more piece of evidence of the unimaginable cruelty by the Zionists, especially the IDF:

The IDF meanwhile is stressing the importance of maintaining the flow of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

290 trucks carrying food staples and medicine entered the Gaza Strip from the Karni crossing over the last few days.

Some 400,000 liter of solar petrol, 100,000 liters of benzene and 15 tons of gas entered the Gaza Strip over the same period.

AFP accidentally explains the entire PalArab problem

Reading between the lines of this absurdly biased AFP dispatch, one can discern some real truths.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada will accept a third of some 150 Palestinian refugees stranded in a camp in "no man's land" on the Iraq-Jordan border for three years, a UN Refugee Agency spokeswoman said.

Most of the asylum seekers had moved to Iraq after the creation of Israel in 1948, then fled their new home after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, but were denied entry into Syria and Jordan.

They have been "stuck in no man's land," living in tents in a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) camp just inside the Jordanian border ever since, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid Van Genderen Stort told AFP.

Canada agreed to take in 63 of them, she said.

"They're undergoing security and medical clearance. If they don't meet the requirements, some might still be turned away," she said. "At least 30 have already been cleared."

The UNHCR stepped up efforts to relocate them this year, noting their living situation in an isolated desert with extreme temperatures, and an abundance of dangerous snakes and scorpions, has been "difficult," Van Genderen Stort said.

"Their plight was presented to various countries," she said.

Almost 300 Iranian Kurds, who fled to Iraq during Iran's 1979 revolution, were relocated from the camp to Sweden and Ireland, and some Palestinians have been moved to New Zealand, she said.

The Palestinians had received preferential treatment in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. After he was ousted from power by US forces, they faced "a backlash" from upset Iraqis who had been poorly treated by the former president.

Jordan and Syria turned them away, claiming they had already welcomed their quota of Iraqi refugees from the previous Gulf War and Israel was not warm to the idea of them returning to the occupied territories, she said.

"It's been a really sad situation because it's gone on for so long. We're extremely glad that countries have accepted some of these people," Van Genderen Stort said. "But, it will be difficult for those who stay behind."

Let's see what we can glean from this article:

A number of Palestinian Arabs fled in 1948 to Iraq. They were treated well, according to this article. They lived there for some 55 years. After Saddam Hussein's regime fell, the Iraqi Arabs were upset and made life difficult for them, causing them to flee Iraq and then they could not find any country that would accept them.

For all intents and purposes, these people should not be described as "Palestinian." They supposedly lived well in Iraq for five decades - yet for some reason they are still considered "Palestinian," not Iraqi. (AFP's "new home" comment is as inaccurate as journalism can be.) The percentage that have ever stepped foot in Palestine must be pretty small. And even though they were said to be treated well in Iraq, apparently they were never truly accepted as Iraqis, and it appears they were never offered citizenship.

In other words, even the Arabs that pledge solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs do not truly accept them as brothers. Even in the best of circumstances, they will be considered outsiders.

The people who are truly interested in helping this group of people do not come from any Arab nations, rather from New Zealand and Canada. You know - the immoral infidels.

The UNHCR is actually doing what a UN refugee agency is supposed to do - take care of the problem, so that the people in the refugee camps eventually manage to get settled. However, the UNHCR does not consider this a Palestinian Arab refugee camp - but an Iraqi refugee camp, as evidenced by the Kurds who live there as well.

Many Palestinian Arabs also live in camps, but not under the auspices of UNHCR. Rather, the UNRWA takes care of them. And instead of working overtime to find countries that are willing to take them, the UNRWA is doing everything they can to keep them in camps, generations after they lost their "refugee" status under any definition but the PalArab one. While UNHCR considers 3 years to be a long time for people to be stuck in camps, the UNRWA does not.

The AFP refers to PalArab refugees not being able to "return" to the disputed territories, when in fact the only place they could properly return to would be Iraq itself. Note that no one seems too concerned about the fact that Iraq is now hostile to Palestinian Arabs, to the point that they must flee. Rather than discuss ways to eliminate the prejudice and bigotry of the Iraqi people, the world simply accepts it as a way of life. (This happened on a much larger scale in Kuwait after the first Gulf War, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were kicked out. For some reason, that "refugee problem" did not take up any room in the UN docket.)

Similarly, note that the refugee camp was on the Jordanian side of the border. Yet Jordan refused to even give the basic humanitarian aid to their PalArab brethren.

Reading between the lines, one can certainly learn a lot from this article.

Chofetz Chaim's obituary in the NYT and Time

English Hebraica posted a story by Avigayil Meyer where she had heard that the New York Times had written an obituary of the Chofetz Chaim in 1933, and she dug it up on microfiche:

I just found that Time magazine, in its September 25, 1933 issue, also wrote a much shorter obituary, but it is still notable:

Died. Rabbi Yisroel Meier Ha' Cohen. 100, "The Chofetz Chaim," "uncrowned spiritual King of Israel," Talmudic scholar, venerated by the world's orthodox Jewry as one of 36 saints whose piety dissuades the Lord from destroying the world; in Radin, near Wilno, Poland. Thousands of pilgrims sought his blessing in Radin where he founded a yeshiva (Talmudic school). He was "The Chofetz Chaim" (Desiring Life) by virtue of his book of that name listing the forms of slander from which a pious Jew must refrain. A onetime storekeeper, he humbly closed his shop when his popularity diminished the trade of other storekeepers, lived the rest of his life in poverty.

Freedom of the press, PalArab-style

A Palestinian Arab magazine that is published by the PA-controlled Al-Ayyam newspaper has pulled its latest issue:

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Ayaam pulled the plug this week on the latest issue of a biweekly journal it publishes called Al-Haal ("The Situation"). The reason for the suspension of publication was an Al-Haal interview with an Arab who assisted Israel in its war on terrorism in the PA. Al-Ayaam said that the positive portrayal of the anti-terrorist PA resident was damaging to the newspaper's reputation and to its professional underpinnings.

In the interview, the PA dissident, identified as one of the greatest allies of Israel, brags that he advised the leaders of the various PA terrorist factions regarding their tactics. However, Al-Ayaam editors felt that the portrayal of the Arab counter-terrorist was too positive, even heroic. The chief editor of the Al-Haal biweekly said in response that the editors of Al-Ayaam actually opposed those sections of the interview that appear to include criticism of the status quo in the PA.

Either reason is censorship.

And remember, kids...the liberals who are so enamoured of everything "Palestinian" are the ones who scream the loudest about "free speech."

The busy life of Mahmoud Abbas

Judging from the Palestinian Arab News Agency, WAFA, Mahmoud Abbas is so busy doing important things that he can't be bothered to figure out how to pay his people.

Here were his accomplishments yesterday:

He met with a delegation from a religious dialogue organization.
He met with members of the German Christian Democratic Party.
He received a letter from a Lebanese member of parliament wishing him well for Eid and congratulating him for his wise leadership.
He received an Eid letter from the Turkish President.
And from the Uzbek president.
And from a country which may or may not exist (Tatarstan)
He expressed sympathy for the death of a member of the Youth Ministry.
He received an Eid telegram from the President of Comoros, looking forward to seeing Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Presumably he wrote this from his capital in Moroni.
Another telegram, this one from Yemen's leader.
He took a phone call from the External Relations Commissioner of the European Union.
He took a phone call from Qatar's foreign minister.
He sent a telegram congratulating Brazil's president on winning a second term in office.

All these hugely critical tasks must be quite a burden, but as the territories fall further and further into chaos, it is good to know that the PalArabs have such an effective leader.

Irrationality as policy?

Moshe Arens has an interesting column in Haaretz saying that just maybe, Olmert's choosing Lieberman as minister of strategic threats was a shrewd move.

He explains that, in game theory, an irrational player (Ahmadinejad) has a decided advantage due to his irrationality. Since no one can predict what he might do, he can expect the world to play it safe and give him a wide berth so he can pursue his plans.

Arens is saying that Lieberman is (almost) equally irrational and throwing him up against the Ahmadinejad problem may be more effective in making the madman from Iran pause before making his next threat or pronouncement.

There is something to be said for irrationality as policy, keeping your opponents off balance. I'm just not as convinced that Ahmadinejad is acting irrationally in the real sense of the word.

We've discussed before Iran's geopolitical goal: to become the world's superpower.

Ahmadinejad is a sincerely religious man, and his vision of the future is the vision of a worldwide Islamic 'ummah. The establishment of this universal caliphate can be accomplished a number of ways, all of which are happening simultaneously:

Demographically, by converting large numbers of people to Islam and by ncreasing the birthrate of Muslims;
Politically, by making Europe irrelevant and targeting the US and Israel exclusively; and
Militarily, by becoming a nuclear power.

Ahmadinejad is not acting as the head of state of Iran; he is acting as the putative leader of the Muslim world. He has that pesky Shiite/Sunni thing to overcome but for the most part he is ignoring the differences between Muslims and focusing on the commonalities.

His seemingly irrational statements about Israel, the Holocaust and the US make much more sense when one realizes that his audience is not Iranians but a billion Muslims. If he can unify them behind him, he effectively becomes the superpower.

His manipulations of the West may be somewhat attributable to studied irrationality, but I think it is more focused - it is clear that old Europe is so paralyzed with fear of confrontation that they are more than happy to believe anything conciliatory he says and ignore the outrageous parts. Also, any head of state, no matter how nutty, has the opportunity to frame debates, and since Ahmadinejad has started his "wipe Israel off the map" and "Holocaust is a myth" memes, both those ideas have been taken more seriously by the world, albeit in watered-down forms.

If Islam is what makes him act how he does, then coming up with a counterattack is much harder. The only reason acting irrationally works is if one of the possible irrational actions will hurt the enemy more than it helps him, and almost anything Israel (or the US) does would increase Ahmadinejad's prestige and power.

The best policy I can think of, as I've stated before, is a unilateral, severe economic boycott against Iran by the US - as well as against any country that trades with Iran. The main US strength is economic and it is a weapon that is not used nearly enough. It would send stocks into a tailspin but that is a hell of a lot better than a nuke.

Arens has a point, though - the fear of an Israeli first nuclear strike by the irrational Lieberman may slow down the Iranian program. I think a few well-placed rumors that the Iranian nuclear brain trust has been thoroughly infiltrated by Zionists can work wonders as well. (And don't forget how effective a single bullet can be.) But Israel's options are very limited, no matter how many "strategists" are elevated to cabinet positions.

PalArab chaos reigns as everyone is buying weapons

A very revealing article in the Arabic (and not the English) side of the Palestine News Network. (I am doing my own paraphrasiing of the Google auto-translation to make it easier to read):

Qalqiliya - Palestinians are acquiring weapons not only to fight the occupation, but also because of the family disputes and clan clashes that have become more prominent, as well as the use of arms by the warring factions. This is resulting in ordinary Palestinian people acquiring weapons for self-defense in light of the chaos of security problems, the law and the lack of control by the government.

PNN reviews this phenomenon which is entrenched in Palestinian society and diminishes the chances for stability and the rule of law, and replaces it with the law of the jungle.

The rest of the article talks about the black market in weapons, apparently from Arabs in Israel; how the price has gone up as demand has increased lately so guns now cost three times what they cost at the height of the Intifada. Palestinian Arab families are vying to have the best weapons, and bullets are easy to smuggle in from Israel.

Families that cannot afford guns are buying hunting rifles which are manufactured locally by PalArabs.

300 weapons have gone into a single small village in the northern West Bank in anticipation of the coming chaos.

This pretty much proves that PalArab society is doomed. Putting thousands of weapons in the hands of a people who are trigger-happy to begin with, in a place where it is not even conceivable that there will ever be an effective police force or a working judicial and penal system, is a recipe for any Palestinian-controlled areas to become Somalia, with warlords and clans killing each other forever.

The very idea that this could be the nucleus for an effective state is utterly idiotic. We have an immature people who have no discipline and no self-control being given deadly toys. It is a hundred times worse than the most lawless inner-city ghettos in American history.

Which brings up the obvious but little-discussed fact: Even if all the political pieces fell into place, even if the most dovish Israeli government would give all the territories to a PalArab government that pledged unequivocal peace, the resulting Palestinian Arab state would not be tenable. No possible PA government could impose order over the PalArabs without being extraordinarily repressive. Civil war may not be assured, but deadly chaos most certainly is.

It is inevitable that the daily lives of Palestinian Arabs in any sort of independent state are going to be miserable and far, far worse than under "occupation."

But on the bright side - they can always blame the Jews!

Dead PalArabs that I missed - we're up to 142

Since I found the Palestine Human Rights Monitoring Group site, which also maintains a list of Palestinian Arabs who were violently killed by each other (or themselves), I am now compiling a list of deaths I had missed in my count since June 25. Here's what I have so far from late June to mid-September.

I am comparing these with names listed in PCHR, my sole source of PalArab self-deaths until I discovered other sources. It is possible that a couple of these are repeats and the names were spelled wildly differently, but I'm pretty sure I didn't record these deaths previously. In general PCHR records more than PHRMG but there are definitely some that PHRMG finds that PCHR did not record.

Tahiea Jirjawy Magazy Camp shooting 28/6/2006 dead cause bullet in the chest
Zaher Salman Mhareka 27 Salfeet Family Dispute 1/7/2006 dead cause bullet in head from Tha'r Sleman Moadi when he was in barber and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Tha'r Sleman Moadi 26 Salfeet Family Dispute 1/7/2006 dead cause bullet in chest from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Zaher Sleman 27 Salfeet shooting 2/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Basel Tha'r 40 Biet Lahia gun fire 1/7/2006 dead during family dispute
Tha'r Madi 25 salfeet shooting 1/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Faiq Ata Madi 50 Salfeet shooting 1/7/2006 dead during cross fire and he's from AL Aqsa Martyrs Kataeb
Moatasim Qudeih Khan Younis Arm Clashes 16/8/2006 Killed in arm clashes between members of Fatah and Hamas activities.
Mahmoud Amin Awad Jaber 43 Kufur Laqif east of Qalqilia Misuse of Weapons 19/8/2006 Killed accidently by a bullet fired toward him
Wasim Nasim Salman El Masri 18 Khan Younis Police 28/8/2006 Killed by a bullet in the abdomen in Khan Younis
Ra'ed Al Natoor Nablus shooting 9/9/2006 Unknown gun men

So this adds 11 more to the count, which has now hit 141.

UPDATE: 142.

A 30-year-old woman was killed and her five-year old daughter critically wounded after being shot in their home in Kalanswa, Zaka reported Monday night.

The girl was evacuated to Beilinson Hospital for treatment.

Police speculated that the woman, Fatama Salama and her daughter, were shot due to an unpaid debt and that the father of the family was likely the target.

According to Israel Radio, a grenade was thrown into the family's home some months ago.

Israel "Not Eligible for Protection under International Humanitarian Law"

Anyone doubting the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Arab "human rights" groups need only to look at the description of (yet another) international conference about PalArabs:

PCHR and International Federation for Human Rights, in cooperation with a number of Palestinian, Israeli, Arab and international human rights organizations; civil society organizations; solidarity groups with the Palestinian people; and human rights lawyers, academics and experts, will organize a conference on international protection for Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the period 13-15 December 2006 in Geneva. The conference seeks to lobby the Swiss Government as Depository of the Fourth Geneva Convention to convene a meeting of the High Contracting Parties to task a strong international protection force within the OPT to protect Palestinian civilians and their property.

The idea of organizing this conference emerged for two reasons:

First, there has been unprecedented deterioration in the situation in the OPT, under which crimes committed by IOF against Palestinian civilians have dramatically increased to include killings, destruction of property and economic infrastructure and a total siege mainly targeting Palestinian civilians.

Second, the international community tasked a strong international force consisting of 15,000 soldiers, mostly European, in response to an Israeli demand to protect Israel after a 34-day war against Lebanon and Hizbullah, although Israel is a nuclear country, which has the fourth strongest army in the world, and it is not eligible for protection under international humanitarian law.

The amount of hypocrisy and falsehood here is stunning:

Even though the PCHR itself reports on PalArab infighting and security chaos in the territories, this conference that is supposedly meant to protect Palestinian Arabs completely ignores this major source of their misery. It would not be a good idea to tell the world that Arabs treat fellow Arabs worse than Israelis do.
For the "fourth strongest army in the world" that is supposedly "targeting" Palestinian Arab civilians, they sure do a bad job. Hell, yesterday Arabs killed more people in Iraq than the IDF killed in weeks.
The last paragraph quoted shows the sheer bigotry of these supposed defenders of "human rights." They are saying explicitly that Jews do not have the right to be defended according to their twisted interpretation of international law. Besides the absurdity of framing the UN as a pro-Israeli force in Lebanon that is solely meant to protect Israelis, these moral midgets make up their own arbitrary rules whereby, effectively, Jewish Israeli is allowed, or supposed, to be killed.

A corrolary to this is that Hezbollah has every right to target Israeli Jewish civilians with cluster munitions, according to the PCHR. Any defensive move Israel does is, by their definition, illegal.

In other words, these people who claim to be supporters of human rights are defining Jewish Israelis as being subhuman who do not enjoy any human rights at all.

Just because someone says they are part of a "human rights" organization does not make them moral. As we can see here, the most immoral and twisted thinking can find a pleasant home as it hides behind high-minded platitudes about "human rights" that are effectively not about human rights at all, but about the abrogation of the human rights of Jews.

Tale of two tortures

From the Iranian Radio Broadcast Service:

The human right groups have slammed U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s allegations in support of torture.
In a recent interview with one of the American TV channels, Cheney approved the worst kind of torture in which the prisoner practically struggles between life and death.

From the historic Washington Post archives:

CRUCIFIED BY THE ARABS
The Washington Post (1877-1954) - Washington, D.C.
Author: Special Cable to The Washington Post.
Date: Nov 30, 1911
Start Page: 1
Document Types: front_page
Text Word Count: 204

Rome, Nov. 29. -- A party of officers, surgeons, and reporters who have been searching the places in Tripoli retaken by the Italians on November 26 found many bodies of Italian victims of the fighting of October 23.... These bodies had been atrociously mutilated. Some of the victims had been crucified and their eyelids stitched so that they could not close them. Some had been buried to their arm pits, their hands lopped off and their eyes gouged out. The agonized faces of many of them suggest that they had endured awful torture before death came.

Car thefts = "resistance?"

I don't want to read too much into an auto-translated word, but an article in the Arabic "Palestine News Network" speaking about the rash of car thefts by Palestinian Arabs against Israelis, refers to the thefts as "resistance."

Both the Google and WorldLingo language tools translated it the same way.

As we've said before, PalArab leaders look at the conflict as a "zero sum game" while Israelis tend to look for solutions that are win/win. Now, we know that "resistance" is a keyword by the PalArabs to justify terror (as well as to justify why they treat their own people so badly). Given the zero-sum mentality, then petty crimes against Israelis become a low-level "resistance" as well.

This is just conjecture but it is plausible. I would appreciate it if someone who knows Arabic could translate the first paragraph for me at the original site.