Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Ohio Statehouse to host pro-Hamas activist

The Ohio State Capitol in Columbus will be the setting for a curious convocation later this month when it hosts an event featuring several well-known Islamic extremists as part of an “interfaith” conference entitled, “The Many Faces of Islam”. The conference, which is to be held in the atrium of the Statehouse on Sunday, October 28^th, will feature two well-known speakers with multiple connections to the HAMAS international terrorist organization, a host of convicted terrorist leaders, and colleagues who fled the US to avoid prosecution on terrorism-related charges. The event is sponsored by the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio.
One of the featured speakers at the conference will be Anisa Abd El Fattah, the chair of the National Association of Muslim American Women based in Columbus....
As one of the foremost spokesman for HAMAS in the US, Fattah has published a litany of screeds denouncing “Zionism” and promoting violence against Israeli civilians. A letter to the editor she had published last month in the Columbus Dispatch (“Israelis in Gaza aren’t civilians”), Fattah indicated that any Israeli man, woman or child in Gaza was fair game for terror attacks: “There are no Israeli civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are only illegal Jewish settlers, who, by Israeli law, are also citizen-soldiers. They are heavily armed with fully automatic weapons.”

In a May 2006 article, “Condemning Zionism is crucial to world peace”, Fattah rages against Israel, arguing that Zionism is an “evil and racist ideology that not only directly contrasts everything we profess to stand for as a country, but that also violates every relevant divine, human rights, or other law, including our own laws, as well as every norm of decency known to the human species.” She concludes her article by adding that Zionism was attempting “to expand into Sudan through Darfur”, and thus, responsible for the genocidal violence there, rather than the Islamic government in Khartoum.

An April 2006 article by Fattah, “A Religious History of Justice and Palestine”, begins with her pronouncement that “[t]he racist and colonizing legacy of the Zionist Christian Church, and the Synagogue continues into the 21^st Century…”.

This is one of the featured speakers at the “interfaith” conference at the Ohio State Capitol.

Read the whole thing, plus followups by the same author, Patrick Poole.

More details on Lakewood beating

From the Asbury Park Press:

LAKEWOOD — Police have released a composite sketch of the man being sought in the attack on a third-grade Orthodox school teacher Tuesday night.

The investigation into the attack of Mordechai Moskowitz, 53, of Lakewood, is being conducted by Lakewood Police Detectives Greg Staffordsmith and Steve Wexler, along with Investigator Carlos Trujillo-Tovar from the Ocean County Prosecutors Office.

Police are asking the public to call if they have any information or saw anything out of the ordinary about 8 p.m. Tuesday on Princeton Avenue, Isnardi said.

The first comment on the article is somewhat less than sympathetic towards the Orthodox Jews of Lakewood:

It's terrible that this man was almost killed. That being said, why should anyone from outside of the orthodox cult get involved in solving this crime?. I doubt any of them would do likewise. The orthodox want nothing to do with Lakewood outside of their own interests (segregated housing, segregated schools, welfare, etc.)

UPDATE here.

EUdiots show their love for terrorists again

From JPost:

Calling Gaza a "prison" and a "ghetto," European Union parliamentarians harshly condemned Israeli actions there in a special session held in Brussels on Wednesday.

During the hour-long, heated debate in advance of a Thursday vote on a resolution, parliamentarians, as well as EU officials, called on Israel to open the Gaza borders to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in the impoverished area where 1.1 million of the 1.4 m. population are dependent on the international donations for basic food supplies.

In one of the more impassioned speeches, Belgian MEP Veronique De Keyser called Gaza a "ghetto" where "people are dying little by little with cameras trained on them."

While the IDF is working on a proposal to close the borders between Gaza and Israel in favor of Egyptian crossings, EU parliamentarians called on Israel to find a solution to the problem.

In particular, it urged Israel to live up to its commitment to ensure pedestrian passage at Rafah and full commercial movement in Karni.

The Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June forced the closure of the main commercial crossing into Israel at Karni and the pedestrian one into Egypt at Rafah. The third major crossing into Israel at Erez has been opened for limited pedestrian traffic.

Since June, the IDF, along with the United Nations, has worked to bring basic supplies, agricultural products and limited goods into the area through alternative crossings at Sufa and Kerem Shalom.

Among the stumbling blocks to opening the crossing have been continued mortar attacks by Hamas on the passages and the absence of a viable plan to replace the Fatah personnel who had manned the Gaza borders on the Palestinian side.

In a more measured speech than some of the others, Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs Manuel Antunes Lobo attacked Israel's decision last month to declare Gaza a "hostile territory" and said that such a move "exacerbated" an already bad situation.

"The European Union recognizes Israel's legitimate right of self defense but asks Israel to carefully consider the consequences of its decision." He added that "access and movement" agreements regarding the borders need to still be respected even in the current situation.

The EU, he said, remains committed to helping out the Palestinians financially both in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2006, it gave out €688 million in humanitarian assistance and this year it has already shelled out €425m., he said.

EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she was particularly disturbed by the fact that the border closures had forced the suspension of important water and sanitation projects.

But even as she took spoke of the EU's continued financial commitment to the Palestinians, she called on the Arab states - who have not contributed in the same way we did - to step up and "do their part in the future."

One British MEP, Chris Davies, said it should be Israel and not EU taxpayers who should foot the bill to solve the Palestinian humanitarian crisis.

"What does it have to do with the EU? Gaza is an Israeli prison camp. It is the Israelis who should be responsible. They are the ones that keep them in misery," said Davis.

The level of EU depravity and hypocrisy stays pegged at 11 on a scale of 10.

They pay lip service to Israel's security needs but do not blame Hamas for anything that is happening in Gaza. They say that all responsibility for Gaza is Israel's, not their Arab brethren who they admit contribute next to nothing to solve the "humanitarian crisis." They blame the closing of Karni on Israel and do not acknowledge the terrorist attacks at that border crossing.

The hypocrisy really hits home when they blame Israel for Rafah being closed. Somehow, Egypt manages to open it for wanted terrorists to travel to Gaza and the EU which is supposed to monitor it disappears.

So it is Israel's fault that the Rafah (and Karni) agreement stipulations have been abrogated by Hamas' takeover of the Strip?

So the EU can insist that Israel negotiate with a group sworn to destroy it?

So when a people democratically elect terrorists, they must eb shielded from the consequences?

So Egypt has no responsibility for Gaza, and only Israel does?

So the EU cannot deign to mention weapons smuggling, Hamas/Fatah civil war, religious coercion, torture and all the other things that make life in Gaza hell that are quire independent of Israel?

These moral midgets love to stand up and accuse Israel of crimes - and their use of the word "ghetto" is no accident as they try so label Israel as being Nazis without actually saying it - when they have histories of colonization whose associated atrocities have dwarfed anything Israel could dream of.

Perhaps most tellingly, they promote the stereotype of Arabs as savages, saying that the Arab people cannot possibly be expected to take care of their own, or to act like human beings. No, only Israel is responsible for taking care of the poor animals, in th EU's twisted and bigoted viewpoint. The very idea of Arab responsibility for their role in creating and prolonging a fake "refugee" problem is never to be mentioned - and the idea that somehow Palestinian Arabs have the ability to fix their own messes is not even entertained.

Gaza is not sub-Saharan Africa, and PalArab children are not sitting with distended stomachs and fleas begging for a morsel of bread. Gazans are educated and clothed and fed; they have cars and houses and designer clothes and the Internet. A billion dollars a year flows into Gaza legally, who knows how much more smuggled in suitcases from Saudi and Iranian petrodollars. Gaza could have turned into a Singapore or a Hong Kong if the Arabs had the ability to take responsibility for themselves rather than spend their entire existence whining that somehow they deserve more and more Western support. Gazans have created a successful industry of building rockets and tunnels - efforts that could have been building real businesses where they could export their wonderful goods to Europe itself.

This is the ultimate irony: a group of politically correct Europeans saying, in effect, that Gazans are less than human and must be treated as if they are all mentally ill.

Arabs taking responsibility for their own actions? Mon Dieu!

Speaking of free speech....

One rarely finds the same people who agitate for "free speech" to allow, say, neo-Nazi messages to be broadcast on TV, to be nearly as concerned when a US ally does this:

A Jordanian security court has sentenced former Jordanian MP Ahmad Al-'Abadi to two years in prison for criticizing the royal family in speeches before U.S. Congressmen.
Al-'Abadi's wife called the sentence a political move aimed at distancing her husband from the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Source: Al-Jarida, Kuwait, October 10, 2007

Yes, our friends the Jordanians jail people who say things that tick them off.

Perhaps it is just me, but this seems to be a teensy bit greater violation of free speech than forcing any media to give space and time to any crackpot's ravings. Yet not a single English-language news source mentions this story.

The disastrous idea of "land swap"

Palestinian Arab negotiators are flocking to wire service reporters to float ideas, and today another one came up - the idea of a "land swap" where PalArabs get the same number of square kilometers from Israel that Israel keeps from settlements.

Once again, we have a situation that would sound reasonable if both sides were reasonable, and it utterly disastrous once one understands the Arab psyche.

People tend to forget that before the Six Day War, Israel's borders were just armistice lines. The Arab world did not accept those borders as being anything close to final and they were using military, terrorist and diplomatic ways to try to shrink the Jewish state.

After 1967 and especially after 1973, however, the Arab attitude changed. Once they saw that they could not defeat Israel militarily they dedicated their efforts to get back the land - and the honor - that they lost. Sadat famously said that he'd rather go to war than lose a single grain of sand of the Sinai, and the entire existence of the PLO is largely due to Arab governments using them to get the West Bank away from Jewish control. While they never truly gave up on the idea of Israel's destruction, their more immediate concern was to get back the 1967 losses and that forced them to implicitly recognize the Green Line as being meaningful. In other words, 1967 and 1973 allowed Israel to solidify its hold on the 1949 borders to the point that the world accepted them far more than they did before 1967.

A land swap would smash the idea of the 1949 Green Line as a border of Israel, and it would bring Israel back to its pre-1967 situation, in more was than one. The Arab world would still consider the settlements to be Arab land - there is no question about that - and now they would also gain leverage on 1949 Israeli lands, which haven't been on the table in decades. Every point of contact has the potential of becoming another Shebaa Farms, another excuse to whittle Israel down, another set of terror attacks coupled with impassioned pleas against the intransigent Israelis refusing to give only a couple of kilometers here and there of ancient Arab land - and Westerners believing them. They will insist on a land corridor between Gaza and the West Bank, cutting Israel in half, and that corridor will have to grow in width year after year.

The Green Line was an impossible border for Israel to live securely, and moving it towards the West - allowing even more of Israel to be in rocket range - is not only stupid militarily and from a security point of view, but it will open the doors for the entire Arab world to again believe that they can drive the Jews into the sea.

cross-posted at Yourish

No-man's land: the difference between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs

The AP quotes Abbas' demands:

In a television interview, Abbas said the Palestinians want to establish a state on 6,205 square kilometers (2,400 square miles) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was the first time he has given a precise number for the amount of land he is seeking.

"We have 6,205 square kilometers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," Abbas told Palestine TV. "We want it as it is."

According to Palestinian negotiating documents obtained by The Associated Press, the Palestinian demands include all of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, east Jerusalem and small areas along the West Bank frontier that were considered no-man's land before the 1967 war.

Let's talk about those small areas:

Two Bay Area visionaries have teamed up to turn a Jerusalem battlefield into a peace park.

San Francisco environmentalist and philanthropist Richard Goldman, the man behind the Goldman Environmental Prize known as the "Green Nobel," and celebrated landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, designer of the FDR Memorial in Washington and the new Sigmund Stern Grove, will receive a special award in June for their part in creating a 1 1/2-mile promenade linking East and West Jerusalem.

The promenade was built across Government Hill Ridge, a mountainside in southern Jerusalem that was no-man's land between Jordan and Israel from 1948 to 1967.

According to the New Testament, this was the Hill of Evil Counsel, where 2,000 years ago Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver on the eve of the crucifixion. More recently, it was where the Six Day War erupted in Jerusalem in 1967.

Thanks to Goldman and Halprin, the site is today a vast, tranquil park with a picture-postcard view that is shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians from across the city and around the world.

The Haas Promenade -- named in honor of Goldman's parents-in-law of the Levi Strauss family, and designed by Halprin -- was completed in 1987. It allows visitors to enjoy a spectacular view of the ancient Old City of Jerusalem, the surrounding biblical landscape and the new neighborhoods of East and West Jerusalem across a park with more than a mile of twisting pathways among olive trees and shrubbery.

The same team extended the park to create the Goldman Promenade, which was opened in 2002. This smaller path meanders eastward through a forest of Jerusalem pines toward an observation point overlooking the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab in Jordan.

Rather than "Judaizing" Jerusalem, as the Arabs always claim, these Jews worked with the Israeli government to build a beautiful park and promenade for all of Jerusalem to enjoy - Arabs, Jews and Christians.

Now, Mahmoud Abbas, that man of peace, not only wants all of East Jerusalem - not only does he want the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not only does he want the Western Wall of the Temple Mount - but he is also "demanding" an area that was never even Jordanian.

An area that Jews cultivated and beautified for all of mankind - he wants to take away so it could become another Arab slum. He would prefer to see it turn into another Hamastan rather than let the hated Jews control it.

In the mind of even the most "moderate" Palestinian Arab, Jews must be restored to their rightful, second-class dhimmi status by any means possible. Negotiations, terror false promises of peace - they are all the same as long as the end result is that Jews control less land in the Middle East.

The contrast between Abbas' bigotry and extremism, and Israel's desire to compromise and find solutions for everybody, has never been more striking. His demand for an area that was never "Palestinian" on any map proves yet again that the goal of Fatah is identical with the goals of Hamas - not to gain "Palestinian" Arab lands but to take away land from Jews.

From 1948 to 1967, Palestinian Arabs didn't care when they were under Jordanian or Egyptian rule. their desire for a state was close to non-existent, and their efforts were aimed towards taking away Jewish land, not establishing a "Palestinian" Arab state. And this has not changed one bit.

The international community, cowed by fears of Arab terror, are more than willing to convince themselves that yet another Arab state in part of Western Palestine will help keep bombs out of their cities for a few years. It is that fear, rather than any real desire for truth of justice, that fuels the relentless pressure on Israel to keep on conceding more and more land over and over again in exchange for worthless promises that usually get broken within months. Annapolis is yet another exercise in this chapter of the vast effectiveness of terrorism in accomplishing its goals.

And the diabolical brilliance of Yasir Arafat was in his starting his major terror campaigns against Western airplanes - and then stopping to concentrate only on Israel. He understood that continuing to directly confront the West would bring his downfall, but to offer the West a deal where they only have to sacrifice Israel to mollify the terrorists was an irresistable offer to a world that has no love for Jews to begin with.

Denying reality to promote misoziony

Here's a useful place to use the word I coined yesterday.

A few days ago, the Iranian ambassador to Chile showed up at the launch party of a book about Hashomer Hatzair and he chatted a bit with the Israeli ambassador:

Shortly after the beginning of their conversation, Jalali leaned over and whispered: "I have to tell you something, but don't be offended, it's nothing personal. We are forbidden from speaking with Israeli diplomats."

How does Iran react to this horrible breach of Iranian etiquette? By denying that it ever happened:

An informed source at Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied certain media reports that Iran's ambassador to Santiago, Chile, had held talks with a Zionist regime diplomat.
The source told IRNA that the news has been published by a daily based in the occupied lands.
He said such propaganda raised by the Zionist media was not something new and authenticity of such claims has never been confirmed.

This is not the first time this has occurred - only last month we saw very similar circumstances:

Officials from Israel and Iran put aside political animosity Tuesday to work together in using Israeli forensics expertise to identify their dead from the crash of a jetliner on a Thai resort island.
"It's human nature to help in solving this problem as soon as possible," Safdar Shafiee said at the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok after shaking hands with Yaki Oved, head representative of Israeli police in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
"In situations like this, you forget the division," Oved said. "The main thing is to help. You don't think about the politics."

And the Iranian reaction?

Iran's envoy to Thailand has denied the allegations that Iranian and Israeli teams had cooperated to identify the Thai plane crash's victims.

Mohsen Pak Aeen said that the Iranian team received help from Thai experts, Iranian and Thai travel agencies and Iranian nationals living in Thailand to identify the crash victims.

Pak Aeen added there was no contact between the Iranian consulate in Phuket and Israeli nationals.

This is pure misoziony - the seething hatred of all things Israeli causes Iranians to deny events that were witnessed by dozens of people. (It is so pathological that they cannot bring themselves to say the word "Israel.")

The inherent irrationality of misoziony discredits anything that Iran says - yet it is so strong that they hate Israel more than they value their own credibility.

Jew severely beaten in Lakewood

From the Star Ledger:

An Orthodox Jewish man was hit on the head with a baseball bat in Lakewood last night, leaving him with life-threatening injuries as authorities searched for suspects, police said.
The unidentified beating victim, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, was found lying unconscious in the street on Princeton Avenue, near 12th Street, about 8 p.m., Lt. Michael Mooney said. Mooney added injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Police responded to the scene on reports of a man down.

Although the victim was dressed in Orthodox Jewish clothing, police are not treating the incident as a bias crime at this point because they have no suspects or motive, Mooney said.

A baseball bat was found near the victim, and K-9 units were being used in the search.

Egypt: Shalit in "good condition." How do they know?

From AFP:

An Israeli soldier held by Gaza militants for more than 15 months is in good condition, Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was quoted as telling an Israeli minister today.
"Gilad Shalit is in good condition. He feels well and has even gained some weight because he does not do any exercise," Suleiman told Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai who held one-day talks in Cairo yesterday, one of his senior aides said.

Since the Red Cross is not permitted to visit Shalit, the only ways that Suleiman can know this is:

- He believes what Hamas says, showing that Egypt is hardly an honest broker.

- Shalit is in Egypt and Egypt is complicit.

- Suleiman has gone to Gaza to see him.

In any of these cases it seems to indicate that Egypt tilts more towards Hamas terrorists than to Israel.

Aspen TV station considering airing Holocaust denial video

From the October 6 Aspen Times:

ASPEN — A controversial Holocaust denial film is raising questions about free speech at GrassRoots TV, the Aspen community-access station.

Steve Campbell, founder of Citizens for 9/11 Truth, asked the station to air “Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II” on Monday, but GrassRoots TV board members stopped the screening.

The one-hour program features Dr. Frederick Töben, an Australian national and member of the Adelaide Institute, an organization that denies that the Holocaust ever happened.

“This film is offensive not only to Jews in the world, but to any sensible person,” said GrassRoots TV Executive Director John Masters.

But the question of airing the film he called “like an homage to [Joseph] Goebbels” has stirred a “healthy debate” at the station, Masters said.

The newspaper itself is firmly on the side of the oxy-moronic "truthers":

Our local television station, GrassRoots TV, this week faces a tough question of whether to air a video that’s offensive to many of its board members and viewers. The video takes a “critical view” of the Holocaust and goes so far as to suggest that Hitler’s Germany was under attack by an “international Zionist elite,” and not the other way around.

We urge GrassRoots to run the video, “Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II” — not because we agree with it but because Aspen shouldn’t be frightened of a dissenting viewpoint.

The GrassRoots board meets Thursday to discuss not only what to do about this video, but what to do with other questionable material. We hope the management and the board choose a path of openness rather than censorship; it’s in keeping with democracy and the spirit of public access television....

This video shows the Holocaust deniers for the crackpots that they are. If viewers wish to see it, then let them. Suppressing this stuff only gives it power.

This has nothing to do with free speech.

TV stations, and newspapers, (and university daises for that matter) have limitations on what I'll call "bandwidth." By choosing to allow hate to be broadcast, printed or otherwise spewed, no matter what the context, they give it legitimacy. Choosing what to allow in bandwidth-limited media is not censorship, it is editing, and it necessarily happens all the time.

The only media that has no limitations on bandwidth is the Internet. As a result, people who want to see this video are free to do so. Nobody's free speech is limited in the least.

Would the enlightened editors at the Aspen Times allow the publication of an op-ed that argues for the re-establishment of slavery?

Another Google "News" source with explicit anti-semitism

For some bizarre reason, Google started indexing as "news" a site called ProgressiveU.org which appears to be a bunch of drunk college students blogging random thoughts.

An example of pure anti-semitic drivel can be seen here. It is so over the top that I was convinced it was a joke ("Alot of people have known about the criminology of these Jews and since they own everything they are able to supress the victims from talking. well, not this victim. ReAD! Remember, the Nazi's were never found. Only a couple of scap goats were prosecuted. And they never found Hitlers body. I found out he was living with the British Monarchy up until his death in 2005. I met his son, in 1988. He was in his late teens back then. There has been a hugh cover up and it is time we did something to do about it! READ!") but then the author appended a long, more serious Jew-hating article.

There are other articles that are equally bad, all indexed by Google News.

Once again, if you want to complain to Google the URL is here.

Misoziony

While the irrational hatred of Israel and Zionism is often a good indicator of a hatred of Jews as well, use of "anti-semitism" is often a distraction from the argument being made, and overuse of that term waters it down over time.

Misoziony , although I'm not sure how it is pronounced, is a word that may solve this problem. Miso- is a prefix, based on the Greek misos, that means "hatred." Misoziony - the hatred of Israel and Zionism - is a fundamentally irrational loathing that is just as disgusting as anti-semitism but without the baggage.

Misozionists like to say, for example, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not anti-semitic because he allows a number of Jews to live in relative peace in Iran, as long as they keep in their place. Arguing that this is but a more subtle form of anti-semitism - which it is - takes away from the prime argument that Ahmadinejad singlemindedly wants to see the Israel utterly destroyed. Arab and Islamic anti-semitism is generally more subtle nowadays than their naked misoziony.

Hating Israel in grossly disproportionate ways compared to the behavior of any other nation is a sickness that is closely related to anti-semitism but it is not identical. Misoziony shows itself to be no less reprehensible than pure anti-semitism, because the desire to see the destruction of Israel is as disgusting as any bigotry.

Israel-bashers like to claim that Zionists use the term "anti-semitism" as a club to crush all criticism of Israel. The problem is, of course, that the same crowd uses the claim of Zionist use of anti-semitism as a means to avoid discussing real issues. The word misoziony can neatly solve that problem and can help re-focus the arguments back on their fundamentally untenable bases. Pointing out misoziony can help to sharpen the debate and point out the basic irrationality of the Israel-bashers.

It is also a much more convenient term when talking about the Jimmy Carters or Walt/Mearsheimers of the world. While they claim that they are not against the existence of Israel, there is no doubt that they suffer from misoziony, uniquely blaming Israel for a large number of world problems and simultaneously absolving everyone else. It is probably not accurate to call them anti-semites but they are firmly in the misozionist camp.

What do you think?

Egypt allows 30 Islamic Jihad terrorists into Gaza

Ma'an reports:

The Egyptian authorities on Tuesday morning permitted the entry of around thirty Palestinians into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing, between Egypt and Gaza.

The majority of returning Palestinians were members of the Islamic Jihad movement.

Sources from Islamic Jihad reported that the majority were members of the military wing of the movement, the Al-Quds Brigades, and one was a Hamas loyalist.

Egypt, which denied that it released some 75 Hamas terrorists in late September, is breaking all of its agreements with Israel.

The EU Rafah "observers," still on the EU payroll, are sitting idly by.

Israel remains silent.

And Gazans now have more terror to look forward to.

Morning links

Front Page: Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th

Augean Stables: Insights into Honor-Shame Culture: Reflections of an American-born Israeli Officer among Bedouin Soldiers

Hot Air: Jimmy Carter on Darfur: What genocide?

Slate: Hitchens on The Price of Freedom

(h/t Omri, Backspin, LGF)

Israel's terrible Internet hasbara

Last July I quoted an Omedia article highly critical of the IDF's information policies. At least by judging from the website, it appears to be even worse nowadays - and the IDF is not alone in its horrendous record of hasbara, and the Israeli government's web efforts highlight these shortcomings all too well.

The IDF web site's English section is a joke. There is nothing about current operations, no press releases, no substantive articles describing its philosophy - almost nothing. And there is an empty video section. In the era of YouTube, this is unforgivable. Even the photograph section is impossible to navigate in Firefox and woefully out of date.

It's Hebrew section seems marginally better - at least there are some videos - but in general it is just as hard to navigate, and the world audience is not conversant in Hebrew.

The IDF is not the only Israeli organization that is failing in its obligation to tell the world its story. Even the Foreign Ministry website - better than the IDF's, to be sure - has stories on its front page that are months old. Its video section is sparse as well, with no indication of even what year the videos were created.

Even the IsRealli blog, which was launched with much fanfare a year or so ago by the Israel Consulate in New York, is being updated only once or twice a week.

Compare these with the Israel Insider website, the video site Israel Up Close, the excellent Israel21c site and its associated blog Israelity. These are professional, attractive and updated sites that do what Israel's official websites do not - inform the world about what is really going on and show a side of Israel that is never seen on the news.

The talent exists for Israel to do a better job in Internet hasbara. The poor track record needs to be improved, and quickly.

UPDATE: Two commenters mentioned Israelplug.com and it looks like a very good and entertaining site.