Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Berlin gallery shuts down after Muslim threats

A Berlin gallery has temporarily closed an exhibition of satirical works by a group of Danish artists after six Muslim youths threatened violence unless one of the posters depicting the Kaaba shrine in Mecca was removed, it said on Thursday.
The Galerie Nord in central Berlin said it had closed its "Zionist Occupied Government" show of works by Surrend, a group of artists who say they poke fun at powerful people and ideological conflicts.

On Tuesday, four days after the exhibition opened, a group of angry Muslims stormed into the gallery, shouting demands that one of the 21 posters should be removed, said the gallery.

"They were very aggressive and shouted at an employee that the poster should be taken down otherwise they would throw stones and use violence," the gallery's artistic director Ralf Hartmann told Reuters.

The Muslims objected to a depiction of the Kaaba -- the ancient shrine in Mecca's Grand Mosque which Muslims face to say their prayers -- which gave a "bitingly satirical commentary against radicalism," said the gallery in a statement.

Hartmann said the gallery was working with German authorities to improve security and he hoped to re-open the show as soon as possible.
"It would be unacceptable if individual social groups were in a position to exercise censorship over art and the freedom of expression," said the gallery in a statement.

The show also contained pictures which ridiculed neo-Nazis who believe Jews dominate global politics and industry as well as the state of Israel and radical Jews.
Surrend members are mainly street artists and use stickers, advertisements, posters and Web sites to express irony.

Surrend might make fun of everyone, but only one group threatens them for it.

Surrend once bought an ad in the Tehran Times that pretended to be pro-Ahmadinejad but actually called him a "swine" in the first letter of each bullet point:

Surrend's webpage is here.

Kuwait summons 1500 Mugniyeh mourners

From AFP:

Kuwait has summoned more than 1,500 suspects, including Kuwaiti citizens as well as others from various Arab and Islamic nationalities, over a rally to mourn top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh.

Diplomatic sources in Kuwait said interrogation is underway with some of them.

The summons relate to an investigation into a rally to mourn Mughniyeh who was killed in a car bombing in Damascus Feb.12.

The suspects were summoned for "suspicion of belonging to Hizbullah and for intimidating state security," said one source.

The sources said prominent Shiite Kuwaiti MPs Ahmad Lari and Adnan Abdulsamad will not be debriefed because they enjoy parliamentary immunity.

They said the summons, however, included former Kuwaiti MP Abdel Mohsen Jamal, municipality council member Fadel Sifr, Secretary General of the Social Cultural Society (SCS) Hussein al-Maatouk as well as SCS member Hasan al-Salman. They were prevented from traveling.

Prior to the summons, interrogation was carried out with three other Kuwaiti officials.

"Mughniyeh is a martyr hero who shook the grounds beneath the Zionist enemy (Israel) and America ... His blood will wipe Israel off the map," Abdulsamad told a large crowd that took part in Mughniyeh's mourning.

But Abdulsamad denied that Mughniyeh, who was on America's most wanted list for a series of attacks on Israeli and Western targets in Lebanon in the 1980s, was involved in two plane hijackings and a series of bombings in Kuwait.

"There is no evidence whatsoever to prove that Mughniyeh was either the mastermind or a perpetrator in the hijackings or the bombings," he said.

Although it is widely believed that Mughniyeh was behind the hijackings in Kuwait, the Gulf state has never officially accused him.

A former Egyptian steward with Kuwait Airways has said he recognized Mughniyeh as the hijacker of two Kuwaiti passenger planes in the 1980s.

The planes were seized by militant Shiite groups to demand the release of 17 Shiite activists jailed in Kuwait for carrying out a series of bombings against U.S., French and Kuwaiti targets.

About one-third of Kuwait's native population of one million are Shiites. They have four MPs in the 50-member parliament.(AFP)

I wonder - is Kuwait acting "disproportionately" for questioning 1500 people about their support for someone who performed two terror attacks against Kuwait 20 years ago?

Waiting to hear what the human rights organizations have to say....

Like most working men, the employees of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice sometimes have to attend stupid mandatory training sessions. Pinheaded academics who know nothing about the raw, hard real world of enforcing Sharia law come and say things like "you shouldn't bash women's heads with your batons" and "you should be more sensitive when beating foreigners."

In one recent, boring session, our heroes became fed up when the instructor suggested that they should be polite to the public. Other Vice Commission members were upset when this same teacher gave some of them failing grades.

Clearly, this man - a professor of psychology at Umm al-Qra University in the holy city of Mecca - was an immoral attacker of Islam who spat on time honored customs like beating women. The only thing that our heroes needed to do was catch him in the act.

So they set up a sting.

They "persuaded" a woman to call up the professor, pose as a student and ask to meet with him to discuss her grades. He agreed to meet her in a public place, as long as she shows up with a chaperone - her brother.

As soon as he arrived, he was surprised to find the girl alone. The professor then found himself surrounded by our heroes, the religious police, who handcuffed him and hauled him into custody.
He was accused of being in a state of khulwa – seclusion – with an unrelated woman.

The professor has been sentenced to 180 lashes and eight months in jail, and the heroic Muttawa has restored its honor. And by extension, the honor of Allah has been protected as well.

UN envoy calls Qassams "terrorism"; Abbas proud of Fatah terror

Yesterday, UN envoy Robert Serry gave a report to the UN Security Council. As can be expected, most of the report was more of the same - blaming Israel for how it is dealing with Gaza, blaming settlements for creating a humanitarian crisis (not quite sure how that works), claiming that Israel has not removed any outposts (um, remember Amona? Neve Daniel North? Tapuach West?) and similar naive statements.

As usual, he has no real idea about what Israel should do, only what it should not do:

A different and more positive strategy for Gaza was a humanitarian, security and strategic imperative, for Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Any idea what this strategy should be? Well, nothing that can possibly involve the remotest possibility of hurting civilians, of course, so possibly he is calling for Israel to move from "condemning" Qassam attacks into "deploring" them. Perhaps providing them with more potassium nitrate so they can fertilize their crops.

Buried in his speech, however, is something that I have never seen the UN say before:

His visit to Sderot, which had been the target of over 4,300 rockets since 2004, had brought out the physical and psychological damage to the population. Those crude rockets were aimed at hurting civilians and clearly constituted terrorism. Their continued firing was completely unacceptable and must be halted unconditionally.

The "T word" is hardly used even in the Western media to describe Qassams, with sickening words like "resistance" used far more often. The fact that the reliably anti-Israel UN classifies rocket attacks as terrorism needs to be publicized and the Arab terrorists and their friends need to be forced to respond, so that the world can see their sickening "logic" for what it is.

I, for one, would love to see if Mahmoud Abbas would agree with that characterization - unlikely given his statements yesterday:

"I had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965 and of being the one who taught resistance to many in the region and around the world; what it's like; when it is effective and when it isn't effective; its uses, and what serious, authentic and influential resistance is," Abbas said.
"It is common knowledge when and how resistance is detrimental and when it is well timed," he addad. "We (Fatah) had the honor of leading the resistance and we taught resistance to everyone, including Hizbullah, who trained in our military camps."

Let's ask Abbas what his distinction is between effective terrorism and ineffective terrorism, whether he has any moral rather than tactical problems with suicide bombings, and whether he is still proud over the early PLO airplane hijackings and mass murders.

This is what reporters should be doing.

Jewish school in Sabbath basketball playoff kerfuffle

From Sports Illustrated (h/t Global Freezing):

DENVER (AP) -- State senators have taken up the cause of a Jewish boys basketball team whose playoff run may be halted because its players can't play on the Jewish Sabbath.

The Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy team could be headed for a regional championship on Saturday, March 8, if it wins one more game. But the Denver team's religious beliefs prohibit students from playing on the Jewish Sabbath between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.

If Herzl/RMHA makes it to the regional championship and refuses to play a Saturday game, another school would be chosen to take its place, CHSAA commissioner Bill Reader said.

Earlier this month, the Colorado High School Activities Association, which governs sports and other high school activities, rejected the team's request for a schedule change.

At the end of morning debate in the state Senate on Wednesday, Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, called on the CHSAA to be more flexible.

Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, said the CHSAA's decision was ironic because it has a rule barring games from being played on Sunday for religious reasons.

Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Sedalia, said there must be a way for the CHSAA to accommodate the team.

"It just seems like the bureaucracy has run amok here," Wiens said.

Bruce H. DeBoskey, mountain states regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said the group was disappointed by CHSAA's decision.

More details in this article from CBS 4 Denver:

Reader said CHSAA can't accommodate everyone.

"We speak for 110,000 athletes and 340 member schools that all have different needs and desires. It's impossible for us to be all things for all people," he said.

"(Herzl/RMHA) joined in 2002 with the full understanding that sundown Friday to sundown Saturday is a prime time for high school athletics, and they voluntarily joined anyway."

Reader said the CHSAA board allowed the school to compete at the district level of playoffs if other schools agreed, which they did. He said late scheduling changes at the regional level would be more difficult, with teams having to travel to a rented facility in Sterling.

The school knew the rules when it joined the league. So what is the best solution?

As with all similar problems, the religious minority has the right to request accommodation - but not to demand it.

And when accommodation can be extended, appreciation must be shown enthusiastically.

In this case, I would recommend that should the Herzl school win the next game, that they try to privately arrange an unofficial game against the opponents they would have faced that Saturday - just for bragging rights.

Abbas doesn't want PalArabs to become citizens of Lebanon

From the Daily Star (Lebanon):

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted Wednesday as rejecting the naturalization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. "We would never accept any settlement that leads to naturalizing Palestinians in Lebanon," Abbas told pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

"We would not accept any settlements that would lead to a demographic change in Lebanon. This is totally unacceptable ... We won't accept a settlement that obliges Lebanon to naturalize even one Palestinian. We will find a settlement that satisfies Palestinians in Lebanon and satisfies Lebanon ... I'm sure of this and time will prove it," Abbas added.

What a great leader the Palestinian Arabs have! He cares about Lebanon so much - the country that keeps his people in camps, restricts their movement and what kinds of jobs they can have, doesn't let them buy land, restricts their travel, and even limits the amount of building material they can have inside the camps. But rather than fight for the rights of Palestinian Arabs who have lived for generations in Lebanon to become naturalized citizens, Abbas wants to keep them in misery - and the reason he gives is because he cares more about Lebanese demographics than about his own people!

An interesting vignette: in 1994, Lebanon quietly allowed some Palestinian Arabs to become citizens, but it didn't publicize it . Even so, some 20,000 PalArabs took advantage of the new law, desperately trying to improve their lives. Then, in 2003, right before the Lebanese law that grants full rights afer ten years of citizenship, Lebanon started revoking the citizenships of these same Palestinian Arabs.

(Another interesting fact: some 50,000 Palestinian Arabs did successfully manage to get citizenship in Lebanon in the 1950s and 1960s - and the way they did it was by proving that their parents and grandparents had moved to Palestine from Lebanon and weren't in Palestine for centuries. Imagine that!)

How many Lebanese Palestinian Arabs would similarly jump at the opportunity to become full Lebanese citizens if given the chance? We'll never know, because the topic is forbidden to even be brought up among Arabs - they will facetiously claim that Palestinian Arabs of course prefer to self-identify as Palestinian and remain in stateless limbo for the foreseeable future. Even so-called "civil rights" organizations for Palestinian Arab "refugees" refuse to consider the possibility of resettlement - even they prefer that the Palestinian Arabs remain in limbo, with some more human rights but not the full rights of citizens.

But has anyone actually polled the people stuck in camps for sixty years? Is there any doubt that if Lebanon would offer citizenship to its 250,000 PalArabs languishing there that most of them would jump at the chance?

No, the self-appointed leaders of the Palestinian Arabs know that if they would give their people these choices there would be no "Palestinians" left. The only people who benefit from Palestinian Arabs staying in miserable conditions are their so-called "leaders" and the leaders of the Arab world who use the "Palestinian" issue as a means to keep pressure on Israel and avoid addressing internal problems.

See also An Arab almost admits the truth about PalArabs and Very interesting Arabic editorial in "Falasteen" for other postings that elaborate on this Arab pathology against making Palestinian Arabs happy.

Dead Hamas terrorists trained in Iran or Syria

In an article about Israel's airstrike this morning that killed 5 Hamas members, Arab News adds an interesting detail:

Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and one in the West Bank during separate attacks yesterday. The dead included Hamas members, who had allegedly returned from military training in Syria or Iran.
Five members of Hamas’ Ezeddine Al-Qassam Brigades were killed when the van they were traveling in was attacked by Israeli warplanes near the southern town of Khan Younis, medical officials said. Local residents, who knew the men, reportedly said some of them had undergone training in Syria or Iran and returned home after Hamas breached the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt.
Egypt closed the border at Rafah about two weeks after the breach, but allowed Palestinians who had crossed into its territory to return.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military intelligence chief alleged that dozens of Gazans, who had gone “primarily to Syria but also to Iran for training in various areas of terror expertise,” had taken advantage of the open Rafah border to return home.

So while Hamas' main objective in storming the Egyptian border may have been to embarrass Egypt, a possible strong secondary reason was to bring back all of their newly-trained terror leaders to plan more ways of killing Jews.

And Israel's job is now to find these people and kill them before they kill Israelis.

Georgetown University hires a real Israel scholar

With all the things we read about the vicious misoziony and anti-semitism at many US universities, it is refreshing to see that one is hiring someone who does not call for Israel to be destroyed:

Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service announced that renowned international historian Michael B. Oren has joined the faculty as Visiting Professor. Beginning in Fall 2008, he will teach undergraduate and graduate students in courses on America in the Middle East, military history of the modern Middle East, and the history of Zionist diplomacy.

“Michael Oren is a great addition to our community of scholars and will enhance our cadre of experts in the growing Program for Jewish Civilization,” said Robert L. Gallucci, dean of the School of Foreign Service. “I am pleased to welcome him to the School of Foreign Service and know he will offer valuable contributions to our understanding of critical issues in the Middle East.”

In addition to his position at Georgetown, Oren is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research facility, where he specializes in the diplomatic and military history of the Middle East. Oren joins other distinguished faculty associated with the Program for Jewish Civilization (PJC) including Jacques Berlinerblau, PJC director and associate professor of Jewish civilization; Ambassador Dennis Ross, visiting professor of Jewish civilization; Yossi Shain, founding director of PJC and professor of comparative government and diaspora politics; Robert Lieber, professor of government and international affairs; and, Avi Beker, Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor in the department of government.

Read the Hamas press release taking credit for murder

Hamas, for all its terrorist rhetoric, tends to be considered a bit less extreme than Islamic Jihad or Al Qaeda. And like the long line at the supermarket where you feel better when someone goes behind you, the very existence of organizations that are more extreme makes Hamas look a bit more moderate in comparison without having to change their position.

Reporters pick up on this as they take pains to distinguish between Hamas and the other groups, and as a result the word "extremist" is not used quite as much for Hamas as for others anymore.

This is a manifestation of Western projection as well as wishful thinking - it is too hideous to imagine that Hamas cannot be reasoned with, so we really want to think that they are more pragmatic and therefore more reasonable and that peace is possible.

The press has no such compunctions with Israel, routinely using words like "hawkish" and "hardline" to refer to people on the Israeli political right. Over time, readers of the press will start to associate hardline Israeli positions with hardline Arab positions, making a mental parity between the two groups who have that adjective in common.

Keep that in mind as you read this, the auto-translation of the Hamas press release taking credit for killing an Israeli college student with a rocket today:

Recognize the Zionist enemy soldier killed and three wounded by the shelling rapists principals of Sderot

(Fight them and punish God's hands and helps you heal them and recovered the people believing)

Statement issued by the military

..::: Brigades martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam :::..

Recognize the Zionist enemy soldier killed and three wounded by the shelling rapists principals of Sderot

After reconcile God for they, here is the Zionist enemy recognizes killed a Zionist soldier and wounding three of the rapists by the fall of Qassam rockets at Sderot usurped, the Qassam Brigades announced in their successive shoulder and figures (0802-93) and even (0802-97) claimed responsibility for the bombing usurped mentioned ten missiles.

The shelling came in response to the Zionist crime and the massacre committed by the Zionist aviation treacherous this morning in the town of Khan Yunis, which led to the martyrdom of five of the finest Qassam Mujahideen fortunate ..

We in the Qassam Brigades, which declare jihad for the task that we face stress occupation usurper all of the means we have, and break thorn cowardly army on the eve of the Gaza Strip and steadfast stationed ..

It is a jihad victory or martyrdom,,,

Brigades martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam

It is instructive to occasionally read the actual words that Hamas uses. If more people would read their words rather than the sanitized versions that make it into English it would be much harder for natural Western empathy and "understanding" to kick in when thinking about them.

Breaking: Israeli murdered by Hamas Qassam at Sapir College

UPDATE:

At least one person was killed, another was wounded and many were treated for shock Wednesday as least 20 Qassam rockets slammed into the western Negev town of Sderot and surrounding communities.

The victim was apparently in a car, parked next to Sapir College on the outskirts of Sderot, which was directly hit by a Qassam.

A rocket directly hit a home in Sderot, while another exploded in a factory mess hall shortly after the workers had exited.

Another person was lightly wounded in the strike and several people were reportedly suffering from shock.

Hamas' military wing claimed responsiblity for firing the Qassams.

Iran: Anyone who disagrees that Israel is a dirty microbe is a filthy Zionist

Ya gotta love it:

Iran hit out at the European Union on Tuesday for condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s description of Israel as a “dirty microbe”, saying the bloc had given in to pressure from a Zionist lobby.

The EU’s Slovenian presidency had condemned as “unacceptable, damaging and uncivilised” a stream of anti-Israeli comments from Iranian officials since the murder of a top Hezbollah commander.

“The issuing of such a biased statement by the rotating presidency of the European Union is the result of pressure from the international Zionist lobby,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.

“World powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and have unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region,” Ahmadinejad [had] said.

The foreign ministry warned the Slovenian EU presidency “not to fall into the trap of the Zionist lobby.”

Ah, but Iran has already fallen into our Zionist trap, as we force them to publicly make themselves look even dumber than they already had!

February Qassam Calendar

As usual, this is far from complete, and it is more to show how ignored the Qassam issue is rather than to show how many are being fired. Many Qassams never make it in the news, and the rare times that the IDF publishes statistics shows that I am usually undercounting by about 50%. Also, these are Qassams that make it to Israel; many that are fired explode in Gaza itself.

This list does not include mortars being shot from Gaza, which are usually much more numerous on any given day. It also does not count the occasional rocket from Lebanon. It does count Grad-style rockets that come from Gaza, often to Ashkelon.

February

288 this month.

Previous calendars:

January 2008

December 2007
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February

Saudis try to increase tourism - with polygamy

The New York Times wrote a glowing article about how much fun it is for adventurous people to visit Saudi Arabia:

As part of a group of reforms, the kingdom is trying to develop the country as a tourist destination, first for domestic travelers and later for international ones. Westerners are starting to visit the country on small group tours, a process that has become easier with loosened visa rules.

The country’s starkly different customs are part of the appeal for visitors — some even claim to see advantages in wearing the abaya, the formless black robe that women must wear in public. So are its intact culture, historical sites and unexpected diversity of climate and topography.

...It is a closed country, but a wealthy one, with a mix of modern buildings and ancient architecture. Although non-Muslims cannot see Mecca and Medina (and those with Israeli stamps on their passports cannot enter the country at all), most can visit the old souks of cities like Jidda, which is well-preserved.

...But the biggest draw of Saudi Arabia may be the closed nature of the country itself. The tour operators interviewed for this article said that the majority of clients who went on their Saudi tours were exceptionally well traveled, many having visited 100 countries. Saudi Arabia at this point is a place Western tourists go when they’re looking for something totally different, a culture little touched by the Western world.

The country’s leaders are interested in encouraging the Saudis themselves to move around in their country, believing that the growth of a domestic tourism industry would actually solidify their culture. Families would have more options for traveling together and could see the diversity of their country, which Prince Sultan bin Salman thinks would make them recognize their national unity as “nothing less than a miracle.”

The Saudi desire for increasing internal tourism was discussed in a public meeting ten days before this article was published, so it seems unlikely that the NYT reporter was unaware of one specific proposal raised on how this could be accomplished: by encouraging men to marry multiple wives and keep them far away from each other.

From Youssef Ibrahim:

Here’s an official plan submitted to invigorate tourism in Saudi Arabia: Marry four women, domicile them in corners of the kingdom, travel to visit each during the year, and — boom — you’ve stimulated airline business, hotel occupancy, and car rentals. This was submitted by none less than Hassan Alomair, director of self-development in Saudi Arabia, at a Jeddah conference for the development of internal tourism.

The project combines piety with efficacy by uniting Sharia’s entitlements to multiple wives with economic stimulus, Mr. Alomair argued. Sharing the dais was the female dean of the school of literature at King Faisal University, Dr. Feryal al-Hajeri, who remained silent as he prescribed his harem-induced economic scheming.

Not so with the readers and bloggers on the Saudi daily Al Watan’s website, which lit up on February 12 with commentary. “Why not make it four cows? He can fly around to milk them,” one said. “If that is the mentality of our director of self-development,” another asked, ”how are the others in that department?” There was plenty of accord with Mr. Alomair too. Some saw his idea as a “pillar” for building a true Islamic society, a “refuge” for unmarried Saudi women, and a “cure” for a widening spinster phenomena.

(The entire article is worth reading.)

But the NYT tries to spin the ancient misogynist culture as just part of the fun:

FOR the time being, the experience of visiting Saudi Arabia includes conforming to its norms. No alcohol, pornography or proselytizing materials can be taken into the country. A woman under 30 cannot enter the country without a husband or brother. Women cannot walk about unaccompanied, and they must keep their bodies covered with abayas.

And the Saudis aren’t kidding about it. On a tour she led in 2006, Ms. Zawaideh said, she noticed some Europeans walking around with their husbands, probably business travelers, without abayas or head scarves, and she warned them that the husbands could be arrested for this offense. The women brushed her off, she said, and within an hour, she noticed security people talking with the couples, then taking the men away.

Ms. Zawaideh says that she has no such problem with her clients. Two women wore the abaya all the way to New York, and some found it had the advantages of helping them fit in and protecting against blowing sand.

Joyce Jolley, 76, a retired dental hygienist from Seattle, bought the most severe kind to take home, including a head covering with only an eye-slit opening and a sheer black veil to cover that — more than what Saudi women are required to wear. “It was kind of an adventure,” she said.

Obama vs. Likud

Barack Obama raised up a little dust in a speech to American leaders in Cleveland on Sunday night with this statement:

This is where I get to be honest and I hope I’m not out of school here. I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress. And frankly some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward.

The bolded statement is interesting on a number of levels.

It is curious that Obama is adopting an apparently anti-Likud stance. Likud, after all, was responsible for Camp David and the surrender of the Sinai to Egypt; and Likud was in power when Gaza was abandoned.

Obama's statement seems even more naive when the latest polls in Israel show Likud handily beating Kadima and Labor. As Shmuel Rosner asks, does this mean that a President Obama would not support a Likud prime minister?

Also, as The American Thinker observes, the word "Likud" has turned into a generalized anti-Israel term by the far left, pretty much their equivalent to "Taliban." It is hard to read Obama's comment as anything but influenced by the strong anti-Likud stance of people who clearly are anti-Israel.

But even assuming that all he meant was that the Likud-like positions of the ZOA and other Zionist organizations have taken over the pro-Israel stance in America - not an unreasonable observation - Obama still needs to go a bit beyond this rhetoric and let us know what his specific ideas are about how a final peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world would look.

Americans, by and large, have the erroneous idea that most Israelis want to see essentially all settlements dismantled. However, both Bill Clinton and George Bush at one point realized that there is no realistic way for Israel to give up the major settlement blocs, and acted accordingly. Even the most dovish Israelis cannot countenance the Jerusalem Jewish suburbs and the large blocs being abandoned, but the US has lately been treating them the same as the most isolated settlements. Where does Obama stand?

Does Obama want to see Jerusalem divided again?

How does he expect Israel to deal with missiles shot towards all major Israeli population centers that would result if Israel withdrew from the entire West Bank?

Does he consider the possibility that Hamas could take over the West Bank, either politically or militarily? How should the US react to a democratically-elected Hamas PA government?

Does he consider Gaza as the PA's responsibility, or is it a separate political entity now that would not be included in any peace agreement?

Would further Israeli withdrawals help the "moderates" on the PalArab side - or the extremists?

These are the real questions that Obama - or any candidate - should answer. The answers would reveal whether they have actually thought through on the issues or are just hazily repeating the "land for peace" mantra that is too often used as a substitute for real thought.

Obama's flippant use of Likud as a rhetorical bogeyman indicates that he has not yet reached that stage.

The best autotranslated name

As I try to decipher Arabic articles that are auto-translated into English, proper names are often a problem - because the software translates the names rather than transliterates them. After some time I recognize a few:

French = Shalit
Singer = Mughniyeh
Exhausted = Livni

But I think I finally today deciphered the biggest mystery of all:

Syphilis = Fatah Central Committee member Abdullah Franji

I very often see quotes in the Arabic media from "Syphilis" and it was hard to figure out who he was, but an interview in Firas Press today with him told me his first name was "Abdullah" and showed a picture of him, which narrowed down the field. So here is Mr. Syphilis: