Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Americans traditionally don't like US Senators for President

One fascinating tidbit from this election that I have not seen anyone really expound upon: this year the US will elect a sitting Senator as President for the first time since 1960, and only the second time ever!

Here is a brief chart showing the highest previous office held by every President since 1904:

2000	George W. Bush	Governor
1992	Bill Clinton	Governor
1988	George HW Bush	VP
1980	Ronald Reagan	Governor
1976	Jimmy Carter	Governor
1968	Richard Nixon	VP
1964	Lyndon Johnson	VP/Pres
1960	John F Kennedy	Senator
1952	Dwight D Eisenhower	General
1948	Harry S Truman	VP/Pres
1932	FDR	Governor
1928	Herbert Hoover	Sec'y of Commerce
1924	Calvin Coolidge	VP
1920	Warren Harding	Senator
1912	Woodrow Wilson	Governor
1908	William H Taft	Sec'y of War
1904	Theodore Roosevelt	VP/Pres

Harding was the first sitting senator to ever become President.

With the exception of Nixon, all vice presidents who became president were incumbents (at least in this time period.)

It appears that Americans trust governors far, far more as leaders than they do senators. The numbers seem to indicate an almost visceral distaste for senators - when senators go up against governors,

This could partially explain the appeal of Sarah Palin - even though she is a first-term governor, so were Jimmy Carter and FDR (although they were in office longer.) Americans seem to trust governors more with the presidency than they do Washington insiders; I believe that Harding was the only senator to ever defeat a governor for president.

How the UN lies

The UN "Human Rights" Commission, in its zeal to demonize Israel, has resorted to yet another bald-faced lie.

Buried in the latest report they've issued - saying that the accidental shelling of Beit Hanoun may be a war crime - they say flatly that Gaza is "occupied" by Israel.

As evidence, they bring a footnote:

Democratic Republic of Congo v. Uganda, International Court of Justice, 2005, paras. 173 174.

I could not find the full ICJ court ruling in this case online, but there is a comprehensive summary in an ICJ press release. Here is the relevant section:

The Court then considers the question as to whether or not Uganda was an occupying Power in the parts of the Congolese territory where its troops were present at the relevant time. It observes that, under customary international law, territory is considered to be occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army, and that the occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. In the present case, it has before it evidence sufficient to prove that Uganda established and exercised authority in Ituri (a new province created in June 1999 by the commander of the Ugandan forces in the DRC) as an occupying Power.

I did find part of Paragraph 173 mentioned above:

In order to reach a conclusion as to whether a State, the military forces of which are present on the territory of another State as a result of an intervention, is an "occupying Power" in the meaning of the term as understood in the jus in bello, the Court must examine whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the said authority was in fact established and exercised by the intervening State in the areas in question. In the present case the Court will need to satisfy itself that the Ugandan armed forces in the DRC were not only stationed in particular locations but also that they had substituted their own authority for that of the Congolese Government.

By the ICJ's definition, which is consistent with the Hague definition as well as the apparent Geneva definition, Israel is certainly not occupying Gaza! The reason that the ICJ recognizes parts of Congo under Ugandan occupation is because Uganda created the province and managed its day to day activities.

So when the UN is calling Gaza "occupied," it is consciously relying on a footnote in an irrelevant ICJ ruling as "proof," knowing that nobody will actually research this claim and call them on it. They are not only lying, but they are being doubly deceptive by obscuring the source for their statement. (And they have used this same ruse before. In that case they also buttressed their arguments by footnoting a paper written by a highly partisan Gaza advocacy group, and ignored any legal arguments made by others that show otherwise, thus again proving the UN's mendacity.)

The UNHRC is emotionally tied to the idea of Israeli "occupation," and they have no qualms about twisting the truth - and the law - in order to maintain that fiction. Conversely, while Hamas is unquestionably the effective controller of Gaza nowadays, the UN refuses to give them any legal responsibility for their war crimes, using the same bizarre reasoning that a country outside of Gaza that has partial control over one of its borders has more responsibility than the group that has seized day-to-day control, including the police, the schools, the hospitals and the judicial system.

Grim milestone

The number of dead in Gaza City from the overnight Hamas attacks on the Doghmush clan has risen to 12, and the 2008 self-death count rises to 177.

This marks the 1000th Palestinian Arab violently killed by PalArab actions since I started counting in late June, 2006.

I started this count at the outset of Operation Summer Rains, to counterbalance the incessant MSM counts that were fashionable at the time of the number of Palestinian Arabs killed by Israel since the intifada began. My methodology has stayed the same, with the main gray area being which tunnel deaths to count.

UPDATE: Speaking of...another tunnel collapse, one dead. 178.

UPDATE 2: Man stabbed to death in Hebron. 179.

Déjà Vu: Egypt to allow Gazans to go to Mecca

From Ma'an:

Egypt agreed on Monday to allow 600 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to travel to Mecca for the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage, through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with Gaza next Saturday.

Talib Abu Sha’r, the minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs in the de facto government in Gaza said that all 600 who were approved to leave have already booked their flights and secured visas from Saudi Arabia.

Abu Sha’r said that 2200 Gazans had applied for permits, but only 600 had received approval from the Egyptian and Saudi authorities.

Of course Muslims are very sensitive to allowing their co-religionists to perform one of their sacred rights.

But last year, many of the pious individuals that Egypt allowed to go to Saudi Arabia were in fact Hamas terrorists who met with their patron Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Mecca. He gave them some $50 million, and Egypt ended up allowing them to return to Gaza. (The non-terrorists who returned came through Israel's Keren Shalom crossing; the others refused until Egypt relented.)

There were also reports at the time that some Hamas members took advantage of Egypt's opening Rafah to go to Iran for terror training or to return from that training. Not to mention that Egypt's opening of Rafah is a breach of existing agreements between Israel and Egypt.

Meanwhile, the EU team that is supposed to be monitoring the Rafah crossing for just this kind of activity stays on its extended vacation in Israel, while their bosses are utterly silent about the multiple breaches of agreements concerning the opening of that border.

Hamas kills 10 members of Doghmush clan

From Ma'an:

Eleven people, including a police officer and a young girl, were killed in clashes between de facto government security forces and members of the Dughmush clan in Gaza on Tuesday morning.

A fierce gunbattle broke out after security forces attempted to arrest three members of the family. Medical sources said that 11 people were killed, contradicting an earlier report from the police that only four were killed.

Sources from police department confirmed that Jamil, Ibrahim and Sa’eb Doghmush were killed during the raid.

Twenty-two-year-old Sameh Mahmoud An-Naji, a member of the security forces, was killed, and an unknown number of others were injured.

Members of the Doghmush were reported to have been responsible for the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston in 2007.

Eyewitnesses said that they saw body of a few months year old girl in Ash-Shifa hospital in Gaza who appeared to have “lost her head.” She is said to be daughter of Abu Al-Qassem Doghmush, the leader of the An-Nasser Brigades, and armed group close to Hamas.

Medical sources at Ash-Shifa hospital confirmed that there are a “large number” policemen were injured.

Shahwan described the campaign as “successful” adding that it included other fugitives accused of killing a policeman and other crimes.

The police announced that they seized a explosives and weapons from the building they raided.

YNet adds:

Among those injured in the exchanges of fire was Army of Islam leader Mumtaz Doghmush, who was involved in kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. His brother was killed.

Yesterday, the UN "Human Rights Commission" declared that the accidental 2006 Israeli shelling of Beit Hanoun might be considered a "war crime." Don't hold your breath to hear them say anything negative about the use of mortars and rockets against a house with a family in it, decapitating a baby girl.

My "self-death count" of the number of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by their own actions this year climbs to 176.

UPDATE: To be fair, the Doghmushes are hardly innocent. According to the usually anti-Hamas Firas Press, the Doghmushes fired rockets and mortars from their compound towards Mahmoud al-Zahhar's house in Gaza City during the fighting as well. So both sides have wanton disregard for civilian lives.

Not that this is a surprise.

UPDATE 2: PCHR lists two children killed, a 1 year old boy and a 16-year old. Nothing about a girl. For now, I'm assuming two children.

"Human Rights" organization news

CAMERA takes the New York Times to task for describing the Free Gaza freakazoids as "human rights advocates":

the Times is whitewashing Israel’s adversaries. This time, it is lending undue credibility to the Free Gaza Movement, a controversial group of extreme pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel activists, by describing them not as a pro-Palestinian activist group – which they undeniably are – but rather with the noble designation “human rights advocates.” This description, which appeared several times in Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner’s Aug. 24 story Rights advocates defy Israeli blockade of Gaza, is prejudicial, subjective and misleading, and should not appear in the news section of a serious paper – certainly not to describe a group that includes people who advocate against the existence of the Jewish state, accuse Israel of genocide, and explicitly legitimize violence.

Read the whole thing for details and proof, as well as the NYT's absurd response.

In other "human rights" organization news, the Jerusalem Post has a profile of Yuval Steinitz, who was an enthusaistic supporter of Peace Now during Oslo but woke up to the dangers of a Palestinian Arab state a few years later:

"Oslo could have been right. I gave it a chance, but then I had to be a skeptic and reexamine my position. Then I felt that what we did was a terrible mistake," said Steinitz.

"I realized that, to my frustration, we were giving up land for war and terror and incitement," he said.

To his sorrow, said Steinitz, the principles of Oslo remain intact in the Annapolis process and direct negotiations continue between Israeli and the Palestinian leaders, despite the dangers they pose.

His objection to territorial compromise is not rooted in a belief in biblical Israel, but is the outcome of a security analysis, said Steinitz, who is a former head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

"For any foreseeable future I do not see a partner, or any possibility to leave Judea and Samaria or even part of it," he said.

"The idea of a two-state solution should be dead, today, because unfortunately a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would bring about Israel's demise," he added. Such a Palestinian state, he warned, would "immediately become an outpost for Iran." The Hamas takeover of Gaza less than two years after Israel withdrew from the area was a scenario that could repeat itself in the West Bank, he warned.

The only reason Kassam rockets had not been fired at the center of the country or at Ben-Gurion International Airport was because Israel had a military presence in the West Bank, said Steinitz.

And, finally, we get to the sad news that another supposed "human rights" group has been unmasked, and will lose its EU funding:

Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor has learned this week that the European Union (EU) has decided not to renew its funding of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

In an 'urgent message' to members of ICAHD-USA, the organization's director Jeff Halper announced 'We have just heard that our request for re-funding has been rejected…So we now face a real crisis'. The message went on to plead with supporters for extra funds.

For several years, despite its extreme anti-Israel agenda, ICAHD has been a recipient of major EU funding under the Partnerships for Peace framework. The EU has consistently stated that these grants are directed towards specific projects and are not intended as general funds for the organization. However, as NGO Monitor demonstrated in, "Europe's Hidden Hand" an EU grant of 473,000 Euros in 2005 constituted the majority of ICAHD's annual budget.

ICAHD consistently manipulates the language of human rights to promote an anti-Israel political agenda. ICAHD routinely refers to Israel as an 'apartheid' state while Jeff Halper promotes a one state solution which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. This is in direct contradiction to the EU's official policy, which promotes a two state solution.

NGO Monitor's Executive Director, Prof Gerald Steinberg commented, "ICAHD's façade has finally been acknowledged, and the European Commission has acted appropriately in ending further funding. In reality, ICAHD does nothing to advance coexistence and instead promotes extreme views which fuel the conflict. Following this precedent, we urge the EC to review all such NGO funding in a transparent manner, and establish consistent criteria."

In a world where anti-Zionism tries to masquerade as "human rights," this is a rare piece of good news.

Who fires rockets at Sderot? AP is clueless

From AP:

Israeli children gather at the site where a rocket, allegedly fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza, landed in the southern town of Sderot Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008. Police say a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza has exploded in an Israeli town just across the border fence. They say the rocket hit an open area in the town of Sderot. It set a fire, but no one was hurt. It was the first rocket attack in nearly three weeks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket attack.
(AP Photo / Tsafrir Abayov)

"Allegedly fired by Palestinian militants"? Does this mean that AP is leaving open the possibility that Israelis are firing rockets at each other and blaming it on Arabs from Gaza, which only the looniest of the loonies claim? Or perhaps they don't consider people who shoot potentially fatal rockets targeting civilains to be "militant" enough to be called militants?

It's not like AP can see where the rocket landed; they can only claim that the Israeli police say that the rocket landed in Sderot. It is of course possible that those notoriously unreliable Israeli police are lying and they just took one of the old rockets out of inventory and placed it there for the benefit of the AP photographer - you can never be sure! And the person who suffered from shock and was hospitalized - could be fake. You never know.

And the fact that Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for this attack? Well, that didn't make the deadline, and only when Palestinian Arab terrorists say something can you report it as fact.

Latest "Zionist": Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi

In a particularly humorous turn of events, the Arab press is reporting that Iranian media are heavily attacking notorious Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Qaradawi, it may be remembered, is an Sunni cleric who calls suicide bombings against Israeli civlians mandated by Islamic law. But what seems to have gotten under the Iranians' collective skins is Qaradawi's anger at Shiites. Last week, Qaradawi warned his fellow Sunnis against threats from Shiites:

”Unfortunately, there are Shias now in Egypt…Since the age of Saladin until very recently, there wasn’t a single Shia Egyptian. They tried to gain one but they never succeeded.” But now they are openly spreading their ideas in the newspapers and on television” he said. According to Qaradawi, this might be because the Sunni societies have a certain vulnerability because the Sunni ulema did not fortify Sunni society against the Shia threat because we always employed the phrase “avoid/stay away from fitna in order to unite all the Muslims.”
What he seems to be saying is that the Sunnis were taking the high ground, in pleading for greater Muslim unity, so as to avoid fitna. As a result the Shias took advantage of this to try and spread or recruit Shias in the Sunni societies.

But he is clear what has to be done: “We (the Ulema) must stand up and protect Sunni societies from the Shia assault."

This is not a new position, but apparently, this is enough to make the Shiites go apoplectic:

The Iranian newspapers accused Sheikh Yusuf as speaking on behalf of the leaders of global Freemasonry and rabbis. They published a torrent of words of insult and defamation against Qaradawi, saying that he speaks the language of hypocrisy and the hypocrisy stems from sectarian ideas, and he uttered such obscene words against the Shiites Messenger of Allah peace be upon him.

They further accused him of serving the interests of Zionists and rabbis who warned against the tide of Shiite after the defeat of the Israeli army in south Lebanon in 2006.

I gotta admit, the Iranians are right. Sheikh al-Qaradawi (or, as we Elders like to refer to him, "Joey") has been on the Zionist payroll for years. He goes on Egyptian TV (owned by us, natch) and rails against Zionists and then we meet him in the Green Room and reward him with some bagels and lox flown in from the Lower East Side. (Joey loves that stuff; he particularly likes Philly Light cream cheese with garden vegetables.)

Qaradawi started off as a stand-up comedian but we quickly saw his potential as a firebrand anti-Zionist clown who can help stoke the separation between Shiites and Sunnis, one of our grand plans. (Wait till you see what happens with the Salafis next year!)

Personally, he's a nice enough guy, although he does have a funny smell. Not sure if that is part of his act or if he really smells like that, but, hey, whatever works in that part of the world.

Go for it!

Western intelligence has been slowing down Iranian nukes

From the New York Sun:

WASHINGTON — Israel and America are intensifying a clandestine war against Iran that has run hot and cold since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 but has grown more urgent as Iran races to obtain an atomic bomb.
That is a central claim in a new book, "The Secret War with Iran," by an Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman, who also details a series of mishaps during the past 2 1/2 years that have likely delayed Iran's efforts to go nuclear.

While President Bush and other Western leaders have warned of the seriousness of the threat that Iran may obtain a nuclear weapon, little reporting has surfaced in the West on the efforts in the shadows to stop the Iranians. Mr. Bergman himself has had to skate a close line in this area, in part because of military censorship in Israel, where some of his reporting has been withheld from publication pending rulings from the Israeli Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, the Israeli journalist compiles a picture that suggests that the West has had some successes in the war to stop the Iranian bomb. Mr. Bergman reports, for example, that in January 2007 Iran determined that some of its nuclear suppliers in Europe were fronts for Western intelligence services, specifically Britain's MI6.

And Mr. Bergman writes that between February 2006 and March 2007, at least three planes "belonging to the Revolutionary Guards crashed in Iran, while carrying personnel connected with the security of the nuclear project." Specialized pipes for centrifuges sold to Iran have been modified, he writes, and specialized computers sold to Iran for its nuclear laboratories contained viruses that sabotaged the code.

The secret efforts appear not to be limited to modifying equipment: On January 18, 2007, an Iranian expert on electromagnetics who worked in an Isfahan enrichment facility, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, died in his apartment, Mr. Bergman writes.

The author quotes the deputy director of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, Eli Levite, as saying in a closed forum that operations against Iran "gained time for us" and have "doubtless caused significant delays in the project. The process has led to the revealing of large parts of the program in the areas of sources of supply, of the infrastructure, and of the goals, which were not known or were known at a different resolution."

While Israel's Mossad and military intelligence have targeted Iranian terrorists almost since the 1979 revolution, the Jewish state was relatively slow to pick up on the full extent of Iran's nuclear program. Mr. Bergman reports that Israel first learned of the nuclear facility in Natanz in 1996, a full six years before the facility was first disclosed to the public, but several years after the Iranians began their initial work there. Two Israeli operatives, posing as tourists, arrived at the site and took soil samples, which they brought back to Israel in their shoes and which showed some radiation.

Mr. Bergman also details a success for the CIA in the shadow war against Iran, when General Ali Reza Askari defected to the American side in February 2007. Mr. Bergman reports that General Askari was closer to the reformist President Khatami and felt threatened by his old rival in intelligence when President Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005.

General Askari, for example, warned Mr. Khatami after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that Iran's Revolutionary Guards had given shelter to key Al Qaeda operatives fleeing American troops in Afghanistan. He said in his debriefings, according to Mr. Bergman, that Iran had entered into joint nuclear projects with both Syria and North Korea.

The defector also claimed that Iran erected a secret enrichment facility near the known centrifuge area in Natanz.

Mr. Bergman finally comes close to saying outright that Israel was responsible for the assassination in February of a master Hezbollah terrorist, Imad Mugniyah. He writes: "Although Israel has denied responsibility for the assassination, the Mugniyah hit was exactly the kind of thing needed to restore the country's faith in, and more importantly the enemy's fear of, Israel's intelligence services."

Mr. Bergman then quotes an Israeli intelligence official, who recalls the exact model of the vehicle Mugniyah was driving when he was attacked. "Pity about that new Pajero," he said.

The Pajero part might sound good but the initial reports of the blast did indicate what kind of car he was in.

(If the New York Sun is really going away at the end of this month, we will lose a very valuable source of news.)

Follow-up on Bibi's speech

One of the most commented postings I've had recently was from my article on Binyomin Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish bloggers' conference in Jerusalem. I had paraphrased Netanyahu as saying "The fact is that there are Jewish rights on the land as well, that history is also on the side of the Jewish narrative. Bibi quickly outlined the fact that Jews remained the majority in Palestine for many centuries after the Roman conquest, and that the first time they were physically dispossessed from the land itself was by the Arab conquest in the eighth [sic, really, seventh - EoZ] century."

I missed the historian he quoted but was informed in the comments by Ruth that it was Ben-Zion Dinur, either from "Israel in Its Land" or from his five-volume "Israel in Exile."

Unfortunately, very few of Dinur's works are in English. I found a copy of "Israel and the Diaspora" and have read the first section, much of which is excerpted here. While it is clearly true that Dinur felt that the Diaspora didn't start until the Arab conquest, this piece was not a historical work nearly as much as a work about historiography - his critique of different views of Jewish history and his own point of view. Any of his historical ideas can only be gleaned by implication from this work. I am not conversant enough in Hebrew to even consider tackling his Hebrew works, but it sounds like they are important enough that they certainly should be translated and made available to the world at large. (If anyone knows of an English-language treatment of Dinur, please let me know.)

I just started reading Netanyahu's "A Place Among Nations" which he said covers this material. So far I have not found it, as it (at least the 1993 edition) seems to concentrate on the history of Zionism and does not seem to have much on the historic Jewish connection to the Land.

As far as the Jews being the majority in Palestine before 636 CE, I still do not know if Dinur really says that. Clearly, the majority of Jews lived outside Palestine for centuries before the Arab conquest but that doesn't mean they weren't the majority in sparsely-populated Palestine.

Today's peaceful PalArab news

A Hamas member was killed and another wounded in Gaza City as they tried to arrest another man.

Six more Hamas bombs have been reported to have been found at al-Azhar University. There were a couple that exploded in empty rooms two weeks ago.

The Al Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the Qassam rocket that was shot at Sderot yesterday. Yet at the same time Islamic Jihad released a statement saying that Israel's response of closing the crossings had only a "flimsy justification" and asks the Palestinian Arabs to consider ending the "calm."

A video was released that is supposed to show how Hamas had Mohammed Helles of the Helles clan was alive and in custody of Hamas before he was shot dead in cold blood.

Today is the fifteenth anniversary, in the Islamic calendar, of the incident with Baruch Goldstein in Hebron. This is the first time I've ever seen Palestinian Arabs celebrate an anniversary using the Islamic calendar rather than the secular one. This way they can act as victims twice as often.

The 2008 PalArab self-death count is now 165.

Gaza lies: "Shalit gets birthday cake every year"

The Sunday Times had some real reporting over the weekend, as Christine Tooney goes to Gaza to find out what she can about Gilad Shalit.

Her main finding is that terrorists are liars:

“Nobody from the political or military wing of Hamas knows where Shalit is,” [Mahmoud Zahhar] says, disingenuously, sitting by my side in a starched safari suit. “Only the small group who kidnapped him know. They are very secretive.”
He says he has no idea of the conditions in which Shalit is being held, only that they must be better than those of the more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners whose release Hamas is demanding for his safe return.
...
While Zahar and Yousef are reluctant to discuss Shalit, members of the Doghmush clan are happy to brag about how well he is being treated. I meet them in a garage of one of the many buildings the clan owns in the Sabra district. Abu Khatab Doghmush, a 51-year-old clan elder, is sitting with family on a sofa pushed against a wall.
Abu Khatab insists that the Army of Islam is not holding Shalit. “The only faction that controls his life now is the Qassam Brigades,” he says, his heavy gold watch flapping against his wrist. “But I can tell you that Shalit is living in a paradise. Our religion of Islam demands that we look after prisoners even more than we do our own people.” He rejects speculation that Shalit is locked deep in an underground cell booby-trapped with explosives: “He’s not being kept in a closed room all the time – this would not be healthy. He can go out and take fresh air.”
Abu Khatab then makes an extraordinary claim: “Every year a party is held to celebrate his birthday. Yes, there is a cake and candles, music, everything.” Shalit, born on August 28, 1986, has now spent three birthdays in captivity.
The claim that Shalit is being well treated is repeated by everyone I meet. His plea that he needs hospitalisation is dismissed by Abu Khatab. “No, it is I who require hospitalisation,” he says, kicking off his plastic sandal to reveal a foot eaten away by gangrene.

...Over the days that follow, repeated attempts to talk to the al-Qassam Brigades are rejected. Again and again I am referred back to Hamas political leaders such as Zahar as the only ones able to speak about Shalit. With Zahar and others claiming only al-Qassam knows anything, the circle of professed ignorance and denial is closed.

...
When Abu Mujahed arrives, I am taken aback. We have spent time watching young PRC recruits training – all wear black balaclavas and carry AK-47s. But 24-year-old Abu Mujahed wears a beige suit and brown shirt, a look that would not be out of place in a cheesy video on an Arabic music channel. He has come straight from his brother’s wedding, he says, before explaining in clear English (he is studying multimedia technology at university) precisely how a prisoner exchange should work.
“After the Israelis free the first 100 Palestinian prisoners, Shalit would be moved to Egypt. Once he’s in Egypt, the Israelis would have to free 1,000 more of our brothers and sisters before he is released. We were very close to agreeing a deal a year ago, then the Israelis stopped negotiations. We were amazed that they were prepared to go back to zero. It is the Israelis who are putting obstacles in the way of an agreement.
“If we do not see some results soon, we will be forced to close the file,” he concludes ominously.
When I ask how much he knows about Shalit’s whereabouts and the conditions he is kept in, Abu Mujahed repeats the mantra that he is being treated well, “according to our religion”. Only a small group know where Shalit is held, he claims, and they communicate by means of dead letter drops, mobile phones being too easy to track.

In the end, the people who claim to know how Shalit is being treated profess ignorance as to his whereabouts and those who know his whereabouts don't say how he is being treated, meaning that everyone is lying.

It is rare to see real reporting nowadays; this is an excellent article.

Olmert's defeatism

In 1979, then-president Jimmy Carter delivered an astoundingly pessimistic speech. He started off talking about how he spoke with ordinary Americans and what they had to say:

I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. It has been an extraordinary 10 days, and I want to share with you what I've heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.
This from a southern Governor: "Mr. President, you are not leading this Nation -- you're just managing the Government."

"You don't see the people enough any more."

"Some of your Cabinet members don't seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples."

"Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good."

"Mr. President, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears."

"If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow."

And yet, although Carter heard the words that Americans were saying - that he was a really poor leader - he misinterpreted them as if it was America's problem, not his:

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

Carter was one of the worst presidents in history, and this is one reason why: instead of leading, he whined; instead of showing pride for America, he despaired; instead of the strength that people need from a leader he chose to be a very bad therapist.

I'm reminded of this when I see how lame-duck Olmert is acting lately.

Today, there was a gleeful but accurate headline in Iran's Press TV:

Olmert pronounces Greater Israel dead

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says the idea of "Greater Israel"-- the main motto of the Zionist founders of the Israeli regime-- is dead.

"'Greater Israel' is finished. There is no such thing as that anymore. Whoever talks in those terms is only deluding himself," the prime minister admitted at a cabinet meeting.

"It doesn't help Israel. The international community has changed its perspective ahead of the possibility of Israel becoming a bi-national state," he said.

" I believed that the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean was all ours since in every place there that is excavated, there is evidence of Jewish History. But finally, after a lot of suffering and misgivings, I came to the conclusion that we need to share the land with whom we are residing if we don't want to become a bi-national state," Olmert said.

The premier also warned that the clock is "not ticking in Israel's favor."

The malaise that Israel is suffering from is not from the people, but from the utterly incompetent leadership that has been represented by Ehud Olmert. He unilaterally declared defeat in Gaza and now Judea and Samaria, ceding the historic Jewish ties to land that is far more important religiously and historically than Tel Aviv because he lacks the imagination and the will to come up with ways that Israel can keep the land and the Arabs can still have real choices for self-determination and to raise their families in dignity. He has kept erasing red lines without drawing new ones, acting more like someone hellbent on surrender than a leader of a great nation. He learned nothing from the Gaza debacle, wanting to repeat it again and again. He treats his most patriotic citizens as his enemies and his enemies as if they are his allies. He has consistently lied to his people and he continues to do so as he squirms to avoid mounting criminal charges.

And even now, as his term ends, his one note of consistency and strength is in his steadfast willingness to surrender to Israel's sworn enemies. To allow parts of historic, Biblical Israel to be permanently Judenrein, from which rockets can reach every major population area and Israel's major airport. To hand the most valuable asset Israel has to people who, sometimes explicitly but always implicitly, consider this to be only a stage in Israel's ultimate destruction. To trust a new neighboring nation populated with those who have consistently and overwhelmingly expressed their support for terror against Jewish civilians in the Middle East.

No wonder Iran is gleeful. Olmert is now confirming everything Ahmadinejad has been saying - that in his opinion, the Zionists will lose.

Olmert and his party of ashamed Zionism needs to go, now.

Saudi cleric: Mickey Mouse must die!

MEMRI has a new clip. Transcript:

Following is an excerpt from a religious program featuring Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid, which aired on Al-Majd TV on August 27, 2008:

Muhammad Al-Munajid: What is the position of Islamic law with regard to mice? The Shari'a refers to the mouse as "little corrupter," and says it is permissible to kill it in all cases. It says that mice set fire to the house, and are steered by Satan. The mouse is one of Satan's soldiers and is steered by him. If a mouse falls into a pot of food – if the food is solid, you should chuck out the mouse and the food touching it, and if it is liquid – you should chuck out the whole thing. Because the mouse is i-m-p-u-r-e!

According to Islamic law, the mouse is a repulsive, corrupting creature. How do you think children view mice today – after Tom and Jerry? Even creatures that are repulsive by nature, by logic, and according to Islamic law have become wonderful and are loved by children. Even mice. Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases.

I wonder what he thinks of Islamic mice? Or Hamas cartoon rats?