New IAEA report will say Iran is preparing nuclear weapons

From Reuters:

The U.N. nuclear watchdog is expected this week to issue its most detailed report yet on research in Iran seen as geared to developing atomic bombs, heightening international suspicions of Tehran's agenda and stoking Middle East tensions.

Western powers are likely to seize on the International Atomic Energy Agency document, which has been preceded by media speculation in Israel of military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites, to press for more sanctions on the oil producer.

But Russia and China fear the publication now of the IAEA's findings could hurt any chance of diplomacy resolving the long-running nuclear row and they have lobbied against it, signaling opposition to any new punitive U.N. measures against Iran.

Iran rejects allegations of atomic weapons ambitions, saying its nuclear program is aimed at producing electricity.

The report is tentatively scheduled to be submitted to IAEA member states on November 9 before a quarterly meeting the following week of the agency's 35-nation board of governors in Vienna.

It "will be followed by a U.S.-European Union push for harsher sanctions against Iran at the U.N. Security Council, where Western powers will meet stiff resistance from Russia and China," said Trita Parsi, an expert on U.S.-Iran relations.

The document is expected to give fresh evidence of research and other activities with little other application than atomic bomb-making, including studies linked to the development of an atom bomb trigger and computer modeling of a nuclear weapon.

Sources briefed on the report also say it will include information from both before and after 2003 -- the year in which U.S. spy services estimated, in a controversial 2007 assessment, that Iran had halted outright "weaponization" work.

Many conservative experts criticized the 2007 findings as inaccurate and naive, and U.S. intelligence agencies now believe Iranian leaders have resumed closed-door debates over the last four years about whether to build a nuclear bomb.

"The primary new information is likely to be any work that Iran has engaged in after 2003 ... Iran is understood to have continued or restarted some research and development since then," said Peter Crail of the Arms Control Association, a U.S.-based advocacy group.

The sources familiar with the document said that among other things it would support allegations that Iran built a large steel container for the purpose of carrying out tests with high explosives applicable to nuclear weapons.

"This is not a country that is sitting down just doing some theoretical stuff on a computer," a Western official said about the IAEA's body of evidence, which is based on Western intelligence as well as the agency's own investigations.

This is not the first time that the IAEA has sounded a warning on Iran's nuclear program.

Ma'ariv reports that a high ranking Russian diplomat said that his country "would not shed any tears" if the West attacked Iran's nuclear sites, even though Russia is publicly against the IAEA release of this report.

The Washington Post adds that there is evidence that Iran received crucial information on nuclear weapons design from a Russian scientist as well as from Pakistan and North Korea.

On the other hand, the New York Times is bending over backwards to criticize the IAEA report before it is released.

The Guardian adds some crucial context:

Enriching to 90% [the amount of purification needed for weapons] is not easy, as the level of impurities in the uranium fuel becomes more of a challenge. However, since February 2010 Iran has been successfully making 20%-enriched uranium at Natanz, ostensibly to fuel a medical research reactor in Tehran.

Western governments allege this is a pretext as Iran lacks the means to manufacture the necessary fuel rods. They point out that, in terms of technical difficulty, 20% uranium is nine-tenths of the way to weapon-grade material. In fact, leaked US diplomatic cables reveal that as far back as April 2009 US officials were convinced that Iran had mastered the process.

Iran has more than 70kg of 20% uranium – about a fifth of the quantity needed to make a bomb if further enriched. Of even greater international concern was the confirmation in the September IAEA report that Iran had installed a set, or "cascade", of centrifuges at a new site at Fordow, near to the Shia holy city of Qom.

The Fordow site, whose existence was revealed in 2009, is under a mountain and would be extremely difficult to damage by aerial bombing. Iranian authorities claim 10 other enrichment sites are being prepared but no sign of them has materialised.

At the moment it is the transfer of enrichment to Fordow that represents the ticking clock for western military intervention. Once the bulk of production is established there, the programme would be a much harder nut to crack.

The transfer of Iran's stockpile of 20% uranium from the relative vulnerability of Natanz to the impregnability of Fordow would be seen as even more threatening. "That would be a huge red line – a very significant move that would be very hard to ignore," a western diplomat said.

It looks like those people that Reuters dismiss as  "conservative experts" who criticized the 2007 NIE report were right. I gave my own criticisms of the NIE report here.

(h/t Yoel for Ma'ariv article)

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Israelis saving the world - again

From Israel21c:

As we get older, modern medicine will help more of us live with cancer rather than die from it. That's the assumption behind a vaccine to treat cancer, being developed by a pharmaceutical company in Israel.

Vaxil BioTherapeutics' main product, ImMucin, is now in advanced clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.

CEO Julian Levy tells ISRAEL21c that this therapeutic vaccine doesn't prevent cancer from invading, but activates and enhances the body's natural immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells already present in the body, such as those lingering after cancer surgery.

Malignant cells normally get out of control by tricking the immune system not to notice them, a strategy that works especially well in older people because immune systems get less efficient with age.

The vaccine is currently being tested against a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. However, Vaxil's scientific breakthrough is based on a drug platform, VaxHit, which can be tailored to treat not only 90 percent of cancers, he says, but also diseases such as tuberculosis.

This disease is cropping up in developing nations as existing vaccines are proving less and less effective.

"Two billion are affected by the pathogen," says Levy. "Ten percent will develop the active disease. And while TB can be treated by drugs, it takes several months and it can be brutal."

According to Levy, the vaccine presents no side effects, and can be taken indefinitely, like vitamins. ImMucin is designed to overcome cancer cells that mutate, rendering other drugs ineffective.

Depending on the outcome of clinical trials, the ImMucin vaccine could be ready and marketable within the next six years. It could have major implications for the treatment of leading killers like prostate and breast cancer.

A promotional video by Vaxil can be seen here.

Remember, BDSers, to demand your doctor not use Israeli products when treating your loved ones for deadly diseases. By using Israeli products to save the lives of the ones you love you are helping to promote the worst human rights abuses known to man. You wouldn't want to do that. It would be evil and wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Instead, consider the medical benefits of camel urine. This wonderful technology is being pushed by a country that is not nearly as oppressive as Israel.

(h/t Israel Awareness)

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Why are Falk and Mearsheimer promoting an anti-semitic book? (Dershowitz)

From Alan Dershowitz in The New Republic:

As the discourse about Israel on university campuses continues to degenerate, there is growing concern that some of Israel’s most vocal detractors are crossing a red line between acceptable criticism of Israel and legitimizing anti-Semitism. The recent endorsements by several internationally prominent academics—including John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Richard Falk of Princeton—of an overtly anti-Semitic book written by a notorious Jew-hater illustrate this dangerous trend. 

The book in question is entitled The Wandering Who? and was written by Gilad Atzmon, a British jazz musician. Lest there be any doubt about Atzmon’s anti-Semitic credentials, listen to his self-description in the book itself. He boasts about “drawing many of my insights from a man who … was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist” and a hater of “almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity” (89-90). He declares himself a “proud, self-hating Jew” (54), writes with “contempt” of “the Jew in me” (94), and describes himself as “a strong opponent of … Jewish-ness” (186). His writings, both online and in his new book, brim with classic anti-Semitic motifs that are borrowed from Nazi publications:

Throughout his writings, Atzmon argues that Jews seek to control the world:

·     “[W]e must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously.”

·     “American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.” 

...Atzmon rehearses many of these ideas in The Wandering Who?:

·     “[T]o be a Jew is a deep commitment that goes far beyond any legal or moral order” (20) and this commitment “pulls more and more Jews into an obscure, dangerous and unethical fellowship” (21).

·     If Iran and Israel fight a nuclear war that kills tens of millions of people, “some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all’” (179). 

...·     Children should be allowed to question, as he did, “how the teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matza out of young Goyim’s blood were indeed empty or groundless” (185).

·      “The Holocaust religion is probably as old as the Jews themselves” (153).

·       The history of Jewish persecution is a myth, and if there was any persecution the Jews brought it on themselves (175, 182). 

In light of this Der Stürmer-like bigotry against Jews, it should come as no surprise that even some of the most hard-core anti-Israel activists have shunned Atzmon out of fear that his anti-Semitism will discredit their cause. ....

Hard-core neo-Nazis, racists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, on the other hand, have happily counted Atzmon as one of their own. David Duke, America’s premier white supremacist, has posted more than a dozen of Atzmon’s articles on his website over the past five years and recently praised Atzmon for “writ[ing] such fine articles exposing the evil of Zionism and Jewish supremacism.” Kevin MacDonald, a professor at Cal State Long Beach whose colleagues formally disassociated themselves from his “anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views,” called Atzmon’s book “an invaluable account by someone who clearly understands the main symptoms of Jewish pathology.” Israel Shamir, a Holocaust denier (“We must deny the concept of Holocaust without doubt and hesitation”) who argues that Jews ritually murdered Christian children for their blood and that “The rule of the Elders of Zion is already upon us,” refers to Atzmon as a “good friend” and calls Atzmon one of “the shining stars of the battle” against “the Jewish alliance.”

But neither Atzmon’s well-established reputation for anti-Semitism nor the copious anti-Semitic filth that fills The Wandering Who? has deterred Professors John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk from actively endorsing Atzmon’s work. Mearsheimer, the Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, calls The Wandering Who? a “fascinating” book that “should be read widely by Jews and non-Jews alike.” Falk, Milibank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton University and United Nations Special Rapporteur on “human rights in the Palestinian territories,” calls The Wandering Who? an “absorbing and moving” book that everyone who “care[s] about real peace” should “not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely.” Falk’s endorsement appears prominently on the cover of Atzmon’s book. Mearsheimer’s endorsement is featured on its first page. These professors are not merely defending Atzmon’s right to publish such a book; they are endorsing its content and urging their colleagues, students, and others to read and “reflect upon” the views expressed by Atzmon. One wonders which portions of this bigoted screed Professors Mearsheimer and Falk believe their students and others “should” read and “discuss widely.”

Mearsheimer has defended his endorsement (on Stephen Walt’s blog) by questioning whether his critics have even read Atzmon’s book. Well, I’ve read every word of it, as well as many of Atzmon’s blogs. No one who has read this material could escape the conclusion—which Atzmon freely admits—that many of his “insights” are borrowed directly from classic anti-Semitic writings. Mearsheimer claims, however, that he has endorsed only Atzmon’s book and not his other writings. But the book itself is filled with crass neo-Nazi rants against the “Jew,” “World Jewry,” and “Jewish bankers.” He claims that “robbery and hatred is imbued in Jewish modern political ideology on both the left and the right” (123). And like other anti-Semites, Atzmon is obsessed in the book with Jewish names. It was Jews, such as Wolfowitz and Libby, who pushed the United States into war against Iraq in the “interests” of “their beloved Jewish state” (26). “How is it that America failed to restrain its Wolfowitzes?” Atzmon asks (27).

Likewise, according to Atzmon’s book, it was “Jewish bankers,” financiers, economists, writers, and politicians such as Greenspan, Levy, Aaronovitch, Saban, Friedman, Schiff, and Rothschild who have caused the economic and political problems of the world, ranging from the Bolshevik revolution to the wars of the 20th century to the current economic troubles (27,194). And like other classic anti-Semites, Atzmon doesn’t simply fault the individual Jews he names; he concocts a worldwide Jewish conspiracy motivated by a “ruthless Zio-driven” (27) “Jewish ideology” (69) that finds its source in “the lethal spirit” (122) of the Hebrew Bible. This sort of conspiratorial drivel is borrowed almost word for word from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—the Czarist forgery that became a staple of Nazi propaganda.  

I'm glad Dershowitz actually read the vile book, because it is clear that most of Atzmon's defenders did not.

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Darling "historian" of anti-Zionists falsified a Ben Gurion quote

From CAMERA:

Filmmaker Porter Speakman, Jr., producer and director of the 2010 movie With God on Our Side, has issued a press release acknowledging that a quote attributed to David Ben-Gurion by historian Ilan Pappé is not reliable.

In his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld Publications), Pappé  reported that in a 1937 letter to his son, David Ben-Gurion wrote the following: “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.”

It's a damning quote and is featured prominently in With God on Our Side. But it does not appear in any of the sources Pappé cites.

In his book, Pappé provided two references for this quote. The first reference is the July 12, 1937 entry of Ben-Gurion's diary. The second is page 220 of the August-September 1937 issue of New Judea, a newsletter published by the World Zionist Organization.

CAMERA provided electronic copies of both of these sources – neither of which include the quote attributed to Ben-Gurion – to Speakman earlier this week.

In response Speakman issued a press release that states in part:

… this quote cannot be found in the original sources of Ben Gurion's diary and therefore cannot be verified as authentic. While references to this quote exist, we could not find it in its original form. In an effort to be transparent and accurate, the producers have decided to take the extra step of removing it from future printings of "With God On Our Side." We apologize for this change.

The quote attributed to Ben-Gurion also appears in a 2006 article published in The Journal of Palestine Studies. In this article, Pappé provides another source for the quote. He states it appears on pages 167-168 of Charles D. Smith's Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Boston and New York: Beford/St. Martin's Press, 2004.

The quote does not appear here, either.

The editors at the Journal of Palestine Studies are currently investigating the issue.

CAMERA has made numerous attempts to contact Dr. Pappé at the University of Exeter, but the historian has not responded.

The fake Ben Gurion quote is all over the Internet and has been quoted in The Independent, after which Benny Morris wrote in and said that the quote was a falsification.

We've seen before that Pappe makes stuff up whenever he feels like it. We also have seen him admit:

There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened....I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings...Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers.

He has also said

My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers.

But this is the first time that every single source Pappe supposedly had for a specific quote has been shown to be definitively falsified. He didn't make a mistake - he made up three separate sources for a quote that was nonexistent.

This is not sloppiness. This is historian malpractice. The University of Exeter should take a long, hard look at whether they want their own name sullied by supporting a pseudo-historian who decides what the history would be before he tried to make up facts supporting his pre-existing ideas.

And all who approvingly quotes Pappe, like Richard Falk and John Pilger, are suspect as to their own interest in truth as well.

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Israel haters foaming at the mouth over Goldstone op-ed

Remember the Richard Goldstone op-ed in the New York Times last week that flatly stated that Israel is not an apartheid state?

At the time I wrote "As night follows day, we can expect the rabid anti-Israel Left who embraced Goldstone as their messiah two years ago will issue vicious condemnations of this piece, and charge Goldstone with being a tool of the Zionist lobby, tomorrow."

Well, tomorrow has arrived. The anti-Israel stunt known as the "Russell Tribunal on Palestine" is meeting in South Africa this week, and its members are furious:

PROMINENT Gaza human rights lawyer Raji Sourani has called South African judge Richard Goldstone a liar, following recent comments he made in the New York Times regarding apartheid in Israel.

Speaking at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event in the city yesterday, ahead of the weekend Russell Tribunal, the founder of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza lashed out at Goldstone for saying apartheid did not exist in Israel.

Last month, Goldstone criticised the Russell Tribunal in an opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled “Israel and the apartheid slander”. He wrote that there was no apartheid in Israel, and called the suggestion a “particularly pernicious and enduring canard”.

“It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations,” he said.

But Sourani hit back yesterday, saying that Goldstone “is lying”.

“When he says there is no injustice in Israel, he is lying.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign also hit out at Goldstone in a statement read out by the organisation’s Martin Jansen. “The very recent but weak attack by Richard Goldstone on the tribunal not only exposes him as an ardent Zionist, but his shameful U-turn on the Goldstone report demonstrates his bias as a ‘juror’.”

The article also notes the comments from another member of the lynch mob:

Speaking at yesterday’s event, Palestinian refugee Leila Khaled drew parallels between South Africa’s apartheid regime and her own experiences in Palestine.

Leila Khaled is a convicted terrorist who was behind two airplane hijackings. Characterizing her as a "refugee" and giving her a place of honor at this so-called "tribunal" tells you all you need to know about it.

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Unity continues: Hamas confiscates Fatah car

Over the weekend, Fatah's leader in Gaza held a luncheon honoring the terrorists who were released in the Shalit deal.

Abdullah Abu Samhadana, secretary of the Fatah movement in Gaza, apparently wanted to show that Hamas is not the only party in Gaza happy that terrorists are back roaming the streets and plotting to kill more Israelis.

Hamas, however, which already hosted a number of mass events celebrating the terrorists, apparently took umbrage at Fatah's relatively low-key affair.

So Hamas confiscated Samhadana's car.

Isn't unity grand?

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Pat Condell's great followup video

As a followup to this video I had posted, here's a new one from Pat Condell:



Even better, on YouTube he gives a bunch of links to back up what he is saying:

Wall of Truth - A few inconvenient facts
http://www.wall-of-truth.org/

What really happened in the Middle East
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f81j5Zk-GSA

The Middle East Problem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63hTOaRu7h4

Is Israel An Apartheid State?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1dvwgjDAT8

The truth about the peace process
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAuBc_cbXo0

The truth about the West Bank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=XGYxLWUKwWo

The real racism: Expecting Jews to die meekly
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=243452

Teaching children to hate Jews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL0C2QvqIlo

Ignorant Islamic cleric teaches children to hate Jews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpGRBu7mzrg

Teaching children to die for Allah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0inC2ZRWzG4

Teaching children to admire a suicide bomber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=806ZNYWzE1M

Hamas: "Kill all Jews"
http://www.examiner.com/foreign-policy-in-baltimore/kill-al-jews-statement-co...

"Jews are apes and pigs"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQERHieZHcg

Overrated: Mahmoud Abbas
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4113/full

Laughable bigotry from the anti-Semitic Guardian "newspaper"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/19/israeli-lives-more-important-pale...

The Durban Perversion
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/40602

Norway's ambassador defends Islamic terror
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/07/26/3088704/envoy-compares-terror-in-i...

Anti-Semitism in Norway
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/02/09OSLO114.html

Jews abandon Swedish city amid growing anti-Semitism
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jews-reluctantly-abandon-swedish-city-ami...

Jews being driven out of Malmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9gdBX8q85Q

Sharia law for the new Libya
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036885/Libya-New-leader-Mustafa-Abde...

Amnesty urges Libya to tackle the "stain" of detainee abuse
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15284264

No room for Jews in the "new" Libya
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=241109

Banned speech: Hillel Neuer takes on the UN Human Rights Council
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWgZu6tcZU

Israel's critical security needs for a viable peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWmPqY8TE0

(h/t Sophie, Ian)

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"Moderate" Palestinian Arab leaders pay homage to a master terrorist

Today, for the occasion of Eid al Adha, major PA leaders went to the gravesite of Yasir Arafat and put flowers and garlands on his grave.

They included Western darlings Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad.

Abbas said that he hopes that next year he can hold this ceremony in Jerusalem under an independent "Palestine."

Abbas, it will be remembered, has shown no more flexibility towards peace  in the past seven years since Arafat's death than Arafat, the architect of modern terrorism, ever showed in his lifetime.

It will also be remembered that one of  Abbas' promises is to move the gravesite of this syphilitic, genocidal, anti-semitic symbol of hate in the heart of the eternal Jewish capital of Jerusalem.

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Flotidiots, as always, allege IDF brutality (updated)

The penultimate scene from Ziophobic Moonbat Theatre, from an ISM email:

Greek captain of the Tahrir Giorgos Klontzas has confirmed the use of violence on him by the israeli soldiers during his interrogation in a interview he gave to www.Omniatv.com

He specifically reports that he was handcuffed on hands and feet , very tightly which created a blood circulation problem and that in order to make him give his fingerprints he was held by three soldiers and one was holding him in a strangling way almost suffocating him.

At one point they stuck two fingers in his eyes creating very strong pain. He said that he was very calm, he did not speak aggressively and that he just requested to see a lawyer... He also confirms that some activists were very badly treated.

Imagine that. Handcuffs not lined with fur and soldiers who didn't say "pretty please".

Oh, and by the way, from Bloomberg News:

Medea Benjamin, one of the flotilla organizers, told reporters in a teleconference. There was no violence during the boarding and the activists offered no resistance, she said.

The final scene from the theater comes when the "survivors" go on their speaking tours embellishing their heroism and bravery.
(h/t Israel Awareness)

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Terrorists love the Arab Spring

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh spoke poetically about the so-called "Arab Spring" at a mosque today during a sermon on the occasion of this week's Islamic holiday.

After taking credit yet again for the Shalit prisoner swap, the terror leader said that the Arab nation must pursue three goals: to get rid of the rest of the despotic regimes to open the way to what he calls "civilization," to work to be free from dependence on the East or West, and to work to liberate the rest of the "stolen" Islamic lands stolen, particularly Palestine and Jerusalem.

You don't have to read much between the lines to understand that the "despotic regimes" he is referring not only to Syria but also to include Jordan and Morocco and whatever is left that is secular in Lebanon; that "civilization" means radical Islamism; and that "stolen Islamic lands" also includes much of Spain.

It's beginning to look a lot like Winter....

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Vacation open thread

Today was pretty much the only real vacation day Mrs. Elder and I have had all year.

Here is sunrise over the Atlantic this morning:

Have a great weekend!

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Flotidiots lied, no humanitarian aid. What a surprise.

From YNet:

Navy forces boarded two vessels attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip on Friday and towed them to the Ashdod port in Israel. All 27 pro-Palestinian activists onboard the ships will be transferred over to the police and Immigration Authority and later expected to be expelled from the country.

IDF officials remarked that they did not find any weapons or humanitarian aid onboard the ship. The troops boarded the vessels without any resistance and no one was hurt, the military said.

Since the flotidiots have always vastly exaggerated their "humanitarian" cargo, this is no surprise.

It is a spectacularly boring story.

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Latest Latma

Didn't have a chance to watch it yet, but here it is.

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The burqa mermaids

From ANSAMed:

The shapes of the mermaids that embellish the fountain of Zeus in the centre of Alexandria have been deemed "inappropriate" by the Salafist Al Nour (Light) party, which decided to "veil" them completely with a sheet during a meeting yesterday evening.

The incident, which was reported by the website of the Al Masri Al Youm newspaper, has unleashed a wave of comment and disbelief on Twitter, where the paper posted pictures "before and after the niqab" of the fountain of the sirens, upon which an enormous placard carries the words: "Egyptian women devote themselves to their husbands and their nation".

Political leaders of the party, which is at the head of a coalition of Islamist parties that will stand in the forthcoming Egyptian elections from November 28, had recently announced that they were against the statues, deeming them contrary to Islamic tradition, the newspaper reports. "Covering a statue of sirens will certainly lead us to Paradise. I can't wait," was the ironic reaction of one Twitter user.

Here's the before and after picture (right to left :) )

(h/t jzaik)

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An implicit threat by the PA

From Reuters:

The Palestinians will not accept anything less than full U.N. membership and do not want an upgrade to an observer state in the world body, their foreign minister said on Thursday.

Riyad al-Malki's remarks suggested the Palestinians would not seek such an upgrade once their bid for full state membership meets its widely expected fate -- failure due to opposition from the United States and other governments.

"We do not want, after all of these struggles, sacrifices, and efforts by the entire Palestinian people, to accept an observer state in the United Nations. We will not accept less than we deserve: a full member state," he said.

Now, what exactly does that mean?

When a person says that something is unacceptable, there is an implied "or else" clause. It implies that Palestinian Arabs, who frame themselves as having nothing they can bargain with, will do something that will make people regret a decision of not giving them their full demands if they do not get what they want.

What is the "or else"?

Or else they will dissolve the PA? They will start a new intifada? They will ask Iran to start a war on their behalf? They will go back to their 1970s heyday of international airline terror? They will write nasty op-eds in Al Jazeera? Mahmoud Abbas will resign?

For a people who claim they are so desperate, they have no problem speaking as if they hold all the cards. There is a very real contradiction between their twin public positions of "we are helpless" and "you better do what we demand."

What is the implied leverage that Mahmoud Abbas has on the world to act like a mafioso?

---

Of course, Reuters being Reuters, rather than ask the natural follow up question "or else what?" they find some self-proclaimed "expert" to minimize the threat:

"This reads like a tactical move," said George Giacaman, a political analyst. "It could be directed toward the Americans, the Israelis, to show flexibility, but I would not view it as a final position."

What Reuters doesn't say is that Giacaman is at Bir Zeit University.

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