Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Arab death porn

I noticed a number of Arab blogs and websites, while arguing that Israel is barbarian and pure evil and all that crap, will use lots of images of dead children (don't click if you don't want to see dead kids.) The sources are rarely given but the pictures themselves zoom through the terror-supporting blogosphere, and people such as Juan Cole link to them.

For some reason, the West doesn't need to see pictures of dead people to get upset. We didn't need to see pictures of the bodies on the ground outside Ground Zero - the pictures of the planes smashing in the buildings were enough.

Why is this?

Let's ask a couple of other questions. If it is a cultural thing that Arabs are just used to seeing pictures of dead people, how come there are so few pictures of Arabs who have been killed by other Arabs?

And, finally - why do Arab terrorists like to take videos of decapitations?

The answer is that these photos aren't meant to inform - they is the Arab equivalent to pornography. Both the pictures of dead kids and the videos of chopping heads off are meant to incite hatred - against Jews, against America, whatever. Combine that with a culture that celebrates death, that proudly pretends to desire death (just not for the leaders, only the hapless martyrs), and you have photos whose entire purpose is to create lust - lust for revenge, lust for murder.

There's also a faux macho component to these photos - just like insecure men flock to hardcore porn to make themselves feel superior to women, so do Jew-haters and Arabs surreptitiously enjoy the hardcore sight of dead kids to make themselves feel a little less self-hate for their own, purposeful and deliberate terror attacks aimed at civilians.

The pictures are never shown in the context of "oh this is so sad." They are without exception shown as a means to create strong emotion without having to think about context or motive or anything else that could end up showing the truth: that by any objective measure, the Arabs are far more depraved than the people they are trying to demonize. (This guy is so thrilled to have some dead-kid pictures that he repeats each picture 5 times on his website!)

Not once will you see Israelis celebrate the deaths of Lebanese or Palestinian Arab kids. Once again, the only people who gain anything by the death of Arab kids are Arabs themselves. And too many of them are more than happy to show off their latest bonanza of pornographic pictures (whether they are real or not) on the Internet.

Genocide? Ethnic cleansing? No, just Arabs killing Arabs

The PalArab self-death count is now at 32, with the latest additions:

At approximately 14:10 on Sunday, 16 July 2006, masked gunmen traveling in a car fired at Mohammad Zaki Dahalan, a 24-year old member of the Preventive Security Apparatus. He was hit by several bullets in the chest and abdomen as he was standing near his house in the Jorit El-Aqad area in Khan Yunis. He was taken to Naser Hospital for treatment, but died shortly after arrival in the hospital.

In a related development at approximately 16:00 on the same day, a number of Dahlan's friends and colleagues gathered near his house and fired bullets and threw bombs at the house of Dr. Walid Amer, a lecturer in the Islamic University and a senior figure in Hamas. No injuries were reported in the house, which sustained material damages to the windows and outside walls.

Yesterday afternoon, a guard was killed at the house of a Preventive Security officer, Nabil Tammous, and two others were injured when unknown gunmen detonated explosives in the officer's house in Naser Quarter in Gaza City. The house was partially destroyed.

And the world headlines screamed "Genocide! House demolitions! Ethnic cleansing! Nazi-like methods!"

Oh, sorry. The world ignores Arabs killing Arabs, because that doesn't fit in with the meme of Israel being the source of all the problems and terror and bloodshed in the Middle East - the latest proponent of this absurd view being none other than CNN's Lou Dobbs.

Hint to Lou - Between the Lebanese civil war, the Hama massacre, Black September, the Iran/Iraq war, the North Yemen civil war (complete with Egyptian chemical weapons) and the internal Palestinian Arabs killing each other, the amount of bloodshed attributable to Israel is a drop in the bucket.

Clueless Reuters Caption of the Day

Supporters of Lebanon protest outside the Israeli consulate in New York, July 18, 2006.

Let's take a closer look at the poster in the background. I recognize it from a previous blog post where there was a similar protest at Ground Zero:

These protesters are not supporters of Lebanon - they are crazed Muslim fanatics who want to subjugate the world! They are from the "Islamic Thinkers Society" and they represent the vilest, most violent Muslims on the planet. The only Lebanon they support is a Jihadist Lebanon with nary a Christian in sight, except to pay the Jizya.

Here they are peacefully protesting a cartoon and threatening to exterminate all of Europe:

Reading material

There have been many great articles and postings over the past few days. Here some good ones:

Eurasia.net - Iran talks tough, but
Treppenwitz - A difficult lesson
Soccer Dad - Cohen's mistake
Ha'aretz - New army of women suicide bombers (what I would call a "target-rich environment")
National Review - Eradication first before diplomacy, also Fight to the Finish

Welcome also to the many, many readers who came from the Truth Laid Bear. I feel guilty because I am not an Israeli blogger as TTLB indicates, but I hope that I have something to contribute anyway.

Arab American organizations support Hizbollah

Here's the press release from the Congress of Arab-American Organizations in an article at the Arab American News:

"CAAO members strongly condemn the indiscriminate killing of civilians, especially of children," said CAAO Chair Abed Hammoud. "Over the past few days, the Israeli Army has launched an aggressive campaign in Gaza, then expanded this campaign of terror on a more severe level into Lebanon. So far, the U.S government has justified and supported the Israeli crimes under the guise of 'self defense', although Israeli leaders have bluntly stated that the objective of their bombings by air, land, and sea is to destroy the country of Lebanon and its infrastructure and collectively punish its people."

"CAAO members are appalled that, while the international community has condemned the Israeli actions and called for a cessation of its criminal behavior, our own government is not only supporting the killing of hundreds of civilians, but it is also encouraging the systematic destruction of two blooming democracies in the Middle East," said Osama Siblani, head of media relations for CAAO. "U.S. officials also do not seem to care that tens of thousands of the civilians under attack by Israel are U.S. citizens currently visiting Lebanon on vacation.".....
Alluding to an incorrect version of an eye for an eye, Imam Mohamed Ali Elahi said that the Israelis are "making millions blind, just for two Israeli eyes."

Even Palestinian Arabs would mouth words of condemnation when their co-patriots blew up innocent Jews in Israel. These Arab-Americans, on the other hand, don't have a single word of condemnation for Hizbollah's kidnapping, nor for rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. They have plenty of time to lie and claim that Israeli leaders have specified a goal of destroying Lebanon.

Of course, this is not the first time that Arab Americans have publicly supported Hizbollah. And this link has the classic quote:

I have never been to the South of Lebanon until my recent trip earlier this month. I went from Beirut all the way to the border in the South. I want all of the American officials to know that I did not see a single person with a firearm from Beirut all the way to the border, except at one Lebanese Army checkpoint. What I have seen calls for us to be proud: people living their lives, smoking the water pipe, playing cards, watching their kids play on both sides of the border without threat! So why are you calling Hizbullah a terrorist organization, and why do you want to take their arms? I didn’t see any arms.”

It is mind-blowing that the culture of death and lies can flourish in the United States.

Iranian hate rhetoric - bluster or strategy?

Yesterday, the Iranian parliament speaker spoke:

The Iranian parliament speaker said on Tuesday the war against Israel has only just begun and there is nowhere in Israel safe from Hezbollah attacks.

“The war has just begun, today is the day of resistance, today is the day of liberation of Palestine and there will be no safe spot in the occupied territories (Israel) anymore from Hezbollah attacks,” Gholam-Ali Hadad-Adel said at a anti-Israeli gathering in the Palestine Square in downtown Tehran.

“The day has come when everybody returns home, the day when Palestinians return home, return to the land of their origins and its is also the day when the Israelis have to return to the countries where they originally came from,” the speaker added.

Thousands of Iranians attended the state-organized gathering and declared their readiness to be dispatched to Lebanon to fight against Israel.

“We call on the United States and the West to cut their support for the Zionist regime, otherwise there would never ever be peace and reconciliation with over 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide,” the speaker said.

Hadad-Adel, who is head of the Abadgaran (Development) party which currently dominates parliament and of which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a leading member, once again declared Iran’s full solidarity with Lebanon and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah.

“There will be no help which we would not render to Lebanon and the resistance (Hezbollah),” the speaker said.

He compared Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with the late leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and said that ”the Ayatollah’s blood was running in Nasrallah’s veins.”

“Inshallah (so God wills), we will soon hold our thankfulness prayers in Qods (Jerusalem),” Hadad-Adel said.

Iran has ratcheted up its non-stop Israel bashing in the past week, with many daily speeches inciting the Muslim world to war, even during speeches about other topics. What interests me about this speech is that it could be interpreted two ways.

So far, even though everyone knows that Iran calls the shots for Hizbollah, Iran has publicly made it appear that they only support Hizbollah but are not the ones making the decisions. Otherwise, Iran would be admitting that they declared war on Israel, something they are not prepared to do.

But this speech can be interpreted as more than just support, rather as a description of Iranian plans for how Hizbollah should act. This comes very close to admitting that Hizbollah is an Iranian proxy.

The speaker added another twist of rabid, slobbering hate, from a different article:

"The Americans should know that as long as this filthy tumor lies in the body of the Islamic world, Muslims will not stop hating America," Hadad-Adel told thousands of regime supporters. "Either stop this support or do not expect any peace with the Islamic world."

This is almost comical, as he pathetically tries to convince the West that Israel is the only reason radical Muslims hate them. He also puts in a hint of the old "Arab street" (now "Muslim street") argument that has been used for decades as a blunt instrument to get Western powers to bend to Muslim will. (Not to mention he vastly exaggerates the number of Muslims in the world as a means of scaring the West.)

Because he knows that there is no shortage of Western dhimmis who are eager to believe his arguments and to submit to second-class status under an worldwide Islamic 'ummah.

Yet another example of Arab projection

A Palestinian Arab blog called "Sabbah's Blog" is indignant over a few wire service photos: (sorry, the permalink doesn't work, this is a link to the main blog)

Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.

He comments:

Dear Lebanese/Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Christians - Kids,
Die with love.
Yours,
Israeli Kids

Hate, disgust, extreme…. I don’t know what word can describe these photos.

And they say that we are teaching our kids hate to Israelis!

He then goes on to a popular Palestinian Arab pastime - showing gruesome photos of dead children.

What righteous indignation! What a defense of the Lebanese!

What a crock!

Palestinian Arabs have a long and colorful history of celebrating the murders of innocents. Hell, they have a long history of murdering innocents. Just today, a crowd showed great happiness in front of cameras while playing with the body parts of a dead Israeli soldier. Palestinian Arabs celebrated 9/11, they created shrines to the Sbarro's pizza bombing, they put up posters of their heroes the murderers, they name sports stadiums and town squares after people who specifically targeted children, they encourage hteir own children to die as martyrs and hand out sweets when the martyrs manage to kill a few Jewish kids along the way.

Moreover, Palestinian Arabs were responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of Lebanese Christians during the civil war there. They killed more innocent women and children, on purpose, than Israel ever will accidentally. The sudden pretense of pain on behalf of the Lebanese is more than a little hypocritical on behalf of this suddenly moral blogger.

Here's where the fun psycho-analysis comes in.

Ask the children in the pictures who the rockets are earmarked for, and ten out of ten will answer the same thing: The Hizbollah murderers who are shooting rockets at these very children.

Who live in the same town that is on the front line, within reach of the shortest-range terrorist missiles.

Which are aimed squarely at these very children.

Not one will say they want to see innocent Lebanese children die. Not one of these girls would even crack a smile when they see the gruesome pictures that Sabbah likes to plaster all over. Not one of them would dream of celebrating the deaths of children the way that Sabbah's people do routinely.

In other words, Sabbah is projecting the behaviors and attitudes of his own disgusting people onto these Jewish kids for whom such thoughts are utterly foreign and repulsive.

One of the goals of the Hizbollah thugs is to make Israelis - specifically, Jewish Israelis - feel helpless. Whoever asked these girls to write messages on the rockets that will ultimately save them from terror was a genius. Israel changed the natural feelings of helplessness into action, into involving everyone in the nation to be a part of the solution.

The solution that will wipe the terrorists off the face of the planet.

UPDATE (7/1): I noticed that Slate just linked here, implying that the message is quite the opposite of what I am saying. But since you're reading, look closely at what the handwriting on the rocket says (I didn't notice this initially):

Dear Nazralah (sic)
From Israel
and Danielle

I wholeheartedly support sending personal messages to terrorists in this fashion. And it neatly proves that I was right, notwithstanding the funny Daily Show piece.

Whoops!

Hizbollah (via their partners at Al-Jazeerah) claimed earlier today that they had shot down an Israeli airplane, and that they had the plane parts to prove it.

It turns out that the parts they saw fall out of the sky were from their best Iranian Zelzal missile (reportedly 200 km range). Israeli planes struck a truck carrying these missiles en route to a genocidal attempt by Hizbollah to mass murder Jews, perhaps in Tel Aviv.

As a result of the bombing, one of the missiles flew up in the air and then came crashing down again - and that was what the Arabs saw.

Of course, a Syrian commenter on the Jerusalem Post article linked to above is certain that Hezbollah really did shoot down an IAF plane - with a Katyusha. Showing once again the amazing ability of Arabs to disregard facts when they interfere with their own fantasies.

France's disproportionate response in 2004

This happened less than two years ago:

Ivory Coast’s latest crisis began when Gbagbo’s military broke a more than year-old cease-fire in the country’s 2-year-old civil war with airstrikes on the rebel-held north.
Warplanes bombed a French peacekeeping post in the north on Nov. 6, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker and plunging the country into chaos.
France wiped out Ivory Coast’s newly built-up small air force on the tarmac. The retaliation unleashed a violent loyalist uprising, with Gbagbo-allied Young Patriots popular militia leading looting, burning and attacks that targeted the French.
No deaths have been reported among French or other non-African foreigners targeted by the militia. France says attackers raped several expatriates.
The Associated Press and hospitals confirmed at least 17 deaths in the rioting, all or most among Ivorians.
Gbagbo’s government claims 62 of its supporters were killed, many of them when French forces opened fire on anti-French demonstrations in Abidjan.

France initially denied shooting protesters, but admitted it a couple of weeks later:

France has acknowledged that its troops in Ivory Coast killed about 20 people in early November during clashes with supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo.

A French defence ministry spokesman said the victims included both civilians and Ivorian soldiers.

The Ivory Coast government has put the number of Ivorians killed at 60 and condemned the French actions.

I don't know enough about the situation then to say whether the French actions were justified, but killing 20-60 people and destroying an entire air force in response to the killings of 9 sounds disproportionate to me! Why, it is a ratio of up to 6-1! And innocent civilians lost their lives!

Amazingly, the UN didn't condemn the French then.

Today, Chirac went beyond the "disproportionate" tripe and called Israeli actions "aberrant."

Arab life really is cheaper - to Arabs

Terror apologists in Britain are up in arms over a statement made by a British columnist and actress on the BBC:

Press release: CAABU condemns Maureen Lipman’s comments on the BBC

The director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), Chris Doyle, has written to the BBC to condemn the comments on the BBC television programme "This Week" by leading British columnist Maureen Lipman.

Unchallenged by the presenter, Andrew Neil, Lipman commented on the situation in the Middle East and denied that the Israeli actions were disproportionate.

"What’s proportion got to do with it. It’s not about proportion, is it? Human life is not cheap to the Israelis. And human life on the other side is quite cheap actually because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up."

The idea that somehow Arabs, whether Palestinians or Lebanese, do not value human life as much as anyone else is disgraceful.

In the letter, Doyle wrote:

"Is it acceptable that what most people would consider a racist comment is merely allowed to pass like this? It is simply outrageous. The comments were made in the context of discussing proportionality; therefore, implicitly she is saying that you could not measure proportion because there was no equivalence between an Israeli and an Arab life. All Arabs, like all other people, value human life.

Of course, Lipman is entirely correct. Arab life is, by their own definition, cheaper than Jewish lives.

Why else would they be asking to trade 1000 Arab prisoners for 1 Israeli?
Why else would they be killing their own civilians on the same scale that Israel is?
Why else would they produce TV shows encouraging their children to want to die?
Why else would they celebrate whenever they kill Jewish civilians in Israel, while no Jews celebrate the death of Arab civilians? (Here's Hamas' celebration of the Hebrew University massacre:

Why do they teach Palestinian Arab mothers to rejoice when their sons die while killing Jews?
Why does the Arab culture even consider the idea of honor killings?
When have the Arabs ever mobilized an entire country for the sake of a single soldier's life?

In fact, the one nation that seems to care the most about Arab lives is Israel. Israel spends enormous effort and money to minimize civilian deaths in its operations. Israel is still sending medical aid and food and electricity and water to Gaza even while at war with its people who overwhelmingly want to see Israel destroyed.

It is because of Israel that the Palestinian Arab mortality rate in the territories dropped a huge amount from 1967 to 2000 and the Palestinian Arab life expectancy shot up in the same time period. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs are alive today because of Israel that would have been dead or never born had Jordan and Egypt kept the territories in 1967.

Above all - why do Arab terrorists like to hide their activities and weapons among the Arab civilians that you pretend that they love so much? It is because they themselves know that Israel values Arab lives more than Arabs do!

Mr. Doyle, as someone who claims to value Arab life, can you provide me with any press release or interview where you condemned Hamas and Hizbollah for hiding among civilians and endangering their lives?

So yes, Mr. Doyle. Arab life is cheap - to Arabs and to people like you. And because people like you blame the Jews for this phenomenon rather than do any serious self-examination about the psychotic culture of death in many Arab societies, you are part of the problem.

PalArab self-death count now at 30

Those people who love wailing and shooting at funerals have added seven more self-inflicted deaths since my last update. These include:

A 12-year old girl who died from a PalArab rocket;
A 45-year old man who was shot during a wedding celebration;
A 16 year old boy who was shot during a funeral celebration;
3 killed in a Clan Clash®;
and one more who was killed in a different Clan Clash®.

So we now have 30 PalArab civilians killed by other Palestinian Arabs since Israel's incursion began.

None of which will ever be mentioned on CNN or the BBC. Because Arabs killing Arabs are like Israelis dying in auto accidents - it is just par for the course and hardly newsworthy.

Unless they blame the Jews, of course.

Is there a Trojan horse waiting?

As many people have already concluded, Iranian fingerprints are all over this Hizbollah operation. The Iranian missile attack on the Israeli navy boat as well as the Iranian rocket attack this morning in Haifa shows that pretty clearly.

What worries me is that Hezbollah/Iran are not yet showing all their cards. The initial attack was not just a kidnapping, but also an ambush. If this morning's rockets were Fajrs, their range extends far beyond Haifa. And from all accounts, Israel has not managed to kill too many terrorists yet by air.

Almost inevitably, Israel will commit ground troops to this operation. So far, Israel has been caught by surprise at least twice. Iranian war strategists are far more sophisticated than the enemies Israel has faced so far. And the Muslim definition of "victory" at this time is to inflict heavy casualties, not necessarily to win. Iran may also have a completely different agenda in which this entire theatre is a diversion - or bait.

I am no expert, but under these circumstances I hope that Israel is fully aware of what she is getting into before starting the ground war.

Map of Hezbollah and Hamas rocket coverage

Based on the reports that the terror rockets that hit Haifa this morning were Iranian Fajrs, and the report from al-Sharq al-Awsat that Iran has provided also 150 km. range missiles and rockets, here is my graphic of what parts of Israel are under direct threat from the terrorists.

One can draw one's own conclusions about the wisdom of giving up control of territory when the result looks like this.

GoozNews: Iranian whining hits new levels

Iran has been increasing its insane rhetoric about Israel even more, if that is possible. Here's a sampling of the latest GoozNews:

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, Israelis aggressive behavior has no conformity with any logic or principle.

Imam's grandson Seyed Hassan Khomeini said here Saturday the Zionist regime has proved that it is not committed to any international and human laws.

Ahmadinejad said the Zionist regime arrests and tortures defenseless people adding the powers, who claim to support democracy, independence and sovereignty are undermining all these cases in Lebanon and Palestine.

In a ceremony to open the traffic tunnel in Tehran which was held before a number of country's officials and foreign envoys on Saturday, President Ahmadinejad said, "The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan."

Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel here Saturday said that as an Islamic country Iran should enter the world equations, given its advanced technology....Turning to the crimes of the usurper Zionist regime in Gaza and Lebanon, he said that today technology has turned into an effective weapon in the hands of the Zionist vampires to shed the blood of ordinary people.

What you can do

UPDATE 2: See my sidebar about the Elder Challenge - donate to the named charities and get matching funds!

BurgerIDF.org and PizzaIDF.org delivers great food and morale to the brave soldiers defending their land.

Zaka is the world famous organization that offers first response service to terror attacks.

American Friends of Magen David Adom.

Treppenwitz has much more, both monetarily and free, that you can do to help.

UPDATE:
Yad Sarah is bringing medical equipment to the north. (H/T Muqata.)

Friends of the IDF provides equipment and morale-boosting (H/T View from a Height)

(To all the Truth Laid Bear visitors - sorry, but I cannot claim to be an Israeli blogger. I'm in the US.)

UPDATE 2: See my sidebar about the Elder Challenge - donate to the named charities and get matching funds!

Islamic leader of Australia: Holocaust a Zionist lie

But wait...it gets better!

THE nation's Islamic leader, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, has dismissed the Holocaust as a 'Zionist lie' in a series of fiery sermons in which he also lashed out at the West and the US-led occupation of Iraq.

Revelations that the nation's most senior Islamic cleric has been openly preaching extreme messages to his mainstream followers will be a major setback for the Howard Government.

Sheik Hilali is a senior member of the Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board.
In a February sermon, Sheik Hilali attacked the Western press for being afraid to admit that the Holocaust was "a ploy made by the Zionists".

He also trivialised the number of Jews killed by the Nazis.

"What's that six million all about? Is there six million?", said the Egyptian-born cleric, before calling on Muslims worldwide to boycott Danish goods over the publication of cartoons that offended Muslims for their depiction of the prophet Mohammed.

"The West say we have freedom and freedom of speech," he told thousands of his followers on February 3. "But journalism stops and shuts up when it discusses the burning of the Jews - the Holocaust -- the Zionist lie and the industry that the West deals in."

In another Friday sermon, delivered two weeks ago at Lakemba Mosque - titled The Zionists Murder Palestinians and the World Watches and the Muslims Are Silent - he called the US the breeders of oppression and labelled Israel a "cancer that is planted in the heart of the Ummah (Muslim community)".

Yes - this is one of those "moderate Muslims" we are always hearing about! At least, as long as he's not speaking Arabic.

Chirac is a disgrace

Here is part of the current Ha'aretz news ticker:

17:24 Man seriously hurt when rocket hits Galilee village of Yesod Hama`alah (Channel 10)
17:20 Hezbollah anti-aircraft guns fire at IDF helicopters along Lebanon border (Channel 2)
16:31 Home Front Command to residents of Acre, Carmiel: Stay in bomb shelters (Haaretz)
16:26 Qassam rocket lands in western Negev; no injuries reported (Haaretz)
15:58 Three Katyusha rockets land in Kiryat Shmona; no injuries reported (Haaretz)
15:21 2 people moderately hurt, 8 lightly wounded in Katyusha strike in Safed (Haaretz)
14:49 Four Katyusha rockets hit Peki`in, several casualties reported (Haaretz)
14:45 Several casualties in Hatzor Haglilit lightly wounded by Katyusha rockets (Channel 1)
14:40 Three Katyusha rockets hit central Nahariya; several people treated for shock (Ch. 1)
14:25 Safed mayor: State should declare emergency situation here due to rocket fire (Ch. 1)
14:18 Two people lightly injured by rocket hits in Nahariya (Haaretz)
14:17 At least three people hurt, residential building damaged by rocket in Safed (Haaretz)
14:16 French President Chirac: Israel`s attack on Lebanon is `disproportionate` (Reuters)
14:12 Initial report: No casualties in latest Katyusha attack on Nahariya (Haaretz)
14:10 Katyusha rockets slam into Nahariya; sirens heard across the town (Haaretz)
14:08 Five Katyusha rockets land in Safed (Haaretz)
13:39 Five fires raging in Naharia environs following Katyusha hits (Haaretz)
13:18 Qassam rocket lands in an open area in western Negev; no casualties, damage (Itim)
13:06 Rockets near Naharia land in open areas (Haaretz)
12:53 Katyusha rockets hit Nahariya; no immediate report of casualties (Haaretz)

With enemies like these...

One of the overarching ironies of the Israel/Palestinian Arab conflict is the fact that Israel helps the day-to-day life of Palestinian Arabs more than any other nation on the planet. For all the Jew-hating morons who love to write articles about Israel's supposed "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" against "Palestinians", Israel - even when it is at war with them - still bends over backwards to help the people who want to see it destroyed.

From Vital Perspective:

Despite ongoing terror attacks from Gaza aimed at the civilian population of Israel, supplies continue to be transferred to the Palestinians through several crossings. Today, reports are that over 30 containers and 140 trucks brought in the following supplies:

1080 tons of grains
800 tons of sugar
140 tons of dairy products
520 tons of flour
420 tons of fruit
169 tons of oil
120 tons of salt
160 tons of rice
40 tons of eggs
100 tons of meat and fish
7 truckloads of medicine and medical equipment
Several heavy duty generators
25,000 liters of chloride
350,000 liters of diesel
50,000 liters of gasoline
100 tons of cooking gas

People on the ground tell us that water and electricity supply remains uninterrupted.

As I've said before, never in history has a nation cared so much about the civilian population of its enemy than Israel is today.

And the final irony is that Israel's enemies truly do intend to perform a complete and total ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Jews in the Middle East.

Photo bias

When looking through Yahoo's list of wire service photos from the Middle East, the ratio of pictures evoking sympathy for Arab civilians outnumbers those that show Israeli civilians under siege by a ratio of about 30-1.

Most of the pictures from the Israeli side show soldiers preparing to do battle with large weapons; most of the pictures from the Lebanese and Gaza side show families and civilians "inspecting damage." One would get the clear impression that Israel is a warmongering state hell-bent on punishing innocent people.

Any moment now....

Any moment now, I'm sure that those noble folks who volunteered to be human shields to protect Saddam's Iraq are flying to Israel as we speak to protect Israeli citizens from Hizbollah rockets. These are, after all, fearless people with a strong sense of justice, who are against all forms of aggression.

Any moment now, I expect we'll be hearing about peace rallies against Hizbollah's unprovoked attack, where the masses of moderate Arabs will be speaking for justice.

Any moment now, op-ed pages will be filled with strong words from famous leftists and peace activists strongly condemning Hizbollah, and Lebanon for not acting against them in accordance with UN resolutions.

All these things are imminent, I just know it. Because these people truly care about all humanity.

UPDATE: I've got to give credit where credit is due. Israel's Peace Now members will spend the weekend in the north in order to support residents on the frontline. Saudi Arabia has rebuked Hizbollah.

Eliminating the root cause

I heard on the radio tonight that the US was doing everything they could to pressure Hizbollah to release the soldiers.

This is laughable. Even if the US could pressure "moderate" Arab nations like Jordan to help out, no Western nation is going to convince any Islamist government (Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas) to do anything, directly or indirectly.

And the US is not going to enter a third war without a serious provocation.

Yet the US, and the West, has one weapon that can solve many, many problems without spilling any blood. It won't be easy but it would be far better to do this sooner rather than later.

Cut off all economic ties with any state that supports Islamist terror. More importantly, cut off any ties with any state that trades with any state that supports Islamist terror.

The US needs to say to Europe, to the third world and to everyone else: You are either with us or against us. If this means another oil boycott, so be it - we can survive without them far better than they can survive without us.

Islamist ideology cannot and will not be changed. No charismatic Islamic leader is going to show up and prove to the terrorists that they are wrong according to the Koran. No one in the Islamic world is going to face down the Islamists. The hope that Islam can modernize is a false hope that comes from not being willing to face the problem head on.

And, I hate to say it, but one cannot soundly defeat a fragmented enemy militarily. You may be able to destroy the Taliban or Hamas or Hizbollah, but you cannot defeat Islamism in the field of war. When the war is asymmetric, where the people down the block from you can one day blow up a building with easily-obtained materials, one can never declare victory.

But the enemy is thoroughly and completely dependent on the West - for our technology, for our petrodollars, for every material need they have, including their weapons. Without money, without our money, they will change from a threat to world pace to a nuisance. They won't disappear but enough of them will happily back the winning horse and turn their backs on the terrorist leaders.

The US' major strength is not its military - it is its sheer economic might. It is past time we use it correctly.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union on Thursday criticized Israel for using what it called "disproportionate" force in its attacks on Lebanon following Wednesday's raid by Hezbollah guerillas who killed eight Israel Defense Forces soldier and abducted two soldiers.

"The European Union is greatly concerned about the disproportionate use of force by Israel in Lebanon in response to attacks by Hezbollah on Israel," according to a statement issued by Finland which holds the EU's rotating presidency. "The presidency deplores the loss of civilian lives and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. The imposition of an air and sea blockade on Lebanon cannot be justified."

According to the calculus of the EU, Israel should carefully take an inventory of its dead and missing, the damage caused by rockets and terror, and bring a spreadsheet to the World Court to gain approval of causing the exact same amount of damage to those who attacked it. That way the EU is happy and won't complain any more.

Of course, when Israel hits back in a proportionate manner, that just perpetuates the "cycle of violence" that so concerns the world, so Israel must, in addition to calculating the damage, exercise "maximum restraint." Which means that Israel shouldn't make any aggressive moves at all towards those who try their hardest to destroy Israel. Restraint means Israelis should hide in their bomb shelters and wait for Hizbollah to run out of ammunition.

To be fair, Hizbollah was also asked to act with restraint by the EUeenies. Since we all know the vast amounts of respect that Hizbollah has towards Christian Europe, we can rest assured that they will drop everything and free the prisoners as they were asked.

And for Euridiots to actually say that one side is wrong and the other side is right would make their heads explode. In these sophisticated times, everyone is equally at fault, unless Israel does something unilaterally, of course. Morality is relative, don't you know. "One man's terrorist" and all that.

Wars must be fair, you see. The Eurodopes say that if the Arabs kill three Jews, Israel can kill 3 Arabs. Let the Muslims kill, say, 6 million Israelis, and then the Israelis would have some justification to kill 6 million Muslims - in the most humane way possible. Just as long as they don't kill any civilians, destroy any infrastructure or buildings, or make too much noise that could keep some kids awake at night. That would be cruel.

What to read

I don't have time today to compose anything major, but there are plenty of bloggers posting great articles and news about the two-front war in Israel.

Check out AbbaGav's editorial, Yourish's coverage, Israel Matzav's articles, and Israellycool's liveblogging.

I have found that traditional news sources, including Israel's, have been frustratingly slow and incomplete. The blogosphere seems to be doing a better job.

Hizbollah's hero

Ha'aretz reports:

Immediately after the Hezbollah attack, the organization's Al-Manar television station began broadcasting clips calling on Israel to release Lebanese prisoners held in Israel in return for the soldiers.

The group in particular emphasized the release of Lebanese militant Samir Kuntar, jailed in Israel since a 1979 attack in the northern town of Nahariyah, in which he entered an apartment and murdered three family members and an Israeli police officer.

Samir Kuntar isn't just another terrorist. He is one of the most loathsome creatures to ever breathe.

Here is an account, from the Washington Post in 2003 (no longer online) of the coldblooded crime that Hizbollah idolizes and the scumbag who committed it:

The World Should Know What He Did to My Family
By Smadar Haran Kaiser

Sunday, May 18, 2003; Page B02

NAHARIYA, Israel
Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The next day,Abu Abbas announced from Beirut that the terrorist attack in Nahariya had been carried out "to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty"at Camp David the previous year. Abbas seems to have a gift for charming journalists, but imagine the character of a man who protests an act of peace by committing an act of slaughter.

Two of Abbas's terrorists had been killed by police on the beach. The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abu Abbas was determined to find a way to free Kuntar as well. So he engineered the hijacking of the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt and demanded the release of 50 Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. The only one of those prisoners actually named was Samir Kuntar. The plight of hundreds held hostage on a cruise ship for two days at sea lent itself to massive international media coverage. The attack on Nahariya, by contrast, had taken less than an hour in the middle of the night. So what happened then was hardly noticed outside of Israel.

One hears the terrorists and their excusers say that they are driven to kill out of desperation. But there is always a choice. Even when you have suffered, you can choose whether to kill and ruin another's life, or whether to go on and rebuild. Even after my family was murdered, I never dreamed of taking revenge on any Arab. But I am determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison. In 1984, I had to fight my own government not to release him as part of an exchange for several Israeli soldiers who were POWs in Lebanon. I understood, of course, that the families of those POWs would gladly have agreed to the release of an Arab terrorist to get their sons back. But I told Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, that the blood of my family was as red as that of the POWs. Israel had always taken a position of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. If they were going to make an exception, let it be for a terrorist who was not as cruel as Kuntar. "Your job is not to be emotional," I told Rabin, "but to act rationally." And he did.

So Kuntar remains in prison. I have been shocked to learn that he has married an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of terrorist prisoners. As the wife of a prisoner, she gets a monthly stipend from the government. I'm not too happy about that.

UPDATE: The disgusting al-Reuters writes a puff piece about this piece of garbage, whitewashing his sickening acts and leaving out any details until the very end of the article.

Syria's news agency also praises Kuntar.

A website dedicated to Kuntar quotes Hizbollah chief Nasrallah in February as saying, "We are working on making this year the year to free our brothers in Israeli detention, Samir Kantar and his friends, which will in turn pave way to free our Syrian and Jordanian brothers detained in Israeli prisons."

Hizbollah's kidnap goals different from Hamas

This morning's attack by Hizbollah against Israel had primarily different aims than Hamas' kidnap of Gilad Shalit.

Hamas fully expected Israel to negotiate for Shalit's release and to get Israel to free prisoners. They were surprised at the scope of the Israeli response.

Hizbollah, on the other hand, clearly sees that Israel did not capitulate (yet) to the Hamas kidnapping. So why did they choose now to perform this (clearly well-planned) attack?

The idea of a "prisoner swap" (more likely a swap of Jewish bodies for live terrorists) is only tertiary in the mind of Hizbollah's leaders. The major goals are:

Embarrass the Jews.
Make Hizbollah look macho

There's that Arab pride again. Here's the Hizbollah supporters' reaction to the kidnapping:

They are not celebrating the idea of a prisoner swap. They are celebrating a "victory", even one where far more Arabs will end up dead than Israelis. As Hizbollah continues to be under international pressure to disarm - which is the same as asking them to stop breathing - they needed the psychological boost that comes, in the sick Arab mind, from killing and terrorizing Jews.

Since th Arabs do not have a prayer at this time to win an open confrontation with Israel they change the definition of "victory" to be any single successful attack against any single Israeli soldier.

We have a people pitifully low in self-esteem, suffering from a mass delusion where death is better than life and where pride is the major driving factor behind all activities (from honor killings to terror bombings.)

What if Israel had never been created?

A far-left Marxist nutcase named William Hughes, who writes often for loony left rags like Media Monitors Network, just came out with a classic piece blaming all the world's troubles on Zionists. (Interestingly, Iran's president says the same thing. )

Normally, I ignore his fevered rantings, even though they are unintentionally hilarious. For example, here are some of his ideas of how the world would be if Israel never existed:

1. The U.S. would not have any enemies in the Islamic World.
2. There would be no Al-Qaeda Terrorist Network.
3. Gasoline would be selling for less than $1 a gallon.
4. There would have been no 9/11.

I don't know what he is smoking, but I thought it may be a cool idea to come up with my own list of how the world might be today if there was never an Israel:

Egypt and Transjordan would have divided Palestine in 1948. There would be no Palestine.
Jerusalem would be Judenrein.
Any Jews who live in Arab countries would be living in fear of pogroms.
The Soviet Union would have gained complete control of the Middle East in the 1960's, and would have had the ability to starve the US of oil during the cold war. It may never have fallen.
Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons in 1991, so he would by now be allied with the Soviets and ruling Kuwait. He would have nuked Iran, and he would be a clear threat to the US.
Islamic fundamentalism would have arisen anyway as a reaction to the increased power of the secular Arab states. Many Arab states would become like Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Adolf Eichmann would have died peacefully and William Hughes would be writing a glowing biography of him.
Computers would be slower and buggier than they are now.
Instead of having 6 million Jews, the USA would have some 10 million, making people like William Hughes write articles about the undue Jewish influence on American policy. But they wouldn't use the word Jewish - perhaps "Hebrew" or "Semitic".

Any other ideas?

UPDATE: Dave Bender has a funny take on a similar idea.

TEHRAN, July 9 (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it had yet to pay $50 million it had pledged to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority and suggested the process for payment was still being discussed. The donation was announced in April to make up a shortfall left by an aid cut-off by the United States and the European Union and Israel's freezing of the transfer tax and customs receipts to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government.

For all the Iranian bluster about how much they support the Palestinian Arabs, the reality seems to be somewhat different.

Red Cross very quiet about Shalit

From Arutz Sheva:

The Victims of Arab Terror organization has written to the International Red Cross, demanding to know why it has not been more forceful in demanding to see the kidnapped soldier. "Israel always agrees to allow the Red Cross to see imprisoned terrorists," VAT head Shifra Hoffman told Arutz-7. "We have not received a single sign of life from Gilad Shalit. Why is the Red Cross not making similar demands to see this soldier, who is suffering in captivity?"

Arutz-7 contacted the Gaza office of the International Red Cross, and asked Gaza sub-delegation chief Georgis Georgantas this question. Georgantas said that Shalit is being held in an undisclosed place by elements who have not been clearly specified. The Red Cross had therefore made it clear to "various interlocutors," Georgantas said, that "we are ready to visit the soldier."

Asked if the precise wording of the request could be seen, Georgantas said that it had been delivered orally.

Georgantas refused to explain why the Red Cross does not contact the Hamas government directly.

Israel's Magen David Adom (Red Star of David), newly accepted into the International Red Cross, has sent a letter to its parent organization, calling upon it to demand to see Shalit.

Arab woman and child join PalArab self-death count (23)

The number of Palestinian Arabs killed by other Arabs since the incursion began continues to grow, now at 23 by my count. As the mainstream media continues to concentrate on Israel killing terrorists, they continue to ignore the number of Arabs who kill each other all the time.

Yesterday, Bara’ Jamal Abu Jarbou’ (11) and Nema Abdel Rahman Hamad (45) from Nuseirat refugee camp were killed and 7 others were injured in a clan clash. And today, 3 other Palestinians were injured in a clan clash in the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunis.

For some reason, Reuters and AP cannot seem to find any photographers to cover these incidents. For some reason, the funeral of the 11 year old girl is not newsworthy, but the heartbreaking pictures of mourners at the funerals of murderous terrorists get plenty of coverage by the wire services:

A Palestinian girl, a relative of Hamas militant Metwali Al Argan, who was killed by Israeli soldiers according to medics, mourns during his funeral in Gaza July 10, 2006. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

What else can you expect from the exclusively Arab reporters and photographers employed by Reuters and AP and AFP in the Gaza Strip? They have an agenda as well, and it does not include any mention of intra-Arab violence.

Yet another peaceful PalArab poll - the dangers of Arab pride

As I have documented before, Palestinian Arabs consistently support terror against Israel. The latest poll from JMCC shows that these trends continue.

The idea that ordinary Palestinian Arabs are not culpable for the crimes of the terrorists gets weaker and weaker as their support and tolerance for terror grows.

Major findings:

77% support the kidnap of Gilad Shalit
67% want more kidnappings of soldiers
80% oppose releasing Shalit to avoid a ground incursion into Gaza
60% support further Kassam rocket attacks against "targets"
Hamas would still win an election if held today, but barely.

Possibly the most fascinating finding was this one:

47% think that the kidnapping will end up hurting the Palestinian Arab side, and only 37% think it will help.

This would seem counter-intuitive. If a plurality of PalArabs know that the kidnapping will end up hurting their cause, why would they support it?

The answer is simple and sad. The Arab sense of "honor" is so overpowering, it trumps logic and even personal welfare. I wrote about this nearly a year ago - the flip-side to "honor" is a massive inferiority complex that results in infantile attempts to act in ways that will prove relevance.

A single kidnap against a single Israeli soldier is a victory, no matter how tiny and pyrrhic. In a world where the Arabs have precious little to feel pride over, this is something to feel proud of, in a completely sick way.

Terror seems a logical response when one's sense of pride is over-arching and psychotic. Israel can kill many Arab terrorists, but they cannot force the Arabs to give back their small victory and all it symbolizes.

A secure person can look logically at his faults and do things to improve himself. An insecure person cannot allow himself to admit any faults, and must blame all his troubles on others.

And that is the Israeli/Arab conflict in a nutshell.

Until this mass psychosis in the Arab world is dealt with, we cannot hope to have peace.

Amazing article from SF Chronicle

Credit where credit is due: Out of the loony left coast comes an article that is actual reporting, even if it is in the op-ed section. The author looks beneath the surface of the Arab hysteria over Israel and discovers that many Arabs see through the facade.

Arab blogs that fight for reform
Frida Ghitis

Sunday, July 9, 2006

When Israeli forces entered Gaza in late June, the news media in the Arab world spared no adjective to describe the "Zionist aggression," as the Syrian News Agency labeled it, or the "crazed racist extermination war," in the words of a writer in the Palestinian al-Ayyam paper. No observer of the Middle East would find that degree of invective and bitterness surprising.
However, buried below the furious, raging surface, a different sort of commentary flowed through the Internet.
In Arab blogs and deep inside the Web comment pages of some major news organizations, a few people dared to disagree. In fact, some Arab advocates of political and social reform saw recent events in the Palestinian territories as ammunition with which to criticize the dictatorial regimes they want to change in their own countries.
The Israeli incursion, with its controversial bombing of a Palestinian power plant, came less than three days after Palestinian militants dug a tunnel into Israel and captured 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit. About one year ago, Israel had completed a withdrawal from Gaza. This was the first major Israeli operation on that strip of land since the withdrawal and since the coming to power of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Many -- though not all -- in the Arab blogosphere sharply criticized Israeli actions as excessive, but they saw in the fury of the Israeli government something lacking in their own: concern for the life of a single citizen. "They will turn the world upside down to get that soldier back," wrote Sandmonkey, who describes himself as 25-year-old Egyptian living in Cairo. "I kind of envy how much they care about their own." The sentiment was echoed by Isis, at BigPharaoh.com, wishing that "our government had half the respect" for its citizens' lives "that the Israelis have for theirs."
Lebanese bloggers found bitter irony in the failure of their leaders to accomplish very much and yet find the time to rhetorically blast Israel. Lebanonesque (lebanonesque.blogspot.com) printed a local news item about a meeting of the country's National Dialogue, which "failed to solve any of their own country's problems ... but they did manage to agree that the international community should step in to halt Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip." A contributor noted sadly that "Arab 'leaders' are following in the grand tradition of posturing and emitting hot air while unable/unwilling to deliver bread to their own people."
Several progressive Arab blogs quoted approvingly from the comments page of the satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. An article titled "Where is the Arab Brain?" and signed by "A Wise Muslim" beseeched Arab leaders to stop supporting terrorism and start helping their own people. "The Arab leaders cheat and lie their people and make them holocaust fuel to their wars with Israel to divert their people from their national and democratic rights," the writer argues, adding, "Continuing the war with Israel is an advantage for Arab rulers and not their people."
Syrian democrats also maintain that their government should stop supporting terrorism, particularly by playing host to Hamas leaders. After Israeli jets entered Syrian airspace and flew low over the home of Syrian President Bashar Assad, someone identified only as Fares wrote at amarji.blogspot.com, a Syrian reformer's blog, "Now even myself for the first time ever I applaud an Israeli action. ... Israel by this action has shown that it does not want to harm Syria. ... (It is) time for Syrians to pick the message up and stop supporting radicals and terrorists."
A recurring theme among many who want regime change in their own countries is a demand that their leaders stop supporting terrorists.
Hamas itself came under withering fire from several writers, including many who expressed impassioned support for Palestinians. In the Al-Arabiya page, someone asked, "What did Hamas expect" when it took the Israeli soldier? With concern for the Palestinians and little sympathy for Israel, he cries out, "the people in Gaza have enough troubles than to be occupied again due to the stupid, irresponsible actions of Hamas idiots."
Hamas leaders fall into the same category as other regional governments that "enrich themselves and enlarge their external bank accounts" while speaking about the "glories of Jihad and martyrdom," was the sentiment in an article quoted in the blog "Free Michel Kilo Now," a site named after a Syrian writer taken prisoner by the authorities in a recent crackdown against the opposition.
The majority of the writing on Arab blogs and other Internet commentary was in support of the Palestinians and highly critical of Israel. Still, Arab democrats are increasingly noting that, however much anyone sympathizes with Palestinians, there is little doubt that Arab autocrats, dictators and assorted rulers-for-life have long used the Palestinian cause as a thick cloak to cover up the deficiencies of their rule.
The Internet, it seems, is slowly drawing the threads off that cloak, making it transparent enough to reveal the ugly truth. This time, even an Israeli crackdown in the Palestinian territories has provided an opportunity to bring more attacks against Arab regimes.

Palestinian Arab self-death count: 21

Statistics you will not see mentioned in the mainstream media:

Number of Palestinian Arabs killed by other Palestinian Arabs since the Israeli incursion began: 21

Since my last posting about this on Friday, we have three members of a family killed by an Arab anti-tank missile, a bystander killed in an armed clash, a terrorist was killed while handling a bomb, and a police officer was assassinated.

In fact, far more Arab civilians have been killed by Palestinian Arabs since the incursion began than by Israel.

AP's bias of the day

The article says:

The Palestinians on Sunday blamed Israel, saying it fired the missile at the house. Israeli military officials, citing intelligence, said a Palestinian anti-tank missile inadvertently hit the house, located on the outskirts of Gaza City near the front lines.

The headline says:
Palestinians blame Israel for missile hit

Even though it would be exactly as accurate to say
Israel blames Palestinians for missile hit
and it would be even more accurate to say
Palestinian Arab anti-tank missile kills three Gazans
along with some background information about the sheer number of anti-tank missiles smuggled into Gaza over the past year.

But that would require the AP to actually seek truth rather than even-handedness and fitting the facts into their pre-written script.

Knesset Member Wasal Taha, corresponding publicly with internet surfers on the Arabic-language IslamOnline site, said he repeatedly advised PA terrorists to battle and kidnap Israeli soldiers.

MK Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party), who last week submitted a bill to negate Knesset membership to MKs who support terrorists, said that Taha's "traitorous" remarks are further proof that Israeli democracy must protect itself.

According to a report in Maariv newspaper today, Taha told surfers on Thursday that he repeatedly advised the PA Arabs to stop shooting and targeting civilians, and to concentrate on IDF targets. An English translation of Maariv's Hebrew translation of Taha's Arabic words:
"We told them more than once that the Palestinians, who are subjected to murder and ongoing crimes on the part of the Israeli army, have two options: One is to explode and kill civilians - and these are much easier operations. The second option is the military option, in the framework of which a military unit from the resistance [i.e., terrorist infrastructures - ed.] is established in order to break into a military camp, clash with the soldiers and battle them and take them and the conquest into captivity."

How exactly can Israel let this traitorous scum remain in Knesset? What definition of "democracy" allows those in government to actively support and advise the enemy?

Palestinian Arabs celebrate death of 6-year old Gazan

After ten frustrating days of not being able to provide the media with any pictures of dead kids that could be blamed on Israel, the Palestinian Arabs finally got their wish:

Never mind the fact that Israel had nothing to do with this explosion. Lying Palestinian Arabs claim that it was from Israel and gullible wire services are more than willing to believe it, because it fits in with their script. As AP reported in he caption for the picture above:

The Israeli military, backtracking on its previous denial of responsibility, said an airstrike in the area targeting a group of militants did not hit an open field, as it previously reported, but struck a street on the outskirts of Gaza City.

What AP failed to mention is that the two incidents have nothing to do with each other. So Israel has not backtracked at all on its denial - it has strengthened it.

So now the Palestinian Arabs who killed Ruwan Hajaj can smile as they blame Israel for her death, as they try to turn her into a new symbol of Jewish evil.

Meanwhile, something interesting happened in Reuters reporting in Australia. For some reason, the headline provided to every Australian source by Reuters was an unbelievably biased, while not for any other country:

Air strikes follow peace offer
Sunday Times.au, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Air strikes follow peace offer
Daily Telegraph, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Air strikes follow peace offer
Courier Mail, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Air strikes follow peace offer
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Air strikes follow peace offer
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Air strikes follow peace offer
Advertiser Adelaide, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Air strikes follow peace offer
The Australian, Australia - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza. ISRAEL launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip overnight ...
Israel rejects Hamas ceasefire offer
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - 4 hours ago
By Nidal al-Mughrabi. ... offensive, Israel's first incursion into Gaza since quitting the territory last year, has dashed hopes of renewing peace talks, stalled ...

I don't know exactly how wire services provide headlines, but someone at Reuters came up with a doozy to give Australians, making it look like warmongering Israel is rejecting Hamas' "peace" overture which doesn't include returning Gilad Shalit. Also not mentioned was what the peaceful Hamas thought of stopping rocket attacks:

Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Saturday denounced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' call for immediate stop of firing homemade rockets at southern Israeli target.

In a written statement, the ruling movement also condemned Abbas' call for releasing an Israeli soldier abducted by the three militant groups including Hamas armed wing during a deadly attack on an Israeli army post near Gaza border on June 25.

Go to shale

With oil prices hovering around $70 a barrel, Israel is looking for ways to reduce its near-total dependence on energy imports. It's pondering the use of the nation's huge reserves of oil shale - a dark, crumbly rock loaded with hydrocarbonslocated in the central and southern parts of the country. Thanks to a technical breakthrough, it should be possible to extract fuel oil from the shale for less than $20 a barrel. That could allow Israel eventually to cut its crude imports by up to one-third.
Shale is already used as a fuel for power plants in Israel and Estonia, where the rock is burned like coal to drive steam turbines. Israel's small shale-fired power plant was built nearly 20 years ago. But past attempts to extract liquid oil from shale weren't economically feasible: The process cost upwards of $50 per barrel at a time when oil was selling for less than half that.
Now, the tables have turned. A Russian-born Israeli immigrant named Moshe Gvirtz developed a technique in the 1990s to squeeze oil from shale by mixing the rock with a residue from conventional oil refining and putting it through a catalytic process. The dramatically improved results, coupled with soaring crude prices, have inverted the economics of oil shale. That could help not just Israel but dozens of other countries, including the U.S., that are rich in shale reserves.

And the best part is the byproduct: less money going to Arab terrorists laundered through Saudi Arabia, Iran and other oil-rich terror-supporting countries.

Ha'aretz-
Unknown assailants shot dead Dr. Hussein Abu Ajwa, 44, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, as he got out of his car outside his home on Wednesday night.
Sources in Gaza described Abu Ajwa as a leading promoter of religious and political reform in Hamas.

Palestinian Center for Human Rights -
Two members of the armed wing of Hamas were killed in a mysterious explosion in a house in the densely-populated Zaitun quarter of Gaza City.
It is believed they were preparing an explosive device that detonated by mistake.

Palestinian Center for Human Rights -
A 12-year old girl was killed Thursday in an armed clash within the Abu M'hadi clan in Nuseirat in Gaza.
An armed clash between the Foujo and El-Arja clan in Rafah on July 1 resulted in the injury of four people.

In fact, since the Israeli operation began, at least 15 Palestinian Arabs have been killed by work accidents, clan fighting, honor killings and the occasional bullet fired in the air that hits someone during a wedding.

Somehow, the 90,000 "security forces" haven't been able to make things safer for the ordinary Palestinian Arab.

Good luck finding this reported in the mainstream press.

I love my human shield

BEIT LAHIYA, -: A Palestinian masked and armed militant stands near graffiti art sprayed on a wall during fire fighting with Israeli soldiers in a part of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya, 06 July 2006.

What are the odds that he wants the kid to run away to a safe place?

"Security forces"

Was it only a couple of months ago that the Palestinian Arabs demanded that the Western world pay their salaries?

Of course, most of the people who work for the welfare state of the PA work in the "security forces."

Now, what are the security forces, created and funded with Western tax dollars, doing today?

Interior Minister Said Siyyam of the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party issued the regime's first call to arms since Israel invaded last week, urging Gaza security forces to fulfill their "religious and moral duty to stand up to this aggression and cowardly Zionist invasion."

As everyone and their grandmother knew (besides the EU), the Palestinian Arabs were building an army, not a police force. But good luck finding any news sources that refer to them that way.

Ferris wheels in Paradise

Since 70 virgins don't hold any appeal for the pre-pubescent potential shaheed, the disgusting Palestinian Arab Islamic leaders need to find another angle to convince kids to blow themselves up.

Hence, the PA showed a video recently showing Mohammed al-Dura in Heaven, flying kites and going to an amusement park.

Palestinian Media Watch has the whole video.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, our friends and allies there also have a children's show where they encourage martyrdom and applaud kids who say that Jews are "the people of treachery, betrayal, and vileness." As MEMRI translates:

"Ruqaya, what did you learn from today's show?"
Voice of Ruqaya: "I learned that the Jews are the people of treachery and betrayal..."
Muhammad Sharaf Al-Din: "Allah Akbar! Say Allah Akbar! What did Ruqaya say? The Jews are the people of treachery and betrayal. May Allah give you success. We want mothers who teach their sons jihad, the love of Allah and His Messenger, sacrifice for the sake of Islam, and love for the countries of the Muslims. Loving the country of the Muslims. May Allah bless you, Ruqaya. That is the most beautiful thing I have heard - that the Jews are the people of treachery, betrayal, and vileness."

The utter depravity of a culture that brainwashes their children to hate and murder and blow themselves up is beyond description. The assumption made in the West that everybody is basically the same is soundly refuted here - there are entire large groups of people on this planet who do not share normal human values and dreams. We want our children to grow up and be successful, they incite their children to murder and die before they grow up. To even entertain the thought of celebrating this culture as somehow being equivalent to Western culture is sickening.

The $2 billion we spend annually in Egypt and the hundreds of millions that the world has sent Palestinian Arabs are paying dividends - we are bankrolling the next generation of jihadists and murderers.

Fireworks...

My family's Independence Day was exhausting and we had no plans to go a couple of miles away to see fireworks.

As we sat outside on our deck we saw what looked like, at first, to be a couple of not-bad fireworks that we assumed some kids were setting off at a school a block away from us.

They kept getting better.

I still don't know who sponsored this fireworks show, and it is hardly Macy's, but from the comfort of your own home sitting outside with an iced tea, this was pretty good.

Enjoy the snippet!

Two Palestinians were killed on Wednesday in an explosion in a house in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City, Palestinian eyewitnesses said.

The explosion ripped through the house of the Dahdouh family whose sons are members of the Islamic Jihad. Two family members were killed in an Israeli air strike. The IDF has denied involvement while Palestinian sources said the explosion was caused by a work accident. Three people were critically injured in the explosion.

The sources added the two brothers were probably preparing an explosive device which prematurely detonated.

As the number of Palestinian Arabs who accidentally kill themselves while planning to murder Jews increases, I have one question:

How come the wire services have photos of the aftermath of every Israeli rocket attack, but hardly ever show the blown-up buildings and cars from "work accidents?" There are clearly plenty of photographers covering every square inch of Gaza. So where are the photos that document Palestinian Arab depravity and recklessness towards their fellow Arabs?

Is it because the story doesn't fit into the MSM playbook of the conflict?

News and op-ed links

The Daily Mail has an op-ed by Melanie Phillips that hits the nail on the head. Quote:

Just as crucial is to address the hatred and lies that are driving this violence. In particular, what must be combated with the utmost vigour is the Muslim culture of grievance, the belief that the West is engaged in a conspiracy to attack and destroy the Islamic world.
This delusion has meant that many Muslims misrepresent Islamist aggression as self-defence, and the West's attempt to defend itself as aggression. This double-think means that Britain is itself blamed for the attacks mounted upon it.

David Gilmour is bemused by Roger Waters' graffiti.

Khilafah.com trots out yet another article saying that Muslims aren't anti-semitic, only anti-Zionist. Then they try to prove that Zionists have always been anti-Islam, using mostly fabricated and out-of-context quotes from Israel's founders. Yet all the pseudo-quotes talk about Arabs, not Muslims!

“The western mind and the Muslim mind are two different psychologies”

A must-read article about a reporter going undercover to a Jihad-infested suburb of Leeds, England.

But his kindness to me was coupled with a darker outlook on the wider world. I was shocked when one day at the Hamara centre he began explaining how the London bombers could be seen as martyrs.
“The western mind and the Muslim mind are two different psychologies,” he said. “The Muslim mind will see that this life means nothing unless I sacrifice myself for Allah.”
Inside I flinched, but outwardly I nodded with a look of sympathy. I did not want him to close up as much of the community had done after last summer’s attacks. I wanted him to speak honestly.
“My life means nothing, you know,” he continued. “I would give up this evil, two-seconds of a life.” Earthly experience, I think he meant, was but a moment compared with paradise to come.
Later he went on to eulogise Abdullah Faisal, a firebrand Islamic cleric who was imprisoned in 2003 for inciting the murder of Jews. Faisal, said to have been a strong influence on the 7/7 bombers, has advocated the spreading of Islam “by the Kalashnikov” and declared that one aim of jihad is to “lessen the population of unbelievers”.
To Ghani, the cleric was “one of the good ones” and he advised me where I might obtain recordings of his sermons.

Once again, I felt as if I had entered a strange bubble, a world where the reality I had known before had been suspended. Bham then asked me if I would ever blow myself up for Islam. I replied that the Koran says you should not harm innocent people.
“What Koran was that?” he countered. “Don’t fool yourself by saying jihad is a struggle within, to get on with life, to motivate myself to get up for prayers and that sort of thing,” he said. “That’s not jihad. Who told you that?”

Even after these experiences, the reporter looks atthis as merely a social problem. He doesn't seem to make the leap that the next 9/11 bomber is likely to come from a place like this, the middle of a Western town.