Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Magic bullet

IDF kills infant, top Islamic Jihad militant in southern Gaza

And in the details we learn:

A two-week-old Palestinian infant was killed after nightfall on Tuesday in a brief Israel Defense Forces ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said, just a day after Israel ended a bloody offensive in northern Gaza against Palestinian rocket squads.

A senior Islamic Jihad operative, Yussuf Samiri, was also killed. Israeli defense officials said that Samiri had been the intended target of the operation.

...Witnesses said IDF tanks fired shells and fighter helicopters fired missiles. A 1-month-old baby girl, Amira Abu-Assar, was killed by a ricocheting bullet, medical officials said.

How exactly do the Palestinian Arab "medical officials" always know that Israeli bullets are the ones that invariably kill civilians whenever there is a firefight? One would expect to see some Palestinian Arab casualties from "friendly fire," but for some reason those incidents are never reported.
Palestine Today (Arabic) reports that "fighters from the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, fought in violent armed clashes with automatic weapons and anti-tank missiles" during this battle. So clearly there were bullets flying from both sides.

Do Gaza police have forensics labs that can identify bullet fragments, perform some metallurgical and chemical tests, look at the trajectories and ricochet angles, and definitively identify their source within minutes of the fatality?

Every single incident, Israel is blamed, and so-called "news" organizations - including Israel's major pro-Arab newspaper - report the Palestinian Arab claims without skepticism or question.

Mishloach Manot for Sderot families

Purim is coming, and Sderot is the most appropriate place to send gift baskets:

This Purim, Connections Israel plans to deliver a holiday gift basket to every family in Sderot (10,000 families in total) with a letter of support from a Jewish family overseas. This project will connect families and communities in a major expression of Jewish unity.
Every Diaspora community’s name and contribution will be marked in a major exhibit that will take place in Sderot after before Purim and will show the support, care and solidarity from the Jews around the world.

Contact your community leader to promote this event.

Urge other caring families to join this project !!!

Write a warm greeting card to a family in Sderot - make it personal! add a picture and a blessing for the holiday and mail it to us.

If you like you can donate a holiday gift basket ($36) and your letter will be included.

160 trucks of aid scheduled today

From YNet:

The Kerem Shalom terminal in the southern Gaza Strip was expected to reopen Tuesday after being closed for six weeks for security reasons.

Some 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinians were expected to pass through the terminal, while 60 additional trucks containing equipment and medications were to cross the border at the Suffa crossing.

The Kerem Shalom crossing was used as an alternative terminal after the Karni crossing in the northern Strip was shut down. The terminal was shut down, however, after the defense establishment received warnings on terror organization's plans to carry out attacks at the area, and after mortar shells were fired at the terminal while goods were passing through it.

On Tuesday, the IDF was instructed to reopen the crossing, allowing a limited number of trucks to enter Gaza while following the developments in the area on a daily basis.

Sixty trucks were expected to pass through the Suffa crossing with medications, as well as equipment and food from the United Nations and donations from Jordan and Turkey. In addition, 80 trucks carrying grains were to enter the Strip through the Karni crossing.

Meanwhile, three Qassams landed in Israel so far today, to correspond with the three crossings that goods will be shipped through.

Video of near-lynching in Jerusalem

Here is the Channel 10 story from yesterday of two Jerusalem municipal workers being nearly lynched by peaceful Palestinian Arab protesters using stones and metal bars.

Defending against terror impossible in international law

Human rights organizations have two main problems with Israel defending itself: the "principle of distinction" and "the principle of proportionality." These are not what the Geneva Conventions calls them but they are the shorthand for the following rules.

The principle of distinction refers to Article 48 of Protocol 1, which states:

In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.

And the principle of proportionality comes from article 51, paragraph 5(b) (bolded):

1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
...
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;

and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects;

and

(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
...

7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.

You will notice that Hamas often violates paragraph 7 above by telling citizens to act as human shields, as they did in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in 2006. And, of course, Qassam and Grad rockets by their very nature violate the Geneva Conventions multiple times by targeting civilians, by not distinguishing between civilians and military targets, by punishing the civilian population for perceived crimes of the military, and many others. Beyond that, Hamas routinely violates other aspects of Geneva, such as by placing military objects in civilian areas, by taking medicines and fuel from hospitals, by placing Fatah prisoners in areas where they are in danger and many, many others.

But Hamas can do all of this with impunity, because of Paragraph 8:

8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.

So no matter how much Hamas violates the Geneva Conventions, Israel must respect the laws with regard to civilian lives. Only Israel is under international pressure to adhere to Geneva; no Arab nation is similarly pressuring Hamas to follow international law.

Hamas has the means and the history of violating dozens of provisions of international humanitarian law and can do so with no fear of sanctions or serious condemnation, and not even the fear of Israel doing the same. There is no way that Israel can attack rocket launchers without some civilians being killed as long as Hamas places them in schools and sends teenage boys out to retrieve the launchers.

In recent days we have seen people representing the EU and UN and human rights organizations who say, in all seriousness, that "Israel has the right to defend itself" - but they cannot say how it is possible without violating Geneva in one way or another. This is because it isn't possible.

It is literally impossible for a nation, hamstrung by international law, to fight against a terrorist foe that flouts that same law.

The only alternatives for Israel are:

* to ignore international law and accept the consequences.

* to be a sitting duck and let Israeli citizens die

* to adhere to the law as much as possible - a slippery slope because there will inevitably be violations in defensive actions and double-standard pressure for Israel to adhere 100%.

What needs to be done is to modify Geneva's Article 51 paragraph 8 to lay the responsibility for civilian injuries and deaths squarely on the parties that ignore the law. If the world blames Hamas for not properly separating civilians from military targets, and therefore blames Hamas for any civilians killed, there would be a short-term loss of lives but over time Hamas will be forced to abandon its policy of hiding military targets in civilian areas - thus saving many, many more lives in the long run.

We need to change the calculus for the terrorists, to force them to consider the death of their own civilians as a loss rather than a positive. And the way to do that is to place the blame for their civilian deaths squarely on them. Only when they start adhering to Geneva will it make sense to expect their enemies to do the same.

The fifth column

From JPost:

Hundreds of Arab teens pelted Israeli cars, police and passersby with stones and rocks in east Jerusalem on Monday, as rioting over the violence in Gaza continued in the Arab sections of Jerusalem for the second straight day.

In the most serious incident, two Jerusalem Municipality city inspectors felt in danger of being lynched on a central east Jerusalem thoroughfare that was blocked by burning garbage bins after their car was pelted with dozens of stones and rocks by half a dozen teens, one of whom jumped on the vehicle and beat the window with a metal bar.

The two city workers, who were inside their vehicle when they came under attack, eventually managed to bypass a burning garbage bin that was overturned on the road by driving on the sidewalk and escape to safety.

"I was afraid we were going to be lynched," said city inspector Chaya Elihan.

The two city workers were in telephone contact the whole time of the attack with their boss, Elihan said.

"Our instructions were just to get out of the there as quickly as possible without paying any attention to the damage done to the car," city inspector Moshe Ephraim said.

But thats not all...

Meanwhile, a group of 150 Arab students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem held a boisterous protest Monday against the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip.

The Arab students who took part in the afternoon protest just outside the main entrance to the university's Mount Scopus campus were met by dozens of Jewish students in a counterprotest opposite the street, with police separating between the two sides.

Carrying Palestinian flags and dressed in keffiyehs, the Arab students chanted the Palestinian liberation slogan: "With our blood and soul we shall liberate Palestine."

"We are part of the Palestinian people and it is impossible to separate us from them," said protester Ali Behar, 23, a third-year student who heads the Arab Students Committee.

"We are protesting against the Zionist terror against the Palestinian people," Behar said, "or as [Deputy Defense Minister Matan] Vilna'i called it, 'the Holocaust.'" Vilna'i has said that he used the Hebrew word Shoah in a radio interview which took place Friday only to mean disaster, ruin or destruction and was not referring to its primary definition as Holocaust.

Israeli student protesters, who supported the army's actions in Gaza, expressed their dismay that the university and police allowed such radical Islamic activity on campus.

"We are talking about a group of students who live in the dorms, who study at the expense of the state and in exchange call for the murder of Israelis and support terror," said Erez Tadmor, 28, head of the right-wing student group If You Will It, referring to the words of Theodor Herzl.

"Regretfully and shamefully, the incitement of the Islamic groups on campus are ignored by both the police and the university administration," he said.

Israeli Arabs have the right to protest, of course, but if they want to see the state get destroyed it is reasonable to ask that they no longer get the benefits of that same state.

Shaytan likes when you eat with your left hand

From a link on LGF...a Lebanese TV commercial.

From the comments, it appears that this rule applies even if the person eating is left-handed.

There is an entire series of these sorts of commercials, showing the evil Shaytan convincing a woman to wear makeup, or asking a man not to get up to pray.

Reuters loves Hamas

Unbelievable bias from Reuters:

Hamas fighters battle on inspired by God

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Abu Mohammed picked up his rifle, said farewell to his wife and six children and went out to face the Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships and missile-firing airborne drones.

"Being unable to defeat Israel is no reason to surrender," the Hamas fighter said with a smile as he headed to the Gaza Strip's front line last Saturday, ignoring pleas from his family to stay.

"My children and wife are very dear to me," he said. "But reward in Heaven and the homeland are dearer."

The 38-year-old furniture salesman says he is not afraid to die for the cause of destroying Israel and forging a Palestinian state on all Israel's territory, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

To Israel and its allies, Abu Mohammed and his comrades are Jew-hating terrorists. But Abu Mohammed sees himself on a mission from God to rescue his people from 60 years of misery as refugees since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Though that conviction may, in some, mingle with bravado and self-interest, it does make Hamas an enemy to be reckoned with, for all that Israel's hi-tech army easily outguns their rifles, home-made rockets and, if they choose, their suicide bomb belts.

Abu Mohammed survived, though he broke a bone in his hand diving for cover. The rocket fire resumed and Hamas and its fellow Islamist allies vowed to battle on, despite losing close to 60 fighters. Estimates vary but there may be 20,000 or more Abu Mohammeds left to continue the war in Gaza alone.

Islam forbids suicide, but rewards "martyrdom" with glory in this world and paradise in the next. For the 1.5 million Palestinians in the slums and refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, the question of why one of their compatriots would sacrifice his or her life to kill Israelis needs little soul-searching.

"An Islamist fighter has two motives: a religious motive -- God's reward; and a social motive -- appreciation from the people he is defending," explained Fadel Abu Heen, a prominent Gaza psychiatrist.

And religion was the stronger motivation for Islamist fighters. "That is what makes them braver and more aggressive fighters than others," he said.

Older than most of his fellow combatants, Abu Mohammed said his family had fled to Gaza from a village nearby in 1948.

"We have the right to all of Palestine," he said in his three-room, one-storey house in Gaza City.

"If we are dead before we can liberate our land, then we did not give up. We have to set an example to our children that weakness is not an excuse for not putting up a fight."

Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem -- terms Israel is unwilling to accept, preferring to negotiate with Hamas's secular enemies in the Fatah faction, which dominates the larger West Bank.

Reuters has outdone itself in lionizing Hamas terrorists. Anti-religion when that religion happens to be Judaism or Christianity, Reuters is all of a sudden quite objective when reporting on the Islamic beliefs of destroying the Jewish dhimmis.

The headline didn't even have scare quotes, as Reuters is reporting an established fact - that Hamas is inspired by God.

Unreal.

(h/t Callie)

Do the Palestinian Arabs want an independent state?

The world media often portray Palestinian Arab terror as a manifestation of their desire for "independence." It is perhaps natural that, in the Western world, such calls are met with sympathy, as independence is often used as a synonym for "freedom."

The only problem is that the desire for independence is not very strong among Palestinian Arabs.

In the 2006 PA elections, Hamas won a plurality of the vote and a majority of the seats in the PA parliament. Hamas, like all Islamist movements, does not call for Palestinian Arab independence, rather it calls for a pan-Arab Islamic 'ummah. Israel's existence on what Hamas considers holy Muslim land is the biggest obstacle to such unified Muslim nation; as such its first job is to eliminate Israel. But the point isn't to establish a state there except as perhaps an interim step; its goal, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, is to overthrow all secularist Arab governments to create a large Islamic nation. This is what it calls "nationalism" in its charter.

On the other side of the spectrum, the recent death of George Habash gave us all a reminder that the goal of his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was, for most of its existence, dedicated to socialist pan-Arabism, not to Palestinian Arab nationalism.

As recently as two weeks ago, the perennial threat of Palestinian Arabs unilaterally declaring independence was brought up by DFLP head Yasser Abd Rabbo, but Abbas' reaction to the idea is instructive:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out on Wednesday any unilateral declaration of statehood in the near future, responding to an aide's call to take the step if peace talks with Israel continued to falter.
"We will pursue negotiations in order to reach a peace agreement during 2008 that includes the settlement of all final status issues including Jerusalem," Abbas said in a statement.
"But if we cannot achieve that, and we reach a deadlock, we will go back to our Arab nation to take the necessary decision at the highest level," he said, without mentioning any options.

It will be remembered that the PLO at its inception was not interested in an independent Palestinian Arab state either, and of course during the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank there was essentially no interest in an independent Palestinian Arab state on Arab territory (except for the factions that advocated the overthrow of Jordan.) The 1968 Palestinian National Charter pointedly did not call for an independent state, rather "self-determination." Abbas is continuing on in that tradition by saying that even a unilateral declaration of independence can only be taken with approval of the larger "Arab nation," a mythical construct that most Arab nations pretend allegiance to in their own constitutions, and his words today are echoes of those in that 1968 Charter.

While the tactics have changed, it is hard to escape the conclusion that even current calls for an independent Palestinian Arab state are not so much for the ideals of freedom and independence as for a stage towards the destruction of Israel. And if you add together the votes tallied for various parties in the 2006 PA elections, it appears that a majority of Palestinian Arabs themselves voted for parties that do not advocate - or only recently pretend to advocate - an independent Palestinian Arab state.

And even those who would disagree with this analysis must admit that Gazans have overwhelmingly supported the anti-nationalist goals of Hamas, and the current escalation of hostilities from Gaza are purely meant to hurt Israel, not to advance the cause of Palestinian Arab independence nor to build an independent state.

Arab media feeding inciteful lies

The Palestine Press Agency reported two interesting items today:

UNRWA commissioner general "Karen Abu Zayd" demands effective international intervention to put a stop to "bloody violence" in Gaza

Pope calls for an unconditional cessation of military operations in Gaza

By saying "in Gaza", the "news" agency is making it sound like the Pope and Abu-Zayd condemned Israel only, thereby justifying Qassam and Grad rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. (Of course, both the pope and Abu-Zayd condemned both sides equally.)

Similarly, even English-language Arab media tends to overlook condemnations of public figures of Qassam and Grad rockets and only mention condemnations of Israel. From Bahrain's Gulf Daily News:

European Union president Slovenia condemned Israel's attacks as disproportionate and violating international law.

(Of course, even Reuters gets in on the act, headlining only condemnations of Israel and burying the same people condemning rocket attacks in the text of the article.)

Another example of absurd media bias in Arab sources is this article from Ma'an:

A Palestinian student was killed on Monday morning after Israeli forces opened fire on a peaceful demonstration in the West Bank against the Israeli mass killings in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, the "peaceful" demonstration included hundreds of peaceful rock throwers and a Jewish citizen felt so threatened that he first fired in the air, then at the legs of his attackers.

Sderot mayor injured by Qassam?

Both Ma'an (Arabic) and Palestine Press Agency are quoting Israeli sources that Sderot mayor Eli Moyal was slightly injured by a Qassam rocket Sunday night.

Palestine Press reader comments are praising Allah, and Hamas, for this news. Nothing yet in the Israeli English press yet.

Schools open in Gaza tomorrow

Ma'an Arabic reports that "Teachers Association and staff in the public sector in the Gaza Strip called on all staff and teachers go tomorrow morning Monday, 3/3/2008 to duty in all provinces of Gaza and the West Bank."

It's almost as if they don't expect any indiscriminate and disproportionate rockets of the evil, genocidal, Nazi Zionists to be fired at their schools and endanger their lives while kids are in class.

Al-Jazeera: Egypt to open Rafah to treat injured

From PalPress (autotranslated):

The "Al-Jazeera" channel published the news this afternoon that Egyptian authorities decided to allow the opening of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egyptian territories to receive the wounded of escalating Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and to import medicines and medical equipment to hospitals [in Gaza.].

This news, if true, will not be publicized very much. The claims that Gaza hospitals are overcrowded and that there is a shortage of medicines is much more dramatic.

Neither will the media remind their consumers that Hamas in recent months has, at least twice, confiscated medicines meant for Gaza hospitals.

Islamic Jihad claims to have Israeli body parts

The ghoulish terrorists of Islamic Jihad's "Al-Quds Brigades" claim to have body parts of Israeli soldiers: (autotranslated from Palpress)

The Al-Quds Brigades military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, it retains limbs Israeli soldiers detonated an explosive device in them yesterday evening Saturday thorn in the south east of the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The military statement issued by the Palace Agency has received "Palestine Press," a copy of the news this morning, the troops were able late in the evening yesterday, Saturday, from blowing up an explosive anti-personnel mines weighing 10 kilogrammes special Israeli force infiltrated one of the houses in the area east of the town of Rafah thorn .

The statement pointed out that the Israeli forces penetrated enhanced in the region and arrived at the scene after the bombing charge, and affirmed that the elements found parts of the remains of members of the Special Force is holding now.

For his part, the spokesman Abu Ahmad Al-Quds Brigades in a telephone conversation with a local radio, the news and said that the Israeli forces spent most of dawn hours they are searching for the remains of soldiers on the walls and trees, and that the Al-Quds Brigades will offer these parts and body parts in a timely manner after improvement security conditions in the sector.

Arab News and Der Stürmer: Disturbing Parallels

In yet another example of the obscene "Zionists=Nazis" mantras so often used by anti-semites, the Arab News has printed an op-ed called "Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Disturbing Parallels." Using methods that a fifth-grader could use to make "disturbing parallels" between, say, butterflies and rabid dogs (Both have blood! Both have natural defenses! Both seem to move about randomly!) the author, one Steve Hutcheson, brings up pseudo-facts to make his case:

The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving. So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density of 4,200 people per sq. km which is 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel which has 360 people per sq. km.

It is hardly worth showing the idiocy of this parallel, but just to mention one part: the population density in the Tel Aviv/Jaffa coastal corridor is some 6000 people per square kilometer, and if you exclude the Negev desert, Israel is indeed one of the most crowded places in the world. The Arabs have pushed the Jews into a tiny state - I guess Israel should start pushing towards Riyadh, since according to moral midgets like this, being crowded is reason to start shooting rockets indiscriminately at your neighbors.

Oh, also: the Warsaw Ghetto population density was not a measly 4,200 people/sq. km., but
110,800 - over 25 times the density of Gaza. Wow, that parallel really is disturbing!

The Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies. So too has the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle.

Another idiot making the implicit - and libelous - claim that Israel is intending to starve the population of Gaza, even more so in his next paragraph:

The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day. So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements.

No, that's not what the UN report said - it said that the UN alone was providing (as of November) 61% of the food that Gaza needs, and it wasn't limited by Israeli sanctions on that number - rather by its budget. And, not surprisingly, the UNRWA budget gets next to nothing from Arab nations!

So it would be far more accurate to say that Arabs are starving Gazans. Not accurate, but more accurate that the Arab News is.

Of course, we have yet to hear about starving Gazans smuggling in food in their many tunnels from Egypt. Cigarettes and explosives seem to be a higher priority right now. Go figure.

The Jewish inhabitants through the ZZB and the ZOB resisted the oppression by the Nazis albeit too late and their rebellion was brutally crushed without concern for who was in the way. So too have the Palestinians of Gaza through their own resistance organizations, in particular Hamas, rebelled against their oppressors and so too do the Israelis use all means available to crush the rebellion without concern for who is in the way or who they maim or kill in doing so.

Ah, so shooting rockets at civilians and sending suicide bombers to kill old ladies is just like the Jewish resistance to Nazis!

These lies, sickening parallels and justification for terror is just part of the mainstream Arab world's (and their leftist allies') viewpoints. Even pointing out the glaring lies and perverted morality in making such statements is difficult, as the idea of comparing the Holocaust victims with the Gazans - even while demolishing those comparisons - is literally nauseating.

But the thrill that Israel-bashing turds like Hutcheson gets from the idea of Jew-as-Nazi gets is too irresistible for them to pass up. And the relatively moderate Arab News - hardly a jihadist newspaper - supporting such drivel is an indication of just how far the Arab world is from reality.

PT Watch - database of rocket and mortar attacks

A new website called PTWatch keeps track of all terror attacks from Gaza towards Israel since Israel's withdrawal. Using mostly Arab sources, it is recording every "projectile" attack that the terrorists take credit for themselves, and whether the target was civilian or military - according to the terrorists themselves.

The author said he was inspired by my Qassam calendar (thanks!) but, unlike my static monthly calendars, PTWatch is a full database where you can query any date or date range. It includes mortars as well. For each attack he includes a link back to the (usually Arab) news source that documents it, far more effectively than my calendars do - I pretty much gave up on linking back to every attack every day and only link to the most "representative" article I can find.

Check it out!

Hamas kills PalArab baby with its own rocket

From JPost:

Hamas said the baby, Malak Karfaneh, was killed and three other civilians were wounded in an Israeli strike on Beit Hanun, a northern town where Palestinians often launch rockets at Israel. But local residents said one of those rockets fell short and landed in the area of the baby's house.

Which makes the known 2008 PalArab self-death count 27.

Pic of the satirical poster in the German art gallery

Here is the picture by the satirical group "Surrend" that forced a Berlin art gallery to shut down because of Islamic threats.

It shows the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia with the caption "Dummer Stein", meaning "Stupid Stone."

But what is more interesting is that it is part of a series of "Dummer" posters. The one next to it shows a Chassidic Jew and is called "Dummer Hat." For some reason, there were no death threats about that poster.

Snapped Shot shut down

The best place on the web for analyzing and critiquing news photography has been sent a "cease and desist" letter from AP, and the blogger (and blog-friend) Brian Ledbetter has agreed to take his Snapped Shot site down until the issue can be resolved.

As the Jawa Report mentions:

Since all of the AP images reprinted by Brian are criticisms of them, they clearly fall into the realm of "fair use".

This is a chilling development, as many other bloggers (myself included) often link to and reproduce wire service photos for criticism and comment. The Lebanon war "fauxtography" scandals, where many photos were found to have been Photoshopped, staged or otherwise deceptive, would not have come to light had it not been for bloggers like Brian.

It is a sad day for free speech.

Another side of the culture of death

One of the more obvious differences between how Palestinian Arabs act and how Westerners act is in how they treat, and think about, their own dead people.

When Roni Yechiyeh was murdered on Wednesday, the closest one could find to a picture of his body was this one, made by an Israeli photographer for Reuters:

Shoes lie beside the body of an Israeli killed after a rocket attack in the southern town of Sderot February 27, 2008.

The picture is meant to evoke sadness and loss. To show his face would be demeaning and painful to his family. With few exceptions, this is how Israeli victims are shown to the world by Israelis themselves.

On the other hand, the Arab press- and Arab photographers for the wire services - revel in showing bloody dead bodies. When a baby dies, his picture gets plastered on front pages (like this one in Ma'an today, I'm not going to reproduce it here.) There is no indication that the families of the victims are upset by this - it is as if a child being killed is cause for celebration, because it can be used as ammunition against Israel in the war of public relations.

The glee at which PalArab deaths are embraced can be seen from this rally, which in a normal culture would be characterized as child abuse:

A man carries a Palestinian boy during a protest against Israeli air strikes which killed Palestinian youth in Gaza February 29, 2008. An Israeli missile attack on Thursday killed four Palestinian youngsters playing football in the Gaza Strip, local medical workers said. The banner reads 'Help us Egyptian people'.REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

What the caption pointedly fails to describe is the red paint on the children's faces and clothing. This rally is meant to have Palestinian Arab children literally play dead, and causes them to associate death with a fun outing at another rally meant for Western consumption. Death is thrilling and pictures of death are titillating - the Palestinian Arab equivalent to pornography.

In short, Palestinian Arabs celebrate both Jewish and Arab civilian deaths, while Israelis mourn them. Death, which is described countless times by Palestinian Arabs themselves as reasons for celebration, is also a major propaganda victory.

And those PR victories, milked for all they are worth and more, give them all the more reason to celebrate.

Another member of the Zionist-controlled press

I just stumbled onto Tony Karon's blog. He works for Time magazine as a senior editor at TIME.com. While he takes pains to say that his opinions on his blog do not represent those of his employer, his opinions are, shall we say, a bit less than even-handed.

His blogroll includes Juan Cole and Richard Silverstein. He continuously describes anything but total love for Palestinian Arabs and anyone who is pro-Likud as "racist Zionist alte-kakkers". And he proudly brings out his Jewish bona-fides so prove to his leftist friends that, see, even Jews can be anti Israel with the best of you!

Having these opinions is his right, of course, as is his grating name-dropping. But it shows again that the American media and its leaders are hardly Zionist.

Morning links

The Palestinians’ Willing Accomplices at Israellycool

A Zionist Manifesto: We must make the change that we seek at ZioNation

A follow-up on the anti-semitic speech at the Vancouver Public Library from the Ottowa Citizen

Norman, is that you? at the LA Times Blogs

The Colorado Jewish school teams both lost last night, making the Sabbath issue moot

Inaccurate Qassams and inaccurate reporting in the Guardian

The Guardian today includes this "fact" in its coverage of Gaza:

The Qassam rockets are notoriously inaccurate - Hamas launched 28 yesterday and only 10 landed in Israel - but there are growing fears that the militants are acquiring an arsenal with a longer range.

Yesterday, according to YNet, "over 30" rockets landed in Israel, and 10 of them landed in Ashkelon alone. Haaretz counted 12 of them as being Grad rockets.

Hamas alone claimed to fire 26 Qassam rockets in its many press releases yesterday, but I cannot find anywhere that Hamas lists which ones landed in Israel and which in Gaza.

There is a very small possibility that The Guardian's reporter Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem managed to track how many rockets were from Hamas, how many from Fatah and Islamic Jihad and other groups, tracked them individually to see where each one landed, distinguished between Qassams and Grads, and counted exactly 28 Qassams from Hamas (two more than they claim) of which exactly 10 landed in Israel.

It is undoubtedly true that many Qassams land in Gaza and that there is always a discrepancy between the number claimed to have been fired by terror groups and the number that are known to have landed in Israel. A 3:1 ratio is absurd, though.

Far more likely is that O'Loughlin is, subconsciously or not, trying to minimize the Qassam threat to Israel and is reporting "facts" as inaccurate as s/he claims the Qassams are.

Berlin gallery shuts down after Muslim threats

From Reuters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surrend's webpage is here.

Kuwait summons 1500 Mugniyeh mourners

From AFP:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So they set up a sting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what reporters should be doing.

Jewish school in Sabbath basketball playoff kerfuffle

From Sports Illustrated (h/t Global Freezing):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More details in this article from CBS 4 Denver:

Reader said CHSAA can't accommodate everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abbas doesn't want PalArabs to become citizens of Lebanon

From the Daily Star (Lebanon):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dead Hamas terrorists trained in Iran or Syria

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

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

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

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

Georgetown University hires a real Israel scholar

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

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

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

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

Read the Hamas press release taking credit for murder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Statement issued by the military

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

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

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

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

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

It is a jihad victory or martyrdom,,,

Brigades martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam

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

Breaking: Israeli murdered by Hamas Qassam at Sapir College

UPDATE:

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

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

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

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

Hamas' military wing claimed responsiblity for firing the Qassams.

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

Ya gotta love it:

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

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

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

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

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

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

February Qassam Calendar

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

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

February

288 this month.

Previous calendars:

January 2008

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

Saudis try to increase tourism - with polygamy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Youssef Ibrahim:

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

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

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

(The entire article is worth reading.)

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

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

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

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

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

Obama vs. Likud

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

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

The bolded statement is interesting on a number of levels.

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

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

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

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

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

Does Obama want to see Jerusalem divided again?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best autotranslated name

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

French = Shalit
Singer = Mughniyeh
Exhausted = Livni

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

Syphilis = Fatah Central Committee member Abdullah Franji

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

John Dugard, racist

The latest drivel from John Dugard, of the UN Human Rights Council, shows that he shares the same racist tendencies of all "human rights" activists that can "understand" Palestinian Arab terror.

Although the report will come out next month, it includes this gem:

While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, "they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation," writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Jewish state of acts and policies consistent with all three.

So, like others before him, Dugard thinks that Palestinian Arabs have no ability to tell right from wrong, that they have no ability to think for themselves, and that they have an irresistible urge to perform acts of terror.

In other words, Dugard considers Palestinian Arabs to be akin to animals; they are subhuman beings who react instinctively but without any ability of thought. Their actions are understandable - but deplorable - exactly the way a rabid dog can be understood, but scolded, for biting people.

He makes a distinction between Palestinian terror and Al Qaeda terror, because, of course, Al Qaeda terror is "mindless" while Palestinian Arab terror is against the unjust Jews. Dugard can magically distinguish between the mindset of Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, knowing that blowing up Jews in Israel because Israel "occupies" Jaffa is much different than blowing up Spaniards in Madrid because Spain "occupies" Andalusia. Dugard is so amazingly smart that he knows that there is a world of difference where PalArab terror is understandable but Al Qaeda terror is outrageous. This is, as he states it, "common sense."

Certainly, Dugard can "understand" how Hezbollah is so upset over "occupation" that it can attack Jewish community centers in South America - because they obviously support Israeli "apartheid." This personification of human rights can discern very fine distinctions of what is considered "understandable" and what goes over the line. He can, after all, show a measure of empathy for one type of terror - because it is done by innocent, unthinking animals - while show horror for the other type of terror.

It takes a very strong commitment to human rights to distinguish between disco bombings in Bali and in Tel Aviv, and John Dugard is just the person to do it. Because when the bombers are Palestinian Arabs, or the victims are Jews worldwide, their rage can be understood and the blame can be placed on Israel.

The other cases of terror are just immoral.

Considering Palestinian Arab terrorists to be subhuman is just a single example of the racism of the Left - excusing and understanding the actions of those who, according to people like Dugard, are simply mentally unfit to be responsible for what they do.

Iranian anti-espionage video

This video was broadcast a year ago on Iranian TV (not, as some think, in the past few days) but it is a fascinating look at Iranian propaganda, not to mention its computer graphics skills.

It features a scary cabal of:

John McCain – a senior White House official, who orchestrates numerous conspiracies against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

George Soros – a Jewish tycoon and the mastermind of ultra-modern colonialism. He uses his wealth and slogans like liberty, democracy, and human rights to bring the supporters of America to power.

Gene Sharp – the theoretician of civil disobedience and velvet revolutions, who has published treatises on this subject. He is one of the CIA agents in charge of America's infiltration into other countries.

Bill Smith – one of the CIA's senior experts on Iranian affairs. For many years, he has maintained close ties with Iranian opposition groups.

It is hokey but it shows that Iran is very nervous about internal spies.

Particularly funny is the part where the spy's sister gets told that his sentence will be lenient because he helped the investigators. Yeah - they'll behead him a little quicker.

Hamas attacks woman student in Gaza university - with an axe

The near-total news blackout that Hamas enforces on Gaza makes it very hard to find stories like these.

IMEMC reports:

Sources within Fateh movement reported on Monday that Hamas security forces attacked a with an axe female student of Al Azhar University in Gaza after breaking into the campus.

The sources stated that Hamas gunmen and security men broke into Al Azhar University and struck Tharwat Abdul-Qader with an axe on her head inflicting serious wounds.

Fateh stated that this attack is part of several recent attempts carried by Hamas-controlled forces and gunmen to control facilities controlled by Fateh movement.

The Fatah-leaning Al-Hayat al-Jadida (Arabic) mentions the attack, saying that the university re-opened today after the incident. Al-Hayat makes it sound like the student was struck in the chest with a hatchet.