Mixing work with Yiddishkeit

(I am finding myself burning out on writing articles about Israel, not so much out of anger as out of frustration at the current Israeli government. So I decided it is time to break the format for a while.)

Last Friday a vendor wanting to sell me services told me on the phone, "Shabbat Shalom" - and informed me that he was Jewish too.

This was not the first time this has happened to me - another vendor tirelessly brings up his Jewish bona-fides to me during every phone call, mentioning how he went to a yeshiva when he was younger, or how kosher pizza does not taste the same as non-kosher, or asking about what schools my kids go to.

Now, I have no problem talking about Yiddishkeit with people who ask me questions at work. One co-worker hilariously keeps trying to find some sort of unanswerable theoretical question ("So what if you are on a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light....") But when vendors use Judaism to foster a false sense of camaraderie, and indeed try to use their own Jewishness as a lever to get me to buy their products or services, I get completely turned off.

On a somewhat related note, I once worked at a place where the director of that location was frum. He is a brilliant person, and quite funny, and I knew him socially before he was moved into that position. But he had no qualms about showing obvious favoritism towards me - in front of all the layers of management in between. He would pepper his speech to me with Yiddishisms that no one else could possibly understand. One memorable time he saw me while talking to my boss, told my boss to wait because he had something important to show me, rummaged through his email for ten minutes (my boss eventually excused himself) and finally found what he was looking for - a Jewish joke that someone emailed him.

Any way you look at it, his actions were rude, even though I was the beneficiary. And I am indebted to him because on a single occasion, I got stuck in a political situation where my immediate manager put roadblocks in the way of me transferring to another location and this director helped me out. But I was always uncomfortable with his behavior towards me around the rest of the workers - essentially showing contempt for them.

When I am at work, as much as possible, I want to be treated like everyone else, and I do not want my religion to single me out for good or bad. My department's administrative assistant always goes out of her way to get me kosher food during any department or location event, and I am very appreciative - but I do not ask for it nor do I expect it. I generally do not mention that I keep kosher when I need to go to all-day vendor-sponsored seminars that include lunch (unless their registration form asks about special diets explicitly); I will pack my own or eat fruit/yogurt/whatever I can.

My desire not to mix work with religion also extends to possible kiruv. I am not a pro-active kiruv person; I will happily discuss anything but I will not bring up the topic of Judaism first. The interesting question is whether I should initiate anything if working with someone who is not frum or off the derech. (One acquaintance at work grew up a chosid and then one day, I am told, he showed up with his beard shaved, his hair dyed blonde, and now he plays with a jazz band at night and the only indication of his roots is that he never changed his very Jewish name.) Should I engage him in conversation? I am uncomfortable even considering it because I try so hard to keep the topics separate.

I would be interested in hearing what other people think.

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Bigoted architects try to ban Israeli exhibition

A major architectural exhibition in Venice is taking place now, and the usual "progressive" gang of genteel anti-semites and self-hating Jews are trying to get Israel banned.

Why?

Because Israel's exhibition is centered around memorials, both for the Holocaust and for those fallen in wars.

There is a growing international and Palestinian campaign for the organisers of the 10th International Architecture Biennale in Venice to cancel the exhibition in the Israeli pavilion. The Israeli exhibition is entitled "Life Saver: Typology of Commemoration in Israel."

Fifty countries are participating in the Biennale, which runs from September 10 to November 19 and is one of the most important events on the international architectural calendar. Egypt is the only Arab country taking part in the Biennale, whose title is "Cities, architecture and society".

The exhibits in the Israeli pavilion comprise plans, models and full architectural details of 15 memorials built between 1947 and 2006, some commemorating dead soldiers or intelligence officers, others the Holocaust. The Israeli Defence Ministry is at the top of the list of the organisations who gave "generous support" for the exhibition.

The international pressure group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) has sent a petition to the organisers of the Biennale saying it is "dismayed and concerned" that the Biennale agreed to host the Israeli contribution.

APJP requests the Biennale Committee to consider withdrawing the Israeli entry as being "provocative and counterproductive to the aims of the Biennale, and particularly distasteful in the context of the aftermath of an ugly and unnecessary war in neighbouring Lebanon, and a continuing one-side war in Gaza."

At the same time four Palestinian organisations have sent a joint letter to the organisers asking for the Israeli exhibition to be cancelled. The Palestinian organisations are the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI); the Palestinian Engineers Association - Jerusalem Center; the Society of Palestinian Architects; and RIWAQ - the Centre for Architectural Conservation.

The four Palestinian organisations say: "It is inconceivable how the Venice Biennale, an international celebration of art and architecture, of civilization and the progress of humanity, can provide a venue for such a blatant justification for and commemoration of genocide, war and bloodshed."

As usual, the hypocrisy is stunning and not mentioned. Palestinian Arabs routinely dedicate public areas, streets, schools and stadiums to the most depraved terrorists on the planet, and for them to say that Israeli war memorials are "commemorations of genocide" is the height of obscenity.

Haaretz adds:

Israeli architect Tula Amir, who curated the project, writes: "Justification of Israel's wars provides legitimization of the blood that has been spilled and is liable to be spilled in the future."

Jewish-British architect Abe Hayeem, who is behind the petition, uses Amir's words to explain why the exhibit should be withdrawn: It essentially justifies Israel's wars instead of criticizing them, he said. Amir, however, said the issue was addressed in the description accompanying the exhibit.

The Israeli architect is tacitly in the detractor camp, which makes her a curious person to curate, and yet her objections seem to be what empowered the more extreme leftist crowd to complain.

Of course, in the glare of the controversy, no one bothers to actually look at what Israel is actually showing at their pavillion.

The actual exhibits include Holocaust memorials, memorials for soldiers fallen in the War of Independence, and of soldiers fallen in the battle for Jerusalem. None of these memorials have anything to do with any war against Palestinian Arabs.

In this context, the true goals of the critics are clear: that Israel has no right to exist, nor to defend itself - even in its War of Independence. That Israel alone among nations is not allowed to have war memorials. That the Holocaust is simply justification for Israeli "crimes."

It is yet another case of Jew-hatred disguising itself as humanitarianism, and it is hypocrisy at its most disgusting.

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The pre-Zionist Zionists (part 1)

Google is now using its search engine on the Newspaper Archive site, making it much easier to research old newspaper articles. Full OCR'd text is available for many obscure newspapers, and abstracts of articles for many others.

I only started looking at it today, but I have been finding some fascinating old articles about plans for Jews to move to Palestine decades before Herzl was even born. There seem to have been three main forces behind this idea:

• The proto-Zionists themselves, notably including the Rothschilds;
• Christians in America and England, who viewed the "Restoration of the Jews" as a precursor to the "Second Coming," and
• The Western Colonial powers, who appeared to consider this a win/win - they can ship out their Jews and a Western outpost would be built in the Middle East.

It should be clear that without a significant number of Jews wanting to actually move to the biblical land of Israel, the other two parties could not have accomplished anything.

Here is an article (as best as I could reproduce it) from The Adams Sentinel of Gettysburg, PA on Wednesday, December 02, 1829:

The following is an extract of a letter, published in the British Court Journal, on 'the subject of the purchase of Jerusalem by Baron Rothschild. KING following curious extract is from a private letter from Smyrna. We give it without note or comment:

The confidence of the children of Israel in the words of the Prophet has not been in vain the temple of Solomon will be restored in all its splendor. Baron Rothschild, who was accused of having gone to Rome to abjure the faith of his fathers, has merely passed through the city on his way to Constantinople, where he is about to negotiate a loan with the Porte. It is stated, on. good authority, that Baron Rothschild has engaged to furnish to the Sultan the enormous sum of piastres, at three installments, without interest, on condition of the Sultan's engaging, for himself and his successors, to yield to Baron Rothschild forever, the sovereignty of Jerusalem, and the territory of ancient Palestine, which was occupied by the twelve tribes. The Baron's intention is, to grant to the rich Israelites who are scattered about in different parts of the world, portions of that country, where he proposes to establish to give them, as far as possible, their ancient and sacred laws. Thus the descendants of the Hebrews will at length have a country, and every friend of humanity must rejoice at the happy event. -The poor Jews will cease to be the victims of oppression and injustice. Glory to the great Baron Rothschild, who makes so noble a use of his ingots. A little army being judged necessary for the restored kingdom, measures have been taken for recruiting if out of the wrecks of the Jewish battalion raised in Holland by Louis Bonaparte. All the Israelites who were employed in various departments of the Dutch Administration, are to obtain superior posts under the Government of Jerusalem, and the expenses of their journey are to be paid them in advance.

It does not appear that this plan ever went anywhere, but it shows the desire of Jews to peacefully purchase land in Israel to settle there as a first step towards sovereignty even as early as 1829!

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How do morons get newspaper columns?

I was reading the Newark Star Ledger on the train today and saw an op-ed piece trying to rip the Bush adminstration for comparing Islamic fundamentalism to fascism. Since I think that the parallels are quite striking, I was interested in seeing how this liberal columnist would differentiate between them.

It turns out that this was more of a lesson in willful deception and misdirection than in any logic.

The anti-fascist oxymorons
Paul Mulshine

MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell was chatting recently with President Bush's counselor Dan Bartlett about the administration's recent effort to recast the so-called "war on terror" as a remake of World War II.

"Well, I think what you saw today, Norah, was a very specific articulation of the type of enemy we're here to face," said Bartlett. "What the sound bite you used by the president demonstrates is that the ideological struggle of the 21st century, the terrorist organizations that we're after in this war on terror, is very similar to ideological struggles that we faced during World War II when we fought Nazism and communism."

I ran this by Murray Sabrin, the Ramapo College professor and sometime libertarian candidate for various offices.

"What a nitwit!" said Murray. "These people are incredibly stupid. Now they're telling us we fought the Russians in World War II. You can't make this stuff up."

No, you can't. It's not merely that the Bushies have no idea who the enemy is in this current war. They can't even decide who the enemy was in World War II. In fact, they seem not to have the slightest clue to the history of that era.

Mulshine's main complaint seems to be that Bartlett said that we fought communism in World War II, during a Hardball segment, and therefore he extrapolates from this that the administration "can't even decide who the enemy was in World War II.." And he needed to interview a libertarian professor to make sure that, indeed, we didn't fight communists during World War II.

Unfortunately, if one looks at the MSNBC website, you will see that the quote is slightly incorrect:

BARTLETT: Well, I think what you saw today, Norah, was a very specific articulation of the type of enemy we are here to face. As the soundbite you used by the president demonstrates, is that the ideological struggle of the 21st century, the terrorist organizations that we are after in this war on terror is very similar in ideological struggles that we faced during World War II and when we fought Nazism and communism.

That little word "and" sure makes a big difference. I wonder if Mulshine will retract his entire column, based on this lie - and it almost had to be a lie, because unless he transcribed Hardball himself, he must have copied and pasted the quote from the MSNBC website and deleted the "and."

But let's look at the rest of his argument:

Later in that same interview, O'Donnell played a clip of Donald Rumsfeld:

"Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem," said Rumsfeld. "I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism."

It is in fact true that in the run- up to World War II many argued the fascist threat was exaggerated. But here's the problem for Rumsfeld: They were almost entirely conservatives. The Republicans, chief among them Sen. Robert Taft, were isolationists.

"The president intends to get us into war," said Taft in October 1941. "He doesn't want it now, but step by step he'll lead us in."

It was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who were hot to trot against Hitler. The Republicans wanted to stay out of the war. It's not hard to see why. They were right-wingers. Up until Pearl Harbor, they thought the threat to America from the Soviets was greater than the threat from the Nazis.

But to hear Bush tell it, you'd think the exact opposite was the case. "The world ignored Hitler's words and paid a terrible price," Bush said the other day, ignoring the unpleasant fact that "the world" in question was made up al most entirely of conservative Republicans.

So Mulshine is not arguing that Bush is wrong, just that Bush is defending the actions of 1940's era Democrats and warning against the actions of the Republicans of the time.

He goes on from there, arguing that true conservatives would not act the way that Bush is acting. But he never addresses whether it is wrong to look at Islamic fundamentalism as the enemy, or as comparable to fascism - which is of course the entire point of Bush's latest talking points. In his rush to prove that the "Bushies" are morons, Mulshine completely ignores the real issue.

UPDATE: Mulshine answered my email with a transcript from the Federal News Service that shows his version of the conversation. He adds:

Note that even with the “and” the quote was nonsensical since there was no time other than World War II when we fought Nazism.

Without seeing the interview itself I cannot determine which is the correct quote. I have no reason to disbelieve his quote from FNS is accurate (one must subscribe to see it.)

Mulshine's note is weak, though, because in the context of "Hardball" (as opposed to a press conference or a speech) this does not betray a lack of knowledge of World War II and he based his entire column on the "fact" that Bartlett and by extension the Bush administration is ignorant of history.

I tend to doubt that the FNS transcript is as accurate as MSNBC's, but even if it is, the fact that Mulshine chooses to interpret it as an indication of mass idiocy of the Bush administration rather than a simple slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment during an interview speaks volumes about his interest in the truth.

And if he was interested in the truth, he would have acknowledged the discrepancy and offered to act as a reporter and find the actual tape, with an eye towards correcting his column. While I am wrong in assuming malicious motives to his quote, and I am happy to print his answer to me, I would have been far more pleased to see an indication that he had an interest in clearing this up, rather than implying that his transcript is more accurate than MSNBC's.

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Today's GoozNews

Today's GoozNews includes a selection of articles from Iran Focus, a very interesting news source:

The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the Bush Administration and the Israeli security service Mossad of ordering the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC.

“The events of September 11 were ordered by U.S. [officials] and Mossad so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East”, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told military commanders on Tuesday. His comments were reported by the state-run news agency ISNA.

General Safavi said that Iran was the leading force of the “Islamic world”. “The geographic heart of the Islamic world is in Mecca and Medina. But, the political heart of the Islamic world is in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] is the flag-bearer of the front of Islamic awakening and the fronts of the awakening of third world nations”, he said.

He accused Washington of plotting a “cultural” attack on Tehran by setting up new radio and television stations broadcasting into Iran, supporting dissident groups, and stepping up intelligence operations. “Therefore, the armed forces must be completely prepared in order to combat any forms of foreign and domestic threats”, he said.

The IRGC’s primary task is to export the Islamic revolution to Jerusalem via Baghdad.

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of many officials who stem from the IRGC.

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 05 – A man was hanged in public on Monday in one of Iran’s most volatile provinces.

The man, identified as Gholam-Reza Rigi, was publicly hanged at dawn in the town of Saravan, the official news agency IRNA reported.

He was accused of drug smuggling.

Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on the bogus charge of drug smuggling.

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 29 – Iran will soon launch new women’s only parks in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran.

The City Islamic Council in Qom announced that it had put forward a plan to segregate four of the city’s parks.

In August, the National Women’s Council announced that a sex-segregated park was under development in the north-eastern city of Mashad.

The development of sex-segregated parks was given a big boost after hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, became Iran’s president. Prior to his rise to the presidency, Ahmadinejad was the Mayor of Tehran. One of his first decisions in the city hall was to order gender segregation on elevators.

London, Jul. 27 – A young woman is at imminent risk of execution by stoning for adultery, according to the international human rights group Amnesty International.

Ashraf Kolhari, a 37-year-old mother of four has been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for five years, Amnesty said in a statement on Thursday.

“On or around July 2006, she received the order for the implementation of her sentence, and is reportedly due to be executed by stoning by the end of July”, the rights group said.

Kolhari had an extra-marital affair after her divorce request was rejected by the court, reportedly on the basis that she had children, and therefore had to resume living with her husband, the statement said.

“She was sentenced on two charges; the first was for participating in the murder of her husband, for which she received a sentence of 15 years imprisonment; the second was for adultery as a married woman, for which she was sentenced to execution by stoning. Article 83 of the Iranian Penal Code stipulates that the penance for adultery by a married woman with an adult man is execution by stoning”, it said.

The woman wasn't executed in the end after human rights organizations made a stink, but the law is still on the books in Iran.

And apparently, adultery is a more serious crime than murder in Iran.

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Latest Israeli high-tech achievements

I have been hearing about "digital ink" for years but hadn't seen any real applications until now:

Digital billboards are the next step in the evolution of signage - displaying still pictures or video footage that can be updated wirelessly and remotely with different images for different locations and at different times. But until now, strong sunshine reflecting off an outdoor digital billboard has completely obscured the picture and dazzle passers-by. Companies have spent millions trying to overcome this problem.

Israeli start-up Magink went back to the chemistry lab to come up with new digital ink technology that actually uses sunlight instead of fighting it. The first network of billboards was erected by JCDecaux, the largest outdoor advertising company in Europe and Asia, on the boulevards of Cannes for the 59th Film Festival, and Magink's technology is soon to be seen on London's streets too.

"The concept is quite simple. In a few years from now, any surfaces that are in the urban environment will have something more than paint," explains Ran Poliakine, founder and vice-chairman of Magink, sitting in the company's Israel headquarters in the Neve Ilan Communications Center, just outside Jerusalem.

"They will have a pattern or design that will change, something more intelligent than paint. Many people talked about it, but what we do is for the first time achieving something that is actually working: the world's first full-color digital ink displays."

The uniqueness of Magink's technology is that it is reflective, just like paper. "If you have a laptop outside, it is difficult to see," Poliakine told ISRAEL21c. "The light from the laptop has to fight with the sunlight. But with a real book, the better the light is, the better you see. We are similar to printed paper but it is not static. You can enjoy the best of both worlds."

[...]
The molecules of this material are in the shape of a helix - a spring or spiral (like our DNA, which is two spirals twisted together). If the spiral-shaped molecules are lying down, light goes straight through them. But if they are standing up - and they can be standing upright or at various angles - and different amounts of pressure are put on these spirals, squashing them more or less, light is reflected, at different wavelengths depending on the pressure applied and the angle. Different wavelengths mean different colors, and this creates digital ink: sections of a billboard are squashed at different pressures and reflect different colors. Take this to the pixel level - each pixel's-worth of molecules is squashed a different amount - and you have a high-quality, full-color image.

"It is a breakthrough in terms of chemistry," says Poliakine.

The billboard is created by putting a layer of paste a few microns (a millionth of a meter) thick of this organic material between two sheets of something that conducts electricity, at least one of them clear, such as glass. An electric field is then applied which puts pressure on each molecule and determines its color. One revolutionary aspect of this is that once the electric field has been applied to get the molecules into the specific set of colors for a particular image, the electricity can be switched off.

"Energy is only needed again to change the image," explains Ben Shalom. "This means no power consumption at all."

A typical LED sign needs around 4000 watts per hour per square meter - Magink's digital ink, for full video display with the same frame rates as television, only requires 60 watts for the same time and area.
[...]
And this is only the beginning, says Poliakine. The palm and laptop computer market is something for further down the line, and, Magink's digital ink "could be used for smart homes, you could create the painting on the PC or another interface and the digital ink will recreate it on the kitchen wall," he enthuses. "It's not a big TV, it's 'paper'."

In the light of the major recall of batteries by laptop manufacturers, this looks very promising:

Scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed new technology to greatly improve battery performance and decrease the risks associated with the lithium-based batteries currently used.

Batteries are the bottle-neck for electronic devices' ability to operate effectively, the project's head, Professor Menachem Nathan told Israel21c.org. Mobile devices need more and more battery power, and consumers are seeking products that take the shortest amount of time to charge.

The demand has resulted in lithium-heavy batteries that heat to high temperatures, posing a fire hazard. "The problem we're dealing with here is the flammability of lithium batteries. There have been a few dozen cases - especially in laptops - of them bursting into flames," Nathan said. "It's not really a new problem. It has existed since lithium batteries came into being, but it's only come to the forefront when Dell made the recall - it became a bit more public."

"The development of our technology wasn't actually geared to solve the flammability issue - it was just a side effect. Our battery is simply safer due to its structure. We meet another demand of fast charge/discharge. With more and more powerful laptops, batteries are quickly discharged. And people are not going to wait a long time to recharge them, they want it done fast. So at the same time, it is recharging faster, and the way the battery is built works against flammability danger, making it safer."

The new "nano-battery technology" was developed by teams at Tel Aviv university over three years. It is made up of a number of tiny batteries positioned in such a way as to provide a large amount of electrical power without the risk of overheating. "We have thousands of miniature batteries which are interconnected," Nathan said. "The basic unit is a 50 micron diameter battery - about the thickness of a strand of hair. In comparison, the diameter of a triple A battery is about three millimeters - ours is .003 mm - about a factor of a thousand."

The nano-batteries have also proven to operate without a loss of capacity or stability after hundreds of charge/discharge cycles.

Nathan estimates that the batteries will enter the market within four years. The project is currently seeking interested companies to fund the continued research and production of the technology.

And what article about Israeli scientific achievements would be complete without something that will save lives?

Israeli team solves problem of reclogged coronary arteries
Sep. 05 - Restenosis (the reclogging of coronary arteries) affects as many as 40 percent of patients who have undergone angioplasty. Now biomedical engineering researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have suggested a revolutionary technique to prevent restenosis after supportive metal-mesh stents have been inserted by angioplasty. The technique, whose award of a US patent was announced on Monday, can also be applied to "any drug" that works best in a specific site of the body, including anti-cancer medications, the researchers say.

Angioplasty - a minimally invasive cardiological intervention in which a tiny deflated balloon is inserted into clogged arteries in the heart and inflated to open blockages and position a stent inside the weak arterial wall to keep it open - results in blockages in more than a third of patients. The cause is not new fatty plaques in the same spot of the arteries, as had been thought, but the growth of tissue in the endothelium of the vessel. Doctors regards this as a "tumor" that has to be treated with medication to prevent uncontrolled growth of the tissue. But anti-tumor drugs cannot be taken systemically to affect the whole body, because the growth is local.

In the new technique - the patient swallows a completely neutral "pre-drug" amino acid that causes no side effects and can be taken as long as needed. This amino acid activates a specific enzyme in a special stent, serving as a "factory" for the anti-clogging drug as long as the amino acid is consumed. The amino acid is a natural component of every protein and is contained in soya and milk products, among others, thus it can be safely consumed. The patient stops taking the amino acid six months after angioplasty, when there is no longer a risk of uncontrolled tissue growth inside the artery.

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Today's photo bias

I always browse the wire-service photos to see how the mainstream media are covering major stories. As readers of this blog know, this is a good way to uncover bias and worse.

Since the cease fire, I have seen a steady stream of pictures such as this one:

Lebanese youths are silhouetted as they climb on the shaded rubble of a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which was destroyed by an attack by Israeli forces during the 34-day Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006. The densely populated residential area was bombed repeatedly by Israeli forces during the recent conflict. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Notice the problems: dramatic silhouettes, small against the seemingly huge amount of rubble; a caption that highlights that Israel bombed a densely-populated residential area without mentioning that Hezbollah's headquarters were deliberately placed in that same densely populated residential area, or the fact that Israel dropped leaflets repeatedly warning residents to get out.

In other words, the only context provided by the caption writer is designed to make Israel look like it deliberately targeted people in a city. And the photographer framed the picture to give the exact same impression.

Here's something more subtle:

Lebanese men, who did not wish to give their names, stop their work to pose for a photograph as they redecorate a third storey apartment in a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which was damaged by an attack by Israeli forces during the 34-day Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006. The densely populated residential area was bombed repeatedly by Israeli forces during the recent conflict. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this photo from a news perspective. It shows people rebuilding, which is a fine and interesting topic. Of course, it includes the exact same biased caption that the previous picture did, but the picture itself is not framed to cause bias against Israel.

But there is still a problem. Israel suffered many hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage as well, and the residents in the north are rebuilding their homes too. Thousands of houses and buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Where are those pictures?

They simply don't exist. Since the cease fire, we are still treated to daily images of Lebanese suffering, three-week old damage, and even funerals (which is very interesting, since Islamic law requires burial as soon as possible after death.) But the wire services do not find any parallel Israeli pictures to be worth photographing. Undoubtedly Lebanon suffered more damage than Israel, but for some reason the damage that was done as a result of targeting terrorists is considered newsworthy three weeks after the fact but the damage that came as a result of thousands of missiles deliberately targeting civilians is yesterday's news.

News is framed by the medium that captures the news. Wars fought without any video will not get the same coverage on TV as wars that include dramatic footage. Bias is inevitable based on availability of reporters, footage and photos.

But here, it is not that no AP stringer exists in Northern Israel. It is not that no equally dramatic pictures could be taken within the hour. It is simply that the media does not deem Israeli suffering and rebuilding to be newsworthy, today, while Lebanese suffering and rebuilding is worthy of dozens and hundreds of pictures - today.

That is just as much of a bias as purposefully posing pictures for dramatic effect. The goal is not to reflect reality; it is to shape it.

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Kofi wants more talks with Iran. And then some more.

The ineffectual leader of an ineffectual organization has just made another ineffectual statement:

The world should not isolate Iran over its nuclear program, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in an interview published Tuesday. Annan, however, said Tehran must take steps to reassure the international community that it is not aiming to build an atomic weapon.

"The international community should not isolate Iran," Annan told the Madrid daily El Pais in an interview during his stop in Doha, Qatar, after visiting Iran over the weekend.

Annan has made clear he wants a negotiated solution to the impasse, which deepened after Iran ignored an Aug. 31 UN Security Council deadline to stop its uranium enrichment program. That set the stage for possible UN economic and political sanctions.

Annan said confrontation with the Security Council "will not be in Iran's favor or that of the region." The UN chief on Sunday met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told him that Iran favored talks over its nuclear program but would not halt uranium enrichment before entering negotiations as demanded by the West.

Like the professional diplomat he is, he allowed Iran to decide exactly what it wants to do and he then supports them publicly, as they defy the deadlines that his organization set. Years of stonewalling and lying and deception by Iran are rewarded by Kofi Annan, as he gives the Iranians exactly what they want - more time to develop the atom bomb.

One can be sure that after Iran's first nuclear bomb test, Annan will favor continued negotiations and assurances that Iran has no plans to use it against any other nation, except Israel. But only a small one.

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Today's Hezbollah staged photos (9/4)

Hezbollah cannot easily stage pictures anymore - there are too many reporters who can roam freely in Lebanon again - but some stringers sure seem to be willing to do Hezbollah's propaganda job for them..

Today's featured photogapher is Mohammed Zaatari, who contributes these:

Lebanese Kamila Hassan stands in the backyard of her house in the village of Blida, near the southern town of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 4, 2006, in front of parts of exploded and unexploded Israeli ammunition that her son Hassan has collected following the 34-day long Hezbollah-Israeli conflict. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

So her son collects bombs that have not yet exploded, she allows him to place them in her backyard, and reporters come over to photograph them? Nah, this doesn't sound contrived at all!

And, exhibit B:

Lebanese woman Zeinab Beydoun sits in her house that was damaged in an Israeli attacks during the 34-day long Hezbollah-Israeli conflict in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 4, 2006. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Let's see - the fighting ended over two weeks ago, and she likes to sit in her house without picking up a single piece of rubble, or putting any plastic over the giant hole in her wall. (Or looking towards the cameraman who is inside her house.)

She must be friends with the revelers at tea party.

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Mazel tov!

To Soccer Dad!

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Leftist anti-semitism on Australian campuses

From The Age:

An unholy alliance

Barney Zwartz and Adam Morton

Anti-Semitism is reportedly on the rise across university campuses. Has political opportunism unleashed the devil?

Daniel Wyner is used to robust debate. A senior figure in the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, he moves around Melbourne campuses arguing for Israel. But he was taken aback recently when a Monash lecturer confronted him, almost incoherent with rage, and called him a Zionist oppressor and f---ing racist.

"He kept going on his rant and rave. He wasn't Muslim or Arab. He may or may not have been a member of the arts faculty, and I may or may not have followed him back into the office to find that out." The incident highlighted what many Australian Jews claim is a distinct rise in temperature on campus but the hostility has not come from Muslims.

"I've been at La Trobe, Deakin and Melbourne too. The problems, the anti-Semitism, the vilification we feel as students on campus are coming almost entirely from the left. The Socialist Alternative (a left-wing student group), they just latch on to a cause which isn't theirs to try to make it their own by twisting it," Wyner says.

Jewish groups claim some of the more radical left-wing groups are trying to exploit tensions in the Middle East to foment trouble on campus and increase their own numbers. An example, Wyner says, was the recent visit to Melbourne University by the Israeli ambassador: Socialist Alternative members disrupted the meeting and were asked to leave by the Lebanese students' society.

In Sydney last month, a Jewish student was pushed to the ground and others spat on. At Monash, a Young Liberal member staffing a stall supporting Israel was grabbed by the throat and threatened, while the table was kicked over.

At Melbourne University, security staff had to keep apart the Students Against War and Racism and a group of mostly Liberal Club members waving Israeli flags. Tensions flared, insults were traded and observers said only a handful of guards prevented the conflict becoming physical. The vice-chancellors of both Melbourne and Sydney universities called for calm, saying that while vigorous debate was acceptable, vilification was not.[Notice how even in this article, this paragraph was written as if the Zionists were equally guilty. -EoZ]

Grahame Leonard, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, says July had the most anti-Semitic incidents since records began in 1945. At 141, the total was 60 per cent higher than the previous record.

"Generally it's low severity — phone calls, graffiti, hate emails — but there are some violent incidents. The big growth was in Victoria, and many of these incidents were on campus."

In Sydney some Jewish students feel so intimidated that they are wearing hats over their kippahs (skull caps). In Melbourne they are more defiant, but they are concerned.

"There's a real feeling of threat," says Deon Kamien, Victorian president of the Union of Jewish Students. "It's not something I can put in words. A lot of students who would feel very comfortable wearing a kippah or T-shirt with Hebrew words on it now feel they are being targeted as Jews — not supporters of Israel, but Jews. When they walk past socialist stalls (on campus) they are called f---ing Jews."

Kamien says that where previous conflicts have been about politics, this time it's turned racial. "The leftists have completely blurred the line between politics and religion and have misunderstood the situation. They've got hung up on the Middle East and absolutely hung up on Jews. What we are seeing is nothing more than anti-Semitism."

Jewish community leaders detect a rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the West. They pinpoint a couple of key reasons: the inoculation effect of the Holocaust is disappearing over time, so that dinner-table anti-Semitism is re-emerging. People who don't like Jews feel more comfortable about expressing it.

Second, they say, Israel provides a convenient excuse. They accept that most criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, but say it can provide a convenient cover for attacking Jews generally. A red-line warning for the Jewish community is when critics compare Israel to the Nazis. You don't use a Nazi slur if you know what the Nazis did, and if you do know and use it, that's inexcusable, they believe.

...A Christian observer at Melbourne University, who did not want to be named, certainly thinks that's the explanation in this city. He says "Jew-baiting" is rising, as opponents try to turn anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Jewish. "Socialists bait Jewish students. The intention is to get Jewish students to fight back so they can use them. It's a deliberate incitement of people's emotions to generate conflict."

The Socialist Alternative tactics are outlined in an in-house publication.

Discussing an incident at Melbourne, when a socialist stall was overturned, Daniel L. says the best response is to "immediately make a huge fuss — denounce them loudly, screaming ‘you're a murderer, you support George Bush's war, you support killing innocent people in the Middle East, you're fascist scum' and so forth. When we did this it had a huge polarising effect with people coming up afterwards to show their support. Often this was from the point of view of freedom of speech, rather than a willingness to support fighting Israel. But that doesn't change the fact that it is excellent terrain for us."

One writer, Vashti, says "two young Lebanese guys came up and asked if they could beat up the Zionists".[But I thought that the Muslims were not involved? Were they Christians? -EoZ]

Daniel says of this: "They knew which side they were on and were willing to fight. We do not want to start fights with the Liberals ourselves, but if Lebanese people do it's a good thing and we're f---ing well with them."

...

Has the left used racism? This is being debated inside the left, as shown by an exchange in late July on a group email list run by the National Union of Students. Chris Di Pasquale of the RMIT Student Union wrote that Zionists at Melbourne and Monash universities "felt the need to reassert their racism and fetish for genocide and mass slaughter of Arab people", calling security and the student union to shut down socialist stalls.

National Union of Students president Rose Jackson wrote that this was a racist remark that would be extremely hurtful to some people in the student movement. While she opposed the war in Lebanon, "you do not need to resort to this type of distressingly hateful name-calling to show people that you are left-wing and radical. There will come a point (if it has not already been reached) where suddenly people in the left will feel they can get away with anything when talking about Israel and the Israeli people. Where no comments or insults are off-limits."

As she wrote, she knew she was inviting attack. She didn't have to wait long. Heidi Claus, the union's Victorian education officer, replied: "WHAT THE!!!!!!!! Rose Jackson you are an apologist for the racist state of Israel and fundamentally uninformed."

Claus claimed that the apartheid state of Israel was set up on the blood of the Palestinian people, and there would never be peace while Zionism or Israel continued to exist. It was Jackson, in fact, who was racist because she equated the Jewish people with Zionism which itself was anti-Semitic. She concluded: "I demand an apology from you for your racist filth and an apology to Chris and Socialist Alternative for your blatant slander."

And what would an article like this be without getting the Muslim side? Here's a textbook example of fictional "Islamophobia.":

Omran says there has not been a single report of Muslim students being intimidated, but Muslims are nevertheless increasingly frustrated. "They feel the world is walking all over them, that Muslim blood is very cheap, of less importance, that there's a blatant attempt to demonise anyone of Islamic faith by politicians or certain parts of the media. This can only lead to radicalisation, and we should look forward to more extremism."

As is inevitably the case, Muslim groups use real anti-semitism to play the victim role, even when they can walk around campus as proud Muslims without fear while the Jewish students feel they have to hide their identities. (The article does quote the Muslims as being against extremism, but the sense one gets is that this is more for self-preservation rather than ideology.)

The point is, though, that Jew-hating bigots routinely use Israel as an excuse to make their filth socially acceptable, all the while claiming that they are not bigots at all. (This was recently shown in Britain as well.) And instead of marginalizing this blatant hate, the Left as a whole has embraced this attitude, seemingly to recruit more to their side.

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Hot time in "Palestine" this weekend!

You'll need a scorecard for this one, but it ended up with 29 injuries and one death on Saturday:

PCHR's preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 20:00 on Saturday, 2 September 2006, a member of the Abu Nahia clan took refuge in "Diwan" of Sowali clan after he was beaten by members of the Barbakh clan. The incident was instigated by a dispute in the crowded Sea Street in Khan Yunis. Members of Barbakh clan gathered around the diwan, located in Jamal Abdel Naser Street, and threw stones at it requesting that Abu Nahia is handed to them.

Members of the Ministry of Interior Executive Force arrived at the scene to break up the dispute. A confrontation developed between the force members and Barbakh clan members. The confrontation developed into hand fights and rocks and empty bottles were thrown. The situation escalated into an armed clash that spread to the vicinity of Naser Hospital in Sea Street, and continued for 3 hours. During the clash, members of Barbakh clan burned a jeep belonging to the Executive Force that was parked in the hospital yard. The Executive Force brought the situation under control. Barbakh clan gunmen withdrew after the Executive Force detained two members of the clan.

The armed clashes resulted in the death of a member of the Executive Force called Khayri Abdel Aziz Abed Soboh, a 23-year old resident of Khan Yunis. He was killed by a bullet in the neck. Twenty-nine others were injured, including 5 children and 3 members of the Executive Force.[1] The injured were taken for treatment in Naser Hospital and the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. The injuries were light to moderate.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, a teachers' strike ended up with those peaceful PalArab bullets again:

NABLUS, West Bank - Masked militants trying to keep students away from school during a politically charged Palestinian teachers' strike on Sunday shot and wounded a 12-year-old boy.

Palestinian teachers began striking Saturday, the start of the school year, to demand full back pay and regular salaries from the Hamas-led government, which has been financially crippled by six months of international sanctions.

Most schools throughout the West Bank remained closed, some by force, as the strike continued.

At least three masked militants stood outside a school in the northern West Bank city of Nablus and fired in the air to keep children away, witnesses said.

Stray fire hit a 12-year-old boy, Issam Ghannam, in the abdomen, witnesses said.

Well, what do you expect? It was an accident! How often does firing in the air result in children getting hit, anyway? Besides all those weddings and funeral celebrations, that is. (And of course they were firing in the air - we have witnesses!)

We also have this incident I missed last week, where those renowned Palestinian Arab police decided to kill someone they suspected of stealing a car, so the PalArab self-death count since late June, that I am aware of, is now at 66.

Sounds like these guys are more than ready to build a state of their own! They obviously care about education, gun control and ties to their clans. What more can you ask?

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