Using Israel's morality as a weapon against it

The PalArabs are buzzing over their latest "victory" (as usual, they define victory as not losing):

The Israeli military has called off a planned strike on the home of a Palestinian militant after hundreds of people gathered at the house to act as a human shield.

The Israeli military had telephoned the house of a commander of the Popular Resistance Committees in northern Gaza to warn him of an impending attack.

The Israeli military often strikes at houses it says are used to store weapons, and on this occasion - as they often do - they phoned a warning to allow the occupants to escape and thereby limit civilian casualties.

But the owner of the house refused to leave.

Instead, he called for neighbours and relatives to rally round and protect his home.

They thronged the surrounding streets and gathered on the roof of the building.

The human shield tactic worked, making it impossible for the Israelis to strike without causing a large number of casualties.

The PalArab press is crowing about "The will of the people to defy the Israeli planes."

From reading these accounts, one would think that it was Tiananmen Square all over again. Except, of course, that the people were defending a terrorist's possessions.

It is interesting that while the PalArabs never tire of telling the world that Israel is practicing "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and "daily massacres" and "indiscriminate attacks," they know that it is all a bunch of crap. Because they know that Israel will not purposefully attack civilians.

And they know it so well, they are willing to risk their own lives, banking on the morality of this supposedly genocidal army.

If the Palestinian Jews were one-tenth as bad as the Palestinian Arabs claim they are, why would they hesitate to kill the hundreds of human shields? Hell, if Israel is interested in ethnic cleansing as we are being told daily, having this big fat target would make the job so much easier, right?

Contrast this with the PalArab philosophy, where victories are measured in the number of dead Palestinian Jewish civilians and bombing of pizza shops is worthy of being celebrated publicly. Deep down, everyone on the planet knows that there is no comparison between the morality of the IDF and that of the PalArab terror groups. Everyone knows that Jewish women and children are the intended targets of suicide bombs and Qassam rockets. Everyone knows that the vast majority of Israelis grieve over the accidental deaths of Palestinian Arab civilians while the PalArabs hand out candy at the deaths of large numbers of Jews.

But despite these blindingly obvious facts, the world is still willing to condemn Israel and give the Palestinian Arabs a free pass.

The Palestinian Arabs themselves know better than anyone they are not in the same moral universe as Israel. But instead of trying to improve themselves, they will use Israel's well-known morality as a weapon to protect the most evil and depraved of their own people. They will willingly bet their own lives on Israeli morality in order to protect the immoral.

As long as the world doesn't demand the same moral standards from Arabs as they do from Jews, the Arabs have no incentive to behave morally at all.

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British Muslim leader donated to Holocaust denier.

What a surprise.

One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place.

Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain's largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund.

Britain's MPAC is similar to CAIR in the US, so when he was confronted by The Guardian it is amazing to see his backtracking and pretzel logic to justify what he did :

Bukhari confirmed sending the letters in 2000. 'I had a lot of sympathy for anyone who opposed Israel,' Bukhari told The Observer said. 'I wrote letters to anyone who was tough against the Israelis - David Irving, Paul Findley, the PLO."I don't feel I have done anything wrong, to be honest. At the time I was of the belief he [Irving] was anti-Zionist, being smeared for nothing more then being anti-Zionist.

'The pro-Israeli lobby often accused people of anti-Semitism and smear tactics against groups and individuals is well known. I condemn anti-Semitism as strongly as I condemn Zionism (in my opinion they are both racist ideologies). I also believe that anyone who denies the Holocaust is wrong (I don't think they should be put behind bars for it though).'

The funny thing is, one can be certain that every member of MPAC will rally behind this bigoted piece of trash.

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"Palestine News Network" calls B'Tzelem "Right Wing"

The "Palestine News Network" reports on a press release by B'Tzelem, that condemns Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and calls for the PA to stop such attacks.

PNN's comment (in a "news" story, in Arabic) was that

This aroused attention to the fact that B'Tselem adopted the view of the Israeli government and the rightist parties in Israel, also by saying that Israel has the right and duty to defend its citizens.

PNN is sympathetic with Fatah more than with Hamas, so this is a reasonable indication of how most Palestinian Arabs think - that Israel has no right whatsoever to defend its citizens from being wantonly murdered at Arab will, and not even to ask the PA to stop the rockets!

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Israelis saving lives worldwide. Again.

From Reuters:

Scientists in Israel say they hope to use highly concentrated light from commercial light bulbs to fight tumours, providing an effective and cheap replacement for laser surgery.

"We used off-the-shelf technology as an alternative to laser beams," said Jeffrey Gordon of Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel, lead researcher in a new study on the subject.

The study, recently published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, showed that light from an ultra-bright commercial bulb, similar to that used in movie projectors, could be concentrated by a special optical system to burn away healthy tissue in rats.

"For the first time ever we were able to kill tissue using the non-laser lamp," Gordon said on Tuesday.

He said the tests would be repeated on cancerous tissue in larger animals and eventually in humans in the next few years, in the hope of producing similar results with malignant tumours.

Laser systems currently used to treat tumours can cost up to $100,000. Gordon said the new light bulb systems may eventually be sold for about $1,000.

Also check out this fascinating article about Israelis creating micro-robots for medical purposes.

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Jordanian/Israeli airport idea maybe not so hot

Jane's reports:

The Jordanian and Israeli governments are to step up plans to build an international airport at Jordan's Red Sea resort of Aqaba that would serve both countries.

The planned airport at Aqaba will have two terminals - one Jordanian and one Israeli - and will service international carriers.

The project has been in the works for more than a decade, and was revived when Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, whose portfolio includes development of the Negev Desert region in southern Israel, and Jordan's King Abdullah II, who favours expanding economic ties with Israel, decided to accelerate joint economic projects.

After the peace treaty with Jordan was signed in 1994, it decided to build a new facility with the Jordanians. The project was shelved when the Palestinian intifada erupted in September 2000.

I can understand the economic reasoning behind this. Eilat is a huge tourist attraction as is Aqaba and having tourists fly straight there from Europe would be a huge boon. Increasing Jordanian/Israeli economic cooperation makes a lot of sense (although it hasn't put a dent in Jordanian citizens' anti-semitic attitudes.)

But let's look at the map:

Is it possible to design a more tempting terror target? We have a low land surrounded by sparsely-populated mountains where it is impossible to patrol effectively. And these mountain ranges happen to be situated in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where Jihadist philosophy is very popular.

How many terrorists will be trying to get their hands on surface to air missiles to get the bragging rights of the first to shoot down a commercial airliner to Aqaba?

Building a major airport will cost billions. Shooting down a single plane that would effectively destroy the economic upside of that airport would cost maybe $50,000. I'm not sure that this is the best use of money.

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Lebanese civilians know the arms are coming from Syria

As if we needed more proof that UNIFIL is useless:

Lebanese civilians close to the border with Syria told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that weapons for Hizbullah were being brought in by the truckload at night. Lebanese Army troops on duty at the border refused to confirm the claims.

..."They don't move in the day," said Yusuf Saad, a taxi driver waiting at the border crossing.

Saad, who had watched this correspondent from the other side of the road for some time before signaling for me to come over, added that "It's much easier for them to drive at night." He nodded toward the distant Syrian mountain range.

"There's not so much traffic on the road. And I can tell you" - his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper - "they might be going in with produce, but they're coming out with weapons. They hide the rockets under the goods and that's how they're able to bring them into the country."

...Fifty-three year old electrician Hassan Taha, a strident Hizbullah supporter who lives opposite one of the areas the Israeli Air Force bombed last summer - a crater marks where a school, supermarket and hotel once stood - was emphatic, however. "Of course weapons are coming from the border," he said. "Everybody here knows that. They're coming from both Iran and Syria and also China and Russia. We need the weapons. We are ready now if Israel strikes us.

Of course, at night UNIFIL goes to sleep, because it is "too dangerous" to patrol at night.

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Sports News

From Haaretz:

The International Tennis Federation has fined Indonesia $31,600 and banned it from next year's tournament for canceling its July Fed Cup match against Israel in Ramat Hasharon.

The Indonesian Tennis Association is expected to appeal against the ruling before the December 20 deadline, Ferry Raturandang, secretary general of the ITA said Thursday.

The Muslim nation, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel, had asked that the venue of its World Group II playoff match be moved to another country.

And from Iranmania:

Iran was crowned at an international taekwondo tournament in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, MNA reported.

The seven-strong Iranian team stood top among 30 participating countries with four golds and three silvers.

Two silvers came as the Iranian representatives in the fourth and eighth weight categories, Behzad Khodadad and Alireza Nasr-Azadani, avoided meeting the finalists from the 'Zionist' regime.

It's nice to see that the Muslim world can separate politics from sportsmanship so well.

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Please ignore this smoking gun

Even after Hamas' election as the appointed terror head of the PalArab people, the Western media and politicians still tend to treat Haniyeh as a political figure - perhaps strident, perhaps stubborn - but not as a terrorist himself.

Similarly, the Fatah-dominated portions of the PA, from Abbas on down through the police, has always been given a free pass as far as terror was concerned. Sure, some of the policemen moonlighted as terrorists, and we all know that they were corrupt, but no one in the West ever really thought of them as the actual instigators of terror.

There is a very good reason for this. To admit that they are terrorists means that there can never be negotiations with them which means that there can never be peace. It means admitting that the Palestinian Arab leaders and government is just a front for terror organizations and do not have any independent positive contributions to give. All the emotional investment that the West has given towards the "peace process" would be realized to have been wasted, or worse, to have been actually encouraging the opposite of peace. To imagine that the West would admit to a mistake this massive, that perhaps PalArabs are really not interested in the peace and compromise that everyone assumes, is just too devastating.

It is easier to pretend.

So, I apologize for the discomfort that comes out of this tiny detail in a Ha-aretz story about the liquid explosive belt that was discovered recently that I mentioned this morning:

A second belt was discovered in a search held by the security forces in the Palestinian National Security building in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Palestinian National Security Forces are building suicide bomb vests.

Not some shadowy terror organization where people wear masks and carry RPGs. Not the "military wing" of Hamas. Not the rogue Fatah ragtag terrorists. No, these bomb belts, these terror weapons, are being built by the organization that was created at Oslo, that was initially armed by Israel to patrol the borders jointly with the IDF, that was funded directly in the millions by the West, that was trained by the UN.

A story that should be in the headlines, a story that completely explodes the prevailing conventional wisdom of most of the free world, a story that should be the start of war crimes trials and ultimatums from a unified world....gets buried as a single sentence in an article that almost no one will read.

When the truth is too painful, it is easier to pretend that lies are the truth.

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Palestinian Arab innovation and creativity

Despite the celebrated comments of Samir 'Ubeid that the Nobel Prize is a Zionist conspiracy, when one looks one can find Palestinian Arabs are in the forefront in scientific research - towards how best to kill Jews.

We have seen in the past how the PalArabs are innovating in the area of tunnel digging. Digging tunnels big enough to get large shipments through, long enough to evade two borders and without expensive equipment is not a simple problem. But over time they have gotten very, very good at it. When they have incentive, they can be very creative.

The major manufacturing industry in Gaza now is the Qassam rocket industry. One may make fun of these "crude" weapons because they do not have accurate guidance systems, but as tools of terror they are perfectly suited. One can be certain that PalArab innovation in the Qassam area is not geared towards accuracy, but rather towards range, because the goal is not to accurately hit targets but just to be good enough to land in a populated area.

We have also seen how, given enough motivation, Palestinian Arabs will willingly turn farm animals into weapons to kill Jews. Similarly, they have used women and children for the same purpose.

Don't forget their imaginative use of rat poison.

And now, the Jerusalem Post has a story on how PalArabs have been perfecting the suicide bomb vest that uses liquid explosives to evade detection:

It is not that PalArabs are not smart or creative. It is just that while those Nobel-prize winning Jews are interested in improving the world, the entire motivation behind the brightest minds in Palestinian Arab areas is dedicated to terrorizing and murder.

And the feedback loop built into Palestinian Arab society is one that praises and rewards these innovators as great men, one that spins successful murders as great victories, one that names their inventions after criminal thugs.

So of course their best and brightest (who don't decide to get the hell out) gravitate towards terror - it is an accurate reflection of their value system.

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Today is "Palestinian Independence Day"

In one of those useless gestures that PalArab leaders have been so fond of, eighteen years ago Yasir Arafat declared November 15th as "Independence Day" - from exile in Algiers.

They even wrote a meaningless Declaration of Independence. It includes this gem:

Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.

Unmentioned is the fact that the Palestinian Arabs at the time, along with all Arab nations, rejected Resolution 181 because they didn't want to recognize a certain other people's claims to nationhood that elsewhere in the Declaration they say is the "destiny of all other peoples."

It goes on to this farcical statement:

By stages, the occupation of Palestine and parts of other Arab territories by Israeli forces, the willed dispossession and expulsion from their ancestral homes of the majority of Palestine's civilian inhabitants, was achieved by organized terror; those Palestinians who remained, as a vestige subjugated in its homeland, were persecuted and forced to endure the destruction of their national life.

This is particularly funny as one would be hard-pressed to find any of those "persecuted" people willingly move out of their "subjugated" status to live in an Arab country or in the territories.

Even better, later on the document describes their mythical state as one where "The rights of minorities will duly be respected by the majority, as minorities must abide by decisions of the majority." This sounds like subjugation to me!

It goes without saying that the "Declaration" in no way limits its sights to only the post-1967 "occupied territories;" it remains purposefully ambiguous as to its real objectives.

Either way, as a fifth-grade PalArab girl interviewed said yesterday, "tomorrow is a strike day." To her, this is just another day off of school. She understands the futility of this mythical independence better than her elders, although most of them interviewed by "Palestine News Network" were quite cynical.

Beyond the complete unimportance of this day, which the PalArabic media is trumpeting as a major holiday, is the simple fact that if they want to truly declare independence in Gaza, they could. All the high-sounding words in the "Declaration" could become reality - if they wanted it to. They could issue stamps and flags and get immediate recognition from 75% of the UN member states.

For over a year, not a single Israeli soldier stepped foot in Gaza. For over a year, the PalArabs had every opportunity to prove that they were not a nation of terrorists and criminals, but that they were a peace-loving and progressive people. For over a year, they could have built industry and an economy. They had industrial zones they shared with Israel; they had greenhouses that brought in millions of dollars in revenue bought by American Jewish money, they even had a border crossing with Egypt that was not being monitored by Israel directly where they could import and export goods and services. They had an election where they could have voted in a government that cared about their day-to-day lives.

Each and every opportunity was not only wasted, but turned into a means to terrorize and wage war against Israel. Gaza is now a lawless wasteland, far worse than when it was under the dreaded "occupation." The only manufacturing industry of note in Gaza is the Qassam industry.

It was an experiment in statehood that not only failed, but it backfired on them. It proved that this "nation" is anything but a real nation.

Reading the Declaration today is the definition of irony as we see what sort of an independent nation they would actually build, given the chance.

And the eighteen years of pretend independence will stretch out for decade after decade, as the PalArabs trade one "occupation" for the far worse situation of being governed by their own immature and destructive leaders.

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"Shallow thought processes"

One of the more frustrating sites in the JBlogosphere is the idealistically and wrongfully named Tikun Olam. I don't spend much time there because the blog author is far left wing and his talking points are pretty much identical to those of Saeb Erekat. The only difference is that Erekat knows he is a baldfaced liar, and Richard Silverstein is probably just excessively naive.

Unfortunately, people like Erekat get strengthened by fantasists like Silverstein. Equally unfortunately, people like Silverstein cannot seem to ever find anything good to say about Israel - plenty of attacks and nothing but silence and tacit support for terrorist supporters in the territories. (As I said, I don't read most of his stuff, but the representative sampling I've seen seems to bear this out.)

This morning he posted an article from Haaretz that mentioned that the Atamna family in Gaza, who lost 18 members in the accident last week, are not seeking revenge and do not wish such a tragedy on anyone, including Jews. This is certainly admirable and welcome.

Unfortunately, Silverstein's spin on this is so wrongheaded as to expose his complete inability to see reality. Once again we see partisanship trumping clear thinking. Although perhaps I am not the exact type of person he is referring to in his posting, I am going to respond as if I am:

The Arab haters who frequent this site are fond of throwing around cliches and racist prejudice about Arab religious and cultural attitudes. According to the haters, Arabs are bloodthirsty for revenge against Israel. They are certainly liars and totally untrustworthy. Even when Arabs say something conciliatory they are only saying it for the benefit of western media.

Well, this passage will throw a wrench in the works of those shallow thought processes of theirs. A Haaretz reporter visited the Atamnas family, which lost 18 members to errant IDF shells which killed them as they lay sleeping. The victims must be crying blood curdling calls for revenge, right? Hardly.

[Ha'aretz quote follows]

Does Israel deserve such empathy especially from victims who have suffered so much due to the unconscionable mistakes of an incompetent IDF? I only applaud the victims for being able to muster such humanity in the face of such horrid brutality.

Perhaps, one day the IDF will become the kind of fighting force that does not make such mistakes, or if it does it confronts the mistake directly and honestly. And perhaps someday when it makes one of these mistakes it will actually do everything in its power to ensure it is never made again. Can we really believe that the current IDF will not make this mistake again next week, next month or next year?

The first two paragraphs are one huge strawman. Generalize something about your opponents, make a sweeping statement that you attribute to them, and then find a single counterexample to win an argument that never occurred. On this blog at least I have been careful to distinguish between the Palestinian Arab people and their destructive "leaders."

Incidentally, so did Ariel Sharon even in his most hawkish days.

Not to say that the PalArabs have not been criticized by this blog as well - they have, often, when their collective actions or polls have shown support for terror - but I do not stereotype them beyond my usual oanalysis of their psyche as a whole. But unlike Silverstein, I do not use a single example to prove my point.

And isn't it a teensy bit intellectually dishonest to point to a single example of a Palestinian Arab family not calling for revenge when "tens of thousands" did call for revenge?

And does Silverstein think for a moment that even the quote from the Atamna family was ever printed in the Arabic press? In my travels through the auto-translated Palestinian Arab news sites, I have yet to see anything remotely resembling that quote or that sentiment. The hate for Israel is systemic, endemic and all-permeating.

But judging from his next paragraph, perhaps he shares that viewpoint.

He goes into his "Israel is evil" mode that is so heartbreaking to read from someone who should know better. To imply that Jews do not deserve any sympathy from Arabs is astonishingly sick from someone who claims to be trying to "repair the world."

To say that the IDF, which is arguably the most moral army in the history of the world, is "incompetent" for making a mistake is simply slanderous. Especially in the light of its immediate reaction and investigation, which he purposefully ignores in his next paragraph.

I would love for Silverstein to show me an example of any army or any nation that acts more responsibly or morally from his perspective. Because the fact is, when Israel's enemies compare Israel and only Israel to an impossible standard of perfection and ignore the crimes of every other nation on Earth, it is a form of anti-semitism. I don't consider Silverstein an anti-semite, but what's his excuse?

He accuses others of "shallow thought processes" but it is apparent that these words refer much more accurately to his own. I hope one day he wakes up and becomes interested in being part of a true Tikun Olam. And any solution, if one even exists, has to take reality into account, not just extreme wishful thinking.

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First Met Meme

Thanks to AbbaGav, I've gotten tagged with a meme to talk about things that are Personal, as opposed to the Political and occasionally Silly things that are usually my themes.

It seems impolite to ignore it, so let's just get it over with.

A long time ago, when I was just a young Elder, I was living on my own in a tastefully-decorated bachelor pad in suburban New Jersey. I worked as a junior engineer for a Major Telecommunications Company (MTC) that happened to employ a good percentage of everyone in town (making the Shabbos table discussions that invariably turned techie into painful moments for the odd spouse who might have been a teacher or rabbi or something.)

One day, I got a phone call from someone I never met. We will call him Shmuel, mostly because I have forgotten his name by now. He got my name from an old yeshiva buddy who told him, "Oh, I know someone who works for MTC, maybe he can get you a job." For some reason, people from New York always think anyone can get anyone a job.

I spoke to Shmuel for a few minutes, expressing my support for him but letting him know that I was but a tiny cog in the giant wheels of MTC and I was in no position to hire, recommend to hire or even broach the subject with my boss.

Shmuel understood and then told me, "You know, I know a girl who sounds just like you do. Are you interested in being set up?"

For reasons that G-d Himself only knows, I took the phone number of a girl for a blind date from a person I never met. Call it a double-blind date.

I called her, we spoke for a while and then set a date.

I picked up the future Mrs. Elder in a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood that I had never driven to before and we went to Manhattan on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in late June. We visited a museum (that no longer exists) and then stumbled onto the annual Gay Pride parade on our way to a vegetarian restaurant that also no longer exists, Greener Pastures.

Despite this inauspicious start, we hit it off. I dated her pretty much every week for the rest of the summer and we were engaged by the autumn, married by spring.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that might have made Shmuel think that Mrs. Elder and I speak the same way is that we both do not have New York accents. We are completely opposite in pretty much every respect.

I did end up meeting Shmuel and his wife a couple of times, and I think that we sent them a gift, but we never became friends and this entire episode is just one giant example of hashgacha pratis.

(As is my custom, I will not be forwarding this meme to anyone because memes are, in the end, human-borne computer viruses. )

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