This should keep you occupied till sundown. Shabbat Shalom.
* Top of the list: IsraPundit’s Jerry Gordon is following a vicious physical attack on Shoaib Choudhury, the Bangladeshi peace activist and journalist who’s already fighting for his life in court – having been charged with the crime of sedition for trying to attend a peace conference in Israel. For what it’s worth, incidentally, Lynn-B has been all over the atrocities being perpetuated again Choudhury for well over a year.
* Alexandra from the eponymously named All Things Beautiful is back after a bit absence. She is somewhat less than pleased with the Bush administration’s continuing aid to Palestinian terrorists (‘but they’re moderate terrorists…’) Also on her shitlist: Republicans and Democrats.
* When the Thai coup first broke, Anne Lieberman of BtB! noticed that nobody was talking about the jihadist dimensions of the overthrow – which was weird, because there were significant suggestions that such dimensions were of salience. Now Astute Bloggers has the BBC article that proves her point.
* Anne is also mildly put out by her discovery that one-third of United Jewish Communities funds are going to non-Jewish sectors in Israel. We tend to agree with her sentiments. Don’t get us wrong – non-Jewish Israeli citizens also need and deserve help. But there seems to be something in the name of the United Jewish Communities that would lead people to understand that their donations are going to Jewish communities.
* Jewbiquitous sites several blogs that use the word “Jew” in order to demonstrate that “unlike Google, Jews don’t necessarily find the word ‘Jew’ to be a derogatory one, as shown by its prevalence in the titles of blogs.” Except none of those blogs use the word “Jew” alone or seriously – they’re all puns on the word (which AnnieGetYou even recognizes). But if that’s true, then listing them does nothing to demonstrate that “it boggles the mind” to point out that in common discourse the word “Jew” is jarring. Which it obviously is. The whole post is misguided anyway – Google doesn’t “find the word ‘Jew’ to be a derogatory one” because they like it that way. Google merely suggests that the relative prevalence of the word “Jew” in hate sites is a quirk of language. Which is, again, obvious – if you don’t believe it, just do a Google search.
* During the Cold War, there were persistent rumors that not a few Israeli nukes were actually targeted at Russian targets. That way, if a militarily overrun Israel took a suicidal last gasp, the Soviets who had created the Arab tanks and planes would not escape the consequences of their recklessness. Meryl helps to explain why Russia kind of would have had it coming – and still might.
* Smooth Stone hates deluded, ignorant peacenik hippies, aka refusniks. It’s all just cheap moral exhibitionism anyway.
* Speaking of refusniks, in Britain it may or may not be a state-recognized Muslim right not to protect Jews. The Muqata points out that this is certainly preferable to the situation in the West Bank, where Palestinians expected to protect Israelis just let them bleed to death.
* Islamist-driven civil war in France goes official. Perfect time for Britain to let Muslim cops declare that protecting Jews is not something they should be expected to do – that’s exactly the kind of tolerance that’s going to make living with unassimilated populations in the heart of old Europe easier to live with and/or assimilate. How could anything go wrong?
* Sol’s waiting breathlessly for expulsions over Wednesday’s outrage at Columbia University. Liberal activists really like being thugs – we’re not joking about this. In their minds, they really are that stupid Che t-shirt that they all wear. And for what it’s worth, Sol is going to be disappointed – expulsions would be ‘censorship’, which American campuses will never even contemplate. Academic freedom means never having to say you’re sorry for attacking pro-Israel and pro-American speakers. People having trouble with this concept can read Pamela’s post on NYU.
* Re Jewlicious’s call to heed the call for peace talks with Syria how about instead of that, Israel does the total opposite and ignore Syria. Except for the occasional and necessary radar station bombing run. Maybe. VP says Assad is facing a coup anyway – and that’s before he’s had to try to make good on his belligerent threats to Israel over the Golan, which might very well cost him his air force.
* Elder of Zion has compiled a short list of stupid things Muslim mobs riot over.
* We’re often told that Palestinian society is, compared to much of the rest of the Arab world, progressive and secular. How progressive and secular is it? Uncertain. Certainly not so progressive and secular that they’re about to stop hating gay people.
* Minor corrections to this post about Ben-Gurion pandemonium. He says:
And this was where the night got really interesting. Think Survivor meets Lost – except Israeli version. It was at this point I realized that Israelis are like assholes – everyone has an opinion. And they’re not shy in letting you know it.
Close, but kind of awkward. First, the expression should be something like “in Israel, vocal opinions that have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with ego are like assholes – everybody’s got one”. Second, his tropes can use some cleaning up. It shouldn’t be “Israelis are like assholes”, but more like “Israelis are assholes”. Maybe followed up with something like “seriously, try being on an airplane with them for twelve hours – total, unrepentant, unmitigated assholes. But we love them anyway”. More or less.
* American Thinker’s Patrick Godfrey on the Foley scandal: “Worst October Surprise, EVER”. Our girl Clarice Feldman continues to lead the blogosphere on the ‘can this scandal get more weird than gross’ issue. And again on The American Thinker, Douglas Hanson wonders when anti-gay witch hunts become OK. Since we oppose those tactics when the right turns them against Democrats, we feel totally comfortable being as sanctimonious as humanly possible about the Democrats’ disgusting gay-baiting.
UPDATE (21:05 PST): This post has been edited and corrected for style (having originally been written while deleriously tired at 4 in the morning). It differs in no substantive way from the original.
Related Mere Rhetoric Posts:
