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Give Me A Trident Missile and A Compass

This is what happens when you're dealing with a culture that interprets limited military operations, human rights institutions, listening to their religious leaders, and sensitivity toward their sensibilities as weakness. There were kids playing with mutilated bodies! What the hell are we doing there? Maybe it's time for a different strategy. If what it's gonna take is bombing them out of the Stone Age, then lets get around to it already. This is sick.
Omri | |

They're Not Even Trying To Make Sense Any More. Seriously.

This is just so pathetic.
Last year, Europe buried their anti-Semitism report because it overwhelmingly demonstrated that followers of the Religion of Peace were beating the hell out of Jewish kids and desecrating Jewish holy places. Two problems: (1) that report got leaked and people pointed out that it's not nice to suppress reports about sky-rocketing European anti-Semitism; (2) it's tough to pretend that nothing's going on when the Paris night is regularly getting lit up by the flames of burning synagogues.
So the Europeans figured a way to be good dhimmis and pretend like they're concerned that they're on their way to openly advocating Jew-murder for the second time in 60 years (although in fairness to them, only the first time this millennium):

Attacks on Jews have increased in several European Union states, especially in France, with the main perpetrators young, white males, an EU report said on Wednesday.
The report by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) contrasted with controversial findings of a Berlin study last year which blamed young Arabs and Muslims predominantly for rising anti-Semitism…
Jewish organizations accused the European Commission of anti-Semitism after the EUMC, an independent EU agency, at first refused to issue the Berlin study amid accusations it was loath to single out Muslim immigrants and pro-Palestinian groups.

See, it's not those Muslim youths who refuse to assimilate and openly advocate anti-Semitism. They'd never think that it's OK to hate Jews. Also, it's definitely just a coincidence that the biggest spike in anti-Semitism just happened to be in the country that has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe:

By far the biggest rise in anti-Semitic violence was reported in France, where the number of incidents rose sixfold in 2002 over the previous year.

The Benelux countries having the second largest Muslim population and seeing a huge spike in anti-Semitic violence? Clearly coincidence:

The number of incidents in Belgium doubled, including the fire-bombing of Jewish property and serious physical assaults.

This part is my favorite though. Remember, the claim that the commission is making is that wherever Muslims attacked Jews, they were inspired to do so not because of something inherently anti-Semitic in the brand of Islam that they practice but by the "extreme right" (Europeans) stirring them up with anti-Semitic rhetoric. And then they go and say this:

Acts of anti-Semitism were rare in Greece, Austria, Italy and Spain, but the EUMC said anti-Semitic discourse in these countries was "particularly virulent" in daily life.

So what have we learned? In countries where there are incredible and disproportionate amounts of anti-Semitic rhetoric but no Muslims, there is no anti-Semitic violence. In countries with less anti-Semitic rhetoric but lots of Muslims, we're witnessing the worst spikes in anti-Semitic violence since the 1930s. You know, it's not the appeasement that pisses me off, and it's not the dishonesty that pisses me off - it's the combination of the two.

UPDATE: It was pretty much only a matter of time before something like thing came out:

Jewish leaders accused the European Union yesterday of covering up the true scale of anti-Semitic violence carried out by Muslim youths, reigniting a controversy over Europe's failure to confront Islamic extremism at home.
Omri | |

Make Up Your Mind

Meryl is now supporting both birds and cats. Gosh Meryl, I wonder what Gracie would think of that. I think we can all guess:



UPDATE:Achem... Meryl very quietly and very non-publicly just pointed out to me that in this post I meant Operation Rescue, the evil anti-abortion people, not Project Rescue, the people who save cute, furry birds. Don't I feel sheepish.

Update from Stan: Hey Omri, what kind of birds are furry?
Omri | |

Evacuating the Territories Will Moderate the Palestinian Street

Some things spin themselves:

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, the leading Palestinian polling institute, has disclosed that a majority of Palestinians, 53 percent, support terror attacks against Israeli civilians. This represents a rise in support for terror - last December, 48 percent of respondents in a poll articulated support for terror attacks. In the latest poll, 87 percent of respondents said they favor attacks on Israeli soldiers; 86 percent supported attacks on settlers in the territories.

This increase in the desire to kill Jewish babies comes after Israel committed itself to withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. For those of you keeping track at home, yes, 5% is outside the margin of error.

UPDATE: This is ABC News's interpretation of recent Palestinian socio-political numbers that say the Palestinians are becoming more, not less, militant:

There is a movement... To transform the bloodsoaked Intafada into a more peaceful protest. And though they don't yet have an alternative either, even the more radical Palestinian groups seem to recognize now that the old ways of kill and be killed ... just don't work.
Omri | |

Religion Of Peace Has Bad Day

Top three headlines on Google News's world section:
(1) Uzbekistan Death Toll Climbs to 42
(2) Britain Seizes Eight In Anti-Terror Raids
(3) 4 Suspects With TNT Held in Manila
I don't mean to say that the words "Muslim" and "Islamic" feature prominently in the lede of every story, but lets just say that the words "Christian" and "Jew" don't. Note that in the Washington Post article, the lede is buried toward the bottom - but when you look for it, you'll know you've found it by the presence of those magic words.
Omri | |

Meryl Proves My Point

So after reading a little bit of my light commentary on cats, Meryl went and told on me. Now her cat is pissed and I'm in trouble:

Omri | |

CNN Does A Story On Growing Anti-Semitism!!

Aaron Brown of CNN's Newsnight devoted an entire segment of yesterday's show to growing anti-Semitism in one of the world's hotspots. Was he worried about children being beaten in Belgium's subways? Was he concerned about synagogues being burned in France's heartland? Was he disturbed about newspapers being used for thinly-veiled anti-Semitism in Britain? Not so much.
You might need to be sitting down when you read this, but he was talking about anti-Semitism because he could frame it as a U.S. failure in Iraq:

BROWN: In Iraq today, more protests following the closing of an Iraqi newspaper by the U.S. civil administrator, Paul Bremer. He shut the paper down yesterday, saying it was inciting violence against U.S. forces. Winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is far from a done deal. And the same goes for building a self-sustaining democracy there. Tolerance being a measure of any democracy, a wave of anti- Semitism in postwar Iraq speaks to the obstacles ahead.
Reporting for us tonight, CNN's Walter Rodgers.
WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A fire-breathing Muslim cleric leads believers in a chorus of "Down with Israel." In Iraq, hatred of Israel, Zionists and Jews has become more, not less poisonous, since the American occupation. Many Iraqis now see last year's war as an Israeli-American plot to keep Iraq weak and divide the nation into separate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish enclaves. Even Iraqi intellectual believe it.

Then they roll some tape of Iraqis accusing Jews of the usual stuff - inciting wars in the Middle East, buying Arab land, controlling US foreign policy, etc. I say "usual," because this stuff gets published all the time in Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian (not to mention Palestinian) newspapers. Seriously - all the time. Where do you think the Iraqis got their ideas from? You think it's just a coincidence that their anti-Semitism sounds exactly like the anti-Semitism everywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world? Of course, when the Palestinians run the exact the same lines about Jews in their newspapers, it's because of their legitimate anger towards "the Occupation," and if only Israel withdrew to the Green Line all that anti-Semitism would magically vanish.
I'm not sure what's more frustrating: how CNN suddenly cares about anti-Semitism because they can, with a little imagination, frame it as proof that things are getting worse in Iraq; or how utterly bad their evidence is for the assertion that it actually is proof that things are getting worse in Iraq.
First, that assertion (which is made only in the relatively unimportant first and last sentences of the segment) is at best poorly justified. I know that we're supposed to accept any assertion of failure on its face, and I tried - really I did - but nowhere in the segment is there a single piece of evidence that anti-Semitism has actually increased in post-Saddam Iraq. In fact, the only historical analysis about anti-Semitism in Iraq goes the other way:

ROBERT WISTRICH, HEBREW UNIVERSITY: In Iraq, you had an older tradition of anti-Semitism, going back to the Nazi influence in the 1930s and '40s.

And of course he's right - Ba'thist pan-Arabism has always trafficked in anti-Semitism. Paranoid conspiracy theories were part and parcel of official Arab (not to mention Soviet) rhetoric in the 1960s and 70s. And come on, Saddam was giving money to suicide bombers and regularly calling for the cleansing of Jews from Israel. For CNN to claim that it has suddenly discovered anti-Semitism in Iraq is a little disingenuous.
Second, even if anti-Semitism has increased in post-Saddam Iraq, they still couldn't use it to say this at the end:

RODGERS: The American experiment in Iraq was not supposed to work like this.
(on camera): A year ago, the Bush administration openly envisioned a new, more liberal and tolerant Iraq. Instead, Iraqis seem more xenophobic now and there are growing fears one possible outcome here might just as easily be an Islamic state as a democracy.

Apparently in Rodgers's mind, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria are all "Islamic states" because they're home to rampant anti-Semitism. The press just can't seem to confront the reality of secular anti-Semitism. The idea that anti-Semitism is still alive and well in secular Arab states would force them to confront the idea that it may still be alive and well in progressive European nations. And that might force them to look a little more closely at the vitriolic hatred for Israel in European capitals and on European streets. What if anti-Zionism really did turn out to be anti-Semitism?
I dunno - maybe I'm reading too much into that last line. In many ways, the narrative of "problem in Iraq = failure in Iraq = Islamic state in Iraq" is just a rhythm that reporters naturally fall into. So the reference to an Islamic state at the end may just have been the inevitable result of the "failure" frame that the whole segment was read through. That it's nonsensical and betrays an almost dangerous misunderstanding of the tide of anti-Semitism sweeping the globe was probably not a consideration. Don't get me wrong - I welcome any press attention to anti-Semitism. But I wish that I didn't have to pay the price of automatic America-bashing to get it. Oh, and I guess I'd also like it if the analysis in the stories was actually accurate. That's important too.
Omri | |

Sharon: Have I Mentioned I'm A Tactical Genius?

Sharon to the U.S. "I'm the best chance you have for any semblence of an election-year peace deal, but my government is going to collapse unless I can bring home Bibi's demands".
U.S. to Sharon: "Weeeellllll... OK":

The US administration has agreed to publish a declaration hinting at denying Palestinians the right-of-return and agreeing that the security fence surrounds some major settlement blocs in the West Bank...
The official also said he believes the final formula of support for the plan that the Bush administration will issue 'will be satisfactory for the Israeli domestic scene,' meaning that it will live up to the three conditions Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spelled out for his critical support of the plan.
Netanyahu, whose support is considered key in swaying some of the uncommitted Likud ministers, laid out three conditions for accepting Sharon's disengagement plan at last Sunday's meeting between Sharon and the Likud ministers.
Omri | |

Q: How Many Ugly, Resentful Politicos Does It Take To Ruin A Country?

A: One:

PM [Sharon] recently reached an agreement with top Labor officials on a national unity government but talks were frozen when Arbel recommended indicting Sharon.

It's OK - I'm sure nobody noticed the politically-motivated nature of this coup attempt. And it's not like national unity governments have been important in seeing Israel through its toughest times or anything. Probably nothing for woman to feel guilty about.
Omri | |

I Feel Safe

I can't think of any way that this could possibly go poorly:

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian saw ties with arch foe China forever deadlocked if Beijing insists on a single country and vowed to build an independent nation despite the risk of war... Chinese generals have said Beijing would go to war if the island declared independence, even it cost China an international boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Watching the Taiwanese bottle up the Chinese navy up in the Straits would be ineresting. Watching Taiwan get turned into a charred hole by Chinese missiles would be less so.
Omri | |

Religious Violence

Maybe it was those fundamentalist Zoroastrians:

At least 19 people were killed and 26 others injured in a series of terrorist blasts in Uzbekistan on Sunday and Monday, news reaching here from the Uzbekcapital of Tashkent said.

Oh - turns out it was Islamists:

President Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov said police have arrested several suspects and he blamed Islamic extremists for the violence.

Will wonders never cease?
Omri | |

These Important People Are Almost As Exciting As Those Unimportant People

Some trivial hippies inexplicably want to spend their time camping instead of serving in a war zone, and it's an international scandal - the refuseniks were a growing movement who were going to shake Israeli society to its foundations.
Now, some of the most important people in Israel have linked up with the settlers to produce a petition strongly condemning the disengagement plan and pledging to oppose it. These are people of political, economic, and cultural significance - real movers and shakers, some of whom might bring down the Sharon government simply by withdrawing from it. You wouldn't know it from the media coverage - "israel petition withdrawal" gets two pages of hits on Google News, exactly one of which is actually a headline about this petition. And that headline is from Arutz Sheva, the settlers!
Grassroots movements apparently don't count unless they're Leftist movements. This is the same reason why you never see American social movement classes about Project Rescue, which inconveniently happens to be the single most successful grassroots campaign in recent American history. Now, I categorically disagree with most of Project Rescue's agenda, but it should be acknowledged and studied. And while I'm not sure what I think of Sharon's disengagement plan (I used to be in favor of it but now I'm back on the fence), his opponents should be similarly acknowledged when they're able to mobilize public opposition.
Omri | |

Most Generic Headline Ever

It's time for another exciting round of Dejafoo's Choose the Joke. Today's topic is the ass-whopping that France's Conservative party just received from the Socialists:
(1) The Moscow Times probably has this headline saved as a template: "French ______ dealt crushing blow".
(2) The French have finally found someone they can defeat.
(3) Socialists? Socialists?!?! Is France moving back in time? Next thing you know, they'll go 1960s style and start selling oil infrastructure and arms to Ba'athist dictators in the Middle East.
Omri | |

Compare and Contrast

This week the best Israeli minds unveiled their newest invention, a 33cm, remote controlled spy-plane that can be maneuvered accurately by laptop even through windows:

The Israeli military is equipping its forces with a new range of spy drones small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack... The new baby drones would give army forces in the field near instant access to aerial intelligence... Their small size allows them to fly through windows and to provide images to military units behind it.

This week the best Palestinian minds unvieled their newest invention, a rocket. On wheels:

Palestinians introduce mortar launcher on wheels Launcher welded to pick-up truck, allowing terrorists to quickly get away.

Clearly, these are two cultures communicating on the same level.
Omri | |

Meryl, Cats, Division of Labor

Meryl Yourish has been extremely generous to us recently. Her compliments have been enthusiastic and quite unexpected, and she is now proposing a division of labor between Dejafoo and Yourish. One of her stipulations is that she gets to keep all cat topics for herself. Meryl, you see, loves cats. Really, really loves cats. This is worrisome to us, because Meryl is so nice and cats are so evil. Some people say cats are not evil. Those people are wrong.
Any discussion of cats, if it is to be productive, must begin with a single, overwhelmingly true assumption: if your cat were just a little bit bigger, it would kill you and eat you. This is because, again, cats are evil.
I don't think anyone reasonable disputes that cats are evil. I have two pieces of evidence for this:
(1) "Cats + evil" gets 640,000 hits on Google. "Humans + evil" gets 655,000 hits on Google. That means that 6,000 years of Holocausts, pogroms, and massacres - not to mention the creation and use of weapons that could wipe out every living organism on this planet - only makes us 15,000 webpages more evil than cats. And when you figure that a good eight or nine thousand of those pages are goth chicks writing poetry about how much they hate their parents, that's not really all that much.
(2) "Cats + pure evil" gets 3,300 hits on Google. Alternatively, "cats + somewhat evil" gets a measly 122 hits. I think that this should be sufficient to establish the correct level of cats' evil.
Cats kill things. Stalin killed things too, and everyone admits that Stalin was pretty evil. Here's what Stalin didn't do - Stalin didn't used to bring injured but still living birds into my sister's room at 6am, and then release them so that she "could catch them herself." You know what else Stalin didn't do? Stalin didn't walk up to my family on the porch one afternoon to get our attention, and then turn around, climb up a tree, and start trying to throw baby birds out of a nest. Those things were beyond the pale for even Stalin - not for our cats though.
As with most evil things, you can't trust cats. In your cat's world, you are "the ape who brings food." However, we know that cats are confident that they can always hunt down their food. This creates a quandary - why would cats, who are confident that they can always hunt down their food, care that you bring them food? Answer: they don't. They are just humoring you because they know that they are not yet big enough to kill you and eat you.
Since they can't kill you outright, cats plot. That's what evil things do - they plot. Cats are no different. Have you ever seen a cat's eyes peeking out at you from next to the staircase in the dark? The cat is thinking "if I hit that ape 'just right,' I should be able to knock it down the steps and break its neck. Then I will be able to eat it. This is important because my size is otherwise insufficient for me to kill it outright." Yes, cats actually think like that.
Sometimes, you hear people baby talk to their cats about how evil but cute they are - something like "aww... look how cute you are. Yes, you're so evil and so cute and you use your cuteness for evil so I'll keep you and feed you." Those people are idiots. First, as I've established above, cats don't need humans to feed them. Ergo, when your cat eats the dry, bloodless cat food that you buy it, it is just biding its time until it can kill you and eat you. Second, cats are not cute. Nothing evil can be cute. The Greeks taught us that. Ergo, since cats are evil, anyone who says they're cute is obviously either lying or a pawn in their sick game. You should obviously distrust such people.
There is an school of thought that holds that resisting cats is futile, because they are far more evil and subtle than we are and will eventually launch an inter-species war in which they will either enslave or exterminate us. I am skeptical of this claim. There are many advantages that we have over cats, should an inter-species conflict actually erupt. Opposable thumbs, language, and nuclear weapons for instance. Nonetheless, I urge those of you looking to hedge your bets to contribute generously to the San Diego Zoological Society. Should cats ever become our masters, they will look kindly upon this act and perhaps keep you around to work the mines.

Update from Stan: For those animal lovers that might have been offended by Omri's rantings, I suggest that you take Omri to the next movie that has talking animals in it. Omri has a strange relationship to movies with talking animals (strange to normal adults anyway) - he thinks they're funny. Can't get enough of them. Note: Omri is in LA so if you're an attractive, well respected, blonde female blogger who drives a classic Porsche, you can witness this first hand. *cough*

Update from Omri: For the record (and to avoid any pending legal proceedings), it is my humble blogging partner and not myself who is obsessed with a certain blonde LA blogger who may or may not be on our blogroll. The thing about talking animals is true though - there's no movie in the Western canon that cannot be made better with a talking animal. Seriously.

Update from Stan: First, you're false - Highlander 2 can't be helped by a talking animal - God Himself could not help that movie. Second, I think "obsession" is a little too strong. "Hobby"?
Omri | |

Sharon vs. Shalom, Advantage: No One

Now this is genuinely dangerous for Sharon:

The group of Likud "rebels", who are objecting to Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan, received an unexpected boost yesterday (Sunday) from Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called in the Likud Ministers for a meeting yesterday to discuss the plan. During the meeting, Shalom expressed his reservations about the Prime Minister's disengagement plan.

Sharon, taking the compromising stance that he is so well-known for politically and militarily, is having none of it:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that he would form a new government if coalition parties object to his plan to unilaterally disengage from the Gaza Strip and certain parts of the West Bank.
Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee Monday, Sharon said he hopes his government would eventually support the plan, but if not, he would form a new government "that very same day."

How this will play out is anyone's guess. Sharon won't go to elections, and he really doesn't need to because under the new Basic Law anyone who wants to overthrow the government has to present a coalition of 61 MKs that can form a new government, and there're no combinations of coalition math without the Likud that yield that. So Sharon will either have to bring in Shas or Labor. Shas will make him pay dearly to join, but it's not like they have moral qualms about joining a government that is either withdrawing from territories or run by someone under investigation for corruption charges. The interesting scenario is Labor - they want back in and if Sharon offers them enough in terms of withdrawal it'll be hard for them join. But for some unfathomable reason they've also been throwing around rhetoric that they'd rather bring down the government than join - you could write this off to off-message intra-party conflict, but it's Peres who's been running it. Either way, Sharon won't go to elections and he doesn't need Knesset approval for the withdrawal - but is even he arrogant enough to undertake an unprecedented and historical security decision over the din of public skepticism and without even a hint of an electoral mandate? I mean, he clearly is - but could he get away with it?
Omri | |

Excuse Me While I Geek Out

If you don't appreciate the inherent beauty of this product, you're probably one of one of those people. Those people are those ones who think that the web is "the Internet." Those people have email addresses that end in aol.com. And it's those people who ruined the Internet for the rest us. But I’m not bitter.
Omri | |

On Infallibility

The Pope on child soldiers:

Pope John Paul II decried the use of child soldiers in world conflicts Sunday, saying they were victims twice over and were overwhelmed by "the hatred of adults."

The Pope on the Separation Wall:

"As Pope John Paul has so eloquently stated, the Middle East needs bridges and not walls.

Translation: it's wrong to use children as soldiers, but it's also wrong to prevent children from getting blown up. Confusing, until you realize that it's Jewish kids getting blown up.
Omri | |

European Mendacity Watch

It's not so much aggravating that this guy is self-righteous about wanting Britain to impose economic sanctions on Israel...

A British Member of Parliament from the ruling Labour party, Gerald Kaufman, has called for economic sanctions against Israel, including cutting off arms supplies, to force it back to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.

... because, after all, Europe has a rich history of denying arms to Israel while it's under attack (see: 1948, 1967). No, what's aggravating is that it still seems reasonable for people to suggest that Israel should "go back to the negotiating table" - as if there's anyone to negotiate with. Details, details.
Omri | |

Sharon Indictment - Yawn

I didn't intend to blog this, mostly nothing has really changed since I blogged about it last time. I was similarly unperturbed about it then. Also because blogging about a Sharon political scandal is like blogging about the weather - it's a regular occurrence and except in rare and severe cases, doesn't really affect anything on the ground.
But since the Western media loves bad news for Sharon (last count: 679 Google News stories with no signs of stopping), I figured I'd comment. And my comment is this: who cares.
(1) Arbel is clearly an anti-Sharon harpie, and most people know it.
(2) No one wants this. An indictment against Sharon is essentially a coup attempt - the nightmare scenario is he steps down, and then the case falls apart. Maybe Mazoz will indict him, but I doubt it. The anti-Arbel forces have precisely the right idea, though -make her take personal responsibility for an actual indictment, so that she's not allowed to continue her political campaign without incurring some costs.
(3) Political scandals help Sharon. Even when he has to stage media events and get cut off for electioneering in the middle of his speech, he turns them to his advantage. This indictment is clearly politically motivated - there's not enough ev to make this case. I think people know that (the next scandal, though, seems to have some legs…)
None of this is making the Western press any less excited - the NYT's breathtaking headline: Call to Indict Sharon Ignites Political Storm". The Israeli press, on the other hand, is either totally unenthused - JPosts's subdued headline: PM indictment draft submitted - or sees the "political storm" breaking the other way - Ma'ariv's headline: "Appel blasts Arbel for 'acting without authority'". So that's why this is still, for now, a non-story. Now if Mazoz actually issues an indictment, all hell will break loose. But we're no closer to that than we were two days ago, and Arbel’s political indictment may have actually put us farther away.

UPDATE: To be fair, I should add that Ma'ariv is using phrases like "political tsunami". But they also ran no less than 3 days of editorials predicting the government's demise for the connections between Sharon and Tennenbaum - and that turned out to be of less than zero significance. So if the Western press is using Ma'ariv to gauge the significance of Israeli political events, that’s their bad.

ANOTHER UPDATE: To give you an idea how illegitimate Arbel's actions have been, consider that even Ha'aretz is coming out with editorial indicting the process for being unfair. JPost is also questioning Arbel's ethics.
Omri | |

Palestinian Cost-Benifit Calculus

Killing Jews versus further impoverishing poor Palestinians? It's a no-brainer (and I mean that literally):

The strike at the Ashdod port is considered in Israel as bold in view of the security at the site. The two suicide bombers exited the Gaza Strip in a container, through the Karni crossing, in a sophisticated ploy that has also harmed the ability of Palestinians to export goods from Gaza.

Apparently, hiding bombs in ambulances wasn't cutting it anymore on the "things that make it impossible for Israel to ease restrictions on the Palestinians" check-list, so destroying commerce from Gaza seemed like a reasonable option for exploration and expansion. The only way that Palestinians trying to launch a mega-attack from inside shipping crates could make Israelis more uneasy about accepting Palestinian goods is if Hezbollah was involved:

Hezbollah financing was behind the suicide bombings at Ashdod Port, which was carried out by Hamas members on March 14, killing 10 Israelis and injuring many others. The Lebanese-based Shi'ite organization was also involved in choosing the site, which is considered a prime target.

It's almost as if they planned it that way; almost as if they thrive on sowing misery into Palestinian society. We have a name for things that live by slowly destroying their hosts - parasites. We have no name for what to call it when an entire society becomes parasitic upon itself.
Omri | |

Someone Get A Newspaper

Around here, we like to think that we're equal opportunity when it comes to pointing out idiocy. But with so much more of it on the Left than on the Right when it comes to the Middle East, we can see how some people would get confused. So we're more than pleased to bring to you this display of get-hit-on-the-nose-with-a-newspaper worthy behavior from some of the more charming elements of Israel's Haredi community:

Dozens of unruly yeshiva students in the southern town of Mitzpeh Ramon prevented an event in which Yahad chairman Yossi Beilin and Labor's Amram Mitzna were to promote the Geneva Accord from taking place on Sunday... Former justice minister Beilin and the former Labor leader Mitzna were attacked by some 60 demonstrators on their way to the hall in which the event was to take place. The protesters bashed on their cars' windshields and tried to hit Beilin. Security guards and a few policemen in the area managed to drive them away.

How did they have the time to go out and disrupt a legitimate political gathering, you ask? It might have something to do with the fact that the government subsidizes their life. Or the fact that they don’t have to be on base, because they don't have to contribute to the national defense. I think that at a minimum, you should only get to violate someone's free speech and undermine a democracy if you've first done something to protect. At a minimum.
Omri | |

Two Jokes

I'm working on some new material, and I've got two jokes but I can't figure out which I like better:
(1) Q: What's the difference between Hamas and ETA? A: Of the two, Spain is only willing to condemn ETA for recent terrorism; or,
(2) Q: What's the difference between Hamas and ETA? A: Only Hamas has actually committed any recent terrorism.
Yeah, I guess you're right - neither are really all that funny. Oh well, back to making fun of the French.
Omri | |

Paging Dr. Freud

As regular readers of this blog know, my academic interests revolve heavily around rhetoric and psychoanalysis (also American Pragmatism, but that doesn't fit into this post). Sometimes, it's difficult to make a connection between the two. Sometimes, it's really not:

"They love power. They know how to get it and they know how to keep it," Clinton said [about Republicans], adding at another point, "They’ve always got white shirts and ties. They’re the 'mature party,' they’re the 'Daddy party.' They remind me of teenagers that got their inheritance too soon and couldn’t wait to blow it."

Mighty strong words from a man who used his political stature to get a vulnerable and insecure girl his daughter's age to... well, you can read the quote as well as I can.

UPDATE: Maureen Dowd, on the other hand, has no background in psychoanalysis and yet insists on trying to encroach on our turf. Her article about Clinton's speech is a hodge-podge of snide, Lefty rhetoric about "little Bush" and "big Bush" (at times, this article comes dangerously close to IndyMedia "Shrub" territory - usually a sign that you're dealing with an especially spoiled and snide college hippy, or a spoiled and snide New York Times columnist). Those issues aside, this part caught my eye:

But while dutiful son John and the uneffusive father who sent him to Swiss boarding school were able to bond when they talked about foreign affairs, black sheep W. and his effusive father spent more time on sports than foreign policy tutorials.
Junior, as he was known in those days, was disengaged from the policy side of his father's presidency. He ran the political loyalty department.

Now, at first you might think that this is just a blue state Manhattanite showing disdain for the way those people in the red states spend their time. But psychoanalysis done well teaches us to look closer - defensive outbursts of sneering hate are the result of strong feelings, and whatever is creating those feelings will always affect how the hate is expressed. Hint: As a child, Maureen Dowd was estranged from and ashamed of her father because he was a blue-collar D.C. policeman. So you see, you shouldn't feel outrage at her arrogance toward fathers who love sports - you should feel pity at her defensiveness. We’re like two verses into Cat's Cradle, except in this case it's the daughter who's "too cool" for her "fascist dad."
Now, someone trained as a psychoanalyst might suggest that perhaps MoDo has a little wish that she too could have bonded with her father about "foreign affairs" instead of sports. Or, more to the point, that she could have bonded with her father at all. That weird paragraph about the "loyalty department?" A psychoanalyst might further suggest that she's almost ashamed that she'd never have been tapped to run a "loyalty" anything for her father. But I'm not a trained psychotherapist, so I can't make those suggestions. I'll have to leave that to someone suitably trained. Cross-reference: projection.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I need to have a chat with whoever is responsible for this - there's another article up today about Bush, Kerry, and psychoanalysis. This time, it's some French guy explaining why Kerry's complete lack of credibility or spine hurts his political appeal:

"The French are thinkers -- 'I think, therefore I am'. Americans want somebody who is going to take action. All this association of Kerry with thinking too much and nuance and five-sentence answers is off-code."
He added: "American culture is an adolescent culture... In America, you have to be the common man, be able to make people think you are the common man."
Rapaille, author of the forthcoming book "Archetypes of the President," specializes in psychoanalysing cultures. His expertise is sought out by major US corporations, and he's often interviewed in US media on mass culture.

I'm not going to get into the not-so-subtle jealousy of a culture that just produced an unpiloted supersonic jet by someone whose culture let 20,000 people die in a heat wave (besides, I don't think that he's giving the French enough credit - surrendering is "taking action" too). And I'm really not concerned that this guy is an effete pansy disdainful of the "common man" - I covered that ground with Dowd above, and you can look up this guy's biography on your own to figure out what the hell is wrong with him.
No, I'm concerned about the fact that he's a lousy psychoanalyst (Nobody cares. -- ed Shut up - everyone loves debates about psychoanalytic minutia). The following is from pg 1 (yes, literally the first page of the Introduction) of one of the clearest, best books on Lacanian psychoanalysis - Lacan and the Political by Yannis Stavrakakis:

Psychoanalytic reductionism... such as attributing war to outbreaks of repressed aggression, the Russian revolution to a revolt against 'the national father image' and 'German National Socialism' to a paranoid culture, that is to say, treating 'society as a patient'... suffering from a psychopathological disorder... has deservedly given psychoanalysis a bad name... Whenever a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, we may be sure that the explanation is false.

In other words, when you see some French consultant blaming the lack of John Kerry's popularity on America's "adolescent culture," you can be sure that his career of "psychoanalyzing cultures" is pretty much a tax on stupid business executives.
Omri | |

Darwin Award Honor Roll

Some things are easy to criticize as potential errors of judgment:

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told Hamas's new leader over the weekend to consider the Lebanese militant group under his command following Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last week.

When the IDF is looking for any excuse to go after anyone associated with Hamas (because their brave leaders have all gone underground and are sending adolescents strapped to bombs into Israel instead), giving them a target may not be the best way to facilitate one's continued health. Alternatively, some things are a little harder to make fun of, because, well, it's tough to choose just one thing to say:

"Consider us in Hezbollah... down to our... women, members of Hamas, and soldiers under your command," Nasrallah told him on Saturday.

You gotta admit, that's a little weird.
Omri | |

Glass Houses, Stones

More from the (other) country Israel has a peace treaty with - Jordanian King Abdullah: Israelis don't want peace. I guess it's real easy to criticize when you don't have to deal with Palestinian violence cause every time they get uppity, you knock off 20,000 of them. Especially when you need Israel to make sure that you can away with it.
Omri | |

''Occupied Palestinian Lands''

The Arab countries often speak of liberating the "occupied Palestinian lands" from Israeli control. They're often joined by Europe and the UN using exactly the same rhetoric. See here, here, and here for some examples. But what if the phrase "occupied Palestinian lands" doesn't mean the same thing to the Arabs that it does to Europe and the UN? This is from Egypt's prominent Al Ahram:


Or worse, what if it does mean the same thing to all of them?
Omri | |

Color Me Shocked

The NYT headline is: "Arab Summit Meeting Collapses Over Reforms". These are democratic reforms, mind you, that totalitarian Arab regimes couldn't agree to. The follow-up meeting has been "postponed indefinitely," which in the vernacular means "canceled until we can work out better ways to blame all our problems on Israel." And here's your understatement of the week:

In a statement, the Tunisian government said it felt that the commitment of Arab states toward reforms — from human rights to a greater role for women — was insufficient for the 22 foreign ministers gathered here to hammer out an agreement on common goals that the heads of state would endorse.

"Insufficient". What was insufficient about it?

Some foreign ministers had refused to include certain words like "democracy" and "parliament" and "civil society," said Oussama Romdhani, an official spokesman for the Tunisian government.

Oh. Later, the article makes that joke about blaming Israel, except it's not really a joke:

But Washington got off on the wrong foot when its Middle East proposal, which laid out a blueprint it hoped the Arab states would follow, was leaked before any Arab leader was aware of its contents.
Many Arab governments had objected to discussing reforms under such direct pressure from the United States. That was particularly true after Israel killed Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, in Gaza days before the meeting.

And really, why should Arab government have to reform while Israel is killing terrorists?

UPDATE: Aww... that's cute - the dictator is going to hold a summit on democracy.
Omri | |

The Real Source Of European ''Fury''

Just the first paragraph of this Financial Times article (subscription only) by Philip Stevens tells you all you need to know about the paper and the columnist:

Behind the bloody despair of what still bears the name of the Middle East peace process, there were apparently serious stirrings. Hard-headed diplomats spoke of glimmers of hope, shafts of light, of a real possibility of politics in place of violence. Israel's Ariel Sharon chose this moment to assassinate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic leader of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic movement.

He's either ignorant or flat out lying. The only game in town for the last month and a half has been Sharon's unilateral withdrawal, which Hamas had responded to by stepping up their attempts to launch a mega terrorist attack. The snide little bit about Yassin being a quadripelgic has been tiring for a long time. This is even weirder though:

The domestic politics of the assassination was clear enough. Mr Sharon has not forgotten the triumph claimed by Hizbollah when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. By destroying the leadership of Hamas, he could pretend the departure from Gaza was a demonstration of strength.

It's not a political issue - it's a military issue. I know that those two aren't exactly exclusive (it could be both a military issue and a political issue), but the "withdraw under fire" issue is primarily a military issue - you can mention that it's a military issue without mentioning that it's a political issue, but to suggest that it's a political issue without noting that it's first and foremost a military issue is misleading (in order words, it's a military issue with political ramifications, not a political issue with military ramifications). Specifically, the argument is that the shameful withdrawal from Lebanon was the main reason for Arafat’s confidence that Israel could be defeated through military means. It was the main reason why he launched a war that has thus far killed over 850 Israelis.
I can't believe that a major British newspaper's Israel columnist could be this clueless about the political, military, and diplomatic situation in the Middle East. I think that these mischaracterizations and outright lies are there so he can set up for the following:

It was this sense of cautious optimism, I think, that explained the fury of European governments at Mr Sharon's decision to kill Yassin. What they thought had been a return to something akin to a peace process had once again been brushed aside in the face of the Israeli prime minister's unabashed contempt for the views of anyone and everyone except the occupant of the White House.

Now you see why Stevens is doing all this work. If Yassin was a poor old man and Sharon is afraid of Hamas for political reasons, then "the fury of European governments" is a legitimate response to Sharon destroying a delicate peace process. If Yassin not, then "the fury of European governments" is a shameful reaction to seeing Jews once again stubbornly refuse to put their heads in a noose.
Omri | |

Tourism Crunch - Who Cares?

One of the dumber arguments that Sharon's opponents have been making is that Yassin's killing will hurt Israeli tourism. They should stop doing that. First, the lives of Israeli toddlers are worth a couple touist shekels. Second, it's false.
Omri | |

Hey Gals, Check This Out

More on Yassin the moderate:

He was plainly the "moral force" behind militant Palestinian tactics. When the Muslim Brotherhood presented eight fresh suicide bombers to a crowd of thousands at Al Azhar University in Cairo two years ago, Mr. Yassin was there via cell phone, congratulating the death squad. That same year, when a 27-year-old Palestinian woman named Wafa Idris became the terrorist movement's first female suicide bomber, he expressed only momentary reservation. She should have been accompanied by a male chaperone, he said. He later qualified that statement. Unless a female bomber is gone overnight, she does not need a chaperone.

So he's not unreasonable - as long as mothers leave their house to go blow themselves up and kill Jews during the day, no chaperone is necessary. That's progress.
Omri | |

Can I Talk To Whoever's In Charge Here?

What the hell is going on in the Ukraine?:

Several hundred decommissioned Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles are unaccounted for in Ukraine's military arsenal, the defense minister told a newspaper...
Hundreds of such missiles from Soviet arsenals in Warsaw Pact member countries had been brought to Ukraine for dismantling but were lost due to "accounting problems," Khivrenko said.
He said the absence of records documenting what happened to the missiles was "strange," and added that an investigation was under way.

No worries - these things aren't nuclear or anything. They're actually most useful for shooting large, slow moving aircraft during takeoff and landing... Oh.
No worries - The Ukrainians say that the missiles were most likely dismantled and they just didn't keep records. Which creates a neat problem - how can you trust someone’s competence to know what happened to missiles that they’re admitting they were too incompetent to keep track of. Yeah, I feel safe.
Omri | |

The Coming Hamas Escalation

When Hamas manages to slip one of their rabid, depraved suicide bombers through and you hear the media say "what do you expect after they were provoked," you should keep the following in mind:

Defense experts have concluded in the last two days that despite the intention of Hamas and other organizations to exact revenge for Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, there would be no dramatic change in the number or intensity of terror attacks.
At one discussion, a Shin Bet representative suggested the Hamas has reached the limit of its capabilities at this point, meaning it undertakes the largest number of attacks it can...
That is based on the fact that for more than a month Hamas has been stepping up its efforts to conduct attacks from Gaza - both inside the Strip, as in the case of the three attacks at Erez junction, and outside, as in the suicide bombings at Ashdod port. Yassin had ordered the expanded Hamas efforts, ahead of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas had already maxed out their efforts because they were hoping to make it look like they forced Israel out of Gaza. Israel gets 95% of the attackers, but the last 5% is horrific - the point remains, however, that Hamas was already throwing everything it had at Israel.
Omri | |

Whatever

The Sharon government can do no right by Ha'aretz's Yoel Marcus. The entire country is in agreement that killing arch-terrorists is a good thing, and this is what he brings to the table:

Did it occur to anyone in that room that a finger would automatically be pointed at us if the train in Madrid had blown up a day after the assassination? Did the ministers weigh the possibility that the whole Islamic world would go berserk? Did they give any thought to the idea that henceforth any terrorist attack, no matter where, would be blamed on us? The Israeli government is responsible not only for the safety of its citizens but for the lives of Jews the world over. Was the threat to Jews and Jewish institutions from possible acts of revenge taken into account?

Israel should not kill people trying to kill Israelis because: unrelated terrorist attacks that will happen anyway will be blamed on Israel (which was already happening); Islamists will get angry at Jews trying to stop people from killing Jews (which was already happening); people will blame Israel for Muslim violence (which was already happening); and protecting Jews in Israel puts Jews in the Diaspora at risk (which was already happening). Brilliant analysis - lets put this guy in charge.

Did anyone consider the timing - two weeks before the Passover holiday, when Israel was expecting a huge wave of tourism for the first time in years?

Did anyone consider the timing - two weeks before the Passover holiday, when Hamas is trying to wipe out entire Israeli families every single day? "Right time" - give me a break. There's no wrong time to kill a terrorist.

UPDATE: I didn't even catch this part the first time around:

To aim higher and go after the top dogs of Hamas is about as smart as Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, which set off the al-Aqsa intifada.

Not even the Barak government thought Sharon's Western Wall visit was responsible for the Intifada - because they knew that the PA had been stockpiling weapons for months in preparation of a full-fledged conflict. At this point, I think Marcus is just making things up.
Omri | |

They Make Movies That Start This Way

This is from the Hamas video of the two terrorists who tried to infiltrate a Gaza settlement a couple of days ago:


In a normal society, these two could have expressed their feelings for each other in a healthy way instead of repressing them until the only outlet they had was to try to kill Jews. Of course, in many Arab and Muslim societies (from Whabbist Saudi Arabia to "secular" Syria) they drop walls on you if you're gay, so that wasn't so much an option for the Hamas folks.
Omri | |

Search Terms Of The Day

Apparently, there's at least some truth to the stereotype that people in the Orient are very conscious of hierarchy and rank. Check out these search terms from Google's Singapore site: "Mr Yassin" of "hamas" and "Arguments".
I have a feeling that anyone who would refer to Yassin as "Mr. Yassin" wouldn't really find Dejafoo to their liking. We're sorry about that.
Omri | |

Waiting For The Other Shoe...

The Palestinians are busily working to get back at Israel for knocking off a Jew-murderer by murdering Jews. In the West Bank, a terrorist took a speed bump a little too fast, and the explosive belt in his van blew it and him up. In Gaza, Hamas tried something new by sending a couple operatives in from the ocean. They didn't manage to infiltrate, but they did manage, in Hamas's words, to "ascend to heaven as martyrs." So I guess that's good for them. Not that Hamas isn't trying, and not that a horrific attack isn't in the works - but a closure has been clamped down on the territories for now.
Omri | |

''Hmm... No''

President Arafat (the only democratically elected President in the Arab world, so you know it's legitimate) hasn't been having a very good week:

The message sent by Israel with the elimination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin along with hints from Chief of Staff Ya’alon, reverberated loud and clear in Yasser Arafat’s office. Fearing a similar fate for the Palestinian Authority Chairman, his men turned to the US, asking them to prevent Israel from killing Arafat.

In 1982, Arafat was facing the same situation. He would have been assassinated in Lebanon had the U.S. not intervened (a relatively famous "we can get him any time anywhere" picture of Arafat in a sniper's scope emerged from this incident). This time it looks like the U.S. apparently wants to join in on the boisterous round of "lets play with Arafat’s head" that Israel is currently holding in Ramallah:

Palestinians requested help from the American Intelligence service - the CIA- to intervene for Arafat’s protection... the US has refused to give a commitment to Arafat’s men that Israel would not eliminate him too.

Arafat needn't worry - he's got at least another couple of weeks until Rantisi is killed, and the Pediatrician of Death is ahead of him on the IDF's list-o-karmic-payback. On the other hand, if the Al Aqsa Brigades continue to display such poor table manners, who knows who might get blamed.
Omri | |

Et Tu Bush?

Has the U.S. made the decision to bring down the Sharon government? Well, maybe the State Department just hasn't been following Israeli politics all that closely (not hard to imagine - they're too busy compiling human rights condemnations). Let’s go over the story thus far:
(1) Sharon is hanging on by a thread, having gambled his political future and historical legacy on an ambitious disengagement plan. If it doesn't pass, he's done.
(2) Bibi's support will make or break the plan in the cabinet and in the Likud. At first, it seemed like the three conditions he outlined were reasonable and doable. But no one is under any delusions what’s on the line:

One of the three conditions Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu set out earlier this week for his approval of the plan – approval that will be critical to getting the plan through the cabinet – is completing the security fence around these settlement blocs before withdrawing from the Gaza Strip.

(3) Buoyed by Bib's seeming support, Sharon went on a line, pushing for his big disengagement plan over a Gaza-only plan:

Israel informed the U.S. that it is prepared to withdraw from the entire Gaza Strip and six settlements in the West Bank.

(4) That gamble. Paying off beautifully:

The United States rejected an Israeli proposal that Washington recognize the West Bank settlement blocs of Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim as regions that will stay under Israeli rule as part of any permanent status agreement with the Palestinians, Israeli diplomatic sources said late on Thursday.
Omri | |

Selective Outrage

The family of the 14, 16 year old who got $20 and the promise of 72 virgins to blow up some Jews is saying that Israel is lying to make the Palestinians look bad:

Husam's... identity card indicates that he has already celebrated his 16th birthday...
Husam's parents have been wondering about the erroneous reports on their son's age, and today the IDF has confirmed that the boy is older than previously claimed. "The IDF and the Israeli propaganda machine are attempting to make headlines by deliberately reporting that he is younger than he is", said Husam's relatives today.

Wow. You see, if he's 16 and not 14, then that makes it OK. The Israeli propaganda machine couldn't possibly make it look bad if an insecure, picked-on 16 year old had been convinced to blow himself up so that he could get some virgins. In a 14 year old, that's sick. But in a 16 year old, that's honorable - not even the Jews could claim otherwise, if they were honest that he was 16.
This is really the level we've sunk to. This kid's parents aren't upset that a privileged group of elites coerced their child to kill himself - they're upset that Israel missed their kid's birthday by two years.
Omri | |

Well I Guess That Counts As Innovation

The Palestinians have a new trick:

IDF soldiers tonight (Thursday) killed three Palestinian gunmen who landed from the Mediterranean at the Katif bloc of settlements in the southern Gaza Strip with the apparent intent of attacking one of the settlements...
Frogmen's equipment was found near the Palestinians' bodies, indicating they had landed from the sea. Military sources noted this is a new modus operandi for terrorist groups in the Strip.

If they put half the effort into building factories that they do into trying to kill Jews, they wouldn't have a state, but at least some of them would have jobs.
Omri | |

Yes, I'd Like Another Cup Of Outrage Please

So we've been following the charming story of the Boy Who Would Be A Suicide Bomber. But just in case you've forgotten:

IDF sappers used a remote-controlled robot to pass scissors to Abdu so that he could cut the explosive belt off his body, and then safely detonated it in a controlled explosion.
Abdu, who was taken in for questioning, said that he received NIS 100 to carry out a suicide attack.
...A Tanzim cell from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus took responsibility for sending the boy.
Abdu told soldiers of his dream of receiving 72 virgins in heaven, which his dispatchers had promised him, and said that he had been tempted by the promise of sexual relations with the virgins. He said that he had been bullied at school for his poor academic performance and that he had wanted "to be a hero."

This is an awkward adolescent who was picked on in school and those animals took advantage of it to try to get him to murder Jews. This is becoming a pattern:

Just last week, soldiers found an explosive charge on a cart pushed by a 10-year-old Palestinian boy at the same roadblock.
The soldiers released the boy after it transpired that he did not know what was in the bag he was carrying through the barricade.

So how were they going to detonate the bomb if the kid didn't know he had it? They were going to detonate it (and the boy) by remote control. Charming.
Omri | |

Hey UN, Shove It

Oh, I'm shocked. Just shocked:

A majority of the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council is expected to condemn Israel for killing a Hamas leader in a resolution to be voted on Thursday, which the United States has made clear it would veto.

It's infuriating that a world body would condemn a nation-state for assassinating a murderer who's life was devoted to murdering their families and was in the process of branching out to trying to incinerate entire towns. Joking aside, it's just outrageous. Even more outrageous is the UN's nonchalant hypocrisy:

The draft resolution... does not mention Hamas as a group responsible for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.


UPDATE: Figures:

The United States on Thursday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution which called for a condemnation of Israel for the killing of Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin...
Eleven nations, including France, Spain, Russia and China supported the resolution. Three nations, the UK, Germany and Romania abstained, and the U.S. used its veto power, and voted against the resolution.

I haven't seen anything on whether this scenario will play out yet, but a veto of a 9+ vote means that an emergency meeting of the General Assembly to be called. I assume it will be called, and it will turn into the usual Israel hate-fest.
Omri | |

''He Needed Killin''

I wonder how long this meeting lasted:

In a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom explained Israel's decision to kill Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

I wonder if Annan got frustrated during the meeting and whined "but we're running out of terrorists for Arafat to funnel UN funds to!"
Omri | |

See, That's Just Sick

Muhammad Deif, the murderer in command of Hamas's military wing (and a soon-to-be jackpot for anyone who's got him on their list for the death pool) has given an interview. Which is sicker - the willingness to wipe out entire families in the interests of murder...

First of all, we [Izz al-Din al Qassam Brigades] have to say that our… people should be proud we have groups of self-sacrificing attackers, and many others wishing to join them. Believe me, entire families, in some cases, wish to volunteer in carrying out "martyrdom operations".

... or the refusal to do it unless you can wipe out other families...

However, the large number of those "living martyrs" cannot blind us from the fact that their blood is dear, and we are not prepared to waste it in cases in which there is a possibility that an attacker would not be able to reach his target and carry out a successful attack.

Not dry-heaving yet? How about this:

It is really a great honor for us to see that the [Palestinian] mothers are the ones who encourage their sons to be martyrs.
Omri | |

Shameless Hypocrites

The details of the Clark debacle aside, there are at least two reasons why Leftist faux outrage about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 focus on terrorism (or lack thereof) rises to the level of "shameless":
(1) The real threat by the time that the Bush administration got into office was not in Afghanistan - it was in this country, where 16 hijackers had already slipped in under the Clinton administration's watch. I can't do better on this point than the inimitable Ms. Coulter:

Suppose Bush had known 19 Muslim immigrants planned to hijack four planes on Sept. 11. What could he have done? Throw Arabs out of the country? Put them in preventive detention? Order airport security to take an extra little peek at swarthy men boarding planes?
Liberals won't let us do that now!
In a girly-girl, eye-poking attack, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., has demanded an investigation into "what the White House knew about the events leading up to 9-11, when they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it." The more urgent question is: What do the Democrats know now?
Memo to Democrats: Muslim men are plotting another terrorist attack on America right now! That's what you know. What are you doing about it? Directing airport security to keep searching white paraplegics at the airport?

(2) It was the Clinton administration's long line of appeasement and brave Aspirin-factory bombing that convinced Al-Qaeda that the US was a paper tiger that would curl up and die in the face of terrorist aggression. If the "feminist" party in the country had just abandoned the President who sexually exploited a woman his daughter's age, maybe we would have had someone sitting in the Oval Office with the political strength to respond to brazen acts of war.
Omri | |

Europe Roundup

The Europeans are in fine form this afternoon.
In a thinly vieled attempt to deprive Israel of home court advantage, Spain has announced that it is refusing to play basketball in Israel. Two jokes, choose one: (1) yeah, because any country where Islamists bomb civilians should be punished for provoking the violence until they elect Socialists or (2) manipulative, spineless cowards.
Hey France, maybe if you burn some more synagogues, the terrorists will leave you alone. After all, they're only burning synagogues because they're upset about the Middle East...

France has struggled against a resurgence of anti-Semitic violence, much of it believed to be by Muslim youths angry about the situation in the Middle East, and has set up special task forces to react quickly to such attacks.

Or then again, maybe it won't help.
Omri | |

Hey Gals, Check This Out

Centuries of Whabbist oppression can really piss you off:

Al Huwayder therefore found a refuge in writing on the Internet, and from there she embarked on a major attack against those whom she defines as "the pathetic and emasculated men of the East."...
"Let's begin with the original land of the Arabs, Saudi Arabia. The most important characteristic borne by the men of this country is the impotence complex. That's the reason why the most common medication among them is a drug against impotence. These men spend more money on its purchase than all the men in the world, in order to achieve the missing sense of masculinity. If we examine them under a microscope, we will see that they are pathetic ... whereas the men of the oil-producing countries were educated on the principle that states that they are the best, the only ones… after they have sat themselves down on a chair to which the title "Director" is affixed. They are afflicted by a chronic germ that has determined that guardianship (of a woman) is a sign of masculinity, and that without it their limbs will not be in balance, and their wives will not do well."

She's like the Chris Rock of Saudi Arabia, except she's not really allowed to go outside without a male relative. Or show her arms. Or talk too loud. But other than that...
Omri | |

Is It Worse To Be A Rude, Ungrateful Traitor?

I'm not sure how I feel about Arab Members of the Knesset applauding at what they consider to be defeats for the Jewish State:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave his endorsement on Wednesday to a bill that would require the support of at least 61 Knesset members to authorize the evacuation of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip...
Immediately following the vote, MKs from the left, notably Arab Knesset members, broke out in applause and celebration.

Of course, you could argue that they were applauding because they thought they were protecting the sanctity of Israeli democracy. But that's not exactly in line with what their constituents elect them to do:

Shouting "revenge, revenge" several thousand Israeli Arabs took to the streets of Nazareth Tuesday to mourn assassinated Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin.
"The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin will fuel Palestinian resistance, and we defend this resistance because we are part of the Palestinian people," said protester Ghairieh Khawlah. "This is a sad day for the Islamic nation."

These are Israeli citizens who vote and hold office openly calling for the murder of their fellow citizens. Where else in the world would that be tolerated? I mean, seriously. Israelis openly calling for the murder of other Israelis, and the world excuses it because the Israelis that're being targeted are Jews.
Omri | |

Dejafoo Scoops Debka On Painfully Obvious Point, Is Awarded No Points

Dejafoo 3/22:

I don't think Hamas actually has the infrastructure to carry out an attack against the U.S. - most of their U.S. presence is limited to CAIR and some shady charities - but it would be a terrible idea for them to try.

Debka 3/23:

Hamas lacks the organization for operations outside the Gaza Strip. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report Hamas can field only one competent operative on the West Bank, Ahmed Bader. But even he is hardly active after lying low for several months in the Ramallah district to avoid the long arm of Israeli security. He is therefore not the man to orchestrate mega attacks.
Omri | |

Darwin Award Nominee

Dumbass:

At least one Palestinian was killed in an Israeli air raid on south Lebanon on Tuesday after firing rockets toward the Jewish state to avenge the killing of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Omri | |

Search Terms Of The Day

We had a very... er... urgent visit from someone using Google earlier today: "army policy on herpes". Looks like somebody slept through that video on hygiene that they show in basic training. We're the 67th link on Google for this search - someone must have been in desperate need of a lot of information.
Omri | |

Hey World, Shove It

The Palestinians murder a sitting Cabinet Minister and the UN tells Israel that it should respond by offering concessions for a peace deal. The Israelis assassinate a guy who sends people to murder Israeli civilians, and the UN holds an urgent meeting to condemn Israel. I couldn't make this stuff up.
And Europe is so self-righteous about it!
The EU issued a statement saying "violence is no substitute for the political negotiations" - and they'd know, what with NATO's affinity for hanging around violent spots without actually doing anything to stop said violence (hey, how's Kosovo going? Two years, and a resurgence of ethnic violence - that's great work guys. Keep it up)
The French said that the assassination "amplifies the cycle of violence." What a bunch of tools. In the UN, they teamed up with the Algerians to condemn Israeli occupation of foreign lands. My understanding is that the deal they worked out stipulates that France will not to invade again and in return Algeria won't militarily humiliate them again.
Luxembourg expressed "fear that we will see new violence." Screw Luxembourg.
Britain said that it doesn't "believe Israel will benefit from the fact that this morning an 80-year-old in a wheelchair was" killed. First, enough with the wheelchair thing already. Second, I think that the veracity of Britain's claim really depends on what you count as a "benefit" - if you count depriving Hamas of the only thing holding it together, then maybe some reevaluation is in order. Third, where was all this concern for costs and benefits when the British were trying to hide their satisfaction with Hamas's "strategic victory" last week.
The Danes said that "there's only one way ahead, and that is political." The Israelis asked what they should do against terrorists like Yassin who say "reconciliation with the Jews is a crime". Crickets thought it was loud in there.
That was Europe. Lets go east and see what's going on in the Muslim and Arab world.
Iran took time out of making the IAEA its bitch to condemn "the Zionist regime's barbarity." Iranian students and dissidents would have commented on the irony, but they don't get TV in the dark torture chambers that they're being kept in.
Lebanon thought that it'd be a good idea to make fun of Israel for occupying South Lebanon. But I think that's just sour grapes because between Israel and Lebanon, only Israel has actually been able to put its troops in South Lebanon in the last 20 years (I can't decide which is more humiliating - to have the entire south of your country occupied by a extra-governmental militia, or to not be allowed to do anything about it becuase the rest of your country is occupied by Syrian tanks).
Jordan condemned the "massacre," but then someone told them that it happened in Gaza and so they didn't have to fear a flood of refugees. They went back to whatever it is that absolute monarchs who have kill 20,000 Palestinians every couple of decades do these days.
This part was my favorite:

Al Jazeera television on Monday interviewed a prominent Islamic leader from Sudan, Hassan Turabi, who made a connection between the Gaza assassination and the goings on in other flashpoints in the Muslim world, such as Chechnya, Indonesia and the U.S. de