Give them an inch:

How about instead of that, Abbas rounds up Hamas, hands them over to Israel, and then goes around the Arab world asking them to stop inciting violence against Jews? I'm just asking for a little reciprocation here.

First the press release from UC Irvine's pro-Israel organizations:

Now the shady, internal email from Haithem El-Zabri (self-description: "Los Angeles-based activist and the editor of Alaqsaintifada.org") calling for people to protest a memorial for victims of terrorism:

If you're in or around Irvine today, it might not be a bad idea to stop in and lend your voice and your presence.

Speaking of El-Zabri, he's having a rough couple of days. His plan to protest the memorial for terrorism victims at the Museum of Tolerance has sadly gone awry:

He's just totally mystified why people would feel uncomfortable protesting a memorial for terrorism victims at the Museum of Tolerance! I mean, who does that? Who really thinks that that's a good idea? The same guy who when, it doesn't work out, throws a temper tantrum and petulantly tries to guilt trip his readers about not showing up to the protest (poor grammar in the original):

This is guy is a regular relations machine. He's also a contributor to aljazeerah.info, palestinechronicle.com, and the ISM's palsolidarity.org. Charming.

The Palestinian street loves to party. Sometimes people party when Jews die. Sometimes they party when Arabs die:

Nothing says "we're ready for peace" like "we love it when people who make peace get killed."

The Europeans never hesitate to condemn Israel for harming innocents and violating international law. Organizations not on European countries' "beyond the pale" list? Hizbullah:

Hizbullah, of course, is rapidly moving into the mainstream:

Hezbollah openly calls for kidnapping Israeli soldiers, even in explicit violation of UN resolutions: legitimize them with an ambassador. Iran threatens to nuke Israel: lets coddle them. Arafat founds and leads an international terrorist war over the course of decades: more talking. What exactly do you have to do or say to Jews before it violates Europe's delicate sensibilities?

The United Nations has gone so far as to reaffirm that Israel did indeed withdraw from Lebanon. I wonder how much diplomatic capital Israel had to spend to get the UN to affirm something that the UN had already affirmed. Opposing the resolution to affirm what the UN had already affirmed were Russia (because they've got that feel-good Cold War feeling), Algeria (because they hate Jews), and Lebanon (because they're Syria's bitch).

Why is this a news story:

Begging the question, of course, of why I'm blogging it [no kidding -- ed. you're not helping].

Of course:

Belmont Club has a long post on the implications behind the all-too-common Islamist practice of destroying other religions' historical and holy sites:

This article is a useful lens through which to examine the on-going destruction of Jewish artifacts on the Temple Mount. The Islamic Wakf authority uses the pretense of "construction" in order to continually remove "debris" - debris that just happens to be rich with thousands of Jewish artifacts. You don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to realize that this is nothing less than a well-planned attempt to obliterate the Jewish link to Jerusalem. The tactical goal may be to strengthen Arab claims to the city, but the sensibility that underlies it is typically Islamist - eradicate knowledge of a pre-Islamist past by destroying material artifacts. It is an explicit enactment of everything that Orwell feared - the destruction of history in order to pervert the future.

When you live in societies that don't allow heckling (free speech what?), you have to develop new ways of destroying speech:

These incidents, occurring with increasing frequency, demonstrate how far Europe's commitment to absolute pluralism has carried them from exactly that goal. The threat of violence has now made it literally impossible to criticize Islam in the Netherlands.

What the hell was he thinking:

I'm skeptical as to the extent to which most of the victims - people from towns and villages without telephones - had been able to form the kind of nuanced understanding of Israeli politics required to literally bring down the wrath of God for being wrong. Then again, I'm no theologian.

Except, not really. Many Iraqi Jews - part of the 600,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab countries in 1948 - have returned home to vote. Since 1948, they've settled in new countries, started new lives, and never once hijacked an airliner, shot up a schoolbus, or blown up a cafe in order to "express their historical trauma." The United Nations never passes resolutions demanding justice for them, and it has never established agencies to help them live comfortably in refugee camps while waiting to "return home." And yet many of them have become quite successful.

There shouldn't be any problem acclimating this society to democracy and the rule of law:

Not that it matters, but it turns out that this poor man was innocent. I'm sure the primitive barbarians who did this in order to "help the Palestinian cause" were very apologetic.

Sharon is positvely giddy about making nice with the Palestinians (money phrase: "uncharacteristically upbeat assessment"). The Americans are already demanding Israeli concessions "in the interests of peace." Mubarak is practically picking curtains for a "Sharon and me" peace-making reality show. He wants Sharon all to himself:

Touching. The only group that's not really into this whole "Palestinians should stop killing Jews" thing? The Palestinians. Opps. (On the other hand, although I'm not hopeful, this seems a touch hysterical. "Eternal infamy" might be a little much).

Madam Secretary Rice is on her way to the Middle East to lend a helping hand to the peace process:

"would probably also meet"? Is there a chance that she won't be bothering to consult the Israeli Prime Minister before trying to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? And then there's this gem:

Even the Palestinian Authority doesn't believe that global terrorism has anything to do with their whatever grievances they might have. Losing Doug Feith is a hit for those who hoped that a more pro-Israel and pro-Bush state department might emerge with Rice's arrival to Foggy Bottom. There are a lot of reasons why a Palestinian state might be a good idea (ok, maybe not "a lot", but there are probably a couple), but dampening international Islamist terrorism is certainly not one of them. Given the State Department's long history of equity and concern for Israel, I can't imagine how them pushing a newly-revitalized peace process could go poorly.

Apparently not-so-subtle anti-Semitic jokes are a little too tame for USC's Muslim Student Union listserv. In response to some USC Jewish groups' Holocaust memorials (and, let's remember, Muslim leaders were not exactly innocent in instigating the Holocaust), members of the MSU's listserv have posted some of the following charming contributions. All misspellings and grammatical cleverness is in the originals. Names and email addresses are withheld to protect the stupid:

And:

The Muslim Student Union is, of course, a university-sanctioned organization whose elected representatives represent USC Muslims to the University and to the community. How could such an environment emerge? On UC Irvine's campus, the administration has told campus Jewish leaders that they are not to refer to themselves as Zionists because that will "undermine dialogue" with Muslims on campus. Put aside the absurd "blame the victim" sensibility that underlies this idea that Jews should be forced to dialogue on terms that deny their right to self-defense or pride - it seems the height of absurdity to believe that the kind of vicious hatred displayed above (prevalent in pro-Palestinian activism across American college campuses) turns on linguistic niceties.

Parts of this article are posted by participants of the January 27, 2005, BlogBurst (see list at end of article), to remember the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, sixty years ago, on January 27, 1945.
On January 20th, we marked the anniversary of the 1942 Wannsee Conference. In the course of that Conference, the Nazi hierarchy formalized the plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Understanding the horrors of Auschwitz requires that one be aware of the premeditated mass-murder that was presented at Wannsee.
Highlighting these events now has become particularly important, even as the press reports that '45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz'.
A more cynical writer might point out that Auschwitz has always been a blind spot for the British. But Briton was not alone in its callous disregard for Jewish life: the United States sent Jewish children from the shores of New York back to Europe. And France, of course, was the only Allied country that actively assisted the Nazis after occupation - they eagerly sent three-fourths of the country's Jews to Hitler's gas chambers.
Today, anti-Semitism has returned to Europe. In Russia, whose army liberated Auschwitz, blood libel is actively endorsed by politicians and intellectuals.
Too many people far too often accuse concerned Jews of hysterics when they warn that the poison of Jew-hatred is again spreading - virtually unchecked - into daily European life. In response, many Jews - especially in the United States - are content to go to Holocaust memorials, to hold all-night vigils, and to sigh heavily if only to continue seeming "reasonable". They won't call out their friends or colleagues for, at the end of the day, simply not caring that Jews are again being physically assaulted in open daylight on the streets of Europe. The great philosopher Karl Popper once tried to defend his father's conversion away from Judaism by angrily insisting that "assimilation worked" in Austria-Hungary. We hear the same refrain from some today - that by not supporting Israel too loudly, that by not being too visibly Jewish - we will help Jews get along in the world. The problem is that this premise is demonstrably false. Those who blithely insist that "it can't happen again" should be reminded that fin-de-siècle Vienna was the most liberal, and the most Jewish, of all modern European cities. That was right before it willingly gave itself over to anti-Semitism and eventually to Nazism. Jew-hatred must be called out for what it is, and those who refuse to do so must be confronted with what it is they are being silent about.