Just kidding, obviously. It was the Lebanese Defense Minister who made that declaration, to the incredible howls of absolutely no protest from anyone, anywhere. Not even 10 to 1 terrorists to civilians - terrorists to soldiers:
If you're in a hurry you can just start around 2:20. But there's a minute or so just before that of him explaining how the Lebanese army was caught totally by surprise, with the soldiers attacked while sleeping in barracks.
Nothing that you didn't already know, but it's nice to have it all laid out:
There's room for disagreement and a touch of dishonesty smuggled in under the banner of even-handedness. Clinton, having dealt with Netanyahu, doesn't really believe that Sharon was anywhere near the most hardline leader on the Israeli political spectrum. But don't let that distract you from what this is: a manifest and explicit admission that Arafat was responsible for the collapse of the peace process.
Israeli missiles hit a Hamas installation in Gaza City on Saturday, and doctors said at least one person was killed and four were wounded.
Hamas reported that two of its members were killed.Another air strike hit a Hamas training camp on the outskirts of Shati refugee camp. There were no reports of casualties.
Incidentally, that first link goes to a story about how Israel could have decapitated Hamas in 2003. Israeli intelligence learned that a terror summit of Hamas leaders was planned, drones confirmed that the entire leadership was in the house on the right day, and the green light was given. The IDF held back from using a bomb that would have collapsed the house - and thus allowed the leadership to walk away - because of... fear of civilian casualties.
So typical. First soldiers of the Palestinian government commit weeks and weeks of war crimes, indiscriminately firing rockets into Israeli population centers. Israel at first declined to retaliate, figuring partly that occasional rocket barrages are the cost of being Jewish in the Middle East, partly that Hamas and Fatah were doing fine retaliating against each other on their own, and partly that the international community would limit Israel's maneuvering room anyway. Then - inevitably - someone got killed and Israel had to defend its citizens.
The U.N. Security Council should "shoulder its responsibilities" and call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, as well as consider sending international observers to monitor it, the Palestinian U.N. observer said Thursday. Riyad Mansour said it is time for the U.N.'s most powerful body, which has been paralyzed on Palestinian-Israeli issues, to help restore peace and stop escalating attacks and arrests by Israel.
Despite the UN's past enthusiasm in shielding Israel's Arab enemies from the consequences of their own actions, the Hamas leadership is fearful that the world won't be able to leash Israel in time. So they're also going with their backup playground-like plan of suckerpunching Israel and then promising not to do it again if only Israel will not retaliate:
Spokesmen from the warring factions in the Palestinian Authority were considering a halt to Kassam rocket fire, in return for an Israeli truce - specifically and end to IAF tactical operations - in the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported Saturday morning. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza said that his organization would wait to see how the coming 48 hours would play out and then decide whether to abide by a truce.
The beautiful thing about this Hamas strategy is that Israel, retaliating less than a week after deadly strikes on Israeli schools and hospitals, ends up getting blamed for starting the violence. The Hamas leadership boasts about how their brave soldiers are striking blow after blow against the Zionist Jews, and then as soon as Israel defend itself Hamas gets to call a time-out. And if Israel actually has the nerve to try to hold someone accountable for Hamas's war crimes - well, the world's press will scream about how Israel is "breaking the fragile 48-hour truce". This happens every. single. time.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, something special: Robert Woolwine's blogspace Tasha and Dishka shrine. When MR gets the restraining order, this post will certainly be a top-ten defense exhibit.
If this doesn't convince the left that action must immediately be taken to stop an irredeemably evil Iranian regime, we're not sure that it's even worth talking to each other any more. If we can't come together over the idea that beer is a cause worth fighting and dying for, then political deliberation in this country is truly dead. Psychopaths [content warning for graphic picture]:
Mamandy, a Kurd, explained that he was visiting his mother in Baneh, Iran in April when he was arrested by police. "We were on an outing with family and friends, six or seven in the evening, and were having a barbecue and enjoying ourselves. Altogether I drank two beers. The police happened to drive by," Mamandy said. He said that he was immediately arrested and taken to the police station where he was sentenced to 130 lashes. This sentence, for beer drinking, was carried out publicly according to news agency Iran Focus.
We understand that watching Iran destroy Israel may not over disturb the hearts and minds of New York fashionistas, but with Ahmadinejad declaring declaring today that the World Will Come Under Political Flag of Iran - well, our liberal brothers and sisters, let us ask you this: where will you get your PBR from then?
Fully 69% of Muslim Americans say that the Islamic religion treats men and women equally well. Only about a quarter of Muslims (23%) believe that Islam treats men better than women. Notably, Muslim women are about as likely as men to say that Islam treats members of both sexes equally well... among Muslims who say religion is very important - 72% of all U.S. Muslims - an overwhelming majority (80%) says that Islam treats men and women equally well.
The more religious an American Muslim is - that is, the more likely they are to self-identify with religious rather than secular versions of Islam - the more they insist that Islam treats men and women equally. Ummm...
But you can't break teeth. He's very clear about that. No breaking teeth during the wife beatings. We kind of think he's being genuine here, in his own pathological, woman hating way - be seems genuinely upset about the prevalence of women who get their heads and legs cracked apart by their husbands in the name of Islam. Which brings us to this little logic puzzle:
(1) When people point out that Islamic law insists upon the superiority of men over women - that women are ordered by Muhammad himself to bow before their husbands - apologists talk about Islamic practice.
(2) When people point out that Islamic practice evinces surreal levels of sexism - that vicious beatings to the point of broken bones are the mere physical manifestation of pathological hatred for women - apologists talk about how that's a perversion of Islamic law.
Ummm... It appears to us that neither is particularly kind to women. An overwhelming majority of American Muslims insist that the Muslim view on men and women is actually egalitarian and equal. Which kind of begs the question: how are we going to convince the Muslim world to stop its pathological abuse of women if even the most Western, integrated Muslims in the world don't admit there's a problem?
Like clockwork, human rights organizations publish articles condemning Israel for how "even ambulances, doctors and medical teams on emergency calls have to wait". We screencap so that we don't have to link to these viciousirrational useful idiots, but a short Google search based on the text should do the confirmatory work if you're so inclined:
And like clockwork, we link to a demonstration of exactly why ambulances and "patients" have to wait at Israeli checkpoints. Hint: they smuggle suicide belts.
No seriously, it has nothing to do with the depths to which Palestinians will go to murder Israeli civilians. It's just the Zionists are cruel and heartless.
The DARPA packmule can carry 6 ruck sacks and stabilize itself in just about any terrain. Perfect for chasing down desperately fleeing human mine slaves. In fact, were we the DARPA workers, we would not be so callously kicking the potential future supervisor of Human Salt Mine #5420.
Meryl pointed out early last week that the usual organs of British anti-Israel agitprop have been quite unsuccessful in rallying respectable Brits to their cause. Certainly a cause for hope, especially as it seems that France may be tossing and turning fitfully in its slumber as well.
But for every step forward:
For the second time in half a century, European Jewish girls are being viciously beaten in open public spaces for no crime greater than being Jewish. The double loyalty canard - "are you English or a Jew" - is especially interesting coming from theocratic lunatics bent on destroying the British way of life. It's almost like they'll use any excuse to attack Jews.
We've been looking for a post to drop this video into. Wouldn't you know it, the link was latent global anti-Semitism:
American Jewish Congress president Richard Gordon has demanded that the World Medical Association - an umbrella body of national medical associations - dismiss a call for a boycott of Israeli physicians. In a letter sent last week to World Medical Association President Dr. Nachiappan Arumugam, Gordon said the call by a group of British doctors for the expulsion of the Israel Medical Association from the world body was based on both "factual and legal distortions." The main argument made by the British doctors was that Israel had "systematically flouted the fourth Geneva Convention guaranteeing a civilian population unfettered access to medical services and immunity for medical staff."
Here's the thing about that - the ethical questions in this debate are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. When you compare what Israeli doctors are willing to undergo to fulfill their medical oaths - where they treat Palestinian patients who later return to blow up their hospitals - to accuse them of immorality is obscene. But let's not neglect the actual consequences of the WMA's sham morality. Israeli medicine routinely makes staggering contributions to the world:
Trying to destroy that network - the robustness of the Israeli medical establishment internally, and its international ties externally - that's the real violation of medical ethics. When anti-Israel posturing is (a) unjustified, (b) useless, and (c) self-destructive - at that point, do we get to say that maybe it's not being driven by clear-headed reasoning, let alone by passionate morality?
Watch CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar address the Pew results. Watch MSNBC's Amy Robach almost totally not see how she's being taken for a ride. The intellectual dishonesty on CAIR's part was probably unintentional - legally trained professional spokespeople are often sloppy with their language:
This 1 percent number is being parroted in other places. Ace has an intimidatingly comprehensive catalog of media lying with statistics, but we want to look specifically at this 1 percent argument that's getting thrown around. Here's what Iftikhar said:
If you look at the number of total respondents, only 1 percent of respondents said that suicide bombings would be often justified and so...
Now listen to Robach's original lead-in:
1 in 4 Muslims under 30 think that suicide bombings are justifiable acts
She means 26 percent, but we'll let it slide. She's genuinely surprised when he quotes the 1 percent figure back at her, because she obviously has no idea where it's coming from. Her guess, for what it's worth, is only half right (and not the half that matters). Someone should have prepped her on the numbers, just on the slim possibility that CAIR would try to be intellectually dishonest. As it turns out, the trick here is pretty transparent. A little tip for public relations flaks: if you're trying to mislead people while maintaining plausible deniability, it's rhetorically inadvisable to almost exactly repeat a question, with only your critical change dangling in the wind. For example, if you're on the air and you need to fudge a statistic, you shouldn't repeat most the interviewer's exact phrase - "... that suicide bombings are justifiable" - while obviously inserting your own caveat - "... that suicide bombings would be often justified". It's just poor form.
Robach is talking about the percent of American Muslims who think that suicide bombings against civilians are "ever" justified. That's obvious to anyone who's read the report, but it's also pretty clear to anyone who's trying to understand the plain meaning of her question. The addition of the word "often" by apologists is not an accident. Here are the relevant tables (full Pew report here [PDF]):
The 1 percent figure comes from information outside the table, where the study authors specify that the breakdown for top table's 8 percent "Often/Sometimes" is 1 percent "Often" and 7 percent "Sometimes". So already you've got 8 percent of all Muslim Americans. The "Rarely" column adds another 5 percent. The total is 13 percent, which is the number that gets bundled into the "Ever" column of the second table.
So to be absolutely precise: the total percent of all American Muslims who think that intentional suicide bombings targeted at civilians are at least occasionally justified in defense of Islam is 13 percent. That's more than 1 in 10 - not exactly the comforting "percent of people who think the White House is controlled by Martians" line that CAIR is running.
That's just the rank intellectual dishonesty part of their defense. It's before we even get to what might be an honest debate - whether we should be looking at total respondents or the 18-30 year old bracket. That's on the second table, where the 26 percent comes from - this generation of Muslim-Americans who think that suicide bombings are justifiable. We think there are good arguments for emphasizing this number more than the total 13 percent number. But no one can have that debate because in the meantime apologists won't stop pushing this 1 percent number.
The 1 percent number is relevant only if you think anyone would be comforted by knowing that 13 percent of American Muslims only occasionally think that mass slaughter of civilians in defense of Islam is justifiable, but 1 percent want it to happen often. Since we don't think that anybody can really believe that that's what this debate is about, we're going to go with the "they're being intellectually dishonest" angle. But we're open to arguments about why they might just be egregiously stupid.
Here's the thing - when this little girl screams at the top of her lungs about beating the drums of jihad, do you think she's talking about jihad like peaceful self-overcoming jihad? Because many of our friends on the left insist that that's what she's talking out, so we're a little confused. Make sure you get to the part where she actually acts out how the Zionists have made the world's Arabs and Muslims blind and deaf. It's precious in that elementary school play kind of way:
We bet that she has a beautiful singing voice. We'd be worried about her voice - those rapturous screams at the end seemed kind of straining - but in a year or two she'll probably be married off. Then her vocal cords will get decades and decades of rest from having to do things like "vocalize a personal opinion" or "talk in public."
Oh, and before we forget: how typical or Arab and Muslim media.
The nutroots are fond of talking about how everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts. That's obviously true, but they have a little trick that lets them keep the facts they like and ignore the facts that they find inconvenient. When confronted with a demonstrably true statement - say, "the Palestinians have failed to live up to the vast majority of their obligations" - anti-Israel advocates (and many of its ostensible friends) will insist that we don't yet have enough information to conclude that this ostensible "fact" is something worth acting on.
The standard for proof imposed on inconvenient facts is impossibly high. Either what would count as proof is unrealistic (as in the case of conspiracy theories that stack the deck against disproof) or what counts as a conclusion is deferred indefinitely into the future.
What's underneath these not very complicated cognitive gymnastics may sometimes be genuine - we'll reserve our judgment on that question for specific cases. But the result is often a de facto embrace of elements that aren't precisely what we were taught to think of as progressive:
Drawing moral equivalences between Israel and its enemies is so mindbogglingly bad argumentatively that it's obviously driving by something different from clear and deliberate reasoning. It's just impossible to look at the study the situation closely and objectively and claim that the Israelis and their terrorist enemies are after the same thing or use the same tactics.
References:
* An Open Mind [SOUTALKUFFAR / YouTube]
30+ terrorists and terrorist enablers arrested overnight, including the charmer responsible for the textbooks in Palestinian schools.
Israel Defense Forces troops arrested 33 senior Hamas officials including legislators, mayors and one cabinet minister early Thursday, the army said. The raid was the latest strike against the Islamic militant group, in the wake of Hamas rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli border towns. The most prominent Hamas politician to be arrested was Education Minister Nasser Shaer. His wife, Huda, said soldiers knocked on the door of their home in the West Bank city of Nablus and took him away. Troops also seized Shaer's computer, she said.
Over forty Hamas members have been killed in airstrikes this week alone. This has caused Hamas leaders - now aware that they enjoy far less immunity than they thought international duplicity guaranteed them - to react in exactly the way that brave martyrs react. By offering to back down if only Israel will promise not to hurt them:
Israel's threat to target senior Hamas leaders in response to the Kassam rocket attacks from Gaza has prompted the group to agree to a unilateral cease-fire with Israel, Palestinian Authority officials said Wednesday. "Hamas wants to stop the Kassam rockets. They are especially worried about reports that Israel may assassinate [PA Prime Minister] Ismail Haniyeh and [Hamas chief] Khaled Mashaal," the officials told The Jerusalem Post.
Apparently the UN and EU's skirts weren't quite broad enough this time around. No seriously, we're not being sarcastic. That's what these brave martyrs count on, and they tremble in naked fear if they can't take potshots at Jews without any real fear of retaliation:
Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel also expressed concern over the Israeli threats against Haniyeh and Mashaal. He confirmed that Haniyeh had postponed his meeting with Abbas several times because of the threats. "We don't have Arab or Western assurances that Israel won't try to assassinate the prime minister," he said, warning that the Palestinians' response would be "very painful."
If we were that definitionally pathetic, we'd be a lot more circumspect about putting on thuggish airs. But we haven't spent the last half century being coddled by an international community that patronizingly excused even the most vicious lashouts and incitements - and we imagine that such a pathological relationship is probably pretty corrosive.
Ami Ayalon has a slight edge over Barak going into the next election. That should be (and is) bad news to Netanyahu, who would much rather not be the only candidate to have been voted out of office going intot he next election. It also looks like the Labor primary is going to be decided in the first round, which means that the 20 percent of votes that are going to the bottom three Labor candidates are about to get put in play. No one is going to throw away their vote in a use it or lose it situation.
That's about all there is to talk about this morning, since neither Kadima or Likud are about to interfere with the impending Labor bloodletting. Hot wars also tend to silence political sniping, even in Israel. But just so you won't feel cheated, here are some Bibi videos that we know you know we know you love. Bibi's Cavuto interview from last Monday...
... and a very, very terse explanation of the same dynamic:
We're almost beginning to think that this Iranian nuclearization thing is something we should be worried about.
After a relatively quiet day in southern Israel, at least four Qassam rockets were fired Wednesday evening from the Gaza Strip. Two rockets landed shortly after 8 pm in the Sderot area, one of them inside the city. One woman suffered from shock. Another two rockets landed south of Asheklon, one of them killing a mare in Kibbutz Nir Am. The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, claimed responsibility for firing a one of the rockets Wednesday evening.
Now some of you might be saying "given these attacks, plus Hamas's promises to keep firing rockets - this would be an especially stupid time for certain European countries to begin giving Hamas direct aid". You must be new around here:
Norway is set to make the first transfer of direct aid to the Palestinians' new government, the foreign minister said Monday - more than two months after the Nordic country broke with most Western nations by recognizing the Hamas-led coalition. "Palestinian Finance Minister Fayyad has now structured a financial account by which we can channel our support," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said. Norway soon will transfer $10 million to that account, Stoere said.
Because really - beside ubiquitous genocidal promises, systematic child brainwashing, and actual war crimes - what has Hamas done to make you think that they shouldn't get money? How biased and one-sided of you.
Abbas, Haniyeh meet in attempt to reach truce. Palestinian president, prime minister fail to reach agreement on ceasefire with Israel. Members of military wings tell Ynet rocket fire will continue in spite of Abbas' efforts to halt it
Then again, it's not like they've really got a truce truce going. It's kind of a truce, except for how Fatah members are killing Hamas members over their beards. So it's not quite a ceasefire. But it's close enough to breathlessly announce as progress and unity to the world. Our current favorite breathless The Truce Is Back On headline is something Ha'aretz had up for like 30 seconds before they thought better of it and changed it to Hamas, Fatah officials: Internal fighting in Gaza is far from over:
Iran continues to defy UN Security Council demands to scrap its uranium enrichment program and has instead expanded its activities, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday, in a finding that sets the stage for new council sanctions. The report from Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, also faulted Tehran for "blocking IAEA efforts to probe suspicious nuclear activities, saying that meant it could not provide assurances about ... the exclusively peaceful nature of its atomic program." And, in new and worrying phrasing, it expressed concern about its deteriorating understanding of unexplored aspects of the program, despite four years of a probe sparked by revelations that Tehran had been clandestinely developing enrichment and other nuclear activities that could be used to make weapons for nearly two decades.
We'd better get the UN on this as soon as possible. You have no idea what could be happening there. They could be doing anything - even developing nukes! Not that there's any reason to believe that they are, but, you know - hypothetically.
Real quick about this leak that Bush is trying to destabilize Iran: we're kind of with Andrew Sullivan on this question. Not really all that much of a leak. Did anyone think that the US doesn't have a covert program meant to destabilize the Iranian regime (bracketing, of course, whether it's any good or not)? Because that's a depth of incompetence that even we haven't accused covert US agencies of.
Just kidding. Obviously it's only the Lebanese Defense Minister who gets to say that:
Lebanon's defense minister issued an ultimatum Wednesday to Islamic militants barricaded in a Palestinian refugee camp to surrender or face death in a military onslaught, as the army reinforced its positions, raising fears of what could be a bloody showdown. Since Sunday, heavy clashes between the al Qaida-inspired Fatah al-Islam militant group and the Lebanese army have left some 50 people dead and dozens wounded near the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
Next thing you know, there'll be an Arab country building a wall to keep the terrorists away from civilians. And Amnesty International won't utter so much as a peep. That would be totally insane.
Anderson Cooper brings his perennially tear-brimmed baby blue eyes to bear on the shocking - shocking - news that many young Muslims in the United States support suicide bombing:
This is as opposed to the LA Times, which is dealing with this shocking - shocking - news by attacking the messenger. It's not even a good ad hominem - it's like they're not even trying any more.
Sorry for the week-long hiatus, and thanks to all of you who checked in to make sure that everything was alright. Our understanding is that the Palestinians spent last week acquitting themselves - from Egypt to Lebanon - in precisely the way one would expect of people who most definitely should immediately be given a state. This is us being shocked.
Updates to begin flowing again in the next few hours like so much milk and honey.
Shiri Maimon is the diva who got 2nd place Israel's American Idol clone Kokhav Nolad (A Star Is Born). Here she is lip-syncing to a Britney Spears mix. No, no - don't thank us. It's really our pleasure to help:
There's also a video floating around of her singing Hatikva at a soccer game that focuses on the emotions of the crowd and the players. We'll probably post it some Tuesday in the near future, as it is quite good.
As the JIBs wind down - and as the beating that we received begins to purple into deep psychological bruising that will take years to cope with - we'd like to take a moment out of our normal schedule to castigate all of you who didn't vote for us. May your cats wake you up before daybreak, may your dogs fetch you copies of the LA Times, and may your children find Noam Chomsky fascinating.
Except only kind of. We're of course beyond grateful to all of you who voted and wish great ill on those of you who didn't, but honestly we're kind of happy to have all of you around to rant at. We won't get teary-eyed about how all of you are the reason we blog - you wouldn't believe us anyway, since it's obvious that we only do this to get chicks. But we don't think we're revealing any state secrets when we tell you that writing into the ether is a lot more worthwhile when there are people on the other side reading and - hopefully - sometimes even nodding.
Still, if some kind soul is interested in sparing us years of therapy:
Hamas blames world, Israel and Arabs - The international community, Israel and Arab countries are to blame for the current inter-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip for failing to life an economic siege on the Palestinians, a senior Hamas official said Wednesday. The remarks by Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, came as fighting renewed between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza early Wednesday... Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press by telephone in Damascus. "The continued financial and political siege has pushed matters to this simmering tension."... "The Israelis are behind all these events... This is a constant pressure that has led to a real explosion."
Poor babies. We'd have a lot more sympathy for the "it's because you're not giving us money" whine if the international community hadn't tripled aid to the Palestinians in 2006. Not that "a lot more" would be "very much at all" - but it would still be more. Anyway, while Hamas was blaming Israel and Fatah for conspiring against the Palestinian people, Fatah was blaming Israel and Hamas:
Fatah legislator Jamal Abu Rub said Hamas and the IDF were responsible. "The time has come for our people to realize that there is a huge conspiracy by mercenaries to destroy the Palestinian Authority," he said. "The security situation in the Gaza Strip is intolerable. We can't remain idle in the face of the atrocities committed by Hamas and Israel."
We expect the UN and the Red Cross to condemn this outrage not at all:
A nurse traveling in an ambulance was shot in the head and killed after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Fighting raged close to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's heavily guarded compound, which was also targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight. Abbas was not present. Early Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak, before storming inside, lining six Fatah bodyguards up against the wall and shooting them dead, Palestinian security and medical officials said.
The Palestinian public elected Hamas on a platform of warmongering. As a rule, hatred and resentment rot a society from inside - this is the result.
They're working out so well in Lebanon - what with their well-known success in stopping arms smuggling - that they'd naturally work out in Gaza:
Italy would consider sending peacekeepers to the Gaza Strip if the Palestinian government requested help to end factional fighting, Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said on Wednesday... "If the Palestinian Authority asked for international help to guarantee security in Gaza, that could be considered," he [s]aid. "... Italy is leading the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. D'Alema said last year that if the Lebanon force proved effective, a similar force could be used in Gaza.
How about this? How about the world doesn't step in to shield the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank from the consequences of their disastrous warmongering? It'd be a radical departure from the last five decades - and we wouldn't want people to step out of their comfort zone - but we're just suggesting that maybe something new might not be uncalled for.
Or Italy could send in peacekeepers to ineffectively prevent Arab intransigence while limiting Israel's ability to protect its citizens. Maybe the hundred and forty second try will be the charm.
Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, a critic of evangelist Jerry Falwell in life, has voiced sadness at his death, calling him a "dear friend of Israel" who would be greatly missed. The folksy, small-town preacher who used the power of television to found the Moral Majority and turn the Christian right into a mighty force in American politics during the Reagan years, died Tuesday at 73. "Despite our many disagreements through the years, we were saddened to learn of the loss of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. He was a passionate leader of Christianity in America and a dear friend of Israel." Foxman said in a statement.
Among other things, Rev. Falwell was an incredible supporter of the debate community that we're part of. We'll forgive a lot for that alone - to say nothing of the respect that we have for anyone who is confident enough to subject their beliefs to the give and take of argument. He provided support to run a huge tournament every year at Liberty, large enough for everyone in the region from the least to the most experienced. As long as he was around the Liberty debate team wanted for nothing - he genuinely believed in having people examine and defend what they want other people to believe. The Liberty tournament always ended with a lavish banquet to which he would personally show up to give a speech. Then, after the speech, he would answer any question from anyone in the crowd. He was one of the smoothest and most charismatic people we've ever watched work a podium, even when his interlocutors were annoying and arrogant first years enamored with being impertinent ("but doesn't the Bible say we have to love everybody? how can you..." - give us a break). He never lost his poise, and suffice to say that over many, many years we never saw anyone crack Falwell.
Israeli army helicopters fired missiles Wednesday afternoon at a Hamas building in the southern Gaza Strip, killing four members of the Islamic group and wounding 20 others. The army said the building situated in Rafah along the border with Egypt was used by Hamas to plan terror attacks.
Here's a dramatic illustration of why Israel doesn't want to get involved in the maelstrom that the Palestinians are whipping up for themselves in Gaza: the IDF air strike killed four Hamas members, right? That's still one less Hamas member than Hamas themselves managed to kill in the last few hours of fighting:
Hamas gunmen mistakenly ambushed on Wednesday a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five of them, in the bloodiest day of Palestinian infighting since violence erupted in the Gaza Strip four days ago.
Forget killing as many Hamas members as Fatah - Israel can't even keep up with the number of Hamas members that Hamas is killing. Not that it will stop our chattering classes from weeping tears of frustration and anger about how horrible Israel is for attacking the oppressed and occupied Palestinians in Gaza.
That's exactly how to express disapproval that the Palestinians chose to elect warmongering genocidal lunatics. Just totally effing perfect:
Donations to the Palestinian Authority almost tripled last year as a result of the international boycott of the Hamas government, according to a report published this month by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Aid in 2006 totaled $900 million, up from $349 million a year earlier. The boycott meant that most countries refused to channel money directly to the PA, and Israel refused to transfer the tax revenues it collects on the PA's behalf. However, Arab and Western nations continued and even increased their donations, channeling them through either a "Hamas bypass" mechanism known as the Temporary International Mechanism (TIM), or the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. This money, which compensated entirely for the halt in Israeli tax transfers, partially financed the salaries of PA employees and was used to make welfare payments to the needy.
Only the UN could write that aid tripled "as a result" of a boycott. Usually those words mean different things, but whatever - the important thing is to remind everybody that other countries care about Israel and are boycotting Hamas. So much for the "crippling American and Israeli boycott" of the Palestinians. Here's a little visual demonstration of how spectacularly the international flood of aid is working out:
The Kinnor Lyre, mentioned throughout the Bible, was played by the Levites in the Temple before it was destroyed and the Jews expelled. Long after that, of course, the Hatikva came to express the yearning to once again create a Jewish home in the Holy Land:
You can find more about the history of this haunting instrument here and here.
UPDATE 03 (12:55 PST):
For the next day or so you're going to see the IDF in a holding pattern. Helicopters will hover over Sderot and northern Gaza to try to limit rocket fire until a meeting this evening between Peretz and army brass. Last Sunday the regularly scheduled security cabinet meeting apparently worked out a number of contingency plans in case of a major rocket attack. They'll choose one of those plans, the orders will go out, and some kind of operation will be implemented.
The only thing that might possibly hold off a ground invasion is if the government decides that Hamas and Fatah are killing more of each other than the IDF thinks it can reasonably do in short order. Which would be a frustrating decision, but not necessarily a numerically unjustified one. There's nothing in the English-language Hebrew media that indicates pressure for a ground operation from anyone starting with the center-right on leftward, so the decision will probably be to escalate air strikes. Invading Gaza while the Palestinians are tearing themselves apart might be more trouble then it's worth.
Then again - rockets are falling on schools and homes, on mothers and children. That can't go on.
UPDATE 02 (12:50 PST):
Hey, you know how you're going to be hearing that the Palestinians dropped a dozen rockets on schools and houses today because of their "legitimate grievances" about the "occupation"? Yeah, that's a bald faced lie:
According to Hamas' armed wing, it fired the rockets to mark Nakba Day, on which Palestinians commemorate what they call the catastrophe of Israel's creation.
Their grievance is the existence of the Jewish state. Don't let the LA Times tell you otherwise.
UPDATE 01 (12:45 PST):
Ha'aretz has the lede as a moderate injury to the mother who was hit when the rocket scored a direct hit on her home, but then clarifies that it's "moderate to serious". Which almost certainly means shrapnel - so at a minimum, the woman is maimed for life, has lost her house, and has a four year old son who was also hit. People need to start understanding what's going on in Sderot: it's like being in the middle of a war, with rockets falling out of the air on your house and schools. Think of an actual war - WWII - and think of bombs dropping from the sky. That's daily life there, and this tragedy was inevitable.
Original:
JPost is reporting dozens of rockets, with injuries in excess of 20 people. Hamas is threatening to fire dozens more rockets at Israeli schools and hospitals unless Israel does whatever it is Hamas wants Israel to do.
David Groder of One Jerusalem had just finished posting video of a rocket flying by right in front of him. The rocket attacks are coming from Hamas soldiers and are scoring direct hits on Israeli schools and houses - that would be a war crime if committed by the troops of any other government anywhere else on the planet, but we're kind of skeptical about the global condemnation that's about to ensue. Or rather - we're quite confident that world leaders will be expressing "concern" and urging both sides to "think about the day after", but we kind of think that they're going to wait until the impending Israeli response to this outrage.
GIYUS just posted an action alert asking people to email world leaders and express their outrage. Do with it what you will - we're generally skeptical of these things, but they certainly can't but help blunt world criticism. You're probably going to be most effective aiming your emails toward the US Congress and State Department, since those are the only places where condemnation of Israel's impending counterattack are not a forgone conclusion.
For the thirtieth or fortieth time this year, all estimates of Iranian nuclearization have been proven overly optimistic. Good job Europe!
Iran has overcome its technological hurdles and is now enriching uranium at a far larger scale then ever before, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The report cited an inspection notice written by International Atomic Energy Agency officials as saying that inspectors visiting Iran's main nuclear facility in Natanz on Sunday found that Iranian engineers were already using an estimated 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors... While knowledge of the large number of Iranian centrifuges already in place is nothing new, what the inspector's report revealed is that these centrifuges are now enriching uranium and running smoothly.
No worries. Given negotiations some time. No doubt they'll bear fruit one of these days. Whether that day comes before or after Iran makes good on its promise to rain down tens of thousands of missiles on the Jewish State - well, that's hardly Europe's problem. In fact, there's an entirely incorrect but very popular understanding of Muslim fanaticism that suggests that it might actually solve some of Europe's problems. If we were just a little bit more paranoid, we might even begin to suspect a link between those two policies. But alas, no - we make it a policy never to ascribe to malice what can be explained as a deeply rooted historical tendency toward rank appeasement.
Apparently Olmert and Peretz are under the impression that their security credentials are solid enough to take a less than hard line:
Israel’s Security Cabinet gave permission to the IDF on Sunday, 13 May 2007 to act more freely in fighting Palestinian terror from Gaza. Though it did not authorize a marked change in the way the IDF defends the South from PA rocket attacks and other terror attempts, it ceased the policy of having IDF commanders approve all operations with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz... Meanwhile, though Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi is in favor of a wide-scale ground offensive, he is currently against the move since the Government is unwilling to agree to prolonged operation to uproot the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.
One Jerusalem has a wealth of recent calls and interviews about the intolerable situation in Sderot. For all the global hysterics about the "daily hardships of Palestinian life," it's only the residents of Sderot that are literally getting bombed day in and day out. It's almost like there's a smidgen of global hypocrisy at work. Almost.
Doug Farah describes the open and explicit emphasis that jihadists are placing on the recreation of the caliphate:
The Times of London notes the increasing importance the al Qaeda-affiliated groups on Iraq are placing on establishing a militant Islamist state in the Sunni regions of Iraq. My colleague Evan Kohlmann has a translation of a leader of al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq, where an important theme is, again, the conquest of specific territory in order to establish the beginnings of God's kingdom on earth. These two fragments are but a small sampling of the growing, overt emphasis that the _jihadists_ place on establishing the physical caliphate on earth. It is not, in their minds, a fantasy, but a real and concrete objective to be achieved in conjunction with the divinely-blessed move toward spreading jihad across the globe.
The sophisticated justification for appeasement goes something like this: going softline on jihad-sponsoring Muslim states and hardline on Israel won't placate the lunatics, but it will cut off their critical public support. But it seems like that support is for their goal of establishing a caliphate and not for resisting the US (in Hannibal Lector's immortal sneer, that is incidental). So if Israel is overrun by Islamic lunatics, it seems like popular belief in the ability of radicals to take over Western land and establish sharia would increase rather than decrease. Although maybe there are deaf, dumb, and blind Muslims in the Middle East who would be unaffected by the destruction of Israel. Good point: we hadn't considered that.
We're sure that this quote has been getting passed around, but our RSS reader decided that it didn't like the posts from last Wednesday-Friday and acted accordingly. So it's new to us:
In addition, MEMRI researchers monitoring jihadi Web sites have recently found Islamists trying to influence American anti-war efforts. On the Islamist Al-Mohajroon Web site, someone with the username Al-Wathiq Billah instructs readers on how to infiltrate popular American Internet forums to distribute jihadist films and spread disinformation about the war. "There is no doubt, my brothers, that raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war ... and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army. This American is an idiot and does not know where Iraq is ... Every electronic mujahid" must engage in this raiding, Mr. Billah writes.
Mr. Billah advises his jihadist readers to "register yourself using a purely American name" and to "invent stories about American soldiers you have personally known (as classmates... or members in a club who played baseball and tennis with you) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves." The writing should, he says, provoke "frustration and anger towards their government, which will ... render them hostile to Bush ... and his Republican Party, and make them feel they must vote to bring the troops back from Iraq as soon as possible."
This is what "not anti-war, just on the other side" means in the context of many of the far left sites to which the Democratic Party is now beholden. The excuses of "jihadists don't pay attention to our media" have never been particularly compelling, but they now require an intimidating combination of denial and ignorance to even pay lip service to. Which is not to say that people shouldn't express dissent against a democratic government during wartime - but it is to say that they shouldn't be allowed to comfortably deflect criticism with fantasized excuses.
There's something almost ironic about this: for decades, the academic and activist left could be as crazy as their little hearts desired - precisely because nobody really listened to them. There was an unspoken agreement: professors could rail against capitalism during the day and play the stockmarket during the night; students could raid their trust fund for gas money on Sunday and ditch class to protest in their Che shirts on Monday. And that was fine, because they were happy in their sandboxes and the rest of us were happy to keep them there. But now there are actual consequences to their nonsense, and it would behoove them to grow up. Or, at a minimum, to honestly recognize that they're providing succor to the enemies of civilization.
