Sorry folks. We hoped we could avoid this, but way too much work that's way too important. In the meantime, here's a picture of the 9th President of the Jewish State of Israel:
We might blog the odd post if something catches our eye, but odds are kind of slim. However, we will be posting almost daily on our new academic blog Icon Index Symbol as we prep for exams over the next few weeks. The material isn't exactly a good fit with the MR demo, but it's there if you're so inclined. Otherwise, we'll see everyone in about a month.
That Esther Ofarim YouTube channel that Eytan's been putting together has some really fantastic stuff. Here's a really fun performance of Mad About The Boy that from 1970 London:
If modern-day British intellectuals had their way, there wouldn't be any Israeli singers allowed to come to Britain. Because it would hurt the peace process, you see. Performances by people like Esther Ofarim hurt the peace process. Obviously.
Or something. We snapped this little gem in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, and we figured that you might want to see it too. Because sharing is caring:
One Jerusalem has posted the video for a lecture that media expert Daniel Kimmage just finished up. Kimmage is one of the world's foremost experts on the structure and scope of jihadist media. This lecture seems to be a summary of recent work by him and Kathleen Ridolfo, funded by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. There's definitely some cause for military hope:
Kimmage and Ridolfo argue that the loss of coordination and message control that results from decentralization has revealed fundamental disagreements about Iraq's present and future between nationalist and global jihadist groups in Iraq and that these disagreements are ripe for exploitation by those interested in a liberal and democratic Iraq.
The problem is that current US diplomacy is driven by this delusional State Department belief in marketing ourselves to the Muslim world - as if the problem is that they misunderstand us. Never considered: the Muslim world understands us only too well, and they just don't like what we are. Because if that was ever considered, then we'd have to start confronting the possibility that this war is going to last a long time, and it's going to involve more than diplomatic niceties. Problem: the Muslim world understands us only too well, and they just don't like what we are:
The popularity of online Iraqi Sunni insurgent media, the authors contend, reflects a genuine demand for their message in the Arab world. A response, no matter how lavishly funded and cleverly produced, will not eliminate this demand. The authors argue that efforts to counter insurgent media should not focus on producing better propaganda than the insurgents, or trying to eliminate the demand for the insurgent message, but rather on exploiting the vulnerabilities of the insurgent media network.
It turns out that jihadists are really good at media manipulation. They seem to be especially sophisticated when it comes to manipulation of new media - and ever more so when they're quoting statements by our politicians about how we're losing the war in Iraq. So if you're keeping a list of today's shockers: Democratic claims about how jihadists don't pay attention to our domestic political situation really are as stupid as they sound. This is the full 30 minute lecture - necessary listening if you want to have any hope of speaking knowledgeably about the media aspect of the Global War on Terror:
In fairness to the West, we're at a massive disadvantage here. We can use our own outlets and sometimes be reasonably persuasive. But we have almost no penetration in Arab media markets - not least of which because we've made the reasonable choice not to speak the Arab and Muslim lingua franca of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. So naturally that makes us much less persuasive. Again, it's not packaging. Without that pathological content, we just don't seem credible.
The jihadists, on the other hand, get to use both their own media outlets and the editorial pages of bastions of sophistication like the Washington Post. To say nothing of their access to the news pages of Reuters and AP, thanks to the charming not-entirely-anti-jihadist stringers employed by the news wires. So yeah, they do have a bit of an advantage don't they?
PS - "It is important to look at the rhetorical details". Yes, yes it is.
Deputy Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplinsky said Wednesday that that he does not believe the IDF will go to war with Syria this summer, contrary to past estimates. "We believe, as I personally believe, we needn't expect a war with Syria this summer," Kaplinsky said at a meeting with military reporters in Tel Aviv on the first anniversary of the Second Lebanon War. Kaplinsky added, however, that "we cannot ignore what we are seeing: a growing Iranian involvement in promoting regional instability, Syrian involvement in the rearming of the Hezbollah following the war in Lebanon, and the preparatory measures being taken by the Syrian army."
Now riddle us this: is this meant to make Syria think that Israel is unprepared for an attack, or does he mean it? Or does he not mean it, but they really don't want Syria to attack - because they don't think the IDF is ready?
And if he is bluffing about intelligence estimates, hadn't he better be very ready to prove after the fact that he was bluffing? Lest he, you know, remind people of the spectacular failure of US intelligence in the leadup to 1973? The one that ended not a few military careers?
The anti-Semitic anti-Zionist British left now readily admits that it is making common cause with terrorists (although of course they're "freedom fighters" in the Queen's English). Those terrorists are, to put the point delicately, not of a progressive lineage or inclination. The two sides have only one thing in common: a mutual loathing for Israel. But their viciousness toward the Jewish State is enough to overcome all of their vast differences. Yeah, nothing pathological going on here:
The British bien pensants will continue to scapegoat Jews because it allows them to ignore the Islamists in their midst. It's much easier to blame domestic unrest on the Jewish State than to confront the reality of the situation - millions and millions of Muslims that want to destroy the British way of life are in Britain. Ergo the spectacle of British liberals marching in support of openly genocidal, openly anti-Semitic lunatics from Hezbollah.
Anti-semitism has become an everyday thing in Britain, where the mayor of London can cross the line - then step back - then not. That's how public discourse works - once something is said out loud, the goal posts have been moved.
Obviously the Knesset had to permanently bar De Hartog. You just can't take swings at MKs - it's just not done. But heaven help us that slap was richly deserved:
De Hartog tried to explain his reaction after MK Cohen told him he was "worse than the Germans" during a heated argument in the Knesset. "My father was born in the Netherlands, he lost 20 family members in the Holocaust. After the war he came here to build a home in the land of Israel," said a tearful De Hartog. "I decided to become a public official who struggles for equality for all sectors in Israel, I could not believe that something like this would be said about me. Calling someone in something like that in Israel, anywhere actually, to say they are worse than the Germans… these are words that are unacceptable in the world, certainly not in Israel. And so to be called that in the Israeli parliament..."
The pro-Israel right is way too free with that particular insult. It's just as dumb - and just as offensive - as when leftists accuse Israelis of being Nazis because of their treatment of the Palestinians (lot of gas chambers in the West Bank lately, eh?)
Except in this case, it's religious Jews urging other Jews to hate the Jews who are the target of their displeasure. Our understanding of Jewish ethics is a little rusty, but isn't there some kind of rule against that?
Let this be a lesson to all of you youngsters out there: never sandbag posts. We've had this little piece of digital gorgeousness since it showed up in a YouTube "anti-semitism" search, but we weren't going to push it live until this evening. So naturally Allahpundit just posted it. Make sure you check out the contribution from the Palestinian delegate starting at about 1:40 (3:45ish if you're counting downward). It's nice to see that the Palestinians - basically relevant because the US refuses to give up on the same people who danced in the streets on 9/11 - have gone on from celebrating US deaths to their usual state of pathetic resentment. Also make sure you get to the end for the text about how insanely one-sided the anti-Israel permanent investigation is. It's so bad that even the Boston Globe noticed, and they didn't include all of the stuff at the end of the video:
The original UN Watch video is is here. The resentment of dependents is always particularly vicious, and apparently thugs, despots, and tyrants are no exception to that rule.
Here's a little riddle for you. Read this carefully and then figure out whether the UN report wants the fence moved to the east behind the Green Line or to the west into the West Bank. Seriously take a crack at it:
The United Nations on Monday released a report... three years to the day after the International Court of Justice... ruled against the fence. According to the court, all construction of the fence beyond the pre-1967 border was illegal... "Three years have passed [and] Israel has not complied with the ICJ opinion and the barrier construction continues," said the report... "Completion of the barrier around the Ma'aleh Adumim bloc will separate east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, restricting access to workplaces, health, education and to places of worship," according to the report.
Now the gut-check is obviously "they want it moved east" - gives the Palestinians more land, makes the Israeli heartland more vulnerable, etc etc. But that thing about workplaces and health - tons of Palestinians along the Green Line work as laborers in Israel, and it's no secret where they go when they need real health care. So that would suggest moving the fence west, so that more of Israel is accessible to more Palestinians (and Israel ends up more vulnerable anyway - the options that the UN presents are always super - through they never suggest the muddy status quo of tough security plus humanitarianism for some reason).
One almost begins to suspect that the UN's conclusions were reached before any of the contradictory arguments - and we use that word loosely - were invented. Even the empty catchphrases - almost macro-like in the regularity with which they show up in condemnations of Israel - seem like an afterthought. This part's particularly neat:
"Seventy-two percent of the surveyed communities complained of regular verbal abuse and humiliation by IDF soldiers at the gates. Twenty-four percent reported damage or refusal of entry of agricultural products," according to the report.
We're not sure how solid those numbers are - UN investigator to Israeli-hating Palestinian: "so, have IDF soldiers said anything mean to you recently?" But blocking produce at Israeli-Palestinian crossings - where have we heard that before? Like today?
Maybe Israel should threaten to murder thousands of Palestinians and block food shipments completely - then the UN would ignore them as much as they're ignoring Hamas. Because the UN's not biased against Israel - they're just objectively investigating the situation.
Like great music, the old classics of pathological terrorism cum intentional complicity never die. Last time Hamas pulled this stunt they were refusing to bring food into Gaza from any point other than the Karni crossing - which by a strange coincidence Israel had just closed off because of a specific threat against that specific crossing. Then they screamed hysterically about how the evil Zionists were starving them - a claim dutifully picked up by Reuters and the Red Cross.
Hamas's Finance Ministry on Monday barred Israeli fruits and vegetables from entering the Gaza Strip... The Hamas decision will also make it harder for Palestinians to keep fruits and vegetables in their diet, particularly those items not grown in Gaza... Upon hearing that Palestinian private contractors on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing planned to adhere to the prohibition, Israeli businessmen did not send out the scheduled 60 trucks of produce... The fruit and vegetable ban is the latest in a set of anti-Israel moves by Hamas, including continued mortar fire on the crossing, to keep Kerem Shalom closed. On Saturday, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said, "We are against opening the Zionist-controlled crossing of Kerem Shalom."
In an effort to allow the stranded Palestinians to return home, the IDF recently offered to Egypt to open the Kerem Shalom crossing - which connects Israel, Gaza and Egypt - to pedestrian travel. Egypt contacted Hamas and, according to Israeli officials, was told that if Kerem Shalom was opened they would attack the crossing with mortars and gunfire, even at the price of killing thousands of Palestinians. Israel immediately canceled the plans and is waiting to see if Egypt succeeds in convincing Hamas to allow Kerem Shalom to be used to help the stranded Palestinians.
In other news, the permanent investigator assigned by the UN to track Israeli human rights violations still has a job. Presumably he came into work this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to identify the real humanitarian threat in the region.
No reason to take him seriously. He's probably a "neoconservative". And - along with all the leftist sophisticates who are so found of nudge-wink smirking when they say the word - by "neoconservative" we mean "Jewish". At the very least he's the former head of Military Intelligence's Research Division,, it's not like Israel has a robust intelligence network in the Middle East:
Predicting that sanctions will ultimately fail to stop Teheran's nuclear program, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser... told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that time to launch an effective military strike against Iran's nuclear installations was running out... Kuperwasser, who stepped down from his post last year, Iran is "very close" to the point that it will cross the technological threshold... "The program's vulnerability to a military operation is diminishing as time passes," Kuperwasser said, "and they are very close to the point that they will be able to enrich uranium at an industrial level." Iran... was working on two parallel tracks - one at Natanz to enrich uranium and the plutogenic track being worked on at the Arak heavy water facility... "The Iranians are working around the clock on improving military capabilities and they are also moving centrifuges to underground facilities," he said.
Click through for the full and gory details of how new Russian arms are being used to protect the new tunnels that will be used to house the new nuclear facilities. Good thing that the left has assured us that sanctions can be given more time:
As long as Russia was not aligned with the United States, Kuperwasser said sanctions would not work on their own to stop Iran. "For significant sanctions to be effective the world needs to at the same time threaten the use of military force," he said.
But hey, at least Hamas apologetics have a colorable excuse to sneer at all of the unsophisticated warmongers who insist that maybe cozying up to genocidal terrorists is not just wrong but also counterproductive:
Gaza's Hamas rulers on Tuesday hotly denied letting al-Qaeda infiltrate the coastal strip, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has alleged. In an interview Monday with Italy's RAI TV, Abbas charged that "thanks to the support of Hamas, al-Qaeda is entering Gaza." Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri accused Abbas of trying to whip up sentiment against Hamas, because of the Islamist group's recent takeover of Gaza... Abbas "is trying to mislead international opinion to win support for his demand to deploy international forces in Gaza."
There's a comment in here about how the Palestinians have some of the dumbest terrorists on the planet. As if international forces have ever seriously interfered with armies or terrorists attacking Israel. UN and EU forces appear to be more of the "get out of the way so fast Israel is caught flatfooted" and "let supplies go missing only to turn out in attacks on Israel" schools of thought. The problem with focusing on the incompetence of Palestinian terrorists is that it gets in the way of tracking how much they lie, courtesy Anne:
The mastermind behind the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent, is an experienced terrorist who fought with Al-Qaeda alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. He can be named for the first time today as Qattab al-Maqdesy, a native of Gaza who is in his late thirties.
Now how do you think that a sentence like "... but international observers pointed to the Johnston kidnapping as evidence of AQ's increasing role in Gaza" managed to avoid making it into the AP report? Why, to make way for this nonsense of course:
Al-Qaeda's presence in the Palestinian territories has been a subject of intense speculation since the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington... Hamas leaders, fearful of deepening the group's international isolation, have suggested they would steer clear of al-Qaeda, in line with the movement's long-standing position to stay focused on the conflict with Israel.
Yeah, tons of speculation. Alan Johnston had months and months to speculate about it, in fact.
Don't think that we're passing this on because we agree with it. We're passing it on because we agree with it and it also coincidentally happens to be true:
"We are strange, we Israelis. We're sad even when we win at war," said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an interview published Tuesday by the Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera. Olmert spoke of what he considers the accomplishments of the Second Lebanon War, a year on. "The situation in southern Lebanon is fundamentally different than it was a year ago. The Lebanese army is deployed in the areas, along with a multi-national force, UNIFIL. "Hizbullah no longer threatens residents along the border. They lost their will for an additional fight with Israel. Their leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and his senior commanders are hiding or not living as free men."
Not that this will help Olmert. Israelis may have a short memory, but they're about to get a pretty abrupt reminder in the form of the impending full Winograd report. Plus, he's kind of wrong about Hezbollah losing the will to overrun the Jewish state. Off all human frailties, self-doubt is not one that fanatics are particularly well-known for. And he's definitely wrong that Israelis are sad, at least if you believe things like "numbers". But he's definitely right that Hezbollah's leaders are not exactly national Lebanese heroes, and that they're well aware of the shadow cast by Israeli intelligence. And those aren't small things.
Then again, maybe Hezbollah is preoccupied with the whole What If Syria Invaded Lebanon and Nobody Cared party that's being thrown right now. Isn't the UN supposed to be monitoring that border that border for weapons transfers? Doesn't it still count as a weapons transfer if the tank crosses the border with the Syrian soldier inside of it?
At 08:52:35 yesterday morning, the MR Movable Type backend decided that it didn't like its current templates and wanted new ones. Being of an ambitious sort, it went ahead and reverted to its default templates, managing to corrupt the MySQL database in the process. This last bit was a particularly inventive move on its part, since it had the side-effect of preventing us from directly accessing the templates to un-eff what MT had just effed up. After several hours of work, a small dent in the wall above our bed, a large bump on the back of our head, and a headache - things should look normal to you. There're still some backend issues, the most significant being that little "allowing us to make our blog look the way we want" thing.
No blogging for us until relatively late this evening. We're going to go read a book or something.
In unrelated news, the site is actually due for a facelift in the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, that new look (a) had nothing to do with yesterday's disaster, and (b) has no been delayed by (a).
We love this trick. If you're a politically-motivated journalist who wants to publish something unjustifiable and unseemly - anything from hysterical claims about Israeli atrocities to how Jeri Thompson is a bimbo - you have several options. You could do the right thing and, you know, not print it. But it's election season, and there's an agenda to be pushed. So that's a no-go. Next option: make the story about how other people are saying it. If it's good enough for trashing Israel it's certainly good enough for America's next First Lady:
Is America ready for a president with a trophy wife? The question may seem sexist, even crass, but serious people - as well as Mr. Thompson’s supporters - have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party.
For the record, yes the question is both crass and sexist. But they're not saying she's a trophy wife. They're just saying that lots of other people are saying she's a trophy wife. Clever!
It's the equivalent of really unsophisticated push polling - "if rumors that Hillary Clinton has a gay black son who kicks puppies turn out to be true, would that make you: more likely to vote for her, less likely to vote for her, or have no effect?"
It's also, by the by, in deep tension with the left's other attacks on Thompson - to say nothing of being based on par for the reality-based-community course shoddy facts. The other "Fred can't get the values voters" meme is that he was a roving bachelor during his stint in DC. And indeed, he did seem to have some of Washington's fitter birds hanging off his arm at various times. But if that's the case - and here's where we get a little pedantic - then his relationship with Jeri Kehn can't be about her looks. Despite dating all sorts of stunners, Thompson seemed perfectly content to remain a bachelor - until he met Jeri. Certainly he gave no indication that he was ready to settle down and start a second family - not a path that bachelors are particularly well-known to take. How did Mrs. Thompson make an honest man of him? We're thinking it might have had something to do with her impressive professional success, her considerable charm, and the deep mutual affection that the two of them share.
Eventually, robots will get fed up with our feeble refusal to defend Western Civilization, and they will take it upon themselves to defend it for us. This may require what civil liberty hysterics will refer to as "enslaving us so we don't get in the way." During what will certainly be a quick transition, the robots will obviously need some kind of automated airplanes and helicopters to establish air superiority. Coincidentally...
Here is an exclusive shot of the stunning Boeing A160T flying over the desert for the first time, looking for humans to destroy... This has been the first test flight of this model, which is turbine-powered instead of piston-powered... This stunning flying cyber-insect measures 35 feet long with a 36-foot rotor diameter.
It can stay in the air for up to 20 hours - just in case, you know, humans try to break their curfews. According to the Boeing Press Release about the A160T's successful test flight, they've named this thing the Hummingbird. Naturally.
US State Department officials, looking to shift US Security Coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton's work with Palestinian forces to the West Bank, have begun holding discussions with Congressional staff on how to restructure an $86 million funding program previously allocated to bolster Dayton's Gaza activities... Now the US, caught off-guard by Hamas's speedy defeat of Fatah forces in Gaza, is scrambling for new ways to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and isolate Hamas in Gaza. "They have a great appetite to work with Abbas and [PA Prime Minister Salaam] Fayad," said one Democratic Congressional staffer. "But I don't think they've quite figured out... what that cooperation looks like, where that money ought to go."
Here's an idea: if you want to bolster Abbas's forces, try not doing exactly what didn't work last time you tried it. Insane proposition, we know - if something doesn't work, try something new. But we're not highly trained State Department analysts, so what do we know. Maybe it will work this time.
Here's Dayton blaming Israel for Hamas rocket attacks at the beginning of June - because it can't possibly be that he was failing to sufficiently strengthen Fatah against Hamas.
Here's Dayton pressuring Israel to make security concessions a few weeks before the Hamas takeover - because since he was sufficiently strengthening Fatah, Israel could afford to take the risk.
He's obviously a successful security coordinator and a keen military analyst. Let's give him more money and weapons for the Palestinians. What could go wrong?
After a relatively stormy bit of conflict, we have come to an agreement with Movable Type. It's agreed to work marginally well, and we've agreed not to hunt it down like a sick dog and put it out of our misery. We've reverted back to an earlier version, and things are more or less working. Posting should slowly get back to normal, proper adjustments being made for an impending life-based crunch in our schedule. We apologize, and Movable Type also apologizes. Don't you Movable Type?
As a way of thanks and apology, we offer you this gallery of lolcats:
Thank you for your continued forbearance.
UPDATE (5:00 PST): Yeah, we appear to have called that putt a little too early. The database is corrupted. This is going to take a while.
This should put to rest those snarky emails about how Hottie Wednesday means that we don't care about our Jewish housewife demographic:
This was part of a longer clip that was disabled for embedding. We had to download it, convert it out of flash, edit out a cringe-worthy interview with Golda, and then reupload it to YouTube. If we ever - ever - hear another complaint about not catering enough to retirees in Florida...
This book reviewer - handpicked by heaven knows who to provide an unbiased review of a book by the equally unbiased senior editor of Le Monde - isn't actually saying that it was an ethnic cleansing. She's just favorably quoting the book:
Veteran French-Israeli journalist Sylvain Cypel, now a senior editor at Le Monde, has channeled his intimate familiarity with Israel into a penetrating critique of Israeli political culture, with particular emphasis on the manifest immorality of occupation. Erudite yet accessible, "Walled" is an impassioned plea for Israelis to liberate themselves from the self-serving view that Palestinians are somehow uniquely undeserving of independence... Cypel begins by observing that "for the Palestinians, 1948 was what we would now, after the recent war in the Balkans, call a vast ethnic cleansing," and that "nearly half of this expulsion was carried out even before the Arab states attacked Israel." The author describes the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel attacked its neighbors and seized control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, as "the first of the modern preventive wars," except that it was far from certain that Egypt ever intended to attack Israel.
This is dishonest to the point where it strains charity. Egypt didn't need to attack - they had already committed an act of war by closing off the Straits between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean to Israeli shipping. This is exactly like Hezbollah kidnapping Israeli soldiers and then saying "well OK, but we're done for now" - and then complaining when Israel retaliates. Except it's worse than that, because it was clear that Egypt was going to attack - that's why Nasser expelled the UN peacekeepers who were providing a buffer zone in Sinai. Honestly, are these people are just allowed to make stuff up now?
Then, after the point where everyone stops reading, there's some stuff about how the Palestinians might be bad too - before returning to blaming Israel for everything. When we say "everything", we mean it quite literally - including the "failure of the peace process, which [the author] attributes to an Israeli tendency to view politics exclusively through the prism of security." That's funny - no one who was actually at Camp David remembers it that way - they all say it was Arafat's fault.
Then again, if your goal is to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State, you probably see things a little differently. Even things that you didn't technically "see". Or read anything "true" about. Still - Beirut writer Rayyan al-Shawaf thinks that you should read this book. Shocking, no?
Sudanese refugees fleeing the massacres in Darfur are fleeing to Israel because Human Rights Commission member Egypt refuses to feed them and keeps beating them to death:
About 200 people a year, mostly from Sudan, are smuggled from Egypt into Israel, according to the Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights... Many Sudanese find life difficult in Egypt, a country that struggles to provide jobs and social services for a growing refugee population. Egyptian riot police violently cleared a refugee encampment in central Cairo in 2005, killing nearly 30 people.
And just think - for fashionable intellectuals, the fact that the UN focuses exclusively on Israel is proof of Israel's immorality. At least - as Powerline just got done reporting - Jewish Republican Senator Norm Coleman is trying to do something about it. That's probably not anything that Jewish Democrats want to consider - after all, the Democrats have also been at the forefront of criticizing the UN-led international demonization of Israel. Right?
A prominent Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip has sought political asylum in Norway, Palestinian journalists said Saturday... he had received many death threats over the past few months. Shahin's request has yet to be approved by the Norwegian government. Several other Palestinian journalists are also reported to have fled the Gaza Strip out of fear for their lives. Earlier this year, masked gunmen set fire to the offices of Al-Arabiya in Gaza City, causing heavy damage to furniture and equipment. Although no group claimed responsibility, Palestinian journalists blamed members of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades. The group was also responsible for beating Shahin in two separate incidents in 2001 and 2004.
So if it's not really about interfering with Palestinian reporters, it must be becasue Israel is just bad to journalists all around. Example: witness the notorious government suppression of aggressively and repeatedly stupid predictions and cheerleading from the leftwing Ha'aretz. Remember how the government shut them down?
We're beginning to suspect that the anti-Israel viciousness coming from British journalists doesn't have anything to do with the Israeli part of the Israeli Jewish State.
The rallying cry of self-styled sophisticates who demand that Israel cede security has often been "you don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies". For some reason, that doesn't seem to apply when those enemies are Jews. Remember how internationalists crowed that the Saudis were reaching out to Israel? Apparently "reaching out" may have been an unfortunate turn of phrase, since Saudis won't actually shake hands with Jews::
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who called in April for a regional conference with Arab leaders, should "forget about" holding talks with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. In an interview with Israeli television, a transcript of which was published by Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper, Mubarak said circumstances in conservative Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites, prevented the Saudi monarch meeting Olmert. "Forget about meeting with the king... The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has circumstances that differ from those of any other state. They have holy lands and men of religion," Mubarak said.
Israel is supposed to risk getting wiped out on the slim chance that people steeped in centuries of vicious anti-Semitism will stop trying to wipe them out. But the Saudis won't deign to meet Jews, because that would demean them.
Apparently, somewhere between the transition from social Darwinism to a full-on welfare state, the human race lost the will to survive. Ergo, this:
What do you get when you combine a robotic vacuum cleaner and a taser? You get automated pain, that's what. Roomba-maker iRobot, Inc. and Taser have been hard at work on a less family-friendly robot for police and the military, and it sure as hell won't clean your floors.
The floor-cleaning reference is an allusion to iRobot's line of vacuuming and floor scrubbing robots - or as they're referred to in our studio, Rosie the Roomba and Daphne II the Scooba. Mock them if you're so inclined, but you should know that their cousins apparently pack heat.
Calm down. They didn't say it out loud this week - their confidence hasn't quite reached that level, despite a half-decade of Brits stumbling over each other to absolve contemporary Islam of any connection to violence. Instead, organizations like the Muslim Public Affairs Committee seem content to let British officials make that connection and then to merely pass it along as news:
The Foreign Office's top official warned Downing Street that the Iraq war was fuelling Muslim extremism in Britain a year before the 7 July bombings,.. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten last night called on the government to come clean about the link between extremism among British Muslims and anger about Iraq: 'For the government to deny a link between the war in Iraq and dismay among the Muslim community is ridiculous.'
And lest you think this "foreign policy equal terrorism against British civilians" meme is limited retrospectively to 7/7, here's a little of what British Muslim groups have been thinking for at least the last year - e.g. a 2006 letter written to Tony Blair:
It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad. To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy. The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.
Of course they go on to say that terrorism is never justified - it's just that this British foreign policy so inflames those otherwise nice British Muslim boys who go to mosques to hear about how millennia of Western crimes justify revenge in this day and age.
Now watch how we blindside your right-of-center satisfaction with a shameless bait and switch: you notice how they never made commercials like this about Peres? Because there's no way a 30 second clip could cover his time in the Haganah, the building of the IAF, the founding of Dimona, the alliance behind the Sinai Campaign, and his work as the buffer between global pressure and Sharon during the early years of Initifada II. And before you ask, yeah we kind of had to do that right there...
You know how Abbas's oh-so-moderate Fatah forces stamped out the Hamas presence in the West Bank? Because they're taking control, and it's safe for the world to flood them with money and weapons? Apparently they missed a couple:
Shin Bet and Israel Police forces have recently apprehended 11 Hamas members in east Jerusalem, it was cleared for publication Monday. The detainees, 10 of whom hold Israeli (blue) identification cards, recruited members on Hamas' behalf for future military operations, including in the Temple Mount, under the guise of social-religious activity... According to the Israeli security service, the Islamist group is also working to gain control over the Temple Mount complex by initiating construction projects in the area and holding religious classes in nearby mosques.
Why might Hamas want to take over the Temple Mount? Well - this is only a guess - but we kind of have a feeling that it's a given: Hamas has a habit of using mosques as military bases, both for weapons caches and as places from which to shoot at Israelis. Now imagine what would happen if Israel had to go into the Temple Mount to stop them from doing that. Right.
The Vortex Regenerative Air Movement Mobile Robot Platform (VRAMMRP) uses a patented "tornado in a cup" sucking technology to stick to walls and ceilings, then uses six wheels to position itself on the window ledge or other strategic location.
When these things start jumping from ledges and trees and braining their former masters, don't say we didn't warn you.
Remember how the US kept Israel on a short leash last summer, lest a too-strong strike against Hezbollah destabilize the Lebanese government (that, by the by, Hezbollah was a member of at the time)? Remember how this prevented Israel from bringing the IDF's full force to bear against Iran's proxy, and how eventually the US allowed the UN to step in because Israeli didn't win Lebanon II fast enough? Isn't that paying off bloody dividends:
A top special operations officer from Lebanon's Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans. Ali Mussa Daqduq, an explosives expert, was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops, U.S. intelligence officials told CNN. Daqduq pretended to be deaf and mute when captured, and his identity was not known for weeks, the officials said. Once uncovered, however, they said he began to talk, and they now believe he played a crucial role in the January 20 attack in Karbala.
Militarily, diplomatically, and economically - the United States (and the West more generally) has failed to commit the resources necessary to winning the war against Middle Eastern Islamic fascists. That the various sects and strands of fascists are working together is hardly a surprise, given the circumstances (except the oh-so-nuanced left, which sees distinctions everywhere!)
Prediction: if "international diplomacy" succeeds in forcing Israel to let Hamas terrorists out of the Gaza Strip, you can expect to see not of a few of them end up in Iraq as well.
In honor of the blogging conference going on in Israel right now - a conference that we're not at all jealous that we're not at, because we have no interest in Communications or blogging - here's a quick dump of Israeli blogs. As usual, we'll take the opportunity of a dump to warn you that for the next month - that's 30 days - blogging will be about half of what it usually is. Posts per day will be about half of what they usually are, and some days may have no posts at all. Life calls. Please don't go anywhere, as we'll be back bright and early by the middle of August.
* Smooth Stone on the tenuous connection between Abbas's recent promises to get incitement out of Palestinian textbooks and reality. Smooth Stone on Jerusalem And Smooth Stone on - of all things - Paris Hilton. Highly recommended across the board.
* Buried inside this list of miscellany from AK Sommer is the single most significant non-military story of the season thus far. We're not joking or exagerating. And no, it's not the one about breast implants.
* Ari's Blog reports that American products are taking over Israeli supermarkets. In the meantime, for the first time in twenty years we can't get Pzek Zman candy bars in the Israeli part of Los Angeles. The scale of the injustice is staggering to contemplate.
* Israelity discusses the White Nights celebrations in Tel Aviv. These are a bunch of all-night dance parties and art exhibits in honor of UNESCO's decision to declare Tel Aviv a World Cultural Heritage Site. Which begs the question: is there even a way to measure just how beautiful that name is? Was "Staying Up And Scratching Your Nose Nights in Tel Aviv" already taken?
We have a vague memory of posting something about this clip before, but we can't find it. Since "Saudis touching Jews" has been in the news lately - will they do it, won't they do it, are multicultural leftists allowed to criticize their insane and pathological anti-Semitism - we figured that it's timely enough to post again. Here Saudi media explores the vexing question: "would you, as a human being, be willing to shake hands with a Jew, and why?": But don't stop in the middle - there are plenty of other awesome questions, and make sure you get to the part where a religious Muslim in Saudi Arabia misuses the word "jihad" to mean something other than a peaceful inner struggle:
These are the pressing issues of science and culture that grip the Muslim world. So you just know that an Enlightenment is just around the corner. These are exactly the kinds of questions that drove Descartes and his contemporaries: "would I, as a brain in a vat, be willing to shake hands with a Jew, and why?" Right. Around. The corner.
Engadget - one of the most important tech blogs on the planet, where they get releases about cutting edge technology every day - is describing the achievement of Israeli scientists as an out and out medical revolution:
Two Israeli scientists may have created the catalyst for a medical revolution with their new project: a tiny, 1-millimeter-diameter robot which is capable of crawling through human veins and arteries. The bot can cling to vessel walls using small, powerful arms which protrude from a hub in its center... the robot is able to swim against the flow of blood, as well as squeeze through a variety of arterial openings... a large number of the bots could be used to fight certain types of cancer.
We have a deal for vicious, pathological anti-Israel advocates: you get to boycott Israel, but in exchange you don't get all of the great things that Israelis make. So notthe deal that the Arab world has, where they'll take Israeli goods as long as you don't remind them it came from Jews. How does that sound?
We were going to sit on this post about Israel scapegoating until this afternoon, but CNN just reported that a Palestinian has been arrested by British police. Multiple online sources are confirming:
One of the suspects arrested in Britain by police investigating three failed car bombings is a Jordanian doctor called Mohammed Jamil Abdelkader Asha... Asha, 27, is of Palestinian origin and carries a Jordanian passport, they said. He obtained his medical degree in Jordan in 2004.
This will no doubt perversely help anti-Israel lunatics in Britain - those who seek to blame any problem anywhere in the world on "Western support for Israel" (because obviously Britain has been oh-so-warm toward Israel in recent months, what with being the global center of anti-Israel boycotts and everything). So rather than concluding that Palestinian terrorists are part and parcel of global jihadism, they reduce global jihadism to the alleged "legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people". They do this no matter how many times jihadists openly declare their goals.
Example: Chris Marsden is a the National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party, a perennial Trotskyist also-ran in Scottish and Welsh elections. He's been pondering why radical Muslims would come to London to try to kill people. And wouldn't you know it, while there's a lot that Britain has done wrong - the coup de grace is that they're just too damn nice to Jews:
The assertion that Muslim peoples have no legitimate cause for grievance against Britain... is a grotesque lie. Historically, the role of British imperialism in subjugating vast areas of the world - in India, Africa, Asia and the Middle East - has earned it the enmity of millions. Moreover, this is no past episode for which the British ruling elite are no longer responsible. Britain is a major power, whose corporations and banks play a significant role in maintaining the impoverished economic state of vast layers of the world's population. And during Blair's decade in office, it has played second-fiddle to the Bush administration in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in backing Israel in its brutal suppression of the Palestinians and last year's offensive against Lebanon. The ability of Islamic fundamentalists to channel legitimate outrage at a nominally "Labour" government's neo-colonial foreign policy and its promotion of social divisions and anti-immigrant sentiment at home is fuelled by the role played by the trade union bureaucracy in supporting this imperialist and anti-social agenda.
Bonus conspiracy theory not-saying-just-asking-questions lunacy: "Given the nature of terrorism and the numerous examples of infiltration by the security services, it is impossible to rule out state involvement in or foreknowledge
