What a bunch of tools:

Bolton, whose contempt for the United Nations is only matched by his exasperation with the State Department, recounts the position Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer adopted in 2006 toward the "final and binding" ruling an international commission had reached over the Eritrean-Ethiopian border, the cause of a war that claimed some 90,000 lives. "For reasons I never understood," writes Bolton, "Frazer reversed course, and asked in early February to reopen the 2002 [Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission] decision, which she had concluded was wrong, and award a major piece of disputed territory to Ethiopia. I was at a loss how to explain that to the Security Council, so I didn't."...

Bolton's words confirm what those who follow U.S. policy in Africa sensed but could never prove: While presenting itself as a neutral player in a bitter contest between two African regimes, Washington has in fact played the old Cold War game, favoring realpolitik over international law - with disastrous results.

The article goes on to describe how the State Department allowed Ethiopia to reopen what all sides had agreed was a closed border dispute in order to bolster the Ethiopian regime in the short term. That's twice. One more time and it's a pattern!

Stories like this hint at the possibility that the State Department's actions towards Israel are less the result of anything like anti-Semitism and far more a function of incompetence borne out of narcissistic and self-important delusions of sophistication. It's not that there's no unseemly antipathy towards Israel among certain US diplomats. It's just hard to untangle that antipathy from misguided stupidity.

These are obviously the people who should be in charge of fixing the Middle East. Because they're so good at their jobs.

References:
* America's Latest African Blunder [Slate]
* Are They Really that Stupid? [MR]
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics [MR]

Previously:
* Some Things You Didn't Know About Hezbollah and Syria (Hint: Syria Has Lebanese Prisoners, Hezbollah Openly Committed To Destroying Israel)
* In Just Seven Short Paragraphs, Jimmy Carter Tells 2 Lies, Makes 2 Incoherent Arguments, Takes an Anti-Israel Stance that the State Department Mocks, and Just Generally Annoys the Hell Out of Us
* US State Department: Lebanon Is Not Responsible for Hezbollah

Perfect time to sign a peace deal:

"Today we are going to break the bones of anyone who dares to demonstrate in the street," a Palestinian police officer shouted at a group of journalists as they arrived to cover the funeral of a man who was killed a day earlier during protests against the Annapolis peace conference... Baradi, a member of the Islamic fundamentalist Hizb al-Tahrir [Party of Liberation], was shot dead by security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during fierce clashes that erupted here on Tuesday... PA security commanders issued firm orders to their men to use an "iron-fist" policy against anyone who breaks the law.

But the ban did not prevent thousands from taking to the streets of West Bank cities to voice their opposition to the US-sponsored conference. The demonstrations, which came as a surprise to the PA leadership, were organized by both Hamas and Hizb al-Tahrir... Following noon prayers, the mourners, many of whom were carrying Hamas's green flags, tried to march toward the Palestinian policemen waiting outside the mosque... Hizb al-Tahrir spokesman Maher Ja'bari [said]... "This is the end of Abbas's existence."

When they get around to rolling the West Bank - which they're going to do as soon as Abbas is done pocketing Israeli concessions - Hamas stands to inherit 25-50 cutting edge, helicopter-busting APCs and all the goodies that $410 million in new US aid can purchase.

Oh, and they're also going to ignore Annapolis. Not ignore it enough to give Israel back the land that Olmert is being pressured to give up. Just ignore it enough to embrace genocidal murder with enthusiasm.

References:
* At least 60 hurt in Fatah-Hamas clashes [JPost]
* Bush Launches Final Status Talks: "I Don't Think It's A Risk To Try" (Plus: Anti-Abbas Riots Spread Through West Bank) [Video] [MR]
* Palestinians To Get 25 Cutting Edge, Helicopter-Busting APCs [MR]
* US Unviels $410 Million's Worth Of Assistance That Will Shortly Be Siezed By Hamas [MR]
* Hamas: Oh By The Way, We're Totally Going To Ignore Annapolis When We Roll Over The West Bank [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Has Smuggled 112 Tons Of Explosives Into Gaza, Preparing Bunker System For All Out War (Plus: Israel Suspends Decision To Cut Fuel On Humanitarian Grounds)
* Palestinian Moderate With No Power Takes Bold Left Wing Position: Palestinians Willing To Give Up Something They're Not Entitled To In Exchange For Total Israeli Capitulation
* Dutch Government Funding Islamist Organization To Advocate Iranian Nukes, Protest Dutch Policy Of Not Engaging Hamas

Oh come on:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly said in Annapolis this week that her childhood in the segregated South had helped her to understand the suffering on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I know what its like to hear that you can't use a certain road or pass through a checkpoint because you are a Palestinian. I know what it is like to feel discriminated against and powerless," Rice told a closed meeting of Arab and Israeli representatives, according to the Dutch representative at the summit, Franz Timmermans.

Blacks in the Jim Crow South, of course, very famously fought back against discrimination by launching decades and decades of genocidal violence and demanding that whites leave North America.

References:
* 'I know what it's like as a Palestinian' [JPost]
* Hamas demands UN rescind '47 partition [JPost]

Previously:
* Bush: "Now Is The Time To Lay Out A Vision" For A Palestinian State
* State Department Deliberately Circumvents Anti-Terrorism Laws, Funds Hamas
* State Department Gets Bright Idea: Let's Screw Israel Even More By Bundling Syria Into The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

It's so nice to see two people who are perfect for each other get together. The Palestinians, very famously, heart Bin Laden for 9/11...

... and now he's officially letting the world know that he hearts them back:

The September 11 terror attacks in the US were carried out as revenge for treatment of the Palestinians and actions in Lebanon, al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden said in excerpts of a new audiotape aired Thursday on Al-Jazeera television. He also called on the Europeans to stop helping the United States in the war in Afghanistan, saying America is "ebbing."... "The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance's aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that," he said.

This is supposed to be his fourth message this year. Doesn't this guy have a mafia-style international terrorist organization to run? Can we get him a hobby or something?

By the by, how awesome is it that - in the eyes of the Bush Administration - the Palestinians have gone from "those people who were dancing on 9/11" to "very, very ready for a state."

References:
* Palestinians celebrating the fall of the twin towers on 911 [Yank507 / YouTube]
* '9\11 revenge for Palestinians, Lebanon' [JPost]

Previously:
* Naughty, Naughty - Three Palestinian Government Soldiers Captured Trying To Attack IDF
* High Ranking Member of Moderate Fatah Party Wishes Every Day Was 9/11 (Bonus Outrage: US Trained Him!)
* Wherein We Imagine Palestinian Negotiations

You know what? We're not sure that Saudi Arabia has Israel's best interests in heart:

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States rejected recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. "There are 1.5 million civilians in Israel who do not define themselves as Jewish," Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the U.S.-convened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis, Md... Al-Jubeir did not think it was inappropriate that the Saudis refused to shake hands with the Israelis at the conference. "This is a serious effort, we are not here for theatrics," he said. "The time for handshakes will come when there is a peace agreement."

And when Saudi Arabia Arabia says "peace deal" they mean that Israel has to commit suicide:

The Saudi foreign minister told the closed afternoon session that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their original homes. Saud al-Faisal, the Israeli official said, listed the core "final status" issues that have to be resolved in the accelerated negotiating process launched here, but specified the need for a "right of return" to the refugees.

So Saudi Arabia won't make peace with Israel until there's a peace deal they approve of, and any peace deal they approve of would mean the end of Israel. What a neat way to get around Bush's assurances to Olmert that only countries willing to make peace with Israel would be invited to Annapolis.

References:
* Saudi envoy: No to 'Jewish' state [JTA]
* Saudis urge Palestinian right of return [JPost]
* The Saudi Peace Initiative: A Discrete Way to Destroy Israel, Based on an Ethical Lie [MR]
* Annapolis As A Rosetta Stone For How Anti-Israel Bait And Switch Diplomacy Works [MR]

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Your Saudi Husband Isn't Allowed To Beat You In The Face Because It "Makes Your Face Ugly"
* Bush Launches Final Status Talks: "I Don't Think It's A Risk To Try" Having Israel Make Concessions To Abbas (Plus: Anti-Abbas Riots Spread Through West Bank) [Video] [MR]
* Hey Saudi Arabia, Shove It

The idea of final status talks are laughable, because people like this traitor will always demand that Israel grant ever-more "autonomy" to Israel's enemies on every random parcel of Israeli land that they decide belongs to them:

An Israeli Arab woman convicted of having ties to Hezbollah was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison and a two-year suspended term. 24-year-old Manar Jabarin, a resident of Umm al-Fahm, came in contact with a Hezbollah agent while studying dentistry in Jordan. Jabarin, currently in her fourth year of studying law, was convicted of having contact with a foreign agent and providing services to an unauthorized organization.

Israel cannot rely on even the most ironclad international agreements. It is expected to suffer literal daily bombing of its schools and hospitals from land that it voluntarily and unilaterally handed over to its genocidal enemies. Neither principle nor outcome are guarantees that its enemies won't just make things up and invent new demands. The only way to prevent the slow erosion of Israel - all the way up to the north inside the Green Line and eventually to Tel Aviv - is to insist that Israeli land is, well, Israeli. Insane, we know.

References:
* Israeli Arab woman gets three years in jail for Hezbollah ties [Ha'aretz]
* Annapolis As A Rosetta Stone For How Anti-Israel Bait And Switch Diplomacy Works [MR]
* The UN Makes It Official: There Is Absolutely No Agreement That Won't Be Changed If Israel's Genocidal Enemies Refuse To Accept For Long Enough [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Has 200 Tons Of Explosives That The US Gave To Fatah (Plus: Egypt Says It's Israel's Fault)
* International Agreements Don't Really Apply To Israel
* EU Again Backs Out of Monitoring Agreement, Endangers Israeli Security

We haven't done one of these since the Likud primaries predictably went to Bibi, but there's going to be an election soon so we might as well start easing our way back in. The exact shape of the post-Annapolis landscape is just about impossible to predict. It depends not just on the summit itself - whether Olmert seems like he's protected Israel, whether Lieberman thinks the concessions are too far-reaching, whether Jerusalem becomes an issue, etc. That's just the Kadima side of things. Barak's popularity relies on a host of other factors - whether Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah "offshoots" stay quiet, whether he has the ability to respond to any provocations, whether he gets the credit or blame for responding or not responding, etc.

Not that the uncertainty should stop anyone from irresponsibly speculating about what might happen. Analysis on each of the big three parties after the jump, including the most under-appreciated poll of the month.

Hey, remember that time when Bush got Olmert to agree to a peace conference by promising that only countries ready for normalization with Israel would be invited? And then a bunch of countries got invited who refused to let Jewish Israeli reporters talk to their ambassadors in DC and ran a bunch of vicious anti-Semitic cartoons in their government papers back home:

While Arab leaders trekked to Annapolis for the summit, Arab newspapers, many of them government-funded, have been running cartoons depicting Israel as violent and untrustworthy, according to a survey of Arab media conducted by the Anti-Defamation League. The cartoons often use anti-Semitic themes, such as depictions of ugly, greedy Jews in religious garb, to convey their messages. While some of the cartoons come from places with declared belligerent policies toward Israel, such as Syria and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, others come from what the American government has called "moderate" states, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, and even government-funded newspapers in Jordan and Egypt... An example of classical anti-Semitic depictions came from Oman's Al-Watan paper, which published a November 16 cartoon showing a religiously-attired Jew standing behind a gagged and seated Uncle Sam and speaking in his stead to a crowd of Arab listeners.

Oh wait. That was right now. Good to see that the peace deals with Egypt and Jordan are working out so well. Getting that kind of peace with Saudi Arabia and Syria is definitely worth tearing Israel apart and voluntarily accepting blame for refusing to be wiped out in the Six Day War. Sign us up for two. Because it's so normal and peaceful, you see.

References:
* Vicious Iranian Anti-Semitism [photonh2o / YouTube]
* Annapolis As A Rosetta Stone For How Anti-Israel Bait And Switch Diplomacy Works [MR]
* Normalization left out in the rain [MR]
* 'Moderate' Arab papers showcase anti-Semitic cartoons ahead of summit [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinians: We Won't Show Up To Annapolis Unless The State Department Screws Israel By Inviting Arab Countries To Make Demands
* Ha'aretz Headline: "Israel to go on high terror alert due to Annapolis peace summit"
* Arab League Decision To Attend Annapolis Already Not Paying Any Dividends At All In Bahrain (Plus: It's The Whole "Touching Jews" Thing Again)

Sometimes, you wake up and just feel that today will be better than yesterday. Today is not one of those days.

* We did not actually give this quote to the Daily Trojan last night. It's demonstrably true, but it's from some previous interview that had nothing to do with last night's debate. That debate was between RJC CA chair Larry Greenfield and Andrew Lachman representing LA Democrats for Israel. Our very partisan verdict: facecrush. Apparently it's very hard to argue that Democrats are good for Israel. Who knew? Which is not to say that Greenfield had an easy time - he's got Annapolis hanging around his neck right now. Still: facecrush (full disclosure: we know Larry have had the pleasure of talking to him on occasion).

* Illustration of facecrush: Lachman was enthusiastically emoting about how much the rest of the world hates Bush, how the Democrats' global apology tour will make people like the US again, etc. Greenfield pointed out that this was - our words, not his - bullshit. So then Lachman had to play some defense about how the elections of Merkel, Sarkozy, etc had nothing to do with Bush - "domestic issues" sophistication on display. Neo-neocon reminds us this morning that this argument is - our words, not hers - also bullshit.

* Clever.

* Nice catch by Elder of Ziyon. Abbas will offer Olmret exactly what Barak rejected in 2002. Barak is already way to Olmert's right, representing the defense establishment's opposition to Annapolis in the Cabinet. The way that 2002's "Palestinian concessions" are lining up with 2007's identical offers won't help Olmert convince Barak to pretend that peace talks might work.

* Rank anti-Israel bias at the LA Times? The hell you say. CAMERA catches our local paper in out and out historical revisionism.

* Iran's new missile can go 2,000 km. If Annapolis goes the way that the State Department wants it to, that'll be about 1,999.5 km more than Hamas needs to fire it into the Western Wall.

Previously:
* Tuesday Link Dump - Liberal Demorcrats Are Politically And Ideologically Retarded, Widespread US Anti-Semitism, Iran, Etc.
* Major Jewish Groups To Carter: We'd Love To Talk To You, But You're Just Too Anti-Semitic
* Hillary Demonstrates Sophistication - Refuses To Negotiate With Individual Terrorists

Hamas has openly declared they're going to roll the West Bank and help themselves to the cutting-edge weapons that the entire world is supplying to Abbas:

The militant Islamic organization Hamas... would take over the West Bank if Israel pulled out of the territory... The comments [were made] by deposed Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar... "Israel says the party in Ramallah [Fatah] serves Israel, and if Israel quits the West Bank, Hamas will take it over. And we say this is true," Zahar said at a rally for Hamas supporters in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

They've also openly declared that they're going to suspend Annapolis as soon as they take over. So what could be more natural than launching final status talks with Abbas two weeks from now?

Israel and the Palestinians will begin final-status negotiations on December 12, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced yesterday in a joint statement read out by U.S. President George W. Bush at the Annapolis conference. Speaking to reporters after the conference, Bush acknowledged that he was worried about the consequences if peace talks failed, but said: "It is worth it to try." "I don't think it's a risk to try for peace," he said. "I think it's an obligation."

Really? Really? Because we think that it's very much a risk. Our view, admittedly, is a little biased and is influenced by potentially irrelevent things like Abbas's demonstrable weakness even in ostensible Fatah strongholds. Video after the jump.

The Center for American Progress wants you to know that this is France's fault, because these "youths" feel "alienated." The thing about that idea is that it's totally retarded:

Could be worse. To be honest, we kind of expected him to blame Israel. Maybe they're waiting for things to get a little bit worse before the "root causes" equal "Israel" scapegoating starts. Hot Air says things are getting slightly better, although Bryan points out that that's not saying much:

See Pamela's extensive coverage here and especially here for updates. They're using shotguns.

References:
* Shepard Smith grills CAP analyst on French riots [pundital / YouTube]
* Burning Paris, night 3 [Hot Air]
* ChicaGo Le Havre -> Affronte la BAC [Daily Motion]
* War in France [Atlas Shrugs]
* "I do hope that France will survive" [Atlas Shrugs]

Previously:
* France Identifies the Real Threat To the Lebanon Ceasefire: Israel.
* Turns Out France Really Does Hate Israel
* No New Sanctions On Iran. Sophistication On Display.

You remember the Bush Doctrine? The one that said that no action by any state could ever justify violence against civilians? The one about how there's an absolute distinction between terrorism and its victims? Yeah, no:

Such distinctions may give cause for a giggle, but the declaration contains two elements that will serve the Israeli right wing in attacks it is expected to make on the prime minister. The first is the comparison the declaration makes between "terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis." Translation: Olmert agreed that Israel too is responsible for terrorism and incitement against the Palestinians, and that America will decide in every case who is inciting and who is a terrorist. No public relations spin will be able to erase that: The comments Ariel Sharon's government presented for the road map specifically rejected the requirement that Israel "cease the violence and the incitement against the Palestinians." Now Israel has given up on its opposition and a moral comparison has been established, which leaves Olmert with a lot of explaining to do.

Bush's legacy could have been that he stood firmly by the moral framework needed to fight the war of our time. Instead he'll be simply another in a long line of Presidents who abandoned his principles in a failed attempt to solve the Middle East conflict by weakening Israel and giving land and money to its enemies. That's some mighty good company right there.

References:
* Who's in favor of ending (Israeli) terrorism? [Ha'aretz]
* Jimmy Carter: Hamas Made Up of "So-Called Terrorists" [MR]

Previously:
* Things That Piss Us Off About This Morning's Guardian Article (5) - The Total Lack of Any Thought About Anything. Ever. They Don't Even Know The Consequences of Their Own Stupid Moral Equivalence.
* Munich is Cheap Propaganda
* Los Angeles Times Moral Equivalence at Work

Rough day for our side.

The video is from Memorial Day, April 2007.

References:
* Hatikva baKotel [jhm4hjg / YouTube]

Previously:
* Tuesday Hatikva - Hope On Memorial Day
* Tuesday Hatikva - IDF Graduation [Video]
* Tuesday Hatikva - Hope For The Captured And Kidnapped Soldiers [Video]

Hamas weakens and starves the Palestinians in Gaza by banning Israeli food aid because they don't want to help Israeli farmers. They intentionally don't request medical aid so they can demonize Israel when supplies run short. When Israel has tried to provide what little has been allowed and requested, Hamas has closed the crossing. Meanwhile they've shut down medical clinics across Gaza when the doctors were insufficiently supportive of Hamas's Islamism. And when Gazans have tried to escape this hellhole and get medical care in Israel, Hamas has gone so far as to stop Red Cross ambulances with roadblocks to prevent the transfers.

Hamas already knows that they can count on the UN and the AP (and the UN and the AP) and Reuters and the Red Cross to blame Israel for their intentionally-manufactured humanitarian disaster. Now their demonization efforts are set to go global:

That hed's totally unfair. There's absolutely no evidence that the monarchy would step in to stop this outrage even if they weren't busy trying to help the State Department screw Israel out of the Golan. After all, the 19 year old gang rape victim had the bad taste to complain about her initial sentence of 90 lashes. Is it the court's fault that Islamic law obligated them to bump up the sentence to 200 lashes and jail time? There are some things you've just got to let go, ya know?

By "these things" he means unjust rulings generally, not lashing a raped woman to ribbons because she violated some archaic cultural taboo. That particular thing is a specialty of Sharialand. We already sort of knew that the royals and the courts were at odds on this but it’s nice to have it confirmed. A senior Saudi official on Monday sought to distance his government from a court’s decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes."Unfortunately, these things happen. Bad judgments occur in legal systems," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters while in Washington to attend a Middle East peace conference in Maryland... Faisal said the judgment was being used to vilify the Saudi government even though it was not responsible because the courts are independent. “Issues like that, bad judgments by the courts, happen everywhere, even in the United States,” he said. “It is a process that is still going on. This is being reviewed by a legal process and we hope it will be changed.

Fair enough. There was this one time where we totally got screwed on a parking ticket. That's just like getting lashed 200 times and thrown in jail because you got gang raped. Glib equivalence: not just for Foreign Policy and Kos any more.

References:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - If You Complain About Getting Gang Raped In Saudi Arabia, They'll Double The Lashings To Punish You More [MR]
* Saudi foreign minister on gang-rape victim’s sentence: “These things happen” [Hot Air]
* State Department Bait And Switch Puts Golan Heights On The Annapolis Agenda, Gets Syria To Attend (Plus: Saudi Arabia Got Condi To Do It To Undermine US Anti-Terrorism Efforts)

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Academic Feminism Not Doing Much To Stop Teenage Girls From Being Lost In Pakistani Poker Games
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Your Saudi Husband Isn't Allowed To Beat You In The Face Because It "Makes Your Face Ugly"
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - You're Not Allowed To Sit Down When You Eat In Saudi Arabia Because You're Too Dolled Up

As if that soppy nutjoy abortionist wasn't bad enough, now Mark Steyn has to work this into his next article:

Schools are struggling to cover the cost of providing specialist teachers for thousands of new immigrant pupils, headteachers warned today. Forty per cent of primary age children in London now speak a language other than English at home and some schools take several new arrivals a week as pupils "appear from nowhere", heads have said. The National Association of Head Teachers called for schools to be given the "infrastructure" they needed to get pupils whose first language is not English fluent enough to cope with the national curriculum as soon as possible.

No worries. English will be a lot less important in two decades when lawyers are able to read the British legal code in its original Arabic: art is already imitating life.

References:
* Meet the women who won't have babies - because they're not eco friendly [Daily Mail]
* English is the foreign language for 40% of primary school pupils [Daily Mail]
* UK Reality Show Will Feature Non-Muslims Living Under Sharia Law.... [Weasel Zippers]
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - Sharia Courts Established In Britain [MR]

Previously:
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - MI5 Suspects 4,000 Potential Terrorists In Over 200 Cells In Britain (Plus: AQ Recruiting Children For Next Terrorist Attack)
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - British Artists Terrified Of Muslim Lunatics, British Cops Apologizing For Muslim Lunatics
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - British Spy Chief Calls Out BBC For Shoving AQ Propaganda Down Kids' Throats, Blaming US For 9/11

We're having trouble reconciling the State Department's insistence that the majority of Palestinians want peace with the reality of democratically elected, majority controlling Hamas parliamentarians saying this. On one hand, we're inclined to believe reality. But then we'd have to believe that the State Department is making things up to coerce concessions out of Israel. And forebear the thought, ya know:

Hamas parliamentarians in Gaza signed a petition declaring their opposition to Palestinian "concessions" in Jerusalem and on the refugee issue, Israel Radio reported Monday. "Any settlement that does not include the return of the refugees, [Israel's] ceding of the land and the holy sites, and the release of the prisoners is ridiculous," Ahmad Baher, deputy chairman of the Palestinian parliament said at the signing of the document. "The attempt to force such a solution led to the second Intifada." Among the signatories was Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. "The people believe that this conference is fruitless and that any recommendations or commitments made in the conference that harm our rights will not be binding for our people," Haniyeh said as he entered the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza. "It will be binding only for those who sign it."

Stupid reality.

References:
* Haniyeh: Annapolis deal won't be binding [JPost]
* State Department, UN Make Things Up To Coerce Israeli Concessions, Scapegoat Israel When Plans Fail (Plus: Hezbollah Now Openly Bragging About Using Civilian Human Shields) [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinians Prepare For Peace Conference With Ten Terrorist Plots
* Palestinians Prepare For Peace Summit By Shooting Israeli Civilian In West Bank (Plus: Two Dozen Rockets And Mortars Hit Israel Monday)
* State Department Deliberately Circumvents Anti-Terrorism Laws, Funds Hamas

Full slate of posts today explaining why we're all totally effed. This stuff is about the lightest it's going to get today.

* The problem with blogging the low-level French intifada is that everybody makes the same "French youths of indeterminate religion" joke about the rioters. We wish they would come out and just declare that they're Quakers like we suspect they are. Sarkozy's got a rough few years ahead of him.

* Maybe not that rough.

* Question: will Israel's incredibly sophisticated environmentalism make the left hate the Jewish State less? Answer: no.

* We heart Amazon's classification of Walt and Mearsheimer's "the Jews and their Christian tools have taken over the US" contribution to public discourse.

* Figures.

Previously:
* France - How Did It Come To This?
* Ann Coulter Embraces France: Hot
* No New Sanctions On Iran. Sophistication On Display.

Annapolis has already seen a very typical anti-Israel diplomatic bait-and-switch on the process side of things, where Israel agrees to a particular dialogue under particular gaurantees only to see those guarantees abandoned. Lebanon II's assurances about Hezbollah being disarmed are the best recent non-Annapolis examples. The most obvious Annapolis example is how Bush promised Olmert that only countries that recognize Israel would be invited to Annapolis - and now not so much. Then Israel was promised that if Syria showed up - Syria being a country, for those of you keeping track at home, that does not recognize Israel's right to exist - then at least Israel wouldn't be coerced into making territorial concessions to Assad. But then Condi needed a legacy (hint: not Russia) and wanted to get the Saudis to attend - so the Golan had to go on the table.

Again the best non-Annapolis example involves Lebanon, where UN inspectors physically walked along the border with a GPS to make sure that Israel had withdrawn from every inch of Lebanese soil. Hezbollah needed an excuse to keep killing Israelis though, so they just unblinkingly insisted that Israel was still occupying Lebanon until they got the UN to agree with them. This is an example of the "moving the goalposts" kind of bait and switch, where Israel makes all the concessions that it is asked to make in exchange for recognition that, finally, it's met some obligation or another - only to find out later that those concessions have been retroactively deemed insufficient.

After the jump, how Bush may pull the same kind of anti-Israel moving the goal posts blindside at Annapolis.

This is like a cornucopia of batshit craziness. She's in jail and faces jail time and 40 lashes. There are crowds gathering around the jail to lynch her. And the the school has had to close for months because they're afraid of getting firebombed:

A British schoolteacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam's Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, said she made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name... the charge could lead to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine... The spokesman said the naming of the teddy happened months ago and was chosen by the children because it is a common name in the country...

The school has been closed until January for fear of reprisals. Fellow teachers at Khartoum's Unity High School told Reuters news agency they feared for Ms Gibbons' safety after receiving reports that men had started gathering outside the police station where she was being held. The school's director, Robert Boulos, said: "This is a very sensitive issue. We are very worried about her safety.

Over a teddy bear. Because when you have to choose between civilization and education on one hand and mindless primitivism on the other, it's always safer to eschew progress. Life in a suffocating 9th century culture must be very warm and comforting (h/t: PS).

UPDATE: Of course Charles had this posted by 9am. And of course he used the same Teddy Bear Of Blasphemy joke. And of course he even had the same "I Love You" stock photo from a Google Images "teddy bear" search. Of course he did. This will teach us to clean out our inbox before checking the day's blogosphere.

UPDATE 2: A reader points out that Charles ellipse'd out the part about the school having to close. Redemption!

UPDATE 3: Hot Air had it by 10:30am, used the same Google Images stock photo graphic, and even pointed out the inconvenient "yeah, this school might get firebombed now" thing. Natch.

References:
* 'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested [BBC]

Previously:
* MR Asks: Yeah, Why Aren't We Bombing Syria?
* Good News: AQ Says World Is Going To End By Next Thursday. Looks Like We're Off The Hook For PhD Quals.
* FrontPage Writeup On UC Irvine: Jihadism Deeply Entrenched. Nice That UCI Hillel Is Finally Noticing.

Both Israel and the State Department paid enormous prices to get a unified Arab League presence at Annapolis. For pro-Annapolis people, the gamble is that the process itself will be able to substitute for the genuine willingness to make peace that - in other cases - lead to peace talks. For anti-Annapolis people, this is the very definition of a fetish where the outcome itself is supposed to substitute for what's underneath. Let's see which way that debate's breaking:

Bahrain has refused an offer by Foreign Minister Tizpi Livni to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, the Jordanian Petra news agency reported Monday. According to Petra, Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, who came under harsh criticism for an unofficial tete-a-tete he held with Livni at the United Nations earlier this fall, asked to wait until after the Annapolis peace parley before discussing possible diplomatic ties. Last Tuesday, Bahrain's parliament called upon the Gulf Arab emirate's government to cease all contact with Israel and to refrain from attending Annapolis, which it labeled "a waste of time"... Islamist deputy Nasser al Fadhala said that Khalifa should ritually wash his hands six times with water and then cleanse them with sand for having shaken Livni's hand.

Of course this kind of vicious intransigence - so clearly grounded in a visceral, literally physical repulsion towards Jews - is thinly coated by rhetoric about "the rights of the Palestinians." That's what makes Annapolis work. As long as Israel's Arab enemies are willing to pretend that the issue is geopolitical - at least out loud some of the time - then the State Department can go through the motions of coercing concessions out of Israel with nudge-wink promises that it will some how mollify anti-Jewish hatred.

Except everyone knows that it won't, because it's not the lack of a Palestinian state that makes the Islamists in control of the Arab League think that touching a Jew makes you filthy. Which is a problem not exactly limited to Bahrain.

References:
* Arab League: Israel Has To Move Behind 1967 Lines, Give Up Fence Protecting Itself Behind 1967 Lines [MR]
* State Department Bait And Switch Puts Golan Heights On The Annapolis Agenda, Gets Syria To Attend (Plus: Saudi Arabia Got Condi To Do It To Undermine US Anti-Terrorism Efforts) [MR]
* Bahrain spurns relations with Israel [JPost]
* State Department Succeeds In Screwing Israel By Getting Saudi Arabia To Annapolis, Can't Get Them To Touch Jews [MR]

Previously:
* On Eve Of Peace Summit, Fatah Promises To Launch Hundreds Of Rockets Into Israel (Plus: US Diplomacy Doing Great!)
* Blair: Israelis Need To Make "Psychological Shift" By Giving Up Stubborn Insistence On History, Experience, Reality
* Palestinians Prepare For Peace Summit By Shooting Israeli Civilian In West Bank (Plus: Two Dozen Rockets And Mortars Hit Israel Monday)

It's been a long time coming, but now we've reached that point:

Kasparov was forced to the ground and beaten, his assistant Marina Litvinovich said in a telephone interview from outside the police station where he was being held... Russian police have detained opposition leader and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. He and other critics of President Vladimir Putin were arrested as police broke up a rally in Moscow organised by Mr Kasparov's Other Russia coalition. Police moved in when protesters tried to march to the election commission, which had barred Other Russia candidates from next week's election.

And just so you don't feel cheated by the lack of a "holy shit the State Department sucks" angle: it's often forgotten that Secretary Rice is officially trained as a Russia expert and that - of all the places in the world - that's an area where she should have excelled. Instead she's been a miserable failure and is trying to make up for it with Annapolis:

''We've let Putin and Russia elude our grasp,'' said former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a prominent neoconservative. ''I rate that as one of the biggest disappointments, not because it has an immediate impact in the here and now,'' but because of Russia's anti-Western drift later. Even as she finds herself a target for Democratic opponents of the Iraq War, Rice also is increasingly under fire from hawks such as Bolton, who argue that she's abandoned Bush's purist principles to negotiate with North Korea and pursue diplomacy for diplomacy's sake in Iran. ''Everybody's in the legacy mode now,'' Bolton said.

She's substituting failure in one part of the world by setting up decades of warfare in another part of the world. That warfare will be all the more dangerous because it will be done in a world where Israel has been deprived of its ability to win wars conventionally (giving high tech weaponry to Israel's Arab enemies, depriving Israel of badly needed strategic depth, etc). Fantastic legacy.

References:
* Putin Goes After Chess Master, Opposition Politician Kasparov [MR]
* Garry Kasparov Arrested at Russian Rally! [Gateway Pundit]
* With peace talks, Rice seeks to polish diplomatic legacy [Miami Herald]

Previously:
* We Heart Putin - Big, Really Threatening Russian Airshows Are Back
* Putin Wins Russian Politician Of The Year
* Putin Figures Out Constitutional Way To Continue Ruling Russia With Iron Fist

It's hard to find a government agency that exceeds the State Department's unique combination of self-importance, wrongheadedness, and incompetence. And yet somehow TSA manages again and again to impress us on that score. So the next time you're going through one of our oh-so-secure airports, slip this into your luggage (full pic behind the link):

The incompetence of these people is just astounding.

References:
* LAX TSA Misses 75% Of Fake Bombs, Lets People With Bad Boarding Passes On Airplanes [MR]
* HuffPo Blogger: Replace TSA With Blackwater Ops [MR]
* A handy guide for luggage inspectors [Upgrade]

Previously:
* Well then...
* Airport Security in This Country is a Bad Joke
* Northwest Airlines Caves To CAIR Boycott Threat And Apologizes, MR Caves To Our Worst Instincts And Publishes Conspiracy Theory Bait