The first, tragic casualty of the Obama Intifada?

Thursday's brief afternoon rain could not wash the blood out of a small pile of sand, where hours earlier the body of Thai worker Mane Singauephon had lain. He was killed around 11 a.m., when a rocket fell through the roof of a hothouse where he worked on the border with Gaza... He had come to the small community of Netiv Ha'asara more than three years ago to support his wife and child back home. "Ten workers witnessed the death of their friend," said Yair Farjun, head of the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council... Singauephon had been hit in several parts of the body, including his head, back and left arm.

The geopolitical upshot is that the post-Cast Lead deterrent which had kept peace in the south of Israel is breaking down. Emboldened by - achem - international anti-Israel diplomacy, and knowing that Israel's options are constrained by a potential Goldstone II, Hamas is back to genocidal incitement against Israeli civilians:

As noted, the IDF has thus far shown relative restraint in its response to attacks directed at our territory. One of the important reasons for this is the criticism leveled at Israel internationally because of the Goldstone Report and Gaza blockade. Another reason is that these rocket attacks are usually inefficient and sporadic. A third reason is the "understanding" shown to the difficulties faced by Hamas, which genuinely attempts to prevent attacks. However, the rocket that killed a man in Israel Thursday changed the equation.... it's quite clear that the frequent rocket fire in the past day was carried out as result of Hamas incitement and the calls by its leaders for an Intifada, in the context of tensions in Jerusalem over the holy sites.

Those riots, of course, came in the context of Obama's smart diplomacy over Jerusalem. It turns out that convincing the Palestinians that they'll be able to wipe out Jewish holy sites in the Old City - again - doesn't dampen their enthusiasm for violence.

Back in Gaza Hamas has seeded the entire Strip with rockets and explosives in preparation for another war, the better to maximize civilian casualties. They're apparently hoping for more Palestinian civilian casualties than during Cast Lead, which was itself a huge civilian-murdering success for them. There are 500 pages of photographs and testimony showing that they used kids as human shields, transformed mosques into weapons and barracks, and flagrantly committed war crimes. All of which was obvious during the war and none of which kept Goldstone and his ilk from demonizing the Jewish State.

References:
* 10 workers saw their friend die [JPost]
* Deterrence tested in Gaza [YNet]
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* 'Hamas used kids as human shields' [JPost]
* One Jerusalem Conference Call - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu On Hamas's "Double War Crime" [Videos] [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Palestinians
* Anti-Israel Journalism
* Human Rights

I kind of want to sympathize with him. Marty Peretz is reminding everyone - again - that the order to detonate the US/Israel alliance came directly from Obama, who is "rip shit" with the Israelis. Apparently learning about the Middle East via classes with Columbia professors, hallway chats with Ayers, and dinnertime talks with Said - apparently that failed to instill in the President an appreciation for Israel's security concerns.

There are even arguments that Biden has some genuine affinity for the Jewish State, though that's tough to square with his despicable sell out of Soviet Jewry.

In any case here he is again "condemning" Israel, even while insisting that the rhetoric - which is now accepted as a proxy for outright hostility unbefitting an alliance - should be no big deal. Why can't the Israelis just take blistering diplomatic insults in stride, ya know?

Biden said the United States and Israel need to "get over" the latest flare-up in tensions and insisted that the essential elements of the relationship between the two nations remain the same. "Israel's security is undeniably in our interest to make sure it is absolutely secure," the vice president said. Biden called the Israeli announcement of new settlements last week "provocative" and said it was "obviously designed by some in Israel to undermine a peace process George Mitchell finally got -- our negotiator -- finally got back on track." "And so the message is: We've got to get over this," Biden said. "Granted, I condemn the announcement made by that planning council. ... The irony is even that planning council acknowledging not a single new unit can be built at least for a year and maybe never will be built, it was provocative."

You're following this, yeah? It's "ironic" that the WH tried to detonate the US/Israeli special relationship over an announcement that - by Biden's own admission - had zero material consequences. "Ironic." That's their description for needlessly going nuclear on an ally, perhaps terminally undermining the peace process, and triggering a wave of Palestinian violence that's quickly escalating into a full-blown Obama Intifada. And those are just the links from this morning.

Anyway - if beat sweetening NYT writeups are to be believed - the Vice President has inordinate influence over WH foreign policy. That would make his reemphasis on "condemnation" an act of deliberate personal antagonism. If he's merely following Obama's directives then it would show, given the firestorm over that specific word, that the WH is still committed to slapping Israel around. And why wouldn't they be? After all, it's paying off.

References and related after the jump...

They're setting up Israel to take the fall for the collapse of proximity talks, which were themselves a pre-Olso-style "we'll take the Jews' land but we won't talk to them" slap. Mitchell is being held in the US until Netanyahu makes even more concessions for the Palestinians to pocket. And now we've reached a point where the US Secretary of State is gleefully chortling about the fiasco:

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that the Obama administration's decision to ramp up pressure on Israel over construction of Jewish homes in east Jerusalem was bringing results. In an interview with BBC television, Clinton was asked whether escalating the tone with Israel had paid off. She said: "I think we're going to see the resumption of the negotiation track and that means that it is paying off because that's our goal."... It was now the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's duty to overcome opposition within his coalition government and ensure that the stalled negotiations moved forward, Clinton told the BBC.

Anyone still think this wasn't a premeditated shot across the bow, held back until now because the WH didn't have an ostensibly anti-Netanyahu wedge issue to use as a pretext? Keep in mind this was the equivalent of the Russians showing up for START talks and then triggering an international incident over some mid-level paper shuffling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Obama's condescending explanation of his one-sided hostility was incoherent to the point of mockery. Biden got back to the US and started doing stand up routines about the US's double standards on construction. And now Clinton's gloating about the administration's broadside on the BBC, an outlet not overly loved in Jerusalem. Very diplomatic!

For what it's worth, Jennifer Rubin's running the argument that the dust up was tied to Iran: something like "if we're willing to detonate the US-Israel alliance over something this trivial, just think what will happen if you preempt." That's not my camp. I'm with Jeffrey Goldberg in the "regime change" camp.

Besides the warnings regarding Iran are being telegraphed via the well-coordinated reports of linkage between Israeli settlements and jihadi motivation. Both the Petraeus and the Biden statements have now been debunked of course. But the message undoubtedly got through: "defend your interests and anti-Israel partisans will scapegoat you for the deaths of American boys and girls." Charming.

References and related after the jump...

We're a little over an hour away from this week's Omri Ceren Show, courtesy of One Jerusalem Radio. This week's episode - to which you can tune in live via either the main show page or the episode page - will revolve around Obama's ongoing diplomatic broadside against Israel. Since it's already paying dividends in the form of maximalist Palestinian demands backed by riotous Palestinian violence, we might as well discuss the overwhelming evidence that it was obviously premeditated and blisteringly hypocritical. That it will also set the peace process back by boxing in Abbas - again - is probably also worth mentioning. As always the decision-making process is as important as the decision, since apparently the people advising the President are either being ignored out of pique or being listened to out of ignorance.

On the TOCS technical/housekeeping side: I'm slowly getting caught up on remastering old episodes and working through old interviews. I've eliminated much of the choppiness from the first month of episodes, which you can now revisit here. The full 38 minute interview with Larry Greenfield, highlights of which aired last week, is now available on the One Jerusalem Audio page. Look out in the coming weeks for more reedited old episodes and more full versions of past interviews.

Anyway, today's official blurb:

Omri covers the Obama administration's diplomatic broadside against Israel. From Biden's initial "condemnation" over a minor mishap to Clinton's aggressive tirade against Netanyahu - to President Obama's personal orders to do both - the last week has brought the US-Israeli special relationship to the breaking point. Meanwhile anti-Israel partisans have unleashed a flurry of articles insisting that the US should scale back its support for Israel, some adopting almost classically antisemitic terms. Dan Diker calls in to provide an insider perspective on how the Israeli government is working to repair the crisis and minimize its damage.

All in all this hasn't been the best week the US-Israeli special relationship. But at least the crisis wasn't all totally predictable during the campaign!

References:
* Double Standards And Non-Standards [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Crisis [Halevi / TNR]
* Compare And Contrast: Israeli And Syrian "Insults" To Clinton [MR]
* Maybe Obama Deserved That Nobel Peace Prize After All [MR]
* Confirmed: US-Israeli Alliance Plummets Into "Historic Crisis," Obama Triggers Worst Relations Since Carter [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Jewish Politics
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy

David Gerstman sent me this IHT op-ed a few days ago, along with an acerbic comment about how photographs posted on MR the week before had pre-relegated it to the "utter anti-Israel bullshit" pile (my language, not David's). The author is Michael Martin, foreign minister of the multicultural paradise that is Ireland:

Last week I visited Gaza... to see for myself the impact of a blockade that has now been imposed on the people of Gaza for some two-and-a-half years and to meet with the courageous and dedicated staff of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), including its director of operations, Irishman John Ging... the deprivations and hardships resulting from the blockade were all too evident. Visiting an UNRWA food distribution center, I could see for myself the despair and suffering etched in the faces of those who queued for the most basic rations of rice, milk powder and sunflower oil... UNRWA is encountering increasing levels of abject poverty where people basically do not have enough food, even with their meager food allocations, to live.

The tragedy of Gaza is that it is fast in danger of becoming a tolerated humanitarian crisis... One can imagine how hard it is not to give in to despair and hopelessness... what was most impressive and heartening during my visit was the resilience and incredible dignity of ordinary people. In particular, I want to mention two young girls whom I met during a visit to the UNRWA girls' preparatory school in Rafah... I was similarly struck by what I heard from a business group at the Karni industrial park. This group of predominantly young businessmen and women graphically described the devastation that has been wrought on the private sector in Gaza, an economy that is now only operating at some 10-15 percent of capacity.

In no particular order: Gaza's economy has been booming for years, the "no food" canard is especially dishonest, pretending that Hamas allows Gaza women to have business careers is risible, the Gaza private sector is financially overwhelmed by Hamas and Fatah public employers using Iranian and US funds, the UN has at times imposed its own blockade on Gaza, and whatever humanitarian crisis does exist is deliberately manufactured by Hamas. But that's not what we're here to discuss.

What we're here to discuss is how the Canadians - who as a nation have never met an anti-Israel NGO they didn't want to subsidize - have cut off UNRWA's funding because it's a cesspool of incitement and corruption. The Obama administration? Exactly the opposite:

Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Eric P. Schwartz welcomed Filippo Grandi, recently appointed Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), to Washington DC on March 11, 2010, and announced that the U.S. will make an additional planned contribution of $55 million to UNRWA. The United States is UNRWA's largest donor. The announced contribution of $55 million includes $30 million to UNRWA's General Fund, which provides core services to Palestinian refugees across the region, and $25 million to UNRWA's Emergency Appeal for the West Bank and Gaza. This additional funding will bring total U.S contributions to UNRWA thus far in Fiscal Year 2010 to $95 million. In 2009, the United States provided more than $267 million to UNRWA.

UNRWA's 60th birthday party in 2009 - yes, they're now caring for 5th generation "refugees" - became a major fund raising event. Not enough! The UN says they need $100 million more for this year. And really, how can you not give them additional money? In between covering up Hamas's aid supply hijacking and fabricating Israeli attacks on schools - well, they get things done:

Noah Pollak already wrote the measured and reasoned version of this post yesterday so pretty much all that's left for me is vitriol. It's worth emphasizing, then, the unblinking, unthinking hypocrisy that this administration hides behind when they get called out on their Allies Last Enemies First diplomacy. A verifiable mix-up...

It was self-evident that Netanyahu's "stupidity not malice" explanation for Ramat Shlomo was accurate. Just days earlier, he had moved effectively to shut down Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat's incendiary plan to demolish dozens of Arab homes in Silwan. And yet, acting doubtless on the orders of her president, she resorted to what the ADL - no hysterical critic of the Obama administration - termed "gross overreaction."

... constitutes a mortal "insult" to Secretary Clinton. But Assad and Ahmadinejad standing side by side and actually literally insulting her by name?

Which part of the new "positive, constructive U.S.-Syrian relationship" involves having the US Secretary of State getting publicly mocked by grinning totalitarian thugs? "President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a bilateral deal to remove travel visas and attended a Muslim ceremony in the Syrian capital... "We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement to cancel the visas," Assad said. "I find it strange that they (Americans) talk about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other," he added. Ahmadinejad told a joint news conference: "Clinton said we should maintain a distance. I say there is no distance between Iran and Syria." He added: "We have the same goals, same interests and same enemies.""

Suffice to say that our outreach to Syria continues apace.

Also apropos of this nonsense, you should check out the NY Sun editorial on Clinton's credibility as she heads into AIPAC. It turns out that the woman who smooched blood libeler Suha Arafat before becoming pro-Israel before becoming mildly anti-Israel before detonating the US-Israeli alliance - it turns out that she actually has a history of strong Arab financial connections. Strange, that.

For what its worth Shmuel Rosner thinks she'll get plenty of applause. Presumably he imagines that she'll mouth empty banalities - "Israel's security" etc etc - and that the crowd will pretend to believe her. I think he's wrong. I think she'll go in there talking about how Israel's future requires concessions - "difficult choices" etc etc - and that she'll be greeted by stony silence.

Then I think that anti-Israel journalists will muse sophisticatedly about how Obama had to rough up Israel because "Netanyahu's intransigence" was stymieing the President's vigorous appeasement of the Muslim world (my language, not theirs). In between they'll gloat about how the all-powerful Israel Lobby has been cut down, which after all is what Jesse Jackson promised Obama would do.

References and related after the jump...

Mere Rhetoric, October 18, 2008:

Memo to ostensibly pro-Israel Obama supporters: circa 2010 there are going to be headlines about the "severe crisis in US-Israel relations." You're not going to be able to say that you didn't know.

Reuters, March 15, 2010:

Israeli envoy sees "historic crisis" with U.S.:report - Israel and the United States are in a "crisis of historic proportions" over a settlement dispute that has brought relations to a 35-year low, Israel's ambassador to Washington was quoted on Monday as saying.

The Washington Post writeup about Clinton's over the top condemnation also included the line "the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades." But the headline wasn't as on point and elegant as with the Reuters story, so that's what you got.

The idea is nonetheless the same throughout. Netanyahu had announced a temporary construction freeze that excluded East Jerusalem. Clinton had described the freeze as an "unprecedented" concession. Then Israel announced new construction within that framework.

But sensing the opportunity to pick a public fight with Israel, Obama personally ordered Biden to "condemn" the Jewish State. Clinton followed up by insisting that the US had been "insulted." For their part the Palestinians tweaked their ever-expanding construction halt demands, setting up Israel to take the blame for failed proximity talks. All over a neighborhood that borders two other Jewish neighborhoods and that had never, ever been controversial before.

Coincidentally - and just in time - there are a flurry of articles being published with different reasons why the US-Israeli relationship should be abandoned. This morning's is from Mark Perry, who "reports" how Israelis are getting American boys and girls killed. His FP article fails to note his previous job as an Arafat adviser, though that detail did seem salient to Laura Rozen. Also seemingly salient: "There seems to be more in the ether in recent days suggesting a diverging of perceived U.S. and Israeli interests in the region." Yes, there do seem to be that.

The really obnoxious thing? We're supposed to pretend that this policy is a reluctant recourse by an otherwise pro-Israel administration. Or that journalists are slowly discovering and objectively describing the situation. Come on now.

References and related after the jump...

We're a couple hours away from today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. With Mitchell and Biden on the ground the show is going to be extremely diplomacy-heavy, making allowances for the time needed to cover this-week-in-Iranian-warmongering. You can tune in live via the show page or the episode page starting at 6:30pm PST, and as always I'll have the chatroom and the phone lines open for questions and comments.

There are functionally two full interviews this week. Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation, comes on as a special guest to talk about "Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood," the enormous writeup he just completed on the recent Jerusalem Conference. Given his role in conservative and Jewish politics - the Obama campaign banned surrogates from debating him when he was head of the California RJC and then NJDC moron Aaron Kayek targeted him in one of the dumbest attacks I've ever read - that comes up too.

Today's Diker segment goes for almost 20 minutes, which is what you'd expect given that the show topic is diplomacy and he's among Israel's top diplomacy analysts. One of the money lines from the beginning of the conversation: "we haven't seen this type of sympathy by an American administration... really since Carter, and even the Carter administration was somewhat more measured in its approach." Cf. the rest of the Israeli political world, where that exact conclusion is on its way to becoming conventional wisdom. You'll want to stay till the end where he evaluates whether Obama will actually succeed in detonating the US-Israel alliance. Tough to say, tough to say.

Official show blurb:

Omri interviews Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. They discuss Greenfield's recent missile defense talk at the 7th Annual Jerusalem Conference, the political climate in Israel and within American Jewry, and the future of the US conservative movement. Dan Diker also joins the show, talking about Israel's recent public and state-to-state diplomacy in the context of the Iranian threat. In between Omri runs down the week's news on global terrorism, Middle East geopolitics, and the left's Big Government push in the United States.

I'm also in the process of going over all the old shows and reediting them to make them listenable (or at least to remove cracks and pops - any unlistenable content will, alas, stay the way it is). More on that in the next week or so. In the meantime, see you in a bit.

References:
* Jerusalem's Misgivings with Larry Greenfield [TOCS]
* Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood [Larry Greenfield]
* Obama Campaign Demands Ban On Republican Jewish Group, Escalates Thuggish Intimidation [MR]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* Politics: Not afraid to speak her mind [JPost]
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship? [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Jewish Politics

The concrete and significant Israeli moves on settlements have all been in the direction of unreciprocated concessions. When Netanyahu announced his temporary freeze it was hailed by Clinton as an "unprecedented." Since that praise naturally sent the Palestinians into fits the Obama administration promptly backtracked. It also totally failed to deliver on its promise of international support for the freeze, a nice additional bait-and-switch. Instead the UN condemned Israel for not going far enough.

All that left Netanyahu feeling that there's nothing he can do to avoid US and international disapprobation, which is not where you want someone when you're asking them to take "risks for peace." An Israeli Prime Minister contemplating territorial concessions needs to know that he can count on international security assurances should things go wrong. So one of Biden's two goals for his trip was to give Netanyahu some much-delayed recognition and support.

Then a couple of Israeli officials from the government's most junior coalition partner made a symbolic announcement about East Jerusalem construction. Netanyahu didn't know about it. Biden's response - nonetheless - was to humiliate the Israeli Prime Minister, keeping Netanyahu and his wife waiting 90 minutes into dinner and then issuing an unprecedented condemnation. Netanyahu found out about the statement during dinner.

That treatment precisely mirrors what happened on Netanyahu's November trip to DC, when Obama dragged him around the carpet before approving a Monday meeting. The White House kept the Israelis in limbo until the night before, continuously creating new and changing prerequisites. The next day Obama arrived late, highlighting the priority he places on the US-Israeli alliance. Netanyahu offered to make additional concessions to the Palestinians anyway. Obama's response was to emphasize that East Jerusalem is not Israeli and to link Palestinian terrorism to Israeli construction in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood. That last part was so stupid that lefty Jeffrey Goldberg accused the President of inventing issues and excusing Palestinian violence.

So say what you will about Biden's ham-fisted diplomacy. In this rare instance he's merely following the party line. First the insult - language, per the WaPo, that is "rarely used in diplomatic terms when criticizing the behavior of close allies" - and now the fallout:

Compare...

Washington refused to endorse British claims to over the Falkland Islands yesterday... Despite Britain's close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain's claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue... a State Department spokesman told The Times. "The US recognises de facto UK administration of the islands but takes no position on the sovereignty claims of either party."

... and contrast...

The Obama administration criticized Israel Wednesday for designating two shrines on Palestinian territory as national heritage sites... Underscoring those difficulties, the State Department on Wednesday sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for adding two shrines in the West Bank to Israel's list of national heritage sites... State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the administration viewed the move as "provocative" and unhelpful to the goal of getting the two sides back to the table.

The Palestinians have sovereignty over Jewish holy sites in the West Bank - which they've historically desecrated and destroyed - but the UK has no sovereignty over the Falklands. Nice to see the White House responding to increasingly public UK concerns that "Obama has it in for Britain." Overflowing with nuance and agility, is this government.

Add this to Obama's early snub of Brazil, which included misspelling Silva's name and was later repaid in the form of Brazilian backing for Ahmadinejad. But presumably Argentina now owes us a favor, so we've got that in our pocket in case they ever magically become the largest country in South America or a nuclear-armed European NATO ally.

Just out of curiosity, if Obama was trying to detonate all of the US's traditional alliances - what would he be doing differently?

References and related after the jump...

Hmmm...

Israel's air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range. The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel's military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads.

Depressing theory: Israel only revealed the fleet because it doesn't intend to use it on Iran. If an attack was in the works, the existence of the drones wouldn't be confirmed until they were done dropping ordnance on Natanz. Israel's new urban warfare weapons were unveiled during Cast Lead, and not in a formal setting.

Possible counter-theory: the US and the EU3 need to credibly raise the specter of an Israeli attack to get China and Russia on board the sanctions train, and this is aimed in that direction.

Depressing counter-counter-theory: China's never going to assent to a genuine and robust sanctions regime. Minus military action, Iran's going nuclear.

Should that happen, Israel is working on a few other drone projects as well:

Israel is increasingly worried about the threat of a nuclear, missile-equipped Iran. So the Israeli military is working on "a high-fly­ing, long-endurance unmanned in­frared sensor" that can tell the difference between "nuclear war­heads amid doz­ens of decoys sent to confound na­tional missile defenses," Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome reports. "If implemented, the Israeli program will mark the first use of an unmanned platform for [n]uclear warhead hunting."

The problem, of course, is that only a single missile has to get through for the result to be nuclear genocide. How lucky do you feel? How lucky do you think Netanyahu feels? Barack put the point of no return somewhere around the first half of 2010, and that was in the context of Iran's last generation of long-range missiles.

Then the P5+1 couldn't meet because the Chinese were too busy. Then they met but couldn't come to a consensus. Then Iran showed off their new lines of even more powerful domestically-produced offensive missiles.

So probably not all that lucky.

References:
* Israel unveils new drone fleet that can reach Iran [AP]
* Israel Developing Nuke-Hunting Drone [Wired Danger Room]
* Israel Says Iran Close to Nuclear Capability [VOA]
* World powers fail to agree in meeting on Iran [JTA]
* Clenched With Two New Offensive Missile Lines [IIFSC]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Israel
* Israeli Technology
* Iran

Too bad...

A multi-branch team of PA agents found an Arab-driven car carrying 20,000 shekels' worth of cleaning products several days ago. The "contraband" was manufactured in the Jewish community of Karnei Shomron... and was therefore promptly confiscated and destroyed... PA police, tax officials, customs agents, and PA Preventive Security personnel banded together to carry out a recent PA Finance Ministry decision... The destruction operation was described in the PA as a "Palestinian national moral obligation" in safeguarding PA "interests and its economy."

... they really could have used those supplies for that shiny new Palestinian city they're building:

The construction of the new Palestinian city Rawabi, north of Ramallah, is proceeding... Israel is not obstructing the progress of this important project. Israel has repeatedly declared that it views economic peace as an essential stage on the path to political peace... Improvement of living standards there will assist in lowering the value of violence, will encourage moderation, will allow the incremental building of confidence and will portend a horizon of hope.

The factory which produced the goods, by the by, was owned by Israeli-Arabs who just happened to be located in a Jewish community. Which means that these tools are now destroying goods that were produced by Arabs living in West Bank territory that the Palestinians claim for... Arabs.

No word yet on whether Prime Minister Fayyad - the ne plus ultra of Palestinian moderation, the one the State Department holds up us the linchpin of Palestinian good governance - showed up this time to burn the Jewish goods. He was certainly there last time:

Your tax dollars at work (h/t: Doris).

References:
* PA Agents Destroy 20,000 Shekels' Worth of Jewish Products [A7]
* Summary of editorials from the Hebrew press [Yisrael Hayom via MFA]
* U.S. warns it won't recognize PA unity gov't sans Fayyad [Ha'aretz]
* Fayyad helps burn settlement products [YNet]
* Obama Bundles $200 Million Palestinian Aid Into Emergency Iraq/Afghanistan Supplemental [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Palestinians
* Israeli-Arab Peace Process
* Israel

Stan Shivell and I have been IM'ing back and forth about what Iran's February 11 saber rattling. is all about. It's the 31st anniversary of the Islamic takeover and both the government and the opposition will be out in force. But there's also this other element - and the Iranians do this periodically - where they attach some kind of mystical significance to a day and predict "surprises" and "demises" and so on. Probably as good a time as any to look at how a regional war between Israel and Iran might play out.

Ergo today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, going on the air at 6:30pm. As always you can tune in live via either the episode page or the main Omri Ceren Show page. Chat room available, phone lines open, etc. Segments in the queue: the calculations and capabilities of Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Egypt. This crap about Apaches will also come up. I've been trying to chase the story down a little bit and it turns out to be pointedly different than original press reports implied.

Dan Diker joins the show for three full segments today. We'll go over the specifics of recent Israeli/Syrian relations before moving into how the Syrian military would get dragged into a regional war. Even measured by the amount of game Diker usually brings to these discussions, there's just a ton of information in each section. Two specific things for which to keep an ear out: the significance of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal specifically in the context of peace talks and the degree to which Iran can impose its will on Damascus's behavior.

References:
* Clenched With A Weird Feb 11th Deadline For The "Demise Of Capitalism" And America [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* What Would A Middle East War Look Like? [One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show]
* Wonderful: Obama Blocking Apache Sales To Israel, "Dismayed" At Use During Cast Lead [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Syria
* Iran

So perfectly does this fit the "Obama is deepy anti-Israel" narrative that I'm almost inclined to doubt it's true. A story about how the WH is generically hamstringing weapons sales, fair enough. The Pentagon is again dragging its feet on Israel's Joint Strike Fighter requests, because apparently the two year delay created by WH "obstacles" hasn't sufficiently damanged US/Israeli relations. So there's some precedent.

But blocking Apaches that are critical to Israel's urban warfighting because Israel used them to fight an urban war - that's meat a bit too red. And yet, two separate sources:

The administration... is delaying an upgrade project for Israel's military on the grounds that it could be deployed against Palestinian militants. Industry sources said the Defense Department has taken measures to slow down an upgrade of Israel's AH-64 Apache attack helicopter fleet. The sources said at least three Apache helicopters have been awaiting an upgrade at Boeing, the prime contractor... The sources said the delay of the Apache project stemmed from the White House's concern that Israel was rebuilding its military for another war. They said... Obama was dismayed by the widespread use of the Apache and other U.S. platforms during the January 2009 war with the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. "Everything having to do with Israel's Apache fleet has been delayed by the administration," another source said.

So much for that year-end Forward article about how US/Israeli arms sales demonstrate that "strategic security relations between the two countries are flourishing." It's become a standard lefty talking point in the last few months, and it really ought not be.

It's not just that Obama's anti-Israel diplomatic offensive has actually damaged strategic security relations across the board, though it has. It's that the entire article - from the headline about arms cooperation all the way through the stuff about promoting Israel's qualitative military edge - is the opposite of true. No arms deal has been made with Israel since Obama took office, while Arab countries have been the beneficiaries of unprecedented largess:

There's an Al Jazeera expose at the bottom of the post, outlining the massive indigenous weapons industry that Hamas is running in the middle of the "world's largest concentration camp" (because that's exactly how Auschwitz was - lots of spare missiles and raw materials just lying around!) They're back to mass weapons production, which as a sheer matter of statistics means a bump in "work accidents." And in the Sinai the Egyptians are literally tripping over huge weapons caches.

And - ust as they were doing on the eve of Cast Lead - Hamas is back to strutting around about taking on the IDF:

One year after Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip, the spokesman for Hamas' armed wing said this week that the Islamist group would not shirk away from a new battle with Israel... Israel has said the brigades, which some observers estimate have 25,000 fighters, have been seeking with Syrian and Iranian help to upgrade their rocket capabilities and put the Israeli heartland and the commercial capital of Tel Aviv within range. Abu Ubaida said Hamas had no choice but to improve its arsenal.

Rocket barrages are again routine, having escalated from the merely sporadic attacks that Hamas launched at the end of 2009 in violation of the ceasefire. Why not? They fired on Israeli civilians 29 out of 35 consecutive days, and the Obama administration responded by demanding Israeli security concessions. Plus - if nothing else - they've got all of these rockets and missiles just piling up in the living room. They've got to do something with them:

If only Israel would lift the siege on Gaza! The way things are right now, Hamas is limited to using their VIP tunnels - electricity and telephones included - to smuggle food, missile materials, and anything else they want up to and including cars. The sheer scope of the humanitarian crisis is well-nigh overwhelming.

References and related after the jump...

Note the time change. We're going on the air 30 minutes early today for scheduling reasons, which gives you just enough time to get comfortable and tune in. Everything else - from where you can find the show to the structure of the segments - should be familiar. You can listen live either via the main Omri Ceren Show page or through the page for today's episode. As always the phone lines will be open and the chat room will be available for questions and comments.

The bulk of today's program revolves around anti-Israel media bias and propaganda. You'd think being the global leader on Haiti would be a public diplomacy boon, but it turns out not so much. Ditto for investigating alleged IDF misdeeds. Ditto for trying to make concessions to West Bank Palestinians. Ditto for minimizing Hamas's exploitation for human shields in Gaza. Instead those either become reasons to attack Israel or - at the very least - they embolden anti-Israel partisans by signaling uncertainty and weakness.

Today's Diker segments deal specifically with the two controversial Israeli investigations into Cast Lead. The first investigation is the one that the IDF just concluded, with its results being handed over to the UN. The second probe is the one that Netanyahu is considering, which would involve another huge and hostile inquiry into the behavior of Israeli soldiers operating under almost impossible conditions. There's a point during the second part of today's interview that's pretty much required listening, where Diker very calmly and very systematically explains the precise degree to which another investigation would be a total disaster.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Incoherent Success [Omri Ceren Show]
* Israel to UN: We launched 150 investigations following Gaza op [YNet]
* Israel 'war crime' probe urged [The Age]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Journalism
* Cast Lead

The Palestinians also - apparently - need to attack and expel Jews like the Na'vi attacked and expelled humans. Which is probably the first time an antisemite has ever acknowledged that Jews should be treated as humans, but whatever:

This week, a screening of "Avatar" erupted into a small ruckus in a suburb when one moviegoer loudly announced that the Palestinians should learn from this movie what to do to the Jews, causing a commotion and angering others in the audience. The opinionated moviegoer was Juliano Mer-Khamis. Born in Nazereth to a Jewish mother and Arab father, he is an accomplished actor of many years, a filmmaker as well as a political activist who is very outspoken against the occupation... "No one dares to make the real analogy. 'Avatar' is one of the bravest films made. It portrays the occupation, but people aren't making the analogy. Many would like to be like the blue people but don't understand the meaning..."

I'm actually more offended by that "Avatar is the bravest film ever" crap than by the explicit call to violence. Sure genocidal mass murder is unseemly. But to pretend that some vast pro-American Hollywood groundswell is going to threaten James Cameron's career for making the highest-grossing movie of all time - that's just insulting.

Since this is MR's first and probably last Avatar-related post: come on now. I don't know why the Onion even bothers caricaturing maudlin liberals. It's funny. But reality's just better at this game (h/t: SP).

References:
* ISRAEL: 'Avatar' and the Palestinian blues [LAT]
* Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues [CNN]
* Onion Tries, Fails To Capture Full Absurdity Of Post-Election Obama Cultists (Plus: They're "Sitting At Phone" Asking "What Do You Want Me To Do Next"?) [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Stupid
* Palestinians
* Media Bias

This story won't get international play until there's an incident between Gaza fishermen and the Israeli Navy, but apparently Hamas has found a new set of Palestinian human shields. Those explosive-filled barrels that have been washing ashore in Israel are coming from Hamas boats disguised as fishing vessels, all but guaranteeing a miscalculation that will drag in Palestinian civilians:

Barrels filled with explosives sent by terror organizations from Gaza are putting Palestinian fishermen in danger, a senior Navy official estimated Tuesday following the discovery of explosive devices off Israel's southern shores... "The terror organizations often use innocent-looking fishing boats in order to carry out attacks, making things very difficult for us. On the one hand, we would like to allow Palestinian fishery, but on the other hand, it's our duty to thwart attacks. This leads to serious inner conflicts."

And when Palestinian fishermen do get tangled up in an Israeli anti-terror operation, you can be quite sure that Israel will get the blame. Because per the rules codified by the Goldstone Report, normal reasoning like "the people who use human shields are responsible for their deaths" doesn't apply when the Jewish State is defending its civilians.

Of course Israel will end up getting demonized for this even without a live fire incident. If Hamas is going to use Gaza fishing to turn the Mediterranean into a minefield, Israel will have to restrict Gaza fishing to prevent the Mediterranean from being turned into a minefield. The headlines about Israelis starving Gazans will follow shortly thereafter, just like they did after Israel shut down the border crossings that Hamas kept spraying with gunfire. Those headlines were false back then and will be false the next time around. But whatever.

Hamas is only throwing explosives off fishing boats because they can't launch attacks out of Gaza any other way. The security fence that surrounds their little terror statelet has limited them to a grand total of one successful suicide bomber in the last few years. All of which is weird because the foreign policy experts who tried to block Israel's West Bank security barrier assured us that fences don't work.

References:
* Militants pledge to float more bombs toward Israel [WaPo]
* IDF source: Gaza fishermen in danger [YNet]
* Deputy IDF chief: Terror groups facing difficulties [YNet]
* Main terrorist attacks carried out at Gaza Strip crossings [Israel MFA]
* Gaza's Booming Economy - Underground Mall System, Hundreds Of Supermarkets, Latest Fashions (Plus: New Gaza Tunnel Wasn't For Smuggling) [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Israel
* Palestinians

Original: Kudos to whatever seething, obsessive anti-Israel organization managed to sneak this in under the radar. Drip drip drip delegitimization of the Jewish State is after all the strategy du jour. But seriously? This is what we're doing now?

Apparently someone has convinced Yahoo to go into their News Weather data, erase "Ariel, Israel" as a valid location, and replace it "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories." The 20,000 residents from Ariel, where the relevant weather station is built, apparently don't deserve their own weather. Yahoo has decreed that it belongs to the residents of Jenin, which is 25 miles north and 850 feet lower. It's absurd that this kind of petty crap even has to be addressed, but inasmuch as it's part and parcel of a broad-based replacement geography campaign it's unfortunately not trivial.

Someone should ask Yahoo if there's a list somewhere: which Israeli cities are Israelis allowed to keep, which do the Palestinians deign to let them share, which are entirely Palestinian, and which are simply unworthy of existing? Because given how they've gone out of their way to divide up Weather Channel data - more on that in a sec - apparently Israel's capital, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, and the city of Ariel are all in play.

As near as I can tell it was Reut Cohen who first reported that something was up. I've put the screencaps I reference at the end of this post for readability purposes:

Last night he called me to tell me that Ariel, Israel, which is an Israeli town near Jordan's west border, had been renamed... Rather than seeing the weather for Ariel [on Yahoo's weather widget], he saw "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories" listed in its stead... It is unclear why the change was made, but it is clear that those who deny the right of Israel to exist consistently refer to all of Israel -- not just Ariel, Israel -- as occupied territories... It's this sort of blatant political revisionism of renaming Israeli cities that we are up against... When it comes to historic revisionism, the so-called myth of tolerance and acceptance of Middle Eastern Jewry is a perfect example of history re-written to suit the agenda of Arab Nationalists and/or Islamic Totalitarian organizations.

Here's where things get weird. Yahoo's weather widget just takes data from Yahoo's Weather site, which in turn gets its information from The Weather Channel. If you use The Weather Channel's weather.com to check what's going on in "Ariel, Israel" you get data from the weather station that - not coincidentally - is in Ariel. The Weather Channel doesn't have any data for "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories," which makes sense since Jenin doesn't have a weather station. [1]

The results are exactly the opposite on Yahoo Weather. There's nothing available for "Ariel, Israel." So if you're one of the 20,000 Israelis who live there, sorry. But there is a location named "Jenin, Occupied Palestinian Territories," which is what they're calling the data that is actually coming from Ariel.[2]

Again: "Ariel, Israel" has been delisted as a real place and replaced by "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories." That would be bad enough. But it's particularly absurd when the "Jenin" data is coming from a station that's in a city Yahoo refuses to provide the weather for. They're just intercepting the data and retagging the "name" field, so the Palestinians can feel included or justified or something.

Given that the State of the Union is the worst political ritual evuh - to say nothing of tonight's likely content - we figure you'll be wanting an alternative about 30 minutes after Jesus Cicero starts talking. Ergo tonight's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, which will be kicking off at exactly 6:30pm PST / 9:30 EST. You can tune in live to call in, participate in the chat room, or just listen.

The only caveat is that I'll be playing my own version of the SOTU drinking game for the half-hour before the show, where instead of looking for specific phrases like "let me be clear" or "make no mistake" I just take a shot whenever Obama is obnoxiously condescending. Odds of tonight's show happening at all: middling.

More seriously, segments in the queue: health care, the administration's latest Iran spin, and whatever had happened in the SOTU as of 6:30pm. The WH just sent out an email preview, promising that Obama will detail - among other things - how he has "restored America's alliances and standing in the world... [and] restored our standing and leadership around the world." Since that's the opposite of true in Latin America and Britain and Eastern Europe and China and Russia and Israel and Japan, I'm really interested to know what he's going to say.

Dan Diker will join the show, as he always does, to lend a note of actual expertise. This week he'll be talking about Fatah/Hamas tensions, which have now reached the point where the PA is asking the EU not to engage their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza. On the international stage Hamas is playing the old game where they say one thing to the West and then another in Arabic. Meanwhile there are signs that Fatah is playing an even more brazen double-game, accepting US security assistance while seeking rapprochement with Iran. Dan picks those controversies apart, explaining what's going on beneath the surface across various Palestinian factions and sub-factions.

References and related after the jump...

In fairness it was probably their parents and grandparents who consummated millennia of Catholic antisemitism by turning over Jews to Nazis, denying supplies to Warsaw Ghetto smugglers, pretending that Auschwitz didn't exist, and so on. But still:

Knesset members visiting Poland for ceremonies marking International Holocaust Day were surprised to see ads against Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni in the city of Krakow on Tuesday evening. Posters hung not far from the Israeli lawmakers' hotel read in English, "Wanted for war crimes," offering the public an award of 10,000 euro in exchange for information on Barak or Livni's expected arrival in Europe... "After 65 years, we once again realize that being right is not enough," said MK Hasson. "We must remember this ahead of the next challenges, like Holocaust deniers, Holocaust cursers and different kinds of anti-Semites."

I especially like the part where they offered rewards for any information on where the Jewish delegation could be found and captured. Cultural traditions are important and it's heartwarming to see that some fin de siecle Polish rituals managed to survive the long night of Communism. And yes, of course Hamas is directly coordinating the "progressive" overseas persecution of Israeli leaders:

The British newspaper The Times spoke with Diya al-Din Madhoun, who heads the Hamas committee set up to coordinate the campaign, in Jerusalem. About a week ago, an arrest warrant was issued against Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni, who served as foreign minister during Operation Cast Lead. It seemed as if the effort to put Israeli leaders on trial was continuing full force ahead. Madhoun told the Times, "All the political and military leaders of the occupation in our sights", although he did not specify its future targets. "This has absolutely become our policy," he said.

There's a joke to be made about how this generation's genocidal lunatics are working with last generation's genocidal lunatics, but I don't really have a punchline for it because it's true.

References:
* Livni, Barak 'wanted for war crimes' in Poland [YNet]
* Hamas admits masterminding arrest warrants of Israelis abroad [YNet]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* European Antisemitism
* Global Antisemitism
* Europe

I usually try to avoid any kind of "it's our land / no it's OUR land" stuff. Israel's position as the front line in the global war against political Islam is more than enough to justify Western backing, plus they're an invaluable high-tech democracy, plus the international law arguments are devastating. So I think "Jews were there first" can sometimes be a distraction. But just for the record, Jews were there first:

Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing - an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David's reign. The breakthrough could mean that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than previously thought... many scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible originated in the 6th century B.C., because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. But the newly deciphered Hebrew text is about four centuries older... "It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research," said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

Imagine what else we might know about that period, but for the typical and ongoing destruction of ancient Temple Mount artifacts by Muslim authorities. Their authority, of course, was granted by Israel after the Israelis recaptured the ancient Jewish capital from Jordan, thereby ending the Jordanians' decades of wanton vandalism. Systematically desecrating ancient Jewish cemeteries and using the tombstones of Jews as latrines - classy.

References:
* The "Mandate for Palestine" is the Best Reply to "Occupation" [Eli Hertz]
* Ancient handle with Hebrew text found [MSNBC]
* Wonderful: Iraqis Permanently Scratch Out Ancient Hebrew Inscription Biblical Prophet's Tomb [MR]
* Photos Of Israeli Police Trying And Failing To Stop Temple Mount Destruction [MR]
* Jordan's Schizophrenia [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Jewish Politics
* Israel
* Political Islam

Compare...

A meeting between US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aimed at restarting the peace progress with the Palestinians, saw 'interesting' ideas raised, the Israeli leader said Sunday. 'I heard several interesting ideas to renew the process. We are systematically interested in doing this ... and if the Palestinians will express a similar readiness, we will find ourselves in the midst of a political process, something which is important to us and to them,' Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

... and contrast:

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell was meeting... after apparently failing to budge Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas toward negotiations during their talks on Friday. Mitchell met with Abbas in Ramallah for about three hours, but failed to get him to drop his insistence that Israel declare a complete construction freeze in the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem, before resuming negotiations... A statement released from the Prime Minister's Office said that the Netanyahu government... "has consistently called for the immediate resumption of talks without preconditions. The fact that talks have not taken place until now was clearly at the responsibility of the Palestinian side that has placed new unrealistic preconditions, preventing the resumption of talks."

Of course Abbas can't drop his East Jerusalem precondition, since the Obama administration painted him into a corner by demanding it themselves. So he's placed in the absurd position of demanding up front all the Israeli concessions that are supposed to be negotiated later. Since that's embarrassingly nonsensical, he ends up ruefully suggesting that maybe the US can negotiate with Israel in the Palestinians' place. That wouldn't placate the Arab world or the perpetually seething Palestinian street - Israeli concessions would be met with conspiracy theories about US/Israeli plots to cede the absolute minimum - but at least it's internally coherent. "We'll begin negotiations only Israel starts at the end" - less so.

Stephen Walt, by the by, thinks that Mitchell should resign. Apparently Obama played Mitchell for a fool by promising to pressure Israel and then backtracking because of the all-powerful Israel Lobby (quote: "I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there's too much human misery involved.") Of course Obama actually imposed unprecedented pressure on the Jewish State only to have it harden Palestinian demands and make the peace process impossible. But whatever. Walt has been dismantled for his feverish rent-a-validator antisemitism even by lefty Chas Freeman supporters. He spent decades positing a geopolitical metaphysics where nation-states unerringly pursue their self-interest, expect apparently where American Jews and the Christians they've corrupted sully said metaphysical perfection. How original

References and related after the jump...

I'm finally back in One Jerusalem Radio's Los Angeles studios, which you'd think would enhance the technical side of tonight's broadcast. Unfortunately there's a gigantic storm tearing apart the city - editing out the thunderclaps from the prerecorded interview with Lee Smith was a singular pleasure - so the studio might well be blacked out. If we do have electricity the show will go live as planned at 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST. You can tune in live to call in, hang out in the chat room, or just listen.

Huge show today. Lee Smith shows up to talk about his new book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. About halfway through I ask him about why liberal foreign policy experts get to just imagine the Middle East as they'd want it to be rather than as the cluster of warring tribes that it actually is. The conversation before and after goes into the precise level of disaster that can be expected, given that the WH seems bent on indulging in exactly those kinds of pseudo-sophisticated fantasies.

Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel to talk about Israel's efforts in Haiti, making the case that Israel's global leadership on disaster relief - coupled with a public diplomacy push on Twitter and YouTube - can't help but bolster the Jewish State's image. I'll be making my usual point that antisemites are simply too antisemitic - and have too many media enablers - for public diplomacy to make much of a dent. I obviously think I'm on the right side of that debate but Dan has "data" and "arguments," so take from that what you will.

References:
* The Pseudo-Sophisticated Horse - Lee Smith, Dan Diker [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith [Amazon]
* What Is the Arab World's Problem? [Lee Smith]
* ISRAEL: Sending soldiers of peace to Haiti [LAT]
* Israel builds a field hospital in Haiti. Anti-Zionists not fooled! [Gutmann / Telegraph]
* Haiti: An Israeli Public Relations Moment? [MediaLine]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy
* Foreign Policy Experts

I'll be broadcasting One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show live from London at 2:30am this morning, putting us in the show's normal 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST time slot. After that I get to fly back to Los Angeles, with all the accompanying normal broadcast times and 40 degree temperature bumps that the trip promises.

I've been assured that the tech connectivity problems - the ones that made last week's show cut in and out - have been fixed. That means you'll be able to listen and participate in realtime as you normally would via either the episode page or the show page. Afterward I'll download and remaster any old choppy episodes, reupload everything, and post a notice.

In the meantime tonight's show promises to be a particularly timely one. Dan Diker's must-read 6,000 word article unpacking the Palestinians' unilateral strategy - which he'll be previewing and contextualizing tonight - just went live a little while ago:

The Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" contains several major implications for Israel. First, the Palestinian delegitimization of Israel in the interim poses a strategic threat. The Palestinian state-building process has succeeded in painting Israel as a pariah state, while the hidden foreign policy agenda of the PA and PLO leaderships is to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States. Although unlikely, if the Palestinians win international endorsement of sovereignty along the 1967 lines, Israel will become persona non grata anywhere east of the "green line," including in many central neighborhoods within its own capital city, Jerusalem, that have been developed since the 1967 war.

After going over the basics of the report we'll get into some background, with Dan giving a few "yes, but..." pushbacks to my "the whole clusterfark is Obama's fault" arguments. Also in the queue: how WH fickleness is undermining US influence in theaters as far-flung as Iran, Eurasia, and West Asia. Smart power!

References:
* The Unsteady, Unreliable Horse [Blog Talk Radio]
* The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel
* Past Anti-Israel Diplomacy Makes Obama's New Peace Push "Doomed From The Outset" Because Of Inflated Palestinian Expectations [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel
* Foreign Policy Experts

On one side of the vaunted Palestinian territories, Hamas absolutely refuses to negotiate with Israel, thereby confirming every single thing they've ever said. On the other side Fatah can't handle their own terrorists let alone go after Hamas or Islamic Jihad infiltrators. It's an open question whether they even want to any more:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday spurned a new US effort to revive Mideast peace talks, sticking to his position that he will not resume negotiations unless Israel freezes settlement construction. With Abbas digging in, an upcoming diplomatic mission by US Mideast envoy George Mitchell could be doomed from the outset... the US has failed to get Israel to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands the Palestinians want for their state... Abbas said on Tuesday he will not resume talks under the current conditions... "We won't agree to resume negotiations without a full settlement freeze, especially in Jerusalem, for a certain period." The Obama administration has recently suggested bypassing the settlement issue by getting the two sides to discuss the borders of a Palestinian state. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that by focusing on the endgame, such talks would defuse the problem of settlements.

Yeah, listen. If the US didn't want the Palestinians to focus on settlements they shouldn't have functionally forced the Palestinians to focus on settlements. Abbas had always been willing to negotiate in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement construction, both during the Bush years and during the first months of the Obama administration. Then State and the WH - bragging all the while about publicly slapping around Netanyahu - launched their anti-Israel diplomatic offensive last spring. Among the demands: a full construction freeze. No playgrounds or supermarkets for Jews, not even in Israel's capital. Abbas had to follow along lest he appear less pro-Palestinian than the US President.

In the most generous scenario this was a misguided attempt to move the goalposts, bleeding the Israelis on concessions. More likely the WH actually believed the self-deceiving propaganda of ostensibly pro-Israel groups like J-Street - duly funneled into the Oval Office via a special someone - that the Israeli public is much further left than the last election would indicate. Anti-Israel foreign policy experts like Walt even supplied polling data on the question. You can't argue with science!

The hope was to use settlements as a wedge issue to peel Israeli citizens away from the government, creating a win-win for anti-Israel diplomats. If Netanyahu caved then Obama would see his stock rise in the Arab world, this per the predictions of foreign policy analysts like Marc Lynch. If Netanyahu resisted then he would be toppled via popular disapproval and - by assumption - the next Israeli government would reflect the Israeli public's pro-concessions position.

As will inevitably happen with plans based on pseudo-sophisticated fantasies, the entire stunt backfired and Obama managed to alienate Israel and harden Palestinian demands. Smart power!

References and related after the jump...

Back in October 2008, on his way to securing American Jews as his single most sustained bloc of supporters, candidate Obama seemed quite explicit about the status of US loan guarantees to Israel. Quite explicit:

US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has promised not to cut foreign aid to Israel if he is elected in November, a spokeswoman for Obama has said. In a statement to the Israeli business daily Globes, a spokeswoman for Obama said he would honor existing agreements pertaining to foreign aid and as such was committed to 'increasing aid to Israel to $30 billion over 10 years.'

So a few months ago the Israelis went ahead and locked in 2010/11 loans without any peace process-related conditions. Unfortunately they forgot the part where all Obama promises come with an expiration date:

On the eve of his visit to the Middle East, US special envoy George Mitchell threatened that his country would freeze its aid to Israel if the Jewish state failed to advance peace talks with the Palestinians and a two-state solution. Mitchell clarified in an interview to the PBS network that the United States would use incentives or sanctions against both sides. According to American law, Mitchell said, the US can freeze its support for loan guarantees to Israel. He added that all options must remain open and that the sides must be convinced about what their important interests are.

Forget the part about how this White House seems committed to detonating the US/Israeli alliance, if only because that's not really newsworthy. More broadly - and here I'm shamelessly cribbing from Instapundit - if Obama was trying to wreck America as a superpower, what would he be doing differently? If he was deliberately working to erode US influence in the Middle East, would there be a better way than putting the US on a collision course with both of the region's most powerful countries? He's taking a softline approach with Iranian antagonists, which only emboldens them, and a hardline approach with Israeli allies, which only alienates them. Smart power!

Both Israel and Iran will respond by doing what countries do: pursuing their own interests. Like so many other world leaders are beginning to do, Israeli and Iranian pols will simply start ignoring Obama. It'll be bad for the United States to lose its influence in one of the most dangerous and energy-rich regions in the world. It would be disastrous for Israel to lose its most consistent and powerful international ally. But it's not like Israel doesn't have other options, some of which they've been neglecting precisely because of US pressure. Cf. Caroline Glick from this morning.

References and related after the jump...

The awesome thing is that the two statements came out on the exact same day, a nicely pointed illustration of the differences between Israel and its partner in peace. Netanyahu proposed a reinvigorated peace summit in Egypt, and promptly got his answer:

The secular Fatah movement led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday vowed to step up its struggle against the Israeli occupation with demonstrations and diplomacy. "Our programme emphasises the importance of a two-track approach, with the first being the escalation of the popular struggle to resist occupation," the movement said in a statement. The group said it would model the struggle on the weekly demonstrations in two West Bank towns, Bilin and Nilin, where residents hurl rocks and protest against the expansion of Israel's controversial separation barrier. Fatah, which marks the 45th anniversary of the start of its armed struggle on Friday, also vowed to "increase movement on the international level to pursue Israel, to isolate it and to force it to answer to international law."

The really elegant part is how they bundled together (a) threats of Palestinian violence and (b) international efforts to delegitimize Israeli self-defense in the face of Palestinian violence ("to isolate it and to force it to answer to international law"). Only Israel's Arab enemies could be so confidently brazen about crowing that they'll attack Israeli civilians and then whine about Israeli retaliation. Of course only Israel's Arab enemies are justified in that brazen confidence, so it's hard to blame them. The organizations behind the sentiment - Human Rights Watch, the UN committees who back Goldstone and his ilk, etc. - they might on the other hand be worthy of mild disapprobation.

Meanwhile - just should Abbas consider trying to reciprocate Israeli gestures - Palestinian civilians and Fatah soldiers want him to know there's more than enough violence to go around:

The killing of the three Fatah operatives in Nablus by the IDF over the weekend could trigger a third intifada, Fatah officials warned on Sunday. But the new intifada, they said, would be different from the first two - this time it would be directed against the Palestinian Authority. During the funerals of the three men, all veteran members and leaders of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, thousands of Palestinians chanted slogans accusing the PA of collusion with Israel and calling for an end to security coordination with Israel and the dismantling of the PA.

Nothing that a couple square miles of Israeli territory can't solve. Because that's what this is about. Right? Right.

And lest you think no one could be so obliviously stupid, here's Barry Rubin's recent article to disillusion you. The phrase "pressures Israel" appears in the headline, after which the post continues at length and in detail. Turns out the Obama administration might well be exactly that obliviously stupid.

References:
* Israel's Netanyahu proposes Egypt peace summit [Reuters]
* Fatah vows to escalate struggle against occupation [AFP]
* Fatah warns of intifada against PA [JPost]
* The Palestinian Authority Sets its New Strategy: Tempts Obama Administration with Instant Peace if it Pressures Israel [Rubin Report]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Palestinians
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Israeli-Arab Peace Process

I'm about to start uploading the clips for this evening's very special holiday edition of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. In acknowledgment of the season we've scheduled even more optimism and cheer than usual, starting with a segment about the religiously-driven return of polygamy to the UK and Chechnya. Suffice to say that it's not because fundamentalist Methodists are sweeping across the region. From there things only get better with segments about the newest additions to Iran's arsenal, Hamas's Islamization of the Gaza Strip, and of course this nonsense. Per the usual routine you can tune in live to ask questions and participate in the chatroom, or you can grab the podcast afterward directly from the episode archive.

In between Dan Diker will join the show, this week to talk about how Egypt and Saudi Arabia are reacting to Iran's growing regional assertiveness. Small example of the pool balls bouncing off each other just on the issue of Egyptian/Israeli relations: Arab nationalism 101 is that you use Israel as a scapegoat to funnel internal dissent outward but in the Middle East the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now plant that enemy's proxy in Gaza right between Egypt and Israel, boosting the incentive for government-to-government cooperation even though Egyptians would turn against Mubarak if he publicly colluded Egypt's "Gazan brothers and sisters."

Now add in a weird dynamic where Israel and Egypt usually compete for functionally zero-sum US ties, except they're both so frustrated with the US stance on Iran that they might close the triangle and cooperate to undermine Iran - except the Obama administration would oppose that, putting them in a position where they're blocking rapprochement between two ostensible allies. Terrific.

I already linked to this April article yesterday in the context of Hamas as an outpost of political Islam but let me link it again as prep for today's Diker segment:

In the last week, Egypt has moved against Iran and its allies in the Arab world. Cairo arrested a Hizballah cell that was preparing terrorist operations on Egyptian soil, organized a campaign against Hamas weapons and money smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula, and stepped up efforts to displace Qatar -- an Iranian sympathizer -- as a mediator on Sudan, Lebanon, and other inter-Arab issues. It remains to be seen whether this policy shift will become a sustained part of a grand strategy to restore Egypt's leadership among Arab states or, instead, a more-defensive approach designed to parry previous humiliations from Iran's allies. It is apparent, however, that Cairo is sending a signal to Washington that the "nuclear file" is not the only -- or even the most urgent -- aspect of the Iranian threat.

The US went to Egypt and said "we're really committed to helping you out with this Israel thing," and the Egyptians responded by insisting that they pay attention to Iran. If for no other reason, you should tune in today to hear what happened when the Bush and Obama White Houses tried the same stunt with Saudi Arabia.

References:
* Obligatory Post About New Organ Harvesting Story That Provides "No Evidence" For Organ Harvesting Libel (UPDATED) [MR]
* Arab Countries In Iran's Middle East [Omri Ceren Show]
* Media Outlets Shocked To Find Hamas Imposing Islam, Digging Up Dead Christians Because They "Pollute The Earth" [MR]
* Egypt's Campaign against Iran Sends Washington a Signal [Washington Institute]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Egypt
* Saudi Arabia

Plus an overnight in Budapest that gets in just too late to make it worthwhile to go into the city. So that's going to be an exciting layover which will remind me exactly why I hate multi-city trips. BUD is actually not a terrible airport to get stuck in - it's certainly not Da Vinci, where I once came within 15 seconds of unplugging a fire alarm just to get an outlet - but it's not exactly going to be the highlight of the trip.

Still: I'll be in Bulgaria through New Years, London through the middle of January, and Israel in between. My most extended stay is in London - part of my "see Westminster again before it gets turned into a mosque" nostalgia tour - but I've got around a week in each of the other two destinations. I've even worked things out such that there won't be much disruption in posting and no disruption at all in TOCS broadcasts. And to think - conservatives say funemployment is just liberal propaganda

Relatedly: if any groups want to book a scholar/journalist to speak knowledgeably about the geopolitical, economic, and cultural dynamics of the global war between the West and political Islam, Victor Davis Hanson's contact info can be found here. But I hear his honorarium is commensurate so if you want to book me instead let me know. Transportation and lodging costs are already covered.

For everyone else who reads MR: it's the end of the year, so please consider this your official holiday appeal for donations. I'm staying with friends and the trip was created entirely with oneworld miles - details posted on Jaunted if you're curious - but food and transportation still cost money and the dollar is awash in hope and change. Especially change. Plus there's the more pointed matter of expenses like rent and debt. Especially debt.

So if you can spare anything and you've appreciated the work that goes into MR, please drop some coins into my tip jar. I will thank you, as will VISA, Mastercard, and the US federal government. And if anyone's going to need money soon, it's the US federal government.

References:
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - No Really, We're Going To Miss It [MR]
* The Omri Ceren Show [Official Site]
* For the 'funemployed,' unemployment is welcome [LAT]
* Use AAdvantage One-Way Bookings To Create A European Vacation [Jaunted]
* Gold Sales Boom as U.S. Government Debt Multiplies - FDIC Broke [Before Its News]
* CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion [Weekly Standard]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Life In Israel
* Israeli Hotties
* Britain

Lots of new MR-related audio sprinkled around the Internet this morning. Parts 2 and 3 of my appearance on BEDROCK With Larry Greenfield have been posted and can be found here and here respectively. The podcast is broadcast weekly by the Claremont Institute, and I gave a longer overview of Larry and of the show when Part 1 went up (plus a reminder of what kind dishonest tools staff the NJDC). These new segments are a bit more policy-oriented, ranging from what we used to call the sociology of the academy in Part 2 - liberal academics and their academic liberalism - all the way into Middle East diplomacy and the Iran Lobby in Part 3. The academic discussion includes a good deal of mass communication theory and political philosophy, getting into some interesting stuff that rarely makes its way into MR or into The Omri Ceren Show.

Speaking of One Jerusalem's TOCS, the most recent episode with Dan Diker and Noam Bedein had some pretty critical stuff. Israel hasn't been this militarily besieged since May 1967 and it hasn't been this diplomatically vulnerable since the modern rebirth of the Jewish State. Given that, Diker's rundown of what's driving the UK's branding of Jewish goods from the West Bank - something we unpacked at length - comes pretty close to necessary listening.

The highlights I played from my interview with Noam spoke to global deligitimization in a less direct way: Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli schoolchildren walking to school for more than half a decade, but the only group doing sustained media outreach on the issue is a 7-employee NGO. There's a reason why we spend so much time talking about public diplomacy on the show. More importantly, you'll definitely want to check out the full 30 minute interview that got posted exclusively to the top of One Jerusalem's audio page. As always it had sections that never made it on the air. One section is about Noam's experiences with liberal American Jewish groups. It's exactly what you'd expect, in the sense that it's much, much worse than what you'd expect.

References and related after the jump...

References:
* Bedrock: Omri Ceren Interview, Part 2 [BEDROCK With Larry Greenfield]
* Bedrock: Omri Ceren Interview, Part 3 [BEDROCK With Larry Greenfield]
* Omri On Larry Greenfield's Claremont Institute BEDROCK Podcast, Part I [MR]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* The "Iran Lobby" Moves Into The White House [MR]
* http://www.onejerusalem.org/audio.php
* Noam Bedein - Sderot In An Era Of Hamas War Crimes [Omri Ceren Show]
* One Jerusalem Radio Audio [Official Site]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel
* Academia

Hamas is promising to get involved in an Israeli/Iranian war - an inevitable Israeli/Iranian war - by blanketing millions of Israeli civilians with rockets. That's not exactly surprising given that they're functionally a wing of the Iranian military, armed in precisely the way the international community promised would never happen if Israel evacuated Gaza and called off Cast Lead. Now they can destroy Israel's airport and they can knock down Tel Aviv's skyscrapers. Risks for peace!

And when Hamas does get involved you'll still see Israel get blamed for "drawing them into the conflict." So just in advance, let's all be clear that these lunatics are already sufficiently motivated to commit mass genocide:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that gaining control of the Gaza Strip was "just a step toward liberating all of Palestine." "This movement liberated the Gaza Strip with the help of the militant factions," said Haniyeh... "Brothers and sisters, we will not be satisfied with Gaza," he declared. "Hamas looks toward the whole of Palestine."... Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters thronged downtown Gaza City... Gaza was decked out in Islamic green, with Hamas flags fluttering from rooftops, lampposts and cars. Some parents dressed small children in combat fatigues and green Hamas headbands.

That follows similar statements from November and October and September and so on. But maybe they're just kidding about that, and a couple more Israeli concessions would empower whatever fictional "moderate camp" our foreign policy establishment has invented this week. Could be!

The Palestinian child abuse thing was a nice touch on the genocidal festivities, I thought. It was a little too routine for my taste - via Elder, here are 100,000 Hamas kids being brainwashed to kill Jews - but still a nice touch:

700 summer camps, for children and teenagers, operated this summer by terror organizations along the Gaza Strip - operating under the slogan - A "Victory for Gaza - The Glory of Jerusalem". The camps are operated by the Hamas in order to encourage the next generation of this organization.... 100 thousand children and teenagers participated in Hamas camps this year. The budget of these camps is estimated to be 2 Million Dollars. The youths were guided by 1,500 counselors that went through special training courses. A marketing campaign of the Al-Aqsa channel of the Hamas and a special internet site encouraged participation of children in these camps.

And I thought Gaza was awash in breaking poverty, bereft of even the resources to purchase basic necessities. Weird.

References and related after the jump...

Based on polling feedback from you - suitably normalized, ala global warming science, by throwing out responses we didn't like - One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show returns from Thanksgiving with a new time slot and a new duration. We'll kick off today's show at 6:30pm PST, allowing families in homes across America to crowd around their computer, to dial in with questions, and to participate in the chat room.

Per your other suggestions, there will be more concentrated ranting by me and less careful analysis by guests. Dan Diker will drop in to contribute expert insights on Middle East geopolitics - today he talks Iran/Sryia/Lebanon and Israeli diplomacy - but the rest of the show will be handed over to a bevy of domestic and international news. That wasn't the first direction we thought of taking the program, but vox populi and so on.

Today's agenda: this Jerusalem broadside from Sweden, Obama's "present" vote on Afghanistan, the left's politicization of science, Iran's most recent fist clenching, and more. As always your questions, concerns, and feedback are solicited and greatly appreciated. Unless you're the lone reader who voted to move the show "to a non-Wednesday time slot, which I recognize will not happen but about which I nonetheless feel very strongly." In which case we'd like to talk to you over here for a second. It'll just take a second.

See you in a few hours!

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* Leaked Global Warming Docs: "Publicity Machine" Used To Manipulate Journalists And Intimidate Scientists [MR]
* Assault On Jerusalem [Blog Talk Radio]
* Sweden: It's Time For The EU To Lock In Jordan's Ethnic Cleansing Of East Jerusalem [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel Coverage
* American Politics

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show goes on the air at 2pm PST today. Head over to the main Blog Talk Radio site to chat with other listeners, submit questions, and get on the air live. Last week's show had a discussion that began in the chat room and eventually ended up on the air, moving from Bill Clinton's specific trip to Israel to the general shamelessness of US liberals who undermine Israeli leaders then ask for Israelis' trust. This week: more of that, plus extra doses of despair. Happy Thanksgiving!

Today's show will be the last before we switch up formats. Based on your input we're moving the show to later in the day and running longer. Tune into today's for more details on those changes, plus the full results of the "how should TOCS change" poll that you voted on.

Also on the agenda for today: expert-level pessimism on a large scale, courtesy of Dan Diker of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs. Have you heard that a deal on Shalit may be close or that it'll be anything but a disaster? Sorry. Thinking that that Israeli/Turkish relationship is on the mend? Don't get your hopes up. Down on unilateral Palestinian diplomatic gambits or worried about Iran? Not enough.

In between I'll be talking about Obama's latest excuses for Iranian foot-dragging, about his Bow Mocked 'Round The World, about new levels of United Nations mendacity, and about European antisemitism. Hating Jews is fun again on the Continent.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [MR]
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* Israel awaiting Hamas chief response on Shalit deal [Ha'aretz]
* Resuming the Turkish track [Ha'aretz]
* Crisis in the Palestinian Authority [Right Side News]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel News and Coverage
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show goes on the air in a little under an hour. Remember that to hear it live - and to participate - you need to go to the show's main page here. Continuing with this morning's "let's see how this goes" theme, I won't be doing a full guest interview for the first time ever. You're not totally getting abandoned - Dan Diker is still dropping in for 15 minutes of updates and analysis - but the rest of the show will be handed over to news and commentary.

Scheduled topics Dan will be discussing: (1) the renewed diplomatic push on Syria and why - if everything works out perfectly - it'll merely end up being a huge waste of time and (2) the train wreck that is zero Israeli public diplomacy plus the Goldstone Report plus a global anti-Israel delegitimization campaign of unprecedented venom. That would make this the third or fourth week in a row where a different security expert emphasizee that public diplomacy is a strategic necessity for Israel. On the plus side there's no way you're getting bored, since every time this comes up there's a different way Israeli oversights have limited the Jewish States's wartime options. So there's that.

The rest of the show will be the usual scattershot pile of international and domestic controversies, albeit with a skeptical eye towards arguments like "it's not Islam that's behind how the overwhelming number of terrorists are Muslims, it's just extremism in general." Definitely on the agenda: Obama's "dismay" that Jews would try to return to areas in East Jerusalem that Jordan had ethnically cleansed, the unhinged left's obsessive sexist hatred of Palin, the WH's weird habit of suppressing intelligence on Syria and Iran so liberals can keep up their engagement fantasies, and a bunch more. The words "bow" and "grovel" and the phrase "pathetic obsequious scraping" might come up.

The chat room will be open and the phone lines will be active. We're looking for questions, comments, and criticisms. In nothing else today's episode should give you a good idea on how you want to vote in the "What Should TOCS Change" poll.

References:
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Progressive Democrats To Palin: Get Back In The Kitchen [MR]
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* American Politics Coverage
* Public Diplomacy Coverage

First, some odds and ends from last week. I should have posted a formal message after the Martin Sherman show, which was arguably the best TOCS yet and is available for download. I didn't get to it so let's take care of the formalities here. Prof. Sherman's a former Shamir adviser, a military intelligence specialist, a widely-cited academic, and - unarguably - among the most careful scholars on the Israeli right. If you make a point of coming at US and Israeli issues from the conservative side of the spectrum - and Google Analytics says you do - you'll have a tough time finding a more exacting account of regional and global geopolitics.

The interview topics ranged from the Middle East peace process to Israeli/Indian relations to Israeli public diplomacy, touching down for specifics and anecdotes in between. The segments I played on the show dealt largely with public diplomacy, which Sherman outlined as Israel's single most significant strategic failing. That plus the rest of last week's show - news, commentary, and the usual brilliance of Dan Diker - can be found on the podcast. The full Sherman interview - which has all the highlights from the show plus 20 more minutes of in-depth Q+A - will be on the One Jerusalem audio page. Obviously you should avail yourself of both.

Now the part about changing up the show. We've been getting feedback from listeners, some quite laudatory some containing note of frustration. TOCS will definitely be changing up after Thanksgiving, though we're still deciding how. Nothing drastic - it'll still be mostly me sounding off, it'll still have interventions of sanity and analysis from Diker, there will still be a weekly interview more often than not, etc. But expect some combination of a new format, a new time slot, and a new show length.

The actual form the combination will take - still an open question. I've embedded a poll so you can sound off about what changes you'd most appreciate. The goal is to get people involved in the live broadcasts instead of channeling all of you to the podcast. Chat room participation has been sedentary and call volume has been positively anemic, creating a situation where we're in Month 2 and I have yet to hang up on a listener. Obviously this will not do.

Feel free to share why on the Facebook page. But remember: ultimately you have to be the change you want to become. Or something.

References:
* Martin Sherman - The Anti-Jihad Imperative [The Omri Ceren Show]
* One Jerusalem - Audio [Official Site]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy Coverage
* World News Coverage

I know. Despite the security assurances swirling around Israel's decision to call off Cast Lead. I mean, sure the international community made identical assurances in the context of Israel's original withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. And sure those first assurances were provided with an extra exclamation point, where Palestinian shelling was understood to justify massive Israeli retaliation. And certainly the shameless historical revisionism that greeted Israel's defensive war proved all that to be empty.

But gosh darn it this time I really believed. Bummer:

Smuggling into the Gaza Strip from Egypt beneath the Philadelphi Corridor has returned to the busy levels that prevailed before Operation Cast Lead last winter, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Estimates of how many tunnels are now functioning range from several hundred to 1,000, although the most authoritative figures indicate that between 350 and 500 are currently operating. The IDF claimed to have destroyed about 300 tunnels during Cast Lead. Israel has long asserted that the Egyptians could put an end to the entire smuggling industry within 24 hours if they wanted to, using military obstructions along the length of the Philadelphi Corridor.

Not to worry. It's not like all those weapons are staying in Gaza. There are Israeli civilians to bomb after all:

A Qassam rocket was launched from the northern Gaza Strip and has apparently fallen in an open area in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council. There were no reports of injury or damage. A Color Red siren was sounded before the rocket landed.

Ditto for February and March and April and May and June and July and August and September and October. Mortars and small weapons fire are also back in play, and of course the kidnapping attempts started again immediately.

None of which is surprising since Gaza residents - for all the coverage they get about wanting to live normal lives - have never stopped supporting war crimes against Israelis. Something to think about the next time the State Department ritualistically intones that Gazans are "being held hostage" by unpopular Hamas forces.

Israel will object to the international community. That objection will be ignored. Then the IAF will have to launch one of their periodic anti-tunnel bombing raids. That's how it's been since the end of Cast Lead, as far back as March: rocket fire that eventually hit a synagogue, followed by a complaint to the UN, followed by nothing, followed by the inevitable. And when it happens again I have no doubt that the international community will react with exactly the self-reflection and fairness that we've all come to expect.

References and related after the jump...

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. With a new list coming out in a few hours, it's probably about time for me to post last week's nominated posts. That's the kind of tight ship we run here at MR HQ.

Why do these posts always go up at the last minute, even though they're basically cut and paste jobs plus a little commentary? Tough question. Without getting into too many details the answer involves a "happy hour," a "patio" and "how it's always 70 degrees in LA." There's also a bunch of stuff having to do with side projects and daily travel blogging and assorted other rent-targeted activities, rent being an unfortunate monthly necessity that if you could see your way to defraying I would be much obliged.

Anyway, here are last week's nominations from the Watchers Council and beyond. For the record, Joshuapundit's meticulously written post ended up squeaking past my own "liberals seem to have a lot invested in glittery displays of sham erudition" nit-picking, so if you're pressed for time that's the place to start.

Council Submissions
* Mere Rhetoric - Agitprop-Funding NEA Chief: "Barack Obama Is The Most Powerful Writer Since Julius Caesar
* The Glittering Eye - Triage
* Rhymes With Right - Just A Reminder - Hasan Not The First
* Bookworm Room - Watch the Democratic dominoes fall
* The Provocateur - Dr. Chacko Comes to Lahey
* The Colossus of Rhodey - The problem with Islamic terrorism and the Left
* The Razor - Suburban Perspective on Rural America
* Right Truth - A Small Nation
* Joshuapundit - Death By A Thousand Cuts

Honorable Mentions
* Okie On The Lam - Nanny Nancy Pelosi Shoving 1990-Page Health Care Up Our Collective Wazzoo!
* Tel-Chai Nation - Turkey's Erdogan continues with his bigotry

Non-Council Submissions
* Submitted By: The Watcher - Selwyn Duke/American Thinker - Jihad and America, the land that cried sheep
* Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - Tigerhawk - The myth of American heroism
* Submitted By: Rhymes With Right - Red County - Tragedy At Ft. Hood
* Submitted By: Bookworm Room - Villainous Company - Obama doesn't "get" the military he commands
* Submitted By: The Provocateur - WSJ Blog - Doctor: I Was Fired for Fighting Hospital's Ties to Medtronic
* Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - The Scientist - Promises, Promises
* Submitted By: Right Truth - Right, Wing-Nut - A Nation, Hi-Jacked
* Submitted By: The Razor - MG Hoft - Wash U Shuts Down Freedom Memorial
* Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric - Danger Room - Is This China's Anti-Satellite Laser Weapon Site?
* Submitted By: Joshuapundit - Ron Radosh/Hot Air - The Nation, Jihad and General Casey

References:
* Watcher of Weasels » Watcher's Council Nominations, Veteran's Day Edition [Watcher Of Weasels]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics Coverage
* Democratic Politics Coverage
* Republican Politics Coverage

Today's TOCS episode goes on the air a little less than an hour, with highlights from my interview with Prof. Barry Rubin, analysis from Dan Diker, and the weekly roundup of US, Israeli, and international news. To hear the show live - and to submit questions via the chat room or get on the air through the phone lines - head over to the show's Blog Talk Radio page at 2pm PST.

The call with Diker covered (1) the increasingly pointed tensions between Obama and our NATO allies over Iranian nuclearization and (2) the so-called Fayyad peace plan, where Prime Minister Fayyad wants to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. To give you an idea of the kind of game Diker brings to the latter debate, here's Sunday's CSM article on the plan:

Fayyad's plan was recently analyzed in depth by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), a right-of-center think tank. Dan Diker, the JCPA's senior foreign analyst, says that the plan is potentially dangerous because it doesn't call for working in tandem with Israel on issues that the Jewish state sees as essential to its security... "For Israel to be 12 kilometers [7 miles] away from a Palestinian state that is 3,000 feet above sea level, which is looking down on Ben Gurion airport with most of Israel's infrastructure? After the rockets from Gaza, people are saying, 'Yikes, this is a dangerous proposal,'" Diker says... Fayyad, who clearly does his homework, already has Diker's report from the JCPA printed out in his office in Ramallah.

As always, make sure you grab the full Barry Rubin interview from the One Jerusalem audio page after the show. Prof. Rubin sat down for 35 minutes of questions, only a dozen or so of which made it into the highlight cut.

Topics that you'll get only in the full interview: the decades-long campaign of anti-American mass murder and torture waged by Iran's proxies in Lebanon, the pitfalls of security assistance to the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon, and how Obama's engagement-centric diplomacy pushes moderate countries into the Iranian orbit. There's also an extended bit about the Obama Effect. It turns out that The One's personal popularity doesn't exactly change the calculations of our allies and enemies. Which isn't to say that Middle East writers like Hendrik Hertzberg are cutting their Obama hagiography out of whole cloth. But, in the final analysis, they're probably not winning any prizes for rigorous and levelheaded social scientific analysis either.

References:
* RubinReports [Official Site]
* Dan Diker Home Page [FreedomOutpost]
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Interview: How Salam Fayyad plans to save the Palestinian dream | csmonitor.com
* New Middle East Events Prove it: Obama Right About Most Everything - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine [Reason]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Diplomacy
* Lebanon and Hezbollah

Well sure it sounds batshit crazy. But if you look at it from the perspective of a conspiracy-addled antisemite - "whatever helps Israel must have been instigated by Israel, including the genocidal wars Arab States start and lose" - then it makes a lot of sense. Why wouldn't Israel fire on its own citizens, thereby exposing Lebanon to the unbearably withering prospect of an Israeli complaint to the UN:

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman claimed Tuesday's Katyusha rocket attack on Kiryat Shmona was in Israel's interest, and suggested that an Israeli agent may have launched the projectile. In an interview with the Lebanese Arab-language newspaper Al Akhbar published Thursday, Suleiman said that an Israeli agent may have launched the rocket, stressing that one "must not rule out" the possibility that Israel was behind the attack. On Tuesday night, a Katyusha fired from the Mount Dov (Shaba Farms) area slammed into a field not far from Kiryat Shmona, causing a fire but no casualties. The IDF immediately shelled the Lebanese territory from which the projectile was launched, using several rounds of artillery.

Presumably those four rockets aimed at Israel that the LAF just dismantled were also planted by Israeli agents. It's not that Lebanon has been systematically ignoring Hezbollah's rearmament in violation of even its symbolic obligations under UNSC 1701. It's that the agents of the Jewish State are really sneaky. And they're everywhere.

When Sunni/Shiite tensions finally erupt - and they will, not least of all because the country has been infiltrated hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives ready to wage jihad against Jews and Hezbollah-backed Shiites - that'll be Israel's fault too.

That the "UNSC" in UNSC 1701 stands for "United Nations Security Council" is particularly ironic given how Lebanon currently sits on the Security Council. I don't really think that's fair. The UN is supposed to be a one-state one-vote kind of place and Iran and Syria already had their turn.

References and related after the jump...

First things first: make sure you check out the exclusive Richard Landes interview over on the One Jerusalem audio page. The highlights I played on the air were less than one-third of the total material - academics, it turns out, err on the side of thoroughness - and there are entire categories of questions that you don't get except on the full interview. The extended section on how Stockholm Syndrom is the generous explanation for why journalists carry Hamas's water is especially brutal.

In the meantime you should obviously check out Goldstonereport.org, where they're posting new debunkings on an almost daily basis. It would also behoove you to check out Landes's home blogs Augean Stables and Second Draft. It's really impressive how many different smears human rights organizations can invent without ever straying far from antisemitic canards like water poisoning, child murder, and cabalistic conspiracism. From a certain perspective it almost looks like they might be obsessed!

Now on to some site business. I think I'm going to start lightening up on the incessant Omri Ceren Show reminders and wrap ups. The routine is familiar enough by now: live radio show with news and interview highlights at 2pm on Wednesdays, exclusive full-length interview available at One Jerusalem shortly afterward. Plus MR has been getting a little too process-heavy lately. I'm beginning to worry that all the radio show posts, Watchers Council roundups, and LA event reminders are crowding out more substantive material.

Even worse, they're preventing me from constantly reminding you that micropayment donations are the future of citizen journalism.

So I'm going to try to limit TOCS-related blogging to just one post per week, a teaser on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning about that week's interview and news segments. I'll trust you guys to remember to grab the full interviews on your own, since those are where the nuance and inside baseball discussions get hashed out. When that doesn't work I'll start dumping reminders into roundups and see if we can't strike a happy balance.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show on Blog Talk Radio [Official Site]
* AUDIO EXCLUSIVE :: Dr. Richard Landes -- Full Interview! [One Jerusalem]
* Goldstonereport.org
* Augean Stables
* Second Draft

Related Mere Rhetoric Coverage:
* Human Rights
* United Nations
* The Omri Ceren Show

Lots of people are saying Obama's done nothing to promote global peace. Certainly, the refrain goes, he hadn't done anything by day 12 of his Presidency, which is when he was nominated to share in the same glory as Yasser Arafat and Iranian stooge Mohamed ElBaradei. I think that's just so unfair.

If you believe - as I do - that continued Israeli territorial concessions in the context of ongoing Palestinian intransigence are a recipe for war, you have to concede Obama's got at least some case. Before he came along the Israeli electorate was inclined to support further peace gestures. Palestinian leaders were willing to sit across the table from Israeli negotiators and offer unenforceable intangible promises in exchange for tangible land - promises Israeli diplomats were loath to reject.

Just two years ago the Bush administration - by pushing on Israeli leaders slowly without alarming the Israeli public - managed to stage Annapolis. It was predicted by secular Israeli centrists to be a total disaster for the Jewish State. It turned out merely to be a substantial disaster. That's the drip drip drip method you have to use if you want to get Israelis to buy into one bad diplomatic deal after another.

Instead last Spring the Obama White House decided to kind of sort of spectacularly detonate the US-Israel alliance. They leaked to everyone that they were going to kick Netanyahu's ass and ordered Israel to come up with a peace plan by July. Somehow that managed to backfire. I'm not sure if it was because Obama telegraphed his sellout on Arab TV or because Mitchell announced that America would push for the "Israel has to commit suicide" Saudi Initiative or because pipsqueak State Department officials publicly reveled in slapping around a sitting Prime Minister. But somehow Israeli officials got the distinct impression that Obama really didn't like them.

And just to keep things topical, yes Obama's counterproductive anti-Israel moves began before that crucial twelfth Presidential day. On the eve of the inauguration he promised to make a point of investigating Cast Lead literally on Day 1. Because why would Israel get nervous about promises to "address" their self-defense against Hamas?

It was Obama's weird demand for a total Israeli settlement freeze, though, that was really inspired. Netanyahu was willing to commit to offering the Palestinians statehood. So something else had to be found so Obama could pick a fight with Israel and build some anti-Israel cred in the Arab world. Settlements seemed like a good target since someone in Obama's inner circle really thought they could be used as a wedge issue with the Israeli electorate.

Sure the utterly shameless bait and switch on Bush's "settlement blocs" promises was particularly ill advised, given that Israel needs to believe in US security assurances to take "risks for peace." Sure it turned Israelis against Obama, united them behind Netanyahu, and even brought Ehud Olmert out of retirement to support the Israeli right that defeated him. Sure average Israelis started urging their leaders to reject Obama's demands, which Israel subsequently and loudly did on Jerusalem. And sure the situation became so grim that ostensibly pro-Israel liberal American Jews started openly whining that Israelis are spoiled (because that's persuasive!)

But it was the dustup's effect on the Palestinians that was really magical.

Another in an unending list of reminders about the insane hypocrisy of anti-Israel feminist activists, almost all of whom reflexively bring a "gender lens" to bear on every other domestic and international controversy. Immigration? Gender. Toy stores? Gender. Health care? Definitely gender. But the Israeli-Arab conflict? Well, in that context you have to be very careful to weigh the "legitimate grievances of the Palestinians" against their Islamist-driven pathological opposition to women's rights.

So while Israel just gave the world the first female Nobel Chemistry laureate in 45 years...

Yonath, 70, is the fourth woman to win the Nobel chemistry prize and the first since 1964, when Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin of Britain received the award. "I'm really, really happy," Yonath said. "I thought it was wonderful when the discovery came. It was a series of discoveries. ... We still don't know every, everything, but we progressed a lot." Ribosomes are crucial to life because they produce the proteins that control the chemistry of plants, animals and humans. Working separately, the three laureates used a method called X-ray crystallography to pinpoint the positions of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

... Hamas has been obsessing about the corrosive un-Islamic influence of women who ride motorcycles:

The Hamas government has banned women from riding motorcycles in the Gaza Strip, saying the move was in keeping with "Arab traditions." The decision to ban women from riding motorcycles was published by the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the movement's security forces in the Gaza Strip. The decision is seen in the context of Hamas's efforts to enforce strict Islamic teachings in the area. Two months ago, a Hamas judge issued an order requiring all women who appear in court to wear the hijab.

This lines up nicely with Hamas's recent ban on women laughing or talking in public. The double ban - the addition of laughter - was a nice touch. I think most people long ago gave up any hope that the left's opposition of Israel would ever be rational. But is it too much to ask for then to be consistent?

It's important to remember, though, that women are oppressed in Muslim societies not because of Islam but because of oil. So go the insights of political science professor Michael Ross, a very sophisticated UCLA scholar who actually has a paper on this subject. So but for the Gaza Strip's massive oil wealth, we can presume none of this would be happening.

References and previously after the jump...

The investigation's mandate was so structurally one-sided that Mary Robinson - the woman who oversaw the Durban I hatefest - avoided it lest she grant it her imprimatur. First the UN picked a time window that excluded the Palestinian rocket attacks which led to the war. Then, just in case any Palestinian war crime slipped through, they precluded the investigators from looking into much except "Israeli war crimes."

Goldstone took the job anyway, bringing his reputation and his Judaism to bear on legitimizing the predetermined anti-Israel slander. He actually invoked his personal views on the Holocaust as a reason to take the report seriously. Apparently the trauma of historical anti-Jewish persecution - totally forbidden as a reason for supporting Israel - is a laudatory ethical basis for trashing it. Cue sneering anti-Israel partisan Stephen Walt:

It was disappointing that the Obama administration felt it had to denounce the report within days of its release, despite Goldstone's impeccable credentials (former member of South Africa's Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda) and his strong Zionist convictions. Israeli PM Netanyahu hasn't been doing Obama any favors of late, and the release of the report would have been a golden opportunity for Obama to play a little hardball and remind him that stiffing your principal patron has a price.

Elder of Ziyon has been compiling a seemingly unending list of Goldstone inaccuracies. He's currently on #18 and probably has at least a dozen to go (not exactly a surprise since the report has to make biased and untrue libels seem objective and tenable, which isn't straightforward).

His post about how "the Mission found no evidence that members of Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat in civilian dress" is as brutal as Israel Matzav's post is thorough. Israel Matzav's goes on for pages and pages, with photographs and videos specifically debunking Goldstone paragraph by paragraph. It's a really impressive take down, though in all honesty it's probably kind of a gimme.

More entertaining: Elder's discovery that Goldstone uncritically relied on a Palestinian who thinks Israel is infecting Gaza with sex gum.

And as far as structural bias is concerned - time window, mandate, etc - the recent post about how Goldstone condemned the Gaza blockade but excluded the reasons for it is to the point. There was no way to make the investigation fair. There was only a way to make it seem fair, which is what Goldstone tried and is trying to do. And now his daughter wants Israel to thank him for it:

Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza war, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher, Goldstone's daughter, Nicole, said... "My father took on this job because he thought he is doing the best thing for peace, for everyone, and also for Israel," Nicole Goldstone told Army Radio.... "It wasn't easy [for him]," Nicole Goldstone said. "My father did not expect to see and hear what he saw and heard." Nicole Goldstone, who currently lives in Canada with her family, spoke of her great love for Israel. "Every time I dream of returning to the country or that my son will one day immigrate there," she told Army Radio.

I don't know why she would want her son to move to such an ostensibly horrible place. But I'm beginning to see why Diaspora Jews felt the need to invent the word chutzpa.

References and previously after the jump...

Yeah, of course he published his response on HuffPo. Second rule of damage control: do it in front of a friendly audience so you can remind your allies who they're supposed to be rooting for:

Now I've achieved some blogosphere fame... for my hobby (unusual and disturbing to some, I realize) of collecting Second World War memorabilia associated with my German grandfather and my American great-uncle... I'm now in the bizarre and painful situation of having to deny accusations that I'm a Nazi...

I've never hidden my hobby, because there's nothing shameful in it... Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things. Thousands of military history buffs collect war paraphernalia because we want to learn from the past. But I should have realized that images of the Second World War German military are hurtful to many. I deeply regret causing pain and offense with a handful of juvenile and tasteless postings I made on two websites that study Second World War artifacts... Other comments there might seem strange and even distasteful.

Four times he acknowledges that his obsession with the color and pageantry of Nazism might be "disturbing" or "painful" or "hurtful" or "distasteful." You can almost imagine the "let's make this go away" emails HRW sent him: "you have to make it clear that you understand why people might be upset by this." The classic non-apology apology.

I'm pretty sure those blase "other comments" allusions are to forum posts about his SS chic and his Iron Cross hoodie. Neither line up particularly well with his "I'm just a misunderstood historian" ethos. And per Israellycool, his Bambiesque "I never realized" shtick is the opposite of true:

Garlasco also blatantly lies in his response. His contentions... do not compare well with this comment to him by a fellow Nazi memorabilia aficionado on one of the forums (no longer accessible without a login): "I remember you asking about using a psydonym before your book was published." The pretense that he studies "Second World War artifacts" is [also] just that - a pretense - given that his focus is clearly on Nazi memorabilia.

I think Dave goes too far in talking about those objectively disprovable "I never suspected" fibs the same breath as Garlasco's weasely "Second World War artifacts" descriptions. The descriptions are merely intellectually dishonest. Yes he's obsessed with WWII memorabilia. But the type of WWII memorabilia he's obsessed with is the Nazi type. For all his great-uncle's service for America, Garlasco hasn't written a detailed 430 page tome on US badges.

And speaking of intellectual dishonesty: at no point does Garlasco provide any link to anybody. At first I thought he was just being impolite - I was nice enough to link to his gushing forum posts about swastika-engraved paraphernalia - but now I'm thinking there might have been a more deliberate purpose. If he linked to his critics then he'd have to answer their real arguments instead of the arguments he's made up in his head.

Nobody serious has accused Garlasco of being a Nazi, though I guess it's heartening to have him on the record denying it (baby steps!) The criticism is that someone obsessively fascinated by Nazism is suspicious in the context of repeated apologism for Hamas and demonization of Israel. It's not one or the other, it's the convergence of the two. I know that's the criticism because I wrote it up myself in that first post and then people sympathetically linked to it:

Naturally:

Three Katyusha rockets struck open fields near Nahariya on Friday. There have been no reports of casualties. The rockets were fired from southern Lebanon and Israel Radio has reported that the Israel Defense Forces have launched retaliatory artillery into southern Lebanon... Channel 10 reported that an electric tower was struck by one of the rockets.

Apparently Hezbollah found somewhere else to plant a few of their tens of thousands of rockets. They were having some problems after Lebanese villagers disabused them of the notion that the villagers were willing to become human shields (not that Hezbollah uses human shields - cf. Human Rights Watch's "no basis" strutting).

Interesting few days for Hezbollah. First they block the government from forming, forcing Hariri to resign. Now this. Someone's having a good week.

References:
* Three Katyusha rockets strike northern Israel [Ha'aretz]
* Lebanese villagers recorded driving away Hezbollah men [YNet]
* HRW: "No Basis" For Claims That Hezbollah Used Human Shields. MR: What About All The Photos And Videos [Video] [MR]
* Hariri fails to form cabinet, resigns [JPost]

Previously:
* Great News: UNIFIL Breaking Up Israel's Anti-Hezbollah Spy Rings
* UNIFIL Peacekeepers Now Actively Trying To Start A War In Lebanon
* Surveillance Video Shows Hezbollah Moving Some Of Their 40,000 Rockets To Israeli Border, War Could "Explode At Any Minute" [Video]

The latest in a series. It's a perfect topic: a glimpse into how the other side thinks, an appreciation for what they're willing to say out loud, and - most importantly - easy content for me. Since we're a couple weeks away from the total insanity that will break out over the Goldstone Report - this is the report that will blame Israel for the civilian deaths caused by Hamas's use of human shields - how about we start with one of that organization's more charming contributions:

Deleted comment:

haychex: ahh well, what are you going to do.. when they're right, they're right.. zionism is terrorism and Israel has no place in the UN.

And here's Hezbollah - Iran's other human-shield adoring regional proxy - moving around the missiles the UN has ostensibly ensured they don't have:

Rejected bon mot from that video:

J4archae: Hezbollah should acquire nuclear weapons and eliminate fcukng zionist scum jews off the face of earth.

No worries though. He's just talking about the genocide of Zionist Jews. So no antisemitism there.

References:
* Right of Reply: Isolating Israel through language of human rights [JPost]
* HRW: "No Basis" For Claims That Hezbollah Used Human Shields. MR: What About All The Photos And Videos [Video] [MR]

Previously:
* We Get Mail - Irony Impaired UC Irvine Liberals Are Stupid
* Today's Nuked YouTube Comments From MR's Iranian Anti-Semitism Post
* We Get Mail - Pro-Holocaust YouTube Cretin Edition

Figures:

Desmond Tutu said that the Palestinians and the Arabs are paying "penance" for the Holocaust. In an interview Thursday with Ha'aretz, Tutu, the South African archbishop who is visiting Israel this week as part of the group known as the Elders, said that the West was consumed with guilt because of the Holocaust, "as it should be."

He added, "But who pays the penance? The penance is being paid by the Arabs, by the Palestinians. I once met a German ambassador who said Germany is guilty of two wrongs. One was what they did to the Jews. And now the suffering of the Palestinians." Israel is mistaken to think it can achieve security through force, he said. "The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns," Tutu said.

This is either a totally incoherent statement or a mind-blowingly disgusting reference to how hiding behind the "walls" of the Warsaw Ghetto couldn't save Poland's Jews. I'm actually leaning toward incoherent statement, since self-important cosmopolitan scolding of Israel tends to proceed Mad Libs style: "Israel must learn from the Holocaust that ______ [dehumanizing and/or condescending pronoun] can never achieve ______ [noun] through ______ [something that has empirically actually been pretty successful "achieving" the last noun]."

Plus if he brought up the Warsaw Ghetto it might remind people that - historically - guns have been the only way Jews have been able to get security.

I still can't get over how Tutu and his venomous ilk travel under that "Elders" banner. Conspiracy theory 101 is that pathological conspiracy theorists always end up appropriating for themselves the symbolic trappings of their imagined enemies. But come on.

References:
* Tutu: Palestinians paying for Holocaust [JTA]

Previously:
* Boston Globe Notices UN Is Not Entirely Fair To Israel (Plus: Lebanese Muslims Pissed That Even Israel Is More Humane Than Syria) [Video]
* UN Sends Committed Anti-Semite Anti-Zionist To Conduct Unbiased Investigation Of Zionists
State Dept Forgets To Condemn Palestinian Terrorist Attack - Another Diplomatic Masterstroke

Just so everyone's clear: for the purposes of pressuring Israel to give away territory, there is a timeless distinction between Palestinian land and Israeli land. But when it comes to letting random Israel-hating US citizens wander between terrorist havens and Israeli cities - well, it's all just land, ya know?

The United States said Wednesday it had complained to Israel about restrictions on the travel of US citizens of Palestinian origin, calling the measures "unacceptable." The State Department said that Israel has been issuing entry stamps for some travelers, mostly those of Arab ancestry, stating that they are only allowed in the Palestinian Authority and cannot transit through Israel.

"We have made it quite known to the Israeli government ... that we expect all American citizens to be treated the same regardless of their national origin," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "These kinds of restrictions we consider unacceptable," Kelly told reporters. "We will continue to protest."... Israeli authorities recently started to stamp in visitors' passports whether they are heading to Israel or the Palestinian territories, potentially preventing them from traveling to both.

Interesting. Usually the US asks Israel not to stamp passports because intransigent Arab states bounce travelers with Israeli stamps, making it harder for US citizens to get into those countries. That's a policy State is presumably not "continuing to protest." Now they're asking Israel not to stamp passports because it makes it difficult for genuinely suspicious US citizens "of Palestinian origin" - and believe it or not, such people do exist - to move between Gaza and Israel at their leisure.

The policy isn't racist, the AFP's implicit smear by omission aside. It very emphatically extends to moonbat activists who want to burn Israeli flags with terrorists in the morning and chain themselves to a Jerusalem building at night. It's not exactly hard to understand why Israel wants to limit their movement.

There's an easy solution to this though. If the choice is all or nothing - Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza or no entrance at all - well, that almost solves itself doesn't it?

References:
* US complains to Israel on Palestinian-American entry rules [AFP]
* State Dept Importing 1,350 Palestinian Saddam Supporters From Iraq Into Southern California [MR]

Previously:
* Obama Alienates The Israeli Left: "He Has Spoken About Us But Not To Us"
* Obama's Top NSA And CIA Picks: Harsh On Israel, Sympathetic To Iran And Hezbollah
* State Dept. Banning Pro-Israel Obama Officials From Speaking Out

The article didn't say Jews are harvesting the organs of Palestinian children, ala the most primitive blood libels and the most cutting-edge Iranian TV. It said Israeli Jews are doing it. Even if that's not true - and the reporter who published it in Sweden's largest circulation daily says he's agnostic on the question - that doesn't make it a false antisemitic claim. At worst it's just over-exuberant anti-Zionism.

And after all, isn't rooting out innocent factual errors what the public sphere is all about?

Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Benny Dagan was expected to speak to the Swedish Foreign Ministry on Wednesday to protest the publication of an article in the country's newspaper Aftonbladet that accused IDF soldiers of abducting Palestinians to steal their organs... The Foreign Ministry responded furiously on Tuesday to the story, saying it was a grotesque throwback to the blood libels of the Middle Ages. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor characterized the story as "racist hysteria at its worst. No one should tolerate such a demonizing piece of medieval blood libel that surely encourages hate crimes against Jews," Palmor said. "This is a shame to freedom of expression, and all Swedes should reject it unconditionally."

Stop trying to use charges of antisemitism to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel, Likudniks.

References:
* What's Next? Eating Babies? [MR]
* Israel furious over Swedish newspaper article [AP]
* Israel aghast at Swedish report on IDF [JPost]

Previously:
* One Jerusalem Conference Call With George Gilder: Israel Is The "Crucial Battlefield For Capitalism In The World"
* Human Rights Watch Shill Has Meltdown - Rants About "Sharanskys Of The World," Dares Critics To Find "One Incident" Of HRW Bias (UPDATED: Nasrallah Bragged About Using Human Shields)
* Iran PressTV Blows The Lid Off Anti-Obama Birther Conspiracy Theories. Turns Out: Jews.

At first this was going to be a "look how biased the AP is" post, since the very first AFP report on the incident recognized that there was cross-border provocation...

... and the AP report, filed about 20 minutes later, very much did not:

But then I went back to the AFP article to screencap the timestamp - Yahoo's RSS feed served up the original AFP article at 10:57pm PST and the orginal AP article at 11:18pm PST - but the post had already been changed to mesh it with the AP's characterizations:

Now the very last line of the rewritten AFP post reminded readers that "army radio initially said the Israelis had returned fire after the Egyptian shot at them." So if you were thinking "I wonder if there's something going on here other than Israeli soldiers taking potshots at an Arab police officer, something that perhaps explains why the Egyptians aren't screaming their heads off" - well, if you're one of the less than 5% of readers who get to the end of an article you'd get a hint that there might be more. Which of course there is:

IDF troops shot and wounded an Egyptian border policeman overnight Sunday after the man cocked his weapon at them along the Israeli-Egyptian border. The incident occurred near Eilat when a routine patrol identified an armed figure moving near the border. When the troops challenged the man, he cocked his weapon, prompting the soldiers to open fire, the army said. The soldiers realized it was an Egyptian policeman only after the shooting, the military said.

Let's say you're an AP or AFP editor and that, since your early days as an idealistic undergraduate cub reporter speaking truth to power, you and most of the people in your political community have been inclined to blame Israel for Middle East violence. Fair enough. This story comes over the wire, you see the initial army radio report, then the correction, then the final Israeli version. And you unilaterally conclude that the confusion means the Israelis are flat out lying.

Don't you still put in a line like "Israeli sources denied that the shooting was unprovoked but declined to give more information pending a joint Israeli-Egyptian investigation"? Just on the off-chance that the region's most professional army wasn't just randomly making shit up? It might be a small chance, but just to hedge your bets...?

Good few weeks for the AP though. Between this story and that description of "Jewish extremists" scuffling with "Muslim residents," they're really demonstrating why people are so attached to trustworthy and objective legacy media outlets.

References:
* Firefight on Israeli-Egyptian border: army radio [AFP]
* Israeli soldiers shoot Egyptian policeman [AP]
* Israeli soldiers shoot at Egyptian policeman [AFP]
* Troops wound Egyptian border guard [JPost]
* AP Photo Labels Jews as Extremists, Muslims as Residents [CAMERA]

Previously:
* AP: British Diplomat Who Screamed For Israel To Be Wiped Out Was "Criticizing Israel's Conduct" (Plus: British Anti-Semitism Now Kind Of An Everyday Thing)
* AP Caption Of The Day: "Israel Will Not Heed Obama's Powerful Appeal"
* AP: US Pressuring Jews Who Live In "Traditionally Arab East Jerusalem" [MR]

There's a certain asymmetry in the international demonization of Israel. Organizations like Human Rights Watch get to make things up out of whole cloth but Israel has to spend precious resources and months of time disproving the charges. By the time the nonsense is debunked the news cycle is long gone. Plus nobody publishes "turns out, Israel didn't commit war crimes after all" articles. Plus anti-Israel academics just repeat the myths anyway since they can just footnote the original report.

Example: in 2006 HRW put out a report saying that Israel took potshots at Lebanese civilians waving white flags. It was dutifully picked up by the usual anti-Israel outlets. Of course the report was crap - Israel produced documents and videotapes showing that the "civilians" waving white flags were Hezbollah soldiers launching missiles. But as of 2008 the report is still being cited in academic dissertations under headings like "8.1.1 Possible war crimes committed by Israel."

Last week HRW put out a report pointing out that, yes, Hamas did in fact try to kill Israeli civilians. Rather than let that simmer for a while - or not, as Google News might indicate - they quickly published a brand new "Israel shot at civilians waving white flags" report. Because this way they can say "we release reports on both sides" - which is what they did in their Lebanon "white flags" report - without bringing up how their anti-Israel reports are (a) more numerous, (b) mostly false, and (c) timed to starve any anti-Hezbollah or anti-Hamas reports of coverage.

Money line from the summary of the new report, helpfully bolded on their website so media outlets know exactly what repetitious anti-Israel trope to quote and amplify:

In the 11 killings documented in this report, Human Rights Watch found no evidence that the civilian victims were used by Palestinian fighters as human shields or were shot in the crossfire between opposing forces. The civilian victims were in plain view and posed no apparent security threat.

This is the same organization that also stated - flat out - that there was no evidence that civilians were used by Hezbollah fighters as human shields. Of course there was the photographic evidence and the video evidence and how Nasrallah explicitly bragged about using human shields - but whatever. And in Gaza there's the photographic evidence and the video evidence and how Hamas explicitly bragged about using human shields...

Can you believe these guys?

The United States and the European Union hit out Monday at Israel for evicting Palestinian families from east Jerusalem, warning that such moves endangered the Middle East peace process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the international condemnation, labelling the evictions "deeply regrettable" and "provocative" and accusing Israel of failing to live up to its international obligations under existing peace initiatives. "I have said before that the eviction of families and demolition of homes in east Jerusalem is not in keeping with Israeli obligations," Clinton told reporters.

This coming from an administration that led an international campaign to pressure Israel to keep Jews out of homes they had legally purchased in East Jerusalem. That apparently didn't count as "deeply regrettable," presumably because ostensible ethnic cleansing is only "provocative" when it's done against non-Jews.

Not that this eviction is ethnic cleansing. Israel allows Arab families to legally purchase homes anywhere in Jerusalem, the emphasis on legality being an unfortunate byproduct of living under the democratic rule of law. The Israeli Supreme Court - which in the same session once OK'd the demolition of Jewish settlements in Gaza but halted the destruction of a suicide bomber's house - firmly ruled that the Arab ownership documents were forged and that the homes legally belong to Sephardic Jews. I understand that the Obama administration is uninclined to defer to the the Supreme Courts of other sovereign nations - cf. Zelaya, removal of - but they actually are kind of important.

The stuff about demanding a total ban on Israeli Jews legally moving back into the Old City, where Jews have lived continuously for thousands of years minus the 19 years when Jordan kept the city Jew-free - that actually does count as ethnic cleansing.

Here's how CSM choose to cover the story:

It was 13-year-old Diala who was awoken first, just after 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, by the commotion outside. She rushed to the window, saw special riot police in black uniforms, and ran to wake her parents. By the time she did, the Israeli police were already breaking in through doors and windows, forcing the 17-member Hanoun family - three brothers, their wives, and children - to leave the home their relatives acquired a half-century ago. In all, 58 Palestinians were evicted in this predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah. Though they had received - and refused to obey - a court order in May to leave after losing a longstanding dispute over property rights, it was still a shock.

Therein follow two extended paragraphs worth of quotes from the oh-so-put-upon, illegally squatting children and parents. This is exactly the kind of coverage that the Jewish residents of Gaza got when they were evicted by the Israeli government so Palestinians could have land for their own state. Except those Jewish were residing in homes that had been legally purchased. And they had a reasonable expectation of government protection. And they actually got the opposite kind of media coverage. But except for that, identical.

I do like the touch of opening the article with "it was 13-year-old Diala who was awoken first." The writer can't possibly know that and it's totally irrelevant and it only serves to muddy a century-old juridical controversy, exactly reversing what good journalism is supposed to accomplish. But it's a nice bit of shameless anti-Israel journalism, so you have to admire it on an aesthetic level if nothing else.

References:
* Clinton leads condemnation of Jerusalem evictions [AFP]
* Attacks On Israeli Sovereignty Over Jerusalem Coalescing After Obama's Broadside [MR]
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Israel defends Jerusalem evictions [CNN]
* Evicted Palestinians stand their ground - on thin mattresses [CSM]

Previously:
* Flashback: Candidate Obama Doubles Down On His AIPAC Commitment To An Undivided Jerusalem
* Reader Poll: Which Israeli City Will Obama Try To Ban Jews From Next?
* AP: US Pressuring Jews Who Live In "Traditionally Arab East Jerusalem"

A nice followup to the Hezbollah arms cache that exploded last month:

Three years after Israel fought a bloody war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, there are fears that hostilities could erupt again -- this time with the militant group better armed than ever... Hezbollah has up to 40,000 rockets and is training its forces to use ground-to-ground missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv, and anti-aircraft missiles that could challenge Israel's dominance of the skies over Lebanon. Brigadier-General Alon Friedman, the deputy head of the Israeli Northern Command, told The Times from his headquarters overlooking the Israeli-Lebanese border that the peace of the past three years could "explode at any minute".

His concerns were due partly to threats from Hezbollah's leadership. Last month Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, warned that if the southern suburbs of Beirut were bombed as they were in the last war, he would strike back against Tel Aviv, the largest Israeli city. "We have changed the equation that had existed previously," he said. "Now the southern suburbs versus Tel Aviv, and not Beirut versus Tel Aviv."

Of course these videos and quotes won't matter once Lebanon III gets underway and Hezbollah's left-leaning international friends go to work blaming Israel (cf. UNRWA's brazen claim during Cast Lead that there was a magical super-secret ceasefire which Israel "obviously" violated):

Hezbollah has extended its international reach by establishing contacts with left-leaning, environmental and peace groups opposed to U.S.-led economic globalization, analysts and people tied to the group say. The Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant organization and political party, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States, has participated through a front organization in dozens of gatherings where attendees criticized U.S. foreign policy and global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The aim, analysts say, is to rally support for armed opposition to Israel among groups that regard the West's policies as a threat to developing countries and to the environment.

Almost difficult to believe that the watered down UN sanctions passed in the context of international sympathy have failed to stop arms smuggling. No worries. I'm sure that Britain's eagerness to engage Hezbollah's "political wing" will teach them a lesson!

References:
* Hezbollah stockpiles 40,000 rockets near Israel border [Times Online]
* Illegal Lebanon arms may have been Hezbollah's -UN [Reuters]
* Hezbollah finds left-leaning friends abroad [LAT]
* UN Palestinian Stooge: "It's Obvious" That Israeli Attack Violated 48-Hour Truce That No One Knew About Until Now [MR]
* Britain's Double Vision of Hezbollah? [CT Blog]

Previously:
* Aww... Hezbollah Likely To Forgive, Make Up With Breathtakingly Moronic VP
* Great News: UNIFIL Breaking Up Israel's Anti-Hezbollah Spy Rings
* UNIFIL Peacekeepers Now Actively Trying To Start A War In Lebanon

Billions of dollars in overall aid, over a billion specifically for Hamas, plus a seemingly unending supply of military training and gear to Fatah. This is what it buys us:

Palestinian leaders warned Arab states on Monday that any effort to normalise ties with Israel at the urging of President Barack Obama would deal a damaging blow to the quest for statehood. The dispute over Israel's role in the Middle East emerged as Fatah, the dominant faction in Palestinian politics, prepared to stage its first congress since a meeting in exile in 1989... "Normalisation of Israel's ties with Arab countries before the occupation ends in the Palestinian areas is the last thing that the Palestinians should have to experience," said Abu El-Izz Dajani, a former PLO ambassador who is running for a post in the Fatah leadership. "It is as dangerous as the Nakba, as dangerous as the 1967 seizure of the West Bank and Jerusalem."

This is really surprising. Because after they went out of their way to insist that they weren't pressuring Hamas to recognize Israel, I thought for sure they were in favor of recognizing Israel:

In "Dahlan to Hamas: Never recognize Israel," March 17, The Jerusalem Post reported that "former Fatah security commander Muhammad Dahlan ... called on Hamas not to recognize Israel's right to exist, pointing out that Fatah had never recognized it." Speaking on Palestinian Authority TV, Dahlan said reports that Fatah demanded Hamas recognize Israel as a precondition for a Palestinian unity government were "misleading." "They [Hamas] say that Fatah has asked them to recognize Israel's right to exist and this is a big deception. For the one thousandth time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist .... We acknowledge that the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] did recognize Israel's right to exist, but we are not bound by it as a resistance [terrorist] faction."

That was a couple weeks after they took credit for murdering two Israelis as part of an open campaign of armed escalation. Quoth the Philadelphia Bulletin: "Fatah Terrorizes While Undergoing US Military Training."

Best. Peace process. Ever.

References and previously after the jump...

Since I'm perennially behind on my obligatory blogging - the Watchers Council bloggers and the One Jerusalem folks now know how my adviser feels - the audio for this conference call has been up for a couple days. If you haven't grabbed it you should: Eitam is on the Knesset intelligence committee so while he's not speaking for the government he has an excellent sense of Israeli political dynamics. One of the more striking parts of the call was when he rejected out of hand the widespread rumor that the Israeli government was considering a ceasefire. And of course - given how Israel has brushed aside the formal UN ceasefire resolution today - he was obviously right.

At this point it's almost like journalists are just guessing about what Olmert, Livni, and Barak are thinking. Livni has staked her political career on the peace process but started being vocally ideological in early November and was done with the non-ceasefire by early December. Olmert had long been reticent to use force but he has just a few months to shake off his Lebanon II legacy.

The recent holdout to attacking Hamas was always supposed to be Barak. But at this point I wouldn't trust him to tell me what color the sky is when IAF planes fly through it. His head fakes leading up to Cast Lead were pitch-perfect, sending the Israeli right into outright hysterics and costing Hamas dearly. The humanitarian truce rumors during the first few days were apparently pure disinformation. Barak's public blanket opposition to military force was always a little weird and he seems awfully familiar with very precise operational logistics for someone's who's been spending time opposing the operation.

It might be that the MFA has adopted the Iranian approach to international resolutions. For any given ceasefire proposal - from the Egypt-France proposal to the UN resolution itself - take it and promise to "study" it. Then have half the political establishment leak that they're inclined to accept the proposal while the other half publicly declares that it's a non-starter. Meanwhile establish irreversible facts on the ground. It's diplomatic filibustering, except in this case in the interest of defeating a genocidal agenda.

References and previously after the jump...

They've already violated the sanctity of hospitals in the last few hours so why not bomb a schoolhouse to really cement their "schools and hospitals" cred?

Hamas flexed its muscles Tuesday night and fired two rockets into Beersheba as Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked for government approval to call up an additional 2,500 reservists ahead of a planned ground operation in the Gaza Strip. One of the Katyusha rockets struck a kindergarten in Beersheba, causing damage. Another rocket hit outside the city in an open field... In total, more than 50 rockets struck the South on Tuesday, with one scoring a direct hit on a home in Sderot. No one was wounded in the attack, as the family had taken refuge in a nearby secure room.

A nice followup to their murder of two Palestinian schoolgirls on the eve of Israel's retaliation. At least the IAF knew how to respond this time.

In the meantime Barak has requested another 2,500 reservists at the same time that the IDF has completed their preparations for a ground invasion. And the IAF is still doing what the IAF does:

IAF aircraft attacked Hamas installations and government buildings in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning, including the Gaza office of the organization's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. It was the second time that Haniyeh's office had been targeted and the army said that the building was being used to conduct terror activities against Israel. On Tuesday night, the air force bombed the launcher of the Grad-model rockets that were fired at Beersheba, as well as the cell responsible. The army said it successfully hit its target. IAF aircraft also pounded smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, setting off a huge explosion in a fuel tunnel, witnesses said, as other aircraft hit Hamas positions in Gaza City. No casualties were reported.

So yes: I really do think that those rumors about Barak floating a ceasefire were overblown.

References:
* Oh-So-Brave Hamas Soldiers Fleeing Into Mosques And Hospitals [MR]
* Two rockets strike Beersheba [JPost]
* AFP Helpfully Provides Crisp Example Of Institutional Anti-Israel Media Bias [MR]
* IDF bombs Grad launcher, terrorist cell responsible for Beersheba rockets [JPost]
* Barak Asks for More Reservists, Ministers Vote by Phone [A7]
* Are "Humanitarian Truce" Rumors Just More Strategic Israeli Disinformation? [MR]

Previously:
* Another Day Another Palestinian Rocket Barrage. New Rockets Bring Hundreds Of Thousands Of Israelis Within Range.
* Livni: Hey, I Guess These Daily Rocket Attacks Aren't Much Of A Ceasefire After All
* Hamas: You Know What? Starting Friday We're Not Even Going To Pretend There's A Ceasefire.

These fearless predictions always turn out disasterously for me, but nonetheless: I think that the widespread rumors about how Israel is considering a 48-hour truce are flat false. I'm not sure if it's Israeli misinformation - the second time in a week where Barak's public hesitancy is being used as a head-fake - or if it's just an "anonymously sourced" excuse for breathless "Israel rejects ceasefire" headlines (as if Hamas wasn't categorically rejecting any renewed truce just like they've always done). But in any case it makes no sense.

Let's take it as a given that that Hamas can't accept a ceasefire after the last four days because it would make it look like they'd been ground into submission. Let's also take it as a given that the post-Peretz Defense Ministry isn't staffed by idiots - so they know that. Why would they float rumors of a ceasefire if - acknowledging ahead of time that Hamas will reject it - they know it would make them look weak? The only possible reason is that they were hoping that it would give them a propaganda boon: a news cycle of "Hamas rejects Israeli truce offer" headlines. But only an idiot would think that newspapers would go with that frame rather than "Resilient Hamas turns Israeli truce plea" headlines. But the post-Peretz Defense Ministry is not staffed by idiots. Ergo they didn't float a ceasefire. QED.

Plus both the defense establishment and Barak say it's not true. You could say that they're just trying to save face after Hamas rejected the offer. But - again - they would have known in advance that Hamas would reject the offer which means they would never would have put themselves in a position where they'd lose face.

Not to get too inside baseball, but I do kind of have a perverse incentive to believe that Barak is actually pushing for a ceasefire. It sort of appeals to my muddy pragmatism. First it establishes a clear distinction between the Israeli center and the Israeli left, highlighting the stupidity of protest votes. It also makes Ben-Eliezer look good and I've had a soft spot for him ever since Sharon joked that he routinely talked him out of launching anti-terrorist operations. But alas, I just don't think it's true.

Although I don't discount the possibility that some mid-level MFA staffer, not understanding how the story would framed as Hamas tenacity vs. Israeli hesitancy out, leaked it to Ha'aretz. That I'd easily believe.

References and previously after the jump...

Should we go through the hassle of having them tried and hung at the Hague...

The Iranian government has decided to task a legal team with preparing a war crimes indictment against Israel, to be filed with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in The Hague. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that "the international police to send an official subpoena to The Hague to those working against the helpless people of Gaza. This action should be swift and the heads of the Zionist regime should be served this week." (Dudi Cohen)

... or just skip the formalities and kill them outright:

Hamas on Sunday threatened to respond to an ongoing Israel Defense Forces assault on the Gaza Strip by assassinating senior Israeli officials. Senior Hamas official Fatah Hamad specifically threatened Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak... Earlier Sunday, the IDF massed troops near the Gaza border in preparation for a possible ground operation against Hamas. In parallel, the cabinet approved a relatively small call-up of the reserves - some 6,700 soldiers - in case they are needed for the operation.

Decisions, decisions. Anyway - behind the jump I've embedded a video of Livni from Sunday's Meet The Press, on the off-chance that random eye-rolling about Islamist tools doesn't count as "a post."

The IDF is looking at a Hezbollah-style force of about 15,000 heavily-disciplined Hamas soldiers who have been armed via the "most intensive military buildup - for a terrorist group - in modern history." They've been smuggling advanced weapons into Gaza since the moment the ceasefire began and have already launched highly advanced missiles into some of Israel's largest cities. Now Israeli intel is now talking hundreds of rockets per day throughout the Gaza operation and beyond. Everything points to Hamas having made a strategic decision to go to war:

Above all, the decision to renew the firing stems from an arrogant perception - which can also be observed from time to time on the Israeli side of the border - that the other side understands force better than anything else. Hamas seems to believe that "the Jews understand only force." If violence at a low intensity fails to persuade Israel to let goods into the Strip, then, according to Hamas' approach, another escalation in violence could help Israel make the right decision. The organization's leadership expects an Israeli retaliation, but they assume it will be limited in scope. They deduce this from what they view as an Israeli reluctance to launch a massive land invasion.

They may have gambled right: the Israeli public seems somewhat against an extended ground invasion and the IDF has ramped up only for a limited operation. On the other hand the operation involves ground and air operations and Livni is breathing fire diplomatically. Even Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Israeli President Shimon Peres seems distinctly unhappy about the rockets raining down on Israeli civilians. At least this makes it easy on journalists. Hamas fires rockets at Israeli civilians, Israel responds by targeting Hamas infrastructure: it's a cycle of violence!

Just for the record: no it's not:

Exactly the same people - who last week presented convincing reasons to justify continuing the policy of restraint in the Gaza Strip... have now changed their tune completely... There are several factors behind the change in policy. The central one, simply put, is the situation on the ground: Close to 200 Katyushas, Qassam rockets and mortar shells have been fired at the Negev since Hamas said it would not renew the tahadiyeh (lull) that had expired on December 19. The response on the part of the Israel Defense Forces, at least until yesterday around noon, was the epitome of restraint.

Even as the IDF was suiting up, Olmert went on TV to appeal to Hamas to stop firing rockets and missiles. He had just freed a bunch of Palestinian prisoners. But no such luck: confidence in divine victory has put Hamas leaders beyond the reach of even appeasement.

References and previously after the jump...

Hey, real quick before I get to the political stuff: there's a new meme developing that blames the collapse of the peace process on Livni's decision to call elections. Just for the record - Hamas was already set to take over the Palestinian Authority within the next months, which would have had a less than copacetic effect on negotiations. And also, come on.

Now that that's out of the way - I'm really starting to hate elections:

A day after Kadima leader Tzipi Livni handed back the mandate President Shimon Peres gave her last month to form a government, new opinion polls gave Kadima a small edge over Likud. A poll by the Dahaf Research Institute showed Kadima winning 29 of the Knesset's 120 seats and Likud taking 26. Meanwhile, Labor was projected to win 11 seats, compared with the 19 mandates it holds in the current Knesset. A TNS Teleseker survey gives Kadima 31 seats to Likud's 29.

I'm skeptical. I know that last week I wrote about how Livni was taking the best political option available by pinning the government breakdown on Shas. But Aluf Benn thinks otherwise and he actually knows stuff. And I know that right before that I wrote about how Likud is going out of its way to lose the election by forcing Mofaz to stay in Kadima (which is exactly what happened). But even with Mofaz back as Livni's security fig leaf, Kadima should still be splitting the social vote with Labor and Netanyahu should still be getting the bulk of the national security vote.

I don't have the crosstabs for these two polls, but still - makes. no. sense. The Labor thing makes sense - keeping an unpopular Prime Minister in power while transfering weapons to the Palestinians is apparently not the way into the Israeli public's heart. But is the national security vote really only worth 26 seats? Yeah there are some signs that the Israeli public is less than resolved when it comes to forming a united front against terrorism. But soldier abductions are kind of a national pathology so it's hard to extrapolate, plus there's plenty of evidence going the other way. And the polls that show overwhelming support for land-for-peace swaps are hardly unequivocal.

Best guess if the numbers fade: it was an anti-Shas boost. Best guess if the numbers hold up: no idea. Maybe strong anti-settler sentiment?

In the meantime, go read erstwhile Obama shill Shmuel Rosner's new article on Shas's political power. Sure it's not as bold or prescient as my fearless Sept. 21 prediction that Shas would leave Livni out to dry and trigger new elections. But it's longer and smarter and your only other option is to go read another poll about how the most anti-Israel Presidential candidate ever is about to become Commander of Chief.

References and previously behind the jump...

Netanyahu has been courting Labor veterans for over a year. It's been "crunch time" for Barak since January. Now it's ostensibly "decision time" for Livni. I can haz election nao?

Decision time is here: Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni says a decision will be made by Sunday on whether to form a new government or call for general elections. Speaking to Kadima faction members, Livni said: "Decisions need to be made by Sunday, and then we will know whether we'll have a government or elections."... On Wednesday, sources in Kadima said Livni went all out, offering religious parties Shas and United Torah Judaism a total of almost one billion shekels (roughly $260 million.) However, Shas reportedly rejected the offer, prompting Livni to tell her close associates that she is not convinced whether Shas truly wants to join the government.

Going to elections because of Shas's blackmail is about the best way for Livni to launch her campaign. Whether it will be enough to overcome public disgust with Kadima is an open question: the Israeli electorate has the collective memory of a gnat. Maybe she can convince them that Netanyahu is too dangerous to put in power (that would be a happy morning on the rightwing JBlogosphere). Even happier: Israel in elections while Obama is winning in the US - that pretty much means that Iran gets nukes, right?

NB: time to stop checking Ha'aretz. Their in-the-tank propagandizing for Peretz was embarrassing at the time, shameful in Lebanon II retrospect. A year ago they moronically declared that Barak was "increasingly popular" as a PM candidate. During election the Ha'aretz news page basically becomes a less subtle version of the LA Times.

References:
* Labor veterans to meet Netanyahu [JPost]
* Editor's Notes: Crunch time for Barak [JPost]
* Livni: Sunday is decision day [YNet]
* Ha'aretz Confused About Just How Great Peretz Is - Great or Super Great? [MR]
* Israeli Political Update - Ha'aretz Shills for Peretz Edition (Edition I) [MR]
* Barak becoming increasingly popular as candidate for PM [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* Israeli Politics Roundup - 2007-11-28 - Annapolis Edition (Plus: The Most Under-Appreciated Poll Of The Month)
* Olmert Resigning, Livni To Try To Form New Coalition. Unofficial Election Countdown Begins Now.
* Israeli Politics Roundup - Likud Already Gearing Up To Lose Election Through Arrogance, Spite

Israel:

A 33-year-old gay Palestinian man petitioned the High Court of Justice on Sunday, asking it to grant him permanent residency in Israel so that he may live with his partner, who lives in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam. The man, a resident of the northern West Bank village of Tamon, further claimed to fear for his life, since his family refuses to accept his sexual orientation and may try to harm him... The man chose to continue living with his lover in Israel, unbeknown to his family, but unfortunately, relatives residing in Jaffa informed his father that he was "still hanging out with homosexuals."

Egypt:

Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery are applied to homosexuals in this conservative country... Egyptian secret police have been quite literally hunting down gay men for at least half a decade. They troll online chatrooms and set up wire taps to entrap homosexuals - who are then summarily arrested and subjected to degradation and torture.

After the jump, other countries that are also not Israel.

I've been putting off writing about the Akko riots because (a) I don't really have anything to say, (b) other JBloggers are flooding the zone with news, pictures, and commentary, and (c) whatever I'm inclined to write will get me emails about my insufficiently pro-Israel sentiments - and I don't have that kind of time. I guess I just kind of feel bad for this guy:

The Arab man who drove into a Jewish neighborhood in Acre on the eve of Yom Kippur, sparking a series of riots and violent clashes, told the Knesset Committee of the Interior on Sunday that he would "sacrifice his neck" to bring coexistence back to the bi-national nothern city. "If what I did caused this, I am ready to sacrifice my neck right here on this table, on lowered gallows, just to return peace and quiet back to the city of Acre, to bring co-existence back to its place. I just wanted to go home, I made and mistake and tried to ask for forgiveness. This has been a harrowing experience." He also said that he had been one of the founders of a community co-existence committee in Acre: "We invented co-existence," he said. "They have made me out to be a murderer, they've turned me into a fascist. We are not Nazis, we are not fascists."

A breakdown of Arab-Jewish coexistence would also prevent me from getting the best hummus in Israel next time I'm in the Akko. And, everything else aside, that would be pretty fucking obnoxious.

References:
* Akko is Not Going to Go Away [My Right Word]
* Riots in Acre -- Photos [Solomonia]
* The news, and the truth of the Akko riots [Yourish]
* Driver who sparked Acre riots: I'd sacrifice myself to bring back coexistence [Ha'aretz]
* Old city of Acre (Akko): Humus Said [Humus101]

Previously:
* Breaking: Arab-Israeli Terrorist Injures 15 In J'lem, Anti-Israel Media Bias Watch Begins (UPDATE: 19 Injured, Terrorist Was Palestinian From J'lem) (UPDATE: Press Bias Exceeds Expectations)
* Shouldn't They Be Out Protesting Disengagement?
* Moronic Right-Wing Jewish Fanatics Turn Dog On Israeli Soldiers

This is exactly how the Nazis did it, right? I only ask because "Jews = Nazis" is now the standard anti-Israel line for Arab governments and liberal activists. It's almost like they're wildly exaggerating just so they can make a particularly vicious, borderline anti-Semitic smear:

The creative minds inside Israel's Border Police have invented a new crowd control weapon, one that pays homage to that devil of a stinker, Pepé Le Pew... Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven't been washed for weeks - topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer. Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon... The smell... apparently lingers on the skin and in hair for days and can be smelled from quite a distance... neither soap nor tomato sauce is doing the job.

The smell is so awful that police stations can't even store it, while the actual substance is 100% nontoxic.

Vicious lunatics go on violent rampages where they alternate between attacking police and screaming for Israel's destruction. In response the Jewish State develops cutting-edge technology to minimize injuries - and still has to bear the brunt of the UN's condemnations. Nothing to worry about though - those condemnations come from clearheaded and objective anti-Zionism. Obviously.

References:
* Israel's new weapon [FP Passport]
* Libya spurs UN protest with Nazi remark [JPost]
* Terrorist Loving British Tool: Israel Running "Concentration Camp", Gaza Like Darfur [MR]

Previously:
* The IDF Is The World's Most Moral Army (Humanitarian Coordination Edition)
* The Most Moral Army In The World - Soldier Testimonials [Video]
* Still the World's Most Moral Army

Olmert's resigning today and Livni has almost no possibility of forming a new coalition. Some people think she does, but - unless Shas beats their own previous record for shamelessness - those people are wrong. I was actually surprised that she even beat Mofaz, given how he was clearly the better candidate. But then I remembered that about one-half of Kadima's primary voters are ex-Labor primary voters. Which means that about one-half of Kadima's primary voters have the collective IQ of a sack of turnips. Which clarified things for me. If you want anything more specific, Meryl has a pretty decent roundup of reactions.

So there should be new elections in about a month and a half:

After Livni is declared the party leader, Olmert formally submits resignation to President Shimon Peres. The cabinet resigns with him. After consulting with party leaders, Peres picks a member of the Knesset, most likely Livni, to form a new coalition government. The prime minister designate has 42 days to form a new coalition and bring it to the Knesset for approval. If no new government is formed, a general election is held within 90 days. The process of forming government begins all over again. Olmert remains in office as caretaker prime minister until a new government is approved by the Knesset.

There will have three realistic candidates. Two of those candidates will have been previously voted out of office as diplomatic and/or military failures. The third will have functionally zero relevant experience running a country under diplomatic and/or military siege. In between preemptively signaling land concessions in Israel and abroad, she's occassionally tried to solve terrorism by supplying Hamas with human shields. Not coincidentally, she's getting warm words from Assad and Abbas.

I really could not be more excited for the next few months.

References:
* Olmert to give resignation to Peres Sunday evening [Ha'aretz]
* ANALYSIS / Even Assad has a better opinion of Livni than Barak [Ha'aretz]
* Israeli Political Roundup - Labor Voters are Total Fucking Idiots Edition [MR]
* Livni roundup [Yourish]
* After Livni's victory in Kadima race, what happens next? [Ha'aretz]
* Livni criticizes settlement plan [YNet]
* Livni to discuss Arab initiative in Cairo [YNet]
* Livni to push for international force in Gaza [JPost]
* Abbas welcomes Livni's Kadima victory [JPost]
* Israel's Olmert announces Sunday resignation [Wash Times]

Previously:
* Israel Politics Roundup - 2007-05-02 - Olmert Not Looking So Great
* Hamas Brags About Violating Truce, More Rockets Fall On Israeli Schools And Hospitals
* Statement by FM Livni on attack from Lebanon

I haven't done one of these in a while, so let's all go over the ground rules together:

1. No, not understanding how Western democracy works is not an excuse
2. No, it's not "their land"
3. Yes, there will be a betting pool about how many of these criminals had obnoxious Brooklyn accents

And now, to quote the Jewish Joshua Lyman from what may be the greatest scene in the history of television, can we have a civilization?

Some 90 right-wing activists on Thursday besieged an Israel Defense Forces post north of Ramallah, in protest against the civil administration's decision to remove construction supplies from an illegal outpost in the West Bank. The settlers rallied around the civil administration officials, pierced the tires of a supervisor's car, and sicked a dog on one of the soldiers. The clash between the settlers and soldiers broke out Wednesday afternoon as civil administration supervisors, escorted by security forces, arrived at the illegal Yad Yair outpost in the West Bank.

So it turns out that, rather than solving anything, sicking a dog on a soldier didn't solve anything. Which these idiots might have predicted, except they're idiots.

References:
* Changed Timezones (The West Wing) [capierno / YouTube]
* Right-wing activists attack, set dog on IDF soldiers in W. Bank [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* Haredis In Jerusalem Need To Learn How To Behave Themselves
* Shas Has Brilliant Idea About How They Would Run Things If Israel Wasn't A Democracy
* Chasids Rioting In New York Completes List of New York Jewish Subgroups That Piss Us Off

They've turned on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the planet hasn't been eaten by any macroscopic black holes. Which is weird, because a bunch of idiots said that the opposite would happen and populist science has such a great track record. There's at least a little interest in the JBlogosphere, plus an ongoing Israel angle that MR actually has a video up for:

It probably won't turn out to be quite as exciting as a black hole swallowing up planet earth, but the world's largest ever experiment, which kicks off on Wednesday, is still likely to take human knowledge a thrilling leap forward. Three of the 30 Israeli professors, students and technicians who have taken part in preparations for the historic launch of the gargantuan particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, are already at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) site spanning the Swiss and French borders.

MR's fearless prediction: Hawking's wrong on both counts. The LHC will find the Higgs boson - for which CERN has already found experimental hints - but it won't find any exotic superpartners. In the aftermath, string theorists will be spun off to newly formed but awkwardly named "kind of applied math" departments, where they will be joined by theoretical methodologists from economics and communication.

The upside of this is that if I'm right I'm going to look great. The downside is that this post has the phrase "Hawking's wrong," which means it'll probably be getting scrubbed from the backend some time in mid-2009.

References:
* Scientific progress goes ghostbusters [Soccer Dad]
* LHC - Large Hadron Collider countdown and black holes [Simply Jews]
* God from the (atom smashing) machine? [JPost]
* Most Ambitious And Delicate Physics Experiments Ever: "It's All Israeli Development" [Video] [MR]

* Physicists firing up atom-smasher [The Age]

Previously:
* Neat - NASA Foolishly Equips Planet-Hopping Robot With Nuclear Power and Laser Beams
* Neat - Liquid Moon Mirrors
* Water On Mars!!!

Race-neutral giant attack rats would have been bad enough. But Israeli depravity knows no limits:

In fact, according to two Palestinian newspapers, their mortal foe has come up with a new plan to dislocate Jerusalem's Arabs from the area -- through the medium of supernatural rats.... According to the reports, these rats are twice as big as yer average rat, they are ferociously aggressive, they like to attack Arab children and they breed four times more often than a normal rat. The rats are apparently being introduced into the area by Jews "who bring them in huge cages and release them onto the streets to make living there a nightmare for Arabs". Terrifyingly, the rats even know the difference between Jew and Arab and they leave the Jews alone while terrorising the Arabs.

Because it wouldn't make any sense to deploy supernatural rats that don't even know the difference between Jews and Arabs. Working in that vicious "Jews as rats" motif that's become so popular in anti-Zionist Islamist propaganda - nice touch.

References:
* Save us from the Jewish rats [Independent.ie]
* Canadian Muslim Terrorists: Kill Rats or Jews, No Contest [Seraphic Secret]

Previously:
* Mainstreaming Of Global Anti-Semitism, South Korea Edition
* What International Anti-Semitism?
* As Far As Smirking Anti-Semitism Goes, UC Irvine Muslims Have Really Outdone Themselves

I'm interrupting MR's annual July break early, because it seems like there're going to be some people writing about this. Apparently, the guy who made the tough but wrongheaded decision to trade living murderers for the dead soldiers - the same dead soldiers that he couldn't recover when he and his Labor Defense Minister bungled Lebanon II - is done for the near future:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on Wednesday evening he would not seek reelection in the upcoming Kadima primaries. Prior to his announcement on Wednesday, Olmert became enraged in the Knesset and said, "This is terrible, you can't run a country this way." According to coalition members, the prime minister was angry at the recent losses suffered by the government and coalition in recent bill proposals, the costs of which are estimated at billions of shekels. Olmert's associates claimed that "the Labor Party got on his nerves," and senior Kadima Party officials slammed the Labor's behavior. "Their behavior is lawless. You can't act this way. The Labor is every coalition's nightmare," one official said. Their grievances were based partly on the party's bill proposals, such as the recent bill calling for the extenuation of maternity leave, which may cost the State millions.

What a stunning concession from a guy who had no chance of winning the primaries in the first place.

In fairness to Olmert, the Labor party is kind of a nightmare when it comes to running a country (let alone when trying to run a war). But that's why you need a strong Prime Minister as opposed to an obtuse technocrat - Sharon never took this kind of nonsense from his coalition partners. This was a nice touch on Olmert's part though:

The prime minister has chosen to address the nation while his chief political opponents are away. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are currently visiting the US.

You know what's really awesome? An Israeli political crisis just as the window on stopping Iranian nuclearization is closing.

UPDATE: Contrary to the sensationalist Drudge siren, Olmert is not really "stepping aside." All this does is make formal what everybody already knew - that he will step aside as PM after he is replaced as the head of Kadima in the September primaries. So if Livni wins, for instance, he'll give her a chance to try to form a coalition. And when that fails, Israel will go into a general election some time in October. It's not like someone new is taking over tomorrow. Or even next month.

References:
* Olmert announces will not run in primaries [YNet]
* Reminder: Stupid Political Ideologies Sometimes Have Consequences - Shallow Israeli Leftism Edition [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Brags About Violating Truce, More Rockets Fall On Israeli Schools And Hospitals
* Olmert Totally Incoherent On Why He Won't Approve Gaza Operation
* Olmert's Disclosure Of Israel's Nuclear Capability: At Wost, Harmless

Well this got real big real fast. It's now on Israel At Level Ground, BtB, Daled Amos, Solomonia, and a whole bunch of others.

There were three action alerts in my inbox this morning, each of increasing vehemence. I deleted the first one after I realized that it was accusing Google of anti-Semitism and the second and third ones based on their subject lines. Because if the hysterical accusations during the "Jew" Googlebombing dustup demonstrated anything - good intentions do not necessarily grant bloggers a robust grasp of new media technology). I figured that this was more of the same - pathologically anti-Israel users create content, a Google technology automatically indexes the content and makes it available, Google as a corporation gets blamed. Close. The article is written by Andre Oboler a social media expert and comp sci professor - so he knows the difference between platform and content. His concern is at the bottom:

Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent "Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the "Palestine Remembered" site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained. Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation... The inclusion of virtual Palestine, superimposed on Israel in the core layer of Google Earth, is an example of replacement geography advanced by technology. Those wishing to explore Israel in Google Earth are immediately taken to a politically motivated narrative unrelated to their quest. Google should remove the narrative and treat Israel as it treats every other country on the globe. The core layer of Google Earth should be ideology free and not serve as a platform for indoctrination or a campaign to wipe Israel off the virtual map... Disturbingly, Google has incorporated the Palestinians' overlays and their accompanying narrative into its core maps of Israel. As Google maintains editorial control over its core layer, it has responsibility for its content, which it clearly has not adequately exercised.

Yes and no. First a little background: Google Earth is a GIS platform. It takes arbitrary data inside a layer - provided it's in the right format and says where it's supposed to go - and then projects it on a map. Any user of sufficient skill can create a layer with anything they want and then make it available to everybody else. The layer in question - this "Virtual Israel" thing - has points representing a bunch of Arab villages that either never existed, were never destroyed, or were destroyed long before Israel existed. Vicious and false - but not Google's fault any more than a webpage saying the same thing is Google's fault. Oboler's claim seems to be that Google incorporated this layer into their default installation of Google Earth - almost as if when you searched for "Israel" on Google itself you got a sponsored anti-Israel page at the very top. The problem is that - as near as I can tell - there is no "Virtual Israel" layer in the Google default. The misleading information that's pissing everybody off is there, but it seems to be in a different layer - and not one that there's an easy solution for.

Next to "what we had for lunch," this is perhaps the definition of a self-indulgent post that ought not be blogged. But please - no more action alerts about these:

* The new Nintendo game where you rescue Jewish kids from the Holocaust. The only thing that makes us think twice about not caring is that it puts us on the same side as the ADL - and on the issue of new communications technologies, no less. But still, don't care.

* Livni calling the Israeli-Arab conflict "the sexiest conflict in the world:"

"I know the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the sexiest conflict in the world and everyone wants to be involved," said Livni, who visited Washington earlier in the week. "I think the world should leave it to us. There is no need to push us. It is about our lives."

The only reason we might kind of care is that we wish we would have come up with it. It's an objectively good line. But we probably would have ruined it with some heavy-handed punchlining like "... and now the EU is trying to turn this State Department - White House - Arab League threeway into a full blown orgy." We just don't know when to leave the understated enthymeme alone. It's a stylistic flaw. We're working on it. And regardless, don't care.

* Merkel speaking to the Knesset in German. Don't care. Really.

References:
* Nintendo to Release Holocaust Video Game [Jewcy]
* Livni criticizes settlement plan [YNet]
* Standing ovation for Merkel in Knesset [AP]

Previously:
* ADL Thinks Real Hard, Identifies Religious Threat to American Jews - Christians!
* It's Tuesday, So the ADL is Concerned About Evangelical Christians
* Some Jews Are Very Stupid - LA Jewish Journal Edition

Good speech:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Nice to see that the Senator has discovered that Israel is a US ally. It only took him a year.. But you know what would be even better? If he could slip that secret to his profoundly anti-Israel foreign policy advisors. Because there's apparently no one else in the Obama campaign who believes that. So that'd be nice.

And, not for nothing, but did anyone hear him specifically repudiate his pastor's anti-Semitic hate speech? He certainly isn't going to cut Wright off for embodying decades of the ugliest kind of anti-Jewish demagoguery - that much he was clear on. Or is even bringing that up a cynical refusal to change on our part? And is that because - according to the AP - Jews are only concerned about Wright because he "has a history of supporting Palestinian causes?" Because that's obviously why Jews are concerned.

References:
* OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION [Drudge]
* Obama May Or May Not Think That Israel Is An Important US Ally [MR]
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad) [MR]
* Obama's "Pro-Israel Advisers" Don't Actually Exist. As Such. [MR]
* Obama tries to allay Jewish concerns [AP]

Previously:
* Obama Really Getting The Hang Of Anti-Israel Diplomatic Code Words
* Obama Defenders: What Brzezinski Guy? (Plus: That's Not Even Their Worst Argument)
* Obama Draws Line In The Sand: Invading Israel OK But Calling Hillary A Mean Name Is A Firing Offense

Enough:

Schachter's controversial comments are part of a 39-second clip posted on the YouTube Web site this week and are taken from a discussion the rabbi had with American students learning at Yeshivat Hakotel in Jerusalem... In what appeared to be a response to a question about serving in the IDF, the highly respected halachic authority and Talmud scholar said... "If the army is going to give away Yerushalayim [Jerusalem], then I would tell everyone to resign from the army - I'd tell them to shoot the rosh hamemshala [prime minister]," a statement that prompted laughter from his audience. "No one should go to the army if they [the soldiers] are doing aveirot [sins]," the rabbi continued. "We're talking if the army is seeing to it that the country is secure, if they're doing the right thing.

Yes. Because what the IDF definitely needs is to have each 19 year old adjudicating the legality of individual orders while considering whether they constitute legitimate grounds to murder the sitting Prime Minister of the Third Temple Commonwealth. On the plus side - having respected religious authorities telling religious fanatics to kill the Israeli PM has never gone badly in the past. For the left or the right.

References:
* YU rabbi apologizes for anti-Olmert jab [JPost]

Previously:
* Knock It Off
* Moronic Religious Protesters: Education Minister Responsible For Arab Terrorism
* Mere Rhetoric is Mean to Religious Jews

We can't boast about our Talmudic erudition so maybe one of our religious readers can clear this up. Is the new rule now "Obey Jewish teaching except in those cases where you really disklike the sitting government?" Did we miss a meeting? Was there a memo on this? Because if we're watering down fundamental concepts because they're just too hard - any way we can get this one opened up for amendment? [Photo: Dave Bender, Israel at Ground Level]

References:
* Derekh Eretz
* Tamir called 'murderer' at yeshiva [JPost]
* LEVITICUS RABBA
* The Most Difficult Commandment

Previously:
* Moronic Religious Zionists Ready To Target Secular Israel? Really?
* Mere Rhetoric is Mean to Religious Jews
* You Can't Say That - De Hartog Should Have Slapped Yacov Cohen Twice For Calling Him A Nazi

We think we were pretty good yesterday about taking a pass at some of the more... zealous... expressions of anger on the pro-Israel side of the Jewish blogosphere. Everyone tends to lose themselves when extreme shock gives way to extreme anger - even when Google means that their confused sentiments are meticulously recorded and indexed. But it's the day after now and people need to stop being hysterical:

The people directly affected by the deadly terrorist attack on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva are not just the students, their relatives and friends, but the much wider larger segment of the religious Zionist public. This segment of the population, already seething with anger, which started with the Disengagement in 2005, the Amona pullout, the government promises to America remove illegal outposts, the continued diplomatic process launched at Annapolis and its emphasis to talk about all topics, including Jerusalem, is going to be extremely unhappy about this attack. Together with the grief and sorrow, there is going to be a lot of angry talk about good and evil, about a religious war over the Holy Land... Settler radio talk- show hosts are interpreting this prophecy by saying that if the Jews don't stop Hamas, the Palestinians, Hizbullah and any other Islamic fundamentalists God will force the Jews to do it. The talk-show hosts blame Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres.

Stirrings of a religious-secular civil war? Oh good. Because in the meantime God will take over raining down fire on the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. No wait - that job will be left to an IAF pilot most likely from a kibbutz or from Tel Aviv. But at least the Divine Creator will tell anti-Israel diplomats to get bent. Actually that job will eventually fall to Bibi or Bogie - and neither of those guys turn their cell phones off on weekends.

People are more than welcome to wait on grim heavenly retribution. But in the meantime could they kindly stay away from microphones, newspapers, and keyboards so the rest of us can stop getting spammed with zealous wailing? Just on the offchance that Eliahu doesn't consider low-level talks between Israel and a powerless Palestinian figurehead sufficient criteria for ushering in the End Times. As for calls to "round up" the "Oslo Criminals" - we're assuming that the sixty or seventy percent of Israelis who supported Rabin the first time
and elected Barak after Bibi gave the City of the Patriarchs to Arafat - we're assuming that they're included in those fantasies of revenge too, right?

Which isn't to say that anger at the Israeli government for its confused incompetence is inappropriate. But Kadima and Labor are the opposition. The enemy is the side shooting schoolchildren. Seeing this massacre through a religious-secular lens doesn't help anybody except genuine enemies of the Jewish State - and if you need to be convinced of that from the religious side, consider that there are dorms halls at Tel Aviv U with more people than all of Mercaz Harav.

References:
* Attack will be seen in Messianic terms [JPost]

Previously:
* Mere Rhetoric is Mean to Religious Jews
* You Can't Say That - De Hartog Should Have Slapped Yacov Cohen Twice For Calling Him A Nazi
* Knock It Off

Bracketing her hatred of Jews - not just Zionists, apparently - the remedy still seems somewhat extreme no?

A female teenager from east Jerusalem was arrested several weeks ago on suspicion of planning to carry out a suicide bombing, Police announced Thursday. The girl, approximately 17 years of age, had allegedly contacted Islamic Jihad operatives in the West Bank and offered to execute a bombing in the capital... the youth said she did it because of her hatred for Jews.

It must be that Israeli apartheid state. Bringing up little girls to be suicide bombers - that's how Mandela did it, right?

References:
* Police: East J'lem girl planned to carry out suicide bombing [JPost]

Previously:
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - Is It Treason Yet?