Good speech

The Israel-Palestinian "peace process" is perhaps the world's longest-standing act of cynicism.  Countless have professed themselves to the cause, but too often in ways that actually avoid the possibility of any resolution.  As Blazing Cat Fur notes in his post on the lawsuit of one Cherna Rosenberg, the Gazans today enjoy the trappings of modern consumer culture: Blazing Cat Fur: Sea Hitler Lawsuit - Canada's Gaza Boat Sued For A Cool Million.  However, there is no economic basis in Gaza for this consumption other than the inflows of foreign "aid" in various forms. Essentially, the Gazans are paid to hate and fight the Jews, and as David Goldman has shown their warfare economy has earned them a standard of living considerably higher than that of their neighbors in Egypt.  The world pays the Palestinians because the world doesn't really want a resolution to the conflict, because such a resolution would require the world to admit it either wants another Holocaust or wants the Jews to be a sovereign nation like all the rest (and not a pathetic figure in whose apparent failures one can take religious comfort), a self-interested nation with the ability to guarantee its security by controlling, if only militarily, the lands from which the local Arabs have professed, since at least the 1920s, their will to launch endless attacks until the Zionist presence is wiped off the map.  The world doesn't want either of those outcomes as much as it wants a ready scapegoat on which all the resentments churned up by the modern global economy, and the failure of large swaths of humanity to adapt to this economy,  can be directed. Countless organizations around the world gain their credibility among the resentful by participating in what is, effectively, a death cult that positively requires blood and suffering that people may find identification with a victim of supposedly "aggressive", world-destabilizing, Jews. Money is paid for blood, as the latest parade of self-sacrificing Arab youth to tresspass the Syria-Israel border has once again shown.

So one wonders, now that much of  the Canadian and world left has returned to its antisemitic roots - i.e. to the Marxist identification of "the Jew" with the evil invisible hand of bourgeois capitalism - will a Canadian court with, likely, a centre-left judge, allow a Jewish plaintiff to sue successfully the Canadian organizers of the Canadian "Sea Hitler" boat to Gaza? In other words, will the Ontario courts allow for some reciprocity that a Jew, who has suffered under the rocket attacks from Gaza, get a share of the money the world directs towards the Palestinian cause of blaming and hating Israel for all the woes of the Middle East and beyond? Via Scaramouche:

A lawsuit filed in Toronto is seeking to block Canadian participation in the second international "Freedom Flotilla" to Gaza.

Cherna Rosenberg, a 68-year-old citizen of both Canada and Israel, filed her case June 2 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice inToronto against the Canadian Boat to Gaza and Alternatives International. The complaint charges these groups with raising funds for and providing material support to Hamas, which governs Gaza and which was declared a terrorist group by Canada in 2002.

Under Canadian law, it is illegal to help or support "a designated terror group," said Rosenberg's lawyers, Neil Sher of New York and Ed Morgan of Toronto, in a statement.

Rosenberg, who divides her time between Israel and Canada, is seeking an interim and permanent injunction prohibiting the defendants "from continuing to raise funds, purchasing equipment or supplies, and purchasing or renting a vessel for the purpose of delivering goods or funds to the Gaza Strip."

According to a statement of claim, which outlines a plaintiff's cause for action, the suit also seeks to block the defendants "from sending goods, funds or any other material support, directly or indirectly, to Hamas or any of its representatives, and/or from aiding and abetting Hamas by assisting in bringing imports and exports to and from the Gaza Strip."...

Today comes news of the latest in the long litany of revelations of how the Arabs have been fighting a century-long war against any Jewish state or political presence in the land of Israel, while getting a deeply naive West to consider Arabs potential "peace partners" or at least an equally-aggrieved party in a conflict that is dubiously styled the "Palestinian (or Arab)-Israeli conflict" - a term which assumes two parties equally desirous of conflict - when in fact what we have witnessed is a century-old Arab/Muslim war against the desire for a Jewish presence in the land of Israel/Palestine:

Hamas Reveals that Arafat Gave Green Light for 2000 War - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

We now know that Arafat - a man who never had any authority to recognize a Jewish state - was never a serious partner for peace, and was in fact someone who had to unleash violence the more Israel wanted to make concessions for peace. He had to do this for two reasons: 1)However "secular", he had no authority in what has always been an Islamically-dominated culture (the secular, after all, is just another, less ritualized, form of the sacred) to acknowledge any right for any kind of Jewish political presence in land that Islam has previously conquered and ruled.  Arafat could play at making peace as long as this won his people useful concessions and foreign aid, but when it came to actually being asked to sign a deal that would recognize Israel, wrecking violence had to be unleashed as the only way out of a cultural impossibility.  2)In the Arab world view, those who sue for peace are seen to be weak and so deserve to be forced to submit.

None of this is to suggest that Israel doesn't have a moral responsibility to be always ready to negotiate and assist in various arrangements to facilitate Jewish life alongside Arab life, whenever the Arabs are serious about (in)formally recognizing the Jewish presence in Palestine.  But Palestinian culture is today one where endless and widespread antisemitic libels and hatred are expressed as normative, where no one "serious" can acknowledge Israel's right to exist.  For now, peace can only come as long as this Jew hatred is treated with the stony contempt and necessary force it deserves.  The forceful reality of the Jewish presence in the land of Israel must be asserted until it is accepted, if only silently.  One must not dream of final victories or final peace terms - there is only unnecessary violence in Utopian desires - but rather see that in fighting, step by step, for one's values and cultural presence, instead of showing fear and weakness, one engages the Other on a primitive level - the only realistic level in this case - and starts to create a reality, an order of shared existence that better recognizes powerful facts on the ground, and hence creates some degree of stability.

More good stuff from LatmaTV, creators of "We Con the World":

Lebanese Threaten Mass March on Israeli Border - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

The anti-Israel flotilla has turned the tide of world opinion against Israel, Fatah leaders in Lebanon say, and the time is ripe for a mass civilian charge against Israel’s border.

Mounir Al-Makdah, a leading Fatah leader in Lebanon, says plans are being made for a mass charge against Israel’s northern border. “What can Israel do,” he asks, “kill the entire Palestinian nation [sic]?”

“And even if they kill all those who take part in the march, the number of remaining Palestinians will still be more than all the Jews in the world.”

That's some fancy number crunching, but what the heh, this guy is clearly another sane and responsible "Palestinian" leader.

Poor Palestinians taunted with empty "aid ships" full only of gawking-at-suffering tourists and Shahid Youngsters of Anti-Zion.

Gobsmacked Gazans teased with expired and near-expired medicines and crushed cargo.

It's Official: There was No Humanitarian Aid on Mavi Marmara - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

In other news:

The president of the United States has just announced that his country must give in to the defiance of a dictatorship with about 1.2 million people. The chief executive of the greatest power in the world (even if he doesn't think that's true) is changing his policy because a few dozen radical Islamists picked up iron bars, hit Israeli soldiers, and forced a confrontation. How do you think that lesson will be absorbed by others in the world, especiallyAmerica's enemies, and what do you think that will motivate them to do?

And so now President Obama is going to subsidize and stabilize a genocidal-intentioned, antisemitic, terrorist regime allied to Iran for no material gain to U.S. interests.

How To Deal With Moonbat Protests : Israellycool

I got a laugh out of the scene in the film Downfall where Hitler, facing death in his Berlin bunker, decides to marry Eva Braun. They bring in a marriage commissioner who is on his bureaucratic best behaviour. At the appropriate point in the "ceremony", he asks for Hitler's certification of pure Aryan ancestry. Hitler doesn't have it. Goebbels breaks the pregnant pause... "But he's the Fuhrer!!?". The commissioner proceeds.

When antisemitism take over a people's minds, it drives them crazy and self-destructive; no matter how many you kill, there is always the need for another "Jew" or Zionist or Yankee blood sucker to confirm the rightness of the regime and one's personal identity; it becomes a mad quest: one cannot face up to and deal with one's resentment of the way the world is - with all its necessary differences - letting go of much of the uncreative resentment in good faith; one can only dive deeper into it. Hell, if Hitler had survived to lead some rump of hold-out Nazis in the Alps, Argentina, or somewhere, his followers may eventually have turned on him, discovering that he had deceived them because, they would conclude, he must have been at least part Jewish. Such is often the fate of those who step out of the mob and into history, by making some significant difference, good or bad.

I wonder if in the last of days, the Muslims will witness a similar marriage scene.

Cairo to Strip Citizenship from Men Who Marry Israelis - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Cairo's High Court of Justice has upheld a lower court ruling that ordered the Interior Ministry to ensure that Egyptian men lose their rights if they marry Israeli wives.

Administrative Supreme Court Justice Mohammed al-Husseini handed down a decision Saturday that Egypt's Interior Ministry must ask the country's Cabinet to take what steps it must to strip citizenship from men married to Israeli women -- and from their children.

At present, Egyptians marrying Israelis are allowed to retain their Egyptian citizenship, and their children are automatically considered Egyptian citizens as well. The practice parallels that of the Muslim faith, in which custody of the children, and the religious faith, follows that of the father.
[...]
Al-Wahsh explained to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite news network that he wanted to prevent the creation of a generation who are “disloyal to Egypt and the Arab world.” The children of such marriages “should not be allowed to perform their military service,” he commented.

Al Jazeera reporter in Cairo, Rawya Rageh, commented that the case has “highlighted the divide between the official Egyptian stance on peace with Israel versus the real sentiment on the street of the Arab world's most populous nation.”
[...]
“It's not clear whether the Egyptian government will indeed enforce the verdict,” commented Rageh. “but for now, the verdict has quenched the thirst of many in an increasingly angry population seeking action against Israel.”

Ahh, but just as an Arab in the desert can never stop dreaming of water, and enemies, the only thing that will really cure Jew hatred is a conversion to the truth, the truth that the world, that any kind of possible social order, will always provoke some amount of resentment; and so if we want to progress as a culture or civilization, we will have to deal with this resentment without madhouse conspiracy theories that target those who are in some way different, or creative, unless we want forever to live in a madhouse of conspiracy and human sacrifice, which is where today's left-Islamic alliance now lives, as any cool reading of the movement to deny Israel's right and responsibility to defend itself from those who would destroy it now makes clear.

The resurrection and prominence given to the anti-Jewish blood libel by the recent MSM "reporting" of the Gaza attactivist flotilla is a very scary sign of things to come. The mob in the Arab and "Western" worlds will not be sated for long by one or another anti-Israel measure. They will still return to the desire to kill the Jew, i.e. to kill free societies with rational justice and economic systems; and if they ever get their way they will just have to find more "Jews" to kill, unless and until they can be converted to the truth, to good faith full of doubt and real thinking and not ritualistic certainties.

Humanity in future is going to have to revisit, I fear many times, the "neocon" or Lincolnian proposition that we cannot live with any kind of security in a global village that is half free and half slave. If the mad mobs of the Arab world are allowed to fester in self-righteous scapegoating, they will forever be in need of another victim to sacrifice to guarantee their unity, to forget, if only for a moment, all their internal tensions and resentments. We can feed them Israel, but it will not, cannot, stop there. They will forever project their internal resentments onto external enemies. And what will the rest of us have to do about it? Can we bottle them up, with real walls, without seeing many of them die (in populations that have grown through access to Western technology, trade, migration, to numbers that "Sharia economics" or isolated big man tyrannies can never support), thus provoking further our "white guilt"? And can we continue to let them into our Western world without also seeing many people killed through the growing irrationalism of the Islamist-left alliance, one that can never produce enough victims of "the Jews"/America to flaunt and to justify revenge against white guilt?

If we value life, we must face up to this historical challenge sooner rather than later.

This evening I decided to bite the bullet and see how the CBC - supported by Canada's taxpayers with a billion dollars annually - is reporting on the Gaza flotilla story. I knew it would be anti-Israel, but I was not expecting such utter and complete hatred of the Jew/Israel, depicted in officious tones as a fundamentally violent blood-sucker. The radio report began by saying that, unprovoked, Israel attacked with deadly force (who could believe such incredible fantasy, as if Israel just goes about randomly murdering people; and yet it was stated with absolute certainty and "authority"?). We were also told that Israel faces massive international critcism, with no mention of what Israel's friends are saying. We were told that this violence is troubling to friends and foes alike because it is not just a one-off but a pattern of repeated use of disproportionate force. And that was it. They picked up the report of a smarmy BBC p.o.s., Jeremy Bowen, and not a word from the pro-Israel side. Not a mention that this - the one ship that violently resisted the Israeli boarding party - was clearly a Turkish state provocation in the battle to lead the Umma by taking up the cause of Hamas. No mention that maybe some of the dead were killed by their own side in a hurry to have "martyrs" to flaunt before a credulous world.

It was a viscerally shocking experience that left me with a feeling no amount of intellectual study and understanding leaves, an experience of what it must have been like to be a Jew living under the most oppressively Jew-hating of modern states.

When opinion leaders in a country like Canada can fall so deeply into a bizarre narrative of unprovoked violence from evil Jews, we are all in serious trouble, whether we like Jews or not. Nothing good can come from such hatred but only the further erosion of a once free society.

But we must remember that no historical trend lasts forever (even if some evils, like Judeophobia, have always existed as long as there have been Jews). We must remain hopeful that narratives with some grasp on reality will one day gain ascendance and the horrible anachronism that is the CBC and the BBC will be put to their fitting ends by indignant tax payers. To this end, let us keep trying to promote writers and narratives that are not completely delusional. And let us even demand more and better from the state of Israel when it comes to defending itself. Israel should be on the offensive, making demands of Turkey for supporting (and apparently there are another two ships on the way) this attempt to crash a blockade of an armed enemy committed to the elimination of Israel (an act which should be seen as tantamount to war) and to get people killed in the attempt, as was surely desired.

To this end, I recommend another great piece from Barry Rubin.

See also Melanie Phillips.

Video showing Israeli forces being attacked as they land on ship:


Legality of Action in International Waters

Many more posts at Augean Stables

Phyllis Chesler:

One may also describe the Turks on board the “freedom flotilla” (Orwell himself could not have suggested a better logo) as “humanitarian activists.” But they are still pro-terrorist Turkish jihadists whose mission was to kill Jews, one way or the other. This was a mission which aimed to further demonize the already shamefully tarnished reputation of the Jewish state. This mission planned to force a violent confrontation; were Israeli soldiers to dare defend themselves and if Muslims are therefore martyred—even better public relations, even better for international lawfare against the Israel.

The so-called “humanitarians,” at least on one boat, came armed with metal bars and knives. They were fighters, not pacifists, and they called out traditional Islamic battle cries: “[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” According to Palestinian Media Watch:

“Khaibar is the name of the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. Many Jews were killed in that battle, which marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor for future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.”

“This video shows Israeli soldiers being beaten with long and heavy metal rods on one of the Turkish boats. Jeff Dunetz (“YidWithLid”) has a series of disturbing and informative videos in which we can see the planned nature and intensity of the Turkish-Palestinian violence against Israeli soldiers—an attack which involved stabbings, beatings, firebombing attempts, throwing soldiers overboard, etc.”

Earlier today, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that the Turkish-led flotilla was: “An armada of hate and violence in support of Hamas’ terror organization and was a premeditated and outrageous provocation. The organizers are well known for their ties with global jihad, Al-Qaeda, and Hamas. They have a history of arms smuggling and deadly terror. On board the ship we found weapons prepared in advance and used against our forces. The organizers intent was violent, their method was violent, and the results were unfortunately violent. Israel regrets any loss of life and did everything to avoid this outcome.”

Roger Simon interviews Richard Landes

Elder slows down the video: It was an ambush

http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2010/05/bnai-brith-says-kangaroo-courts-rush-to.html

Thanks to Dan Schloss of the Canada-Israel Committee for sending us the following links:


http://danielgordis.org/2010/05/31/facebook-meets-the-flotilla/

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/31/jenin-on-the-high-seas/

http://blog.camera.org/

http://www.justjournalism.com/media-analysis/view/peace-activists-or-violent-attackers-how-the-media-narrative-on-flotilla-incident-is-shaping-up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM0VEcPgQmg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU12KW-XyZE

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137798

BEST article I’ve seen - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896796,00.html

If you’re able to, read 67A in the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea—dispels myths about international water immunity argument.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2489.htm

Aboard the Turkish flotilla where the skirmishes took place: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq8y6UWVwH2wkwZGgxghMsc3I8j4bFAvHxTihnP9VQ7cS0Rf8pXIVMwJmM0eNA9FahHojCJpseM_AthftfUHIw9QOSUdw-Larhyphenhyphenqc6tNBojat9mHtxwk9Upv3x64LFuwx9ut9y4g/s1600/peaceful_flotilla_terrorist.jpg

http://muqata.blogspot.com/2010/05/anti-shalit-flotilla-updates.html

http://www.cicweb.ca/scene/2010/05/ihh-behind-the-flotilla-violence/

Up to 16 killed in Israeli attack on Gaza aid flotilla - The Globe and Mail

“This is a historic day … a day of freedom … a turning point in the battle to end the siege of Gaza,” said Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya on Gaza television. He sent his sympathies to the families of the dead and assured them the people would be viewed as “martyrs” in the campaign to liberate the Palestinian people.

For a Jewish perspective.

At least 10 activists dead, dozens hurt in flotilla clashes

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Belmont Club » Where the Old Flotilla Lay

Together those three developments — the shadow of the Iranian nukes, the missiles of Hezbollah and the loss of American support — may have fostered a regional perception that Israel is vulnerable. Certainly the flotilla organizers could not have been insensible to the rising pressure on Israel and were determined to exploit it, nor was it lost on the IDF that if they showed weakness in the face of the flotilla there would be more to follow. In one sense the flotilla put to sea on the perceived political tides and were met by IDF elements sailing on the contrary currents. The result was a clash inconsequential in itself, but not in the sparks that it may generate.
[...]
It’s about 3 am in Chicago and near enough that on the East Coast. Here’s the proverbial 3am call for good old Hillary and Barack Obama to field. Let’s hope they are up to it.

UPDATE: Pajamas has some good coverage; Findalis reminds us that those who support Hamas are complicit in a desire to kill all Jews everywhere.

Blazing Cat Fur: Ali Mallah CUPE Union Thug Assaults Blazingcatfur at Islamofascist Anti-Netanyahu Rally!  Here's the video:

Mrs . Catfur has the background on the unfortunate Mr. Mallah.

So just what is it that Mallah demonstrates? Forget all the surface appearances for a moment because what percentage of Canadians will look at the kind of people in the video and think, simply, these are pro-Palestinian demonstrators? Most Canadians will look at these obsessive Israel haters, people who consider the Jewish desire to have a state to be "Racism!", and think, hmm, what really is the disaster that has messed up their lives, cornering them in self-destructive hatred? But many will not really know the answer.

We find a pretty good answer here: Palestine Betrayed

And for any readers in the vicinity of London, ON, Toronto, or Ottawa (June 2,3, and 7) , don't miss the rare opportunity to hear an exceptional scholar, Bat Ye'Or, who has taught us so much to understand the kind of world that creates Ali Mallahs.

Facts and Lies About West Bank Settlements » Spengler | A First Things Blog

David Ha’Iviri, the executive director of the liaison office for Israeli settlers in Samaria, spent some time with me after my talk at Ariel. He’s now visiting New York, and explained to me over lunch that the Jewish settlers created their own volunteer emergency units, initially in response to terrorist attacks. As the attacks abated, the volunteer organizations kept expanding. Now they spend most of their time rescuing Arab victims of road accidents. The Western press seizes upon the rare incidents of settler violence against Arabs, but is silent about the hundreds of Arab lives that settler-volunteers save.

Jews build schools, plant gardens, start businesses wherever they are. The Samarian settlements are an exemplar of high-tech organic agriculture with a minimum environmental footprint, blended with light manufacturing. With sweat and ingenuity, and very little support from Jewish institutions, the settlers have managed to do more to educate and employ and otherwise better the lives of Samarian Arabs than the feckless and corrupt institutions of the Palestinian Authority in the region. It is a terrific story for any journalist willing to spend a few days with open eyes and without prejudice–but I doubt that the mainstream media will touch it.

If any reader wants to send Covenant Zone to Judea and Samaria, we'll do the job!

1) FOXNews.com - EXCLUSIVE: Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge:

According to insider sources and publicly available internal listserve discussions, Wikimedia editors have rebelled in the last week against Wales' attempts to remove pornographic images from the nonprofit's websites. Those images have been the subject of heated discussion within the community since their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com on April 27.

On May 7, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that Wales had personally deleted many of the images from Wikimedia's servers, and that he'd ordered that thousands more be purged. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages.

Hundreds of listserve discussions among Wikimedia board members, administrators and editors reveal the eruption of a heated and chaotic debate over whether to delete the images, which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws.

The debate heated up when FoxNews.com began contacting high profile corporations and foundations that have donated to the Wikimedia Foundation for comment — including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Best Buy, USA Networks, Craigslist, Ford Foundation and Open Society Institute.

Several of those donors contacted the foundation to inquire about the thousands of images on Wikimedia’s servers that could be considered child pornography. There also are graphic photo images of male and female genitalia, men and women or groups of people involved in sexual acts, images of masturbation and other pornographic material — all of which can be viewed by children at most public schools, where students are encouraged to use Wikipedia as a source encyclopedia.

When the donors started calling, Wales immediately called on the sites’ editors to quickly purge any possibly obscene or pornographic content from the sites.

This led to outrage among the sites' many volunteer editors and administrators, who charged that Wales’ actions betrayed the essence of the open user-generated online encyclopedia.

2) Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages on Wikipedia:

The international campaign to erode Israel’s legitimacy is slowly expanding its reach into the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, according to Israeli sources familiar with the Web site’s operations.

The collaborative reader-edited encyclopedia is the Internet’s sixth-most popular Web site, making it a central clearinghouse for knowledge and opinion worldwide. Since it is written by the public, it tends to deal in greater detail with issues in the media spotlight.

No wonder, then, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is covered from countless angles across a spectrum of articles.

Yet, according to Israeli editors of the encyclopedia who asked to remain anonymous so as not to damage their editing rights on the Web site, these articles are slowly being taken over by pro-Palestinian campaigners in an effort to tilt the encyclopedia’s narrative of the conflict and its history to reflect their position.
[...]
These activists also use teams of like-minded editors working together to sustain debates about new edits ad infinitum, thus improving the chances that their changes will be accepted and preventing the removal of any claims they have added.

One of the most important recent debates that showcased this ability concerned the technical definition of Mandatory Palestine as a state. Pro-Palestinian advocates have brought pro-Palestinian Western academics, along with selected quotations from British, Ottoman and UN sources, to argue that Palestine has always had the legal status of statehood, whether under Ottoman, British or Israeli occupation.

The purpose of the campaign is simple. If Palestine has always been a state, it has the legal right to turn to international tribunals to sue Israel for war crimes, a move that is difficult for non-state actors under the rules governing the International Criminal Court and other bodies.

This argument is a central plank in the pro-Palestinian campaign that seeks to find new ways to attack Israel’s legitimacy in the international arena. It is put forth in the article “State of Palestine,” which exists independently of the geography-focused “Palestine,” or other related articles such as “The Palestinian territories” and “Proposals for a Palestinian state.”

According to an editor, “We face what can only be described as an organized campaign that brings to bear a huge number of sources, even if most of them are problematic and polemical, and is willing and able to debate without end and not to allow changes to articles until the debate is concluded.”

-------------
1) New Miss USA in stripper controversy


2) Elder of Ziyon: New Miss USA's ties to Hezbollah

Today, May 12, is celebrated in Israel as the anniversary of the moment, in 1967, when the IDF captured the Old City of Jerusalem from the Jordanian army. At a time when the world is being made to witness the spectacle of Obama playing a game he doesn't likely much understand, attempting to impose his will on Jerusalem building permits, in a pretense to be making a peace he cannot make given the fundamentalist desires in play...

"and [Obama] urged that President Abbas do everything he can to prevent acts of incitement or delegitimization of Israel."

This is interesting and could be encouraging. Obama is asking Abbas to do something and that was the right thing to say. But here's the problem: as Abbas engages in incitement, the PA incites, and the PA doesn't interfere with incitement, will Obama say or do something?

After all, we know that if an Israeli construction crew turns over some shovels of dirt for a construction project in east Jerusalem, the United States will scream out protest. But if the PA names squares for terrorists, produces broadcasts delegitimizing Israel, secretly lets terrorists out of jail, and so on, there will not be a peep.

But let's consider what's going on meanwhile in the real world. Palestinian Media Watch reports that on the PA's own television station this week the program "We Are Returning," shows a map in which all of Israel is erased and covered with a Palestinian flag.

The program explains that Israeli Jews should go to places like the Ukraine and Ethiopia: "Please, I ask of you, return to your original homeland, so that I can return to my original homeland. This is my homeland; go back to your homeland!"

This kind of thing goes on in PA-controlled mosques, classrooms, media, and in speeches by PA or Fatah officials on a daily basis. The U.S. government virtually ignores it. There are no programs, articles, classes, sermons, and speeches in which PA officials and employees urge their people to live peacefully side by side with Israel and accept that country's existence permanently.

... it might be useful to remind ourselves that the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is founded in a living history that goes back millennia and will not likely be given up short of some genocidal extermination, an event the likelihood of which Obama must have little capacity to imagine (after all, he is not the Messiah) even as many frightened Jews cannot but think that this must be his ultimate agenda given the way he acts (because if it isn't, he is foolish choosing holy Jerusalem as his key leveraging point).

So, here's an article featured in today's Jerusalem Post: In honor of Jerusalem Day, MKs get to dig into past:

In 1999, the Wakf Islamic trust, which is in charge of the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, requested permission from the government to construct emergency exits for a series of underground mosques that had been opened inside the compound during the late 1990s. Upon receiving permission, Wakf officials constructed an entrance to the underground el-Marwani mosque in the area known as Solomon’s Stables. During the exits’ construction, the Wakf removed some 10,000 tons, or 400 truckloads, of ancient debris, which was then dumped in the nearby Kidron Valley and the Jerusalem municipal dump – some of it lost forever among the trash and other rubble.

Enter Gabriel Barkay of Bar-Ilan University, who applied for and eventually received a license from the Israel Antiquities Authority to sort through the discarded piles in search of antiquities.

Joined by his former student Zachi Zweig, Barkay now oversees the sorting. Using a process known as “wet sifting,” which is similar to panning for gold, the efforts have turned up a rich bounty of First and Second Temple-era artifacts.

On Tuesday afternoon, Knesset members got a firsthand look at the site’s operations and were even given a chance to do some sifting of their own, as they paid a visit to the tent where Barkay, Zweig and a slew of volunteers were conducting their work.

“This could have part of a vessel one of my ancestors carried olive oil in to make sacrifices in the Beit Hamikdash [the Temple],” said MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union), as he held up a shard of pottery he discovered in a pile of the discarded debris.

Other MKs echoed Ben-Ari’s observations, expressing the importance of the site’s offerings for “all Israelis, and all of the Jewish people.”

“This is a clear sign that Jerusalem is ours – that its beginnings belong to the Jewish people, and the basis of its holiness is rooted in Judaism,” said Kadima MK Otniel Schneller, who was also in attendance.

“And it’s not an issue of right-wing or left-wing, religious or secular,” he added. “Any Jew with even a basic knowledge of the Bible can relate to this place on a deep level. It is the tangible history of our people and a solid proof of our connection here that is impossible to argue with.”


Schneller said that for that reason, he would continue to work in the Knesset to halt the Wakf’s excavation activities on the Temple Mount, and hold them accountable for the damage done to antiquities at the holy site.

“We have to realize our sovereignty over the site,” he said.

Habayit Hayehudi MK Zevulun Orlev echoed Schneller’s comments, telling The Jerusalem Post, “Today I saw with my own eyes and felt with my own hands the very history of the Jewish people.”

He charged that “what the Wakf has done on the Temple Mount amounts to a horrible archeological crime and an affront to the deep connection Jews have with the Temple Mount.”

And this may be a good time to remember the famous "Letter to the World from Jerusalem" by Eliezer ben Yisrael (Stanley Goldfoot):

There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves – a humane moral code. Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning. Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than surrender; and when finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arm wither.

For two pain filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the Almighty: “Gather us from the four corners of the world, bring us upright to our land; return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as Thou promised.”

On every Yom Kippur and Passover we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in Jerusalem. Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the Holocaust (and worse, your terrifying disinterest in it) – all these have not broken us. They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed, but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and sanctions? We have been to Hell and back – a Hell of your making. What more could you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us?
[...]
I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw women and children blown to smithereens, this after we had agreed to your request to internationalize the city. It was a deadly combination that did the job: British officers, Arab gunners and American-made cannon.

And then the savage sacking of the Old City: the willful slaughter, the wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school; the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for building materials for poultry runs, army camps – even latrines.

And you never said a word.

You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shut off the holiest of our holy places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they had made after the war – a war they waged, incidentally, against a decision of the UN. Not a murmur came from you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls.

Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your airlift “to save the gallant Berliners.” But you did not send one ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered against the wall which the East Germans ran through the middle of the German capital – but not one peep out of you about that other wall, the one that tore through the heart of Jerusalem.

And when the same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs unleashed a savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again, did any of you do anything? The only time you came to life was when the city was at last re-united. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of “justice” and the need for the “Christian” quality of turning the other cheek.

A Chinese friend asked me the other day if British people were antisemitic. I explained that a prejudice against Jews is common there but that traditionally it is not stated forcefully but is just part of the culture's undercurrent. He said he understood exactly what I meant - that's what the British are like. I wonder, however, how much of humanity can see through the absurd antisemitism in this video or how subtle will have to be the future that inherits this mindlessness:CAMERA responds:

The Economist, with Al Jazeera hot on its heels, has dug up a new Israeli villain: traffic lights.

This joins aphrodisiac bubble gum, poisonous candy, super rats, and stripper assassins in Israel's purported arsenal of tools to oppress Arabs.

According to a March 6, 2010 article in the mainstream British news magazine, traffic lights in Jerusalem "flick green only briefly for cars from Palestinian districts while staying green for cars from Jewish settlements for minutes."

When pressed by CAMERA to provide evidence for this wild charge, the Economist provided a list of intersections at which drivers from Arab neighborhoods are allegedly forced to wait at long red lights to make way for those from Jewish neighborhoods. Shortly afterward — coincidentally, or not — Al Jazeera English broadcast a short news segment purportedly demonstrating the discrimination at one of the intersections named by the Economist.

A CAMERA field investigation reveals that the Economist and Al Jazeera claims are absurdly false — the latest examples of how even the most benign irritations encountered in quotidian life are manipulated to demonize the Jewish state. In fact, the discrepancy between the timing of red and green lights is related, as in cities across the world, to street size and traffic flow, affecting cars from both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods equally.

Beit Hanina Junction

The Economist's first example was an intersection in northern Jerusalem near the Arab neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina and the predominantly Jewish neighborhoods of Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Zeev. This same area was the subject of the Al Jazeera feature.

According to the Economist, traffic lights for cars approaching Jerusalem from the Arab areas remained green for 18 seconds, while traffic from the Jewish neighborhoods toward Tel Aviv enjoy the benefit of a one-minute-and-30-second green light.
This comparison is highly disingenuous, as it does not compare apples to apples.
The image [above] shows the neighborhoods mentioned by the Economist. The intersection best matching the magazine's description is shown in the highlighted square.

The road from Pisgat Zeev and Neve Yaakov to Tel Aviv is Route 1, a major thoroughfare that crosses Israel. Traffic on this busy highway naturally has priority at junctions with smaller roads such as Derech Shua'fat, which comes south to Route 1 from the Arab neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina.

A more apt equivalent to Derech Shua'fat at this intersection is Rechov Sheshet Hayamim, the road leading north to Route 1 from the Jewish neighborhoods of Givat Hamivtar and Ramat Eshkol. At this intersection, travelers encounter similar wait times to those on Derech Shuafat — a green light for 16 seconds and a red light for one minute and 41 seconds.

Another comparable intersection can be found less than two kilometers to the west, at the junction of the road from the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo and Route 1. Here, motorists encounter a much shorter green light then do those at the Derech Shuafat intersection.

Clearly, then, the discrepancy between red- and green-light times at the intersection is a function of road size and not ethnicity. Traffic on larger roads have priority over smaller roads that intersect it, whether those roads are from the Arab neighborhoods or Jewish neighborhoods.

Of course, the major arteries into downtown Jerusalem are open to all travelers. Motorists from the Arab neighborhoods are certainly able to use any of the larger roads crossing Route 1. For example, it is a mere half kilometer detour for Beit Hanina residents opting to skip the allegedly-racist traffic light by using the overpass highway crossing Route 1 (Route 60/Derech Ha'aluf Uzi Narkis).
[...]
Unsurprisingly, Al Jazeera bombarded viewers with additional outrageous fabrications. Reporter Jacky Rowland alleged:

The settlers journey to work will soon be even easier, because the municipality is building a tramway for them. The rail lines have robbed the Palestinians of two lanes of traffic.

The absurdity and hypocrisy of this charge is dumbfounding. The tramway is not being built for "settlers," but for all Jerusalem's residents, both Jewish and Arab. In fact, there will be numerous stations serving Arab neighborhoods. This is precisely why it "robs" Palestinians of traffic lanes — just as it robs Jews of traffic lanes where the rail is being built in Jewish neighborhoods.

Once a people become so averse to asking sane questions in an attempt to actually understand reality, how low can their culture go before it self-destructs? Next time, you think you can't be bothered to stand up to the epidemic of Jew/Israel hatred, ask yourself if this sinkhole is where you want our culture and intellectual leadership to go. And what about the police?

You know what the problem with Jews is? They just own too many cars, create too much economic hussle and bustle wherever they "settle". How dare they!

Dan Schloss of the Canada Israel Committee is looking for pro-Israel members of Mountain Equipment Co-op to turn out to the AGM this Thursday evening.

Over the last 12 months, Canada’s pro-Israel community has mobilized in support of Mountain Equipment Co-op’s (MEC) ethical sourcing policy, increasing their sales of Israeli products by some 2000% in a single day on November 29, 2009.

We need to show our continued support for MEC’s commitment to corporate responsibility, while opposing its politicization by members only interested in demonizing Israel.

MEC members as of January 8, 2010 are asked to attend the MEC AGM on Thursday, April 29, 2010 between 6 pm and 8:30 pm at the Simon Fraser University Segal School of Business at 500 Granville Street.

BUYcott Israel Alert: Mountain Equipment Co-op – AGM Call to Action « BUYcott Alerts

I believe Dan thinks there is a chance that the meeting could be hijacked by the anti-Israel group that did so last year, if the special resolutions proposed by the MEC board and on the recent election ballot do not pass (results to be announced at the AGM).

I see on the CIC web site this interesting observation on the mob frenzy of the Israel boycotters, the unthinking push to find a scapegoat for the world's ills, as the basis for the "solidarity" of today's ever-more networked global village.

However, Israel, as a multiethnic and multilingual nation is worthy of our support for being a real model of how to marry globalism and the need for small nations as a guarantor of democracy and self-ruling freedom. The possible illustrations of this I could point to are endless. But here's one I came across today, a site devoted to reconnecting "hidden Jews" with the family that is Israel. Check out the video on Shavei Israel's homepage.

David sent us this short video for Israel lovers on why Israel is so great. It struck me that inasmuch as it is an attempt to rebut "Israelophobia" by showing all the good things about Israel, it is really just showing what the Judeophobes already see and answer with their conspiracy theories and blood libels, because they resent a success that does not seem available to all.

If you are one of those who gets tired of the "look how smart and successful" Jews are promotions, maybe you can fall in love with the little things. Here's a little list making the rounds of Israel lovers on the web

Loving Israel is in the details

By Joel Chasnoff · April 14, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- In honor of Israel’s 62nd birthday, I’ll forgo the expected Op-Ed about Israeli government corruption, the Bibi-Obama drama, or the Israeli Rabbinate’s stranglehold on marriage and divorce.

Instead, I offer this love letter to Israel: "Top 10 tiny details about Israel that make it the most wonderful country on earth."

10. Egged Bus #394: The midnight ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. The trip begins in the gray-stucco slums of south Tel Aviv. Two hours later, you’re rolling through the desert beneath a blanket of stars. You crack open the window. The desert smells dry and ancient, like an attic. At dawn, you pull into Eilat as the city comes to life.

9. The way Israelis refuse to cross the street on a red light. Drivers blare their horns the instant the light turns green. Yet pedestrians refuse to cross the street until the sign turns green. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon at 3:00 a.m., the streets bare and not a car in sight.

8. The Jewish soul of even the most secular Israelis. I served in the Israeli Army with kibbutz kids who were so anti-religious that they never even had a bar-mitzvah. But on Friday nights, as the brigade sung the Sabbath Kiddush en masse, I could see my secular comrades mouthing the words.

7. Flush handles on Israeli toilets. Almost all Israeli toilets, both public and in homes, have two flush handles -- one for “light” loads, and one for heavy ones. This saves Israel’s most precious natural resource: water. And it’s genius.

6. Drop-dead gorgeous Israeli soldiers. The men are hunky, the women beautiful. Try not to drool as you watch them strut down Ben Yehudah Street in their olive-green uniforms, M-16s slung across their backs. It’s not so much their physical beauty that charms us as what they embody: Jewish power.

5. Shuk Ha-Carmel on Friday afternoons. So many things about Israel drive me mad. The bureaucracy is crippling. Government offices operate when they want, for as long (or short) as they want, usually something like 8 a.m. until noon Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Thursday. Each week, another group goes on strike -- schoolteachers, garbage men, postal workers, phone operators, cable guys, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, airport baggage guys, and the old men in blue jumpsuits who walk the streets of Tel Aviv stabbing pieces of trash with meter-long spears have all struck in the past year -- so the country never runs at full power.

The Knesset, Israel’s 15-party parliament, is trapped in a state of perpetual gridlock. And yet, when I step into the Carmel Market and hear the shopkeepers barking their wares, smell the mixture of frying lamb, goat cheese, and human sweat, and watch the people line up to buy flowers for Shabbat, I remember why I love Israel so much. It’s the excitement of the place, but also the Middle Easterness of it -- the barking, the bargaining, the haggling that’s at once friendly and brutal. At pushcarts and stalls, middle-aged men with gold chains and raspy cigarette voices sell mangoes, lemons, whole and quarter chickens, cow lungs, cow tongues, cow testicles, sheep brains, 50-plus varieties of fish, calculators, knockoff Nikes, carnations, sponges, girdles, batteries, and men’s and ladies’ underwear.

Friday afternoons, with only a couple of hours until sundown, the peddlers shout their last-minute pre-Sabbath bargains: “Tangerines, 1 shekel, 1 shekel!” “Pita, hummus, chickpeas-- yallah! Shabbat, Shabbat!” Whenever I walk through the souk, I think about all those American diplomats who call Israel the America of the Middle East. If those diplomats really want to understand Israel, they should leave their fancy Jerusalem hotels and take a stroll through the Carmel Market.

4. Chocolate milk in a sack. Half a liter of Kibbutz Yotvateh chocolate milk sealed in a palm-sized plastic bag that you rip open with your teeth and then squeeze, causing the milk to shoot into your mouth in a way that makes you feel like you’re drinking straight from the udder of a chocolate cow. Need I say more?

3. The incredible bond between Israelis. Maybe it’s a remnant of shtetl life in Europe, or perhaps it has something to do with living so close to your enemy. Whatever the reason, Israelis act as if everyone is everyone else’s next-door neighbor. The first time I experienced this unique bond was the week I arrived in Israel to begin my army service. I was driving to Tel Aviv in a rental car when a guy pulled up next to me at a stoplight and beeped his horn. “Hey, achi!” he called. “My girlfriend’s thirsty. You got water?” Beside me, on the passenger seat, was a bottle of water. But it was half empty.

I held up the bottle. “It’s already open,” I said.

“No problem,” he replied, and stuck out his hand.

A week later, I was at my girlfriend, Dorit’s, family’s apartment with her parents. It was dinnertime and we had ordered pizza. Finally, after two hours, the pizza guy showed up on his motor scooter. He was disheveled and sopped with sweat. “I got lost,” he whimpered.

“So come inside! Sit!” said Dorit’s mother, Tzionah. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” said the pizza guy. “Milk and two sugars.”

While Tzionah made the coffee, Dorit’s father, Menashe, opened the pizza box. “Please take.” He offered a slice. The pizza guy waved him off. “Nu! You’re offending me!” said Menashe. “What’s your name?"

“Oren,” said the delivery guy.

“Oren. I insist. Eat.”

And I’ll be damned if Oren the pizza guy didn’t sit down at the kitchen table and eat the pizza he’d just delivered. As we ate, I thought about all those porno movies where the lonely housewife invites the pizza boy inside and seduces him on the kitchen table. In the Israeli version of the story, the pizza boy doesn’t make love to the housewife. Instead, he sits down with the family and eats pizza.

2. Dropping off a passenger at Ben-Gurion Airport. You pull up to the Departure door, hug your loved ones goodbye, and watch them walk into the terminal. Then you inhale a breath of sweet Israeli air, look up at the cloudless Tel Aviv sky, and think, “They have to leave...but I get to stay in Israel.”

1. ____________________________________________ . I leave this one up to you. What do you love most about Israel? E-mail me and I’ll post your responses on the blog page of my Web site.

Do you have to be a Jew to live in a nation like this? I see no reason to think so. But it would require seeing through a lot of the anti-national ideology of our times and start modeling your own life on others you admire.

Ari, Covenant Zone's Israel member, sent in this video a few days ago:


All he wrote was "Who we are dealing with in EU". That kind of sounded to me like a challenge to watch the (unnarrated) video and "get" the vibe of this woman. After watching her - diplomatic smile, festooned in green, except when she dressed up like the Grim Reaper to visit a mosque (which gets me wondering if Western depictions of the angel of death are not in some degree a product of "orientalism"...) - I wrote back:

I thought this woman I had never seen before has a rather self-righteous bearing, the kind of "evil" that can't be good for understanding the bases of conflicts, and something that is easily manipulated by Palestinian victim theatre. Today I see Barry Rubin has this to say about her.

Check it out. Rubin provides a good analysis of the Western pathology that rebels against existentially discomfiting realities while dreaming of the Gnostic key - the necessary "solution" - that will open all doors to Peace, Love, and Holy Sibship. His opening statement strikes a mood:

The fact that she holds such a position—in effect, she's the European Union's first foreign minister—shows Europe is in serious trouble. For Ashton’s main previous claim to fame was as a leader in the Soviet-oriented movement for nuclear disarmament of the West.

If Ms. Ashton's only claim to fame is her involvement in that quintessential movement of the 1970s British left, the campaign to outlaw another difficult reality - the bomb - while sympathizing with a tyrannical empire - my mind wanders and wonders, could Robert Plant be singing to the the EUtopian empire's latest smile?

It's a semi-secret mission, at least it seems to have been in the planning stages. But I think our best bloggers are going to regale us with some reports from the frontlines of liberal democracy vs. the Global Intifada. So far, I'm only aware of these participants:
small dead animals

five feet of fury. (don't support the team.)

Blazing Cat Fur

and Vancouver's finest, Jonathan "New Media" Narvey.

It seems this blog - Rediscovering Israel | Dispatches from the holy land by travelers from the true north. - has been set up to carry the group's reports, though so far only Jonathan is blogging there, with three essays under his belt. Inspired!