For technical reasons, I have decided that it is simpler to publish the new Wordpress-based blog to another directory. This archive will remain here, in full, and completely searchable, but the new blog address, which you should bookmark is:

http://www.solomonia.com/wp

I hope that will be the last move in a long while. If someone can help me overcome the technical issues I have with remaining in this directory (/blog) and still keeping the search in tact in my old installation, I'm all ears and will come right back.

Thank you, and believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you. ;)

[Attention! If you are reading this through a feed reader and it hasn't updated (that is, if this is still the top post you are seeing), that is because you are subscribed to an outdated feed that isn't being updated anymore. You should unsubscribe, visit the Solomonia home page, and re-subscribe! Thank you!]

It's that time. I am going to be leaving behind this install of the Solomonia software and changing blogging platforms. I am not even going to attempt to import all the old posts at the current time. I will be leaving this blog and all the archives in place. Comments will be closed and it will all remain here completely accessible.

When the change occurs you will notice a slightly different look, though not very, since I have spent most of the past week getting the new template to look like the old. While I'm far from done, I've got to pull the trigger some time. You may notice some disruption during the move, so please be patient as we go through the transition.

See you on the other side...

(If, for some strange reason, you have this page bookmarked with the full url: http:www/solomonia.com/blog/index.shtml be sure to knock that /index.shtml off in order to see the new site -- it will have a .php extension.)

[By Barry Rubin, crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

The main street of Dolhinov, then in Poland, in 1931 on Polish national day. The 1886 pogrom took place in the area pictured and against Jewish shops on the left behind the onlookers.

Without taking any partisan position, but purely on the issue's historical merits, nothing could have been more appropriate than Sarah Palin's use of the term "blood libel" to describe what happened to her after the Tucson killings. I know because my direct ancestors were the target of a blood libel.

A blood libel is a false accusation that someone else has deliberately caused the shedding of blood, made in order to harm that person or people, advance one's own political and ideological agenda, and stir up hatred for them in a manner that might lead to the shedding of their blood in revenge.

I'll tell the story of an actual blood libel first--recounted by newspapers at the time and interviews with the peasants done later by Russian anthropologists--and then explain the current post-Tucson story.

[By Adam Levick, crossposted from CiF Watch.]

However, while touring Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the site of Saturday's mortar attack, we learned that such projectiles (as opposed to rocket fire) aren't detected by Israeli monitoring devices, leaving residents absolutely no warning before impact.

[By Lee Kaplan, of StoptheISM.]

Quick - What rhymes with treason?

"Born in 1976, Tali Latowicki, besides being a promising poet, is also a literary critic and pianist. She studied literature and musicology at the Jewish University of Jerusalem, with a specialization at the Ben Gurion University of Beer Sheva, where she also taught Jewish Literature. So far, her poems have only been published on internet sites and in specialized magazines. A few of her critical essays have instead appeared in the Israeli magazine Da qui. She currently works as editor at the collection Saggio critico at the University of Ben Gurion."

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

News item:

In yesterday's Ma'ariv, the  Im Tirtzu organization, which last January created a storm by revealing that a majority of the anti-IDF 'evidence' underlying the Goldstone Report was provided by a few left-wing NGOs funded by the US-based New Israel Fund (see here, here, and here), released a report exposing the connections of these NGOs to a Palestinian 'welfare' organization funded by Arab states:

[By Dexter Van Zile, crossposted from CAMERA's Snapshots.]

Al Masry Al Youm, an Egyptian newspaper that has provided detailed coverage of life of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt, offers a horrifying detail about the recent attack that has left one Coptic Christian in Egypt dead and several others wounded. According to the report, the assailant, allegedly ensured that his victims were in fact Christian by looking for green crosses tattooed on their wrists. Al Masry Al Youm reports:

A five-year-old entry at a blog titled "Deep Thoughts" provides some detail about the cross tattoos the assailant allegedly used to target his victims.

[By Daniel Greenfield, crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

There is hardly a better way to degrade the entire idea of political speech than by classing everyone who is in any way critical of the government as "anti-government". Such a label creates two camps, the camp of government and the camp of everyone unhappy with government, and defines the latter camp by the actions of a psychotic killer, who was unhappy with government, grammar and higher mathematics, among a seemingly inexhaustible supply of other things. Such a course is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also far more dangerous than slapping a bullseye across a congressman.

I said what I had to say on Sunday.

Krauthammer has the must-read to start the day today: Massacre, followed by libel. It includes the quote of the month: "The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?"

Sarah Palin's video responding to the slanders:

Of course, as is to be expected, there are people for whom nothing is good enough (as though reason matters to most of these same when it comes to Palin), and now her use of the term "blood libel" is the latest excuse for venom. Remember, most of these are people who thought nothing of falsely assigning blame for bloody murder on her, now posing with indignation (h/t to Legal Insurrection for the thought).

For the record, I have seen the term used far too casually and often inappropriately by plenty of people, including many of my pro-Israel Jewish friends. At worst it's a chance for discussion, not yet another reason to bash Sarah Palin. The ADL did what I would expect the ADL to do (and I meant that seriously). It's their turf and I expect them to defend the seriousness of the term. They do so in an appropriately measured way, here. Alan Dershowitz, no Palin fan, defends her on this, here, as does lefty Jonathan Chait, as quoted in William Jacobson's excellent post, here. A snip (Jacobson here):

Thanks to DaTechGuy for the pizza last night at Linguini's in Marlboro. Always a good time when bloggers get together. Also in attendance, Right Wing Gamer, Neoneocon, Libertarian Leanings, and ChicagoBoyz.

If you're a local blogger interested in helping Da TechGuy with his radio show, he's looking for you:

Head on over if you're interested.

[By bataween, crossposted from Point of No Return.]

With thanks: Sylvia

It is 50 years to the day that 42 Moroccan Jews and one crewman lost their lives on board the ill-fated Pisces (renamed the Egoz). The Jews were desperately trying to reach the Promised Land by defying a ban on Jewish emigration. Some good did come out of this disaster, however: it paved the way for Morocco to re-open its gates to Jewish emigration in the early Sixties: some 200,000 Moroccan Jews left for Israel. Here's an account of what happened on that fateful day (translated from the French from the Dafina website).

Horror? More of a vacation spot. Certainly there is poverty there, as there is the world over, but these images hardly comport with the oft-peddled line that Gaza is an impoverished prison camp. It is not.

[By Israelinurse, crossposted from CiF Watch.]

As time progresses and the Guardian's latest Jerusalem correspondent finds her feet, I am finding Harriet Sherwood's double standards increasingly both offensive and revealing.

Just over a month ago she reported from Tsfat (or Safed, as she calls it) with a story about the edict issued by Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu aimed at preventing Arab tenants from renting property in the town.

Via Carl, the IDF has released (finally?) some video of the weekly riot at Bilin against the security fence from this past Friday. This is what some people keep calling non-violent?

More from Carl, here.

[By Barry Rubin, crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

When one crazed or ideologically obsessed gunman starts shooting in Arizona, people condemn him and start bemoaning the state of their society. How about a place with ten million people like that who are treated as heroes?

America this week is awash in a huge and passionate debate over whether angry political disagreements and harsh criticisms of certain views or groups inspired the attack on an American congresswoman (Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, by the way). I'm not going to enter into that argument right now but I want to point out the Middle Eastern ramifications of what's going on here.

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

There's a consensus of opinion in much of the media and world governments that has developed in the last few years: that the settlements should be dismantled, that the 1949 lines are not borders but somehow what is outside of them is 'Palestinian', that the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict is the establishment of another Arab state exclusively for Palestinian Arabs, and that there is an urgency to 'rectify' the 'unnatural' situation that Israel controls territory beyond the 1949 lines (including the strategic Golan).

[By Barry Rubin, crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Well, much of the world media may not report it and the anti-Israel crowd won't believe it but the IDF has concluded on the basis of Palestinian hospital documents that the woman who allegedly died of tear gas poisoning in fact was being treated for cancer and died as a result of being overdosed with medicine. In other words, this isn't an Israeli war crime but a potential Palestinian malpractice suit.

That's why the death certificate has no medical diagnosis, there was no autopsy, and the body was quickly buried.

Let's assume that nobody wanted to take the IDF's word for it but conducted a serious investigation and reviewed the evidence. And let's say that it turns out what I've reported here and earlier turns out to be true.

Would a more general lesson be drawn and an end be put to the transmutation within hours of phony Palestinian tales about Israel into page-one news stories around the world? Probably not, but it would be nice to think that.

Martin Solomon adds: Don't expect the truth to interfere with the haters' good times, however.

Dick Winters, of 'Band of Brothers' fame, dies

At This Ain't Hell: Major Dick Winters has passed

A salute from us ordinary folks. /s

[By Lee Kaplan, of StoptheISM.]

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Bard College President Leon Botstein was permitting a Hamas support group called the International Solidarity Movement to operate on his college campus to train activists to go the Middle East as a human shield support arm for known terrorist groups like Hamas.

Botstein, instead of closing down the campus group, the first one of its kind in the US on a college campus, he decided to defend it as part of the free exchange of ideas. But Bard-ISM engages in lies and deception as part of the ISM playbook, and does more than just propagandize Bard's students. The "campus club" trains activists to assist terrorist murderers such as are found in Hamas. Some of Bard's trainees were involved with the Gaza flotilla boats.

Now further information is emerging about the judgment of Bard's president which could be the harbinger of more ruinous effects on American postsecondary education across the nation.

[By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, from Palestinian Media Watch.]

Dying as a Martyr for Allah - becoming a Shahid - continues to be presented as a positive achievement in Palestinian society. As documented by Palestinian Media Watch, for years the Palestinian Authority has promoted Martyrdom as an ultimate value and goal both to adults and children. Still today, aspiring to become a "Martyr" is considered an honor and praised by society. Often the death and funeral of a "Martyr" is referred to as a wedding and he himself is considered a "groom" who marries the virgins of Paradise.

[By Israeligirl.]

Rocket attacks on Israel have escalated over the weekend, as one IDF soldier was killed and several soldiers and civilians were injured in clashes with Palestinian terrorists.

AP Image

The al-Quds Brigades, the militant arm of the Islamic Jihad group, took responsibility for the shootings. Hamas is looking the other way, allowing smaller terrorist groups to test how far Israel will go in its response.

Here is a summary of the events: