August 2010 Archives

Murderous terror attack on eve of peace talks: Four Israelis killed in West Bank shooting attack Tuesday evening; pregnant woman apparently among victims, officials say. Security forces nationwide ordered to go on high alert

Lethal terror attack on eve of peace talks : Four Israelis were murdered Tuesday evening after the vehicle they were traveling in was ambushed by terrorists in the Hebron region.

At least some of the victims, who are all residents of Beit Hagai, are members of the same family. Ambulance service officials said the victims include two men aged about 25 and 40, as well as two women of roughly the same ages, one of them pregnant.

According to initial reports, an Israeli vehicle traveling in the area came under fire directed at it from a passing vehicle at the Bani Naim junction on Highway 60, between Hebron and Kiryat Arba.

More than one terrorist apparently took part in the attack, with Channel Two reporting the attackers apparently confirmed the death of the Israeli victims by shooting them at close range, before fleeing the scene.

"The vehicle was sprayed with dozens of bullets," a paramedic at the scene told Channel 2. "There were numerous shell casings around. We found four bodies and there was no chance whatsoever to help them; all we could do was to pronounce the death of these four Jews."

Paramedic Guy Gonen told Ynet: "The victims were hit by numerous shots from short range. It looked like a well-planned ambush."...

...Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Ynet the attack was not meant to foil direct peace talks, and said the negotiations had failed even before starting.

"This is a natural response by the Palestinian resistance to the enemy's crimes, and is proof that despite the resistance's persecution by the security services and despite Israel's crimes, the Palestinians are capable of responding to these crimes."

"This is proof that the Palestinian resistance is living, breathing, and kicking," he said...

...Meanwhile, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) told Ynet Tuesday's shooting attack was a message to the Palestinian negotiating team ahead of the resumption of direct talks with Israel.

"They should not have embarked on this move without the support of the Palestinian people," PRC Spokesman Abu Mujahid said. "Our people still espouse the resistance and do not believe in the fictitious talks scheduled to commence tomorrow. "

"This is proof that the Palestinians and Palestinian groups reject the negotiations doctrine and only espouse resistance, which continues anywhere, anytime," he said.

...Note that Moriah writes in the comments that one of the couples who was murdered had seven children. Hashem yerachem (may God have mercy upon them)...

...Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida told The Associated Press late Tuesday that Hamas carried out the attack...

...The four were two couples - one aged 25 and the other 40. One of the women was pregnant. According to eyewitness reports, the terrorists succeeded in hitting the passengers in their initial fire but then approached the car and shot them occupants at close range.

"When we arrived on the scene, all four doors of the car were open and four bodies were strewn on the road," Magen David Adom paramedic Guy Ronen told The Jerusalem Post. "We saw that the vital organs had been struck by a very large number of bullets, and that there was no chance of saving their lives," he added.

"It was a very difficult scene. We had learned to forget scenes like this in recent years," Ronen said.

A ZAKA volunteer who arrived on the scene recognized his wife's body. "We saw him crying at the scene and didn't understand what was happening at first. It wasn't the first disaster he saw," his colleague, Isaac Berenstein, told the Post. Then he shouted, "that's my wife!' That's my wife!'" The volunteer was immediately removed from the scene by his colleagues and taken to his home in Bet Hagai...

Civilian deaths are always tragic. Israel must stop using civilian settlers as human shields for the land it is stealing

...The Islamist Hamas organisation praised the attack and hundreds of its supporters took to the streets of the Gaza Strip to celebrate...

[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: "Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware." From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem...the Islamic Resistance Movement...does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed. Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the nonbelievers as arbitrators in the lands of Islam...There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.

On September 30, 2000, The New York Times, Associated Press and other major media outlets published a photo of a young man -- bloodied and battered -- crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of Israeli brutality -- with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier was the one who beat him.

That young man was, in fact, Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago, who was beaten within inches of his life before being rescued by the Israeli border policeman in the photo.

The resulting outrage generated by the gross distortion of the photo "launched" HonestReporting...

...Now, ten years later, we caught up with Tuvia in an exclusive interview...

Saucy star Dita Von Teese on Monday began suing her former landlord, claiming he subjected her to a "Mel Gibson-like anti-Semitic" attack, entertainment news website TMZ reported.

The burlesque artist, who is American-born of Armenian heritage, accused Lallubhai Patel of launching vicious tirades after she said she was moving out and tried to get back her $5,000 deposit.

In a lawsuit in the LA County Superior Court and cited by Courthouse News Service, Von Teese said Patel "repeatedly went on Mel Gibson-like Anti-Semitic tangents, personally attacking [Von Teese's] Jewish managers and business partners" who approached him for the money.

The suit is referring to embattled Hollywood star Gibson's alleged anti-Semitism -- which infamously came to light when he busted by police for drunk driving in 2006. He later apologized.

She also alleges Patel wrote to her, warning her to be "aware of Jews. In your business no one can do anything without them. Just a reminder to be cautious" and "Jews they have shucks [sic] the whole world and still more to come."

Von Teese, who splits her time between Paris and Hollywood, moved out over a dispute about accounting of repairs to the property.

She is seeking unspecified damages for civil rights violations.

You know how the Ground Zero Mosque Islamists claims that the purpose of the massive structure is to promote tolerance and interfaith dialogue.

Well, that was the initial fiction. But that's been dropped because the aggression and rigidity are, well, obviously so not tolerant, so hostile and Islamist, that now, Mr. Feisal Abdul Rauf--"I don't believe in religious dialogue"--and his supporters tediously repeat the lie that this is about, ahem, religious freedom.

Well, religious freedom is not a problem in America.

The real problem is, gee, what a shock, in the Muslim world.

The Mount of Olives, an ancient--from biblical times Jews have buried their dead here--and a holy cemetery in Jerusalem, is being used by Muslims as a garbage dump.

Jewish graves have been desecrated and destroyed. Muslims regularly lead their donkeys across the gravestones.

Muslim children play soccer among the dead.

Of course, this is nothing new:

Jewish burials were halted in 1948, and massive vandalism took place from 1948-1967. During the nineteen years of Jordanian rule, 40,000 of the 50,000 graves were desecrated. King Hussein permitted the construction of the Intercontinental Hotel at the summit of the Mount of Olives together with a road that cut through the cemetery which destroyed hundreds of Jewish graves, some from the First Temple Period. After the Six-Day War, restoration work began, and the cemetery was re-opened for burials.

For decades, Arab and Islamic leaders and governments have been inciting their people against Israel. That is the main reason why these governments and leaders would never be able to persuade their people to make peace with Israel.

In this regard, the Palestinian Authority has not been different from the Arab and Islamic dictatorships.

For the past 15 years, the Palestinian Authority has been involved in the dissemination of anti-Israel messages through the rhetoric of its leaders and spokesman, media and mosques.

Yasser Arafat unleashed a wave of incitement against Israel in the Palestinian-controlled media. His message to the Palestinians, immediately after the beginning of the peace process began in 1993, was that Israel was not serious about peace and only wanted to continue "stealing Arab land."

Arafat also kept promising that if the Palestinians don't get 100% of their demands, they would not hesitate to resort to an armed struggle. He pledged "millions of martyrs" who would march on Jerusalem to liberate the city.

Moreover, Arafat told the Palestinians that no Arab or Muslim leader had the right to make real concessions to Israel, especially not on issues related to Jerusalem and the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.

Perhaps that explains why Arafat was unable to sign any deal at the Camp David summit in 2000. After all, he himself had been telling the Palestinians that anyone who makes concessions to Israel is a "traitor." Through his media and rhetoric, Arafat delegitimized and demonized Israel to a point where he was unable later on to make a deal with the Israeli government...

Holliston, MA ...Today, Marty Lamb, Republican candidate for Congress in Massachusetts Third District, has filed another police report about vandalism that took place at his home late Saturday night at his home in Holliston.

This time vandals threw broken glass, old books, suit cases, and broken lamps on to the candidate's family lawn along with stealing their campaign signs.

"I am concerned about the escalation of vandalism at my home where I live with my wife and two daughters. It is one thing to have a political disagreement, but going to a candidate's home is just plain wrong," said Lamb.

During a campaign candidates often see lots of theft of signs. It is unusual to have people throwing glass and dumping garbage on a candidate's lawn...

Op-ed: Obama may mortgage America's future, but we won't let him do the same to Israel

This past week, the cat was out of the bag and the American president's infinite arrogance came bursting forth. Unlike his European colleagues, whose statements made sure to minimize their involvement to "ending the occupation of 1967," President Obama (via a State Department spokesman) revealed his intention to bring an "end to the conflict."

Does Obama really know how to "end the conflict?" We got the answer two days later, when a document published in the media revealed the US Administration's intention to secure a final-status agreement within a year, while implementing it within 10 years. In other words, Obama wishes to win all the glory while mortgaging the future (our future, not his.)

After all, this is Obama's specialty. The president "saved" the US economy by printing more than $3 trillion, most of which were poured into the American economy via the acquisition of inflated mortgage-backed securities. He's leaving the bill for his successors.

Americans may be willing to clean after Obama and believe that he saved them from collapse (they will find the fractures and skeletons in a few years,) but the State of Israel cannot take such chances. We live in the present and not in promises for a rosy future; hence, the US president would do well to show a little modesty: Learn about the roots of the conflict, understand why there is no solution for it at this time, and most importantly, premise any proposal for an interim agreement on realities on the ground.

If Obama wishes to use the "implementation in 10 years" card to shove a "deal" premised on the types of dreams he's selling to his own people down our throats, we have news for him: We're not your highness' suckers. If you wish to propose something that would be implemented in 10 years, you're invited to come back for a visit nine years from now. Any attempt to look even just one year into the future is dangerous in our neighborhood...[More.]

Official Palestinian Authority TV continues to teach children that all of Israel is "occupied Palestine." A repeating message on the children's show The Best Home, currently broadcast three times a week during the month of Ramadan, is that all Israeli cities are "occupied" Palestinian cities.

The PA TV host refers to cities in Israel alternately as "1948 occupied cities," "occupied cities" or "occupied territories." The Israeli cities described as Palestinian cities include Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Acre.

The following are examples from three of the TV programs in which the PA TV host refers to Israeli cities as "occupied Palestinian cities."

PA TV host to girl: "You live in Jerusalem. Do you visit the 1948 occupied cities (Israeli cities)?"
Girl: "I've been to Hebron."
TV host: "No, Hebron is a city [in the Palestinian Authority] that we all can enter. The occupied cities - such as Lod, Ramle, Haifa, Jaffa, Acre (all Israeli cities) - have you visited them?"
Girl: "I've been to Haifa and Jaffa."
TV host: "Tell us, are they beautiful?"
Girl: "Yes..."
TV host: "We hope all children of Palestine will be able to go to the occupied territories, which we don't know and have never been able to see. Personally, I have never been there."
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 25, 2010]

PA TV host to children in studio:

"No doubt you've all been waiting to know lots of things about Ramadan in those days, in some of the occupied areas, in the occupied territories. Today we'll find out lots about Jaffa in those days of Ramadan."
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 22, 2010]

PA TV host to children in studio:

"Don't you want to see Ramadan from those days in an occupied Palestinian city, to which we hope to return?"
The children are told a story of Ramadan in Ramle.
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 24, 2010]

PA TV is controlled by Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's office.

See more examples on PMW's website of how the PA presents Israel as "occupied Palestine."

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer demanded Friday that a reference to the state's controversial immigration law be removed from a State Department report to the United Nations' human rights commissioner.

The U.S. included its legal challenge to the law on a list of ways the federal government is protecting human rights.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brewer says it is "downright offensive" that a state law would be included in the report, which was drafted as part of a UN review of human rights in all member nations every four years.

"The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional," Brewer wrote...

...The report -- part of what the UN Human Rights Council calls its "Universal Periodic Review," in which countries grade their own human rights records -- is both ludicrous and offensive. Let's take them in order.

The report reads like a term paper by a very earnest and very politically correct college freshman. After a few perfunctory words of praise for America in the introduction, the rest of the document is a catalogue of terrible liberal sins that are being washed away by wonderful liberal solutions, including (but not restricted to) ObamaCare; the recently passed financial reform law; suing Arizona for its law aimed to curb illegal immigration; the first White House Adviser on Violence Against Women; the "formation of the 9/11 Backlash Taskforce"; an internal review of the Justice Department's 2003 Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies; a commitment to "protecting the rights of incarcerated persons ... including the right to practice their religion"; and of course -- who could ever forget? -- President Obama's hosting "a historic summit with nearly 400 tribal leaders to develop a policy agenda for Native Americans where he emphasized his commitment to regular and meaningful consultation with tribal officials regarding federal policy decisions that have tribal implications."...

...t is yet more evidence that when the president and his administration scan the world for human rights violations, they are irresistibly drawn back to the grave injustices they believe have been and are being perpetrated by America.

It is an unprecedented and alarming thing to witness -- an administration that is not only unwilling to defend the United States but seems to take great joy and satisfaction in undermining her.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists.

...As for violence, Hamas has inflicted a fraction of the harm on Israeli civilians that Israel inflicts on Palestinian civilians. If violence disqualifies Hamas, surely much greater violence should disqualify the Israelis?...

To the editor:

This represents a new low in NYT editorials.

I'm nearly speechless.

Hamas is not only brutal to Israelis, it's a violent, repressive organization that terrorizes Palestinians, steals from the UN and is sworn to destroy not only Israel but Jews...

Hamas is a shibboleth. If you want to know whether an ostensible Muslim "moderate" is really moderate, ask him if Hamas is a terrorist organization.

It is really not a hard question, even if Feisal Rauf can't -- or won't -- answer it. Rauf, the would-be imam of the controversial Ground Zero mosque, is also a stud in the State Department's stable of ready-to-travel-on-your-dime "moderates." That same State Department has branded Hamas a terrorist organization, and we can't even get it to say that about the Taliban, the guys we're fighting in the overseas contingency operation formerly known as the War on Terror.

During a WABC radio interview, Aaron Klein three times pressed Rauf to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Rauf bobbed and weaved in classic Islamist style. "I'm not a politician," he replied, as if only politicians trouble themselves over whether terrorists are terrorists. "I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question." Avoid the issues? You don't say!

But it is not a complex question, no more complex than "Does Derek Jeter play for the Yankees?" It is a straightforward question that Islamists complicate with clever casuistry, carefully designed to ring all the right chimes for our opinion elites and their media pitchmen...

Mosques in Italy will not receive a share of income tax revenue the Italian government allocates to religious faiths each year. Hindu and Buddhist temples, Greek Orthodox churches and Jehovah's Witnesses will be eligible for the funds, according to a bill approved by the Italian cabinet in May and still must be approved by parliament.

Until now, the government had earmarked 8 percent of income tax revenue for Italy's established churches. The great majority of these funds go to the Catholic Church, although if they wish, individual tax payers may elect to give the money to charities and cultural projects instead.

The head of COREIS, one of Italy's largest Muslim groups, Yahya Pallavicini, said he was bitter that Islam had been denied the revenue from Italian income tax.

"Work should be begun on legally recognising those moderate Muslims who have for years shown themselves to be reliable interlocutors who are free of and fundamentalist ideology," he said.

Islam is not an established religion in Italy and there is only one official mosque in the country, Rome's Grand Mosque (photo). Politicians from the ruling coalition cite radical imams, polygamy and failure to uphold women's rights by Muslims immigrants as obstacles to recognising Islam as an official religion in Italy.

Until now, only the Catholic Church, Judaism and other established churches including Lutherans, Evangelists, Waldensians and 7th-day Adventists have received the income tax revenue from the Itallain government.

There are between one million and 1.5 million Muslims in Italy and 130 mosques linked the Muslim umbrella organisation UCOII across the country.

...Naser Abdo said when he joined the Army more than a year ago, he initially felt he could be a soldier and a Muslim at the same time. But he said he now believes Islamic standards would prohibit his service in the U.S. Army in any war.

According to documents provided to The Associated Press, Abdo cited Islamic scholars and verses from the Quran as reasons for his decision to ask for separation from the Army.

"I realized through further reflection that God did not give legitimacy to the war in Afghanistan, Iraq or any war the U.S. Army would conceivably participate in," he wrote.

A recommendation from the commander of his battalion's rear detachment based at Fort Campbell said if Abdo deployed to a combat zone, he could jeopardize the lives of fellow soldiers as well as his own because of his convictions as a conscientious objector...

I just updated my will and trust and, with heavy heart, cut out what was a significant bequest to my alma mater, Brooklyn College.

What caused the disinheritance is that all incoming freshmen and transfer students are given a copy of a book to read, and no other, to create their "common experience." This same book is one of the readings in their required English course. The author is a radical pro-Palestinian professor there.

When I attended in the 1960s, Brooklyn College - then rated one of the tops in the country -- was, like most campuses, quite liberal. But, there was no official policy to inculcate students with a political viewpoint. Now there is. That is unacceptable.

The book is How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America It is interviews with seven Arab-Americans in their 20s about their experiences and difficulties in the US. There's appreciation of freedoms in the US, and deep resentment at feeling or being discriminated against post-9/11.

The seven are not a representative sample. Six are Moslem and one Christian. According to the Arab American Institute, 63% of Arab-Americans are Christian, 24% Muslim. The author chose those interviewed and those included in the book...

...The author [Moustafa Bayoumi] asserts "The core issue [of Middle East turbulence] remains the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination," that the post-1967 history of the entire area is essentially that of "imperialism American-style," and that the US government "limits the speech of Arab Americans in order to cement United States policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Again, preposterous...[More.]

In July, HonestReporting took apart The Lancet medical journal's collection of articles supposedly examining the state of the Palestinian healthcare system. Our research into the background of a number of contributors to The Lancet's articles revealed some disturbing information and called into question the credibility of the content, particularly as most of those authors identified were active supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

We demonstrated a politicized anti-Israel agenda in The Lancet. Yet, instead of addressing our very legitimate criticism, the journal's editor Richard Horton responded in The Lancet's July 31 edition (available on The Lancet's Facebook page):

The Lancet is grateful to our colleagues at HonestReporting for providing further international coverage of the research we published recently online, which drew attention to the health predicaments of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and internal political fracture. With the help of HonestReporting, we have been able to reach a large, new, and largely unaware audience.

We believe that the "large, new, and largely unaware audience" are more likely to be readers who have now been made aware of The Lancet's anti-Israel bias and abandonment of scientific and medical norms. We also received many communications from medical professionals who expressed their deep concern at The Lancet's agenda.

But we shouldn't be surprised. Richard Horton only this week exposed his personal animosity towards Israel in a letter to The Guardian on 24 August in response to an op-ed by Israel's Ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor. Some selected excerpts (emphasis added):...

An Israeli skin care shop has had red paint thrown across its windows in a suspected targeted attack.

The Ahava store - famous for its Dead Sea products - was covered in the paint during the incident in Covent Garden, central London, on Wednesday night.

Staff discovered the damage when they arrived for work on Thursday morning.

Shop assistant Rita Trindad said: "We don't know exactly what happened. I came in this morning and there was red paint all over the windows. We cleaned the windows this afternoon and we are still open - it's business as usual."

She said the attack had been reported to police who are now investigating.

The Ahava store has been the scene of regular anti-Israel demonstrations...

We missed an important moment at the Miss Universe pageant on Saturday night. The outgoing Miss Universe made a little political statement on her final catwalk that was visible to Venezuelans but probably no one else, holding up an obsolete seven star pre-Chavez era flag. She did it to signal distress in her country, and nowhere is that move evident than in Venezuela's violent crime. This week the news came out that Caracas is the most violent city in the world, a distinction it holds over Kabul, Baghdad, Sao Paulo and Ciudad Juarez.

Hugo Chavez has made Venezuela a real hellhole and that's prompting little public statements amid public discord. Investor's Business Daily brings the news in "The killing fields of Caracas."...

... Syria's Bashar al-Assad, a dictator buttressed by torture, recently called Israel a state "based on crime, slaughter." Imagine what Israelis thought when, at about the time Assad was saying this, a State Department ninny visiting Syria was tweeting to the world, "I'm not kidding when I say I just had the greatest frappacino [sic] ever."

Israel has changed what it can, its own near neighborhood. Since 1967, faced with unrelenting Palestinian irredentism, Israel has been weaving the West Bank into a common fabric with the coastal plain, the nation's economic and population center of gravity. Withdrawal from the West Bank would bring Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport within range of short-range rockets fired by persons overlooking the runways. So, the feasibility of such a withdrawal depends on how much has changed since 1974, when Yasser Arafat received a standing ovation at the United Nations when he said Israel had no right to exist.

Thirty-six years later, Israelis can watch West Bank Palestinian television incessantly inculcating anti-Semitism and denial of Israel's right to exist. Across the fence that has substantially reduced terrorism from the West Bank, Israelis see Ramallah, where Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, lives and where a square was recently named in honor of Dalal Mughrabi. In 1978, she, together with 11 other terrorists, hijacked an Israeli bus and massacred 37 Israelis and one American. Cigarette lighters sold on the West Bank show, when lit, the World Trade Center burning.

The Obama administration, which seems to consider itself too talented to bother with anything but "comprehensive" solutions to problems, may yet make matters worse by presenting its own plan for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Barack Obama insists that it is "costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure," although he does not say how. Gen. David Petraeus says Israeli-Palestinian tensions "have an enormous effect on the strategic context." As though, were the tensions to subside, the hard men managing Iran's decades-long drive for nuclear weapons would then say, "Oh, well, in that case, let's call the whole thing off."...[More.]

...at any particular time, a given people is in a condition of savagery, civilization, or moral maturity. The Greeks and Romans, Kant says, bequeathed ever-improving political constitutions to Europe, and Europe "will probably legislate eventually for all other continents."[4] But in Kant's day there didn't seem to be any nation that had reached the level of moral maturity, and Kant predicted that the civilized nations would have to go through much more pain and suffering before they were ready to "renounce [their] brutish freedom" and submit to international government.[5] The rest of the world, remaining savage, had not yet taken even the first step of banding together in the form of solid nation-states. And they'd obviously have to do this before anyone could seriously entertain the thought of their rising higher.

I think that if you consider Kant's argument carefully, you'll find it generates exactly the New Paradigmers' position with respect to our own present-day international arena. On this view, there is exactly one place in the world where the nations have finally reached the level Kant calls "moral maturity": The European Union. Only there has it become clear to many that the order of nation-states must be transcended. Only there is the right to independent national action on its way to being disposed of. Only there (as New Paradigmers see it) are people morally mature, not just at the level of individuals, but of entire nations.

From this point of view, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, the Arabs and the Third World are at a much more primitive stage in their history. They're still trying to escape savagery, still trying to consolidate genuine nation-states under the domestic rule of law. Once they get there, possibly centuries from now, they too will begin to understand the desirability of outgrowing their nation-states and reaching "moral maturity" under an international government just as the Europeans are now doing. This explains the enthusiasm of New Paradigmers for the establishment of new nation-states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as their relative disinterest in the aggression and atrocities committed by (as they see it) the half-formed nation-states they find in these places. In the eyes of the new paradigm, all of this is just a necessary stage they have to go through: Like children, they aren't grown up yet, and just don't know better. And they won't for a while...

On Sept. 5, 1972, eight members of the Palestinian terror organization Black September broke into the athletes' village at the Munich Olympics. They kidnapped and ultimately murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

After Amin Al-Hindi, one of the senior planners of the terror operation, died this week, the Palestinian Authority glorified him and his terror attack. The official PA daily described his participation in the Olympic massacre, saying he was "one of the stars who sparkled... at the sports stadium in Munich." The attack itself was referred to as "just one of many shining stations" in his life.

The PA daily reports that Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were at the funeral, where "a red carpet was laid out for the arrival of the body, and the military band played the final farewell melody."

The following are three articles in the official PA daily, describing the honoring of the terrorist who planned the Olympic massacre...

Z STREET, a pro-Israel non-profit corporation, filed a lawsuit in federal court today charging that the IRS violated the organization's First Amendment rights. The suit was filed after Z STREET was told by an IRS official that its application for tax-exempt status has been delayed because an IRS policy requires consideration of whether a group's views on Israel differ from those of the current Administration.

"Not only is it patently un-American but it is also a clear violation of the First Amendment for a government agency to penalize an organization because of its political position on Israel or anything else," said Z STREET president Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a former First Amendment lawyer. "This situation is the same as if the government denied a driver's license to people because they were Republicans or Democrats. It goes against everything for which our country stands."

Z STREET filed for tax-exempt status in January of this year and, despite having met all of the requirements for grant of this status, the application has been stalled. An IRS agent told Z STREET's lawyers that the application was delayed because of a Special Israel Policy that requires greater scrutiny of organizations which have to do with Israel, in part to determine whether they espouse positions on Israel contrary to those of the current Administration.

Z STREET is a Zionist organization that proudly supports Israel's right to refuse to negotiate with, make concessions to, or appease terrorists. Z STREET's positions on Israel and, in particular, on the Middle East "peace process" differ significantly from those espoused by the Obama administration.

If Z STREET had tax-exempt status, its donors would be able to deduct contributions from their taxable income. The IRS's refusal to grant tax-exempt status to Z STREET has inhibited the organization's fundraising efforts, and therefore impeded its ability to speak and to educate the public regarding the issues that are the focus and purpose of Z STREET.

The lawsuit, Z STREET v. Shulman, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, was filed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

COPY OF COMPLAINT HERE

...In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, again according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim ones by at least 6 to 1. Why aren't we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?...

Finland's AI chairman Frank Johansson: Oh I've been to Israel and deem it a scum state.

Writing on his blog over at the Finnish tabloid paper, Iltalehti, the chairman of Finnish Amnesty International took to calling Israel a "scum state" while recounting a visit he had with his friend who lives there.

Frank Johansson:

"A friend of mine who works in Israel, was visiting while piling wood in the shed, we got into his favourite topic. Several years of residence in the holy country, he has come to the conclusion that "Israel is a scum state". On the basis of my own visit, which occurred during the 1970s and 1990s for the final time, I agree."

So this "human rights" activist who chairs Finland's AI branch of the international organization, which is supposedly a non-biased, impartial organization, labeled Israelis....scum. The man is a bigot, and an anti-Semite. Would Johansson ever dare to write publically about Saudi Arabia, or any other Muslim nation as a "scum state", or does he, as many other "human rights" organizations do, take aim at Israel, just because he thinks he can get away with it?

This dispels the notion that Amnesty International (especially in Filand) is an impartial human rights organization as long as sentiments such as Frank Johansson is allowed to go unanswered by that parent organization. Another point worth noticing, is that Johansson makes that obvious biased, bigoted statement out in the open, without a care in the world that he would be held accountable in the Finnish speaking media and blogosphere...[More.]

...Israeli civil society is civilized, democratic and liberal. Israel is a country where murder-rates and domestic violence cases are lower than in Finland.

Johansson's willingness to label Israel is nothing short of perverse. Out of all the rogue states in the world Johansson decides to choose the only democracy in the Middle East.

I wonder what scale Johansson is using in determining the scum-states of this world...

The head of Amnesty International's Finnish branch, Frank Johansson, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he stands by his statement that Israel is a "scum state."...

...Asked why he termed Israel a "scum state," Johansson told the Post in a telephone interview that it was because Israel has "repeatedly flouted international law," and due to his "personal experiences inside and outside of Israel with meeting Israelis."

Johansson said that his remarks were not anti-Semitic. "I actually praise Breaking the Silence," he said [Jews that lie to denounce other Jews are OK with him. -MS], referring to an Israeli organization claiming to collect and share testimonies of former IDF soldiers over human rights violations they allegedly witnessed, while rarely providing names of troops, dates and locations of these incidents.

Asked whether there are other countries aside from Israel that, according to him, meet the definition of a "scum state," Johansson did not specify any, but noted that there are "Russian officials" who meet the criteria.

The Amnesty International official said: "I have been on record on Finnish TV as saying George Bush is the biggest executioner in the Western Hemisphere, [I] use strong language... I am writing those [blogs] in my capacity as a private person, not as an Amnesty official."

However, Iltalehti's Web site clearly provides readers with his title as "director of the Finnish branch of Amnesty International," which appears above his blog...

...a spokeswoman for Amnesty International's headquarters in London, Susanne Flood, told the Post in a telephone interview that "Amnesty would never use an expression like this toward the State of Israel, or any other state."

Flood said that Johansson used the phrase "creep state" to describe Israel, rather than "scum," as the initial English translation of the Finnish word found. Native Finnish speakers from Tundra Tabloids said the Finnish term used by Johansson to denigrate Israel is a "highly derogatory term," and is frequently translated as "scum," "scum bag" or "douche bag."

Asked if AI plans to discipline or sack Johansson, Flood said she would have to check on his employment status, but noted that the organization generally does not comment on human resource matters.

Pressed if he is singling out Israel for disparate treatment - a manifestation of modern anti-Semitism according to some critics - Flood said that one "has to look at the full context of his articles."

She added that Johansson assured her that he is not using his title to write the anti-Israeli blogs. But, when shown that his title was indeed being used in his blog, she conceded to this fact...

...Mr. Brennan had visited the Washington Times Editorial Board on June 24 as a result of a June 11 Washington Times editorial he objected to. It did not take long for the White House counter-terrorism adviser to lose his temper with our editorial board's questions regarding what he previously said about individuals who become terrorists (see transcript and video below).

Mr. Brennan cut the meeting short and stormed out of our offices thereafter following a question posed by senior editorial writer Jim Robbins (transcript and video below). Referring to a quote Mr. Brennan said in May, calling jihad a "legitimate tenet of Islam," Mr. Robbins looked to discuss the concept of jihad further with the Obama administration adviser. Fox News reported earlier in May:

The president's top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a "legitimate tenet of Islam," arguing that the term "jihadists" should not be used to describe America's enemies.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of "political, economic and social forces," but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in "religious terms."

He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not "terrorism," because terrorism is a "tactic," and not terror, because terror is a "state of mind" -- though Brennan's title, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word "terrorism" in it. But then Brennan said that the word "jihad" should not be applied either.

"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children," Brennan said.

Ethan Bronner of The New York Times has a classic piece on the opening of a luxury mall in Gaza.

How does one balance the endless propaganda that Gaza is a concentration camp and that Israelis are committing genocide, with the reality that Gaza exceeds most of its Arab neighbors (and even Turkey) in key health measurements?

How does one balance the endless propaganda of mass starvation in Gaza with the reality that there is plenty of food available, and there was plenty of food available long before Israel eased the restriction on civilian imports?

Most of all, how does The New York Times show balance on a subject which almost never is treated with balance by the mainstream media, much less the Islamist-Leftist Anti-Israel Coalition and its blogospheric sympathizers?

Bronner achieves balance through an ingenious slight of argument:  The luxury Gaza mall is mostly an act of defiance!...

At Sunday's Ground Zero mosque protest, I spoke to one man who had been with the counter-protesters, Joey "Boots" Bassolino, immediately after the police pulled him out from the crowd. What happened, I asked? "There was a guy standing up, a Pakistani guy, who had identified himself as a Pakistani, and he said: 'We're not going to sit there and back these Zionist Jews,'" Bassolino recounted, still clearly a little shaken up.

"And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. What's up with the racism? And they're like, 'what's racist about that?'" The guy behind Bassolino yelled "f*** you," reached forward, grabbing his camera and hitting it. "So I kicked him in the shin," Bassolino said. Bassolino, a disabled U.S. army veteran, claims that he's an "objective" observer and was in the group of counter-protesters to "document what was going on."

"These are people that are supposedly protesting racism, yet you get people standing up there on a soap box yelling about 'Zionist Jews.' What the hell is that? That's racism to me, man," Bassolino explained to me.

Here's the video Bassolino uploaded to YouTube. The remark about "Jewish Zionist Israel" is at the 3:55 mark:

There are no words to express the outrage Americans would have expressed if the Japanese government had proposed to build a memorial to their fallen soldiers at Pearl Harbor immediately following World War II. We can only hope President Truman would have ordered our military to carpet-bomb and firebomb the Japanese again for being so rude and stupid.

Slice it any way you want, but the Muslim community is being tremendously rude and stupid for wanting to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero in New York City. Instead of using the $100 million for their proposed mosque, I recommend that the Muslims donate the cash to the U.S. military so we can build more smart bombs to kill more radical, voodoo Muslims. That would earn my respect and admiration...

Why it will be good for Muslims if the Ground Zero Mosque is stopped

The plan to build a mosque and Islamic center at the site of the 9/11 attacks is one of those rare events that is more important for what it portends than for what it does. To build a mosque on the spot where three thousand people died in the name of Islam would be deeply offensive; but what seems even more important about this event is what it teaches - about those who are building the center, about the non-Muslims who are supporting them. As President Obama might have put it, this is a "teaching moment." What can we learn?...

...Rhetoric about a "two-state solution" is de rigueur. It also is delusional, given two recent, searing experiences.

The only place for a Palestinian state is the West Bank, which Israel has occupied -- legally under international law -- since repelling the 1967 aggression launched from there. The West Bank remains an unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate, the disposition of which is to be settled by negotiations. Michael Oren, now Israel's ambassador to the United States, said several years before becoming ambassador:

"There is no Israeli leadership that appears either willing or capable of removing 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes. . . . The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops -- the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War -- and was profoundly traumatic."

Twenty-one Israeli settlements were dismantled; even the bodies of Israelis buried in Gaza were removed. After a deeply flawed 2006 election encouraged by the United States, there was in 2007 essentially a coup in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. So now Israel has on its western border, 44 miles from Tel Aviv, an entity dedicated to Israel's destruction, collaborative with Iran and possessing a huge arsenal of rockets.

Rocket attacks from Gaza increased dramatically after Israel withdrew. The number of U.N. resolutions deploring this? Zero...

...as far as I can tell, the revolution in the way scholars think about facts, arguments, and truth has not yet had the slightest impact on the manner in which Jews and friends of Israel think about the progressive delegitimization of the Jewish state in the international arena. Indeed, most of the concerned individuals I speak with are still convinced that if only certain facts were better known-or better presented-Israel's circumstances could be improved dramatically.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is right. Media battles such as the one over the Turkish ship off Gaza are necessary for Israel's short-term defense, and we had better do our best to win them by presenting the facts as best we are able. But I think that Kuhn's argument makes it clear that the outcomes of these contests won't have any real impact on the overall trajectory of Israel's standing among educated people in the West. This standing has been deteriorating for the past generation, not because of this or that set of facts, but because the paradigm through which educated Westerners are looking at Israel has shifted. We've been watching the transition from one paradigm to another on everything having to do with Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign nation. So long as we don't understand this well, we won't really understand what's going on, and we won't be able to do anything to really improve things.

What's the old paradigm? And what's the new one to which the international arena is shifting...

Speculation in matzah, pigs, thievery, deception, debauchery-these are the real characteristics of many synagogue leaders. Shrewd operators convert the synagogues from religion into their own personal feeding-grounds; they make free with the contributions of the believers, and become wealthy from them...Foreign Judaists, together with Zionists, are attempting in every possible way to activate nationalistic propaganda among the believers in our country...

Who exactly is Blumenthal targeting with this Jew-face minstrel show? The image would be right at home on Stormfront, wouldn't it?...This isn't Blumenthal's first flirtation with hate-speech. As I wrote here, Blumenthal gave several interviews earlier this year in which he called U.S. politicians who support Israel "quislings", thus equating them with the puppet leaders installed by the Nazis in the countries they occupied.

It's very rare that you come across someone deserving of the title "hero" - or "heroine," for that matter - but I just did.

Cliona Campbell is a 19-year old student from Cork, in Ireland. She is something of a prodigy; in 2008, she was a finalist in the Young Journalist of the Year competition run by British broadcaster Sky News. Last year, she won the essay-writing competition run by the law faculty at University College in Cork, one of the more prestigious institutions of higher education in Europe. She has, it would seem, everything going for her.

Except that right now, Cliona lives in fear. She's become an object of vilification in parts of the Irish press. Grown men have walked to up to her in the street and abused her. Browsing in a clothes store, the security guard recognized her and showered her with insults. Threats have been emailed to her...

I've never been a compulsive person, or a thrill seeker, quite the contrary, I'm one of the most reserved and skeptical people you will ever meet. Yet my decision to fly 5,000km across the globe from my comfortable suburban existence to the sweltering heat and harsh discipline of the Israeli army was never one based on impulse. Ever since the age of nine, I have been captivated by the Jewish people - a nation which has endured hatred, persecution and genocide, and yet still retains an unyielding will to survive, unifying them in an unbreakable kinship.

But why the army? I had watched the injustice during Cast Lead, where after eight years of incessant rockets, Israel cried enough and was villainised for the deaths caused by terrorists who used their own people as human shields, hiding cowardly in densely populated civilian areas, brandishing their dead shamelessly before the media. I couldn't stand by another day and see the people I cherish being discredited before the world and wanted to show solidarity to the Jewish nation...

Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights condemned the murder of a 62-year-old woman, accused by locals of witchcraft, in Gaza City Tuesday.

An investigation by the rights group confirmed earlier reports that unidentified men fired at Jabriyeh Abu Kanas as she sat in front of her house with her 75-year-old husband. She was pronounced dead on arrival at Ash-Shifa hospital.

In a sworn statement to Al Mezan, one of Abu Kanas' relatives said he witnessed the shooting. He told the rights group he was returning from buying Jabriyeh groceries, and saw a silver Hyundai car, with blacked-out windows and no number plates, stop outside Jabriyeh's house. He heard what he believed to be muted gunfire, and then the car sped away, leaving his aunt bleeding from her chest.

Abu Kanas' relatives added that a fortnight ago two cars, a Mercedes and a Skoda, tried to approach Jabriyeh but fled when her family appeared.

Locals had accused the woman of practicing witchcraft and voodoo, officials said Tuesday. Her relatives told Al Mezan that she cured people using traditional methods...

Out of all the titans in American history -- Presidents and generals, inventors and entrepreneurs, reformers and revolutionaries -- have you ever wondered who the best of the best were? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that's why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions. Representatives from the following 44 blogs responded...

Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Ronald Reagan
Mark Twain
Martin Luther King
Albert Einstein
John Roy Carlson (who?)
John Adams
Audie Murphy
Jackie Robinson
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Edison
Booker T. Washington
Walt Disney
Chuck Yeager

5) Thomas Edison (31)
5) Abraham Lincoln (31)
4) Benjamin Franklin (32)
3) Martin Luther King (34)
2) Thomas Jefferson (36)
1) George Washington (42)

The powers-that-be say Israel cannot risk another Holocaust; sounds to me like their Holocaust mania is creating what could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."

During Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's July visit to Washington, Barack Obama praised him as "willing to take risks for peace." There was a time when that meant swapping "land for peace" -- Israel sacrificing something tangible and irrecoverable, strategic depth, in exchange for something intangible and perishable, promises of diplomatic normality...

...Palestine has a seemingly limitless capacity for eliciting nonsense from afar, as it did recently when British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Gaza as a "prison camp." In a sense it is, but not in the sense Cameron intended. His implication was that Israel is the cruel imprisoner. Gaza's actual misfortune is to be under the iron fist of Hamas, a terrorist organization...

...The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.

In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

Among the first things the Obama administration did to break from the "unilateral" policies of the Bush administration was to join the United Nations Human Rights Council, which the U.S. shunned when it was formed in 2006. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised that "we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system." U.N. ambassador Susan Rice declared that we were joining "because we believe that working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights."

Now, almost a year and a half later, the Council remains as it ever was: a body composed of some of the worst human rights abusers in the world, devoted to attacking Western democracies, demonizing Israel, covering up the abuses of authoritarian regimes, and undermining the pursuit of human rights. The only difference today is that America's name is being lent to this effort.

The administration's desire for cooperation and engagement at the U.N. has led to acquiescence and even active involvement in a number of unsavory proceedings. The United States co-sponsored a "freedom of expression" resolution with a dictatorship, Egypt, which in effect endorses the suppression of free speech. When Libya and other authoritarians were elected to the Council, Ambassador Rice refused to say whether the U.S. had opposed their admission. When the Syrian representative claimed that Israeli children "sing merrily as they go to school, and, I quote, 'With my teeth I will rip your flesh. With my mouth I will suck your blood,'" the U.S. representative made no protest. This summer, the U.S. voted for a resolution that seemed to absolve Iran of human rights abuses...[More.]

Eight Muslim American leaders who visited concentration camps and met with Holocaust survivors signed a statement condemning Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

The trip earlier this month, intended to teach the participants about the Holocaust, featured visits to Dachau and Auschwitz.

"We stand united as Muslim American faith and community leaders and recognize that we have a shared responsibility to continue to work together with leaders of all faiths and their communities to fight the dehumanization of all peoples based on their religion, race or ethnicity," the statement read. "With the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hatred, rhetoric and bigotry, now more than ever, people of faith must stand together for truth."

Marshall Breger, an Orthodox Jew who served in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, launched the trip to educate those who may not have had the opportunity to learn the history of the Holocaust. Breger said this would help combat Holocaust denial among Muslims.

The leaders on the trip were Imams Muzammil Siddiqi of Orange County, Calif.; Muhamad Maged of Virginia; Suhaib Webb of Santa Clara, Calif.; Abdullah Antepli of Duke University in North Carolina; and Syed Naqvi of Washington, D.C., along with Dr. Sayyid Syeed of Washington; Sheik Yasir Qadhi of New Haven, Conn.; and Laila Muhammad of Chicago. U.S. government officials, the State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, and an official from the Organization of the Islamic Conference also participated.

According to the Jewish Daily Forward, several of the leaders, all with large spheres of influence, had a history of anti-Semitic comments. Laila Muhammad is the daughter of American Muslim leader W.D. Muhammad and granddaughter of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam...

If there is one lesson to be learned from the controversy over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, it is that messing with memory, particularly traumatic memory of the first order, is akin to messing with Mother Nature: It rarely ends well, no matter how good the intention.

I learned this the hard way 12 years ago, when my idea of inviting Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to visit the Holocaust museum in Washington proved to be a disaster. There is great danger in misappropriating memory and attempting to link it to another agenda or to a tragic historical experience seared in the minds of millions. However the controversy over the proposed mosque and Islamic center in Lower Manhattan plays out, the outcome is bound, for many in this country and elsewhere, to keep raw and open the wounds of Sept. 11, 2001. And the benefits do not appear to be worth the risk.

The decision to invite Arafat to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was conceived with the best intentions. In 1998, the Arab-Israeli peace process was in constant crisis. There was zero trust between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (then in his first term in that office). Both were looking for ways to demonize the other. Israelis and Palestinians -- officials to ordinary citizens -- traded accusations in the media over settlements, textbooks and portrayals in the media. To many Israelis, among the worst of the Palestinian transgressions was Holocaust denial. As a senior U.S. adviser on Arab-Israeli negotiations, I was charged with identifying steps and gestures that might build confidence on both sides, in this case among Israelis. I proposed inviting Arafat to the museum during one of his many official visits to Washington, thinking: What better way to counter Holocaust denial than by having the alleged denier in chief visit the museum?

Inviting Arafat to the museum, one of the dumbest ideas in the annals of U.S foreign policy, created a perfect storm. After I had gotten a yes in principle from the Palestinians and the chairman of the museum's executive committee, the idea leaked to the media. The museum's board was blindsided; its director was fundamentally opposed. Israelis and many American Jews were outraged by what they saw as a political hijacking of the genocide. Some Holocaust survivors supported the idea but many were opposed. The official invitation eventually was retracted.

How I could have believed such an invitation would head any way but south is beyond me. Yes, the museum was a living memorial to combating racism, hatred and genocide. But did I fully grasp that I was using hallowed memory and narrative for purposes that could affront the very people I was trying to persuade? For millions, the museum was a positive and powerful symbol of not forgetting -- just as, for so many, Arafat was a symbol of anti-Semitism, violence and insensitivity. The potential conflict and misunderstanding overwhelmed any opportunity for dialogue and understanding.

And even if the visit had taken place, what would Arafat have said afterward? That he better understood the Israeli and Jewish sensibility but that they would have to understood Palestinian dispossession and suffering, too? That Israelis were perpetuating a genocide against Palestinians and demand equal time and space? The possibilities for disaster were too numerous to identify...[More]

...Big Rapids police said the woman, 22-year-old Ahlam Mohsen of Coldwater was arrested not far from the deli and charged with assault and disorderly conduct. It was not immediately clear this afternoon if she was still being held...

In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University's endowment...[Etc...]

Non-event. Israel no longer an"emerging market"- now in a developed market index. These sales were part of a rebalancing- new holdings not reflected.

...Industry analysts, however, say the move was economic, not political.

"This is pure economics and I don't think it was because of the Arab boycott," Dr. Gil Feiler, founder of Info-Prod Research (Middle East) Ltd and director of the Middle East Business and Economic Research Institute at Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya told The Media Line. "They didn't eliminate their investments in Israeli stocks," he claimed. "They still have tens of millions of dollars invested, and if you are going to boycott Israel you sell all your stocks."

Shirley Adler, Investor Relations Coordinator at Cellcom, Israel's leading mobile communications firm, told The Media Line that the company had no official indication from Harvard as to the reasoning behind the decision.

Yaacov Heen, Cellcom's Chief Financial Officer, said the divestment is in response to Israel's recent reclassification as a developed economy.

"It's more technical than strategic or an issue against Israel," he told The Media Line. "I have asked my international relations people to check it and we believe it's because Israel was reclassified as a MSCI developed country in May 2010."

Formerly the Morgan Stanley Capital International, MSCI World, is an international index of 1,500 stocks from a couple dozen 'developed' countries and is often used as a benchmark by global stock funds. In May MSCI upgraded Israel from an 'emerging' economy to a 'developed' economy.

"There are some funds which invest only in emerging markets," continued Heen, the Cellcom CFO. "So Harvard had to sell our stock because Israel is no longer classified as an emerging market and they no longer have the ability to hold this stock within the emerging markets fund."

"We have seen a real change in the volume of trade since they reclassified us," he said. "In the longterm this is good news for us because there is now more money that can be invested in Israel, but in the short-term it means we need to work to find new investors."

"The problem is that Israel is very small compared to other developed countries so we have to compete on a much higher level," Heen added. "When we traded against emerging countries it was very easy to compete for investors."...

Thank you for taking the time to write.

The Management Company's most recent SEC filing details changes in holdings, as is routine, but no change in policy. The University has not divested from Israel. Israel was moved from the MSCI, our benchmark in emerging markets, to the EAFE index in May due to its successful growth. Our emerging markets holdings were rebalanced accordingly. We have holdings in developed markets, including Israel, through outside managers in commingled accounts and indexes, which are not reported in the filing in question.

I hope that this is helpful.

Sincerely,

John

Tolerance rightly understood serves an important public purpose. In the classical liberal understanding, it means according respect to the beliefs and practices of others, and learning to live peacefully and civilly with one another despite deep differences. Tolerance allows for the "free trade in Ideas" (in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase), which is the best way to ensure that the right beliefs will emerge. It assumes that all reasoned opinions will get a fair hearing, even when what is said may not be popular. Tolerance can serve as an antidote to the destructive passions inflamed by (among other things) misguided religious beliefs. So tolerance is a great social good, which is precisely why it needs to be rescued from the reckless attempt to redefine it. For it is a social good only up to a point, and only when its meaning is not massively disfigured. But tolerance can be a genuinely harmful force when it becomes a euphemism for moral exhaustion and a rigid or indifferent neutrality in response to very great moral issue -- when, in G.K. Chesterton's phrase, it becomes the virtue of people who do not believe in anything. For that paves the road to injustice.

...What I do know, having hung out with him for an afternoon, is that he's still always spoiling for a fight. As we're about to say our goodbyes, he pulls a sheaf of faxes out of his pocket. They are complaints, e-mailed to his manager, John "Rambo" Stevens, who lives in Arkansas, complaining that PiL will shortly be performing in Israel. One, from a fan called Lawrence Casin, declares: "I will destroy all my albums and paraphernalia that I have collected over the years if you bastards play that hell hole."

Most musicians, particularly those who have been around for 30 years, wouldn't let hate mail upset them. They probably wouldn't even read it. But John's anger is genuine. He wants me to record it, for posterity. "I really resent the presumption that I'm going there to play to right-wing Nazi jews," he tells me. "If Elvis-fucking-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated."...

The Israeli army began Sunday to remove cement walls once used to protect against Palestinian sniper fire in a Jerusalem neighborhood adjacent to the West Bank.

Cranes lifted the two-meter high slabs, each weighing two-and-a-half tons, and placed them onto a semi-trailer bed to be carted away to an army warehouse.

The Middle East is changing. Palestinians and Israelis are on the verge of resuming direct peace talks for the first time in years. Growing prosperity on both sides and increased security cooperation have kept terrorist attacks almost non-existent. The army has decided that this wall was no longer needed.

"The security situation has turned around completely," Maj. Peter Lerner, spokesman for the Israel Army's Central Command, told The Media Line. "This is our main thinking of why we can today remove these elements of the fence. We have good working relations with the Palestinian security forces. We have a good sense of security and we have the ability to deal with terror threats that could formulate on the other side. Today gives us the opportunity, for the wellbeing of all residents living in Gilo, to remove these elements."

For the past decade, cement barriers have become a fixture in the lives of residents of the Gilo neighborhood and have given them a sense of security. When the Palestinian unrest erupted a decade ago, Arab gunmen across the valley in the cities of Beit Jala and Bethlehem would take pot shots at their Jewish neighbors...[More.]

...General Von Thoma, who commanded a panzer division in Russia before being captured at El Alamein, told the pro-Nazi General Ludwig Cruwell in January 1943: "I am actually ashamed to be an officer."

He related how he had spoken to the Army Chief of Staff, General Franz Halder, about the atrocities, only to be told: "That's a political matter, that's nothing to do with me."

So he put his protests in writing to Army commanderin-chief General Walther von Brauchitz, who said: "Do you want me to take it further? If you want me to take it further, anything might happen."

Thoma said of those who believed the Fuhrer was ignorant of what was happening: "Of course, he knows all about it. Secretly, he's delighted. Of course, people can't make a row - they would simply be arrested and beaten if they did."

The kind of things that were happening to Poles, Russians and especially Jews were common currency in the 'private' conversations at Trent Park...[More.]

Serving in Germany, armed with my M16, living in the field in arctic conditions, part of the Cold War, from 1977 to 1982, there was broadcast on the German Television of the US movie series "The Holocaust".

TV studio had set up a single hotline for people who might have now found their conscience. Within 48 hours there were over 100 operators answering the lines, people were committing suicide over their theft of neighbor's properties, and having turned in parents or lovers, in anger or jealous rage.

When I departed my assignment, the phone bank was still running full tilt, almost two years later. Hundreds of psychiatrists were on call, and suicide prevention was a 24 hour manned response team in most major cities!

The Holocaust evidently was a personal failure of conscience for almost all Germans who contributed, achieving the death of neighbors, co-workers, ex-lovers, with hardly any motive at all.

...The arrest last week of seven Palestinian university lecturers at the hands of Palestinian Authority security services in the West Bank is yet another example of how the international media functions in this part of the world.

Some Palestinian stringers and reporters offered the story about the arrest of the academics to at least a dozen foreign correspondents and newspaper editors in North America and Europe.

Only one foreign journalist agreed to write about the story. His colleagues gave different excuses for turning their backs on the story.

Some said they were concerned about their personal safety should they report a news item that was likely to anger the Western-funded PA security forces in the West Bank.

Others simply blamed their editors in New York, Paris, London and Toronto for turning down the story as "insignificant."

Earlier this week, a disenchanted Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist decided to put her Western colleagues to the test. She contacted the same group of newsmen and editors who had been offered the story on the academics' arrest with a "new idea" for a news item.

The Palestinian journalist proposed that the foreign press write about a Palestinian university professor who complained that Israeli authorities had turned down his request to visit Israel together with his wife and three children.

The response from the international journalists came almost instantly. All but two said it was a "great story" and expressed readiness to start working on it immediately...

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy issued the following statement regarding remarks from President Obama on the proposed mosque and Islamic Center at Ground Zero:

"As an American Muslim whose family fled persecution in Syria and as someone who has stood in the face of some resistance to the building of many of our houses of worship in the U.S., I fully understand the value of standing for religious freedom in America. But President Obama's statement about the Ground Zero mosque at last night's White House Iftar dinner is the latest example of political correctness gone awry...

Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America's heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see. Since that dark day, Americans have been asked to bear the burden of defending those values, again and again and again. Now this president declares that the victims of 9/11 and their families must bear another burden. We must stand silent at the last place in America where 9/11 is still remembered with reverence or risk being called religious bigots.

Muslims have worshipped in New York without incident both before and after the attacks of 9/11. This controversy is not about religious freedom. 9/11 was more than a "deeply traumatic event," it was an act of war. Building a 15-story mosque at Ground Zero is a deliberately provocative act that will precipitate more bloodshed in the name of Allah. Those who continue to target and kill American civilians and U.S. troops will see it as a symbol of their historic progress at the site of their most bloody victory. Demolishing a building that was damaged by wreckage from one of the hijacked planes in order to build a mosque and Islamic Center will further energize those who regard it as a ratification of their violent and divinely ordered mission: the spread of shariah law and its subjugation of all free people, including secular Muslims who come to this country fleeing that medieval ideology, which destroys lives and crushes the human spirit.

We are stunned by the president's willingness to disregard what Americans should be proud of: our enduring generosity to others on 9/11-a day when human decency triumphed over human depravity. On that day, when 3,000 of our fellow human beings were killed in barbaric act of raw religious intolerance unlike this country had ever seen, Americans did not turn outward with hatred or violence, we turned to each other, armed with nothing more than American flags and countless acts of kindness. In a breathtakingly inappropriate setting, the president has chosen to declare our memories of 9/11 obsolete and the sanctity of Ground Zero finished. No one who has lived this history and felt the sting of our country's loss that day can truly believe that putting our families through more wrenching heartache can be an act of peace.

We will honor the memory of our loved ones. We will protect our children, whose lives will never be the same. We will not stand silent.

...There was a particularly nauseating moment when President Obama called Ground Zero "hallowed ground." Well, what does "hallowed" mean if it doesn't mean "ground that we treat with more deference and sensitivity than other places?" He clearly doesn't see the ground as "hallowed." He supports treating it like any other intersection in America.

Even worse is the tone of his speech (see video above). He's clearly angry and annoyed by those of us who oppose the mosque. He's not saying "Hey--this idea sucks, but the law's the law--what can I do?" President Obama said last night that the mosque BELONGS at Ground Zero, and that there's something wrong ("This is America!") with those of us who oppose it.

President Obama has gone beyond "laws and ordinances." He thinks the Cordoba imam is the good guy, and 68% of the American people are the bad guys...[Read more.]

...That's why Disney's 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War (and that was wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It's why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It's why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.

And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign...

...Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won't one day hire an Anwar al-Aulaqi -- spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and onetime imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists?

An Aulaqi preaching in Virginia is a security problem. An Aulaqi preaching at Ground Zero is a sacrilege. Or would the mayor then step in -- violating the same First Amendment he grandiosely pretends to protect from mosque opponents -- and exercise a veto over the mosque's clergy?...

If it is another mosque that is wanted, as Obama suggests, ordinary Americans desire only that it be built somewhere else in New York. Obama's invocation of the First Amendment right of the free exercise of religion is not on point.

In the good old USA, citizens have a right to do many wrongs. One such wrong would be the establishment of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero. Obama simply does not engage the point. He does not argue that the establishment of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero would be right...[More.]

Imagine yourself on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001.

As you sat there in shock, what if someone had told you that in 10 years, the World Trade Center would still be a crater. However, just off of Ground Zero, a gigantic, 13-story mosque would be erected. A mosque endorsed by President Barack Hussein Obama.

You would have thought we had lost a war, wouldn't you?

To those who are still confused: The men who wish to build this mosque had the choice to build it further from Ground Zero. They refused. If they were granted the choice to move it closer to Ground Zero, to build it on Ground Zero, do you still think they would refuse? If you think the answer is "no", you should have your head - and your heart - examined.

...For Obama, 9/11 was a "deeply traumatic event for our country." Traumatic events invite characteristic reactions and over-reactions--fearfulness, anger, even hysteria. That's how Obama understands the source of objections to the Ground Zero mosque. It's all emotional. The arguments don't have to be taken seriously. The criticisms of the mosque are the emotional reactions of a traumatized people.

But Americans aren't traumatized. 9/11 was an attack on America, to which Americans have responded firmly, maturely, and appropriately. Part of our sensible and healthy reaction is that there shouldn't be a 13-story mosque and Islamic community center next to Ground Zero (especially when it's on a faster track to be built than the long-delayed memorial there). But Obama (like Bloomberg) doesn't feel he even has to engage the arguments against the mosque--because he regards his fellow citizens as emotionally traumatized victims, not citizens who might have a reasonable point of view.

...A friend and I arrived at the party and were having a lovely time when a young man in a baseball hat sauntered over to me and said, "I have some questions for you." I had no problem with this and sat down next to him on a bench in a cramped corner. He proceeded to spend what seemed like an eternity traducing Americans, Jews, Zionism, and Israel until I began to suspect he was a Nazi. When I attempted to defend my ancient heritage (I told him this will be the 5,771st Jewish New Year), of which I am as proud as would be a person of Egyptian, Indian, Chinese or Persian descent, he became irate. I thought he was going to strike me.

He was fixated on the Jewish lobby so I reminded him that many American banks are Protestant-run. When I reminded him of the good that Jews do, like writing virtually every Broadway and West End show, he erupted and said I was self-obsessed. "It's always me, me , me -- the Jews, the Jews," he shouted. It is unheard of for me to scream and shout at a genteel summer garden party, but I suddenly found myself bellowing at the top of my lungs: "Listen, I am damned proud of my Jewish heritage and burst with pride at being an American." It was impossible for me to get away from him because every seat was taken and I was hemmed in. Meanwhile, his little girl sat down across his lap and glowered at me as he ranted in an endless stream of the f word.

I have been on Any Questions?, Woman's Hour, and other debate shows with tough British hosts Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Vine and Andrew Gilligan but frankly have never been so frightened by such an opponent. He never let me finish a sentence and probably missed my saying his views were "alarming." When I came home I took an aspirin as I really and truly thought I might have a heart attack.

So, you may ask, what does he do for a living? He is creative director of one of the main British television networks!...

Although there is still some chance that President Bush will decide to attack Iran before he leaves office, it is impossible to know for sure. There is also some possibility, given the inflexible rhetoric of the presidential candidates, that his successor will do so, particularly if Iran gets closer to developing weapons and if hard-liners there continue to predominate. If the United States does launch an attack, it will be doing so in part on Israel's behalf, and the lobby will bear significant responsibility for having pushed this dangerous policy.

Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said Wednesday he would reject any U.S. military assistance to Lebanon's army if it comes with conditions that the weapons not be used against Israel.

Murr was commenting Wednesday on a decision by U.S. lawmakers to suspend $100 million in aid over concerns the weapons could be turned on Israel and that Hezbollah may have influence over the Lebanese army.

Murr said those who want to help the Lebanese army but place conditions on how their funds or weapons are used, should keep the money.

He also said a Lebanese soldier who opened fire across the border with Israel earlier in August was acting on orders. The clash killed two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and an Israel Defense Forces officer.

In response to the remarks, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley rejected the claim that the United States was halting military ties with Lebanon and said that the country is committed to its relationship with Lebanon, but has conditions for its assistance.

"We continue to believe that investing in Lebanon's government and investing in Lebanon's military serves as a stabilizing influence and expands and strengthens Lebanon's sovereignty," Crowley said during a press conference.

He added that "we place conditions on how our military aid is delivered, and there are similar conditions in terms of how Israel is able to use the assistance we provide them."...

Give Mahmoud Abbas credit, at least, for consistency. Eighteen months ago, when the then-new Obama administration tried to jump start Middle East peace negotiations, the Palestinian president balked. He said he would not agree even to meet the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, unless Netanyahu made several big concessions in advance -- including recognition of a Palestinian state on the basis of Israel's 1967 borders and a freeze on all Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.

Convinced that Netanyahu was the problem, the Obama administration spent the next year in a crude and clumsy effort to extract those concessions. Netanyahu stoutly resisted; the administration belatedly discovered that it could not compel a democratic ally to comply with its demands. Eventually a rough compromise emerged: Netanyahu publicly accepted the idea, but not the pre-defined borders, of a Palestinian state; and he imposed a partial and temporary freeze on the settlements, which is due to expire in September. The administration agreed that should be good enough to start formal peace talks.

But Abbas, who watched this diplomatic drama from the sidelines, never changed. He's still refusing to meet Netanyahu unless the Israeli leader -- or Obama -- gurantees those big concessions on borders and settlements in advance. He's held firm through multiple visits by the administration's long-suffering envoy, former senator George Mitchell. He's resisted pressure from Arab leaders. He's been warned that the White House -- home to the most pro-Palestinian president since Jimmy Carter -- is about to lose patience with him. Still, he refuses to budge...

"Today, the Zionism which has destroyed so many occupied lives is turning inwards. Israel is being corroded by the ideology underpinning its existence. The Zionist state's latest victims are Palestinian-Israelis and migrant workers."

Photographs that show PKK fighters killed by chemical weapons used by Turks have been confirmed by German experts, according to a Der Spiegel report, Thursday.

The German newspaper reported that the evidence puts added pressure on the Turkish government.

Turkey has long been suspected of using chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels.

German politicians are demanding an investigation into the claims.

According to the report Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists say that the photos show eight members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) underground movement.

The PKK members were thought to have been killed in September 2009.

The activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation in March that comprised of Turkish experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, according to the Der Spiegel report.

A German expert on photo forgeries, Hans Baumann, was able to confirm the photos authenticity, Der Spiegal reported...

According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner's apprentice, to fulfill their "Passover blood ritual" in the fateful year of 1144--the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.

He's got a point. Construction projects that fail to consider local cultural sensitivities aren't very conducive to dialogue, are they?

You're free to open whatever you like. If you won't consider the sensibilities of Muslims, you're not going to build dialog

Today the JDL Canada staged a gentile demonstration in front of the Toronto Star.

Canada's largest daily newspaper by circulation is noted for its consistently anti-Israel - frankly, anti-Semitic - editorial slant. Today the JDL called them on it. It was lunchtime and the demo got their attention.

At least one noted columnist saw these flags flying and, like all brave jihadis confronted with a fair fight, ducked behind a pillar, thought the better of it, and scuttled back inside.

Curly-toed shoes don't fail me now!

On a personal note: My private life has got a lot less complicated recently, freeing me up to see friends and get out to demos as well. Even so, I should have been there with the JDL and against the fascists long before now. The future belongs to the people who show up.

Not only that. Holding the flag of Israel there on Yonge Street in the noonday sun was a great honour, a proud moment. How many times in a man's life does he get to say something like that?

If I keep turning up, I might be able to stand tall enough to look Kathy Shaidle in the eye.

BTW: Check out the link at the bottom to Kathy Shaidle. It upsets me every time I read that post. In some ways more than video of 9/11. I don't think enough people have seen it.

Four anti-Israel activists were today cleared at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court of all charges after they locked themselves onto concrete-filled oil drums inside the Israeli-owned Ahava shop on Monmouth Street in London's Covent Garden forcing it to close down for one day in September 2009 and another day in December 2009.

Taherali Gulamhussein, Bruce Levy, Tom Ellis and Ms Crouch, all from London, were found not guilty of failing to comply with a police officer's orders to leave the shop (Ss.68&69 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994).

The activists insisted that they were legally justified in their actions as they claim the shop's activities are illegal because the products on sale in the shop originate from Mitzpe Shalem, an Israeli settlement on the West Bank, and are deliberately mislabeled as "Made in Israel"...

"If the liberals and leftists are wrong, and there are good grounds for thinking that they are horribly wrong, history will judge them harshly. For they will have gazed on the face of a global fascist movement and shrugged and turned away, not only from an enemy that would have happily killed them but from an enemy which already was killing those who had every reason to expect their support."

"Zionism -- the idea that Jewish people ought to have a Jewish state in mandate Palestine -- is anachronistic in the 21st century. The idea that non-Jews who have lived on the land for generations before the creation of the state of Israel should be relegated to second-class citizenship because they're not Jewish is illiberal. It's also racist."

The hawkish Emergency Committee for Israel is targeting two more imperiled House Democrats , Virginia's Glenn Nye and Connecticut's Jim Himes, with ads attacking them for signing a letter pressing Israel to ease conditions for civilians in Gaza and warning it to avoid "collective punishment."

The ad, a version of which already aired against Ohio Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, notes that most House Democrats wouldn't sign what it calls "anti-Israel letter" and suggests viewers ask the members why they "joined an assault on Israel."

The next to air, targeting Nye, is above.

The ads pit ECI -- chaired by Gary Bauer and Bill Kristol -- against the left-leaning J Street, which circulated the letter, and they attempt to exact a cost for deviating from both congressional parties' traditionally near-total support for Israel's security policies.

"Glenn Nye signed onto a letter accusing Israel of 'de facto collective punishment," said ECI adviser Michael Goldfarb in an email. "This is a de facto accusation of war crimes against one of our closest allies, which is why 88% of the House refused to sign the letter. We plan on making sure that voters know if their representative is signing anti-Israel letters, taking anti-Israel votes, or doing anything else to undermine the US-Israel relationship."

(The letter, in fact, doesn't literally accuse Israel of the act. It says that Israel's security concerns "must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.")...

... A group of high school students attending a conservative leadership conference in Washington, D.C. said they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a June 25 visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

"They told them to stop singing," said Evan Gassman, a spokesman for the Young America's Foundation. "I was taken aback. You wouldn't expect a display of national patriotism to be censored."

U.S. Park Police confirmed that the students were in violation of federal law and their impromptu performance constituted a demonstration in an area that must remain "completely content neutral."

"The area they were standing in and singing is an area that is restricted for this type of activity," said Sgt. David Schlosser. "The United States Park Police is absolutely content-neutral when it comes to any sort of demonstrations in these areas."...

The popular Tunisian singer Saleem Bakkoush has been forced to cancel a concert at the annual Carthage festival, after a video surfaced showing him performing at a synagogue.

Mr Bakkoush accused his rivals of publishing the tape to tarnish his reputation.

Tunisia is one of only two Arab states with a sizeable Jewish community (sizeable? Not more than 2,000 Jews remain out of a community of 100,000 - ed).

But pro-Palestinian sentiments remain strong and the country has no diplomatic ties with Israel.
This was supposed to be Mr Bakkoush's first appearance on the prestigious Carthage festival.

But the sudden emergence of the tape showing him performing at the country's oldest synagogue in Djerba has scuppered this unique opportunity.

The Carthage festival is a prominent event attracting a range of artists

Mr Bakkoush said the recording was a few years old and suggested that his enemies had published it now to prevent the concert.

Anti-Israeli sentiment in Tunisia - especially in cultural and artistic circles - was already running high following the emergence of another remarkable tape.

It showed another popular singer, Mohsen El Sharif, performing at the wedding of a Jewish couple of Tunisian origin in Israel.

What angered people most in Tunisia was Mr El Sharif's readiness to please the Israeli public by shouting "Long Live Netanyahu", referring to the Israeli prime minister.

He later tried to defend his action by saying that he thought that was the bridegroom's name.

Few believed him, and his critics have launched an internet-based campaign to have him put on trial and stripped of his nationality.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived on Monday evening for two days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, even as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was coming under increased pressure from Palestinians to refuse to enter direct talks with Israel.

Mitchell, whose arrival was not announced until nearly the last minute, was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. He is then expected to meet with Abbas afterward, and to leave the region on Wednesday.

Both Israeli and US diplomatic officials have been saying for days that Mitchell was delaying his visit until there was something to talk about.

His arrival on Monday, however, was not being interpreted by those same officials as an indication that Abbas had finally decided to agree to the launching of direct talks.

"I don't feel comfortable" saying that his arrival indicates a breakthrough, one Israeli official said. "It might be possible that they will get something out of Abbas, but I wouldn't hold your breath."

Abbas has come under a great deal of pressure from the US, as well as from Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and now even Saudi Arabia, to renew direct talks - but so far, he has not budged.

Diplomatic sources said that if the circumstances warranted it, Mitchell could, during his current visit to the region, travel to Egypt and Saudi Arabia to discuss the matter.

Meanwhile, representatives of dozens of Palestinian factions and organizations on Monday warned Abbas against succumbing to pressure to open direct talks unconditionally.

They claimed that Israel was planning to exploit the negotiations "to cover up for its practices, including the Judaization of Jerusalem, continued settlement construction and the completion of the racist separation fence."

They also warned that entering direct talks under the conditions set by the US administration would "save Israel from the international campaign of boycott and condemnation."...

A senior US Congresswoman is blocking funding to the Lebanese military following its attack on Israeli soldiers last week.

"This incident was tragic and entirely avoidable. US assistance is intended to enhance our safety and that of our allies," Rep. Nita Lowey (D-New York) said Monday.

Lowey chairs the House appropriations subcommittee that handles foreign aid and needs to authorize such funds. The $100 million in Lebanese military assistance approved for 2010 has yet to be disbursed, giving Lowey a window to put a hold on the funding for the immediate future.

Lowey is looking to find out more about the nature of what she termed an "outrageous incident" as well as watching how Lebanon responds in the wake of the violence.

"These holds are typically dependent on the actions and rhetoric coming out of the relevant nations," a Democratic aide noted.

Last Tuesday, Lebanese Armed Forces soldiers shot at Israeli officers who were clearing brush along the northern border, killing one and seriously wounding another. The IDF returned fire, killing two soldiers and a journalist.

A State Department official said that the US is still trying to ascertain the facts regarding the incident, including whether there's any truth behind reports that the LAF troops used American-issued guns.

"We consistently review all of our security assistance programs to all receiving countries," the official said. "Ultimately, we continue to believe that our support to the LAF and ISF [Internal Security Forces] will contribute toward improving regional security."...

As I have argued before, there is not too much attention given to the Holocaust or any other genocide, there is too little. Think only of the energy and attention that is being given, in the US and globally, to the American presidential election; or think of a major sporting event like the football World Cup; and then think how it might be, politically, if there were a planetary consciousness, a world-wide human rights movement, so cognizant of the worst crimes of the past, not turned away from them towards easier preoccupations, that people marched and agitated in their tens and hundreds of thousands whenever there was a genocide in process or threatening, demanded that the governments of the world and the institutions of world governance would treat these situations as urgent. Can Tony Judt, or anyone, be confident that this would not make the world a better place?

...So what is in these files? First, the FBI had evidence that Zinn was a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and lied about his membership when being interviewed by FBI agents. The first file on the subject appeared in March of 1949, when an informant noted "that he (ZINN) is a Communist Party member and attends meetings five days a week." Zinn was then employed by the American Labor Party, which itself gives credence to the informant's report. By that date, the ALP -- created in the early forties to give NYC labor a left-wing ballot on which to vote for FDR -- had been taken over lock, stock and barrel by the CP. It never would have hired non-Party members as full-time employees.

Another informant described Zinn as a "person with some authority" in the CP group to which they belonged. Zinn, he said, taught a course for his comrades on "basic Marxism." On June 12, 1957, another informant told the Bureau that when he was transferred to the Williamsburgh branch of the Party in 1949, "HOWARD ZINN was already a member of that section." It was his impression that "ZINN was not a new member, but had been in the CP for some time."

Zinn, however, denied he was a Communist when questioned by the FBI in 1953. It is important to note here that unlike those who testified before Congressional investigating committees, Zinn was not under oath. The reason Zinn denied his membership was the same as that for other Communists. The Party instructed them not to, even when asked to testify before committees like HUAC. As some of the Hollywood Ten members revealed years after their own investigations, if they said they were Reds, that would only prove that the Red-baiters were right when they called them Communists! It would undermine their pose as good liberals, who were only taking pro-Soviet positions because they genuinely believed in them, not because it was the Party line...[More.]

Sam Meas could teach President Obama and Governor Deval Patrick a thing or two about hope. But unlike them, he hasn't written tomes about himself, which is too bad because you'd want to read his life story.

"Hope," he says, paraphrasing his favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption, "is the only thing." Hope took him from Cambodia's killing fields - "a virtual prison" - over landmines, through "a filthy refugee camp" to America. Now the former financial advisor hopes to unseat Congresswoman Nikki Tsongas (MA-5). "I am not an establishment candidate," he tells me in the most understated of understatements.

Indeed he isn't. Born in Cambodia, sometime between 1970 and 1972, Meas isn't sure how old he is, nor does he know how many siblings he had. His birth records and his father were lost in Pol Pot's murderous reign. His family fled, to a refugee camp near the Thai border, but that, too, was overrun when the Vietnamese military invaded, separating him from his family. In the confusion, a cousin whisked him away to a Thai refugee camp, where they stayed for two weeks. His cousin left him there and returned to Cambodia, never to be heard from again.

Alone in the refugee camp, Meas lived a Dickensian existence - chopping wood, babysitting, cooking, and doing the laundry for other Cambodian refugees. He slowly learned English through UN-sponsored classes and, after convincing a customs agent that he didn't know what his own birthday was, he received permission to immigrate to the United States through Catholic Charities in Virginia...[More.]

Having provoked anger with his description of Gaza as a "prison camp", David Cameron's latest appointment is likely to raise further suspicions among supporters of Israel about the direction of his policy in the Middle East.

Mandrake can disclose that the new head of the Foreign Office, Simon Fraser, left his post working for a minister in the last Conservative government after he became romantically involved with an official of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was considered to be a terrorist organisation at the time.

Fraser, 52, left his position as private secretary to William Waldegrave, a Foreign Office minister in John Major's government, after just one year. His colleagues are, however, keen to deny that he was sacked.

"Simon established a cohabiting relationship with a Palestinian woman who was an official of the PLO," confirms his colleague. "Simon considered his position and decided that this relationship, which was a loving one [All together now, "Awwwwww..."], could cause problems among the government and in his professional life.

"He then went to Waldegrave, of his own volition, explained his position and decided it was sensible to stand down. He has since gone on to enjoy a stellar career."

The mandarin is now married to Shireen Fraser, by whom he has two daughters. He resigned in 1990, three years before the PLO formally rejected "violence and terrorism"...

...In an outdoor press conference held at a lookout point above the Lebanese border where the incident occurred, Ilan Diksteyn, the deputy commander of the Israeli brigade, explained what happened. The IDF had notified the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)  of its intentions and complied with multiple requests to delay a routine job that should have started early in the morning and didn't get going till midday.

According to Diksteyn, he had personally walked the border with the UNIFIL commander and identified all the trees and shrubs they intended to cut down, all approved of as being located on the Israeli side of the border by the UNIFIL commander. The key tree was some 200 meters from the Blue Line, so there was not the most remote possibility that Israel trespassed on Lebanese territory. The IDF even set out the crane without a man in it, just to demonstrate their intentions beforehand.

But no sooner did they put a man in the unit and lift him over the fence than a sniper shot and killed the commanding officer of the unit who was away from the border and observing from a distance. Despite claiming they fired first in the air, and that Israel initiated the hostilities, an LAF spokesman eventually asserted their right "to defend Lebanon's sovereignty."

The Israelis claim this was an ambush by units of the Lebanese Armed Forces. And as such, this was an unprecedented new level of aggression. Even the normally cautious UNIFIL, which the previous day had restricted itself to calling for calm and announcing its intention to investigate, eventually -- and exceptionally -- sided with Israel's claim that the tree was on their side of the border. Even the Lebanese admit they carried out an ambush...

It wasn't a US Army sniper who killed IDF Lt. Col. Dov Harari and seriously wounded Capt. Ezra Lakia on Tuesday. But the Lebanese Armed Forces sniper who shot them owes a great deal to the generous support the LAF has received from America.

For the past five years, the LAF has been the second largest recipient of US military assistance per capita after Israel. A State Department press release from late 2008 noted that between 2006 and 2008, the LAF received ten million rounds of ammunition, Humvees, spare parts for Lebanese attack helicopters, vehicles for its internal security forces "and the same frontline weapons that US military troops are currently using, including assault rifles, automatic grenade launchers, advanced sniper systems, anti-tank weapons, and the most modern urban warfare bunker weapons."

Since 2006 the US has provided Lebanon some $500 million in military assistance. And there is no end in sight. After US President Barack Obama's meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in June, the White House proclaimed Obama's "determination to continue US efforts to support and strengthen Lebanese institutions such as the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces."

And indeed, in late June, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates informed Congress that the Pentagon intends to provide the LAF with 24 120mm mortars, 24 M2 .50 caliber machine guns, one million rounds of ammunition, and 24 humvees and trailers. The latest orders should be delivered by the end of 2011...

...this can't be allowed to just fade away. A man was murdered, a Jew was murdered because he was a Jew -- yes, that is the motivation here.

This isn't Hitler-era Germany. It's not acceptable to murder Jews to create diversions, or because you have an ideological commitment to a Jew-free dar al Islam, or just for the hell of it. That's why there is a Jewish state.

Someone bears the overall responsibility for this murder, and it's probably not the Lebanese soldiers who were killed when the IDF returned fire.

Perhaps some of the investigative resources being employed to track down the 'guilty' parties who executed Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai, a multiple murderer who was arranging for Iranian weapons to be shipped to Hamas when he was killed, could better be spent solving this crime? Possibly some of the indignation about the death of nine Turkish thugs who were trying (again) to murder Jews could better be applied here?

The Israeli government has requested that Lebanon court-martial the commander of the Lebanese unit that fired at IDF troops across the border in a deadly confrontation that occurred earlier in the week, Army Radio quoted from the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar on Friday.

According to the Lebanese paper, Israeli officials were supposed to have threatened to "take revenge" against the Lebanese commander for the death of Lt. Col. (res.) Dov Harari if Lebanon did not adequately resolve the issue. The report also said Israel threatened that if the issue was not handled satisfactorily the IDF would then view the Lebanese Armed Forces along the border as an enemy force and the IDF would respond to any future attacks with "an aggressive response without precedent."...

Far from the stigma of Gazan rubble and poverty sits an oasis of water slides, hookahs, swimming pools and music.

The news from Gaza is often filled with suffering and stories of humanitarian aid unable to reach the impoverished coastal enclave. Tourist attractions, resorts and malls, which have recently been inaugurated in the besieged strip, are not what you would expect from Gaza.

The Crazy Water Park, one of the most talked about new attractions and a number of seaside tourist resorts, opened in May 2010.

Various media outlets have attempted to estimate the budget of the park, described locally as "the new sensation", with some reports estimating the price tag to be as high as seven million dollars.

Mohammed Al-Araj, the economics minister in the first government formed after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, is believed to be one of the water park's directors. Other partners are believed to be members of Palestinian political factions as well as "independent businessmen," the British newspaper The Independent reported.

Sitting on 14 dunams of land, The Crazy Water Park features swimming pools, ponds with pedal boats, three waterslides, a 100-meter-long canal, a restaurant, a cafe, and a secluded area shaded by a tent where adults can sit on carpets and listen to music...

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy recently argued at National Review Online that the federal government has reason to investigate Rashid Khalidi, an activist Middle Eastern studies professor at Columbia University. What prompted this? Khalidi's efforts to raise $370,000 for a new sea vessel (to be named The Audacity of Hope, after President Barack Obama's second book) designed to break the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

As increasing numbers of pro-Palestinian activists try to break the blockade of Gaza, McCarthy's argument is worth exploring. Are these flotillas legal?

McCarthy notes that it is illegal for Americans "to furnish or fit out a vessel in the service of any foreign entity 'to cruise, or commit hostilities' against a nation with which the U.S. is at peace." Israel, of course, is an American ally that is imposing a policy in Gaza that Washington officially supports.

McCarthy also notes that the Logan Act prohibits U.S. citizens "from carrying on 'any correspondence or intercourse' with any foreign government... to 'defeat the measures of the United States.'" To this end, McCarthy then suggests that the Justice Department should investigate flotilla organizers' communications with the de facto Hamas government in Gaza, particularly if they seek to undermine U.S. policy.

In the end, it is McCarthy's third point that is the most convincing: The Justice Department, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, could also investigate American flotilla organizers for providing material support to a terrorist group...[More.]

Some members of Congress are threatening to reassess US aid to the Lebanese military following its border clash with Israel on Tuesday.

"To start shooting as they did - one person killed, one seriously injured - is a very serious move by the Lebanese army," said Florida Rep. Ron Klein, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in response to a question from The Jerusalem Post.

"It certainly is going to come up in our conversations in the Congress about the continued support of the Lebanese Army," he said.

Klein was speaking by phone from Israel, where he happened to be visiting when the incident, which also left two Lebanese soldiers and a journalist dead, took place.

He noted that the UN had confirmed that Israel was operating in its territory while cutting down a tree along the border, when the Lebanese army opened fire.

Klein indicated the degree to which higher-ups had been involved would affect Congress's view.

"If in fact it's factually shown that this was a Lebanese government authorized action, I think a lot of members would be very concerned about continuing to provide military support to Lebanon," he said. "I certainly would be."

Last year, the US approved $100 million in assistance to the Lebanese military, as well as $109m. in economic aid and $20m. in anti-narcotics funds. The Obama administration has requested the same levels for 2011, with small increases for anti-narcotics, anti-terror and military training programs...

On Thursday evening, al-Manar television quoted an unnamed Lebanese army source involved in Wednesday night's meeting between UNIFIL and the Israel and Lebanese armies as saying that the order to open fire in Tuesday's border skirmish had "come directly from the [army] command."...

The University of Chicago is a great school. And academic freedom is a great principle. But should there ever be limits on who can teach what?

Consider the following course offering from Chicago's 2010 catalog:

Zionism and Palestine. This course has three broad aims, the first of which is to explore the various strands of early Zionist thinking in Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second aim is to analyze how the European Zionists who came to Palestine created the Jewish state in the first half of the twentieth century. The third aim is to examine some key developments in Israel's history since it gained its independence in 1948. While the main focus is on Zionism and the state of Israel, considerable attention is paid to the plight of the Palestinians and the development of Palestinian nationalism over the past century.

This sounds unexceptionable, though one might detect a hint of something amiss in the one-sided reference to the "plight of the Palestinians." In fact, there is something amiss. The professor teaching this course is one John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is a an expert in international relations. He has no record of scholarship in the history of Zionism, let alone command of the relevant languages to acquire a knowledge of that history.

...the main event in the aftermath of the clash is an anticipated major speech by Hassan Nasrallah. The speech was scheduled for 20:30 on August 3, 2010 (Lebanon time), but its exact time was being constantly changed. Senior HizbAllah officials predict that Nasrallah's speech "will mark a turning point" for Lebanon and the entire Middle East. They explained that Nasrallah would "focus on the national and Islamic dimension of the July [2006] war" and its implications for the current situation in the entire region. Nasrallah's speech, the Senior HizbAllah officials stress, "will mainly be devoted to talk about the meaning of victory against Israel" in both past wars and in the historic confrontation still to come.

Given the above, the August 2, 2010, rocket firing from southern Sinai of Aqaba, Eilat, and a base of the US-led Multinational Force & Observers Organization in Sinai might also be part of this kind of made-to-order "proof" of Israeli aggression. Significantly, the six 122mm GRAD rockets fired from Sinai were made in Iran or North Korea, strongly suggesting that the perpetrators were Iran-sponsored main group rather than a Palestinian fringe entity.

...Struger: "I can confirm that we received notification from the IDF early in the morning about this work, and we conveyed this to Lebanese army. Our investigation has been launched today..."...

Community Vigil for Gilad Shalit: 1500 Days in Captivity

Tuesday Aug 3 - 7:30pm

BU. in front of Marsh Chapel, 735 Comm. Ave,. Boston, MA

Participants include:
* Rony Yedidia, Deputy Consul General of Israel for New England
* Cantor Elias Rosenberg, Temple Emanuel, Newton

More info:
Todd Young
617.428.0012x1155
www.davidproject.org

Today's Example of Ridiculous Media Bias Against Israel

Along the border with Lebanon, east of Metulla, some bushes were pushing in on the border fence. The fence is set in slightly from the border precisely so that Israeli soldiers can work on it. The IDF called UNIFIL and informed the UN that this work was going to be done today so that they could tell the Lebanese army that there was no aggression going on but just routine maintenance. Soldiers from UNIFIL came to observe and can be seen standing next to Israeli soldiers in the photos. Photographers were also standing by to film the operation.

But Lebanese soldiers opened fire on the Israelis who were working and in no way acting aggressively. The fact that journalists were standing next to the Lebanese soldiers shows that they knew Israel was going to do this maintenance and were observing. After the Israeli soldiers were ambushed, they returned fire. Reportedly, one Israeli officer, three Lebanese soldiers, and a Lebanese (?) journalist were killed.

So how did Reuters and Yahoo using an AP photo report this? By captions on photos saying that Israeli soldiers had crossed into Lebanon and been fired on! Other news agencies merely reported: Israel says the soldiers were inside Israel; Lebanon says they were on Lebanese territory.

Reuters: "An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers."

Yahoo: "A Lebanese officer spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said the clash occurred as Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border." No Israeli is quoted.

AP also missed explaining the story properly: "The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to cut down a tree along the border, a sign of the high level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah....There was no sign of any extensive Israeli preparations for a large-scale operation -- an early indication the clash might not trigger a wider conflict."

The truth is easy to ascertain--did Israel announce the maintenance, permit the photographers and UN people to watch and then cross deliberately into Lebanon?--but Israel is being portrayed as an aggressor that caused the outbreak of fighting. So millions of people will either believe that Israel was at fault or that the event is in question.

Today's unprovoked attack by the Lebanese army against the IDF, took place in Israeli territory along Israeli's Northern border. In some areas, there is a gap between the IDF security fence and the actual border, which is where this attack took place. IDF soldiers were conducting routine maintenance work including clearing bushes from the area. This sort of activity is crucial to keep an open line of sight, to prevent attacks and kidnappings, like the one in the summer of 2006, which was in a similar location.

This crucial work was fully coordinated with UNIFIL, and there was nothing unique about it.

A Lebanese sniper opened fire towards IDF forces in a clear and blatant violation of UN security council resolution 1701.

The IDF retaliated with artillery and helicopter fire.

IDF intelligence is investigating if this was premeditated attack.

The LAF opened fire not at the soldiers who were doing the routine maintainance work on the fence, but at the commanders who were standing nearby observing the work. this indicates that it was a preplanned attack not in reaction to the work on the fence.

We estimate 4 casualties on their side.

Some parts of the LAF are influenced by Hezbollah

After the initial exchange of fire, we were requested to suspend our fire so that they could evacuate their wounded. roughly half an hour after we suspended our fire, LAF shot an RPG at one of our tanks. They missed the tank and our tank returned fire.

IDF only opened fire in response to our soldiers being shot at and wounded.

This is the most serious incident along the northern border since 2006.

UNIFIL forces who toured the site of Tuesday's deadly exchanges of fire on the northern border said the IDF's activity did not warrant the attack launched by Lebanese Army soldiers, Israeli army officials who spoke to UNIFIL representatives said.

According to the IDF, soldiers were performing routine operations in a border-area enclave within Israeli territory when they were ambushed by Lebanese troops.

During the incident, which took place mid-day Tuesday, Lebanese soldiers ambushed an Israeli Engineering Corps force operating on the Israeli side of the border. The Israeli soldiers were clearing bushes along the border fence. According to the army, such activity has become routine since the conclusion of the Second Lebanon War.

Lieutenant Colonel Dov Harari, 45, who commanded the IDF force, was killed in the skirmish, and 30-year-old reservist Captain Ezra Lakia was seriously injured. Two Lebanese soldiers and a local reporter were also killed.

Israeli army officials believe the Lebanese force was operating under a company commander whose decision to open fire on the IDF troops was supported by higher-ranking Lebanese officers...

Israel Defense Forces analysts believe that the Lebanese sniper fire at the Israel-Lebanon border on Tuesday, which killed Lt. Col. Dov Harari and seriously wounded Captain Ezra Lakia, was in fact an ambush planned by a Lebanese officer who was encouraged by his commanders.

The exchange of fire began when Israeli soldiers approached the border in order to trim some bushes that had grown along the fence. The operation had been coordinated in advance with UNIFIL, which in turn informed the Lebanese army.

As in previous cases of such Israeli activity, the Lebanese army deployed soldiers to the area. After a round of yelling, unanswered by the Israeli troops, Lebanese snipers opened deliberate fire at the IDF observation post several hundred meters into Israel, the IDF said. Harari and Lakia had manned the observation post, and both sustained serious gunfire wounds.

According to information gathered by the IDF, the sniper fire was ordered by a commanding officer within the Lebanese army. The IDF has found no indication that the officer received an order to open fire, and believe that the decision was his alone. However, it is known that the particular officer was influenced by inciting remarks against Israel made by the top commanders of the Lebanese army in the recent past.

Following Israel's harsh response to the sniper fire, which included tank and artillery fire as well as the bombing from the air of Lebanese army posts, killing at least two Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and President Michel Suleiman asked international bodies to impose an immediate cease-fire.

...Over the past few weeks, as Turkey has come under increasing criticism in Washington and Europe over its handling of the flotilla episode, there has been a marked moderation of its demands for resuming normal diplomatic ties with Israel.

The decision on Monday by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's inner cabinet, a forum known as the septet, to agree to participate in a panel established by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was largely viewed as an attempt to meet one of these demands and thereby significantly reduce the tension.

"Part of our agreeing to this process is that Israel, as the prime minister has said, is interested in reducing tensions with Turkey and bringing the ties with Turkey back to normal," a senior government official said.

Ban called the establishment of the panel an "unprecedented development."

"I thank the leaders of the two countries, with whom I have engaged in last-minute consultations over the weekend, for their spirit of compromise and forward-looking cooperation," Ban said in a statement on Monday.

He had met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Friday and spoke with him at least once over the weekend.

Netanyahu's office issued a statement saying that the decision to participate in the panel had been made "in the wake of diplomatic contacts that have been held in recent weeks in order to ensure that this was indeed a panel with a balanced and fair written mandate."...

The child hydrotherapy rehabilitation center adjoining Sderot's Sapir Academic College provides therapy and workshops for specialneeds children who live in the western Negev and is used by children from the entire country.

On Saturday night, an upgraded Kassam rocket scored a direct hit on the ceiling of the center.

The Kassam hit not far from where Sapir student Roni Yechiah was killed on February 27, 2008.

The attack followed the explosion of a Iranian Grad missile that hit the city of Ashkelon on Friday morning.

We are approaching a total of 400 rocket attacks launched from Gaza since the cease-fire that halted Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in January 2009.

Palestinians from Hamas controlled Gaza have targeted Ashkelon, with a population of 125,000 Israelis, since March 2008.

A film crew from our Sderot Media Center arrived a few hours after Saturday's attack, where an IDF Home Front Command officer was assessing the damage.

As the crew filmed, a childcare worker arrived at the destroyed office. She was overwhelmed by the devastation.

She walked through the rubble that had been her office and, looking through the mess, she picked up a photo of her two children that had been hanging on the wall.

Had the rocket struck on any other day, it would have been a catastrophe, killing and wounding the children at the center. During the week the center is open until 10 p.m. and is packed with hundreds of children and therapists.

Because there were no casualties the attack has not remained in the headlines for very long...