January 2011 Archives

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

http://www.solomonia.com/wp

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

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

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and it hasn't updated (that is, if this is still the top post you are seeing), that is because you are subscribed to an outdated feed that isn't being updated anymore.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

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

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

See you on the other side...

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

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

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

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

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

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

[By Adam Levick, crossposted from CiF Watch.]

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

[By Lee Kaplan, of StoptheISM.]

Quick - What rhymes with treason?

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

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

News item:

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

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

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

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

[By Daniel Greenfield, crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

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

I said what I had to say on Sunday.

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

Sarah Palin's video responding to the slanders:

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

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

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

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

Head on over if you're interested.

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

With thanks: Sylvia

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

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

[By Israelinurse, crossposted from CiF Watch.]

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

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

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

More from Carl, here.

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

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

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

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A salute from us ordinary folks. /s

[By Lee Kaplan, of StoptheISM.]

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

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

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

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

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

[By Israeligirl.]

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

AP Image

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

Here is a summary of the events:

There is a nasty phenomenon in the blogosphere (and I guess we'll add the twittersphere to that as well) that compels people to jump on board to a breaking news item before they've bothered to check their footing (the MSM does it as well, but tends to be a bit slower about it). There's a lot of value -- in traffic and respect -- if you can get in early on an issue, be the person collecting and disseminating information, and best of all, if you can add some data of your own. You will be mentioned. You will be linked. People will look to you in the future.

But there is danger in opportunity. If you hop on the bandwagon in order not to be left behind, you could wind up with a whole lot of egg on your face when you discover that the narrative you've been feverishly and passionately posting on proves false. I've put up posts in the past I regretted owing exactly to this phenomenon -- though precious few and I like to think I've learned my lesson in this regard. My traffic may not be as high as it could be, but I like also to think that I maintain a small degree more of my integrity than I otherwise might have.

You can get your credibility back, but that relies on you doing the right thing when new facts emerge and you show you're better for the mistake.

You know where this is going, right?

Yesterday a horrible crime was perpetrated in Arizona. A real tragedy. And in spite of the fact that it was hours before anything whatsoever was known about the shooter, that didn't stop a whole lot of people from assigning blame. In fact, one could be forgiven for arriving at the conclusion, listening to some people, that the murders were committed by Sarah Palin with the help of the Tea Party.

This reflects nothing about Palin or the Tea Party, and everything about the fevered minds of the people pushing that narrative. It would seem that Palin Derangement Syndrome has trumped the Bush strain in spades. In fact, even after the facts started to emerge, here on the morning of day 2, there remains not just no proof, but no evidence whatsoever that Sarah Palin or the Tea Party had anything whatsoever, even in the fevered mind of the perpetrator, to do with this crime.

Some people seem to simply want to blame Sarah Palin, they need to blame Sarah Palin. But this is really about them and their need to slander someone for political purposes, not about healing the political system or trying to make sense of the senseless. It's slander, pure and simple.

I will refrain in this post from providing all of the multitude of examples from the left that could be twisted for use as blame for political violence, or the actual political violence that has arisen from the left, not the right, in recent years.[I have a good reason for that. There's another internet phenomenon whereby people start defending their side by posting "evidence" of the other side doing what they themselves are accusing others of doing -- argument by irony -- and everyone forgets that that wasn't the point in the first place. Everyone gets so busy rubbing the other side's noses in it that they forget what the point was supposed to be in the first place. I realize that's a bit convoluted, but hopefully you follow.] Others have done that already and I'll link some of it below. It happens to be beside the point in this case.

It's irrelevant to the issue, that is, unless you are one of those who have spent any part of the last 24 hours talking about (or blogging about, or re-tweeting about) Sarah Palin -- a connection, I emphasize, for which there is still no evidence whatsoever -- and failing to mention any examples on the other side of the political divide.

We have a word for people whose fevered minds make connections and assign blame for which there is no evidence -- conspiracy nuts. I'm not sure which is worse, people who may be suffering under a delusion, or people whose minds are so fogged with hatred that they use a blood-soaked tragedy to slander a political enemy who happens to be completely innocent.

Oh, and by the way, on no account do you have to be a Palin "fan" simply to be disgusted by seeing the slander and hatred that are thrown her way.

For further reading:

Legal Insurrection: Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona

Instapundit roundup: BARACK OBAMA: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

Byron York: Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings

theblogprof: Figures: Man who shot AZ Congresswoman in the head is a left-wing lunatic

The unseemly rush to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Republicans for murder in Arizona

Palin 'Target' Graphic in Perspective

A disgrace to nuts everwhere

Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Raymond Massey, Alan Hale, Van Heflin, and my personal favorite, Olivia de Havilland, still living at the age of 93, albeit in France:

Via Barbara Ledeen, from Elam: Over 70 Christians arrested in Iran during Christmas:

[By Barry Rubin, crossposted from The Rubin Report. Originally published in edited form at Pajamas Media.]

There has been a great deal of discussion in the United States about the Constitution--despite the fact that it was promulgated over two centuries ago--and whether it is relevant to contemporary America. Indeed, the U.S. Congress took the step--which amazingly turned out to be controversial and supposedly partisan--of actually reading that brief document at the start of its session.

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

The massacre of 21 Copts at a New Year's Eve mass has been called 'a watershed moment'.

The Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg blogs:

"I've been struck over the past couple of days by the lackadaisical coverage of what seems to be the most important story coming out of the Middle East right now -- The Salafist war on Christians in the Middle East is intensifying fairly rapidly, with profound consequences not only for Christians in the lands of their faith's earliest history (keep in mind that Christianity had planted itself in Egypt well before the birth of Muhammad) but for the rights of all ethnic and religious minorities in the greater Middle East".

Helloooo, Jeffrey! We have been here before. Where were you when the Jews - also in the region well before the birth of Muhammad - were being systematically deprived of their rights ? Where were you when the Jews were 'ethnically cleansed' from the Middle East and most of North Africa, to the point where the 80,000 Jews of Egypt are down to double figures, the 150,000 Jews of Iraq down to single digits, and no Jews live in Libya or Algeria?

[A guest post by Irving Miller.]

I wanted to draw your attention to this important article on the supposed "impoverished" Gaza: Gaza's Economy: How Hamas Stays in Power. Not only are they making money (including much transacted with shekels brought in from Israeli banks), but they are exporting money as well. Here are some snips:

If you're a pro-Israel blogger looking for some recognition for your underappreciated blogging greatness, head on over to IsraellyCool to read about, and nominate some of your material for, his 2011 Pro-Israel Blog-Off. A star-studded panel of judges will make the decisions.

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZIonism.]

The ADL is shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- that Hamas is antisemitic:

I can't help but remark that the press release itself is misleading. It fails to mention that IDF shells did not hit the school, and that all the fatalities were in the street outside the school where a Hamas mortar team had set up and fired at IDF troops. Five Hamas fighters were killed there, and an undetermined number of civilians who were next to them (certainly fewer than 43). Even the ADL has accepted the Palestinian version of the event!

Cool stuff, via the Daily Alert:

When the "solutions" are worse than the problems they supposedly address. Activists without oversight.

Finally got a chance to watch this speech that's making the rounds, delivered by newly elected Rep. Allen West. Great:

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

As the proud owner of three cats (or vice-versa as it often seems), I have not yet deployed them for intelligence use. However, to read various Middle Eastern newspapers, you would think that Israel is the world leader in having animal espionage agents. This is my list so far but tell me if I'm missing anything:

Egypt: sharks (shark attacks in Red Sea blamed on Israeli effort to damage Egyptian tourism. Potential joke: What's next? Sending in lawyers?).

West Bank: snakes; wild boars (Israeli settlers allegedly release poison snakes and other animals to bite Palestinians. Potential joke: Still working on that one.).

Iran: squirrels (Mossad squirrels cross border to gather information. Potential joke: A good choice given the nuts running Iran's Islamist regime.)

Via Sippican Cottage, enjoy:

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

News item:

Probably this resolution will say something about the settlements being 'illegal'. But this is not a simple concept. At the risk of oversimplification, international law is based on the consent of the parties involved: the treaties and agreements that nations have agreed to be bound by. Disputes can be adjudicated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), insofar as the parties agree to submit such issues to its jurisdiction (there is also an International Criminal Court, but it only has jurisdiction over 'crimes' like genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Israel is not a signatory to the statute which created it).

[A guest post by Irving Miller.]

There will be a riot in the Ramallah suburb of Bil'in tomorrow. There is one every Friday, because Fatah likes it that way.

Many weeks they are very small, with a mix of PA employees and jihad tourists along for the thrill. Anti-Israel activists take videos and post them on youtube.

If you look at the video of a typical Friday in Bil'in, April 2, 2010, you see the blond jihad tourists, the banners, and the speeches. Then the crowd marches towards the separation barrier. At 1:23 you see them dismantle part of the fence. The elimination of the security barrier that has prevented so many suicide bombings is the goal of these demonstrations.

At 1:30 and 1:57 you see young men throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. At 2:06 a man uses a slingshot. Stones and slingshots are lethal weapons, for that matter, a baseball is is a lethal weapon; it can kill you. In the April 2 video more stones are thrown at 2:22 and at another slingshot at 2:47. Most of these films, however, edit out images of Palestinian men slinging rocks at Israelis. According to Neil Rogachevsky, this is made easier by the fact that the men attacking with stones and slingshots stand apart from the jihad tourists and photographers.

[A guest post by Anna Geifman.]

On January 2, 2011 YNet published several reports about a violent episode at the checkpoint Bekaot, southeast of Nablus. See: here, here, and here.

The central theme of the Yediot Akhronot journalists was IDF's use of fire against an Arab civilian. In contrast to soldiers stationed at the roadblock and equipped with weapons and protective gear, the man from the West Bank "was unarmed". In his hand he held only a water bottle. According to Palestinian sources, he was on his way to work.

Yet another instance of Israel's uncalled-for violence against Palestinian civilians, it would seem. The incident was fatal for the 20-year-old Kfar Tubas resident, Mohammad Dragma, allegedly sprayed with bullets from close range and killed. But of course it was for the reader to decide whether or not this use of force was an obvious overreaction.

I wanted to make what I hope will be my final few thoughts (yeah, good luck with that) on the death of Jawaher Abu Rahma at Bilin a week ago. I think Rabbi Kaufman has a good run-down of the facts here: Another "War Crime" that Wasn't - Abu Rahma

It's clear that Abu Rahma had some sort of physical ailment, as tear gas deaths are extremely rare (actually unheard of). There is video from the day of the usual suspects literally jumping around in the gas, so there was nothing out of the ordinary in the gas itself (despite some claims). We will assume that CS gas was a factor in Abu Rahma's death. Why assume so? Because there is no reason, from a perspective of assigning blame and responsibility, not to do so. Unless IDF soldiers held her down and poured chemicals down her throat, there is no evidence whatsoever that they did anything wrong.

Quite the contrary, IDF activity seems to be calibrated to avoid confrontation and injury and everyone knows what to expect. In the first video in this post, you can see the sort of pushing and shoving confrontation that occurs when the rioters get too close.

Activists intend to create a physical confrontation. Pushing, shoving, rock throwing, slinging, molotov cocktails...and cutting the Security Fence. The Fence is not a joke. It is there to protect lives, not serve as a prop for political grandstanding and it is the IDF's responsibility to protect it (the fence's route has been ordered changed by the Israeli courts, but this section of fence will remain in place until the new section is completed -- not a joke). There is no evidence that the IDF uses anything but appropriate crowd dispersal methods to accomplish their mission, and there is no evidence they did anything but that in this case. Even I have been caught up with the hype of the event, and have felt the need to debunk the idea that this woman's death was caused by the Israelis when no such complete debunking is even necessary.

Just as the Friday Bilin tourist protest is a predictable happening, so it is predictable that the Palestinian Arabs will take any opportunity to demonize and assign malicious intent to the Jews no matter what they have done or how innocent their intent. The ISM makes no bones about intentionally sending young Western dupes into harm's way, and has had a number of successes where they were injured or even killed. You may remember the story of the opportunistic use of a child's tragic swing set death to paint Israelis as child murderers. It goes on and on. This is another column of march in the Arabs' war with the destruction of the Jewish State as its goal.

So Abu Rahma's death was an opportunity to yet again blame Jews for being killers, even though the real blame for any injuries is on the rioters themselves.

But what about those on the Israeli left who have taken what they should know is at worst a tragedy to demonize their own people? What to make of the Didi Remez's and the +972 crowd and the Derfners who seem to revel in the demonization? That's a question beyond the scope of this short post, but I am reminded of David Frum's description of the paleoconservatives:

[Children as fodder for the meat grinder of jihad, reported by Palestinian Media Watch.]

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

A new Wikileaks document is being spun by some media to imply something critical about Israel's policy in the Gaza Strip. In fact, the secret cable shows the exact opposite. It also shows that what I've been writing on the subject was 100 percent accurate.

The U.S. State Department cable dated November 3, 2008, says that the goal of Israel's sanctions on the Gaza Strip was to keep Gaza's economy functioning at the lowest possible level without causing a humanitarian crisis.

Precisely:

[By Dexter Van Zile, from CAMERA Snapshots.]

The New Year's Day attack on a church in Alexandria that claimed the lives of 23 Coptic Christians was preceded by threats against churches and individual believers in Europe and North America, raising the possibility that Coptic Christmas celebrations slated to take place on Jan. 7, 2011 will be marred by acts of violence, not only in Egypt but elsewhere throughout the world. Fortunately, these threats have been getting a fair amount of attention from the mainstream press.

On Dec. 21, 2010 - more than a week before the attack in Alexandria - the Toronto Sun reported that Muslim extremists have posted the names, phone numbers and photos of Coptic believers in Canada on the Internet with the apparent desire to target them for death. "The fact [that] photos and phone numbers accompany the names of those targeted is believed to mean someone inside Canada is providing the information [to extremists outside the country]," the Toronto Sun reported.

Three days after the attack, the Washington Post reported that governments throughout Europe have provided stepped up protection to Coptic Christians in their countries in response to online threats against this community.

While such security arrangements have long been part of Jewish life in Europe, the need for officials in Europe to provide security for local Christian worship services is a new phenomenon.

Will media outlets cover the anti-Coptic incitement in the Middle East? They should. It's not that hard a story to cover. Websites fomenting hostility toward Coptic Christians are relatively easy to find on the Internet. For example, this anti-Evangelization website displays an image of the decapitated head of Coptic Pope Shenouda III surrounded by flames. The image is displayed below the jump. (Warning: Not for the faint of heart.)

Good material from Steven Rosen:

He takes you through it, step by step. There is good news, however...

Good stuff from Lee Smith at The Tablet: High Morals - A condescending moral double standard allows Western thinkers--notably Times foreign-affairs columnist Roger Cohen--to praise the Middle East's worst regimes

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

Malcolm Hoenlein...on a humanitarian mission (Photo: Rosalyn Zinger)

Oh no! Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to the restoration of the country's synagogues and cemeteries, especially in Damascus and Aleppo.

Assad made his pledge, al- Ahram reports, during a meeting about 10 days ago with Malcom Hoenlein, the kippa-wearing executive vice-chairman of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations. Hoenlein was not sent by the Israeli government, but was on a 'humanitarian mission', according to Ynet News.

Why greet this piece of news with dismay? The restoration of the crumbling and abandoned Jewish heritage in Arab countries must surely be a good thing. It will remind Arabs that Jews, whose history in Arab countries their regimes are so eager to erase, lived there continuously since Biblical times.

[By Daniel Greenfield, crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

At the start of the new year, the Governor of Punjab was murdered because he had opposed the call by Pakistan's Islamists to execute a Christian woman on false blasphemy charges arising out of her harassment by her Muslim neighbors. The murderer was one of his own security personnel. Around the same time in Egypt, security forces withdrew from a Coptic church, and an hour later a car bomb went off killing 21 and injuring a 100 more. And this was not the first time security forces had pulled back before an attack on a church.

The first order of business was to muddy the waters. The Egyptian government treated it as a national attack on Egypt by foreigners. The Obama White House issued statements falsely claiming that both Christians and Muslims were casualties of the Alexandria attack. Both avoided clearly identifying either the victims of the perpetrators or addressing the Muslim mobs chanting Allah Akbar while the dead burned. When the Burqa is lifted long enough to identify the attackers as Muslims, it will be only to describe them as "extremists". But it also clear that these "extremists" are represented in the security forces of both countries. Which once again raises the question of just what is an extremist anyway.

A bit too soon to ask if the next Miss America will be Jewish, but this girl has certainly gone far, fast: The Next Jewish Miss America?

In the 89-year history of the Miss America pageant, there has been only one Jewish winner: Bess Myerson, in 1945. On January 15, there may be another: Loren Galler Rabinowitz, Miss Massachusetts.

The 24-year-old Harvard University graduate from Brookline is the daughter of two doctors, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and a novice when it comes to pageants, but she is no stranger to competition...

...In addition to standing only 5 feet 2.5 inches and being the only Jewish 2011 Miss America contender, Galler Rabinowitz has no entourage and a minuscule history of competitive pageantry.

"Anthropologically, it's been so interesting to do this," she said.

The eye-opener has worked both ways, as Galler Rabinowitz fielded questions from other contestants about keeping kosher and about her Conservadox Jewish lifestyle. She also writes her own material...

More.

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

What happens when the New York Times publishes, with no investigation, an atrocity story about Israel that is not only false but ridiculously so, based on the most obvious starting point: death by tear-gas doesn't happen?

There's a long history of Palestinians (including the Palestinian Authority) making up atrocity stories that blame Israel and then having these widely disseminated by the mass media. This is one of the main factors leading to increased hatred or criticism of Israel. These tales are disproven but the facts never catch up with the lies. Here's a history of the phenomenon with a number of examples.

Now we have the first phony slander of 2011. You can check out the cartoon version also. The Palestinian Authority claims that Jawaher Abu Rahma, 36 years old, died during a demonstration, killed by "poison" in tear gas fired there by Israeli soldiers.

Looking Back at an Eclipsed Earth Explanation: Here is what the Earth looks like during a solar eclipse. The shadow of theMoon can be seen darkening part ofEarth. This shadow moved across the Earth at nearly 2000 kilometers per hour. Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon. This spectacular picture of the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station. The two bright spots that appear on the upper left are thought to be Jupiter and Saturn. Mir was deorbited in a controlled re-entry in 2001.

Now it emerges why the Palestinian Authority wouldn't release the medical records of Jawaher Abu Rahma, allegedly killed by tear gas (!) at the weekly Bilin riot. They were lying: Story about Woman Killed by Tear Gas is a Hoax, Says IDF

Jameel has a very interesting report from an IDF conference call on the subject, here.

Carl also reports back on this bit of "opportunistic martyrdom".

Also Elder: "Tear gas death" was a hoax

Pure Pallywood.

Update: A reader sends in this academic snippet about cancer in Arab society, as to why this may still figure in to the shame narrative and may go to explaining why not all the girl's family may not have known of her sickness:

Update2: J.E. Dyer calls Abu Rahma "The Palestinian Tawana Brawly." Good one.

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

On this the first working day of 2011 in the Western world, go read Melanie Phillips in her analysis of what's going on in the world. While she focuses on the demonization of Israel and the bizarre distortion of Middle East realities in the West, her argument applies across the board to the internal debate in Western democracies today.

In short, as in the title of her book, this can be described as turning things upside down, creating a counter-reality based on emotion over facts and the belief that privileged groups can be said to be always right whatever they do because of past claimed victim status. This new way of looking at the world throws out the window all of the logical, pragmatic, and democratic concepts that have made the West so successful.

[By Ira Sharkansky, via email.]

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is at least a century old, although it was not described clearly in its present terms before 1948, or perhaps 1967. It has had periods of sporadic violence, organized mayhem,and most recently a campaign of Palestinians and their friends to achieve politically what they could not obtain with violence. It is not clear if their motives are the complete destruction of Israel, or only what they say in the international languages about 1967 borders, a capital in Jerusalem, and the refugees' rights of return.

One must always be modest about predicting the future, but it may well be too late for any of what the Palestinians want.

Notorious Israel and America hater Norman Finkelstein has an interesting speaking engagement planned for March:

This would come as no surprise as Tufts' Jewish pro-Israel stance has a checkered past. Current J Street spokesperson Amy Spitalnick is a Tufts alum and was seen protesting Daniel Pipes as a student.

For those who need a reminder of the sort of creature Norman Finkelstein, let us recall the spectacle of him virtually on his knees begging Hizballah to go to war against Israel.

If true, this would be one of J Street's most odious associations to date, and that's really saying something.

J Street national must be flipping, Here's Spitalnick on twitter:

So the questions: Did Finkelstein make it up? Did a J Street U'er at Tufts give the go ahead and is now getting a lecture from his betters? What gives? Expect a story of interesting implications however it shakes out.

[By Daniel Greenfield, crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

Headlines in New York papers are blaring once again that Islamophobia is up. Up and rising. Statistics released by the state's Division of Criminal Justice Services reveals that Islamophobic bias attacks are up by a whopping 15 percent.

Just a reminder that being of the educated and wealthier class does not preclude hateful stupidity. Needless to say, Hizballah and Iran are included in this, too.

[By Adam Levick, crossposted from CiF Watch.]

We just came across this little nugget of information from a site called Views of the World.

One region of the world certainly seems bit, well, enlarged doesn't it? Just for the sake of comparison:

[By Geary, crossposted from CiF Watch.]

One area where this is most obvious is environmentalism. According to War on Want, the only way to fight climate change (and presumably everything else they don't like) is to smash capitalism.

Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, has often expressed his utter dismay at this process of politicisation:

His words are echoed by other experts in the field of human development:

(CS Prakash, Professor of plant genetics)

Stewart Brand, one-time Green guru, describes in his book Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto the infiltration of his field in the 90s by far-left ideologues, refugees from the lost Cold War who saw environmentalism as a new way of attacking the west and its economic system.

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

Hey, boys and girls! Notice how we keep finding out more and more about the corruption of the Ground Zero mosque project and its chief sponsors? Well, now we discover that the whole thing received a lot of secret help from NY City's mayor and government to ensure it was approved even though--on purely legal and financial grounds--that was a questionable decision.

The mayor's office says that the project received only normal help. Wow, I'll bet a lot of New York developers would be amazed at that statement. But let's never forget that this project, budgeted at far over $100 million, has no serious money raised!

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

News item:

PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, was also at the "protest" -- a weekly gathering of hundreds of Palestinian Arabs, Israeli extremists and international activists who attempt to destroy the security barrier.

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

One should not generalize in describing European states. Still, the case of the Netherlands shows interesting points regarding both attitudes toward Israel and Islam.

Let's start with the Israel issue. I've been closely following the new Dutch government, formed after an election in which 55 percent of the voters supported explicitly pro-Israel parties.

When the new foreign minister Uri Rosenthal was asked about the country's policy toward Israel by the extremist (and virulently hostile) Green Left party, he replied that he thinks it's necessary to develop further the relationship with Israel because the right to exist of Israel, the only democracy in the region, is still put in doubt by some nations and groups. "The Netherlands want to push back against attempts of delegitimizing Israel. Israel's right to exist must be very clear and Israel should should feel supported in this by the international community."

[By Vic Rosenthal, crossposted from FresnoZionism.]

Details here.

I am always surprised at the lack of understanding of the idea of Zionism. It's really simple: it's the movement for national self-determination of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Unlike some national movements, it does not declare that the Jewish people is superior to other peoples.

[By Daniel Greenfield, crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

It is often forgotten that one of the causes of the evolution of the modern American urban union was the lawless suppression of workers by Democratic party affiliated political machines, and yet it did not take so very long before the union became an outgrowth of that same political machine. And having wiped out nearly every independent industry with which it was associated, the only unions still surviving are those in control of either municipal services or state subsidized service providers, particularly in the medical field.

[By Lee Kaplan of StoptheISM.]

Academic leader Leon Botstein knowingly allows Hamas-support group to use campus facilities and money to aid terror front group ISM

Bard College is a small idyllic liberal arts college located near Annendale-on-the-Hudson in New York State. A shining star for Bard is supposedly its campus president, one Leon Botstein, Botstein has been the President of Bard College for the past seventeen years, a base from which he promotes his dual careers as an educator and music conductor. Botstein is also Jewish, born in Switzerland and the grandson of victims who died in the Holocaust. He is presently the second string conductor for the Jerusalem Philharmonic orchestra.

Botstein has decided to allow the International Solidarity Movement(ISM), a group that openly admits it works with State Department designated terrorist groups such as Hamas, the PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to set up shop on his campus using campus facilities and student activity money to train ISM activists to go to the West Bank and interfere with anti-terror operations of the Israeli army, as well as to act as human shields for Palestinian terror groups.

The ISM at Bard has actually invited Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the ISM and one of the main organizers of the Gaza Flotilla boats that continually try to run the Israeli navy's control of the sea lanes to Gaza to import weapons for Hamas. Arraf was invited to campus to do recruiting for ISM terrorism enablers once before and I alerted Botstein then, too, who did nothing about it. The Bard ISM campus group even recently raised money for the Gaza flotillas that included IHH, an al Qaeda-affiliated "charity" that was involved in the millennium bomb plot to blow up the LA airport in 2000. It is common knowledge the ISM organizes these flotillas in order to try to enable the Iranians to run weapons to the Hamas to attack Israeli civilians on Israel's southern border with rockets and mortars. Photos are available of ISM activists receiving medals from Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Lynn points out this excellent essay in the JPost, a message from Israel's Jews to the diaspora's: The gloves are off. Where is criticism OK, and where does the line get stepped over? Green has some advice. Here's a snip, but read it all:

[By Ben Cohen, crossposted from The Propagandist.]

Abu Khalil, seen here in a picture which may serve as a warning about the misuse of hair restoration products, berates me for my latest piece - published here in The Propagandist and on The Huffington Post - about Al Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper with a Strasserite editorial line: anti-American, anti-capitalist and viciously antisemitic.

Abu Khalil, whom I have never met and never corresponded with, wants his readers to believe that I have no knowledge of Marx's oeuvre (dude, don't get into that with me - I really do.) And he's also spitting rage that a "Zionist hoodlum" like me - don't you just love that deliciously retro, Soviet term of abuse? - should criticize an Arab newspaper when I don't read Arabic.

It's that last point which has triggered my decision to respond. Abu Khalil is right. I don't read Arabic and I'd like to explain why. In 1941, my father's family was ethnically cleansed from Iraq in the wake of the farhud, a pogrom against Baghdad's Jewish community instigated by similarly "angry Arabs," allied with the Nazis and spurred on by the notorious Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, which resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries and destroyed homes. Had it not been for that event - painstakingly documented in Edwin Black's superb book on the subject - my mother tongue would have been Arabic.

Hence my desire to set the record straight. And now I'll move on.

[By Ira Sharkansky, via email.]

While I do not claim expertise in the history or politics of Great Britain, my impression is that the Munich Agreement of 1938, involving Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler (" . . . peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.") is an icon of shame in that country. It represented great power pressure on the weak government of Czechoslovakia, and traded away part of another country's territory for the empty hope of peace. You find reference to the event under "appeasement" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Economist is part of my Friday morning routine. I view it as the best news magazine in the English language. I usually excuse its tilt against Israel as not overly extreme, insofar as it is generally balanced with a reasonable assessment of Israel's options.

An article put on its website on December 29th, dealing with Israel, the Palestinians, and Barack Obama fell outside my parameters of tolerance. The Economist on this occasion is closer to the spirit of Neville Chamberlain than to that of Winston Churchill.