Errror In NYTimes Romney Claim

Here's how the NYTimes opened its story by Ashley Parker and Richard A. Oppel Jr. (two needed to cover for one Jodi R.?)

JERUSALEM — Mitt Romney offended Palestinian leaders on Monday by suggesting that cultural differences explain why the Israelis are so much more economically successful than Palestinians, thrusting himself again into a volatile issue while on his high-profile overseas trip.

Did you catch the error?

No?

Oh.

Well, that opening sentence lead-in should have been written

Palestinian leaders claimed Mitt Romney offended them on Monday

That would be fair journalism.  Not every statement is truthful, even if it need be published.  And what one person considers offensive may not be.


____________

P.S.  Read this. And this.  This.

And Seth Mandel.  And Max Boot.

^

Can TV Sex Entertainment Be Politically Relevant?

Sure, why not?

Look what I found at Pajamas Media:

Larry David’s Curb Confession: Leftist Jews Want to Have Humiliating Sex

with Anti-Semitic, Muslim Women

This piece, by David Swindle, associate editor for FrontPage Magazine and the managing editor for NewsReal Blog, relates how Larry David, the leftist creator-star of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm has "crafted one of his show’s greatest, most important episodes — and all apparently by accident."  Which is...?

Okay, here it is

(Warning – plot spoilers of course follow)

The premise of the episode: Larry and his friend/manager Jeff discover a new “Palestinian” Chicken restaurant and decide to go in spite of knowing that their fellow Jews would disapprove. Once there they chow down on the best chicken they’ve ever eaten, indifferent to the anti-Semitic posters on the walls. Larry also discovers a new object of lust: the sexy “Palestinian” woman who manages the restaurant...But how does Larry win the affections of the dark-haired Muslim beauty?

Later in the episode Larry and Jeff return to the restaurant with their friend Marty Funkhouser who has recently converted from Reform Judaism to Orthodox. He wears a yarmulke that’s more attention-grabbing and ostentatious than any Orthodox Jew I’ve ever known. Before they enter Larry tries to force Marty to take it off. A fight ensues, attracting the attention of the Muslims eating inside. When the fight is over Larry has ripped off Marty’s yarmulke and frightened him back to his car. When he and Jeff enter they are applauded and embraced as fellow anti-Semites. (One imagines that this is a comparable reaction to what Noam Chomsky got when he visited Hezbollah.) The “Palestinian” manager, Shara, [played by Anne Bedian, who is Canadian-born of Armenian background] then approaches Larry, sexually aroused by this act of a secular Jew tormenting an Orthodox Jew.

The inevitable sex scene between the two of them follows. Shara is the sexual aggressor, dominating over Larry as he lies on the bed. She shouts anti-Semitic slogans all the while. It apparently isn’t just Larry’s fantasy to have sex with a Muslim woman; rather, he wants to be degraded in the process. [note: "So it was weird to sit on top of Larry, and be like, 'You ready?' And he has this cushion patch on his crotch, to prevent any, whatever, accidental contact, and his assistant is bringing him his breath spray.” That’s hot! “ I was like, 'Come on Larry, I'm doing all the work here, you're not doing anything.' And he said, 'That's what's going to make it funny.' "]

But the satirical truth is kicked up to the next level when Marty walks into Larry’s house to hear the Jew-hating cries of passion upstairs. He sits to wait, forced to listen while Larry continues having sex with a woman who wants to exterminate them both. Afterwards Larry is indifferent at what his good friend has just heard, and Shara sees Marty as she leaves. There’s truth behind the satire. Adam Shapiro is the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and has a “Palestinian” wife who would likely grab Larry’s attention...The episode ends with Larry walking down between two competing protest lines at the opening of a new franchise of the “Palestinian” Chicken restaurant setting up shop next door to a Jewish deli. The unattractive Jewish wife of Jeff angrily swears and yells at Larry for him to come and join them on the pro-Israel side. Meanwhile, Larry’s new “Palestinian” lover is on the other side and says she has a sister named Yasmine she wants to bring to bed with them next time. The episode ends with Larry wondering which side to join and the audience knowing the answer...

Swindle concludes:

...politically the show was about as evil as one could get. (What next Larry? Going to have a kapo during World War II getting abused by Warden Ilsa?) But I couldn’t contain my laughter — if I was writing my own satire of the Left then this would basically be it. That it was written by a progressive and broadcast on HBO is even better.

Another reviewer, Blair Mandell, has this

...the majority of the show is based around Al-Babbas, a chicken restaurant run by anti-Zionist Palestinians. They're not quite militant and they don't seem to want to co-exist with Jewish people in the Holy Land, but they're relatively tolerant of Larry and Jeff's (Jeff Garlin) presence..Larry is also particularly attracted to Shara (Anne Bedian), one of the owners of Al-Babbas who is particularly outspoken against the Jewish people. In Larry's mind, nothing is more attractive than someone who hates you.

...The highlight of the episode comes when Larry and Jeff prevent Marty from wearing his yamaka in Al-Babbas, earning a standing ovation from the other patrons and amorous attention from Shara. She becomes so taken with Larry that she promises to "f*** the Jew" out of him as she shout outs anti-Jewish slogans to maintain her sexual excitement. It's ludicrous and a little unbelievable, but David still makes it work...Outwardly, Larry and Jeff are against the new Al-Babbas, but their hearts are with their stomachs on this one...the beautiful Shara, [later] promises a three-way with Larry and her sister if he joins her side in the fight. Larry's decision isn't shown, but his first choice will always be in his self interest....Larry's side visit to Funkhouser's Rabbi was also pretty funny as he alternately fought with her over the Palestinian Chicken and then apparently used it to force her to allow Funkhouser to go golfing on the Sabbath.

Btw, for unabashed adults, the sex scene is here. And the text of most of it is here.

Now, I've heard of Muslim women justifying rape of Jewish women as part of the struggle (see: Egyptian Lawyer Nagla Al-Imam Suggests Arab Men Should Sexually Harass Israeli Women and Declares: Leave the Land So We Won't Rape You, Al-Arabiya TV (Dubai/Saudi Arabia) - October 31, 2008 ), but actually doing it themselves and to Jewish men?

^

Arab Public Opinion Videoized

EOZ made this video based on  the recent public opinion poll I reviewed.

It's here:




And on YouTube.

^

I Didn't Say That - Is Someone Falling?

This:-

"They [the Palestinian leadership] climb up trees and don't know how to get down, except by falling out of the tree."

Diana Butto, a former legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators, did.

Those poor trees.

^

The Pals. Can't Even Lie Plausibly

Yesterday, I caught this:

Facing ban, Israeli dairy company leaves settlement

Ramallah – Ma’an – A leading Israeli dairy company has moved its factories from the occupied Golan Heights into Israel and will be allowed to market its produce in the West Bank, the National Dignity Fund announced Thursday.

President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government led by Salam Fayyad started the fund, in April banned the sale or purchase of settlement produce in the West Bank, and the deadline to clear shelves of settlement goods is 31 July.

Fund director Omer Qabaha said the move by Tara dairy, which was included in a booklet listing settlement producers that was recently distributed to Palestinian homes and shops, out of the illegal Ketzarim settlement was an accomplishment and said he hoped other companies would follow suit.

A good fellow blogger I alerted, DF, was quick off the mark and he sent me this:

Even on a Friday, Tara’s customer relations department is on the ball.

Here is their response.

David

Dear David

Tara has no factory on the Golan Heights and there were never any products marketed under the name Tara processed at the dairy processing plant on the Golan

Shabbat Shalom


Ralph Ginsberg

Israel Dairy Board

Ha.


- - -

Another Interesting New Book

"Unprotected: Palestinians in Egypt Since 1948", Oroub El-Abed, Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, DC and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

The Abstract:-

The small and scattered Palestinian community in Egypt was formed mainly from the refugee waves coming into the country following the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. Unlike Palestinian refugees in the other areas bordering Palestine, they do not live in refugee camps and are not served by any international agency. Since the late 1970s when there was a change in Egyptian government policy, they have extremely limited rights and a precarious legal status. The great majority of the Palestinians in Egypt is therefore “unprotected.”

Based on face-to-face interviews with scores of Palestinian families in both rural and urban areas of Egypt, this book focuses on the life situations and coping or survival strategies mobilized by a vulnerable population trying to get by in an often adverse legal and political environment. The field research material is set in a solid historical and legal framework, with the interviews used to illustrate chapters on the Palestinians’ arrival in Egypt, settlement patterns, evolving Egyptian policies towards the Palestinians, the PLO’s history with Egypt and its ramifications, changing regulations governing residency rights and travel documents, employment, property ownership, and access to education and health services. A final chapter addresses Palestinian protection under international law, while identity issues are discussed in the context of the post-Oslo return to Gaza and the pull of assimilation. Overall, the book presents a broad portrait of the Palestinian communit(ies) in Egypt and should be of interest to anyone concerned with Palestinians in general, refugee and human rights issues, and Egypt’s long history with the Palestinian movement.

Why interesting?

a) the abstract, at least, skips over the fact that the refugees (and I won't get into an argument over that entire issue here) who lived in Gaza, which was ruled by Egypt, were denied Egyptain citizenship, unlike those in Judea and Samaria who were granted Jordanian citizenship.

b) and it funnily enough uses the term "settlement patterns" and here I presumed that only Jews are "settlers".

First Torture; Now Shooting Each Other

You'd think the Arabs have enough to do trying to kill, maim and bother Jews besides torturing each other that they now have time for intramural activities:-

Clashes have broken out between Palestinian factions in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon. The fighting was between members of the Fatah faction and an Islamist group called Jund al-Sham.

It took place in the densely populated Ain al-Hilwe refugee camp, which is located on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon.

Fighters launched rockets and exchanged gunfire in the middle of the camp, causing dozens of civilians to flee. Lebanese and Palestinian officials said one Fatah member was killed and four others wounded...

One or the Other

Family differences...

Two brothers, one from Islamic Jihad and one from the military wing of Hamas, were killed in clashes with Israeli ground forces

...are slight.

You Just Got To Love 'Em

I asked a question earlier: where'd those Gazan Pals. get all the money they've been using to purchase goods in Egypt?

Here's the answer:-

Gaza Arabs Shopped in Egypt with Fake Money

(IsraelNN.com) Arabs in Gaza used fake Israeli money to pay for supplies they bought in Egypt after the fall of the barrier at the Rafiah border, according to the Hebrew newspaper Maariv. On the other hand, many Egyptian stores sold food that was beyond the expiration date.

Fake shekel notes of 100 and 200 shekels were printed and sold to children during the expulsion in the summer of 2005, explained one Gaza resident. After two days of being given fake money, the Egyptian shopkeepers realized the scam and began checking the currency.

Did You Ever Ask Yourselves

Did you ever ask yourselves where all the Gazans going over into Egypt have all the money to buy what they are buying?


Source

And, by the way, as my cousin-in-law Chaim said, if Sudanese refugees and Moldavia prostitutes are infiltrating Israel from just a few miles south of Rafah, can you guess how many Hamasniks are going to start visiting Eilat and Beersheba?

And if and when Olmert succeeds in reestablishing Israel's border near Kfar Saba or Jerusalem, what wil the IDF do when 100,000 Arabs march on the fence with 10,000 kids in front, followed by 20,000 mothers and then 30,000 elderly ment followed by 40,000 gunmen?

Nu, so ask yourselves and give me an answer.

Anyone Keeping Count?

Five Palestinians were killed and about 30 were wounded in armed clashes between Fatah supporters and Hamas policemen, according to news agency reports.

Source.

A Caricature Not Left/Liberal

Thanks to YS

Pal. Campus Activity

From Pal. Academia:

on Tuesday, the police broke up a fight between Fatah and Hamas students at An Najah University in Nablus. Three people were wounded by gunfire, including one who was shot in the head and was in critical condition, doctors said. Others were injured in beatings. The clash began when Hamas backers staged a sit-in and Fatah supporters demanded that they remove Hamas flags.

10th paragraph

Isn't That Called "Repression"?

Dozens of Hamas members have been arrested in the last week, since the
militant Islamic group drove Fatah out of Gaza, the West Bank’s smaller and more
radical sibling. Men with beards — the symbol of religious devotion and, often, of Hamas — say they are sticking close to home. Hamas’s charities, a bedrock of the group’s support, have been attacked, and their workers are lying low.

Not when it's being done by Fatah.

Feeling "Abandoned" of All Possible Reasons?

This chart



accompanies this article which starts off well

The de facto division of Palestine over the last week into a Hamas-led enclave in Gaza and a Fatah-dominated West Bank marks a new low in the sorry annals of Palestinian affairs. Part of the blame lies with President Mahmoud Abbas, who has proved utterly unable to cope with the challenges of leadership, a fact only underscored by his “firing” of the elected Hamas government that had already in effect fired him. Israel’s wildly unpopular prime minister, Ehud Olmert (a man whose approval rating recently hit 2 percent), played a contributing role by bombing Gaza last summer (in retaliation for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers), a move that further weakened Abbas and his Fatah party.

But then flops

The Bush administration, too, deserves its share of the blame for openly neglecting the Middle East conflict for its first four years in office. As it turned out, feeling abandoned made ordinary Palestinians despondent about the prospects for peace — which enabled them to cast protest votes for Hamas without worrying that its election would effectively scuttle an already moribund peace process.

Oh, Really!!!?

"There is no dialogue with these murderous terrorists."

Mahmoud Abbas

We Can Relax

A member of the clan was shot dead on Wednesday by a family affiliated with Hamas, but Mr. Zahar said the issue was blood revenge, not politics.

Source.

Truth

A few excerpts from Fuad Ajami's op-ed on the Hamas-Fatah struggle, "Brothers to the Bitter End":-

The Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs.

The political maxim that people get the leaders they deserve must be reckoned too cruel to apply to the Palestinians. Before Hamas, for four decades, the vainglorious Yasir Arafat refused to tell his people the basic truths of their political life. Amid the debacles, he remained eerily joyous; he circled the globe, offering his people the false sense that they could be spared the consequences of terrible decisions.

For their part, the Arab states have only compounded the Palestinian misery. The Arab cavalry was always on the way, the Arab treasure was always a day away, and there was thus no need for the Palestinians to pay tribute to necessity. In recent years, the choice was starkly posed: it was either statehood or a starring role on Al Jazeera, and the young “boys of the stones” and their leaders opted for the latter.

It is idle to think that Gaza could be written off as a Hamas dominion while Fatah held its own in the towns of the West Bank. The abdication and the anarchy have damaged both Palestinian realms. Nablus in the West Bank is no more amenable to reason than is Gaza; the writ of the pitiless preachers and gunmen is the norm in both places.

There is no magic wand with which this Palestinian world could be healed and taught the virtues of realism and sobriety. No international peacekeeping force can bring order to the deadly streets and alleyways of Gaza. A population armed to the teeth and long in the throes of disorder can’t be pacified by outsiders.

Arab poets used to write reverential verse in praise of the boys of the stones and the suicide bombers. Now the poetry has subsided, replaced by a silent recognition of the malady that afflicts the Palestinians. Except among the most bigoted and willful of Arabs, there is growing acknowledgment of the depth of the Palestinian crisis. And aside from a handful of the most romantic of Israelis, there is a recognition in that society, as well, of the malignancy of the national movement a stone’s throw away.

There was even a current in Israel possessed of a deep curiosity about the Palestinians, a romance of sorts about their ways and folk culture and their connection to the sacred land. All this is stilled. Palestinian society has now gone where no “peace processors” or romantic poets dare tread.

And What Can We Expect?

If this is what they do th "brethren", what can we expect?

Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City.

"They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize medal," said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman. "Hamas militiamen and gangsters blew up the main entrance to the house before storming it. They stole many of Arafat's documents and files, gifts he had received from world leaders and even his military outfits."

Abdel Rahman said the attackers also raided the second floor of the house and stole the personal belongings of his widow, Suha, and daughter, Zahwa. "They stole all the widow's clothes and shoes," he added. "They also took Arafat's pictures with his daughter."

"Most of the looters were just ordinary citizens," they said. "They stole almost everything, including furniture, tiles, water pipes, closets and beds."

The homes of several other Fatah leaders have also been looted over the past few days, Palestinian reporters in Gaza City said over the weekend. Among them are the homes of Muhammad Dahlan and Intisar al-Wazir (Um Jihad).

Wazir complained that looters stole her jewelry, furniture, clothes and family albums and the personal belongings of her husband, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), a top PLO leader who was assassinated by Israel in 1988 in Tunis.

She said the looting occurred in broad daylight and under the watchful eye of Hamas militiamen. "We don't feel secure any more," she said. "We fear for our lives and property."

The "Two-State Solution"

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, faces the collapse of Fatah power in Gaza and a putative Palestinian state divided between Fatah and Hamas.

Well, if the New York Times says so, who am I to disagree.

One Pal. state in Gaza; another in Judea & Samaria.

But evil lurks:-

Some in Israel, however, are beginning to ask whether it might make sense to have indirect discussions with Hamas, which is clearly not going away.