Hamas Uses Ben Franklin False Antisemitism Claim

MEMRI has distributed a clip about antisemitic incitement on Al-Aqsa TV which includes an assertion that Benjamin Franklin Warned Americans about "Proliferation of Jews" - Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas/Gaza) on June 17, 2010.

For those who received this, unfortunately (and I am not sure if "understandably") no refutation of the Ben Franklin assertions is included even as a footnote.


So, here it is :

The Franklin "Prophecy"
Modern Anti-Semitic Myth Making

Introduction

This article, which thoroughly documents the history of the transparent fraud known as the Franklin "Prophecy", appeared almost forty-five years ago in the April-May 1954 issue of Facts, a publication of the Anti-Defamation League. At the time, the authors wrote "This 20-year-old anti-Semitic hoax is circulating again." Today, more than sixty-five years after it was manufactured, the "Prophecy" it is still circulating, a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda. It can be found on a number of web sites maintained by haters and hate-groups. The article is, therefore, still timely and instructive.

Another anti-Semitic hoax on history, of a piece with that incredible forgery, The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion, but not as widely distributed nor as successful in creating the pogrom atmospheres that were the achievements of the Protocols, is a speech attributed to Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The anti-Semitic movement, which founded the hoax, calls it the Franklin Prophecy — ascribing to Franklin a dire warning that unless Jews were expelled from the new nation by Constitutional decree they would ultimately immigrate in great numbers to the detriment of the Christian population.

Of course, no such speech was ever made. But the hoaxers sought to impart an aura of historical credibility to the fake by claiming that the speech is quoted in a "private diary" of Charles Pinckney, Revolutionary leader who was delegate from South Carolina to the Constitutional Convention. They also maintain that the diary is now in the possession of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a bald lie which Henry Butler Allen, director of the Institute, has often refuted. Allen says that "historians and librarians have not been able to find [the diary] or any record of it having existed."

A copy of the forgery was anonymously circulated through the mails this month [May 1954] on stationery captioned WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF. The envelope bore a May 3 postmark from Atlanta, Ga. This is the latest in a series of recent incidents that suggest another revival of the Prophecy. A copy was picked up earlier this year at a Tampa, Fla., bus stop, and there have been recent distributions of it in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Alabama.

The "Prophecy"

The Franklin Prophecy was first published in February, 1934, in William Dudley Pelley’s publication, Liberation. (In 1942 Pelley was convicted of sedition and given a 15-year sentence.) The following is the most common version of the faked speech:

There is a great danger for the United State of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

For more than seventeen hundred years they have lamented their sorrowful fate — namely, that they have been driven out of their mother land; but, gentlemen, if the civilized world today should give them back Palestine and their property, they would immediately find pressing reason for not returning there. Why? Because they are vampires and vampires cannot live on other vampires --they cannot live among themselves. They must live among Christians and others who do not belong to their race.

If they are not expelled from the United States by the Constitution within less than one hundred years, they will stream into this country in such numbers that they will rule and destroy us and change our form of Government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our life, property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not excluded within two hundred years, our children will be working in the field to feed Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children’s children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change his spots. The Jews are a danger to this land, and if they are allowed to enter, they will imperil our institutions. They should be excluded by the Constitution.

The Uses of the "Prophecy"

For more than two decades the Prophecy has been circulated throughout the United States. In the 1930's it was disseminated by chain letters. Printed copies of the spurious speech were placed in trains, buses, railway stations and similar public places. It appeared in the propaganda press and broadcasts of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and a version was included in the 1935 edition of Handbucb der Judenfrage (Handbook On The Jewish Question), a political tome by Theodor Fritsch, first written several decades earlier, that became a Nazi bible.

Such anti-Semitic groups as Chicago’s We The Mothers Mobilize For America exploit the Prophecy as part of their stock-in-trade. Gerald L. K. Smith and other anti-Semitic propagandists continue to argue its authenticity [The Cross and The Flag, Dec., 1952]. In recent years reprints of it have appeared in Mrs. Lyrl Van Hyning’s Women’s Voice [July 31, 1952] and Harry William Pyle’s Political Reporter [July, 1953]. This month [May,1954] it was a feature of an anti-Semitic publication, The Point, put out by Father Leonard Feeney, the excommunicated priest, and his group at St Benedict’s Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Documenting a Fraud

The fraudulent nature of the Prophecy -- and the fact that anti-Semitism was foreign to Franklin’s behavior — has been substantially documented by eminent historians. The late Charles A. Beard reported, "I cannot find a single original source that gives the slightest justification for believing that the Prophecy is anything more than a barefaced forgery. Not a word have I discovered in Franklin’s letters and papers expressing any such sentiments against the Jews as are ascribed to him by the Nazis — American and German. His well-known liberality in matters of religious opinion would, in fact, have precluded the kind of utterances put in his mouth by this palpable forgery . . . In his writings on immigration, Franklin made no mention of discrimination against Jews."

Beard also noted that "the phraseology of the alleged Prophecy is not that of the 18th century; nor is the language that of Franklin. It contains certain words that belong to contemporary (Nazi) Germany rather than America of Franklin’s period. For example, the word ‘homeland’ was not employed by Jews in Franklin’s time. It was created in connection with the Palestine mandate." Beard also showed "positive evidence" that Franklin held Jews in high regard, citing the instance when the Hebrew Society of Philadelphia sought to raise money for a synagogue in Philadelphia. Franklin signed the petition of appeal for contributions to "citizens of every religious denomination" and gave 5 pounds himself to the fund.

J. Henry Smythe, Jr., compiler of The Amazing Benjamin Franklin, has characterized the Prophecy as "a counterfeit," adding it was a "libel of the Jewish race, unjust both to Jews and to the name and fame of Benjamin Franklin. I have investigated this calumny and find no historical basis." Julian P. Boyd, librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, made the same evaluation, and John Clyde Oswald of the International Benjamin Franklin Society noted that "the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were secret. No official record was kept but a great deal of information has been accumulated and pieced together, giving a fairly good picture of what transpired. Franklin was then 81 years of age and in poor health. He took an active part in the proceedings but made his contributions to the deliberations not orally, but in written memoranda, which he handed to this friend, James Wilson, another member of the Philadelphia delegation, who sat by him and who read them to the Convention. They have been preserved and the collection is believed to be complete..."

The late Carl Van Doren, a biographer of Benjamin Franklin made this report:
The speech against the Jews which Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have made the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is a forgery, produced within the past five years [1933-38]. The forger, whoever he was, claims that the speech was taken down by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and preserved in his Journal. The forger presumably knew that, in a letter to John Quincy Adams dated December 30, 1818, Pinckney said he had kept a Journal of the proceedings at the Convention. But this Journal, if it ever existed, has never been found. The forger claims that Pinckney ‘published’ the Journal ‘for private distribution among his friends’ with the title Chit-Chat Around the Table During Intermissions. No copy of any such printed Journal has come to light. Not content with these two claims, the forger has further asserted that the original manuscript of Franklin’s speech, apparently from Pinckney’s Journal, is in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. The Franklin Institute does not possess the manuscript.

The forger’s authority for his document is nearly as mythical as could be imagined. He cites a manuscript which does not exist, a printed book or pamphlet which nobody has seen, a Journal which has been lost for more than a hundred years. There is no evidence of the slightest value that Franklin ever made the alleged speech or ever said or thought anything of the kind about the Jews.

This report originally appeared in the April-May 1954 issue of Facts, a publication of the Anti-Defamation League

Kabbalah Kutie Kylie Still With the Red

Kylie Minogue at M6 Mobile Music Live event held in Paris yesterday.

And her red wrist string.

Source

What Did Hillary Mean? And What Is the US Doing for Gilad Schalit?

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said today, June 22, 2010

Gee, let’s do this every week.

at an Event Celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Month, what did she mean?

When she said:

Men and women are harassed, beaten, subjected to sexual violence, even killed, because of who they are and whom they love. Some are driven from their homes or countries, and many who become refugees confront new threats in their countries of asylum. In some places, violence against the LGBT community is permitted by law and inflamed by public calls to violence; in others, it persists insidiously behind closed doors. These dangers are not “gay” issues. This is a human rights issue.

Why did she not specify a certain religion?


But better, although actually worse, did you know that in Albania, US ambassador John Withers went on television to publicly express support for a young man named Klodian Cela who "came out"?

That in Slovakia, US Chargé Keith Eddins marched to represent the United States at that nation’s first ever Pride Parade last month? And that he was exposed to tear gas?

Hillary, what is the US doing for Gilad Schalit?


.

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A Look Inside

Quite interesting.

Maybe the internal conflict is more imminent?

And who is demanding that Western countries "stop funding and supporting the PA and its security forces"?

Hamas warned Wednesday of unspecified repercussions if the Palestinian Authority continues its ongoing detention campaign against West Bank-based supporters and leaders of the Islamic movement.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is asserting that 30 affiliates were detained overnight and at least 70 more summoned for interrogation by the Ramallah-based PA, which has partial security control over some Palestinian cities.

“The ongoing detentions have exceeded all redlines and exposed [Fatah's] real attitude to Hamas reconciliation,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said at a news conference in Gaza City on Wednesday.

He affirmed that a large number of Hamas supporters were detained across the West Bank, especially in Hebron and Nablus. The campaign targeted journalists, academics, and party leaders, he said.

“The repercussions of this campaign will be serious if Fatah does not stop these procedures and release all detainees,” Barhoum warned...Barhoum also alleged that the PA raids coincided with an Israeli campaign against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem demolishing houses, expanding settlements, and deporting lawmakers.

...Barhoum also urged donor countries which channel funds to the PA in the West bank to consider their support in light of for the current situation. He urged donors to stop funding and supporting the PA and its security forces.

The top Hamas representative's tone echoed that of Salah Bardawil on Monday following a detention in Hebron a day prior. The spokesman said the move was politically motivated and illegal, noting that "we will be obliged to reciprocate."...

A hot summer?

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The American Nightmare

Found here.

Noise Pollution

Found here.

Example of Alternative History

Here's a caption I found under a picture in an Al-Jazeera story:

Jaffa, now called Yafo by the Israelis, was once the cultural and economic hub of Palestine

Here's another "historical" narrative:

Battered during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the conflict that surrounded the creation of the Jewish state, Jaffa's population plummeted as residents fled or were expelled from their homes.

Let's be concise:

a) Did you know that the city, Jaffa, is from the Hebrew: יָפוֹ‎. It is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world.

Got that? 'Ancient'. 'Oldest'.

"Jaffa is mentioned four times in the Hebrew Bible, as one of the cities given to the Hebrew Tribe of Dan (Book of Joshua 19:46), as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple (2 Chronicles 2:15), as the place whence the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Book of Jonah 1:3) and as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for the Second Temple of Jerusalem (Book of Ezra 3:7). Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the nowadays term "Gush Dan", used for the center of the coastal plain. Many descendants of Dan lived along the coast and earned their living from shipmaking and sailing. In the "Song of Deborah" the prophetess asks: "דן למה יגור אוניות": "Why doth Dan dwell in ships?"

b) Jaffa was a den of anti-Jewish and anti-British violence.

In 1921, there were anti-Jewish riots. Hebrew author Yosef Haim Brenner was killed by Arabs in Jaffa.

The riot resulted in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, with 146 Jews and 73 Arabs being wounded. Most Arab casualties resulted from clashes with British forces attempting to restore order.

Fiften years later:

The 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, also known as the Great Arab uprising, inflicted great economic and infrastructural damage on Jaffa. On April 19, 1936, the Arab leadership of Palestine declared a general strike which paralyzed the economy. The strike began in the Port of Jaffa, which had become a symbol of Arab resistance. Military reinforcements were brought in from Malta and Egypt to subdue the rioting which spread throughout the country. Jaffa's old city, with its maze of homes, winding alleyways and underground sewer system, provided an ideal escape route for the rioters fleeing the British army. In May, municipal services were cut off, the old city was barricaded, and access roads were covered with glass shards and nails. In June, British bombers dropped boxes of leaflets in Arabic requesting the inhabitants to evacuate that same day. On the evening of June 17, 1936, 1,500 British soldiers entered Jaffa and a British warship sealed off escape routes by sea. The British Royal Engineers blew up homes from east to west, leaving an open strip that cut through the heart of the city from end to end. On June 29, security forces implemented another stage of the plan, carving a swath from north to south.

During the 1947-1948 battles, daily snipings from Arab Jaffa and nearby villages including Salama, Al Kheiriya and Yazur caused a major Jewish refugee crisis. Thousands of Jews were forced from their homes on the Jaffa - Tel Aviv border.

Yes, the Arabs have an alternative version which is misleading.

Why? Because:

...in Jaffa the Mayor went on 4 days leave 12 days ago and has not returned, and half the National Committee has left...Palestine's Chief Secretary Sir Henry Gurney, wrote that "It is pathetic to see how the [Jaffa] Arabs have been deserted by their leaders.

c) as for being a hub, well, there were Jews involved:

In 1859, a Jewish visitor, Dr L.A. Frankl, found sixty-five Jewish families living in Jaffa, 'about 400 soul in all.' Of these four were shoemakers, three tailors, one silversmith and one watchmaker. There were also merchants and shopkeepers and 'many live by manual labour, porters, sailors, messengers, etc.' American missionary Ellen Clare Miller, visiting Jaffa in 1867, reported that the town had a population of 'about 5000, 1000 of these being Christians, 800 Jews and the rest Moslems.'

and

At the end of 1922, Jaffa had 32,000 residents and Tel Aviv, 15,000. By 1927, the population of Tel Aviv was up to 38,000. The Jews of Jaffa lived on the outskirts of Jaffa, close to Tel Aviv, whereas the old city was predominantly Arab.

But, of course, who believes Al-Jazeera anyway?

Change

(Kippah tip: BT)


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'The Jews are being scapegoated again', He Writes

And today's must read item:

Israel and the Surrender of the West by Shelby Steele.

Excerpts -

...At every turn "world opinion," like a school marm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation...White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.

...this [is] almost [a] complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations...There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.

...Today the world puts its thumb on the scale for the Palestinians by demonizing the stronger and whiter Israel as essentially a colonial power committed to the "occupation" of a beleaguered Third World people...it is bad manners to be outraged at Hamas's recent attack on a school because it educated girls, or at the thousands of rockets Hamas has fired into Israeli towns—or even at the fact that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran. The world wants independent investigations of Israel, not of Hamas.

One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now...the irony: In the eyes of a morally compromised Western world, the Israelis looked like the Gestapo.

...The West also lacks the self-assurance to see the Palestinians accurately. Here again it is safer in the white West to see the Palestinians as they advertise themselves—as an "occupied" people denied sovereignty and simple human dignity by a white Western colonizer. The West is simply too vulnerable to the racist stigma to object to this "neo-colonial" characterization.

...We don't want to lose more moral authority than we already have. So we choose not to see certain things that are right in front of us...The problem is not me; it is them. And in my victimization I enjoy a moral and human grandiosity—no matter how smart and modern my enemy is, I have the innocence that defines victims. I may be poor but my hands are clean. Even my backwardness and poverty only reflect a moral superiority, while my enemy's wealth proves his inhumanity.

In other words, my hatred is my self-esteem...this recalcitrance in the Muslim world, this attraction to the consolations of hatred, is one of the world's great problems today—whether in the suburbs of Paris and London, or in Kabul and Karachi, or in Queens, N.Y., and Gaza. The fervor for hatred as deliverance may not define the Muslim world, but it has become a drug that consoles elements of that world in the larger competition with the West. This is the problem we in the West have no easy solution to, and we scapegoat Israel—admonish it to behave better—so as not to feel helpless. We see our own vulnerability there.

(Kippah tip: TG)


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The Dilemma of Israel's Anosognosic Hasbarah

Anosognosia.

Wow.

It means:

a condition in which a person who suffers disability seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability. This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments

I found it here and immediately realized that this prognosticates Israel's internal bureaucratic Hasbarah problems well.

Some extracts:-

...As [David] Dunning [a Cornell professor of social psychology] read through the article, a thought washed over him, an epiphany. If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.

Dunning wondered whether it was possible to measure one’s self-assessed level of competence against something a little more objective — say, actual competence. Within weeks, he and his graduate student, Justin Kruger, had organized a program of research. Their paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments,” was published in 1999.[3]

Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”

It became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence.

and

DAVID DUNNING: ... I became very interested in judgments about the self, simply because, well, people tend to say things, whether it be in everyday life or in the lab, that just couldn’t possibly be true. And I became fascinated with that. Not just that people said these positive things about themselves, but they really, really believed them. Which led to my observation: if you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent...when you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. In logical reasoning, in parenting, in management, problem solving, the skills you use to produce the right answer are exactly the same skills you use to evaluate the answer.

...the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that there is a problem beyond that. Even if you are just the most honest, impartial person that you could be, you would still have a problem — namely, when your knowledge or expertise is imperfect, you really don’t know it. Left to your own devices, you just don’t know it. We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know.

...Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”

and the writer, Errol Morris, goes one:

I found myself still puzzled by the unknown unknowns. Finally, I came up with an explanation. Using the expressions “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” is just a fancy — even pretentious — way of talking about questions and answers. A “known unknown” is a known question with an unknown answer. I can ask the question: what is the melting point of beryllium? I may not know the answer, but I can look it up. I can do some research. It may even be a question which no one knows the answer to. With an “unknown unknown,” I don’t even know what questions to ask, let alone how to answer those questions.

But there is the deeper question...Is an “unknown unknown” beyond anything I can imagine? Or am I confusing the “unknown unknowns” with the “unknowable unknowns?”...

..." We’re stupid, but we’re not that stupid.”...

...DAVID DUNNING: An anosognosic patient who is paralyzed simply does not know that he is paralyzed. If you put a pencil in front of them and ask them to pick up the pencil in front of their left hand they won’t do it. And you ask them why, and they’ll say, “Well, I’m tired,” or “I don’t need a pencil.” They literally aren’t alerted to their own paralysis...You could think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect as a psychological version of this physiological problem. If you have, for lack of a better term, damage to your expertise or imperfection in your knowledge or skill, you’re left literally not knowing that you have that damage. It was an analogy for us.

This is stunning in its implications for the inadequacy, limitations and and lack of comprehension some, actually, most, in Israeli officialdom possess.

Can't wait for the article's continuation.


UPDATE

Here's Part 5.

New HH

HH = Haveil Havalim.

Explanation & elucidation:

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs — a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It’s hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term ‘Haveil Havalim,’ which means “Vanity of Vanities,” is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other ‘excesses’ and realized that it was nothing but ‘hevel,’ or in English, ‘vanity.’”

#272 here.

Listen Carefully

Here's from Claire Berlinski's Visit Inside Turkey's Islamist IHH:-

...this debate misses the point, which is that whether or not the group has ties to known terrorists or known eye surgeons—I’ve seen no evidence of either first-hand—it is an important new species of a non-governmental political actor. Its rise to international prominence represents a regional tactical development on the order of the PLO’s pioneering and inventive use of terrorism. To call them terrorists is to muddy the water; if you focus on looking for evidence of this you might fail to recognize what’s truly worrying about them. Although clearly they are Islamists, their chief weapon is not terror, but blackmail. They are indeed a charity, but their charitable works serve as financial and moral cover for a political goal, and that goal is repeatedly to force Israel into a hideous checkmate wherein it must choose between endangering itself and killing the IHH’s human shields.

It’s an old game, but this group isn’t Hamas: It’s more sophisticated, there’s clearly a lot of money behind it, and it’s working with Westerners who are not merely enthusiastic spectators to their campaign, but full, active participants. In a sense it is an analogue to Turkey’s AK party: It represents a sui generis version of political Islam that many in the West find reassuring. After all, it doesn’t look medieval and savage, and it seems to be operating, more or less, in the context of Turkish democracy. But the IHH is determined to keep taking on the Israeli military with ships full of human shields, at the very real risk of provoking an Apocalyptic regional war that the vast majority of Turkish citizens, from what I can tell, did not vote for and do not want. No one in the West should be the least reassured. Even Iran is not this reckless.

The IHH is now one of the more important players in the Middle East, and certainly one of the most influential in Turkey. It is not an elected body, nor an officially appointed foreign policy arm of any elected government, but it has managed nonetheless to rupture the Turkish-Israeli relationship, probably for at least a long while. The crisis it deliberately precipitated has sent Turkey flying into a gibbering, anti-Semitic rage. It has influenced the upcoming Turkish elections in a way that will likely change the course of Turkish history and that of the region. It has dictated foreign policy to the United States and Europe. It looks as if it will succeed in forcing Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza. What happens after that? Peace will shine its light upon the Holy Land, I’m sure. But just in case I’m wrong, the residents of southern Israel might consider moving out of rocket range...

Remember Those Flotilla Blades?

Here's the view from New York on how dangerous they are:-

Manhattan prosecutors are taking a stab at ridding city stores of illegal knives.

Investigators bought switchblades and gravity knives - prohibited in the state - at 14 locations, including big-name retailers Home Depot, Paragon and Eastern Mountain Sports.

The stores - and four others - have already agreed to stop selling them, relinquish their inventories, turn over all profits from selling the illegal blades over the past four years and contribute to a public awareness campaign.

"What makes these knives so dangerous is the ease with which they can be concealed and brandished," Manhattan district Attorney Cy Vance said Thursday.

He noted that about a third of homicides in Manhattan in 2009, and so far this year, involved knives.

Nice Neighborhood

Son kills father who translated for US in Iraq

An al-Qa'ida-linked insurgent shot and killed his own father as he slept in his bed for refusing to quit his job as an Iraqi interpreter for the US military, police said...Hameed al-Daraji, 50, worked as a contractor and translator for the US military for seven years since shortly after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

He was shot in the chest about 3am while sleeping in his house in Samarra, a former insurgent stronghold 60 miles north of Baghdad, police Lt. Emad Muhsin said.

Authorities arrested the son and his cousin, saying the young men apparently were trying to prove their loyalty after rejoining the insurgency. Police were also looking for another son who allegedly took part in the attack...

This is Democracy? You're Kidding, Right?

Welcome to a balanced, pluralistic and open discussion of the burning issues in Israel, brought to you by the...New Israel Fund:-

Not exactly, eh?

In My Rabbinic Mode

And Now, For Myth #2

Myth No. 2, brought to you by Evelyn Gordon:

Palestinians’ prime concern is ending Israeli settlement construction.

In fact, the poll found a huge majority, 60% to 38%, opposing a ban on Palestinians working in the settlements; in the West Bank, where the settlements actually are, support dropped to 34% percent. And since Palestinians work in the settlements almost exclusively in construction, the obvious implication is that they prefer construction to continue, so that they can have jobs.

Why? Because most Palestinians’ actual prime concern is supporting their families (something that really shouldn’t surprise those liberals who believe all people want the same things), and the settlements are a major employer. It will be years before the Palestinian economy is capable of providing an alternative. Thus by demanding a freeze on settlement construction now, Barack Obama and his European counterparts are merely generating massive Palestinian unemployment. It turns out that Palestinians would rather they didn’t.

Staring at Amy's Jewish Star?

For those upset by seemingly immodest appearnaces by Ms. Winehouse, the picture has been cropped:

Is This True?

Do you think I really found this?

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Wednesday that the United States and Israel share information and cooperate regularly, but he couldn't say whether the United States was involved in Israel's latest pursuit of Arab guerrillas.

"These are security matters that directly effect the Israeli government and the Israelis," Crowley said. "Israel, like any country, has the right to defend itself against terrorist organizations. We will continue to work with Israel depending on how this goes. We certainly understand the reasons behind the action."

Naw.

This is the real text:

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Wednesday that the United States and Turkey share information and cooperate regularly, but he couldn't say whether the United States was involved in Turkey's latest pursuit of Kurdish guerrillas.

"These are security matters that directly effect the Turkish government and the Turkish people," Crowley said. "Turkey, like any country, has the right to defend itself against terrorist organizations. We will continue to work with Turkey depending on how this goes. We certainly understand the reasons behind the action."

Some things you just can't make up.

Remember?



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Mazal Tov to Saba Ehud Olmert

Dana Olmert, the gay daughter of former prime minister Ehud Olmert and his wife, Aliza, became the biological mother of a baby girl. Her life partner, Daphi Bar-Zvi, is also the biological mother of a little girl, who has now been given the role of big sister

reports Greer Fay Cashman