The "Right" Person and the Wrong Person

The Jewish Chronicle (sorry, I'm not subscribed so there's no link) carried a story this past Friday that Robi Damelin, on a visit to England together with an Arab woman whose sister was killed, stated that the sniper who killed her son David, shot at a roadside checkpoint, did so because he was a symbol of the occupation but

"didn't kill the right person."

No, who was the "right person" one wonders.

Was it a female teacher returning home? A Rabbi traveling to his Yeshiva? The 5 month old baby whose head was crushed by a rock? The bride blown up one day before her wedding? The teenager cut down in a fussilade of bullets on the basketball court of his school? Or any of the hundreds of other Israelis, foreign workers, tourists and other Arabs killed by Arab terrorists who rejected a more-than-generous peace offer in 2000?

Indeed, is Ms. Damelin the right person to be talking about peace?

Or she simply the wrong person, the very wrong person?

================

Well, I went here
and found all this:-

Billed under the deceptive banner of "Palestine Awareness Week," it featured two women - one an Israeli named Robin "Robi" Damelin, and the other a Palestinian woman named Nadwa Saranda - who appeared as representatives of a group called the Parents Circle. Participants were led to believe that both women had both lost loved ones in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Supposedly, both women had family members killed by the opposite side, tragedies that compelled them to reach out together to create a "dialogue" in the name of peace and non-violence. It all sounded perfectly innocent.

Thus, Palestine Awareness Week - note that it was not Palestine and Israel Awareness Week - scheduled seminars with these two women on the campus at UC Santa Cruz. Sponsored as well by several university faculty members, the women managed to do three seminar presentations to hundreds of students in public high schools in the area during regular school hours. Among the high schools that hosted them were the Soquel High School, Aptos High School, and Santa Cruz High School. Scott Kennedy and the RCNV have sponsored similar events nationwide.

What these high school students did not know was that these women were not the peace activists they affected to be. Touring all over the United States, they are regular features at pro-PLO functions. Nor are their stories of their personal losses completely true. It is true that Robi Damelin lost her son, David. A 28 year-old graduate student in education at Tel Aviv University, David was killed while guarding a checkpoint in the West Bank that was set up to prevent suicide bombers and terrorists from getting into Israel to kill Israelis. But Nadwa Saranda explains her presence at these seminars as an attempt to come to terms with the death of her sister, Naela, a Palestinian activist, who was supposedly knifed to death in East Jerusalem by a "Jewish settler."

Yet an investigation into the details of Nadwa Saranda's story reveals that, her claims notwithstanding, her sister, Naela, was not in fact killed by a "Jewish settler." She was, rather, killed by a Palestinian Arab who confessed to killing her. According to Al Quds, the Palestinian national newspaper, Naela was killed after being stabbed in the chest several times near the Jerusalem Municipality building in al-Musrara quarter. She was killed by 23-year-old Mohammed Sha'lan from the village of Hizma, who claims he thought she was an Israeli. After realizing she was Palestinian, Sha'alan turned himself into Israeli police, confessing his crime. It seems there was also another Arab serial killer who murdered with a knife 13 Arabs in East Jerusalem who also may have been involved in Naela's killing. Yet Nadwa has been traipsing all over the country letting audiences, including Jewish ones, think her sister was murdered by an Orthodox Jew living in East Jerusalem. Far from acknowledging the facts, Saranda blames Israel for her sister's death and says she will continue to do so. Testimony from Saranda in 1999 reveals that she claims no matter what, her sister's death was Israel's fault. (The evidence indicates that the Palestinian Arab who murdered her sister thought he was knifing a Jewess.) Today, she blames her sister's death on the "occupation" of "Palestine" by Israel.

The Parents Circle was created by Yitzhak Frankenthal, a wealthy Israeli businessman whose son was murdered also by PLO terrorists. Frankenthal gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from the European Union, including Germany and Norway. The EU has a habit of funding Palestinian corruption. His organization also pulls in a buck a minute for phone calls placed between Palestinians and Israelis who have suffered bereavements.

Frankenthal's message of "reconciliation and dialog" gets the Parents Circle into high places besides high schools and colleges. People fall for it so much the organization has even been featured on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. They, like the U.S. State Department, don't check what this group really does once in front of a captive audience. And that is support the goals of the PLO against Israel by making misleading comparisons with South Africa, and distributing anti-Israel propaganda materials. At Santa Cruz, Naela Saranda told the audience Frankenthal is an Orthodox rabbi (he isn't) and read a letter from him in which he apologizes "for all the bad things Israel has done to the Palestinians, both real or imaginary." (Nobody has such a letter from a Palestinian religious authority.)

As for Robi Damelin, she is hardly the nonpolitical activist she purports to be. It is a longtime practice of the PLO to find radical leftist Jews to attend pro-Palestinian seminars to give the appearance of "balance." Adam Shapiro was one. Damelin is just such a shill. Robi Damelin immigrated to Israel in 1967 from South Africa, where she was active in the anti-apartheid movement there by the ANC and Nelson Mandela. Once her goal was achieved, Damelin, like many leftist radicals, went to Israel to try and find a new cause there. Once in Israel she became active in radical leftist groups that support the goals of the PLO while claiming to be working toward "peace." Peace, of course, means blaming Israel for the murders against its citizens in adherence to the PLO agenda of "fighting occupation."

Damelin tells audiences that she previously ran a successful public relations firm in Israel before going to work for Parents Circle full-time. Significantly, Damelin describes it only as a "successful PR firm." In fact, her public relations agency specialized in doing spin and promotions for leftist groups in Israel that wish to see the country dismantled but bill themselves as "co-existence groups."

Besides her public relations agency handling publicity for radical Israeli groups, Damelin herself also encouraged Israelis to refuse to serve in the military. Her son, David, at least according to her, was also such a "peace activist," but like all Israelis he was required to do three weeks a year in reserve duty to protect the Israeli people. Damelin claims David was opposed to the Israeli presence in the West Bank, and he may well have been. But he did not take after his radical mother.

Whereas David served in the Israeli army, Robi Damelin has always worked to support a movement in Israel called the Refuseniks, a corruption of the term used to describe former Soviet Jews who refused to remain in the USSR, many of whom were sent to the gulags.

Security

Last night, at the Likud Central Committee conclave, the place was covered with security.

They were afraid of assassination, garroting, stabbing, firebombing, sniping.

And what happens?

Someone dumps water on the electric board.

But, then again, this is Israel, right?

For example:

The breakdown of a machine used for x-raying suitcases at Ben Gurion airport has left hundreds of frustrated passengers stranded.

Six flights have been grounded and security officials have ordered the rechecking of all luggage destined for those flights.

Hello? Why No Answer?

I found a web site which promotes the "Palestinian" viewpoint.

The blogger noted that Israel had "occupied" Palestinian land following the 1967 war.

So I innocently asked him, but really,

Without being provocative, you write that Beit Hanina was occupied by Israel since 1967. And prior to 1967? Was it occupied or what? How do you explain this?

He replied:

Prior to 1967, Beit Hanina was under direct Jordanian control...The residents of Beit Hanina enjoyed the same rights as other citizens of Jordan. Also, while under Jordanian rule, we were allowed to build on our lands, we didn't have our homes demolished, trees uprooted, or lands stolen from us so that Jewish only settlements such as Ramot

Well, I then responded this way:

thanks for replying.

i will try to avoid the more sensitive issues which i would consider problematic in that either there is a factual error or a subjective one.

but i need your response to the issue of Jews owning property in Jordan (which included the area now under Israeli military control until 1967) and in the area administered by the Palestinian Authority. As you know, in Israel within the 1967 borders, Arabs live and own property whether or not there is discrimination which is not the issue now.

here is a statement regarding Jews owning land

LAND LAW IN JORDAN

Under the direct instructions of King Husayn23, the government of Jordan in 1973 passed the "Law for Preventing the Sale of Immovable Property to the Enemy."24The "enemy" is defined in Article 2 as "any man or judicial body [corporation] of Israeli citizenship living in Israel or acting on its behalf." Under Article 4 of this law any Jordanian citizen who sold land in Jordan or the West Bank to the "enemy" faced the death penalty and forfeiture of all his property to the state:
The sale of Immovable property against the provisions of this law constitutes a crime against state security and well being, punishable by death, and the confiscation of all the culprit's Immovable and moveable possessions.
In addition, Article 3 deemed the sale of land to any alien (i.e., a non-Arab) without permission from the Council of Ministers a security offense punishable by death.
According to PA Attorney General Khalid al-Qidra, Jordan had sentenced 172 people to death under this law.25 Amnesty International reported that as of 1988 many of the convictions were in absentia and that there had been no executions. 26 However, PA Justice Minister Meddein claimed that Jordan had executed 10 violators.27

Whatever its application, the Jordanian Parliament repealed the 1973 law in 1995, following the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. Milder statutes adopted in its place still effectively bar Israelis from purchasing or leasing land in Jordan. The Law on Economic Boycott and Banning Dealing with the Enemy (Article 6) states that "it is impermissible for foreign persons or corporate entities that do not hold an Arab nationality to purchase, lease, or own directly or indirectly any immovable property in the kingdom." 28 The only exceptions require high level political authorization.

23 Arab Report and Record (London: Arab Report and Record), Apr. 16-30, 1973, p. 179; May 1-15, 1973, p. 204; July 16-31, 1973, p. 319.
24 Al-Jarida ar-Rasmiya (Amman), #2429, 1973, p. 1223-1224.
25 Palestine Report, June 6, 1997.
26 Jordan: Human Rights Protections After the State of Emergency (New York: Amnesty International, 1990), pp. 53,55.
27 The Los Angeles Times , June 1, 1997.
28 Al-Aswaq (Amman), July 27, 1995, as translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.


Legislation passed in 1954 declared that only non-Jews coming from the former British Mandate of Palestine were entitled to Jordanian citizenship.36

36 Section 3(3) of Jordanian Nationality Law no. 6 of 1954, recorded in Al-Jarida ar-Rasmiya, no. 1171, Feb. 16, 1954, p. 105.

and this
LAND LAW UNDER THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

Enforcement of the old Jordanian law. The PA's justice minister, Meddein, has repeatedly stated his intention to enforce the 1973 Jordanian law.29 It is doubtful, however, that this law has any legal standing in territories under control of the PA. The Oslo 2 Agreement of September 1995 specifically deals with regulations of this sort and renders them null and void in PA territories. Oslo 2 states that any legislation "inconsistent with the provisions of the DOP, 30 [or] this Agreement ... shall have no effect and shall be void ab initio."31Imposing the death penalty on Palestinians for selling land to Israelis clearly violates at least two provisions of Oslo 2. 32

The new Palestinian law. The Palestinian Legislative Council has passed the first reading of a draft law intended to supersede the 1973 Jordanian statute.33This new law reportedly bar sales to "occupiers" whom it defines as the "Israeli occupying government and its civil and military institutions, settlements and whomever is under their authority." It declares the sale of land in "Palestine" to such occupiers to be "high treason" punishable "according to the criminal law." And it states that foreign violators have "committed harm to the national security and will be punished according to the criminal law." The draft law is vague about punishment, but according to the Jordanian Penal Code, which is still in effect on the West Bank, the crime for treason is death. 34

According to PA legislators, the term "Palestine" in the law refers to all the territory of the Palestine Mandate, meaning all of Israel.35 Under this proposed statute, then, an Israeli Arab who sells any land in Israel to an Israeli Jew would face the death penalty. Such extraterritorial threats receive added weight from the reported formation by the PA of a shadowy force known as "The Long Arm," whose task is to track down and execute Palestinians living anywhere in the world who have sold land to Israeli Jews.36

It hardly needs pointing out that this new Palestinian law would, like the 1973 Jordanian law it replaces, directly violate the Oslo 2 Accords.

29 Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA) interview, Dec. 23, 1996 and June 4, 1997; Agence France Presse, May 5, 1997; Yedi'ot Ahranot, May 20, 1997; Ha'aretz, May 28, 1997.
30 Declaration of Principles, the agreement signed on the White House lawn in September 1993.
31 Oslo 2 Agreement (formally, the "Israeli-Palestinian Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip"), Article XVIII.4.a.
32 Article XVI, paragraph 2 of Oslo 2 requires that Palestinians who have "maintained contact with the Israeli authorities" will not on this account be subject to "harassment, violence, retribution or prosecution." Article XIX requires that the Palestinian Council "shall exercise their powers and responsibilities pursuant to this agreement with due regard to internationally—accepted norms and principles of human rights and the rule of law."
33 Palestine Report, Aug. 22, 1997.
34 Amnesty International, Jordan: Human Rights Protections, 1990, p. 52.
35 Agence France Presse, June 16, 1997.
36 Al-'Arab al-Yawm, May 17, 1997, as translated in the British Broadcasting Corporation Summary of World Broadcasts.

Would you consider the foregoing problematic?

And would you believe it, he hasn't been heard of since.

His name is Mike Hanini (or Odetalla), his e mail address is hanini@comcast.net and his blog site is at http://www.hanini.org/ also called Ramallah Online.

Do you think it's because I'm Jewish, or a Zionist or a revenant of Shiloh or maybe he has no answer? Every time I try to initiate a dialogue, I get cut off.

A Bit of Etymology

As my nickname is "Winkie", I once tried to inquire as to the origins and meaning of the name.

Here's how it went:-

Yisrael Medad wrote:

I excerpted the following from a movie review in which a film was described as: "with its winkly-twinkly touches of magic realism and its travel-brochure sexuality." Now, my family name, before I Hebraized it, was Winkelman. Winkel, or Winkle, in German, means a corner.

When I spent time in England, I was informed that to winkle meant to maneuver oneself out of a tricky situation but usually with a negative connotation in that one's escape was achieved unfairly. My nickname, "winkie," I found out, was, in British slang usage, a male sexual organ. Getting back to the quotation: what is the definition of winkly-twinkly and where did it originate? Was it the 1950s TV character Winkie-Dink?

You've actually got a few different etymologies going on here. Let's start with the easy one first (yes, I believe in immediate gratification, dessert first, all that good stuff).

Winkly-twinkly and Winkie-Dink are both pretty straightforward examples of reduplication--when all or part of a stem is repeated. Reduplication is the way that some languages form verb tenses or other inflected forms. In English, it's most often used to make a term or name more familiar, to make a slightly distasteful term seem more innocuous, or to belittle something. You get this in terms like pooh-pooh, peepee, and artsy-fartsy, or in the names of Chicken Little's companions--Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, Foxy Loxy, Ducky Lucky, and Turkey Lurkey. Usually the main word--in your example, twinkly--comes first, but it's fairly common for this to be reversed, especially for emphasis. For example, the term loosey-goosey is used in British English to disparage ideas or practices that are considered to be too permissive or unstructured.

The writer of the review most likely made up the expression winkly-twinkly to show that she wasn't impressed or fooled by the fancy effects of the film. One of the meanings of wink is synonymous with twinkle, 'to shine with little flashes of light'. So your term does not come from winkle, but rather from the verb wink, which was wincian in Old English and winken in Middle English (remember Winken, Blinken, and Nod?). The cognate for this in German is winken, which means 'to wave or signal' and can include winking as a signal--nothing to do with corners or body parts.

In fact, the German Winkel 'angle, corner, nook' has only an accidental similarity in form to the English winkle; they're completely unrelated. The latter is a short form of periwinkle, that snail-like marine creature (oh, okay, gastropod) that you see on plateaux de fruits de mer in restaurants in Europe. (It's also the name of the caddisfly larva that builds itself a protective tube to live in on rocks in lakes and rivers, which you would only eat if you were really desperate. But the only area of the US in which a caddisworm is called a periwinkle is the Northwest, according to Joan Houston Hall of the Dictionary of American Regional English --which finally explained the blank stares I always got when I told people about seeing periwinkles in rivers in Washington state as a teenager.)

At any rate, (peri)winkle is the main British term for the marine snail, having been settled on after a few centuries of confusion, possible scribal errors, and conflation of the spelling with that of the (again unrelated) botanical periwinkle, which you can hunt down in our Unabridged dictionary if you're so inclined. Winkles have to be removed from their shells with winkle pickers, which is also the slang term for the pointed boots that the British Teddy Boys wore. You can see where the 'getting out of a tight situation' meaning came from. And, of course, the small snaily thing looks enough like an uncircumcised boy's penis that the slang terms winkle and winkie meaning 'boy's penis' aren't too surprising. Since willie/willy is also British slang for 'penis' (any size), just imagine the giggles from modern British children reading "Wee Willy Winkie."

Wendalyn

Television Cutlure Even Shapes Diplomacy

Sorry for the belatedness but I only had my attention drawn to this after reading it in translation in Ma'ariv.

Daniel Kurtzer, outgoing American ambassador to Israel, was interviewed in the New York Times and, among other things, said,

What has most disappointed him, Mr. Kurtzer said, has been the failure of the Palestinians, at least so far, to create a positive image based on good administration, realistic policies and opposition to terrorism.

"Victimization gets you on 'Oprah,' but you want to be taken seriously enough to get on 'Meet the Press,' " Mr. Kurtzer said, then winced a little for allowing himself to be direct.

Tragedy and injustice are "part of Palestinian consciousness," he said, adding: "I respect it. It's part of their national narrative. But you have to move beyond it to create something positive."

"You have a Palestinian Authority, but it's still a question in the minds of the international community if they're ready for statehood with these institutions," he said.

I only hope his bosses and some other diplomats pay attention.

By the way, Kurtzer's replacement is Richard H. Jones. And here's highlights from his CV:

Ambassador to Lebanon, a senior member of the U.S. Foreign Service, Mr. Jones has served in Washington, Paris, Tunis, and Riyadh while concentrating on economic and Middle East issues. Besides serving in Washington as Director of the State Department's Office of Egyptian Affairs since June 1993, he has served in Embassy Riyadh as Counselor for Political Affairs (1989-92) and Petroleum Attache (1984-86), and in the Department as Director of Developed Country Trade in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (1987-89). Mr. Jones earned a Bachelor of Science degree (Math, with distinction) from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, as well as a Master of Science degree (Business) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

He and his wife, Joan, are the parents of four children, ranging in age from 3-18.
Mr. Jones was born August 26, 1950 in Shreveport, Louisiana. His foreign languages are Arabic and French.

Rules of Blogging

A year and a half into this blogging business, I know discover this from here:-

These are the rules
For those of you who are new to this whole blogging game, there are certain ground rules you need to follow when arguing on blogs. Be sure to abide by these rules when commenting at Harry's Place, Lenin's Tomb or the Popinjays.

1. Under no circumstances should you suggest that there are certain fields that you do not have sufficient knowledge about to form an opinion. Your bachelors degree from the University of Armchair makes you an expert on all subjects everywhere.

2. This bachelors degree also exempts you from any requirement to provide sources for any claims you may wish to make.

3. All positions that can be taken on a subject fall into two black-and-white categories, and nuances are utterly impossible. Therefore, anybody who is even slightly pro-Israel clearly believes every Palestinian village should be bulldozed to make way for 5-star hotels. Likewise, even the vaguest supporter of Palestinian civil rights laughs as suicide bombers blow up small children.

4. Irrelevant of which side of a debate you take, the mass media is against you.

5. Irrelevant of which side of a debate you take, don't forget to mock Benjamin.

6. When responding to a point made by another commenter, feel free to reply as though that commenter had said something completely different to the point that they actually made.

7. Ranting hyperbole is a sign of gravitas, and is always superior to nuanced argument backed up with evidence.

8. Finally, if you find yourself losing an argument, always ensure that you declare that the issue is unimportant anyway, and close by mocking the other side for having such a silly obsession with that particular subject.

A Good Comment

Here's a selection of Eyal Megged's thinking:-

That's when I got it: the settlers are our scapegoat. They're our expiation. Their hidden role in the eyes of part of Israeli society is to atone for a sin, the repressed sin that we refused to deal with. The "peace now" establishment coming from the kibbutzim that coveted Arab lands in the years following the War of Independence, whose origins are in the philosophers who fell all over themselves appropriating and fixing up abandoned Arab houses, happily grabbed at the opportunity to cleanse their consciences following the Six-Day War.

From herein declare: those who coveted and stole, those who murdered and inherited, are the settlers of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the religious right, Gush Emunim; it is they who must be expelled from the land so that salvation may arrive.

This, then, is the deceit behind the "peace now"-like lie. A self-delusion that may work with part of the Israeli public, but under no circumstances with the Palestinians. They don't buy this lie. They know exactly who settled on their ruins and their lands, and who settled on rocks in empty land. The proof is that they fix their gaze not on the Qatif bloc but on Ashkelon; not on Efrat but on Katamon; not on Betar Elit but on Malcha.

From their standpoint, if someone should be uprooted it is we who live safely within the "legal" green line, on the ruins of their national memory. From their standpoint it is we who are first in line. Because as we have seen, the original sin is not in the "territories", but here: in Lachish, Jaffa, Haifa, the Galilee, and the Sharon region.

Gideon Sammet once attacked Megged, writing:

It's no longer a matter of the debilitation of the left in Israel. The latest trend in a politics stricken by terror attacks is to say that there is no difference, in fact, between right and left. What we see developing is something of a "left-right," which is no longer a defined political stance, but rather a kind of vague consciousness that is trying to blur the differences between two historic movements whose struggle is almost 80 years old.

Among those spurring on this trend are cultural heroes such as novelist A.B. Yehoshua and secondary, hazy figures like author Eyal Megged, whose father, Aharon, can be credited with being one of the veteran and more articulate explicators of the leftright.

Interesting to see how each fights it out.

Torture? Oh, that Torture!

I read this, published in The Forward, and jumped to the wrong conlusion.

Rabbis, Cantors Step Up Campaign Against Torture
By Ori Nir
September 23, 2005
WASHINGTON — An interdenominational group of more than 700 North American rabbis and cantors is stepping up its "campaign to end U.S.-sponsored torture" through a combination of political lobbying, protests and grass-roots mobilizing in synagogues.

I mistakenly thought that the "torture" they were referring to was that of long-winded sermons and off-key melodies sung as if the synagogue was an opera house.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love a good sermon and I have a dozen chazzanut CDs at home. It's just that if done wrong, it's torture.

Which recalls the joke about the schule's rabbi, chazan and president being taken captive by terrorists and threatened to be shot if their demands are not met.

The rabbi seeks a reprieve to prepare his 40 minute Rosh Hashana speech and then read it out before they shoot him. The chazan asks for a reprieve to prepare his 20 minute Kol Nidre and then sing it before being shot. The terrorists, in a favorable mood, then ask the schule president if he has any special requests and he replies:-

"If you are going to give in to the Rabbi and Chazan, then please, take me out and shoot me first."

"Friends" of Chabad

Go on, click and laugh.

No Levee Levity (and how does this relate to Israel?)

In a story on how New Orleans is coping with Storm Rita and the possible threat of a resubmergement, I found this section where two qualified and, presumably, diploma-carrying engineers, disagreed:-

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where two gaping breaches in the Industrial Canal levee submerged and splintered one of the poorest sections of the city, four to eight inches of water began seeping back into some abandoned and destroyed neighborhoods by noon on Thursday. Small waterfalls of leakage could be seen several feet below the top of the repaired levee as wind pushed rising water from Lake Pontchartrain through the Industrial Canal.

This was to be expected, said Chad Rachel, a civil engineer with the corps, after an inspection of the repaired breaches. There did not appear to be any erosion of the compacted clay base of the patched dike, he said, adding that he felt certain the large, interlocking stones atop the base would be able to withstand the expected storm surge.

"We don't expect any problem with a catastrophic breach," Mr. Rachel said.

By dusk, however, water had continued to rise, and Maj. Barry Guidry of the Army offered a direr assessment after examining the leaking at the Industrial Canal. "The levee's going to cave in," Major Guidry said. "In the middle of the night, this thing is going to be gone."

Well, first off, I wish New Orleans success in its fight against the rising water although it seems to me that the whole system is built on materials that enable water to seep right through, but who am I to comprehend?

However, for Israel, there are two lessons.

One, will our "security barrier" stop terror? Is it high enough? Placed strategically enough? Or is it a security blanket with no real intrinsic worth except as a psychological sop, going back to my "King Kong Syndrome" theory?

Second, if these two engineers can be diametrically opposed to each other, what are we to do with army officers, intelligence officers, ministry of defense officials, former army officers now in government, etc., etc. and et al. who argue about how to end terror, how to negotiate, how to protect Israel, how much or less territory to surrender and yield, etc., etc. and et al.?

Could it be the one side really doesn't know what it is talking about?

Memory Lane

Here's a letter of mine that was published in The Commentator, the campus newspaper of Yeshiva University, my alma mater:-

The JTS Library Fire

Dear Sir:

Hillel Goldberg's recounting of the mobilization of the YU student body ("The JTS Library Fire," August 31, 2005) reminded me once again what I missed out on by not dorming.

In my sophomore year in 1966, I moved in with my widowed grandmother in the Bronx. Showing up for school the next morning, it was quite apparent that everybody who was anybody was going downtown. The JTS books were all laid out and we methodically went around trying to dry the soggy pages.

But to return to the dorm scene, I missed out on all the action, drama, and tension. Indeed, many students who did not dorm, upon hearing what had happened, simply skipped classes and went downtown. It was the natural and normal thing to do. Halacha, Orthodoxy, Conservative - all that was quite secondary or less to me and many others at the time.

Yisrael Medad (Winkelman), YC '69
Shiloh
Israel

My Family Comes From Brody

My late mother, Lily, was born as a Nadel.

Her mother was born as a Steckler.

Both families originated from Brody, then in Poland, now in the Ukraine.

I found a fascinating overview of Brody, fairly concise, with a few pictures from last year, here.

Just Like in pre-Nazi Germany

I know our left-wing "friends" don't like comparisons with the holocaust or Nazis.

Nevertheless, although I was involved in this case almost immediately because Ronen and Eli were founding members of Israel's Media Watch in Haifa.

Re-reading it leaves one with the impression that this is how it must have been in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the Nazis were going at the Communists, only to better prepare for the Jews. Or in Italy under Mussolini after his Rome March.

Here's an excerpt:-

Belated Justice For Haifa's Land of Israel Activists

After eight years of police foot-dragging, a left-wing Meretz activist has been sentenced to a year in jail and three years suspended sentence for attacking right-wing activists in Haifa in 1998...

...then attacked Dr. Buchbinder, after he tried to prevent a scuffle with a fellow activist who had accidentally dislodged one of the Meretz banners. He was punched in the face and kicked mercilessly once he hit the ground. “I remember myself on the pavement with three or four hooligans beating me without respite,” Dr. Buchbinder told the B’Sheva newspaper. “I completely panicked. Everything around me became foggy. I tried to defend myself in one place and just to be beaten in another one. They deliberately aimed their blows mostly at my face. My entire body went into shock, numb and completely powerless. I felt like I was being lynched, that there was no chance I would emerge from this alive. It continued for a while longer – them just beating and kicking me with all their might, with intense burning anger. It wasn’t a scuffle; they fully intended to kill me.”

The fact that the attackers were Arabs is irrelevant except for the fact that the Jewish lefties were true to their paternalism, leaving the Arabs to do the dirty work, probably because they thought "well, that's how they normally behave, no?".

The King Kong Syndrome

In recent interviews with officials of the American Consulate-General here in Jerusalem, the new head of the EU's Middle East team who visited as well as a very pro-Palestine British MP, I have been asked about what we revenants (see a comment on my use of this term and I published an article: "Revenant is relevant" in the Jerusalem Post on September 29, 2002. pg. 06) feel regarding the future and more specifically, how I view the new security barrier which places Shiloh on the "other side".

I tell them that I call my feeling the King Kong Syndrome. We are the sacrifice positioned on the other side of the wall to gratify the Beast.

If you can't remember or fail to understand my point, here's an excerpt from the synopsis of the film:-

The main island has a long sandy peninsula…the rest of the island's shoreline has sheer, steep precipices, hundreds of feet high. A wall cuts off the base of the peninsula from the rest of the island. Denham explains that there's an ancient, monstrous wonder "that no white man has ever seen" on the mysterious island:

Denham: A wall...built so long ago that the people who live there have slipped back, forgotten the higher civilization that built it. That wall is as strong today as it was centuries ago. The natives keep that wall in repair. They need it.
Driscoll: Why?
Denham: There's something on the other side of it, something they fear.
Captain: A hostile tribe.
Denham: Did you ever hear of...Kong?
Captain: Why, yes. Some native superstition isn't it? A god or a spirit or something?
Denham: Well anyway, neither Beast nor man. Something monstrous. All powerful. Still living. Still holding that island in a grip of deadly fear. Well, every legend has a basis of truth. I tell you, there's something on that island that no white man has ever seen..

In a frenzy of excitement, the natives have prepared Ann as the new sacrificial bride. The witch doctors open the tall gate in the enormous wall and drag her to the top of a high stone altar at the edge of the jungle. Her wrists are spread and bound to two great pillars or altar stakes (each decorated with a human skull) as a sacrificial gift - the "bride of Kong." After the witch doctors hurry back, the gates are closed and re-sealed with a huge wooden bolt. All the natives then climb to the top of the wall or gate where they gather to watch, torches lighting the sky. The chief halts the dancing, raises his staff, offers prayers, and then two half-naked assistants strike a giant brass gong above the gates to signal Kong. Left invitingly open to attack, Ann sobs helplessly on the altar.

Just then, a lookout up on the gate next to the giant gong cries out: "Hey, look out. It's Kong. Kong's coming!" Ann screams again. They try to keep the huge gate closed, bolted and blocked - the gate that has kept Kong trapped inside the island for so long. At the sound of the gong, the natives swarm from their huts and join them to hold the gate against the giant ape. Kong pounds repeatedly on it, and pushes with his entire weight thrown against the door. As last, he breaks it down, and the doors swing open to reveal the awesome brute. An enraged Kong attacks the village searching for his blond beauty. He hurls an entire hut at the fleeing natives and crushes everything in his path. Kong then smashes the platform with three swift punches from his fist.

And if that isn't enough to get your imagination going, try the trailer of the new Jackson film here.

Who Said This? (1)

Who said this?

The Palestinian Authority are dogs

Was it former Techiya MK, Rafael Eitan?

Was it former Moledet Minister Rechavam Ze'evi?

Was it Professor Israel Eldad?

Nope.

No Israeli rightwingers. No Israeli nationalists? No Israeli religious messianists.

It was an Arab from Gaza named Mohamed Ahmed Zowab.

It was reported here. In the section "Plugging Holes".

Oh well.

Unprofessorial Behavior

Mark Danner, professor of journalism and politics at the University of California at Berkeley and Bard College and the author, most recently, of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror" published a long article on terrorism in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine.

He couldn't avoid mentioning the Irgun and Menachem Begin and this is what he wrote:-

The jihadis used terrorism to create a spectacle that would remove this certainty. They were by no means the first guerrilla group to adopt such a strategy. "History and our observation persuaded us," recalled Menachem Begin, the future Israeli prime minister who used terror with great success to drive the British out of Palestine during the mid-1940's, "that if we could succeed in destroying the government's prestige in Eretz Israel, the removal of its rule would follow automatically. Thenceforward, we gave no peace to this weak spot. Throughout all the years of our uprising, we hit at the British government's prestige, deliberately, tirelessly, unceasingly." In its most spectacular act, in July 1946, the Irgun guerrilla forces led by Begin bombed the King David Hotel, killing 91 people, most of them civilians.

So, Danner presumed to parallel jihadi terrorism to the urban guerrilla campaign waged by the Irgun led by Menachem Begin against the British rule in mandate Palestine by singling out the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel, emphasizing that 91 people were killed, "most of them civilians".

There is no comparison, neither in strategy, in tactics nor rationale.

The operation was initiated and approved by the heads of the Hagana within the framework of the United Resistance Movement, the British having decided to continue a policy of prohibition of immigration and prevention of the establishment of the Jewish National Home. The hotel was chosen as a target because its south wing had been sealed off since 1939 for the exclusive use of the secretariat of the mandatory government and the military headquarters of the British armed forces in the country. The civilians who died in the explosion were mainly the employees of the mandatory administration.

More important, however, is the fact that the Irgun never intended that anyone should die unlike today's jihadis who engage in terrorism that specifically seeks to kill primarily civilians. Telephone calls were made to the British in the hotel, as well as other actions, to warn them to evacuate and the unit commander delayed the explosion by a half hour to facilitate this.

In addition, the jihadis are out to destroy a "civilization", a "culture". Begin and the Irgun had nothing against the British as such, only their White Paper diplomacy.

And Danner didn't know all this or didn't care to know or...?

Dems Fightin' Words (or are they?)

This is being reported:

Israel threatened Saturday to deliver an unprecedentedly harsh response to any attacks from Gaza after Israeli troops quit the territory next week and hand it over to the Palestinians.

'An hour after we leave the field, there will be a strategic change ... in the nature of our response to even an attempt at terror,' Maj. Gen. Yisrael Ziv, the military's chief of operations, told Israel Radio. 'We shall have a far more extreme reaction to any attempt.'

Well, some people might consider those as fighting words or are they but words of bluster?

One of the main selling points of disengagement was that handing over title of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority would then permit Israel to use its military might as it had not done previously.

This is BS.

It didn't use its might because it feared world opinion and will not do so because of same. The same people who were afraid then are the same people with the same fears now.

Already someone has said that only if terror exacts blood will Israel respond and then, only in proportion to the blood shed.

This is the pale face of Israel security.

Maybe There's Another Reason?

The New York Times carries a report that an Arab was killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli soldiers, the second this week, near an "evacuated Jewish settlement".

If the claim has been touted that the Jewish communities in the disputed territories are the cause for Arab terror, why, then, do Arabs continue to challenge emptied out and bulldozed former Jewish neighborhoods?

After 38 years, cannot another few days be worth the wait or is there, perhaps, another reason for Arab hostility, one that even predated the so-called 'occupation' and may exist after Israel's disengagement?

It's To Protect the PA

One of my good friends, A., sent me the Jerusalem Post story on how the government of Israel is fairly determined to raze the Gush Katif synagogues.

And he wrote, inter alia, this:

...Besides the 'Halachic' reasonings against destroying your own Synagogues, when they first started talking about what to do w/the Shuls we thought the same as those who felt it would set a terrible JEWISH SANCTIONED precedent for any situation in the Diaspora when & if condemnation of Shull property would come up for rezoning or otherwise. This is certainly a MAJOR reason for NOT doing what this damn irresponsible gov is going to do!

But another serious thought/reason that came to our minds (the believers that good things can always be hoped for & since the Jewish State was established our history in OUR LAND is nothing more than a minute window in our past & future history) is the "politically correct" consideration that if they destroy our Synagogues when they take over & build as they ALWAYS do their mosques, when we take OUR LAND back & take over again we can destroy their mosques & build OUR Shuls again. The other way around makes it "politically incorrect" to destroy their mosques to rebuild OUR Shuls.

He really has us in a fix. He's bent on finishing his crazy act quicker than ASAP bcs he knows now there is a better chance than ever he'll be thrown out. Can you understand him? WHY!?! -- He did/is doing all this?!? - (Again & again, noone ever showed us any reasons that were reasonable - So if you know of any that you consider to be even fairly logical please relay them to us.

Gee, and here I thought that Sharon wanted to protect the PA from what Israel did to Jordan in the few post-1967 years when we lambasted them over the destruction of 30-odd synagogues in the Old City and the desecration of the Mt of Olives cemetery.

They could be seen as the lowest of lows, uncultured, primitive, truly irreligious. Now, would that be nice to do to his friends?

Ever Heard of the Qaysi-Yamani Feuds, Ms. Hanan?

Back in 1982, Menachem Begin was sharply criticised for making a remark that "goyim kill goyim and they blame the Jews" three days after the Sabra and Chatilla incident in a cabinet meeting (here's one source and here's a second source but this site claim it was in the Knesset. I remember it well, so I trust all of them including Eric Silver who included it in his biography, which I did research for (and that's another story) on Begin at p. 236.

That came to my mind when I read the following excerpt from an article published in the Washington Post and distributed by AP concerning the ferocious Muslim attack on Christian villagers north of Ramallah, an area I know well.

Our well-know Christian Arab apologist, Hanan Ashrawi, had this to say:-

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said Palestinians have increasingly resorted to tribal law for justice after more than four years of conflict with Israel.

The acts of violence and counter-violence in family feuds happen in part because there is no authority that Palestinians can rely on, she said.

"This is a very serious development," Ashrawi said. "We are witnessing some sort of regression in social norms. Palestine has always been famous for its tolerance, pluralism, amicable relations, lack of discrimination and sectarianism. It is quite alarming that such incidents should take place."

She is such a Jew-hater in addition to lying about the history of "Palestine" which was rampant with extreme violence including inter-tribal warfare between the northern tribal families and the southern ones, the Qaysi-Yamani divisions in nineteenth-century Palestine, as described in the first volume of Yehoshuah Porath's book "The emergence of the Palestinian-Arab national movement, 1919-1929", London: Frank Cass, 1973.

The bottom line? Blame Israel for all your troubles.

A Need for Definitions

I sent off to William Safire the following post:-

Did you ever do a column on Sharon's "disengagement"?

Were the Jews from Gush Katif -
disengaged?
displaced?
expelled?
exiled?

Are they -
refugees?
internally displaced persons?

A Very Good Characterization

George Galloway, in an interview in the London Sunday Times Magazine, is quoted as saying:

In the House of Commons these days, he said, he often encountered shivers fruitlessly searching for "spines to run up".

That's a very good line, actually.

And one easily can substitute 'Knesset' for 'House of Commons', too.

"Plucked"?

The Washington Post published this personal opinion piece by Hanna Sender.

Entitled "Now We Must Rebuild Our Lives in Israel", the section editor, I presume, preceded it with the heading "Plucked From Gaza", words that are misleading.

Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister of the Likud, ran on a platform in the 2003 elections diametrically opposed to his rival Labor party candidate's policy of but a partial disengagement from Gaza, one that did not include four other communities in northern Samaria. He violated his pledge to abide by an internal Likud party plebiscite which he lost. He fired two ministers prior to a crucial cabinet meeting, thus assuring a majority by denying them the democratic responsibility entrusted them - to represent their voters.

He then approved not granting the traditional fourth year of service of the commander-in-chief of Israel's army who publicly asserted that disengagement would provide a "tailwind to terror". The head of the General Security Service, parallel to the FBI, who had disagreements about the wisdom of the policy, was replaced. With hundreds of thousands demonstrating in the streets, he refused a suggestion that a referendum be conducted. The State Prosecutor's office lent itself to a dangerous chilling of legitimate opposition. In addition, the woeful unpreparedness of the state agency to provide adequate alternatives for these internally displaced citizens is another blemish.

Hanna Sender and her neighbors were not "plucked". They were expelled and their rights, as Jews, to live in the Jewish national homeland, were trampled.

Could we conceive Arabs being displaced so?

Anyone? Anything?

This appeared in Saturday's New York Times:

On Friday, as on most every Friday now, a demonstration of Palestinian, Israeli and foreign protesters against the building of the barrier near Bilin, a West Bank village, produced arrests and injuries. The Israeli Army has declared the area a closed military zone to try to stop the protests, but they continue.

One soldier was injured lightly after he was assaulted by an Israeli demonstrator, the army said.

Has anyone heard or read about arrests, chages, court cases, media headlines about subversion - anything at all similar to the propaganda campaign waged by government and private sources against those who demonstrated against disengagement?

Anyone? Anything?

Please, No Holocaust Comparisons

[This has been composed tongue-in-cheek but is as real as it gets]

I have been given to understand that if anybody compares the following conditions in the
story about New Orleans with what happened during the Holocaust, whether in the ghettos or the concentration camps, the Israel liberal/progressive elite will bring suit to prevent and/or punish such tattletalers. They will not allow parallels of any sort to be drawn, whether in Gush Katif or New Orleans.

And here are some excerpts:-

"We have been trying to call the mayor's office, we have been trying to call the governor's office ... we have tried to use any inside pressure we can. We are turning to you. Please help us," said Dr. Norman McSwain, chief of trauma surgery at Charity Hospital, the largest of two public hospitals.

He described horrific conditions.

"There is no food in Charity Hospital. They're eating fruit bowl punch and that's all they've got to eat. There's minimal water," McSwain said.

"Most of their power is out. Much of the hospital is dark. The ICU (intensive care unit) is on the 12th floor, so the physicians and nurses are having to walk up floors to see the patients."

Dr. Lee Hamm, chairman of medicine at Tulane University, said he took a canoe from there to the two public hospitals, where he also works, to check conditions.

"The physicians and nurses are doing an incredible job, but there are patients laying on stretchers on the floor, the halls were dark, the stairwells are dark. Of course, there's no elevators. There's no communication with the outside world," he said.

Knox Andress, an emergency nurse who is regional coordinator for a federal emergency preparedness grant covering the state, said it's impossible to underestimate the critical role hospitals are playing for anyone left in the city.

"They're running out of their medications, they're running out of money. They're having social issues and where do they go? They go to the hospital. The hospital is the backbone of the community because the lights are always on," he said.

New Joke Going Around

Israel Authorities Overwhelmed

In an effort to overcome the continuing criticism that he is unsupportive and often dismissive of Israel, President Georg W. Bush announced today that he is converting to Judaism in the hope that this act will demonstrate his affinity and empathy with the Israeli people.

Authorities in Jerusalem have been unable to handle the thousands who have applied to perform the Brit Milah.

And That's Another Reason

The New York Times is supporting Ariel Sharon.

...in the current reality of the Middle East, Mr. Sharon has just boldly gone where Mr. Netanyahu fears to tread. Mr. Sharon's withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza, completed last week, was a historic shift that should be acknowledged and extended.

Now that Mr. Sharon has demonstrated that he is able to carry out a territorial compromise, a necessity if there will ever be any chance for peace, he needs to extend the principle from Gaza to the crucially important West Bank. Members of the Likud Party would be foolish and shortsighted to punish him for the Gaza withdrawal and thus reduce the chances of any further progress toward peace. If they do, they may well deprive their party of any chance of leading Israel to the peace and security that it wants and deserves.

That's it. That's the last straw.
If the NYT is supporting him, that's one of the best reasons to desire his removal from office as fast as possible.

If the United States tried to impeach a president for fooling around with a young female, Sharon's fooling around with an ancient homeland is more than a very good reason, not to mention the country's security, its diplomatic standing and its ability to remain the Jewish national home.

Katrina and Katif

As reported, a resident of Louisiana who chose to stay at home rather than evacuate in the face of advancing Hurricane Katrina believed her country is being dealt with by God because of the major role it played in the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria.

Bridgett Magee said that she saw the giant hurricane “as a direct ‘coming back on us’ [for] what we did to Israel: a home for a home.”

Magee sees the coming catastrophe as something the God of Israel will allow in judgment upon the United States for its central role in the expulsion of 10000 Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.

Those expulsions, which began two weeks ago Sunday and went on for six days, saw 10,000 Jewish men, women and children forced to leave their homes, all of which, together with gardens, schools, shops and synagogues – 25 entire towns – are currently being bulldozed into rubble.

Ancient Names; Modern Parlance

Greg Myre quotes, in today's New York Times, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as saying "not all the settlements of today in Judea and Samaria will remain" but adds that Sharon was "referring to the West Bank by its biblical name".

While Judea and Samaria appear extensively in the Bible as well as the New Testament (Acts 8:1, for example), they were terms used by the British during their Mandate period 1920-1948 and by the United Nations in its Partition Resolution 181 (Part II, Para. A).

There need be no antipathy to using names that originated in antiquity. In truth, the term 'West Bank' is that which is a recent semantic creation, intended to obliterate the Jewishness of the territory promised to become the Jewish national home.

Who is Being Piggish?

I receive the communiques of the Cabinet meetings of Israel's government via the Foreign Ministry. The one from yesterday, 28 August 2005, caught my attention in its thrid paragraph:-


Cabinet Communique
(Communicated by the Cabinet Secretariat)

The Cabinet, at its weekly meeting today (Sunday), 28 August 2005:

...ISA Director Diskin and OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Zeevy (Farkash) briefed ministers on...the three recent incidents of Jewish terrorism (in Shfaram and Shilo, and the throwing of a pig's head at the Hassan Bek Mosque in Jaffa) that were perpetrated in Israel in order to disrupt and/or harm the Disengagement Plan.

As already reported, those arrested, while claiming their act was a hate crime against Arabs (obviously; after all, Muslims don't eat pigs and to dress one's head up with a kaffiyah and the word Muhammed on it is surely motivated by hate), were a pimp and one of his girls.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to call this a "terror" attack.

And I would certainly investigate a) whether the chief suspect is mentally stable; and b) whether he has or had some run-ins whether fellpw pimps from the Arab sector (we are talking about Yaffo, one of Israel's main prostitution areas) which might have caused him, from purely personal reasons, to do such a dumb thing.

They Are Just Warming Up

Rock Attacks on Route 60 in Samaria

(IsraelNN.com)

At least two drivers reported their windows were smashed in rock attacks earlier Sunday afternoon directed against Israeli motorists driving by the Arab village of Sinjel, south of Shilo in Samaria. No injuries were reported.

Ariel Sharon has "freed" them from Gaza so they're looking for more action.

Success with the BBC

Here's a four-part correspondence with the BBC's Jerusalem Bureau.

I spotted an error, complained and achieved a correction.

=========
1)
My appeal

The weirdness of media langauge.

In the Hebron story, the BBC publishes:-

"Approximately 1,200 soldiers guard some 500 ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers living in an enclave in the heart of Hebron,"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4186868.stm

Ultra-Orthodox?

But in the murder of a real ultra-orthodox Jew, one who studied at Mir Yeshiva, we get:

"Shmuel Mett, 21, and fellow Jewish religion student Sammy "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4183622.stm

Religion student?

I'm sure the BBC could do better. After all, English is the mother tongue.

2)
First Response
Subject: RE: Perhaps Correction Needed?
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:59:59 +0100
From:
To: Yisrael Medad

you're right about hebron -- let me see what I can do. I think the other story is ok to describe him as a regious student

Middle East Bureaux
BBC News

3)
Notice of Correction

Subject: RE: Perhaps Correction Needed?
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:06:19 +0100
From:
To: Yisrael Medad

being changed - thanks for spotting it.


Middle East Bureaux
BBC News

4)
Correction

the BBC changed their wording:-

Approximately 1,200 soldiers guard some 500 Jewish settlers living in an enclave in the heart of Hebron, among

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4186868.stm

The Privileged Left

I missed this book and its review at the time.

But, I stumbled over it (I was skimming through some book reviews published in the British press).

Here's the intro:

Likening the Israelis' treatment of Palestinians with the Holocaust is outrageous to most Jews. But Jacqueline Rose has dared to do just that in The Question of Zion, says Rafael Behr

Ah, the privilege of the Left. Only they can use the Holocaust imagery.

The Left is So-o-o Nonviolent

Yet again, another soldier is injured in the Anti-Fence Protest campaign near Bilin, in the Modi’in region. Palestinian Authority (PA) residents and left-wing Israelis pelted soldiers with rocks and eggs.

This has been going on, weekly, since February, I think.

In other words, these so-called nonviolent demonstrations have injured more IDF soldiers and Border policeman (one of whom was killed when he fell while chasing delinquents) than the anti-disengagement actions which, despite denials, the media always portrayed as violent.

Amazing.

Hanging Loose

For how long can the Pals. think they can fool people?

In this New York Times report on the elimination of five terrorists, the claim is made that not all were terrorists.

So what were they?

Read on:-

Palestinians in Tulkarm said two of those killed were militants but three were teenagers who were unarmed but might have had loose affiliations with Palestinian factions.

Loose?

Like in "hang loose"?

The BBC's Habit of So-Calling

In a BBC story relating the circumstances of the murder of a British citizen in Jerusalem by stabbing, the location of the crime is given as:

from the Western Wall (the so-called Wailing Wall) along a shopping street

.

Why "so-called"?

It would have been better to write "also known as..."
although just calling it the Western Wall would have been sufficient.

Let's see, is it to be also "Haram E-Sharif, so-called Temple Mount"?
Or better, "Temple Mount, so-called Haram E-Sharif"?

Maybe then for balance, the BBC should start writing that the Arabs live in a country "so-called Palestine"? Would their Arab listners appreciate that?

No Heart, No God

In her story published in USA Today, "Pullout leaves Sharon on slippery political ground", Andrea Stone saw fit to include a quotation from me:-

Sharon is ³a political dead man,² says Yisrael Medad, a West Bank settler
leader. ³He's without a heart and without a god.²

You Are Reading This As I Received It

I decided to record this just as I received it:-

Young Jewish Man Murdered in Jerusalem.
His crime - being Jewish.

I sit facing my computer, and words fail me. I have just witnessed one of the most tragic and traumatic events of my life.

“A Jewish young man died in my arms tonight.”

Yes, you read correctly. A Jewish man died in my arms tonight. His sin? Being Jewish in Jerusalem. At about 8:25 this evening, we got a call from the MDA dispatcher about a stabbing on Rechov David - the shuk leading from Shaar Yaffo (Jaffa Gate) to the Kotel. I immediately left my apartment and sped over to the chaotic scene not far from there on a Hatzolah ambucycle.

Upon arrival, a horrible sight greeted me. A young Jewish man, lying in a pool of his own blood, with a 15" knife sticking out of his stomach. After being at many bombings, car accidents and other traumatic events, this scene had the distinction of being the worst one I have ever seen. His skin a very pale color, and his eyes half open, I reached him. The only people around were police officers, who didn't really know what to do. The young Jewish man was not breathing, and he had no pulse. This is the nightmare of any EMT. Alone, as the only person with medical training at the scene, there is not much you can do. Many tasks need to be done, and many people are needed to do them. Starting CPR, connecting oxygen, starting numerous IV's due to massive blood loss and trying to stop the bleeding are some of the things that need to be done, but in the seconds that I was there, my mind stopped working.

One cannot think rationally in such situations - one must act like a robot, doing whatever could be done as quickly as possible. First, I called for backup on my MIRS, and then I started CPR. Even with all of the expensive equipment that we have, there are times that the only thing you can use is a simple pocket mask. Using a bag valve mask on a trauma patient that you are having trouble opening an airway for is a waste of time. It is close to impossible to use on your own on such a patient. I took out my trusty face mask, and started mouth to mouth resuscitation. I felt his lungs fill up with air, and I was slightly encouraged. One of the police officers started chest compressions (as well as he could), and we continued basic CPR for a minute or two. At this point, an ambulance with a paramedic - Aryeh Yaffe - arrived at the scene, along with Rafi Herbst and another volunteer. We now had four sets of hands instead of one, and could now start to try to save the young Jewish man's life. We immediately searched for the wounds and tried to stop the bleeding. At the same time we tried to start an IV, but were having difficulty due to the massive amounts of blood that he lost. We continued CPR, this time with a bag valve mask and good compressions, and in the meantime, more volunteers from the Jewish Quarter arrived on foot, and quickly took my place.

Shortly thereafter a MDA Mobile ICU arrived and continued to work on the patient - the Doctor I saw on their crew was one of the best I have ever seen working under pressure and keeping his cool - as well as giving fantastic care to the patient. Soon, we had three IV's running, and we were trying to restart the young man's heart using drugs. Atropine, Sodium Bicarbonate were used among other drugs, and soon we had a heart rhythm on the EKG, although we did not have a pulse. We moved the patient to the mobile ICU who transferred him to the trauma center at Haddassah Ein Karem, but the young man was pronounced dead in the operating room - he had a massive gash in the veins and arteries in his stomach, and we could not save him. When I had arrived at the scene previously - he was no longer with us, yet we tried everything that we could to bring him back - to no avail.

What was the young man's crime? What did he do wrong? Why was he murdered by our 'peace partners'? To us, the residents of the Old City, these answers are clear. The arabs want us out of Israel - out of Jerusalem. They see clearly that violence and terrorism against Jews works, as witnessed in Gaza and Gush Katif - five years of violence culminated in the surrender of the Jews. Now, they clearly say that they want Jerusalem - and the way for them to get it is through blood - our blood.

A friend of mine commented tonight, "Jewish blood is not cheap. It's free." The terrorism will continue - and will get much worse in Jerusalem. One thing I can tell you - we won't run. We will stand firm, and remain here until one side wins - us or them. The battle is for the soul of the Land of Israel - let no one think otherwise. In the meantime, I'm sure you are asking yourselves - what can be done?

The answer, as I see it, is threefold. Physical help: This includes writing to congressmen, senators, politicians; trying to influence the viewpoint of others around you; visiting Israel; helping us in our struggle. After tonight, I've realized that every volunteer EMT in the Old City should have a gun with him - we need to raise money for that as well (I can be reached at moshe@hatzolah.org.il for more information as to how to donate). I never thought that as an EMT I'd be trying to raise money for guns - the instruments of death, but times have changed. There are also other medical items that we need - reach me at the email address above. More importantly, we must realize that our fate is decided in Heaven. When a decree comes from before G-d, we must take a deeper look at ourselves and try to find what is wrong spiritually. Each of us must make additional effort in the spiritual realm to do more mitzvot and study Torah, and through that may we merit the rescinding of the terrible sword that hangs above our heads.

Let us cry together. Let us understand that a Jew murdered in Jerusalem must have an impact upon the entire Jewish nation - we must realize the depths that we have reached. We are a splintered, fragmented nation - each of us finding fault with the other. At the very least, let us join together in sorrow, and cry as one for the blood of a young man, murdered in Jerusalem simply because he was a Jew. Please pass this message on. We must wake up and realize where this is leading. We must arise to the challenge given to us and join together to be victorious.

Written in sorrow by Moshe Simons, EMT Hatzolah & MDA Volunteer Hatzolah Newsletter editor Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem
moshe@hatzolah.org.il

"Poll" Dancing

Anybody watching and listening to the news here in Israel, or what passes for news but is actually the expression of personal political ideology by the newscasters, the interviewers and the commentators, knows that they all sneer at Bibi Netanyahu and mention, in a very annoying fashion his dependence on polls (after all, every politician utilizes polls). Even Arik Sharon deprecates Bibi for his 'poll' mentality.

So, what do I find buried in this Haaretz story?

That Arik's advisers:

"warn Sharon against being wooed by misleading surveys that speak of a victory for him if he heads a new party."

What, Old Man Sharon uses polls? Employs advisers?

Oz - The Peace Fanatic

The London Times carries an Amos Oz op-ed.

Here's a short excerpt:-

We want to live in peace and in freedom, not under the rule of the rabbis, not even under the rule of the Messiah, but under our own elected government.

We have a dream of being free from the lasting occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Amos Oz's attempt to set as opposites Jews as a religion and Jews as a nation is a failed philosophy.

One need not be a theological fanatic to realize that Arab terror is not fed by "occupation" or "settlements", neither of which existed prior to 1967, at which time Arab anti-Zionist terror had been in existence for decades.

Even Oz's dream of a Little Israel is insufficient for Arab visions of an eradicated Jewish state.

These peaceniks are so 'messianic', they put even Chabad to shame.

From an Australian TV Interview

From the transcript of an interview at the big demo 10 days ago, on August 12 for an Australian TV network:


PETER CAVE: Yisrael Medad is a spokesman for the Yesha Council.

YISRAEL MEDAD: We are trying to represent the popular will of the people. This is a democracy.

PETER CAVE: Are you hoping that some of the thousands of people you've got here tonight will actually cross across into Gaza?

YISRAEL MEDAD: We're not only hoping, we know that they will be across into the Gush Katif area next week, and if not, they'll be at Kisufim Junction in order to slow down this process of evacuation and expulsion. We will not allow this process to go down quietly. If it does happen, afterwards, because they're going to be elections within the year, we're going to have a new Government, a new Prime Minister, and hopefully we'll return to sanity in this country.

PETER CAVE: Could you return to Gaza?

YISRAEL MEDAD: Quite possibly.

Other Shilohs

I live at Shiloh, Samaria, Israel.

Here, most probably, Yaakov fought a battle in retreat against Shchemites. Here Joshua divided out the tribal portions of the Land of Israel. Here the Tabernacle was erected. Here Samuel the Prophet was inducted to the prophetic ministry.

But what about the other Shilohs?

Here are a few references I found while stumbling through some search engines for something else entirely:-


1.
A Whole New Wardrobe for
Wet Wrapping!

Shiloh Healthcare are delighted to announce the launch of our new Comfifast Easywrap Suits – a range of easy to apply washable clothing used for wet wrapping in the treatment of paediatric atopic eczema.

2.
Shiloh Industries, Inc.
Products
Body Structures, Interior Metallics, Engineered Welded Blanks

3.
Shiloh, Illinois -- The Place to Be!
People who live and work in the Village of Shiloh know the simple pleasures of small-town life and at the same time enjoy all the benefits of a thriving metropolis. Located on the crest of a picturesque, unspoiled valley, Shiloh is encircled by several larger neighbors, including Belleville, Fairview Heights, O'Fallon, and Scott Air Force Base. Within the surrounding towns are numerous shopping centers, as well as the largest mall in Southern Illinois.

4.
Shiloh National Military Park was established in 1894 to preserve the scene of the first major battle in the Western theater of the Civil War. The two-day battle, April 6 and 7, 1862, involved about 65,000 Union and 44,000 Confederate troops. This battle resulted in nearly 24,000 killed, wounded, and missing. It proved to be a decisive victory for the federal forces when they advanced on and seized control of the Confederate railway system at Corinth, Mississippi. The battlefield contains about 4,000 acres at Shiloh and an interpretive center at Corinth, Mississippi.

5.
The Shiloh Project is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Fairfax County, Virginia and is a participating member of the Combined Federal Campaign and the United Way of the National Capital Area.
Our Mission: Teaching juvenile offenders and youth at-risk Compassion, Respect and Responsibility toward animals and others through the experience of socializing and interacting with rescued homeless dogs, Promoting the adoption of homeless companion animals and Encouraging healthy and positive human/animal bonds.

Any more out there?

Is there a psychosis called Masochistic Self-Hatred?

Amira Haas has published "Khan Yunis / What Netzarim cost Sheikh Ajlin: 114 lives, 1,900 dunams, 105 homes".

What can I say?

One Jay Friedman from Ra'anana added this response there at the site:

The Palestinian leadership caused the death of 114 Palestinians.
Can you imagine how Gaza would have looked had the Palestinians and the other Arab leaders been willing to make peace with Israel in 1947..in 1948? in 1949? in 1956? in 1967? in 1968 and on and on and on and on? in 2001? in 2001? in 2002? in 2003? in 2004???? Would Israel have remained in any part of the Gaza Strip if the Palestinians would have the courage to make peace?

He has said it all.

Poor Amira. But at least she made money off of Gaza by publishing a book.

Fair is Fair

This story parallels that "Jewish couple" story.

And I believe in fairness, so here's an excerpt:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2005 — Officials at JP Morgan Chase have apologized and promised to improve their screening policies, after a credit card solicitation letter sent to a 54-year-old naturalized American citizen came addressed to "Palestinian Bomber."

The form letter for a Visa Platinum card arrived earlier this month at the home of Sami Habbas, a grocery store manager from Corona, Calif. Habbas is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Palestinian heritage. He told ABC News he is "extremely upset" at receiving the letter, pointing out that he has lived in the United States for 51 years and also served in the U.S. Army, receiving an honorable discharge in 1969.

Why Not Be Fair?

The New York Times carries a story on the crisis that the expelled Jewish population from Gaza and its supporters are undergoing.

Unfortunately, his interlocutors, Ari Shavit and Shlomo Avineri, are both opponents of Israel's presence in what Erlanger admits is "biblical Land of Israel".

Could not one representative voice have been quoted, to lend balance and authenticity to the discussion?

I'm Quoted

USA Today quotes me.

Here.

Maybe Sharon and SELA Head Bassi Can Use this Idea?

Okay, this (for full story) is a bit of on the black humor side of things. But the way things are going for some of the Gaza refugees, this isn't that far off the mark.

Germany's homeless students turn to living in a box
By Ruth Elkins, in Berlin
Published: 21 August 2005
The UK Independent

The new Micro-Compact Home (M-CH) offers students a cosy six square metres of individual dwelling where they can sleep, drink beer and occasionally fit in a bit of work. It is a raised, entirely open-plan aluminium cube. Inside, three levels of "interlocking space" miraculously manage to contain a stowaway bed, desk, kitchen and a "completely normal" toilet and shower, even if it is in the doorway. Equipped with flat-screen TV, internet access and air conditioning, the M-CH is easily transportable and so small it can be parked almost anywhere.

The new Micro-Compact Home (M-CH) offers students a cosy six square metres of individual dwelling where they can sleep, drink beer and occasionally fit in a bit of work. It is a raised, entirely open-plan aluminium cube. Inside, three levels of "interlocking space" miraculously manage to contain a stowaway bed, desk, kitchen and a "completely normal" toilet and shower, even if it is in the doorway. Equipped with flat-screen TV, internet access and air conditioning, the M-CH is easily transportable and so small it can be parked almost anywhere.

Rememeber that New Jersey Restaurant?

Remember that story of the "Jewish Couple" from last week?

Well, there's a follow up.

August 19, 2005 -- A posh Jersey Shore eatery, under fire for referring to a pair of diners as a "Jew Couple" on their check, is in hot water again.
Longtime customer Joanne Fordyce said she was outraged when she noticed that her check from Parkhill's Waterfront Grill in Loch Arbour printed, just below her table number, "Dirty Joanne."

Read on.

A Synagogue is not a Church

The scenes we observed at the Kfar Darom synagogue, a community that was abandoned in 1938 due to the Arab riots at the time; that was overrun and destroyed in the 1948 war after a heroic stand against the invading Egyptian army and now, in 2005, scheduled to be eradicated were difficult.

One comment made by the officers in command was that "we didn't desecrate the synagogue; you kids decided to select that site, not us".

Well, technically, that's true.

Nevertheless, as the Yesha Council spokesperson pointed out, this same Israel Defense Forces army refused, in 2002, to go into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. And I am talking about the period when several terrorists were holed up inside, crimes far worse than the acts these youngsters did.

Makes you think, no?

Reality?

The New York Times' editorial asserts that "Gaza...part of Mandatory Palestine...was never part of the Zionist state intended by the United Nations partition plan that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948". This is ingenuous.

Gaza, part of the original territory intended by the League of Nations in 1922 to become the Jewish National Home, was indeed not included in the land mass that was to be the Jewish state in Palestine. That resolution, however, was rejected by the Arabs and became a dead letter. The war of aggression launched by Arabs, in blatant violation of the UN, left Israel in legitimate possession of the Gallilee, the southern sea coast and additional regions which are now recognized as Israel.

The Arab attempt in 1967 to continue the 1948 war left Israel administrating Gaza. The Jewish communities there, some of which existed prior to 1948 like Kfar Darom, are not illegitimate and neither are they the "worst side" of the revenant movement to continue Jewish life in the Jewish homeland but a continuation of genuine Jewish nationalism.

Would not the conclusion of the editorial's logic lead to Israel expelling Arabs, like the Jews of Gaza, out of their homes in Gallilee?

The Foreign Ministry Can't Write Properly

Israel's Foreign Ministry publishes updates on government pronouncements, events and other important developments. Unfortunately, the English is not that successful or even correct.

Here's the posting that went out early this morning:

Response of PM Sharon to Shilo terrorist attack - Aug 17, 2005
18/08/2005 6:42:09
Shalom, Yisrael Medad
**Response of PM Sharon to Shilo terrorist attack - Aug 17, 2005
====================================================================
Information Department, Israel Foreign Ministry - Jerusalem
Website: http://www.mfa.gov.il
E-mail: feedback@mfa.gov.il

And this is the short note I sent to their feedback address:-

Your translation is in error.

This was not the "Shilo Terrorist Attack".

This was the "Asher Vizgan Terror Attack".

Shiloh did not kill anybody.

No one who lives in Shiloh killed anyone.

One person, one individual killed. A community did not kill.

Just Exactly Who Is Responsible?

This is just amazing:-

Neither attacks came as a complete surprise to police or to the Shin Bet security service. In recent months, the security establishment has received numerous warnings of possible attacks by extremist Jews against the Palestinians in an attempt to incite disorder in the territories and block the disengagement plan.

The incident at the entrance to the Shiloh Bloc of communities was not part of some plan but, as far as I can tell, perhaps a result of the anti-"settler" incitement by the media (*) and those politicians who manipulate the media and raise all sorts of ideas that no one would contemplate or think about unless the media gives them a platform. No one here talks or discusses such ideas but the newspapers delight in reporting on the most unlikely scenarios and it is this phenomenom which could be the guilty party.

(*) And as the Jerusalem Post reports:-

The shooter was identified as Asher Weisgan, 40, from the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rahel. Initial findings suggested that he was not known to possess a radical ideology, security officials said.

Some of his friends, however, said he had appeared to be in a state of depression in recent days, probably because of disengagement.

Just How Jewish?

Someone sent me a story about a fancy Jersey Shore restaurant presenting a check which listed the diners' table as that of the "Jew Couple."

Here's an excerpt:-

Brooklynite Elliot Stein says he was shocked that a waitress at the Parkhill's Waterfront Grill in Allenhurst printed the slur instead of a table number on his $36.75 bill.

As if that weren't bad enough, the 23-year-old shoe buyer told The Post, the offensive phrase then turned up on his credit-card statement two weeks later.

"My grandfather went through all that in old-school Europe," an angry Stein said yesterday. "But that happened more than 50 years ago. You don't expect it to happen in 2005, especially when a lot of their money comes from our community."

Relaxing at happy hour on a Friday night, July 8, he and his girlfriend of two years, Jennifer Cassin, had just finished their sushi and drinks. When the check arrived...along with the list of their orders was the printed phrase: "Jew Couple."

Stein, who has a vacation house in nearby Deal, N.J., said he was a regular at the waterfront establishment.

Gee, I feel for them even though I am guessing that the eatery wasn't really serving Kosher food, especially as it was on the Shabbat.

Even a London Bobby You Can't Trust

As the New York Times reports it, London policemen lie and kill.

It basically informs us that an official investigation directly contradicted the police account of the killing of a young Brazilian man after the bombing attempts in London on July 21.

At the time, the police said Mr. Menezes wore a bulky jacket on a hot day, began running from officers despite commands to halt, vaulted the ticket turnstile and ran stumbling onto the subway train. A news report on British television said an inquiry led by the Independent Police Complaints Commission had contradicted every one of those points. The report said that the officers had misidentified Mr. Menezes as one of the failed July 21 attackers and that he was killed even though he walked into the subway station wearing a light denim jacket, did not vault the turnstile and was sitting on the train when the officers moved in.

You can't trust policemen, in the U.K. and, as we know, in Israel as well.

Self-Incitement?

According to this Haaretz report, PM Ariel Sharon might find himself being blamed for incitement to violence. Who knows? With the current atmosphere as it is and with the media as it is and with an Attorney General as he is, democracy is a very fragile tool in the hands of those who either don't understand what the rights of free speech and free expression are, or, worse, seek to selectively pervert it from political and ideological persuasions.

Here, read for yourselves his words and how President Katzav quickly tried to correct him:-

"I want to truly appeal to everyone, not to attack the police, the women and men soldiers and police. Don't blame them. Don't make it hard on them. Don't hurt them, hurt me."

Referring to his disengagement plan, said "I am responsible for this. Hurt me. Blame me. Don't hurt the soldiers and police who are in any case in a state of distress."

Katsav then interjected, saying that Sharon intended to say "'Criticize me,' not 'hurt me.'"

More Thievery

As Itim reports in Haaretz,

Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were caught Tuesday trying to loot the evacuated homes of settlers in the Gush Katif settlement of Pe'at Sadeh. This is the third time soldiers have been caught attempting to loot homes in that settlement this week.

The soldiers were in the midst of stealing pieces of silverware when a female soldier caught them in the act and reported the incident to a commander.

Poor Shuvi. Someone is responsible for this looting and they need to take care of their own moral position before demanding that no hand be raised (see yesterday's posting).

Some Historic Issues

Jordan's King Abdullah II vowed Tuesday to oppose settling more Palestinian refugees in his country amid Arab fears that Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip may not extend to the West Bank.

He further said:

I know and do appreciate the fears of some of you that plans may exist to redraw the map of the region and to settle some historic issues at the expense of Jordan.

Well, well.

If there are any "historic issues" left to resolve, one of them is what happened to the original territory intended for the Jewish National Home? Or, why, after several partitions, one in 1922, another in 1947, the Pals. are still not satiated? Or, how is it that Abdullah's great-grandfather took over Jordan, himself a refugee displaced from Saudi Arabia?

From Whom Did They Learn to Steal?

Last month, a counter-campaign was launched to portray the anti-disengagement protests as violent and causing civil strife (you gotta give it to our Lefties, they really know where to get the money for these full page ads).

Anyway, the message was "don't you dare hit my son". The full ad reads: "His humor is from his mother; his big heart from his father; his duties from the IDF. Don't raise your hand against my son". It is signed "The Mothers of the Soldiers".

Well, in today's Hebrew edition of Haaretz (for which I haven't located a web site link) appears, way back on page 14A, a small notice that two Givati soldiers were caught stealing, or is it more properly plundering, out of homes in Pe'at Sadeh and Channel 10 TV caught 3 other soldiers from a combat engineering unit stealing a refrigerator from a house there, too. Here's The Jerusalem Post report.

Well, from whom did they learn to steal?

P.S. Why not ask them. Here's their address: office@shuvi.org

Not Worthy of Splashy Journalism?

Haaretz's English language web site reports that among those arrested on Friday at the weekly anti-fence demo near Bil'in was a soldier, female. The Hebrew print edition, on page 12A, way in the back, informs us that she was scheduled to serve in the office of...COC Dan Halutz.

Avi Bieber had his picture splashed across the front pages, for days.

And this soldier?

Could it be she belongs to the right, opps, left side of the political spectrum?

Hyper-Zionism

David Brooks, in an op-ed column in the New York Times writes of groups that reject the globalized culture who are "driven". He then sets out some examples. Like these:-

Islamic extremists reject the modern cultures of Europe, and have created a hyperaggressive fantasy version of traditional Islamic purity. In a much different and less violent way, some American Jews have moved to Hebron and become hyper-Zionists.

As it happens, Jews, from all over the world, and for centuries, have been returning to Hebron. In the 1929 riots, a half dozen American boys, from New York, Chicago and other places were among those murdered there. To live in Hebron as in Safed, Jerusalem and Tiberias over the centuries was not "hyper", but the most normal act a Jew could do. This was not a hyper-reaction but a fulfillment of the thousands year-old command and instruction to go and live in the homeland of the Jewish people.

Is it "hyper" because Brooks presumes that Hebron is "Arab territory" and that Jews shouldn't be there even if they do actually "belong" there? Why is accomplishing one of the most basic of Jewish acts, just like "next year in Jerusalem", to be thought of as 'weird', 'outlandish' and 'hyper'?

An Itemized Expense

This just shows how determined the evacuation is planned:-

Wednesday's drill took place at Kerem Shalom, a communal farm along Israel's border with Gaza. The army paid for residents to stay in a hotel during the exercise.

The 'Cultured' Left

Just yesterday, the media firestormed the pronouncement of Attorney-General Menni Mazuz that it has not been proven that incitement was a direct cause of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

They berated him for daring to assume that words cannot kill because without this basis, they have no case against the Right in a collective sense.

So, how does the Left write and use words?

Try this, from Yoel Marcus, senior columnist and editorial board member of Haaretz:-

Israel was attacked twice within the space of 72 hours. First by a Jewish terrorist who shot four passengers to death on a bus in Shfaram and then by Benjamin Netanyahu, who suddenly resigned as the cabinet met to put their John Hancock on the first stage of the pullout. Both attacks had the same motivation - to sabotage the disengagement. But it is doubtful that either the military misfit who became a murderer or the smart, sharp-tongued politician will achieve their goal.

Left-wing Hypocrisy Yet Again

Arutz 7 reported that

vandals damaged the Rishon L’Tzion grave of IDF Pvt. Eidan Natan-Zada, who perpetrated last week’s bus attack in Shfar'am. City Hall officials report that vandals removed the grave marker which contains the name of the person buried, and removed a quantity of dirt. Officials stress the body of the soldier was not touched.

Are these the same people who complain when Gush Katif people utilize Holocaust-related messages?

How to Win Over the Public

Tel Aviv University published the results of a Peace Index poll they've been running monthly for almost a decade.

I think the information below from the poll indicates that I may have been right in my long-held beliefs that the methods, strategy, orientation and tactics of the anti-Oslo opposition led by the Yesha Council ("the Yesha Is Here" campaign vs. my proposed "This Is Not My Peace" line) as well as the current anti-Disengagement drive

========================================

Arguments of both the opponents and the supporters turn out to be primarily security-oriented rather than “ideological.” Thus, among the opponents the most common argument—23%—is that the withdrawal from Gaza is interpreted by the Palestinians as flight, and they must not be allowed to think this since it strengthens them against Israel.

The second most common argument—21.5%—is that the withdrawal will lead to an intensification of terror against Israel from the Strip, and the third argument—20%—is that the withdrawal poses a strategic danger to Israeli security. Only 11% cite as a main factor that the withdrawal sets a dangerous precedent for the evacuation of West Bank settlements as well, and even fewer—9%—ascribe most of their opposition to the fact that Gaza is part of the Promised Land of Israel.

Among the disengagement supporters, the order of the arguments is as follows: 33% believe the Israeli presence in Gaza is too costly in terms of victims and strengthens the Palestinians’ motivation for terror against Israel, and 22% say Gaza is not part of the historical Land of Israel and therefore Israel has no business there. Some 14% think the withdrawal will signal to the Palestinians that Israel desires peace and will encourage a return to the negotiating table; 11.5% feel that being in Gaza has no strategic value in terms of Israeli security, and only 10% “bought” the explanation by Dov Weisglass that Israel should leave Gaza in order to relieve the international pressure, enabling it to retain the West Bank settlements in the long run.

Facts are Facts

Andrea Levin, Executive Director of CAMERA in Boston, had a letter published in the Boston Globe on August 5 in response to a factually erroneous letter printed several days earlier.

In part, it read:-

As to Garrett's claim that even Israel's own Supreme Court deems Jewish settlements illegal, he's wrong. The opposite is true. The Elon Moreh case of 1979, the key relevant court decision, set the parameters for establishment of legal settlements. It ruled, for example, that no private Arab land could be taken for settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, but rather, state land was to be used.

To my mind, CAMERA would have been on stronger ground on the question of "settlement legality" had Andrea Levin pointed out that one of the fundamental legal rights granted Jews within the territory of the reconstituted Jewish National Home, which from 1922 onwards included all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, was that of "close settlement".

The language of Article 6 is quite clear on this matter, reading that the Mandate Power "shall encourage...close settlement by Jews, on the land, including State lands and waste lands".

When Reality Becomes Real

The New York Times editorial today is particularly viscious.

On the one hand, it congratulates Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "for standing firm and proceeding with the Gaza pullout...[and]...bowing to a demographic reality and a realistic understanding" of Israel's needs.

On the other, it denigrates resigning Finance Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, pitying him for "still refusing to acknowledge" a political, economic and emotional reality that Israel cannot hold on to the Gaza Strip.

In a few months time, however, we will know what the reality will be as it will be reported on the pages of the NYT and broadcast.

Will that reality be the optimistic view Sharon sees, that of peace, or the pessimistic outlook of Netanyahu, one of increased terror?

But the real puzzle will be: will the New York Times recognize the reality when it occurs or we will still be treated to plain bad advice?

Dumb

So says Ehud Olmert, vice prime minister and Ariel Sharon's running dog or, if that's too strong, then Sancho Panza:-


"I am amazed by the responsible and restrained manner that the Arab public displayed after the attack," Ehud Olmert said on his visit to Shfaram on Saturday.


And the truth?

Read on:-

MK Mohammed Barakeh warned on Saturday that protests could erupt if police probe Zada's lynching.

According to Barakeh, the crowd attacked Zada out of concern he would continue with his shooting rampage. He denied that Zada was beaten after being handcuffed by police.

However, Shfaram's security officer, Jamal Aliam, told Army Radio that Zada had been attacked by dozens after he had been handcuffed and subdued by police.

Dov Weisglass told the world that 60,000 more revenants will have to be displaced in a further depopulation move.

Here's what he said, a la Reuters:-

JERUSALEM, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Israel expects at least 180,000 of the current
240,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank will be able to stay in their
homes with approval from the United States, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon said on Thursday.

In support of Sharon's plan, Washington said last year that Israel could
expect to keep some occupied land in any final peace deal with the
Palestinians.

"Altogether, we talk about 180,000 settlers of a total population of
240,000. So this is of course a significant step forward in this matter,"
Weisglass said in a conference broadcast on Israeli radio.

"It means the entire area of greater Jerusalem, the city of Maale Adumim,
the settlements in the Gush Etzion area and the bloc of settlements around
Ariel."

Feel better now?

They Never Heed Warnings

Haaretz reports that the family of the killer of the non-Jews in Shfar'am warned the authorities that their son posed a clear and present danger. Yet nothing was done.

Carmella Menasheh went on Channel One end-of-week wrapup show Friday night to testify to the truth of that statement, noting that for 6 weeks she tried to get a response to the family's claims and only two hours (!) prior to the shooting, she was informed that everything was being dealt with.

So, if they can't deal with one Jewish killer, of course they ignore the warnings about thousands of potential Arab killers waiting in the wings in Gaza and northern Samaria.

Against Jews They Can Be Tough But Against Arabs?

Haaretz reports

The mob kicked the gunman and hurled objects at him. Police officers surrounded the bus in an attempt to protect the gunman from the mob, but moved away when they thought the Lower Galilee residents were going to set the bus on fire.

a. they can be tough against Jews but prove less than capable facing an Arab mob?
b. when the Kasams fall in Gaza during the expulsion, will they also run away?