June 2010 Archives

[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]

One of the tell-tale signs of a regime in distress is that its top officials begin sounding off on subjects quite removed from their remit. So it is with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who claims to have discovered the reason behind the exit of France, England and the United States from the World Cup.

Was it the seething discord in the French camp spilling onto the field? Was it England's defensive failures compounded by the nasty habit of engaging in "kick and rush?" Was it the US tendency to play catch-up by, more often than not, conceding early goals?

No, it was none of those things, according to Mottaki.

"In this World Cup you see a meaningful correlation between politics and diplomacy and football," Mottaki was quoted as saying by Tehran Emrouz newspaper. "Those who played a key role in new sanctions against Iran such as America, England and France were eliminated in the early stages and some countries that were somehow involved in sanctions did not get into higher rounds."

Well, no, actually.

[The following, by Zach, is crossposted from The Brothers of Judea.]

Dear Huffington Post Staff,

I am writing in response to your request for more information in combating the problem of anti-Semitism on the Huffington Post. I would like to draw your attention to a blogger named MJ Rosenberg whose actions in many ways encapsulate this problem; he does not say anything anti-Semitic himself but enables and legitimizes those who do. If I could spare a moment of your time I will explain why I make this accusation. It was not made lightly.

I will began by informing you about an anti-Semitic staple that has appeared in various forms for centuries: The myth of the Zionist occupied government. In short this myth claims that a secret group of Jews control not only the government of many countries but in fact seek to control the entire world (if they do not do so already). The most prominent example of this is the famous forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" which made exactly that claim. Since then it has appeared in the writings and political cartoons of many anti-Semites, including the Nazis and quite a few Muslim nations. It is one of the few myths about Jews that have persisted into the modern era, even when many religiously-based slanders (such as deicide) have all but disappeared.

So you might be asking at this point: What does this have to do with MJ Rosenberg? Well I will tell you: Mr. Rosenberg writes almost exclusively about what he likes to call "The Lobby" aka "the pro-Israel lobby" aka AIPAC. In fact it appears that Mr. Rosenberg is on a quest to tear down AIPAC and replace it with other pro-Israel groups that he likes, most notably J Street. For every one post about any other topic, there is one attacking AIPAC or people who support it. This isn't all that unusual, there is much to criticize about the way that AIPAC operates. If criticizing AIPAC was all that Mr. Rosenberg did, I would not be writing to you.

[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

In the Huffington Post, Hagai El-Ad has this to say:

Three aspects common to many recent critiques of Israel are present here: Israel is seen as having once been very good and much loved and now to be very bad and widely hated, the person making the critique is Jewish (in this particular case, there's the added bonus of the fact that Stéphane Hessel, the cited drafter of the Declaration of Human Rights is a Holocaust survivor) and Israel is seen to be heading for catastrophe if it doesn't change its ways.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Aside from all the traditional reasons--antisemitism, oil money, the Arab world's strategic weight, guilt over colonialist pasts, fear of Islamist violence, etc--there are some important new ideological ones making large elements of the Western cultural and intellectual elite dislike (or hate) Israel.

If you understand these factors, it also explains a lot more generally about the (temporarily?) hegemonic ideology that has taken over much of Western academia, media, and politics.

1. Religion
As a Jewish state, and a country where religion plays an important role, Israel is anathema to Western leftists and intellectuals who are against religion, or at least against Judeo-Christian religions. Incidentally, though, Israel is not a theologically based or defined states. In fact, Jews are a people who happen to have a distinctive religion, something rather common in history. The idea that Jews are only a religious group is a very recent idea in world history.

But the allergy to religion in public life is a powerful force in Western elites today. Why doesn't this apply to Islam? There are a number of reasons but one rarely mentioned is that Islam isn't "their" religion, meaning that they have never personally or collectively rebelled against it, nor has it shaped elements in their own society that these people hate. Islam may be a repressive religion in Saudi Arabia, but it isn't responsible for Jerry Falwell or the "Christian right." Hence, to a member of the Western elite, it isn't "their" problem.

He's not the first man in history to try to give meaning to the lives of the downtrodden by scapegoating the Jews. Now he's turning it up a notch: Nation of Islam leader accuses Jews of 'anti-black' behavior, asks for dialogue

This is a loogy in the face of all those Jews and Jewish organizations who have put the interests of Black people before their own interests, and in many cases have sacrificed their health and even their lives in doing so. The ADL press release is here.

Mosab Hassan Yousef will not be deported:

They got an earful from the public, and perhaps it did some good. This on the day that Yousef has an op-ed published in the Washington Post: Why deport a friend to Middle East peace?

In full from Jewish Russian Telegraph. Looks like the Rabbis are outnumbered:

We, undersigned members and representatives of the Russian Jewish community of Massachusetts, are writing to you to express our deep concerns about the state of affairs in our community. Enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people are raising their heads without much resistance from the part of organizations that are supposed to defend us. Here is what we witnessed in our recent memory:

• In January when 54 Democratic congressmen wrote an unprecedentedly biased letter criticizing the Jewish state, six of these congressmen came from Massachusetts delegation. They joined without any fear of backlash or political and community repercussions
• during the past decade radical Islamists took over peaceful and historically tolerant Muslim community in the Commonwealth, building mosques with questionable terrorist affiliations that are providing safe haven to preachers of hate. Calls for elimination of Israel and physical destruction of the Jewish people are heard without any forceful resistance
• Jewish students are harassed on campuses
• radical anti-Israel organizations like J Street (routinely shunned by official representatives of the state of Israel) are brazenly claiming and getting their seat at the community table
• cases of terrorist activities by Muslim youth, influenced by radical hate propaganda, are increasing in Massachusetts

With these facts on the background ADL spends more time fighting cyber-bullying and attacking Avigdor Lieberman than they spend on fighting hate and calls to violence against the Jews coming from radical Islamists. JCRC, an organization solely dedicated and funded to be an effective community tool in situations like these, is completely missing in action. Granted, each time, when they are confronted with the facts, Islamists have a tale to tell: "jihad is a way for self-improvement; a gun mentioned in a talk, is not a real gun, but gun of prayer; killing Jews, meant killing only some Jews." Big comfort!? But there is no spin that our leaders would question, and there is no lie that they would not gladly absorb.Their good will and credulity have no limits when it comes to leaders of Islamist radicals. Everything changes though when dissent comes from within the community. Just look at the vicious ad hominem attack unleashed by self-selected community leadership on Charles Jacobs. While official Jewish leadership was silent, media oblivious or intimidated, Charles Jacobs and his group of volunteers have been providing precise and well-documented facts about clear and present danger of Islamist hate surrounding us. Our Jewish leaders who were tame as lambs in front of Islamists, roared as lions against this brave and lonely voice of dissent. Apparently freedom of expression, that is granted for use and abuse to our enemies without any reservations, is apportioned very narrowly to any critic of the politically correct dogmas. Back in the Soviet Union authorities would put a man like Jacobs behind bars for anti-Soviet propaganda. In the United States we are dismayed by attempts to ostracize and silence him. Unable to handle the message, Jewish community leadership decided to attack the messenger. But this shall not pass.

We demand a community wide dialog about the current situation. We must discover what our leaders knew, when they knew it, and why they failed to act. We must do it now, before it is too late. Scripture says: "don't stand idly by the blood of your neighbor." We, our families, and our neighbors are in danger. If we really mean it when we say "Never Again", we must act now.

Signed (90 people):

Dr. Nadia Rodberg, Framingham - RJCF, Romen Rodberg, Framingham, Dr. Nellie Konnikov, Newton, Gennady Konnikov, Newton, Samuil Shmuylovich, Framingham, Nima Shmuylovich, Framingham,Sergey Liberman, Waltham, Natalia Liberman MD, Waltham, Julia Velixon, Lexington, Elvira Fagel, Cambridge, Professor Michael Sherman, Newton, Julia Yaglom, Newton,Vitaly Dumanis, Foxboro, Lev Brown, Newton, Eugenia Brown, Newton,Alex Wolfson, Swampscott,Tamara Wolfson, Swampscott, Michael Brook, Newton, Dr. Mila Magitsky MD, Newton, Dr. Efim Magitsky, MD, Newton, Ary Rotman, RJCF President, Brookline, Alex Koifman, Newton,Greg Margolin, Brighton,Rabbi Dovid Margolin, Inna Tunkel, Lexington, Anna Krasko, Sharon, Raia Levin, Newton, Natalia D Tufeld, Ashland, Ilana Tufeld, Ashland, Shulamit Sophia Dubrovin, Brookline, Eli Dubrovin, Brookline, Igor Tufeld, Ashland, Anna Dubrovina, Marblehead, Dan Roginsky, Brookline, Dr. Dmitry Gurevich, PhD, Arlington, Dr. Boris Dashevsky, Ph.D., Boston, Boris Furman, Newton, Dr. Emmanuil Shrayer, Ph.D., Lexington, Anna Lanskoy, Lexington, Dr. Yuri Tuvim, Gloucester, Dr. Simon Gurmarnik, Sharon, Polina Margolin, Brighton, Ilya Goldovt, Ashland, Vitaly Khazansky, Brookline,, Dr. Igor Khait, PhD, Brookline, Ilia Sokolinski, Brighton, Anna Sokolinski, Brighton, Mikhail Rizkin, Carlisle, Irina Rizkin, Carlisle, Vitaly Tunkel, Littleton, Raisa Rosovsky, Littleton, Igor Chernin, Acton, Bela Chernin, Acton, Mikhail L Gershteyn, Newton, Mariya Gershteyn, Newton, Svetlana Sheinina, Boxborough, Dmitry Sheinin, PhD, Boxborough, Tanya Gurevich, Esq, Needham, Dr. Yuri Shamritsky, Needham, Inessa Rifkin, Newton, Victor Rifkin, Newton, Masha Rifkin, Newton, Ilya Rifkin, Louisville, KY, Lana Madorsky Rifkin, MD Louisville, KY, Leonid Madorsky Louisville, KY, Inessa Madrorsky Louisville, KY, Michael Gorbatov Newton, Lana Gorbatov Newton, Ross Gorbatov Newton, Joseph Itkis, PhD, Newton, Dr. Leonid Raiz, Newton, Alexandra Raiz, Newton, Alexander Epstein, Reading, Leo Galperin, Brookline, Irene Galperin, Brookline, Lina Klebaner, Esq., Boston, Dmitry & Maria Gofshteyn, Marblehead, Sergey Selyutin, PhD, Arlington, Anneta Trifonov, Arlington, Boris Levit, Newton, Berta Shaffer, Lynn, Seva Brodsky. Boston/Jerusalem, Gregory Kaidanov, Newton, Yury Livshetz, Revere, Tanya Gorlin, Brookline, Andrew Gorlin, Brookline, Iosif Lakhman, PhD, Brighton, Mr. George J. Vysotsky, Boston, Katherine Vysotsky, Boston, Dr. Olga Levenson, MD, Brighton

U.S. Air Force F-16 Aggressor aircraft from the 18th Aggressor Squadron fly a sortie over Alaska June 24, 2010, during exercise Red Flag - Alaska 10-3. Red Flag Alaska is a Pacific Air Forces-directed advanced aerial exercise that trains U.S. and allied air force pilots for real combat situations. (DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. James Harper Jr., U.S. Air Force/Released)

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

If you want to say something offensive about Israel or the Jewish community, find a Jewish person who is saying it and quote him. That way you are absolved of all responsibility for the offense, and you couldn't possibly be an anti-Jewish bigot.

This notion is so absurd it should require no response. Yet the tactic is being employed with such increasing frequency that, apparently, someone must believe it. I'm not really sure whether the believers are the people attempting to use Jewish voices for cover or their target audience.

In the PC(USA) context, uses of this tactic abound. Here are a few examples:

[The following, by David Adler, jazz critic and political commentator, is crossposted from Z Word.]

The bloggers of Mondoweiss have worked very hard to convince the public that antisemitism does not exist among the Palestine solidarity movement - indeed, that all such charges of antisemitism are mere subterfuge concocted by "Zionists" to tar critics of Israel, who are by definition pure of heart.

So it's important to note that Mondoweiss is now voicing support for the Israeli-born, UK-based jazz musician and virulent antisemite Gilad Atzmon.

Atzmon, who has declared, "One of the things that happened to us was that stupidly we interpreted the Nazi defeat as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and the Jewish people," is scheduled to play two concerts in upstate New York with Rich Siegel, a pianist, vocalist and bandleader from New Jersey. Siegel is author of the Mondoweiss posts, here and here, alleging that the Rochester concert was nearly canceled thanks to what he calls "Zio-pressure."

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Hamas has twice violently attacked UN summer camps in the Gaza Strip in order to destroy them and intimidate kids from attending them. The goal is to force young people to go to Hamas summer camps where they will be given military and ideological training to teach them to be future terrorists.

The UN actually condemned the attacks and the Hamas regime for fomenting them.

I'm not complaining about this article--a small drop in the ocean of needed media coverage of Hamas's repression and extremism--but one sentence caught my eye. The UN, "camps provide a rare distraction from the hardships endured by more than 250,000 Palestinian refugees that live in the Gaza Strip."

Whatever Taiwanese outfit made this 1:38 re-enactment of crazed sex poodle Al Gore's escapade:

Via The Marmot. Story at Gateway: Al Gore Pleaded With Masseuse to "Release His Second Chakra"

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

Farid Ghadry

Hate for Jews following the Free Gaza flotilla incident is off the scale, Farid Ghadry, leader of the Syrian Reform Party and now a US citizen, has calculated. Yet, Muslims who inflict much more pain on each other and own 97 percent of the Middle East, escape accountability. Every Muslim should try being a Jew for one day. (With thanks: Lily)

Read post in full

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

The tomb of Ezra at Uzair, near Basra

This story's still being told in Iraqi-Jewish circles. Let's call it the story of O.

A young woman - call her O. - attended a Sephardi synagogue in the US some years ago. She struck up a conversation in Arabic with some of the congregants, who came from Iraq. " What's a Muslim doing in our synagogue?" the congregants muttered to each other - for the young woman did not speak Judeo-Arabic, with its distinctive accent and pronunciation.

It turned out the young woman was a Jew who had recently arrived from Basra. There had been so few Jews in the city that O. had never learned to speak Judeo-Arabic. As one of the few dozen Jews still living in Iraq under Saddam's rule in the late 1990s, her dearest wish was to leave. But the government were holding the tiny Jewish community as virtual hostages.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Israel is subject daily to scores of false claims and slanders that receive a remarkable amount of credibility in Western media, academic, and intellectual circles even when no proof is offered.

Palestinian groups (including the Gaza and Palestinian Authority regimes), associated local and allied foreign non-government organizations, Western radical and anti-Israel groups, and politically committed journalists are eager to act as propaganda agents making up false stories or transmitting them without serious thought or checking.

Others have simply defined the Palestinians as the "victims" and "underdogs" while Israel is the "villain" and "oppressor." Yet truth remains truth; academic and journalist standards are supposed to apply.

While regular journalists may ask for an official Israeli reaction to such stories the undermanned government agencies are deluged by hundreds of these stories, and committed to checking out seriously each one. Thus, the Israeli government cannot keep up with the flow of lies.

So the key question is to understand the deliberateness of this anti-Israel propaganda and evaluating the credibility of the sources.

An important aspect of this is to understand that Israel is a decent, democratic country with a free media that is energetic about exploring any alleged wrongdoing and a fair court system that does the same. To demonize Israel into a monstrous, murderous state--which is often done--makes people believe any negative story.

Some of these are big false stories--the alleged killing of Muhammad al-Dura and the supposed Jenin massacre--others are tiny. Some--like the claim Israel was murdering Palestinians to steal their organs-- get into the main Western newspapers while others only make it into smaller and non-English ones.

[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

Every so often and apropos of nothing in particular El País feels obliged to vomit up a gut full of hatred for Israel. Today's edition runs an editorial titled "The Israeli Quasi-theocracy".

It characterizes Israel as being "territorially gluttonous", of hiding its real motives and being run by a military-theocratic government which bases its policies on the contents of the Bible. It also accuses Ariel Sharon, of all people, of advocating and practising a policy of never ceding an inch of territory to the Palestinians.

Argument is obviously wasted on such a text so I won't offer any. I'll just mention that:

1. In 1979 the Spanish state signed and ratified a treaty with the Vatican binding it to provide financial support for the Roman Catholic Church, a commitment it complies with to this day. No such support is provided for other religions.

2. Juan Carlos 1, the constitutional monarch of Spain, and his family all ostentatiously practise the Roman Catholic faith. Article 57 of Spain's constitution establishes that the current monarch will be succeeded by his descendents in perpetuity.

3. Many state occasions in Spain, such as the funerals of members of the security forces murdered by terrorists continue, to be imbued by Roman Catholic ritual.

4.Crucifixes continue to hang on the walls of public schools. No such privilege has been extended to the symbols of other faiths.

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

The Algerian authorities have turned down a request from French Jewish groups to visit the 13th century tomb of Rav Ephraim El -Kawa in Tlemcen, north west Algeria, the Algerian newspaper Al-khabar reports. Via JSS blog (With thanks: Andrew)

These same groups, led by Tlemcen native Andre Charbit, had wanted to repeat their 2005 pilgrimage. Charbit had then headed a group of 220 pilgrims, the largest group of Jews to visit Algeria since independence. They flew to Tlemcen aboard a special Air Algerie flight. The visit created widespread media interest.

Sources say that public opinion and the political class rejected the idea following the free Gaza flotilla incident, in which Algerian 'activists' took part.

Anti-Jewish Algerians believe that these types of visits on the human and tourist level may hide attempts to drag Algeria towards normalisation with Israel - a prospect Algiera officially refuses to countenance.

Algeiran officials believe that the 2011 festival celebrating 'Tlemcen, capital of Islamic culture' is incompatible with a visit from a group of Jews who consider the site the second most holy in North Africa after the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba (Tunisia).

Read blog post in full (French)

[The following, by The Bagelnosher Blog, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

BGU - Ben Gurion University of the Negev - suffered parallel snake problems this week. On two separate occasions, they had to deal with serpents in their midst.

One of the critters they had captured, bagged and hauled away. But when confronted with the other snake, this one they wanted to keep right where he was -- in front of the classroom.

The first serpent - a black three-foot long species native to Israel - surprised the staff when it was spotted lurking behind a desk at the nanotechnology building on the University's main campus. Officials called Beersheba's official snake catcher who responded to the scene. "The snake wasn't a poisonous variety," the snake removal man said afterward. "It appeared to have gotten into the building through an improperly secured air vent. The snake was aggressive, but I caught it and later released it in a remote place where it won't do any harm."

The second, equally aggressive, snake is far more dangerous. This one, known as Neve Gordon, walks upright on his own two feet, although he, too, lurks behind a desk at BGU where he's spent almost a decade bombarding students with his anti-Israel, anti-Semitic tirades. This snake in the grass is treated far differently by BGU officials. Not only was Neve Gordon not bagged and hauled away -- instead, the President of BGU, Rivka Carmi, promoted him.

Again.

Had a good time at a party out in the woods of New Hampshire last night:

Note the hollow tree trunk upright in the bonfire. It burns from the inside out with a jet of flame shooting out the top. Very cool:

Here's a can of bug spray in the hollow tree trunk after the trunk fell over. Yeah, it was that kind of party. Actually, I think it was mostly empty, and just made a rush of sparks for a few seconds.

The morning after:

I was at the Americans for Peace and Tolerance event on Thursday night, filming. It was one of the best attended events of this type I've been to, and the crowd was extremely enthusiastic. I'm not sure yet just how much of the film I'm going to post, but I did want to get this snippet up which I think most of you will enjoy.

Watch, and more to the point, listen to this mostly Jewish audience's reaction during the Q&A as Republican hopeful Sean Bielat introduces himself. I'm not sure if it comes through in the video or not, but it was very loud and uproarious in the hall prompting me to immediately widen out the shot (keep your speakers up):

Remember when Barney put his foot in his mouth over the flotilla (later he desperately backed off)? Bielat took the opportunity to issue a strong statement in defense of Israel's actions:

That's the second time a potential Frank opponent has gotten a big reception in a synagogue recently. The prior time it was Earl Sholley: See Part 6 at about 2:20.

Looks like now might be a good time to post up some of the strongly pro-Israel statements I've been forwarded by a number of the local Republican hopefuls.

Jeff Perry: Quote from a Republican emailer:

Here is his strong paper [PDF]. Replacing Delahunt (a horror show) with this guy would be a major plus.

Perry also issued the following strong statement in support of Israel earlier this month while the flotilla matter was at its height:

Keith Lepor is running against Stephen Lynch. Here's a snip from his strong letter on Israel [.doc]:

Strong. (I keep using that word a lot.)

And for good measure, Senatorial candidate Jim Bender chimed in on the Gaza Flotilla from New Hampshire [PDF]:

Finally, let's replay that video of Congressional hopeful Sam Meas:

Update: And let's not forget our friend Scott Brown who, after all, will be up for reelection before you know it: Brown launches defense of Israel

Update: Since this has been circulating, I've gotten a couple of other statements from candidates that deserve to be mentioned as well:

Marty Lamb is running the MA 3rd district, currently held by far left J Street candidate Jim McGovern. Here is his position paper on Israel [PDF], and here's a snip. Marty is not afraid of naming the enemy:

On June 4, following the Gaza Flotilla, Lamb issued the following press release:

Gerry Dembrowski is hoping (we are all hoping) to unseat Ed Markey (boo, hiss). He issued the following statement following the Gaza Flotilla:

And again. Like mother's milk. From Palestinian Media Watch: PA TV host to children: Jews are "our enemies," Israeli soldiers are "wild animals"

You want to know what the cause of the trouble is? This is the cause of the trouble. This is video of a two year old child being taught hate. Hate like mother's milk.

Click for the translation.

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

Presbyterian employees, members of national committees, agencies, and networks of the PC(USA) do not speak for the PC(USA). The PC(USA) is not responsible for their statements.

This refrain and its variants have been offered many times in response to controversial actions and statements of Presbyterian officials and groups. For example, this was the most common framing given to various Presbyterian delegations' visits with Hezbollah - which usually resulted in widely reported Presbyterian flatteries of Hezbollah.

More recently, this rationalization has been applied to the activities of the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA).

It has occurred on more than one occasion that the IPMN posted information on its website or issued statements that conflicted with "official PC(USA) policy". Most recently, in a letter - provided to commissioners to this General Assembly - the IPMN falsely accused unnamed American Jewish organizations of sending a bomb to PC(USA) headquarters and setting fire to a Presbyterian church as part of a concerted effort to censor Presbyterian speech on Israel and Palestine. Also in this letter, the IPMN argues that a "worldwide increase in anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions" is a reaction to Israeli policies, and objects to the concept of a Jewish state.

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

Ayad Jamal al-Din is a brave proponent of a secular Iraq. He's one of the most exciting figures to burst onto the Iraqi political scene in recent years. Yesterday I attended a lecture he gave at the House of Commons in London entitled The New democracy in Iraq.

An ayatollah in a turban pleading for a secular Iraq? What could be more paradoxical. But Ayad Jamal al-Din personifies this apparent contradiction.

The young cleric, standing for the Ahrar Party, lost his seat in the Iraqi elections in March ('our party was robbed of votes' he reflects bitterly, hinting that corruption prevented a clear winner emerging.) But he and his Ahrar party are not deterred from campaigning to clean up corruption and create a strong, secure and liberated Iraq for the future.

This is just more proof that J Street is not "pro-Israel," but instead are all about their own leftist agenda -- a continuation of policies from failed Israeli politicians: J Street Goes Even Further Left - Kadima goes right.

More here.

Related J Street bashing: The J Street Test

"Teacher" should really be in quotes, since it sounds as though what Brian Kwoba really was was a radical leftist indoctrination machine at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. He's been on the radar briefly here before (see here and here, for instance):

Brian Kwoba, in terror scarf, pursuing his true passion.

Here is Kwoba's whiny lament from the Cambridge Chronicle: Guest commentary: A Cambridge Public School dictatorship?

Oh, do read the rest. You know you want to. May I also just mention how insane it is to think that High School teachers actually get tenure? That just sounds crazy and pointless to me. What a great way to make instructors even less accountable, and thus even worse.

Oh, and DO read the comments as well. You wouldn't think that a Cambridge paper would be getting so many unsympathetic comments, but this fellow has clearly earned few admirers amongst the student body. Example:

A Communist denied continuing employment in the People's Republic of Cambridge? Now that is an accomplishment.

Here is the video of the program discussed in the first item of this post: Arab Childrens' Education: Hate Everyone (Especially Jews). It wasn't with the story originally and must be seen to be believed (h/t: Will Spotts, who asked, "Can this be real?" Yes.). This is produced by a Palestinian Arab TV entrepreneur in Bahrain. In all the years I've been posting material like this, the shock at the sickness of it never fades, but even worse than the thing itself, even worse than what it says about the Arab culture that spawns it, is that people in the West ignore it, write it off, bury it, excuse it, and in all respects refuse to face the reality of it. I am looking at you, Congressman Stephen Lynch:

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Israel's Prince of Darkness to some) takes to the pages of the Jerusalem Post to lay out his vision for what certainly sounds like a perfectly reasonable end to the conflict. His point is that binational states simply don't work. If people don't feel themselves part of the same Nation, that Nation simply won't function properly (A house divided against itself...). It's simply untenable to have a large population of Arab Israelis whose expression in the political arena is to constantly undermine the state. Far better to re-draw the boundaries so as many Jews and Arabs are on opposite sides as possible: My blueprint for a resolution

More.

[The following, by Dexter Van Zile, is crossposted from CAMERA.]

A Jewish dance group was recently attacked -- with stones -- by audience members during a show at Hanover Germany.

Here are some details:

By portraying Israel, the target of genocidal hostility from its neighbors, as a genocidal apartheid nation inhabited by extremists and governed by monsters, so-called peace activists in the West helped render Jews, wherever they may be, as legitimate targets for acts such as this.

So what else do you expect from the UN? UN Watch reports that Communist Miguel d'Escoto is up to his usual tricks, on a world stage provided in part by me and you: NGO urges U.S. to condemn d'Escoto's "divisive and politicized abuse of mandate"

More.

[The following, by Vienna-based veteran anti-fascist journalist Karl Pfeifer, is cross-posted from Z Word.]

The city of Vienna launched a promotional campaign with the slogan "Wien ist anders", "Vienna is different." And Vienna after the Second World War was different, insofar as it did not welcome back its former Jewish citizens and tolerated antisemitism in politics and media for several decades.

After the publication of Carl Schorske's book "Fin de siècle in Vienna," the city of Vienna discovered that the world wants to know more about the flowering of culture in Vienna - and those Jews who contributed to it. Since then the city of Vienna has built a Jewish Museum and Michael Häupl, the Social democratic mayor of Vienna, condemned the antisemitic election campaign in 2001 by the FPÖ of the late Jörg Haider.

Therefore it was a surprise to the Jewish community when the Vienna City Council (Wiener Gemeinderat) voted unanimously on an anti-Israel resolution initiated by Omar al Rawi, a Social Democratic member of city council.

Erwin Javor and Peter Menasse of the Jewish periodical "Nu" sent three letters to Godwin Schuster, the Social Democratic President of the Council. They received no answer.

The first letter:

That Reiki stuff is crap anyway.

[The following is a guest post by Alexander Maistrovoy.]

Showing weakness and stupidity, the West encourages the Middle East predators, promotes the collapse of moderate Arab regimes and throws Israel into a dilemma: the Holocaust or the "Samson option"

"When people speak about human rights, everyone has in mind his own ones", German scientist and publicist Wilhelm Schwebel wrote. His words perfectly reflect the issue of "breaking" the Gaza blockade. These actions are as related to human rights as Josef Stalin's "fight for peace". Till now not a single person has died of hunger in Gaza . They die in another part of the world, in Kirghizia, but nobody cares about it. The rights of Palestinians are above the rights of the Uzbek people. As well as the Sudanese Christians, Iraqi Kurds, Boers in Southern Africa, "Ahmadyya" in Pakistan and Baha'is in Iran. Palestinians are the high caste of mankind because fortunately they are up against Israel , and the international community has its own rights and interests in this conflict.

What are they? The interests of all the players are very clear except for the West.

The goal of Iran is to strengthen its base on the Mediterranean Sea coast to escalate the confrontation with Israel and with moderate Sunni Arab regimes, and at the same time to distract the world's attention from its nuclear program.

The goal of Turkish Justice and Development Party led by Erdogan is to get points before the elections, make Turkey the leader of the Sunni world and to revive the national ambitions lost with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Russia is supporting Iran and Turkey in an attempt to restore previous Soviet influence, push the US out of the region, and recover lost imperial greatness.

The aims of these powers are completely contrary to the aims of the other two leading players in the region: Israel and the moderate Arab regimes.

Avi Trengo thinks so: Another wasted crisis - Israel fails to utilize flotilla crisis in order to finally disengage from Gaza

Get it? Keeping Gaza engaged with Israel (dependent) is a way of keeping the pressure on. It's a way of using the (supposed) misery of the Gaza Arabs as another bludgeon against the "Zionists." So could Israel really simply block Gaza off -- close the crossings completely, stop transferring shekels, stick the whole thing on Egypt's shoulders? Sounds nice in theory? Is it practical?

Probably not. Egypt doesn't want it. The infrastructure is built for Gaza to get a large part of its electricity from Israel. The economy does rely on the shekel for solvency. And the international "community" (such as it is) would scream to high heaven, as well as a significant portion of the Israeli public. Nice idea. Doubt it would work.

The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

The debate on Middle East issues in the PC(USA) is surrounded by several fictions.

I do not mean the fictitious details of the actual Israeli / Palestinian conflict. There are, frankly, so many pieces of disinformation, glaring omissions, unfairly framed items, and disputed claims that sifting through them all would be prohibitive. More accurately, to even get an approximation of the truth of the conflict would be the work of many months or years. That is just the nature of the beast.

Instead, I refer to the claims that surround the actual debate. Some of these are specific to the situation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) while others concern much wider activism. Some are dangerously flawed assumptions, while others are mis-statements of fact. What they have in common is that all are false.

Whether or not the people who spread these fictions believe them to be true is both and unknown and beside the point. Sincerity or dishonesty on their part makes little difference. More to the point is the fact that we - and commissioners to the PC(USA)'s 219th General Assembly - need to examine these more closely. We need to see the role they play in the debate, and, at least on a couple of them, we need to seriously analyze their merits.

This is, of course, only a very truncated list, but these items are either explicitly stated or logically necessary undercurrents in the conduct of PC(USA) officials, the Middle East Study Committee (MESC), the Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (CMRTI), and many Presbyterians.

Here's a collection of links regarding the way the little kids are trained. Someday the MSM will start reporting on this...

First from "moderate" Bahrain (!): Arab song for kids: Allah loves martyrs

Lovely.

And here's a dump of all the stuff from Palestinian Media Watch I've been meaning to post for the past week or so. Hate like mother's milk:

PA TV broadcast kids singing anti-Israel war song to terrorist who aided suicide bomber

Song to violence and death at PLO cultural festival

Indeed it do: Supreme Court ruling barring aid to terrorist groups: why some lament it

Elation. We can only wonder if there were some cases being held back pending this ruling. We expect a population exchange between the City of Cambridge, MA and the federal prison system at any moment.

[The following, by The Alchemist, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

On June 18th, Friday, Jose Saramago died. He was a Nobel Laureate, writer, poet, communist and Jew hater. Saramango symbolized what happens when the line between anti-Zionism and all out antisemitism is blurred and in fact crossed.

In "Death of a Jew Hater" David Frum writes:

Sounds like a familiar mind. Compares Israel to the Third Reich, pisses on Judaism from the perspective of an atheist sophisticate (makes no mention of the monstrous certitudes in Islam) and makes excuses for leftist dictatorship. The perfect personality for a Guardian eulogy which came promptly.

The initiative promised in Jose Maria Aznar's influential essay (see: Jose Maria Aznar: Support Israel: if it goes down, we all go down) now has a web site and is soliciting signatures: FriendsofIsraelInitiative.org: Stand for Israel, Stand for the West. Read the excellent statement of principles there, and if you agree, as I do, then please sign on.

At Islam in Europe: Amsterdam: Hitler salutes

Via The Flea: This is what "anti-racists" look like

Paul Larudee of the International Solidarity Movement and a bunch of other radical Leftist and Islamist groups, along with the complicity of the local longshoremen's union, managed to shut down the port of Oakland, California as they targeted a Zim ship to prevent offloading. (Actually, they only managed to prevent to offloading of a Chinese ship. The Zim didn't come in until later. Oops.)

Zombie has the initial report, including photos and video: Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland

See also Gateway Pundit: Radical Jew-Hating Leftists and Islamists Protest Israeli Ship in Oakland (Video), and Figures... Radical Leftists and Islamists Think They're Blocking Israeli Ship at Oakland Port - It Was Chinese. And Carl: Moonbats block Israeli Chinese ship from unloading in Oakland

It's open season out there. I would think the organizers would be subject to some sort of civil (if not criminal) lawsuit, but this never seems to happen.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Elsewhere, I have explained in great detail the changes in Israeli policy as well as the implications of Western policy in the Gaza Strip: economic normalization meaning also normalization of the existence of a Gaza Hamas-ruled statelet. Israel, seeing that there is not going to be any "rollback" to remove Hamas from power has basically accepted a containment startegy of limited the military weaponry and capability of Hamas.

The U.S. government and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Quartet negotiator have been critical of Israel's concessions as insufficient. While Israel is offering 130 truckloads a day of non-military goods and construction material only for demonstrably non-military projects, the U.S. and European governments want 400 trucks a day, which is what some aid agencies say is needed.

That's what Ed Morrissey asks about this one that has Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis advising illegals of the number they can call to make sure they are getting their proper wages. Not, apparently, a joke.

Says Ed:

Here's another excellent piece of writing from Shelby Steele in today's Wall Street Journal. (Also posted at Hoover and here in full).

This one's coming from Lebanon and has no terrorist connections at all. Nope. No Siree Bob. Not a one...

Here's a powerful piece at American Thinker, by Stella Paul, in defense of Charles Jacobs:

Do read the rest! And don't forget that meeting on Thursday night. How many of those Rabbis who signed letters do you think will be there?

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Israel has looked for a policy that preserves its security to the maximum extent, undermines Hamas as much as possible, and reduces international criticism, in that order of priority. Thus, the cabinet has approved an altered strategy on the Gaza Strip.

The main principle can be summarized as placing the emphasis on anything that can be used for military purposes against Israel but easing up on the destabilizing effort. This makes sense since the international community's protection of the Hamas regime--despite the fact that it is a revolutionary Islamist, terrorist, genocide-intending, anti-Western client of Iran that will fight Israel and subvert Egypt in future--makes its overthrow impossible any way.

The June 20 cabinet decision states:

"Israel's policy is to protect its citizens against terror, rocket and other attacks from Gaza. In seeking to keep weapons and war materiel out of Gaza while liberalizing the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza...."

Thus, the first principle is:

1. Publish a list of items not permitted into Gaza that is limited to weapons and war materiel, including problematic dual-use items. All items not on this list will be permitted to enter Gaza.

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

One week this July, a small - though historically significant, United States Protestant denomination will hold its biennial national meeting. Hundreds of this denomination's members and a host of interested parties will descend on the Minneapolis Convention Center. During that time, they will consider around 750 pieces of business; a surprising number of these business items concern Israel and the Palestinian territories. And they are heavily weighted against Israel.

What does it matter? Let's suppose the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) passes every single resolution critical of Israel. I mean, who really cares? Some (by no means all - probably not even most) members of PC(USA) congregations are interested because it is, after all, their denomination. Some Presbyterians from other smaller denominations will care if the PC(USA) garners negative press coverage because they will be caught in the fallout - having the misfortune of being frequently mistaken for the PC(USA).

But when the PC(USA) is considering actions that are actively harmful to those outside the denomination, people should care. Members should care because their names and any money they have contributed to the denomination are being used to support those actions. People outside the denomination should care because those actions will affect many of us.

Been awhile since I posted this:

Hydrogen in M51 - Perhaps the original spiral nebula, M51 is a large galaxy, over 60,000 light-years across, with a readily apparent spiral structure. Also cataloged as NGC 5194, M51 is a part of a well-known interacting galaxy pair, its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweeping in front of companion galaxy NGC 5195 (top). This dramatically processed color composite combines M51 image data from the Calar Alto Observatory's 1.2 meter telescope. The data include long exposures through a narrow hydrogen alpha filter that trace emission from atomic hydrogen. Reddish hydrogen emission regions, called HII regions, are the regions of intense star formation seen to lie mainly along M51's bright spiral arms. Intriguingly, this composite also shows red hydrogen emission structures in the faint features extending even beyond NGC 5195, toward the top of the frame.

Jeremy Ben Ami has always denied any current connection with regard to himself and his former employer, Fenton Communications (let the record show), but it certainly is worth remarking upon that J Street's reaction to the "flotilla" matter was (OK, as per usual) an outlier in the Jewish Community. Their reaction has actually been what one would expect from an anti-Israel lobbying group like CNI, AJJP, JVP, or others. That is, rather than standing up for Israel and her fight against Hamas, and helping to explain the hard realities that Israel is faced with and the difficult decisions that those realities engender for her, J Street in fact jumped on the criticize Israel bandwagon. They took the opportunity of an Israel under stress to pile on the pressure and push for more Israeli concessions -- just as if they were really working for the other side.

I'm not stating that they were -- formally -- doing so, but it certainly comes as no surprise that Fenton Communications represents a Qatari-based group that supported the Gaza Flotilla. I wonder how much contact Jeremy has with his old colleagues: U.S. PR Firm on Payroll of Qatari Group that Took Part in Gaza Flotilla - Qatar-based Initiative Encouraged Action against Israel

More here.

Update: Good roundup of info/links on this at Israel Matzav: J Street's al-Fakhoora project, including Legal Insurrection: Suicide Protesters Against Israel, Power Line: The MoveOn/Hamas Nexus, and Memeorandum.

[h/t: David L.]

Orange Sun Simmering: Explanation: Even a quiet Sun can be a busy place. And over the deep Solar Minimum of the past few years, our Sun has been unusually quiet. The above image, taken last week in a single color of light called Hydrogen Alpha and then false colored, records a great amount of detail of the simmering surface of our parent star. The gradual brightening towards the Sun's edge in this color-inverted image, called limb darkening, is caused by increased absorption of relatively cool solar gas. Just over the Sun's edges, several prominences are visible, while two prominences on the Sun's face are seen as light streaks just above and right of the image center. Two particularly active areas of the Sun are marked by dark plages. In contrast to recent quiet times, our Sun is moving toward Solar Maximum, and for years will likely appear much more active.

A special meeting for those who would like to learn some of the facts behind the controversy (When Rabbis Attack: The Fallout -- JCRC Needs New Leadership) from Americans for Peace and Tolerance:

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

View over the Mediterranean from Tangiers

Gem of an article by the celebrated columnist Mark Steyn in Macleans: Steyn was shocked to discover that, contrary to assurances received, the graves in the Jewish cemetery of Tangiers were unkempt and being used to dry someone's underwear. It is not unusual for the Jewish 'community' of places like Tangiers to reside in the cemetery, he argues - a fate which jihadists (and Helen Thomas) wish eventually to reserve for Tel Aviv.

[The following, by Richard Landes, is crossposted from Augean Stables.]

I've seen various items on this and couldn't believe that it was true (or at least, that it would continue very long). It would be just too stupid and vicious...

The Department of Homeland Security wants to deport Joseph (Masab) Yousef, the "Son of Hamas," who has so ringingly denounced the cult of death spawned by his father and other Hamas leaders.

But it looks like it's for real (see his facebook page). Which raises a question for me.

2 Charged in Mass. With Conspiring to Aid Al Qaeda

Lest we forget:

Someone alert the local Rabbis.

Here's the latest from Caroline Glick's Latma TV:

Last week we discussed the spectacle of 70 Rabbis and Rabbinical students taking to the pages of Boston's Jewish Advocate to attack local uber-activist Charles Jacobs on behalf of one of their colleagues: When Rabbis Attack: Standing Up for Charles Jacobs. I won't rehearse what I said then and where I stand on the general matter. Please go back and take a look if you're not up to speed on the controversy.

As expected, this week's edition is full of the fallout. Charles Jacobs dedicates his weekly column to a response, and the letters page was expanded to accommodate the correspondence, the majority of which is favorable to Jacobs.

Below, you will find the letters, including a couple that I received that were not published, followed by the Jacobs column.

I would like to feature one letter in particular, and then offer a personal comment:

Israel loosens chokehold on Gaza

With the Associated Press around, who needs Hamas information ministers?

[h/t: Sophia]

This cartoon, from a 1956 Swiss magazine, has been floating around for awhile. Thought it was worth posting again. Not much has changed:

Click to expand.

[h/t: Mark N.]

[Via StandWithUs]

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

The dispatch of an official U.S. high-tech delegation to offer the Syrian dictatorship more Internet access and other gizmos--in exchange for him abandoning his alliance with Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and now even Turkey!--reminds me of a little personal experience which shows a lot about Western naivete and how the media works nowadays.

After Bashar al-Assad became president of Syria, following his father's death, there was a huge amount about how he was a devotee of Internet and a real kind of twenty-first century "hip" guy when it came to hi-tech. The main, in fact the only, evidence of this was that he was head of the Syria Internet Society.

Being a bit of a researcher, I took 30 seconds and went to the site of the Syria Internet Society. Within another 30 seconds I noticed what was really going on. Yes, Bashar was the head of the Society, but the previous head had been his older brother, Basil.

That's what the CS Monitor is asking. Lots of pro-Israel, anti-Hamas comments in there for once.

Let's see what the UN has been up to in Geneva lately:

Well, they do have their priorities.

[This excellent piece announcing a new initiative of heavy-hitters, by Jose Maria Aznar, is posted in full from today's UK Times.]

Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West's best ally in a turbulent region

For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.

In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

Even though I can't think of a single situation in which I would actually use it...

[h/t: Fred]

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Remember what I told you: if you want to know what policy is going to be, watch the governments, not the media. While the results of the EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg were far from perfect, they also show the difference between decision-makers and opinion-makers on the Middle East.

First, the foreign ministers proposed new sanctions going beyond the ones just voted in the UN against Iran's nuclear program to prohibit new investment and transfer of technology, equipment and services.

The British representative, William Hague, told the EU to take a "strong lead" on this issue. Sweden's opposition was overcome. We must wait to see the details but clearly this is a step in the right direction. Incidentally, I believe the main European states were willing to do this nine months ago but were forestalled by the go-slow U.S. policy.

[The following, by Dexter Van Zile, is crossposted from Snapshots.]

Two scholars from Vanderbilt Divinity School, Ted A. Smith and Amy-Jill Levine have written an authoriative critique of "Breaking Down the Walls," a report that will be on the agenda of the upcoming General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Smith, Assistant Professor of Ethics and Society, and Amy-Jill Levine, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt, had their piece, ("Habits of anti-Judaism"), published by Christian Century, the house organ for mainline Protestant churches in the U.S.

The two authors offer their qualifications to their readers as follows:

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

One must not speak ill of the dead, but the lies and fabrications Naieem Giladi spread while he was alive - he died in March 2010 - will live on unless they are challenged. Here's my attempt to rebut some of Giladi's claims published by The Link in its April-May 1998 issue, found on an Islamic site.

Naieem Giladi was born in Baghdad and joined the Zionist underground as a teenager. He was jailed by the Iraqis for smuggling Jews out to Iran, arriving in Israel in May 1950. Something happened to turn Giladi against Israel, and he became active in fighting racism in Israeli society, joining the Black Panthers. Becoming a US citizen in the 1980s, Giladi self-published Ben Gurion's scandals blaming 'cruel Zionism' for scaring Jews, who were otherwise content living in Arab countries, into leaving Iraq. His claim that Zionist agents set off bombs became a staple of anti-Zionist propaganda.

Early on in the interview, Giladi gives a potted history of the Jews of the region. "Although Jews like other minorities in what became Iraq, experienced periods of oppression and discrimination depending on the rulers of the period, their general trajectory over two-and-a-half millennia was upward."

I guess it's my version of affirmative action describing yesterday's Tom Friedman column as "pretty good," but it gets so that anything that even gets it half right in the New York Times is something to celebrate. Friedman makes a few good point that are important for Times readers to hear: Letter From Istanbul

No respect for the dead. Winston Churchill falls victim to someone's idea of political correctness: How today's airbrushing PC censors decided Churchill could do without his cigar

[Via The Flea]

Here's a pretty good video from Israel's MFA that overviews the whole thing:

[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

The publication of the Saville Report into an atrocity carried out by the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1972 has tempted Andrew Sullivan to write a post of remarkable stupidity.

As anyone who has had a moment to glance at the report or knows anything about the recent history of Ireland is already aware, the soldiers of 1 Para were anything but panicked. They were pumped up and raring to go, the people who panicked were the demonstrators when the Paras opened up on them with their 7.62mm rifles.

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

[I believe most Presbyterians want a policy on Israel and Palestine that is both fair and helpful. I suspect many are not that familiar with the issues of the conflict, and fewer are aware of the current state of activism. I believe most Presbyterians want information on the Middle East that is accurate and not one-sided. I believe most Presbyterians are concerned for Palestinians - but also for Israelis. I believe most Presbyterians want to avoid unfairness, bias, and the anti-Jewish themes in PC(USA) statements and actions. And I believe most Presbyterians would be disappointed with the details (as opposed to the sound bytes) of the business coming before this General Assembly. This is my impression; if it is not the case, then so be it. You cannot force fairness and accuracy on Presbyterians, but if it is their desire, then commissioners have a responsibility to at least attempt it.

The following recommendations are intended to serve that goal.]

Remember that guy who threw his shoes at George Bush? Hamas embraces Iraqi shoe-thrower

Life is so unfair.

[The following, by Denis MacEoin, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

Denis MacEoin is the editor of the Middle East Quarterly. This article was originally submitted to Brian Whitaker for publication in the Guardian and was rejected by him on the basis of there being too many articles on the subject. Given the 37 articles, editorials and cartoons published over the course of the flotilla incident, I leave it to CiF Watch readers to speculate as to the real reason behind the rejection of this piece from such an esteemed commentator in the field.

Those of you who take an interest - and, in most cases, that's going to be a malign interest - in matters relating to Israel, Palestine, and the strangely lovable terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah - will have been greatly stirred by the troubling episode of the boat that tried to break a blockade imposed by a state acting within its legal rights, but which ended up with nine of its activists dead. What a rush to judgement this has been. Within hours of the event, half the world had decided it knew all the facts and wasn't going to back down, regardless of any new facts that may come to light. I have some of those for you, but wait a little. What you need first is context, something in short supply in discussions of these matters.

If, like myself, you have a serious interest in Middle East affairs, you can't be unaware of an accusation that has infected the Arab world and beyond. It's very simple: take a war (any war will do), a revolution (ditto), a tragedy, and, lo and behold, the Jews are behind it. Here's a string of such claims from a bog-standard white supremacist website [Warning hate site]. And here's a representative (and much shortened) statement from Egyptian general Hasan Sweilem:

The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]

First-class reporting from German broadcaster Südwestrundfunk below. The members of the German leftist party Die Linke don't seem remotely bothered that they were traveling with the Islamist IHH "charity," nor with the fascist, antisemitic BBP Party. Once again, the sordid nature of the alliance between Islamists and so-called leftists is plain for all to see.

Watch and spread the link.

Well, at least the Rabbis didn't actually grab anyone...

Think things are getting stressful down there in Washington? It's tough to be in Congress these days I guess, just ask Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.):

Touchy much? Those students must have been flipping out.

He's issued an apology, but the whole thing just remains very weird.

Update: Democrats are trying to defend Etheridge, saying it was a Republican "hit." So what?

I congratulate the Globe for admitting this: Oopsies: Globe sent anti-Israel writer to cover Israeli ambassador's commencement speech at Brandeis [I'm pirating Adam's post in full.]

I recall that when the article came out the lack of coverage of the actual event stood out like a sore thumb but just chalked it up to the usual Globe slant, so it's good to see the Globe do the right thing here.

Good news. The group responsible for the organized disruption of Michael Oren's speech at UC Irvine last February has been suspended. It took time, but it looks like UCI ended up doing the right thing. The only question remaining is whether any of the individuals involved will wind up paying a price: UC Irvine Muslim Student Union Suspended

More.

Update: The OC Register story has a link to the PDF of the administration decision: Muslim Student Union members shocked by suspension

Aaron Elias writes at PJM: Muslim Student Union Suspended at UC Irvine ... Finally

[The following, by AKUS, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

The New York Times has re-posted what they claim is an Unedited Video of Israeli Raid shot by Iara Lee, a Brazilian-American filmmaker and activist who was shooting a documentary on the flotilla of ships that was intercepted two weeks ago on its way to Gaza. Iara Lee posted one hour of unedited video online that shows the early stages of the Israeli commando raid.

At approximately 15:50 minutes into the video we can hear two people talking in English. One is asking questions about what is to be expected when the Israel Navy diverts the Mavi Marmara, and the other is quite blunt about what is going to happen.

The following is an extract from the video shot by Iara Lee and posted on the NYT's web-site, first exactly as it appears on the site, then repeated with the sound track slightly filtered to reduce the background noise of the ship and make the voices stand out more clearly.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed a limited international investigation to look at the Gaza flotilla incident. The investigation would include as official international observers: Ken Watkin of Canada and David Trimble of Northern Ireland. Presumably this has been agreed to with the United States as an alternative to a UN-organized, anti-Israel investigation.

The members of the commission would be:

Retired Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel (chair);

Prof. Shabtai Rosen, winner of the Israel Prize for jurisprudence and the Hague Prize for International Law;

Former Technion President, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Amos Horev

There are four points to be investigated:

1. Examine the security aspects of the naval blockade on Gaza and adjusting it in accordance with international law.

2. Examine Israel's actions to enforce the naval blockade and prevent the international flotilla from reaching Gaza on May 31, 2010 with respect to international law.

3. Examine the actions of the organizers of the (Gaza) flotilla and identifying its participants.

4. Examine whether Israel's process of looking into complaints of Israeli violations of the Laws of War--as was implemented during the said incident--corresponds with the country's obligations vis-à-vis international law.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

The Turkish text is followed by an English translation

Kıymetli dostlar,

İsrail'de, bizler, hayatlarını kaybeden Türkler için son derece üzgünüz. Bu çatışmayı istemedik. Tamamıyla haklı olduğumuzu, herşeyi doğru olarak yaptığımızı ve hata yapmadığımızı iddia etmiyor, ancak, dostluk ruhu içerisinde bu konuların tartışılabildiğini ve en iyi şekilde çözülebildiğini ifade etmek istiyoruz. Aynı zamanda Türkiye'deki deprem dönemindem beri gelişen karşılıklı işbirliğimizi ve ortak anlayışımızı da hatırlıyoruz.

İsrail her ne hatalar yapmış ise dahi, Türkler ve Yahudiler arasında Osmanlı'dan gelen kardeşlik geleneği, ve Türkiye ile İsrail arasında gelişen dostluk bu zor zamanları aşmamıza yardımcı olacaktır. Lütfen hatırlayınız ki, Yahudi aleyhtarı ve İsrail aleyhtarı duyguları sömürme yöntemi, gücü elinde tutmak isteyen, kendi teb'asını sömüren ve kandıran tiranlar tarafından öteden beri kullanılmıştır.

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

Daoud Baghstani with the first issue of the Israel-Kurd magazine

Daoud Baghstani is a brave man with an unusual mission: It has been almost two years since he started his glossy bimonthly magazine Israel-Kurd, published by his Israel-Kurd Institution. Now he is appealing to Jewish organisations and communities worldwide for moral, political and academic support.

The two nations are believed to have close genetic ties. In the absence of official ties, Baghstani wants to use the media to strengthen Israel-Kurdish relations. He wants to expand the distribution of his magazine to the whole of Kurdistan.

A voice in the wilderness: Syria's U.N. Blood Libel Violates Anti-Racism Prohibition

Well this is a very interesting blog:

Also this:

Do read the whole thing. Feeling trapped in unfamiliar surroundings where you know no one has to be one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world.

Even a Kennedy wouldn't want to appear on the stage with her now:

I think I'll go anyway and enjoy the silence.

Where have you gone, Ronald Reagan, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

[Via Sarah Palin.]

Boston Pride Parade 2010

Heavy rains didn't stop Gay Pride celebrations today as many took to the streets for this year's Boston Pride Parade, which was titled, "Riots to Rights: 1970-2010." Click through for more scenes from the parade.

At least Boston isn't full of hypocrites (at least, not the same type), unlike Madrid: Nothing to Be Proud of: Madrid's Gay Pride Parade Bans Israel

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

The New York Times is a vast and wealthy organization with highly paid reporters and news bureaus around the world. Unfortunately, however, it seems to need a little help in gathering the news. In an editorial, the newspaper has held forth with the following sentence:

"The Israelis claim that Insani Yardim Vakfi is a dangerous organization with terrorist links. They have yet to offer any evidence to support that charge."

This is like Goldstone who keeps saying that no one has challenged his report despite literally hundreds of specific refutations. It is like the little boy who doesn't want to hear something, puts his hands over his ears, and keeps yelling, "I don't hear you!"

No Jews involved: Egypt activists denied Gaza entry

The name Charles Jacobs should be a familiar one to readers of this blog. Charles Jacobs, founder of The David Project, co-founder of the Boston branch of CAMERA and the American Anti-Slavery Group, and now Americans for Peace and Tolerance. I would hazard to say, without any exaggeration at all, that Charles Jacobs has done as much or more for the Jewish People (and Western Values in general) off the pulpit than any other single person in New England.

Unfortunately for Charles, and more importantly, for us all, Charles Jacobs stepped on the toes of the Massachusetts left-wing Rabbinical establishment with his recent column: What's up with Deval Patrick? In the column, Jacobs addresses the political controversy stirred up by Governor Deval Patrick's recent visit to the Islamic Society of Boston Mosque. (More on that in the videos below.) Along the way, Jacobs called out some of the local religious leadership which has credulously run toward the cliff in allowing themselves to be used as a whitewash for some of the mosque's radical connections, many of whom should well know better. Jacobs even had the temerity (honesty) to call Rabbi Eric Gurvis by name.

Read the linked column. What's written about Gurvis may sting for the truth of it, but it can hardly be called a substance-less personal attack.

Not so the response it has garnered, however.

Not allowing any slight to go unpunished, seventy of Gurvis' colleagues -- most of them on the liberal left-wing of the Reform and Reconstructionist movements -- have counterattacked with an open letter, printed in the same local paper that Jacobs' column originally appeared in. I have pasted the letter and the complete list of signatories at the end of this post. Please review the list to see if your Rabbi is on it.

The Rabbis call the Jacobs column a "vicious, personal attack," when it was anything but. In fact, it is these Rabbis who are guilty of committing a scurrilous personal attack on a man who has put more on the line for this community than most of them can ever hope to do in their lifetimes. Their letter is devoid of any response whatsoever to the substantive matters that Charles Jacobs has exposed. Their letter is a reply the nature of which ought to be beneath the dignity of Jewish clergy. They didn't respond this way when it was brought to light that patrons of this mosque were preaching the worst kind of despicable Jew hatred. No, these "leaders" who have elevated "dialogue" and "interfaith relations" to the level of a fetish have reserved their worst invective for a man who dared simply to criticize one of their guild. They have utterly abdicated their responsibility to protect their own community in favor of good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and a few friendly photo-ops, even stooping to the commandeering of Torah verse as a bludgeon, a blackjack employed in the service of their personal vendetta.

Where have they been as the Wahhabis have built the east coasts' largest Mosque? Silent. Hiding. Complicit. And they dare attack the one man -- more leader than any of them -- who was willing to put himself and his own reputation on the line when none of them would? Shame on them. The fact is they know they've lost authority, through their own inaction, to this unordained layman...and it galls them.

They have so badly forgotten that their primary responsibility to the rest of us is not comity at all costs, but to speak the truth and stand for our community, that they have cast their sense of propriety to the wind and shamed themselves.

Again I ask, is your Rabbi on the list?

[Update: Richard Landes has an excellent post going point by point on this: On the nature of Islamophobia: Jacobs vs. the "liberal" Rabbis on the Boston Megamosque]

Here is everything you need to know. First, watch this excellent video of Charles discussing matters with Bill Whittle of PJTV. Jacobs is eloquent and measured throughout:

Second, here is that Americans for Peace and Tolerance video about the Patrick visit to the Mosque. This is that painful substance the Rabbis wish to ignore:

By the way, even the lefty Boston Phoenix assails the Patrick visit to the ISB in an excellent editorial entitled Mickey Mouse Multiculturalism

Now, here is that "Rabbinical" letter:

[The following, by AKUS, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

One of the concerns Israel has about an investigation, which I do not share, is that it will be biased against Israel in the same way as the Goldstone report was with respect to Cast Lead. The video evidence is so compelling, and the reports by witnesses so revealing of what actually happened, that Israel should be heading the demands for an investigation.

Here is one example:

This radio interview reveals a "witness", U.S. Army Colonel (ret.), Ann Wright, squirming, wriggling, humming and hawing as it gradually emerges that like Sergeant Shultz from the program Hogan's Heroes she heard and saw nothing. She finally admits she wasn't even on the Mavi Marmara after retelling what happened there!

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

If you still haven't heard of Helen Thomas, you have not been reading The Guardian. Ever since the grande dame of the Washington DC press corps told Jews to 'get the hell out of Palestine' and 'back home to Germany and Poland' our favourite newspaper has run no less than seven pieces or blogs about her.

With an exquisite sense of timing, the veteran journalist made her ignorant and hurtful remarks to a rabbi with a video camera at a reception hosted by President Obama to celebrate Jewish Heritage Day.

We are told that Helen Thomas, who will soon be 90, shares a birthday with President Obama. Let's hope he also does not share her antisemitic views. Although Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, did apologise, she was forced to resign her post with Hearst Newspapers. Critics were particularly stung at her reference to Germany and Poland. She could not have picked two places where Jews have suffered more in Europe. (Besides, as Richard Cohen pointed out in the Washington Post, 1,500 Jews did try to 'go home' to Poland after the Second World War, only to be murdered.)

Unbelievable dhimmitude on the part of YouTube, and not the first time: YouTube silences Latma, removes We Con the World

Read the rest at the link. Let's be clear. There is no copyright issue here as far as this layman who has to worry about these things can see. Parody is absolutely protected under the doctrine of fair use.

Caroline Glick writes:

Support Latma here.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

A great deal was made of a statement by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to a closed meeting of Jews in Washington that there is a historical tie between Jews and the land of...well let's leave the name a blank for the moment. Mass media outlets made this sound like a big step forward in the Palestinian recognition of the right for a Jewish state of Israel to exist.

For example, Haaretz reported: "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. Jewish leaders on Wednesday that he would never deny Jews their right to the land of Israel, according to participants of the two-hour roundtable discussion." In the past, Abbas has repeatedly ridiculed this idea. See for example here.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad (known as "the giraffe" among his people when they think no secret police are listening) was in Turkey recently and had a proposition for that country.

"Turkish blood and Arabic blood is the same," he told the Turkish prime minister. "Israel has to be kept in quarantine not to spread its disease. From now on the Turkish flag will remain in the coasts of Palestine,till the Palestinian nation will reach all their rights." Remember that for Assad that means wiping Israel off the map.

So that's what Iran's chief Arab ally has to offer Turkey, involvement in a decades'-long conflict, the abandonment of Turkish nationalism, unity with the Arabs (and Iranians), conflict with the West, battle with Israel and...the ultimate triumph of Iranian ambitions and Islam.

Another good one from Congressman Mike Pence:

[h/t: Hawkeye.]

Always read the label? Muslim Brotherhood slams Hamas for Israeli food

Poisoned, by Zionist baba ghanoush.

If this report from Bill Kristol is true, then there needs to be some big noise made. This internationalist fetish is getting ridiculous. It's impossible for anything good to come of this: Sources: Obama Administration to Support Anti-Israel Resolution at UN Next Week

Keep your periscopes up and your radars active.

Update: White House denies. Interesting. What is Kristol's source?

Had a great time today in studio for Michael Graham's, "That's a Wrap" segment (a lighthearted look back at the week's events). The other guests were Michele Mcphee and long-time Boston comedian Jimmy Tingle. I was not exactly expecting for the fast pace! With three professionals in the room, two of whom are or have been professional comedians there was a lot of pressure to keep up my end of things. After the first segment I realized the other three were all standing at the mics, so I figured I better stand too! Then the pressure to think of something witty to say...oy.

Thanks also to Jimmy for the signed CD! Everyone was extraordinarily gracious, including Jay Severin who came in at the end for his show.

Thanks again to Michael and TKK for having me.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

The Obama Administration has replaced George W. Bush's, "You're either with us or you're against us," with, "If you're not with us, that's cool!

What do you do when a supposedly friendly country stabs you in the back?

Normal diplomacy: Show them (and would-be imitators) that there is a cost for behaving that way.

Obama diplomacy: Assure them that their actions are understandable and their behavior will have no effect on your relationship.

Dr. Frankfurter explains it: Liar, Liar, Pants on fire

[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]

In the late, unlamented Soviet Union, the phrase "international Zionism" was the communist version of that Tsarist-era fabrication, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hugo Chavez's regime in Venezuela has picked up the baton:

Last week, Chavez himself showed signs of Mugabe-like dementia when he declared, "Israel finances the Venezuelan opposition, the counter-revolution. There are groups, even Israeli terrorists, the Mossad, that are after me, trying to kill me."

Anyone remember the Doctor's Plot?

The Missing Peace has an excellent report on just what it was that was found aboard the Gaza Flotilla: Humanitarian aid on the Flotilla. Guess what? Three of the six ships, including the Turkish Mavi Marmara, had no "humanitarian aid" on them whatsoever. Here are a few highlights:

The nature of the "aid":

Read it all.

What this amounts to is yet further proof that this flotilla had no other purpose than politics, and as such it had even less (read: none) legal right to run the blockade.

[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

Apart from being Jewish and having lost family members in the Holocaust (why that should bestow credibility on anyone's analysis of Middle East history and politics I don't know but it seems to be the case), Tony Judt's chief claim to credibility as a critic of Israel is that he is a renowned historian of modern European and is therefore, one would imagine, capable of getting his facts right and arguing in a rigorous and convincing manner.

However, that's not what he does in this piece in the New York Times.

1.

Basque nationalists, even those with the most extreme views, are indifferent to the existence of Spain, they just want to break away from it. None of them think that Madrid is the rightful capital of the Basque country or that Euskera should be spoken from Bilbao to Cadiz. Likewise with Flemish nationalists in Belgium, they only seek the dissolution of Belgium in so far as that would allow them to be shot of the Walloons; they don't want to send them "back" to France and establish themselves as the rulers of all the territory of what is now Belgium.

Of course, not all Palestinians want to replace Israel with Palestine, but Hamas most certainly does.

The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

Commissioners to the PC(USA)'s 219th General Assembly, you face a moral quandary. Unfortunately you also face a practical nightmare. The amount of business on Israeli and Palestinian issues you will have to consider is daunting. In writing over the last couple of weeks, I have spent considerable time examining that business. It reaches a point where one's instinctive reaction is to tune it out and look for a bottom line.

You may feel a lot of pressure to complete this business amicably; the climate of General Assemblies insures that you will automatically feel pressure to affirm reports from committees. It is a simple fact that the GA system is weighted toward approval of committee recommendations. Failure to do so might indicate a lack of appreciation for all the committee members' hard work. Additionally, you may feel a pressure to try to please everyone - knowing that whatever you do, someone will be unhappy and critical. This combination of pressures tends to result in one of two outcomes: affirmation of committee work and recommendations or an attempt to split the difference.

I wish I could offer you a simple evaluation of the issues before you. Unfortunately, I can't. There is a great difference between the actions you are being asked to take and their purpose and symbolic significance. Each occurs within a larger context that is distinct from what you see on paper. Your task is to discern both properties.

Just a little reminder on that original Pallywood production from Richard Landes:

[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]

June 12 marks the first anniversary of Iran's stolen election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues his brutal repression at home while enjoying a warm welcome in certain countries abroad, with Turkey the destination for this week's visit.

One body which has remained conspicuously silent on Iran is the UN Human Rights Council. While Israel is a permanent item on the Council's agenda, the Council - which brought us the Goldstone report and is now calling for a similar "investigation" into the Gaza flotilla - has behaved as though the events in Iran were taking place on another planet.

Many seasoned observers view the Council as a write-off, and for good reason: its membership is typically drawn from serial human rights violators like Saudi Arabia and Cuba. Nevertheless, last year the US reversed its position of shunning the Council by joining it. "Working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights," said US Ambassador Susan Rice.

Now is the time to put that objective to work. AJC has launched a campaign to commemorate the anniversary and to urge American action on Iran at the Human Rights Council.  Please visit the campaign page, sign the letter to Hillary Clinton and spread both the video  - which you can see above, and there's another one coming shortly - and the letter via blogs, websites and social media platforms.

Thank you.

Just another example of how the deck is stacked against Israel in getting their version of events out: Meet the Foreign Press Head

The rest.

[The following is a guest post by Ann Green.]

I'm so glad they were "peace activists," those nice folks who were screaming in my face as I walked into the Sheraton Boston the other night. Had they been Israel-hating anti-Semites it might have been disturbing. Okay, how do I know they really were Israel-hating anti-Semites? Because those who truly care about peace do not single out for their venom the landmass that takes up 1/6th of 1% of the Middle East, the only democracy in that human rights cesspool, the only nation in the region which gives equal rights to all regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation -- the state of Israel, of course.

On my way to attending the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) Leadership Dinner on June 6, I had to walk a gauntlet of "demonstrators," and even use of that designation is being generous. In fact, attending any Israel-related event these days, even a cultural one, guarantees one's being on the receiving end of something vile. No event connected to Israel is considered apolitical by "peace activists."

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

According to the first media report by Hisham Bourar of al-Hurra television, President Barack Obama has announced an additional $400 million in aid for housing, school construction and business development in Gaza and West Bank. Calling the status quo in Gaza unsustainable, Obama said he was talking with Europeans, Egypt, Israel, and the PA on how to have a better approach that takes into account the security concerns of Israel and the needs of people in Gaza.

He did not add anything regarding an investigation but said everyone should know the facts and make sure something like this didn't happen again. Thus, he left the door open to either an Israeli or an international investigation.

Abbas called for lifting the blockade completely.

Analysis:

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

One of the burning issues the 219th General Assembly of the PC(USA) will consider is what they will do with Caterpillar, Inc. The Presbyteries of San Francisco, Newark, and San Jose are calling for divestment while the Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee and the Middle East Study Committee are calling for denunciation. I think the PC(USA) holds 54 shares of CAT stock, so the material effect would be negligible. It is likely that the MRTI's process of corporate engagement directed at Caterpillar has already cost more than the total value of CAT stock owned by the PC(USA). It is clear that the action is more rhetorical than practical.

Actions of this type - because they are rhetorical - can cause far more significant harm than their immediate material result. That potential harm must be a significant factor in commissioners' decision making process (and I will address this more directly in another post). But if commissioners want to make responsible, moral, and ethical decisions, they must also deal with other considerations.

[The following, by Zach, is crossposted from The Brothers of Judea.]

Dear Mr. ___________,

I am a Huffington Post reader who wrote you two days ago to express my gratitude toward the new comment policy. I would like to thank you and the other Huffington Post staff for your hard work in keeping our community a civil one, and I know that this new comment policy is a reflection of that dedication. I would particularly like to thank you for mentioning "anti-Semitism" specifically as a form of hate speech that is not to be tolerated. I have been reading the Huffington Post for almost a year now and in that time I have found anti-Semitism among the readership to be a huge problem, and I hope that these changes mean you do as well.

However, it is on the topic of anti-Semitism that I feel like I should write to you and communicate what I have been feeling. I would appreciate it greatly if you would spare some of your time to listen to what I have to say. I have always found the Huffington Post staff to be an open one that are receptive to the opinions of its readership. I write because I truly want this community to be an open one, so I hope you do not mind if I offer some suggestions.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

I've written about how the Gaza flotilla issue and stirring up a hysterical hatred of Israel is playing a role in internal Turkish politics as the government tries to use this demagoguery to continue eroding Turkish democracy and to win the next election. And a little later I'm going to talk about a major new development in the flotilla story.

In addition, while Turks are united in anger and sorrow about the deaths of nine of their citizens, they do not necessarily agree with the current government's extremist response which threatens to lead to involving Turkey in violence and damaging its reputation abroad.

The leader of the main opposition, Ataturkist and social democratic party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu stated that Prime Minister Erdoğan, "Almost declared war against Israel in his party's meeting....Our party displays a more moderate and careful approach. Foreign policy can't be carried out with heroism but with reason. The Turkish Foreign Ministry should publicly disclose correspondence made with Israel so that we may all learn whether Israel warned Turkey or not."

Now you might ask yourself what is Kılıçdaroğlu hinting at here? And the answer is important and potentially explosive. There is a widespread story, which cannot yet be verified but seems to be more than a rumor, for why this tragedy might have happened. People ask: Why did the Israeli soldiers land on a ship where they should have expected to be received with a violent attack?

This is great:

[via Ed Driscoll]

Hatred, demonization...you can imagine... Here are a couple of examples. Many more at the link.

Egypt:

Ruz al-Yusuf, June 2, 2010
Headline: "The Israeli Attack on the Freedom Flotilla." The Israeli soldier is saying: "I don't understand why the world is so shocked by me. I've been killing innocent people all my life and no one spoke to me (about it)..."

Oman:

Oman, June 1, 2010
The ship is labeled "Freedom Convoy."
The man being beaten by the Jewish man is holding a sign that reads: "Free Gaza."

Qatar:

Al-Watan, June 2, 2010
In Arabic: "Terror State."

I have just signed legislation declaring myself humiliated. The rioting begins in five minutes...

How does Gaza rank with respect to its rates of infant mortality, general mortality, and mobile phone market penetration? The answers might surprise you. Or not, depending on how closely you've been paying attention.

Some people might be helped by seeing this video:

Rabbi Nessenoff has re-released his video of Helen Thomas with the fuller context of the remarks. It doesn't make Thomas look any better:

Via Yid with Lid.

Update: Well, this is interesting: Cal Thomas column on Helen Thomas spiked. I wonder how many consumers of the MSM, like Boston Globe readers, are only now finding out there was any controversy involving Thomas now that she's retired.

Here are a few shots of a moment in time I captured before leaving for work this morning as one of the cats caught sight of a chipmunk on the front step, and the chipmunk caught site of him and froze there. The two stood, frozen, for several full minutes, the cat's tail swishing back and forth and his mouth chittering, and the chipmunk frozen in place, counting down the seconds until his life was to end (transparent but cat-proof surfaces being a bit beyond his cranial-capacity).

Yesterday was the 66th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy and The Big Picture has a good selection of photos: Remembering D-Day, 66 years ago:

French townspeople lay flowers on the body of an American soldier. (Regional Council of Basse-Normandie/U.S. National Archives)

From the comments, here's a related and interesting Flikr account (in French).

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

What if two groups are in conflict and have a completely different way of looking at the world, thus often misperceiving each other? Many Westerners say nowadays that their societies misunderstand the Middle East or Muslim-majority societies and the correct response is to apologize humbly, make amends through unilateral concessions that will prove they are nice, and avoid any possible offense.

But maybe the misunderstanding is in the opposite direction from what they think.

Consider this small example with big implications.

Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper, ran as its lead article on page one a story about what it called photos the Israelis didn't want the world to see. Many Westerners who read these words would expect to see some kind of atrocity -- Israelis murdering or injuring people -- that Israel wanted to hide. That's the implication in a Western context.

[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]

Here's a worthwhile piece from the Armenian Weekly which contains the photograph below, taken at a demonstration in Istanbul on June 5, in which the placard declares, "Legendary leader Adolf Hitler, our patience is running out, we need your spirit."

How long before the flotillistas and their cheerleaders claim this image was faked?

From Gateway Pundit: THOUSANDS Rally In Support of Israel at Los Angeles protest

And here's a great gallery of photos from a rally in Montreal, Canada.

From Red Planet Cartoons.

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

As we approach the PC(USA)'s 219th General Assembly, a lot of people are writing on the Middle East issues being considered. I'd like to highlight a number of these resources.

Presbyterians for Middle East Peace [A group of Presbyterians committed to fairness and accuracy in the formulation of the PC(USA)'s Middle East Policy. This site features analysis of overtures coming before the GA, articles, and videos.]

Bearing Witness 2010 [I am contributor to this site. It has been created by Jon Haber in response to the fact that many of the materials coming before the PC(USA)'s GA do not present both sides of the issues. "Bearing Witness 2010 hopes to rectify that situation with some well-reasoned analysis that puts the entire matter of Presbyterian relations with the Jewish state into context, as well as taking on individual issues related to this year's GA votes."]

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

With thanks: Sara

How bad are things for Turkish Jews? One Jewish lady reassured a friend in the UK, anxious at reports that the flotilla incident would stoke Turkish antisemitism, that they were all fine.

Turkish people were angry at the government, she said, for using the flotilla incident to distract them from other, more pressing issues - notably Turkey's repression of the PKK, outlawed as a party of Kurdish militants. The Turks are claiming the reverse - that the Israeli secret service is stirring up the PKK as a decoy.

Here is what the Jewish lady wrote to her friend:

"For the moment in Turkey, people around do not think as the Prime Minister does. In only one month 35 young soldiers died; on the very day of the ship (incident), seven Turkish soldiers died, two from Izmir, in the Eastern part of Turkey, in the internal war with the PKK terrorists.

"The government forgets these are very important Turkish issues and act as if they were the government of the Palestinians. Therefore people around are very angry.

"Poverty, hunger, unemployment are real problems in Turkey now and the government does not even mention them.

"Maybe this is just a tactic to make the population forget the real problems and close its eyes to internal issues."

Now they're caught cropping photos from the Gaza Flotilla to remove the knives held by the "activists" and the pools of blood caused by them.

See LGF: Did Reuters Crop a Photo to Remove a Peace Activist's Weapon? and Another Cropped Reuters Photo Deletes Another Knife - And a Pool of Blood and Did Reuters Crop Out a Broken Bottle?.

So Reuters starts its backtracking: Reuters Quietly Releasing Uncropped Photos and Reuters: Cropping of Photos Was 'Inadvertent' (and we believe them, too).

CAMERA writes: At Reuters, One Knife Restored, Another Cropped

Edler of Ziyon: Reuters tries to minimize photo deceptions (updated)

And Richard Landes: Reutersgate 2.0: Honor-Shame vs. Liberal MSNM

Helen Thomas saves some other people embarrassment (actually, she saves them what should have been the honor of doing the right thing) by quitting. Buh. Bye.

Jonah Goldberg gives some good Thomas background: The Helen Thomas "Scandal"

Shmuley Boteach has a good piece here: Helen Thomas and Open Season on Jews

I am not interested in the game of "more politically correct than thou," and we who are against most PC speech enforcement should never be too quick scream when it's our ox being gored, but...Taboos are taboos only when they are enforced, otherwise they lose their power. What Thomas said was way, way over the line. No government sanction need apply. It was up to us to demand that she get get get gone. And she did. And that's the right outcome.

Update: Excellent: The First Cousin of Holocaust Denial

Thanks to Kevin at Pundit Review Radio on WRKO 680AM for having me in studio for the full 6:00 hour last night. Our friend Lee Smith, author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations also joined in at 6:30. We discussed the Boston and New York mosque controversies (briefly), Helen Thomas, and the Gaza Flotilla (majority of the time).

Kevin has posted the full audio at his blog: Trying to understand the anti-Semitic left

Following the Dick Morris event the other night, I had the privilege of speaking for a couple of minutes with Congressional hopeful Sam Meas. Sam is running for the Republican nomination in the Massachusetts 5th Congressional District, now held by Democrat Niki Tsongas. I think you will enjoy seeing this short video I made in which Sam discusses his background and his feeling for Israel:

In a future post, I will be compiling the positions of some of the other people in the race as they relate to Israel.

From the IDF Spokesperson: Specific Flotilla Passengers Linked to Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Other Terror Organizations

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Why have Israel-Turkey relations gone from alliance to what seems to be the verge of war?

The foolish think that the breakdown is due to the recent Gaza flotilla crisis. The merely naive attribute the collapse to the December 2008-January 2009 Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Such conclusions are totally misleading. It was already clear--and in private every Israeli expert dealing seriously with Turkey said so--well over two years ago. For example, the Justice and Development (AK) party government did not permit a single new military contract with Israel since it took office. The special relationship was over. And the cause was the election in Turkey of an Islamist government.

After all, Turkey needed Israel as an ally when a secular government in Ankara regarded Iran, Syria, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as the main threats. Once there was a government which regarded Iran and Syria as its closest allies, Israel became a perceived enemy.

Pretty good overview video:

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

Helen Thomas

The doyenne of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas, 89, has raised a storm of controversy for saying that Jews should 'get the hell out of Palestine' and 'go back to Germany and Poland.'

American Jews have rightly been stung by the suggestion that Jews should go back to the countries that oppressed them and slaughtered them - Germany and Poland.

Now Thomas has apologized, saying her statements 'do not reflect her belief in the need for mutual respect and tolerance'.

According to Ynet News:

Here the New Israel Fund demonstrates that in the mad rush to find friends on a left that feels itself increasingly beleaguered, there are literally no depths some groups won't plumb. In this case, we have a major pro-Israel "Civil Society" charity, the NIF, recommending a Twitter account that appears to have been established by an editor at the premier 'dismantle Israel' site on the web: Electronic Intifada.

This might seem a little inscrutable, but Twitter users will see the significance right away.

Yesterday was Friday, that means "Follow Friday" -- #FF. That's the day you send out tweets composed of nothing but the names of accounts that you follow. It's a way of giving a shout-out to some of the people you like, as well as a way of recommending accounts that you think other people should be following.

And what did @NewIsraelFund tweet yesterday?

@ngo_monitor? Is that the account of the excellent NGO Monitor? No, that's @NGOMonitor (and that is an account well worth following).

@ngo_monitor is a fake/satire account hostile to the real NGO Monitor and hostile to the Jewish State that NIF claims to love so much. The tweets characterize Israel and its supporters as the worst racist monsters, scorn the work of the real NGO Monitor, and amplify (re-tweet) the tweets of Israel's worst critics.

Its first follower is an editor at the viciously anti-Israel Electronic Intifada, Maureen Murphy which gives you a pretty good hint as to who started the account in the first place, or at least who their very good friend was. By the way, the second follower is the execrable Richard Silverstein. Nuff said.

This is not a mistake. They didn't mean to cite NGO Monitor and accidentally put in an extra _, thus inadvertently sending their readers to a site whose nastiness they would never, in a thousand years, want to encourage and spread. There's too much hostility from NIF towards NGO Monitor for it to encourage readers there. Indeed, they've never recommended the real NGO Monitor in the past, nor referred to them in any complimentary manner before. Why would they do so now? In recognition of their latest effort critical of NIF? I doubt it.

It's one thing not to encourage your own readers to read what your Israeli critics say. Not admirable, but understandable...

But to send them (out of anger at being criticized) to sites created by sworn, open, and uncompromising enemies of Israel? That seems hard to believe.

And yet, the folks in charge of social networking at NIF had to know exactly what they were doing when they "#FF'd" this brand new fake account. The most charitable explanation would be a temporary lapse wherein someone at NIF allowed their petty hatred to momentarily cloud their judgment. More likely though, they're simply plumbing the depths for friends and don't care who they ally with to combat their enemies. In this case, they identified their enemies not as the forces arrayed against Israel's very survival, but their own personal demons, their Israeli critics.

How sad that a Jewish/Israeli group, allegedly embracing self-criticism (of Israel), has become so incapable of self-criticism of themselves, that they join hands with anti-Zionists of the most virulent and hate-mongering kind.

In the end, I can't know just how much this particular incident reveals about the culture of anti-Israel discourse at NIF (Are they seriously more comfortable with "Electronic Intifada" than NGO Monitor? Indeed, are they willing to throw NGO Monitor under the bus even at the expense of giving fuel to virulent anti-Israel organizations?), or was this the work of just a lone individual? We can't know, but we should have an explanation.

Absolutely shameful.

Update: Richard Landes comments on the social network aspect: Evidence of Sickness in the World of Social Networking. I dare you to try to watch all 6+minutes of the CNN clip he has embedded. I couldn't. I'm afraid that woman still hasn't shut up.

Well isn't this nice:

Well, I'm sure this just must be the fault of Bibi Netanyahu...or is it George Bush? Nono! It's Avigdor Lieberman! I lose track of who else's fault it is that so many people in the Arab states have their bigoted heads up their collective behinds.

A whole bunch of folks came out on Thursday night to see Dick Morris speak on "Obama, Foreign Policy and the Future of US-Israel Relations," and sign copies of his new book, 2010: Take Back America: A Battle Plan, at Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, MA. The evening was sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition and Rabbi Hausman.

An enthusiastic packed house watched Morris speak (without notes) and take questions on everything from domestic politics to the Iranian threat. A passel of local Republican political hopefuls were also on hand, and you can see them stand up and introduce themselves in part 2 of the Q&A video. Here is the entire video -- 4 parts of the main speech, then 3 parts of Q&A. I apologize for the bad audio for the first minute. Things got better when Morris moved over to the mic. I also had to shift position a couple of times, but overall the video should be quite watchable.

Here is a custom player with all the parts in one playlist. The individual parts are pasted into the extended entry:

[The following, by Charles Jacobs, appears in The Jewish Advocate.]

Just days before the Gaza flotilla, Jews were attending to a smaller but more proximate fight: State Treasurer Tim Cahill, who is campaigning as an independent for governor, charged that Deval Patrick's May 22 visit to the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Saudi-funded Roxbury mega-mosque was a case of "pandering" - and of not taking the threat of terrorism seriously.

In response, the MAS - which is called by federal prosecutors "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America" - gathered a few hundred people at the mosque and did what it does best when critics raise concerns about who are the trustees and what do mosque leaders teach Boston Muslims about Jews, gays, women, Christians and America. The mosque leaders ducked the questions and charged their critics with bigotry. The MAS lambasted Cahill.

As if on cue, media stenographers dutifully took down and reported the bigotry charge against Cahill as though it was obviously true. And, again as if on cue, prominently noted and photographed was kippah-wearing Rabbi Eric Gurvis, hugging Bilal Kaleem, who heads MAS.

The real story is what actually happened during the governor's visit?

[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

1.

The Guardian here makes great play of the fact that the autopsies carried out on those killed on the Mavi Marmara show that five of them received gunshot wounds to the head and one was shot between the eyes. The piece quotes a pro-Palestinian activist in the UK as accusing the Israeli commandos having had a "shoot-to-kill" policy.

2.

I can understand reasoned opposition to the blockade of Gaza, the decision to use deadly force to take the Mavi Marmara and anger over the resulting deaths of nine people. However, the attention being given in the Guardian story, and many other media, to the fact that five of the nine died from shots to the head seems to me to reveal more of an obsession with the supposedly uncanny marksmanship and marked bloodlust of Israeli soldiers than anything else. What of those who died from wounds to other parts of their bodies? Do their deaths fall into a separate moral category from those of their comrades?

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

I am persuaded the PC(USA)'s Middle East Study Committee was designed to reach a predetermined result. Whether this happened by intent or by accident, I'm not prepared to say. But the weighted composition of the committee (demonstrated by the prior public stands of committee members), the views of PC(USA) staff assigned to the committee (demonstrated by their prior public statements and actions), and the perspective of the large majority of contacts made by the committee (demonstrated by those contacts' statements, actions, and chosen group affiliations) all worked together to insure only one possible result.

I recognize this will be a difficult proposition for Presbyterians to accept. It is often a part of human nature to want to believe that things work the way they should - especially in an institution to which one has dedicated a considerable portion of one's life.

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

Anti-Israel demonstration in Istanbul (Ynet News)

A Turkish newspaper editor told the European Jewish Press on Wednesday that Turkey's Jewish community feared that the backlash over Israel's interception of aid ships headed for Gaza earlier this week would provoke antisemitism, according to Haaretz :

In full from The Corner (I doubt they'll mind):

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Bülent Yildirim, the main organizer of the Gaza Flotilla, explained at a Hamas rally in Gaza that the operation was no humanitarian effort but part of a global Jihad to overthrow governments and install Islamist dictatorships. He made no secret of that fact, as shown in the MEMRI translation and video.

Keep in mind as you read this that his group originated the project and was the main funder, that his followers controlled the biggest ship, and that they were most of those who attacked the Israeli soldiers. Thus, more than any other individual, Yildirim represents the thinking behind the operation, its direction, and the creation of a militarized group on board that started the violence in order to achieve the intended result. Notice, too, that he--and thus the organizers of the operation and those who created the violence--are totally indifferent to the loss of life they cause.

This is great: IDF Super Star - Druze Vs. Bedouin. I'd post the video here but you really should watch it over at Nizo's to get his full explanation. Two IDF soldiers -- one Bedouin, one Druze -- pass some barracks time by engaging in what appears to be a sort of traditional Arabic rap-off. I don't understand a word but it's mesmerizing.

After the unforgivable, someone, perhaps her employer (Hearst?), instructed Thomas in the correct grunts she was now expected to make:

Which is, of course, a load of crap. Her initial statement was how she feels, and this boiler-plate BS doesn't even come close to making up for it. Are we supposed to be idiots? Time for the glue factory already.

Update: A reminder that this thing took place during the White House celebration of Jewish History Month.

Links via Instapundit:

MICHELE BACHMANN: Helen Thomas Needs To Go.

Ari Fleischer: Hearst Should Fire Helen Thomas.

Hearst Newspapers Refuse To Say Whether Helen Thomas Will Keep Job.

Navy boards, takes control of 'Rachel Corrie' off Gaza coast

The IDF Spokesperson has been posting material concerning the intercept on their blog:

Videos: Radio Transmissions Between Israeli Navy and Seventh Flotilla Ship

This time, the boarding went a bit differently: Video: Aerial Footage of IDF Soldiers Boarding the 7th Flotilla Boat without Incident, 5 June 2010

Photos of Israeli Navy Soldiers Engaging with the Seventh Flotilla Ship, 5 June 2010

Israeli Navy soldiers board the seventh flotilla ship with permission from the crew

Update: Radio Exchange Between Israeli Navy and 7th Flotilla Ship Regarding Transfer of Aid to Gaza: (IDF offers honorable compromise which goes unaccepted.)

There's been some commentary about the earlier audio released by the IDF (Gaza Flotilla to Israeli Navy: 'Shut Up, Go Back to Auschwitz'). It was pretty clearly a montage and I mentioned that in the initial post, though the IDF made a mistake in labeling it as all being from the Marvi Marmara which I think it's pretty clear it's not. They have now released a version with less material cut out (more boring stuff). I'm told there's even much more than this that they will be releasing, but this is what fits on YouTube:

Update: The IDF has issued its own clarification of the audio issue.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

"I have not yet begun to fight!" --Captain John Paul Jones 1779

"Don't Give up the ship!" -- Captain James Lawrence, 1813

"Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" --Admiral David Farragut, 1862

"You may fire when ready, Gridley!" --Commodore George Dewey, 1898

"Oh no! Israel stopped a ship near Gaza, the militants attacked the troops, and nine were killed. Our policy is untenable and we better give in." --President Barack Obama, 2010?

I hope the above turns out to be an exaggeration. Some minor changes--letting private groups send in goods over the border after Israeli inspection--would not damage the effort to isolate and defeat Hamas. But things may go far beyond such cosmetic alterations.

Nice little explanation in this video on how the media is being willingly manipulated:

He's still standing up for Israel: 'Don't submit to outside probe of raid':

You can listen to a conference call with Colonel Kemp in which he makes these comment, here.

Not bad. Sort of takes the form of one of those charity ads. Well produced:

From Free Middle East.

[The following is crossposted from CAMERA.]

Greta Berlin

Greta Berlin is a 68-year-old, anti-Israel activist and media professional from Los Angeles, CA. In university, she majored in mass communications and theater arts. Her training and professional career as a media and presentations coach have provided her with the skills and experience to manipulate the media in the interest of furthering her radical anti-Israel activities.

Berlin began her long career of anti-Israel agitprop after her marriage to a Palestinian man and the birth of their two children in the 1960's. In 2003, she joined the International Solidarity Movement, working as a media officer. She also joined Women in Black In 2006, she co-founded the Free Gaza movement which claims its mission is to "pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation." She runs the movement's media initiative.

Berlin displays extreme animus toward the Jewish state, successfully using the media to publicize her outright distortions and anti-Israel agenda. Her support of Hamas is evidenced by comments justifying the group (see below) and this Aug. 28, 2008 photograph picturing her and fellow ISMers celebrating with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh after Free Gaza's first flotilla landed in Gaza.

Audio:

Lovely.

BTW, I am told by an IDF spokesperson that this is a condensed piece of about a half hour of ongoing exchange including long periods of silence.

This you must see, from old moonbat Jew-hater Helen Thomas:

She is long past her expiration date. This via Yid with Lid who has the full context: Helen Thomas Says Jews Should Get the Hell Out of Palestine and Back To Germany-MUST SEE VIDEO

Looks like someone got to Barney Frank and convinced him to back off the stupid, stupid remarks he made Tuesday with regard to the Gaza Flotilla: Barney Frank Backs Off From Israel Criticism

From Caroline Glick's Latma TV:

Here are a few links to pages that have been set up for those looking for a lot of information all in one place:

StandWithUs has set up Flotilla Facts.

There's also Talk to Gaza: Flotilla Facts.

And this page, at the Jewish Policy Center, contains a good narrative of what happened on one page: What Really Happened on the Gaza 'Freedom Flotilla'

[The following, by Israelinurse, is crossposted from CiF Watch.]

I have just read your latest offering in the Guardian's 'Comment is Free'. Despite (or because of) my English upbringing, one of the things I cherish most about the Israeli people is their directness and their ability to cut to the chase, so I hope you have not forgotten the all-important words in Hebrew 'dugri' and 'tachless' because I do not intend to beat about the bush too much.

The decision to live in Israel or not is, of course, entirely yours. The decision to use your Israeli nationality as some sort of badge or certificate which supposedly gives you the moral authority to preach to those of us who actually live here - and don't just have the tee-shirt - is something else, and a subject which I feel is legitimate for public discussion. I will not grace your words by calling them 'chutzpa' but instead point out the dangerous and insidious manner in which you attempt to divide us into categories of 'good Jews' and 'bad Jews' by writing the following:

Bibi always comes through:

Transcript. A snip:

A couple of good ones from The Muqata:

Frank is full on J Street, pontificating about Israeli politics. He ought to move there and vote since he's got such great ideas. Please, please, please vote this guy out: Barney Frank calls for probe of Gaza raid

Would some of the leadership quoted in the article please call Frank and explain that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about? Fortunately, there is another choice: Sean Bielat.

Elliott Abrams has a must-read on the way in which the Administration stood aside at the UN: Joining the Jackals - The Obama administration abandons Israel.

Do read the rest. And could we please remember that it's been Hilary Clinton playing point person for many of this administration's assaults? Don't forget it. She'll be back.

More of the cynicism of the Gaza Flotilla is revealed in this interview from Jameel at The Muqata: Exclusive: Interview with Senior Israeli Official from COGAT

Check this out:

More here.

From MEMRI: Arab Media Reports on Flotilla Participants: Writing Wills, Preparing for Martyrdom, Determined to Reach Gaza or Die

Here are a couple of highlights from Just Journalism's report: Controversial flotilla members ignored

More here.

[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]

Brazil is an excellent case study on the failure of President Barack Obama's foreign policy. President Lula Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is what might be called a near-Communist and an anti-American. Yet he has been flattered and treated as a friend by the U.S. government even as he was preparing to stab the United States in the back by cutting his own deal with Iran.

I don't know who the anonymous anchor is, or what station/network, but this is quite good, and could describe any number of media outlets:

What's this? I thought there was a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip (there isn't, and never was), yet...get this...Hamas is setting conditions before they will accept the material seized from the ships from the Israelis: Hamas raises conditions to get aid through Israel

Also at YNet: 'Hamas blocking delivery of aid'

Of course, the idea that there is a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, including mass starvation, is a ridiculous lie, as this latest piece of evidence, a Danish report quoted at Elder of Ziyon, makes clear:

In some of the clearest video yet, we see some of the weapons used by the Flotilla passengers against what can only be described as a highly restrained IDF, including clubs, chains, and a stun grenade. These are not the actions of passive civilian peace activists. This is more video evidence of a planned violent resistance against a disciplined force willing to take a beating before causing any casualties:

Update: New Video

Moons and Rings Before Saturn: While cruising around Saturn, be on the lookout for picturesque juxtapositions of moons and rings. Another striking alignment occurred last March in the view of humanity's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. Rhea, one of Saturn's larger moons, was caught passing Epimetheus, one of Saturn's smaller moons. Epimetheus, as pictured above, is actually well behind the heavily cratered Rhea. Further back, several of the complex rings of Saturn can be seen crossing the image horizontally. Behind both the moons and rings is giant Saturn itself, showing expansive but featureless clouds in the green light where the above image was taken. The Cassini mission around Saturn has now been extended to 2017 to better study the complex planetary system as its season changes from equinox to solstice.

[The following, by bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]

A new book provides essential facts in English about one of the most significant events to affect Jews in Iraq in the last century: the Farhud pogrom, which erupted 69 years ago today.

My 89-year old aunt recently shared her recollections of the Farhud with me for the first time. The Iraqi-Jewish Kristallnacht erupted exactly 69 years ago, in the wake of the pro-Nazi Rashid Ali coup. My aunt lived with my grandparents in their house in Baghdad. The house had an entrance on either side. As they heard the rampaging mob approach, my family fled through the back entrance and into the Muslim neighbour's house.

Although the neighbour was a Nazi sympathiser, his wife was a 'lady' and a good friend of the family. She offered them hospitality until the trouble died down. " She even made the beds for us," my aunt reminisced. Eventually the Nazi neighbour, too, turned up trumps: he remonstrated with the looters and made them return all the property they had stolen from my grandparents' house.

[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

We've already examined the mandate of the Middle East Study Committee, its composition, and part of its process.  From the outset, the committee failed in one portion of its mandate:  its composition was supposed to be drawn from "a broad spectrum of viewpoints from PC(USA) members."  Optimistically, before even beginning their work, 77% of the study committee's members publicly favored one side.  Again, optimistically, three quarters of the PC(USA) staff tasked with supporting the study committee's work had a record of bias against one side.  The study committee spent a lot of time, traveled, and met with a number of people; but 78% of the study committee's contacts represented one perspective.  In all three cases, the weight was toward the Palestinian narrative and against the State of Israel.

Given those circumstances, the Middle East Study Committee produced the report a person might expect. They made sixty recommendations to the General Assembly. These recommendations range from the non-offensive to the odd to the extreme to the patently unfair. I am not going to attempt to examine all of them in this limited space. Instead, I'll confine myself to reporting some of the more colorful ones.

Here's another comprehensive collection of useful information regarding the Gaza Flotilla. Judging from the traffic, yesterday's posting seems to have helped a considerable number of people: Video: Gaza Flotilla Thugs Stab Israeli Soldiers, Use Immediate Extreme Violence (Important Updates)

[Update: Before we get to the links. Here's one young man, D Laugier, who wasn't afraid to venture down to the Boston Common yesterday, and do a lone-man counter-protest to the "spontaneous" protest there yesterday. We salute his bravery and his indefatigability:]

Now back to the links:

Let's try, once again, to put to bed some of the legal issues:

CAMERA: Israel's right to blockade Gaza and to interdict shipping

They go on to quote the relevant international law.

Julian Ku, writing at Opinio Juris answers the question: Did the Israeli Defense Forces Commandos Commit "Piracy"? Nope.

Bibi Netanyahu makes a short statement:

This soldier describes what it was like coming down on the deck of the ship, including the use of live fire against them:

Here is chilling audio of the soldiers, their reaction to the attack, and their distress calls while taking live fire:

Richard Landes has posted some even higher definition video of the maelstrom the soldiers came into: High(er) Definition footage of the battle on the Mavi Marmara

[Update: Excellent video of British security expert analyzing the boarding video. Shows the Paintball Guns used by Israeli commandos:]

Here are some links concerning the Turkish Islamist group, the IHH, that seems to have been primarily responsible for the trouble, and with whom the other organizers collaborated:

At The Weekly Standard, Jonathan Schanzer writes about The Terror Finance Flotilla

Just Journalism notes that the press hasn't shown much interest in the terror connections of the organizers: Press ignores controversial IHH profile

And here's that report from the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center: A Danish research institute exposes the links the Turkish organization IHH had with Al-Qaeda and global jihad networks

Elder notes that even Turkey has taken action against the group:

Evan Kohlmann, author of the original IHH report, brings things up to date: Shooting the Messenger: A Look at the Facts on the Turkish Aid Group IHH

NGO Monitor does their usual excellent work: NGO Involvement in the Gaza Boat Flotilla

YNet is reporting (h/t: IsraeliSoldier on Twitter): Navy Commander: The activists were given money to deal with fighters (sorry for Google translation)

Also at YNet (another translation):

Now in English at YNet: Probe reveals flotilla lynchers have ties to Global Jihad

Video at Legal Insurrection: Gaza Flotilla Organizer Puts Lie To "Humanitarian" Purpose

Not sure if I posted this one already, but Palestinian Media Watch notes: More documentation of flotilla planning violence against Israel