Update: Al Queda has threaten to bomb Hamas in the upcoming days. Read the report here.
I was hoping for news that they killed each other off. Instead I got this from CNSNEWS
Hamas announced on Sunday that it was fully in control of the Gaza Strip after another terrorist group declared an “Islamic emirate” in southern Gaza, triggering the deadliest internecine clashes since Hamas seized the territory in mid-2007.
But the second radical group, the reportedly al-Qaeda-inspired Jund Ansar Allah (“Warriors of the Companions of Allah”), hinted in an Internet posting at revenge attacks.
“We wash our hands of responsibility for any events that might take place in the next several days as a result … Await our response,” it said in a posting translated and made available by the NEFA Foundation, a terrorism watchdog.
A battle between Hamas gunmen and followers of Jund Ansar Allah left at least 28 people dead, including the smaller group’s leader, Abdel Latif Moussa (aka Abu Abdullah) and a top Hamas terrorist, Mohammed al-Shamali. Read the rest of this entry »
(IsraelNN.com) Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor has debunked, at length, recent accusations by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that Israel committed “war crimes” during Operation Cast Lead.
The HRW, in its official report and accompanying press releases and interviews, accuses the IDF of using drones to launch precise weapons during the Gaza operation, leading to wrongful civilian deaths. The entire case is based on allegations from only six ambiguous incidents in which 29 civilians are said to have been killed, NGO Monitor states.
HRW’s case against Israel, in which Israel is repeatedly accused of war crimes, is entirely speculative, according to NGO Monitor, “but the conclusions are stated with absolute assurance, as if the evidence was totally clear.” Robert Hewson, editor of the prestigious Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, is quoted as stating, “Human Rights Watch makes a lot of claims and assumptions about weapons and drones, all of which is still fairly speculative, because we have so little evidence.”
NGO Monitor’s objective, its website states, is “to end the practice used by certain self-declared ‘humanitarian NGOs [non-governmental organizations]’ of exploiting the label ‘universal human rights values’ to promote politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas.”
Inconclusive Nature of Arab Testimony For instance, the report accuses of war crimes the Israelis who operated the drones that were allegedly involved in the attacks. Much of the evidence against them, however, is based on Arab eyewitnesses who claim to have not seen Israelis or Hamas targets in the area at the times of the attacks. HRW takes these claims at face value, despite the inconclusive nature of this testimony, and despite details provided by the Israeli government’s report on the Gaza combat that refute this speculation.
These eyewitnesses are “not likely to have known whether there were legitimate military targets in the area,” NGO Monitor states. “These [targets] could have included command and control centers, weapons’ storage sites, and other Hamas facilities… HRW’s reliance on this evidence reflects two highly speculative assumptions: (1) that the presence or absence of visible Israeli forces in an area is a central criteria; (2) that there were no legitimate targets (Hamas fighters, weapons, communications assets, etc.) in the area, visible or not visible… HRW propagates the misleading concept that there were no legitimate targets unless locals, UN staff, journalists or human rights activists (unnamed) claim to have observed ‘active” local fighters or fighting.”
Iranian Ship Transporting Arms To Gaza Torpedoed and Sunk Off Of Sudan
Yesssss! The Iranians continue to try and rearm their Hamas minions in Gaza with shipments on Iranian cargo vessels and this time, this past week, a set of torpedoes took down an Iranian vessel just off the coast of Sudan. Neither Washington, D.C. or Jerusalem has mentioned who put the Iranian ship on the bottom of the Indian Ocean….haha. Here’s some of the scant details from the article over at Haaretz: Read the rest of this entry »
Why didn’t the rest of us think of thisbefore? We can just turn the smugglers into import/export dealers.
While we’re at it, lets burn all the legal codes of all the countries and then there will be no more crime. How do our esteemed leaders come up with this drivel, and so much of it, so frequently, so consistently?
As one of my favorite thinkers, Eugene Narrett has pointed out: “In the ordinary sense of the word the formulators of these policies and their salesmen-puppets, the politicians, are not stupid but evil: callous, power-mad and greedy. Anglo-American policies in the Middle East are not stupid or blind; they are clear-sighted and viciously consistent in facilitating jihad and keeping the cauldron of attrition simmering.”
Exhibit A: “You can’t have effective peace talks without involving Hamas”
-Jimmy Carter
More on Jimmy Carter’s ongoing relationship with the Jewish people here.
“One may argue that by fueling Gaza’s untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the Jews of Israel. If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA’s help.”
I would agree with Doc in his analysis that the West is conducting a proxy war against Israel, but I’m not quite as generous as the Doc in one respect. There is too much evidence to the contrary. I think it’s intentional.
Apparently, effectiveness in battle is prima facie evidence of war crimes. Using children as human shields and storing rockets under their beds is not. I’m going to go muse on this new information as I watch some more videos of pro-Hamas demonstrations in America. These peace loving folks were singing anti-war songs like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, and “In spirit and blood, we shall redeem Al Aksa!” … obvious references to the desired two state solution. Oh and they were also singing “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahood! Jaish-Muhammad saya’ud!” (Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return!), and “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!”. Isn’t it cute how often they refer to us Jews in their songs? They just can’t seem to get over us.
I remember war protesters in the 60’s (now I’ve dated myself) singing “Kumbaya my Lord, Kumbaya” and sitting peacefully on college campuses demanding an end to the war in Vietnam too.
Something seems vaguely different about these protests. I just can’t quite get my hands around it. Give me time. I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, I’ve posted an Arutz Sheva article on the outcome of the recent “Gaza war”. Enjoy.
“A report issued by Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi earlier in the day charged Hamas with vastly overstating the number of deaths in Gaza.”
“IDF spokesmen said they believe that approximately 1,300 people were killed in the operation, as Hamas has claimed.”
“There is, however, a major difference between the casualties reported by the IDF and those reported by Hamas: the IDF believes that most of those killed were members of Hamas and at least 500 belonged to the group’s armed forces…”
“The IDF still believes that the majority of those killed were armed, adult members of Hamas with blood on their hands.”
“… the estimated number of civilians killed was much higher than the actual number because many Hamas terrorists who were actively participating in battle at the time of their deaths were wearing civilian clothes.”
“… Gaza civilians were afraid of Hamas, and said the group had used civilians as human shields against their will and had fired from United Nations buildings.”
Amid a U.N. shipment of “humanitarian aid” for the people of Gaza, inspectors found 38 pallets of military style uniforms:
Hidden in one of the emergency aid shipments supposed to go into the Gaza strip during the 3 hour lull in fighting, were 38 pallets of camo uniforms, green military sweaters and black fatigues. This is one of the emergency shipments intended to bring medical supplies and food to the people who need it so badly. Half the trucks brining the stuff in are UN. Half the trucks are private. I’m not certain which trucks were hauling the uniforms. They had been off loaded when I got there. The whole thing is under investigation.
38 pallets equals hundreds, if not thousands, of uniforms.
So, not only does the U.N. allow militants to use U.N. property to launch attacks, they are supplying uniforms (and who knows what else) to terrorists.
It is time for Olmert to step down and for Bibi Netanyahu to become the prime minister. It is important for Israel to defend its citizens and to stop giving terrorist land for “peace”. Ask the american indians how well trading land for peace worked out for them.
I finished up my May Qassam calendar, I noticed something that has never occurred before:
There was at least one Qassam rocket every single day in May.
Every other months there are some days where none are reported, or that “only” have mortars. This was the first time in the 16 months I’ve been keeping track that there were attacks literally every day.
And even so, demand for real estate among Israelis in areas around Gaza is at an all-time high. Far more are moving there than are moving away, making terrorist claims that they aim to depopulate the nearby communities rather pathetic.
It seems as while Osama Bin Laden is calling to end the gaza blockade, their leaders are creating a virtual blockade themselves. I have been getting a couple of hits a day from Gaza. I wonder if this is one of the site that is going to be blocked.
Islam’s inability to deal with critiques reflects their own insecurities. It seems like they know there jihadi philosophy is built on lies so they try to avoid people from waking up.
(IsraelNN.com) Hamas leaders in Gaza have announced plans to block “licentious” websites from Gaza computers. A telecommunications official said Sunday that at least 5,000 sites had been blocked so far. However, he said, many sites deemed inappropriate would remain available due to a lack of proper equipment to block all of the sites on Hamas’s blacklist.
Gaza has seen a crackdown on people and institutions seen as “un-Islamic” over the past several months, including bombings of cafes, hairdressers, and pharmacies and attacks on the area’s small Christian community. A Christian school was bombed on Friday. A Gaza City cafe was bombed on Sunday morning, leading the owner to complain that his establishment “has become Sderot.”
I found this video over at JTF forums. I don’t know what to think about JTF. I found them at Jews Against Obama but I have heard from an Israeli corespondance that they are extremist. What do my readers think?
Well this video is great. It shows the link between Hamas and Barack Obama. I think if you vote for Barack Obama you are voting for Hamas. They are linked really closely. Not just in Hamas’s support of Obama but also in Obama church printing Hamas propiganda.
The thing is even Al Jezera the terrorist news network links Hamas to Obama. HT (Elder Of Zion)
Maybe when Obama is talking about visting 57 states he means he has support from the 57 islamic states. Obama is good for terrorist. The only thing Obama is going to change about America is in making a holocaust here a dark reality. Obama surrounds him self with people that hate jews. He needs to be stopped. Do what you can to prevent this terrorist loving, jew hatting monster from taking power. A vote for Obama is a vote for Al Qaeda.
That ether, that shit that make your soul burn slow – Nas.
Ether is a street term coined by Nas in his lyrical destruction of Jay Z on the song of the same name. I use that term when a Leftists or Islamists gets exposed. Liberman drops the Ether on Anti-Semite and Jihad supporter Jimmy “The Dhimmi” Carter
Here’s the words that enrage the anti-Semites at Think Progress, Joe drops Ether!
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., told FOX News that “at best, President Carter is being naive” in trying to negotiate with avowed terrorists. “There is a long list of people who thought they could reason with dictators and killers, going back to Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in the 1930s, but it has been shown to be absolutely wrong.”
I wish the Democrats were like Lieberman. He’s the last of the JFK/Truman Democrats and it’s a shame that line will soon be extinct. The Dhimmicrat (Democrat) Party is made up of appeasers and Islamic sympathizers. Joe calls Carter out.
He’s not alone. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C wants Carter to suffer consequences for being a traitor.
advocates revoking Carter’s passport and supports a measure to withdraw all federal funding from his Georgia-based institution, the Carter Center. “We have a policy in this country about Hamas and he is deliberately undermining that policy,” Myrick said. “Why should we support his center when he will not support his government?”
I agree with her. Carter is a traitor. Now the The Leftists will come out and say Hamas didn’t attack us. well I have some news for the Hamas supporters on the Left , Hamas and Al-Qaeda have the same founder. Huh, they will say. His name is Abdullah Azzam. He was Bin Laden’s mentor in Afganisatn and co founded Hamas along with Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. He dies in 1989, Bin Laden took over his organization in Afganistan which became Al-Qaeda and the “Palestinian” Organization became Hamas. Therefore carter is a traitor. He’s meeting with Al-Qaeda’s Sister organization. He should not be allowed to return to America or arrested for treason.
Think Progress won’t condemn Carter though, they’ll go after Lieberman. The reason, Faiz Shakir. He is the administrator of Think Progress and is a member of the Muslim Public Service Network. This group receives funding from Saudi Arabia and is linked with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Let’s see if Think Progress goes after these 2 Patriots, Lieberman and Myrick. If they do this Will prove their support of Islamo-Fascism. If they don’t, it’s because we’ve exposed them before they did it. We launched a Pre-emptive strike.
It looks like Hamas was trying to create more media manipulation and deist. The thing about terrorist is they lie about everything. It is just pathetic the media buys into their lies. Israel destroying Hamas is long over due.
Hamas’ fake martyr operation: “Palestine Press Agency reports that one of the ‘martyrs’ that Hamas claimed to have been killed during Wednesday morning’s murder of an IDF soldier was in fact killed in internal Fatah/Hamas clashes, and Hamas brought his body to the area to claim that Israel killed him: (autotranslated):
[Hamas’] Qassam Brigades announced in a press conference Wednesday in Khan Yunis in the martyrdom of Mohamed Fayed Chamie said that one of its leaders were killed during clashes with Israeli special forces and enable the sniper and killed an Israeli soldier east of Khan Younis…
Local sources in the Gaza Strip said that Mohamed Fayed Chamie not in the place in which it was killed, pointing out that while his body was transported to the hospital and his funeral emerged as a refreshing! There is a new death, which implies that he was killed in the internal events of the Gaza Strip and his body was thrown in the Israeli operation to his funeral and announcing that he martyrs killed during clashes with the occupation.
Chamie a resident of neighborhood Khan Younis many accuse him of being behind the murder and assault on Fatah and the security services and is one of the hired killers in the ranks of Hamas and the militias participated in the bloody coup in the Gaza Strip ‘, according to the sources said.
Citizens in the Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses told Palestine Press News ‘that Hamas has always followed this method during the events preceding or following an internal liquidation operations in the ranks of the militia hide them and no disturbances in the ranks of its members and the number of dead in concealing internal bloody events.’
This is not the first time that Hamas has been accused of faking martyrs, either.
Since PalPress gives details on the person’s name and circumstances, I am counting this as a 2008 self-death, putting the number at 57. And if this practice is as prevalent as it sounds, I am sorely undercounting – and the counts by various agencies of Palestinian Arab deaths from Israeli fire have been inflated as well.
click the link bellow to see the amazing video documenting how the pali jihadis use children as expendable human shields. I was trying to post the video here but I couldn’t figure it out. Sorry I am new to this.
s a video showing how the palestinians use children as human shields and have them perpetrate terrorist acts themselves.Keep these images in mind next time you hear of a palestinian child being killed.”(Via Israellycool.)
I think we need to cut off the shipments. If the Gazan people want to allow Jihadis to attack Israel, then I believe Israel should let them starve.
Rocket Ingredients Found in ‘Humanitarian’ Shipment
(IsraelNN.com) Israeli authorities discovered chemicals used for explosives in the past hour after Israel opened up Gaza crossings for shipments of humanitarian goods. The chemicals were discovered in a sealed container and were intended for use in Kassam rockets.Israel opened up the borders following international protests that it is responsible for a shortage of food and supplies in Gaza, where Arab terrorists have continued to attack Israel with rockets.
This is just sick. It shows the depravity of the terrorist.
Hamas placed children on rooftops as human shields preventing Israeli attack on Qassam workshops and warehousesDr. Aaron Lerner Date: 4 March 2008Yediot Ahronot correspondent Itamar Eichner reports in today’s edition that an officer in Israeli Military Intelligence revealed in a briefing by FM Livni to foreign ambassadors that “before the IDF attacks Qassam workshops or warehouses it distributes flyers asking the residents to evacuate the area. But Hamas exploits the flyers and places small children on the rooftops in order to foil the attacks. And thus because of this trick the IDF is forced to halt many such bombings at the last moment.””We are working with our hands tied because of all these laws and because we are part of the free world and because this is part of our values,” FM Livni said.
I got this great comment from some one in response to one of the crazy trolls I have on my site. Feel free to contradict me if you use logic and evidence. Thank you mitvahGedolah.
Israel will decimate all the Palestinians unless they cease and desist from launching rockets into Israel. Israel has every right, and I say they should go all out against these thugs in Gaza. You seem to be a bleeding-heart loser who doesnt understand what is at stake here. These are not poor-palestinians, these are people who hide behind babies and launch rockets from schools. I would recommend all those in Gaza to distance themselves from anyone they know who makes bombs, suicide belts, has rockets in their basement, or in their schools. Israel will continue to destroy all those resources and any human being who gets in the way of destruction of the missiles and rockets which these scum are launching 100s of into Israel each day. I pray that the innocent are spared, but the guilty are destroyed to the ends of the universe.
Update: I should also include this great jewel thanks Dorian Grey.
While in college I studied the Koran with several Muslim Arabs and Persians. It isn’t just Iranians for whom the concept of MAD has no value. It is all Middle Eastern Muslims. They all are profoundly indoctrinated into the Islamic jihad concept, which has two very important aspects.
The first aspect is that Islam teaches that Allah will weigh each persons deeds on a scale. Their good deeds on one side their bad deeds on the other. While Islam denies the Christian concept of original sin, it readily acknowledges that it is much easier to live a life of bad deeds than to live one of good.The Islamic concept of Jihad is the Muslims loophole or get out of hell free card as it were. To die in an act of service to Allah, or Jihad is an instant pass to paradise. For a Muslim, it need not be an individual act to satisfy Allah. Were Muslims in the Middle East who physically were not involved in Jihad to die as a result of a state sponsored conflict which resulted in a nuclear detestation being unleashed upon the Middle East, anyone who died as a result would be considered by Allah to have died performing Jihad, or service towards Allah.Furthermore there is another very troubling aspect to this conundrum, since Islam has no single central authority, no government or governing body the use of nuclear weapons against any single Islamic State virtually ensures that all Muslims will retaliate and escalate the violence, yet have no method of bringing the escalation to a halt.No Islamic State has ever shown the ability or desire to restrain the escalation of violence once any infidel nation has engaged them in military a conflict. The closest any has ever come might perhaps be modern Iraq. And we can all see how that is turning out. The US is clearly decimating the Islamic warriors/terrorists, yet even so they continue to fight regardless of the fact that they have and never have have any hope of winning.This suicidal fanatical death glorifying idealism is not unique to Iran, but permeates all of Islam. A nuclear conflict with Iran, regardless of who starts it or why is a guaranteed bloodbath of apocalyptic proportions from which Islam will not and cannot survive.
Samantha Power is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide, and she has a professorship at Harvard (in something called “Global Leadership and Public Policy”). She is also a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama. This isn’t an honorific: she has worked for Obama in Washington, she has campaigned for him around the country, and she doesn’t hesitate to speak for him. This morning, the Washington Post has a piece on Obama’s foreign policy team, identifying her (and retired Maj. Gen. Scott Garion) as “closest to Obama, part of a group-within-the-group that he regularly turns to for advice.” Power and Garion “retain unlimited access to Obama.” This morning’s New York Times announces that Power has an “irresistable profile” and “she could very well end up in [Obama’s] cabinet.”She also has a problem: a corpus of critical statements about Israel. These have been parsed by Noah Pollak at Commentary’s blog Contentions, by Ed Lasky and Richard Baehr at American Thinker, and by Paul Mirengoff at Power Line.Power made her most problematic statement in 2002, in an interview she gave at Berkeley. The interviewer asked her this question:Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine-Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?Power gave an astonishing answer:What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing—or investing, I think, more than sacrificing—billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called “Sharafat” [Sharon-Arafat]. I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention…. Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced.It isn’t too difficult to see all the red flags in this answer. Having placed Israel’s leader on par with Yasser Arafat, she called for massive military intervention on behalf of the Palestinians, to impose a solution in defiance of Israel and its American supporters. Billions of dollars would be shifted from Israel’s security to the upkeep of a “mammoth protection force” and a Palestinian state—all in the name of our “principles.”This quote has dogged Power, and she has gone to extraordinary lengths to put it behind her. Most notably, she called in the Washington correspondent of the Israeli daily Haaretz, Shmuel Rosner, to whom she disavowed the quote:Power herself recognizes that the statement is problematic. “Even I don’t understand it,” she says. And also: “This makes no sense to me.” And furthermore: “The quote seems so weird.” She thinks that she made this statement in the context of discussing the deployment of international peacekeepers. But this was a very long time ago, circumstances were different, and it’s hard for her to reconstruct exactly what she meant.It must be awful, at such a young age, to lose track of why you recommended the massive deployment of military force, and not that long ago. So let me help Samantha Power: I can reconstruct exactly what she meant.Power gave the interview on April 29, 2002. This was the tail end of Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield, Israel’s offensive into the West Bank in reaction to a relentless campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings that had killed Israeli civilians in the hundreds. The military operation included the clearing of terrorists from the West Bank city of Jenin (April 3-19). At the time, Palestinian spokespersons had duped much of the international media and human rights community into believing that a massacre of innocent Palestinians had taken place in Jenin. It had not, but the name of Israel had been smeared, particularly in academe. At Harvard, pro-Palestinian activists canvassed the faculty for support of a petition calling on Harvard to divest from Israel. (It was published on May 6.)Power at the time was executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which she founded in 1999. In 2001, she had recruited a celebrity director for the Carr Center: Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian intellectual and journalist who, like herself, had come to prominence writing about atrocities in the Balkans and Africa. A profile of Ignatieff in March 2002 described the division of labor in the Carr Center: “He shares administrative responsibilities with Samantha Power, the center’s executive director. The division of labor works wonderfully, he says: ‘She does all the work.'” Power later told a Canadian journalist that “their social relationship was based on three Bs: baseball, bottles and boys. They talked about the Boston Red Sox, of whom she is a fanatic supporter; they spent evenings together ‘yelling and laughing’ over bottles of wine, and she found him a kind and sympathetic confidant when it came to affairs of the heart.”The Carr Center under this management team generally steered clear of the Middle East. But in that spring of 2002, the pressure to come up with something was very great. Ignatieff, who had been to the Middle East a few times, took the lead. On April 19, 2002, only ten days before Power emitted her “weird” quote, Ignatieff published an op-ed in the London Guardian, under this headline: “Why Bush Must Send in His Troops.” I wrote a thorough critique of this piece over five years ago, so I won’t repeat my dissection of its flaws. As I showed then, the op-ed includes every trendy calumny against Israel.More relevant now are Ignatieff’s policy conclusions. “Neither side is capable of making peace,” he determined, “or even sitting in the same room to discuss it.” The United States should therefore move “to impose a two-state solution now.”The time for endless negotiation between the parties is past: it is time to say that all but those settlements right on the 1967 green line must go; that the right of return is incompatible with peace and security in the region and the right must be extinguished with a cash settlement; that the UN, with funding from Europe, will establish a transitional administration to help the Palestinian state back on its feet and then prepare the ground for new elections before exiting; and, most of all, the US must then commit its own troops, and those of willing allies, not to police a ceasefire, but to enforce the solution that provides security for both populations.Ignatieff ended with a grand flourish:Imposing a peace of this amplitude on both parties, and committing the troops to back it up, would be the most dramatic exercise of presidential leadership since the Cuban missile crisis. Nothing less dramatic than this will prevent the Middle East from descending into an inferno.So this was the thrilling idea that swept the Carr Center that April: a “dramatic exercise of presidential leadership,” through a commitment of U.S. troops to impose and enforce a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Middle East would be saved. The “amplitude” of this notion made divestment seem small-minded. Samantha Power did not misspeak ten days later in her Berkeley interview. She was retailing a vision she shared with her closest colleague. Power went a bit further than Ignatieff, when she spoke about how this show of presidential courage “might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.” Ignatieff would never have written that. But it was implicit in his text anyway.So Ignatieff’s op-ed was exactly what Power meant. That she should claim no recollection of any of this context seems… weird. Or perhaps not. Remember, Ignatieff wasn’t talking about deploying “international peacekeepers,” the context Power now suggests for her words. He specifically proposed United States troops, followed by anyone else who was “willing.” Their job wouldn’t be to keep the peace, but to “enforce the solution.” Far better today for Power to have some kind of blackout, than to tell the truth about the “dramatic exercise” she and Ignatieff envisioned.(“Iggy,” by the way, left Harvard in 2005 to plunge into Canadian politics, and he is now deputy leader of Canada’s opposition Liberal Party. He still has strong views on what Americans should do. “I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve for a year,” he recently announced. “I’m for Obama.”)Is there a conclusion to be drawn from this genealogy of a truly bad policy idea? Ignatieff himself may have hit on it. Last year he published a reflection on what he’d learned since experiencing real (as opposed to academic) politics. “As a former denizen of Harvard,” he wrote, “I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners.”Just substitute Pulitzer for Nobel.
PalestinianAuthority President Mahmoud Abbas labeled Israels actions to counterthe constant firing of rockets into the Gaza Strip ‘worse than theHolocaust.’Abbas said that Israel’s response to the continuousbombardment of western Negev towns by Palestinian terrorists was toosevere, saying that its operations which have left at least 33Palestinians dead on Saturday were unacceptable retaliation to thefiring of rockets.
But there was yet another ‘Palestinian’ leader who had even more explicit comments:
TheFatah head was not the only Palestinian leader to be associating themilitary maneuvers with the Holocaust – exiled Hamas leader KhaledMashaal described the operations as ‘the real Holocaust’ on Saturdayafternoon.’Israeli actions in Gaza since Wednesday is the real Holocaust,’ Mashaal told reporters in Damascus, where he lives in exile.He accused Israel of ‘exaggerating the Holocaust and using it to blackmail the world.’…Healso blamed some European countries, without naming them, for keepingsilent on Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians.’It isshameful that some Western countries try to clear their conscience withregards to the Holocaust that took place on their own land by beingsilent on the real Holocaust being committed by Israel against thePalestinian people,’ he said.
Europe would have to findits conscience first in order to clear it. Their continued support forthe ‘Palestinians’ proves that.Cross-posted to Israel Matzav.
ASHKELON, Israel (AP) – Residents of this beachside city are still coming to terms with being on the front lines of Israel’s battle against Hamas militants. A dozen long-range rockets slammed into Ashkelon over the weekend, marking a significant turning point in the conflict and compelling Israel to strike back hard. ‘Until yesterday, I never would have believed that I would see the things I saw,’ said Rachel Shimoni, 66, as she stood amid shards of glass, blown out of the front window of her clothing store. ‘All of a sudden, the reality has changed.’ Palestinian militants fire rockets nearly daily at Sderot and other Israeli border towns near Gaza. But by reaching Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people about 11 miles north of Gaza, Hamas raised the stakes considerably. It is one of the largest cities in southern Israel, home to Mediterranean beaches, a college and strategic installations like an electric plant and a water purification plant. ————————————————————————————————————————–GAZA (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using ‘excessive’ force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s. Addressing an emergency session of the Security Council in New York after four days of fighting in which 96 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called on Gaza’s Islamist militants to stop firing rockets.
After voluntarily leaving Gaza to the Palestinians, dismantling all settlements, and forcibly removing the settlers, which as we all know, the Palestinians claimed was the entire reason (illegal settlements and occupation) for violence, it’s hysterically obvious with 5000+ missiels since pounding into pre-1967 Israel what it has always been about. It’s about removing non dhimmi jews from life, and frmo the waqf. The rest of the world in the form of the UN is in favor of simply removing this problem, and is clearly readying itself to adapt to what it perceives to te the most difficult group to deal with, and satisfying them, so it can get back to its third world corruption and lunch at Lutece, expensed of course. Thus, the world is prepared to scold the palestinians and the arabs whose leaders backing them with money, smuggling and weapons, but they are not prepared to see the jews DEFEND THE NATION being attacked.They never will be.That is why the UN is useless and belongs somewhere else, where it’s nature is fitting.Dubai.Good bye.Pay the parking fines up and be on your way.I disagree with Bolton on this one, the UN can NEVER be an instrument or advance and protect American interests. It is a mutant cancer. It is not what FDR, and Truman dreamed of.
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