"Why does terrorism prosper because none dare call it Terrorism"

Wednesday a Muslim by the name of Omeed Aziz Popal ran over 14 people, killing 1, and striking 2 people in front of the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. He ran over one senior citizen in a crosswalk and then tried to run him over again, before a bystander pushed him out of the way. When he was finally stopped by police, he identified himself to witnesses as a terrorist. However the press and law enforcement quickly rushed to inform us that the shooter was upset over personal problems and has a history of mental problems and that the attacks can't possibly have anything to do with terrorism. At the scene the suspect was described as showing no emotion.

This very same August another Muslim, Naveed Afzal Haq had opened fire at the Seattle offices of the Jewish Federation and Community Center declaring he was angry at Jews and Israel. He killed Pam Waechter and shot a number of women there gaining entrace by using a 14 year old girl as a hostage. The shooting came a day after Hezbollah leaders and Al Queda had called on Muslims to carry the war against Israel to the US and Haq's father was a founding member of the Islamic Centre of Tri-Cities in Richland, which is an arm of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) which is run by Saudi Arabia meaning that the Haq family was tied to the same Wahhabi clerics who back Al Queda. Police nevertheless described Haq as a lone gunman and claimed he had a history of mental problems and that the attacks have nothing to do with any larger terrorist organization.

In March in North Carolina A Muslim student named Mohammed Taheri-azar drove around in another SUV hitting 9 people on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. He wrote in a letter the following, "My attack on Americans at UNC-CH March 3, was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic territories." Fellow students reported that he had turned suddenly religious a year before. A month earlier Muslim students had angrily protested the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in a UNC student newspaper, the Daily Tar-Heel. Law enforcement assured everyone that Tahreri-Azar was acting on his own. Officials and the university quickly ruled out the attacks as terrorism.

At the end of last year Arizona student Ali Warrayat, a Palestinian Muslim, drove blaring Arabic music directly through the front doors of a Home Depot. He had originally wanted to wear a Palestinian flag but instead brought with him a copy of the Koran. He slammed his car into a display of flammable goods and used a lighter to ignite them touching off explosions. When arrested he refused to answer in English demanding he be addressed in Arabic. Authorities he was merely a dissatisfied employee going on a rampage and no terrorism was involved.

And there's a long list of similar stories that stretches back through the years, sudden violent attacks by Muslims, dismissed as lone gunmen, as mentally unstable, as upset over something, wanted revenge for personal slights and were acting alone despite clear Islamic and terrorist overtones to their actions and statements like Abu Kamal who opened fire on the Empire State Building killing 7 and leaving behind a note attacking America, Israel and England. The media and police dismissed any political motives labeling him as yet another dissatisfied man upset about 'things.'

The prototype for this sort of blindness goes back to 2002 an Egyptian named Hesham Hadayet opened fire in the LA airport in front of the El-Al ticket counter killing two El Al employees and wounding four others before El Al's chief security officer shot him dead. Hadayet had brought with him two guns and a knife. Neighbors said Hadayet had become outraged by a large American flag put up after 9/11. The FBI and the Mayor quickly assured everyone that it was an isolated incident with no connection to terrorism.

The media and police stated that he had been upset because his buisness and marriage were failing. Explanations were advanced that Hadayet was just a dissatisfied buisnessman looking for revenge. Governor Gray Davis said the incident was sad but urged Californians not to stop their Independence Day Celebrations, "Please continue on with your celebrations," he was quoted as saying. A year later the FBI and Justice Department quietly concluded that the attacks fit the profile of terrorism.

In 1990 Rabbi Meir Kahane was assasinated by another Muslim gunman named El Sayyid Nosair, like several on this list, an engineer. Dozens of bombmaking pamphlets were found in his New Jersey apartment and tapes of Sheikh Abdel Rahman threatening "High World Buildings." Nosair was a member of a terrorist cell led by Sheikh Abdel Rahman whose followers eventually bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. The weapon used to kill Rabbi Kahane came from the terrorist who would eventually be convicted of conspiring to kill Americans in the 1998 US Embassy bombings. Prior to this Nosair had attempted to assasinate Premier Gorbachev and bombed a Greenwich Village gay bar.

None of this came out after Nosair's arrest or at his trial to whose defense Osama Bin Laden contributed $20,000. He was never charged with conspiracy. Two of the future perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombing, Mahmud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh were arrested in his apartment that night and then released. Investigators described him as a lone nut. Nosair's Lawyers claimed that he had been set up and wasn't guilty of anything. Despite the fact that he had killed Rabbi Kahane in the middle of a crowded room, held a cabbie at gunpoint and then shot a postal police officer who returned firing bringing down Nosair, the jury refused to convict Nosair of the murder and only convicted of assault on the cabbie and officer and assorted weapons charges. Years later after the World Trade Center was bombed, the Nosair case was reopened and he was convicted of both the murder and participation in the plot to bomb the World Trade Center... but by then it was too late.

In the very notebooks seized by the FBI Nosair had written, "breaking and destruction of the enemies of Allah. And this is by means of destroying exploding, the structure of their civilized pillars such as the touristic infrastructure which they are proud of and their high world buildings which they are proud of and their statues which they endear and the buildings which gather their head[s,] their leaders, and without any announcement for our responsibility of Muslims for what had been done."

Instead of listening the media and law enforcement wrote him off a lone nut, as they have written off so many Muslim killers, in part because of Political Correctness, in part because it was convenient and made the cases simpler, in part because their ramblings seemed insane to investigators who failed to realize that the ramblings of Osama Bin Laden are equally insane. And so the murders continue and the murderers are shuffled off to prison, dismissed as minor and unimportant and the terrorism goes on.

"Why does terrorism prosper because none dare call it Terrorism"

(Due to personal reasons Sultan Knish was not able to post today so we instead bring you a guest post from famed author, journalist and conspiracy theorist, Barry Chaimish.)



Prognostications of Armageddon or I Told You I Was Right

by Barry Chaimish

I'm in sunny South Minneapolis now having lunch with Joel Siegel, Naomi Klein and the descendant of the Archduke Ferdinand whose assasination brought on the beginning of the Crimean War as documented by Oswald H. Reilly in his excellent book, 'A Secret History of the Illuminati's Wars.' The Archduke is picking up the check.

The Archduke better known today as Johnny Kiplinger found inner peace in Buddhism but with some prodding unfolds a tale for us so fantastic that I will make it the center of my next book, 'We're All Doomed' by Barry Chaimish to be jointly distributed by Satanspawn Press, Christmageddon Ministries and any radio station in Idaho that will put me on the air for 15 minutes.

Suffice it to say that the Sabbatean\Freemasonic\Maine Gas and Power conspiracy I've been trying to wake up the apathetic Israeli public to goes on as before. Under the bidding of the Vatican, the EU and Stanley Morgan their conspiracies are unleashed and yet no one will listen or buy copies of my books for a reasonably priced $12.95, that's $618.99 in Canadian Rupees. Does no one care at all? While the 'so-called' Gush Katif refugees live high on the hog, I can't even take a single drink from the minibar. The world hangs in the balance and I've had to cut my tips to the hotel staff down to %12 because nobody in the supposed right-wing camp cares enough to subsidize the hotel bill for my world tour exposing the hidden conspiracies behind everything.

I stumbled on this conspiracy by accident myself some years back when Beelzebub himself, AKA Daniel Pipes said some mean things about me. Immediately I grasped that this was not an accident or an act of ignorance but that his criticism of me could only mean one thing, HE WAS HELMING A VAST CONSPIRACY WHICH I HAD UNKNOWINGLY UNMASKED.

Along with a certain professor from Haifa whom I won't name except to anyone who emails me and gives me the secret password (aardvark) Daniel Pipes, a member of CFR, NRA and the ATF, is conspiring to enrage the otherwise peaceful and friendly Arabs with insulting cartoons of Mohammed and faking the 'kidnapping' of an Israeli soldier which like all the so-called Hamas terrorist attacks, were really the work of the Israeli government. Shimon Peres who assasinated Ofra Haza, JFK Jr and Ralph Lauren is all part of this somehow too.

While the right wing camp engages in frivlous behavior such as aiding refugees and protesting against the government, I have come to Minneapolis for the only people still willing to listen to me, the Baptist Pastors of Messianic Synagogues such as Rabbi Yauchonanu Zwiebel who has invited me to speak on 'The Destruction of Israel and Converting the Heathen Jew' and of course my good friend Thomas Knoebel, a Holocaust skeptic, from the Fourth Reich Historical Revisionism Society. These are the last honest people around and we had better listen to them and me, before it's too late.

I will be on WZBZ radio station, 1056 AM, at 3 AM on Jim Oakley's show, 'Anti-Christ Unmasked - Exposing the Satanic New World Order' conspiracy. Jim has actual video of reptilians boarding the planes which 'supposedly crashed' on 9/11 and new revelations about Stinktrails in the atmosphere, The LUUTE project and the Report from Poundcake Mountain from the Retrolateral Commission of William F. Buckley Junior High School.

As part of my investigations I will also be getting courtside tickets for a Lakers game. As everyone knows the Refaim, the mythological giants of the Bible will be returning shortly on UFO's, and very possibly in the disguises of the LA Lakers. I plan to be on hand to observe and document them. Afterwards I will be escaping pursuit from the fiends the international sabbetean conspiracy will be sending after me to prevent me from speaking to you. If you can please buy my books. If you can't, please buy two. And remember criticising or mocking me in any way proves that you're a dupe or more likely a pawn or knight of the New World Order and other stuff that far-right extremists thought up in the 80's and I ripped off from them after watching some episodes of the X-Files.

The truth is out there. And by out there I mean in here. I mean me. Buy my books.

Barry

(The preceding was an op-ed piece from Barry Chaimish, not to be confused with Barry Chamish. For further information on Barry Chamish but not Chaimish see this site here and here)
To clarify the differences, Barry Chamish believes Peres was behind the deaths of JFK Jr and Ofra Haza but NOT Ralph Lauren. Barry Chamish believes that the giants are returning on UFO's and kidnapping women but not that they are the LA Lakers. Barry Chamish believes that the War in Lebanon and the cartoon violence were both a plot by Daniel Pipes who has said mean things about him. Barry Chamish also tours around Messianic Churches and pals around with Neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. So umm Barry Chamish is nothing like Barry Chaimish. At all.

With the defeat of Senator Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary the Dean wing of the Democratic Party is showing its true agenda for 2008. That should be no surprise to anyone who knows how left wing parties operate. Their true enemies are never on the right, but the moderates of their own party. They will gain influence within the liberal camp by mobilizing against the right and then begin purging the liberal camp, the same way the Communists did when they took power. The real target of the Deanites is not the Republican but Conservative Democrats.

Many reading this no doubt think this is no great concern and that the Democratic part's continued slide into left wing lunacy will only reap a bonanza for the Republican party. Matters though are not that simple. Even if the Republicans continue to control Congress and the Presidency, the Democratic party represents one of the country's two major parties with enormous resources and influence. The further they slide into the sewer of left-wing extremism, the more moderate Democrats will sink down with them. What we wind up with is an entire party and a hundred million people supporting terrorists, spewing anti-semitism disguised as criticism of Israel's policies and seeking an overthrow of the American Republic. It essentially means that the next political party remade in Venezuelan dictator Chavez's image will be the Democratic Party of the United States.

Lieberman, as the most outspoken of the conservative Democrats, was the first step in the purge. Through their assault on Lieberman, the Deanites purged a top member of the Democratic Leadership Council which once dominated the Presidency and the Senate, and sent a message to other conservative Democrats that if they engage in bipartisanship or contradict the left wing party doctrine, they will also be targeted and removed with the covert aid of their own party leadership using the same Moveon.org style groups that sprang up after campaign finance reform as political auxilaries.

Like all political purges, this is done to intimdate Democrats and to make them toe the line of the party agenda. After all if this was done to a former Vice Presidential candidate and a widely beloved figure on both sides of the aisle, the message is that it can be done to anyone. All this is done to ensure that the next Congress and Senate will see far fewer Democrats prepeared to work with Republicans or do anything but repeat the politicial positions of the party's left wing.

Pundits who criticise Howard Dean for failing at measuring up to the barometers of traditional DNC chairmen. What they fail to understand is that Dean's agenda widely diverges from that of traditional DNC chairmen. He has no interest in raising money for the party. He would much rather see political donations go to 'grass-roots' organizations like Moveon.org and DailyKos that will reliably support left-wing candidates than into the party coffers where they would be distributed to Democrats as a whole.

Nor does he have any interest in winning the Presidency in 2008 because the candidate would almost certainly be a Conservative Democrat. The left vastly prefers a Republican President than a Conservative Democrat who will deprive them of the deranged fantasies of a totalitarian fascist regime suppressing free speech and carrying out atrocities around the world with which they radicalize liberals.

Dean may well support Hillary mainly because he knows she will lose. If not he will support another losing candidate he will undermine all through the election (as Hillary herself did to Al Gore in 2000) and use that defeat to argue that the Republicans again stole the election thus further radicalizing the Democratic party. The real battle will be fought to push through left-wing candidates into congressional spots and win just enough seats over and above 2004 to let Dean claim victory accompanied by the cheers of an equally radicalized liberal media willing to tell any lie for the cause.

The transformation of half of America's two party system into a socialist monstrosity has been an ongoing problem since the days of FDR. But the latest transformation takes the Democratic party beyond socialism and into left-wing radicalism. Liberal Christian denominations have already pushed boycotts of Israel and the Presbyterian Church is giving its official stamp to 9/11 conspiracy theories, once the province of the looniest extremists. More and more Democratic congressmen are sounding like Al-Jazeera and the party itself is being dismantled and remade in the image of its most radical voices.

Those who dominate the Democratic party will also dominate the legislative positions and the positions of half the nation. If the Dean revolution succeeds, that position will be one which derives its ideas of morality from Noam Chomsky and its political tactics from the Venezulean rooftops. It will be a party turned against Israel, against America and providing active support to all its enemies. It may implode before that happens and go the way of earlier American parties long vanished from all but the historical record, but if it does not then the country will suffer the consenquences.

As protests mount against Olmert and his government, the government and its media allies continue to desperately throw out every trick and distraction they can to divert the public from its mounting fury at the military disaster, the surrender to Hezbollah, the deficits of supplies that left IDF reservists without food, helmets, bandages and in some cases even uniforms.

So now we have two sex scandals, one involving the President and the other involving the Justice Minister, both key figures in any call for new elections. The media is of course full of tabloid gossip and screaming headlines about THE LATEST ALLEGATIONS but it's all futile. Israelis who have been forced to live in shelters, who have gone to war in a mishandled campaign, who have lost sons are not about to forget what this government did because the media trots out giant headlines about the supposed sexual misconduct allegations involving two politicians. And the Israeli public has seen phony investigations all too often get used as a weapon to settle political scores before.

The utter failure and bankruptcy of this government cannot be cloaked by tossing out President Katsav or Justice Minister Haim Ramon to the wolves, hoping that the chaos and scandals will distract the public, and make any call for new elections more difficult. It won't be obstructed by transparent attempts to shift the blame to Netanyahu or the leaks about General Halutz's investments originating from within the government itself.

While Olmert frantically butchers scapegoats as if he was a witch doctor at a voodoo altar, even his media allies understand that the government is over and that its failure can't be described as victory or the protests silenced. Nor will random operations into Gaza or Lebanon successfully fake an appearance of determination and military strength. All these are distractions thrown out by a desperate regime clinging by its fingernails over the abyss.

For the last few years an alliance between key political figures, the media and powerful businessmen dismantled a portion of Israel, destroyed its two major political parties, subverted the rule of law and turned the country into its own private fiefdom. Sharon's right hand man who tried to run it all failed miserably. The likely outcome now is that the Kadima laborites will return to take over their old party from Stalin wannabe and failed Defense Minister Peretz splitting down Kadima. An invigorated Likud can then finish the job leaving Kadima another failed party as defunct as Mordechai's Third Way.

The media and the businessmen are likely calculating already for that eventuality. They still have Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, now a thoroughly corrupt party beholden to Martin Schalff who owned a stake in Arafat's casino. Lieberman makes pathetic attempts to posture as a right-winger but his actual legislative record is left of center. A man who proposed giving away most of the 67 territories and dividing Yerushalayim is as credible a Zionist as a duck is a fish. There's the Pensioner's Party which is likely to have zero traction in the post-war period. Look then for the emergence and creation of new political parties along the same lines. The current IDF protesters may well be being hijacked by figures like Carmi Gillon and transformed into a platform for another phony party or politician.

Either way the focus now will be on Kadima burning and the circvs maximus Olmert and Co. will put on to save themselves from political extinction, but when all that has passed we will likely be facing an electoral landscape not too different from the last election after all.

Parents of dead soldiers and IDF reservists protesting for Olmert's resignation at Golda Meir's grave. The sign reads 'We don't want food, we don't want water, we want accountability." (Hebrew language petition)

Brigadier General Gershon Hacohen who had commanded the Disengagement and expulsion of Gush Katif now describes it as "a crime against the Jewish people and a crime I participated in" and said that the war in Lebanon was a punishment for that crime.

General Hacohen is a fairly odd character coming out of the religious Zionist Gush Emunim, who in interviews came off coldly focused on following orders above all else and emotionally detached from the situation. Obviously such a statement could very well be an early attempt at campaign for a political posting but considering how little influence the settlers have these days that would seem to be wasted breath. It would be nice to believe that he's sincere and that some high ranking officials are waking up to what they have done at last and doing Tesuvah.

(The following are the projected notes of a top secret meeting by the Israeli cabinet of a scenario for the absolute and utter defeat of the Iranian threat. Marked not for release.)



Dateline:2007

Having severed all political and economic ties with the United States and the Western Powers, Israel is on its own. Seizing the opportunity the Iranian regime sought and achieved close ties with the US and Europe receiving billions in foreign aid, military supplies and international legitimacy.

January - Iran receives its first payment of 3 billion dollars in foreign aid...as credit for purchases of American military equipment. Iran awaits shipments of new weapons only to discover that nothing can get done unless the Senators who are holding up the foreign bill approve it. Iranian Mullahs fly to Washington DC and to several defense contractors
trying to untangle the snarl created when the Senators refuse to approve the foreign aid unless the contractors go to defense contractors in their particular state.

February - Iran is now widely being accused of being an American puppet. Europeans jeer at Iranians and accuse it of promoting globalization. Far right and far leftist Americans begin talking about a Tehran-Occupied Capitol Hill and claiming that Persian influence over American politics is dominating our foreign policy. David Duke begins referring to something he calls the IOG. Persians in America are repeatedly accused of dual loyalties. George Galloway drunkenly accuses Iran of burning his mustache.

March - Israel begins arming Kurdish, Sunni and Zoroastrian guerrillas in Iran, providing them with training and encouragement to carry out terrorist attacks. Iran's responses to the attacks are quickly met with worldwide condemnation. The UN passes numerous resolutions condemning Iran. America threatens a cutoff of foreign aid warning that only a diplomatic solution is the answer.

April - Frustrated, Iran pulls back its troops. The international media begins referring to Southern Iran as New Kurdistan. Kurdish, Sunni and Zoroastrian terrorists are granted observer status in the UN and millions of dollars in foreign aid. Iran meanwhile continues awaiting its shipment of weapons.

June - The US State Department begins pressuring Iran to open talks with the terrorists. Iran refuses. Europeans begin boycotting Iranian goods. The chief of the Kurdish Zoroastrian terrorists delivers a speech at the UN to loud applause as his men begin hijacking Iranian planes and blowing up Iranian cafes. "Now can we fight back?" Iran asks. "No," the world replies, "you'll just be perpetuating the cycle of violence."

July - The American weapons finally arrive loaded down with gear and technology that no one in Iran asked for and that actually impede their functioning. The Iranian arms industry had been shut down in expectation of the American weapons and the Iranian military puzzles over how to integrate the many useless features.

August - Blasts echo across Iran as the terrorists strike again using Israeli made weapons. Iran demands the world denounce Israel. The world instead denounces Iran for creating the conditions that made the terrorists feel so pressured they had no choice but to lash out with violence. The Iranian representative to the UN begins tearing his hair out by the roots right on the podium.

September - Israeli backed guerrillas begin shelling Iranian cities. Iran retaliates with massive bombardments to universal condemnation. Israel is given hundreds of millions free of charge to rebuild. Iran is offered loans on condition that it honor a cease fire, even if the guerrillas don't. The entire Iranian Foreign Ministry commits suicide en masse.

October - Iran enters negotiations with the terrorist groups offering them an autonomous territory in Southern Iran. The state quickly becomes a breeding ground for terrorist attacks. "No backsies," the world tells Iran, "it's their country now." "Hey we said an autonomous territory not a state," Iran protests. The world shrugs. The killing continues.

November - 16 separate UN resolutions are introduced demanding that Iran remove its troops from Southern Iran. British cartoons illogically depict Iran crucifying Jesus. Many nations sever all diplomatic ties with Iran. Meanwhile Israel receives a windfall of offers from Europe if only Israel would consider ending its nuclear activity. In response, Israel refuses and is greeted with even more generous offers.

December - Israeli nuclear weapons explode over Tehran and a dozen major Iranian cities killing millions. Sunni, Kurdish and Zoroastrian terrorists overrun Iran taking over most of the country. From the buried bunker of the Iranian government a quick call is made to Washington asking, "So can we fight back now?"

"No," comes the answer.

Thursday 24th- Rabin Square in Tel Aviv 7 in the evening - Forum for Individual Responsibility, contact Ariella Miller @ 0523-360949

Yom Rishon 27th - 10 AM, Protest march from Rabin Square to the Knesset in Yerushalaim. Buses will accompany the march for those who cannot walk. Protest tents will be placed before the Prime Minister's office for long term protesters camping out.

Yom Sheini 28th - Protest in Tsfat, contact Orit 0524-627118, Shabtai 0523-246827.

Further Hebrew langauge information available *here*

As daily revelations are coming in of staged photos, faked atrocities and media lies from Lebanon, what we are seeing is as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the first time ever the culture of lies, the boundless wellspring of biased reporting has been met, challenged and turned back.

Rathergate represented the breaking of 60 Minutes, a lionized media institution supposed to represent everything great about muckraking journalism. Instead it turned out to just be muck. Lebanon though was the first true field test for a battle between old line media and the new citizen advocacy represented in a worldwide conglomeration of blogs, forums and websites.

When the war began it was entirely predictable that the media would jump into its usual mode of blaming Israel, of reporting Lebanese casualties over Israeli ones, distorting the truth and swallowing Arab propaganda whole. But arguments in text are hard to fight. There's always a counter-argument for every argument and always a way to twist the truth, distort the context and go on telling the same lies. As with Rathergate though, the telling blow came in the proof.

Every lie in the end needs some germ of proof to back it up. Something tangible to point to and say, See there it is! In Rathergate it was the forged memos. Liberal reporters could have gone on smearing Bush for months without ever suffering any consequences but when they tried to pass off badly forged documents as proof, their lies were exposed. That same media was well in its usual smear-Israel mode and its proof was in the photos. The photos that were supposed to be worth more than a thousand words. And they were. But once you present tangible proof, real world evidence of your statements, it can be challenged in an objective way not subject to the usual distortions of debate. And the proof they presented were fake.

The exposure of one lie opened the door to exploring and exposing dozens more. The real work is just beginning but there's now footage of the Qana casualties being shown off and paraded for reporters by the supposed rescue worker in a green helmet. More photos with misleading captions, including a 3 year old girl misidentified as killed by Israelis, have been exposed too. For the first time major media journalists like Anderson Cooper are speaking out about Hizbullah's manipulation of the story. These are the first cracks in the media wall.

There's a reason they're possible. The reason is the maturing of the internet community and technology to the point where it can challenge the massive monolith of old line media. The media exists as a totalitarian force that imposes its own version of truth through its many organs of radio, newspapers, television and created a false consensus that this is public opinion. When public opinion is at variance with media reporting, the media could just ignore it as government propogandists in any totalitarian nation ignored opposing points of view.

The only outlet anyone had would be in the small carefully selected letters column of that own paper. (And now for a rebuttal in one paragraph no spaces from Mr. John Smith whom no one will read anyway to a front page article in 12 columns.) The media couldn't be challenged by anyone except the occasional politician or movie star, because the media controlled public discourse. The internet has dramatically changed all that. The media news sites may still get the lion's share of the traffic but it's been a long while since they were the only source of news. When the Washington Post or the Times adds Technocrati tags and submits its articles to Google News, it's really admitting that it has to fight for readers with everyone else out there on the internet.

Scattered sites though couldn't do very much damage. They added to the discourse. They repeated talking points the media ignored. They worked around the media mostly. They bled big media for traffic but they didn't genuinely hurt it until now. Despite the blogsphere revolution, the media had the advantage of large scale institution, cash and employees. But while Israel fought Hizbullah in Lebanese towns, the media discovered another war on their hands. A war against a loose confederation of sites that could work independently and together almost as fast as they could, that had technical talent, resources and rhetoric that could match their own organization.

There had been inklings of that during the War in Iraq and the Swift Boat controversy and a major signal of it during Rathergate which had led the way. All of those in the end came down to proof. Archimedes said, Give me a lever and I shall move the world. The lever used to move big media was digital photographic proof for a digital age and like the man chipping at the Berlin Wall, once an opening was created a hundred more could jump in to begin working on expanding it.

Big media's nose has been bloodied and while overpaid reporters write snide diatribes on bloggers and blogging, it's the elephant clumsily maneuvering to try and fight an enemy it doesn't understand. An enemy that can't be bought out, merged in, co-opted or crushed by their own organization. The problem for big media is that their opponent seems small but in reality is too big, they are individuals and a mess beyond any single individual but encompass anyone willing to speak out for the truth.

Confronting such an enemy the media is baffled much as Britain was baffled by the colonists, as the butchers of Moscow were baffled by the rising tide of citizens in the street, as totalitarian regimes are always baffled when the people they had once considered compliant sheep rise up against them. They had spent too long holding them in contempt, preparing to fight campaigns against their rivals to have any understanding of how to fight the people they should naturally be dominating. There is a wind of change in the air, regime change. While summer burns outside, think of it as a very belated spring.

A proper regime change passes power from the old totalitarian centralized institutions to democratic republicans made up of individuals. The blogsphere, the internet, for all its flaws is that and the breach in the media wall will only grow.

Chip away.

Via my new Video blog J-Channel

While Israeli hostages continue to be held by Hezbollah, UN officals report that Israel released 5 Hezbollah terrorists seized in a raid that cost the lives of Israeli soldiers. Even while Israeli soldiers are in enemy hands, Israel is freeing enemy terrorists without getting anything in return. Olmert's Kadima led government has disastrously mismanaged the situation. Hundreds of reservists are already protesting over shortages of food and supplies for soldiers , of weak and incoherent leadership and a lack of proper training and still Olmert's government continues its reign of disaster.

Time for Olmert and Kadima to go.

In 2003 after the US liberated Iraq, a formerly little known Shiite cleric Muqata Al-Sadr took control of a portion of Baghdad commonly called Sadr City now and created a shadow government declaring that he had more legitimacy than the American occupation. His newspaper began trumping up lies claiming that America was behind the terrorist attacks and calling for a war against America.

In the spring of 2004 an attempt was made to shut down his newspaper and serve a warrant against him for murder. General Sanchez even issued a "capture or kill" order against him. The resulting fighting left dozens of US soldiers dead and many of Sadr's followers as well. Instead of finishing Sadr off though at a time when the US solidly controlled Iraq, the US agreed to a 'truce' with him. Sadr's Mahdi army were to leave their positions and turn them over to the Iraqi security forces and Sadr would become a purely political force forming his own party.

If any of this sounds familiar it's pretty much the US terms for the end of fighting in Lebanon with Hizbullah or the attempted rehabiliation of Hamas. Backed by Iran Al-Sadr only became more aggressive. In the summer fighting again broke out between Sadr's militas and gangs and the US Marines. Again US forces suffered casualties destroying Sadr's forces and had him on the run when again they were forced to stop operations for another 'truce.' In the fall fighting broke out yet again and no matter how badly he lost, each time Iraqi and American politicians protected Al-Sadr from being destroying caling for meaningless and hollow truces as each time Sadr only gained popularity.

Today Al-Sadr is the third most popular figure in Iraq having gained the reputation of fighting the US to a standstill. He is modeling his forces on Hizbullah and is responsible for much of the Sunni-Shiite violence tearing apart Iraq and still he remains untouchable. When US forces tried to end the current round of violence in Baghdad, the now Shiite controlled Iraqi government prevented the US from disarming his Shiite militas in Baghdad insuring that the violence will continue. Despite the dozens of US troops he's murdered, despite the fact that his continued existance undermines any possibilty of a secure and stable Iraq, he has been allowed to continue his activities.

Al-Sadr and Nasrallah are but fingers on the hand of Iran which is prepearing to close its fist around the Middle East. Whether it's the Mahdi Army of Al-Sadr or Nasrallah's Hizbullah, the essential tactics are the same. A militia is formed of various thugs and rabble, armed by Iran and challenging the US or Israel. After a brief bout of fighting it manages to inflict enough casualties on Israel and America to impress fellow Muslims with its boasts and on the verge of defeat, the besieging Western troops are pulled back on truce terms allowing the terrorists to survive to claim victory. All this is done by Western powers on the deluded premise that these Iranian militias will then disarm and pursue democratic stategies for being elected.

They are of course happy to do it too since terrorists have no scruples over how they come to power. Democratic elections are an easier way for them to do it as Hamas has shown, but at no point will they actually disarm or stop the violence because it is precisely from the violence that their popularity stems and they know it too.

Confronting Iranian pawns like Sadr and Nasrallah, America and Israel blinked looking for accomodation instead of anhiliation. Had America and Israel taken the War on Terror seriously, Sadr and Nasrallah would be dead, the Mahdi Army and Hizbullah would be on the run and Iraq and Lebanon would be in much better shape. Instead Israel and America absorbed their casualties and let their killers stay free and boast. It is unsurprising that from there, things can only get worse.

America's clashes with Al-Sadr set the template for Israel's fighting with Hizbullah. The failure on both sides began at the political level which refused to commit military forces to an all out campaign and were constantly on the lookout for a political way out. But seeking a political solution to terrorism is akin to bribing a wolf with a ham sandwich. It's not a solution but an appetizer.

The general failure in America post 9/11 has been to understand that the War on Terror is not a campaign to uplift and elevate Muslim and Arab civilizations but to destroy them if the free wrld is to survive. The general failure in Israel has been to fall into the same trap of believing there's no military solution, only a poltical one and to disdain the military as brute force that "can only make the muslims angrier."

The more America tried to navigate the labyrinthine currents of Arab societies, the Shiites and Sunnis and the tribal factions, the more America was demonstrating our willingness to accomodate ourselves to the Arab world, rather than as we should have done post 9/11, accomodate the Arab world to us. The more Israel tries to accomodate the US, the more Israel winds up being sucked into the same trap of accomodating the Arabs via the US. Without a recognition that human civilization as we have known it over the past few centuries stands on the brink of anhiliation by growing forces intent on wiping it out, Europe will shortly look like Turkey which once too was a Christian nation, Israel will once again be no more and America will be facing the detonation of nuclear weapons on our soil and a final ultimatum.

"The number of Israelis living in the West Bank increased by three percent in the first six months of the year...The population increase came despite the political uncertainty during this time over the future of the West Bank settlements as part of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's unilateral withdrawal plan. At the end of June, the number of Jewish settlers living in the West Bank had reached 260,932, up from 253,748 at the end of last year.

The total growth of nearly 7,200 people in the settlements in the first half of the year can be attributed both to natural growth, as well as people moving to the settlements...In contrast, the far-left settlement watchdog group Peace Now called the increased settlement growth "severe" - Jpost

יב וְכַאֲשֶׁר יְעַנּוּ אֹתוֹ, כֵּן יִרְבֶּה וְכֵן יִפְרֹץ; וַיָּקֻצוּ, מִפְּנֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

Exodus 1:12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And they were adread because of the children of Israel.

What can one man do?

A Colonel in the reserves David Tatarsky, who served in the Yom Kippur War and the Lebanon War in a tank, otherwise apolitical, is holding a one man protest in front of Prime Minister Olmert's office.

David recalls the time that Motti Ashkenazi went out and stood alone after the Yom Kippur War demanding the resignation of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. In time out of that one man came a mass movement. Though apolitical Colonel Tatarsky is demanding the resignation of Olmert and Halutz. He stood there all day and spent the night at the home of one of his students. He is considering putting up a tent and asking others to join him. People come, he says, but leave soon after.

He does not want merely the 'orange' protesters but people from all walks of life to unite everyone together and bring a new government in the name of elementary decency. He who has failed must resign, especially when on his actions hinge lives, this the blood of the dead demands by the fault of the criminal and incompetent leaders, Colonel Tatarsky says.



There he stands in Yerushalayim by the office of the Prime Minister at the gate of the rose garden waiting for others to join him, to stand besides him, to bring banners, a hat, a chair, a tent if you intend to stay the night.

"A lost war, a hundred and fifty senseless deaths are creating a revolutionary situation. The government that is squandering lives without achieving the crucial goals cannot long remain in power. By the fault of those in power, we may lose the country," David warns, "and then there will not remain any domestic or family concerns."

Colonel Tatarsky asks anyone who can to write about him even if it's on a blog or a livejournal. Press or organizational inquiries in hebrew are welcome to contact him at 05-05-7833-53 or for english inquiries at his lawyer's, Itzik Bam 054-7546-790.

The battles are winding down, many have died and as the smoke begins to clear our leaders emerge triumphantly and victoriously waving a piece of paper. Another piece of paper. For this paper hundreds died, thousands wounded and billions were spent and lost.

What is this paper? It's yet another agreement. As if Israel were the weaker party, we celebrate simply managing to get the enemy to sign another agreement. What is that agreement worth? As much as the other agreements were. As much as any agreement reached through external pressure with a third party which believes it won the war and has a sworn religious obligation to exterminate us from the face of the earth can be worth. Nothing.

Once upon a time Israel's leaders handed us victories. Today they hand us pieces of paper like men trying to dodge their creditors by writing out IOU's. This particular IOU reads, "To the Nation of Israel and the Free People of the World. Owed one victory over Islamic Terrorism. To perhaps be delivered by a UN multinational force. Or not. Someday."

We have been literally papered over with agreements these last few decades. We signed one with Egypt after its leaders decided they had no hope of defeating us on the battlefield and our spirits rose. Still we held off for a few years before going off on a paper signing spree. We signed many papers with the Palestinian terrorists we turned over major portions of our country to. Of course the terrorists didn't keep their end of the bargain, but then our leaders were too busy basking in the glow of their foreign admirers praising them for just signing the paper.

Perhaps even along with the paper those admirers might even throw in a Nobel Prize or two, a trinket to flatter and amuse our leaders, ever contemptuous of their own citizens and their ears ever cocked for an accented word of foreign praise. But a Nobel Prize isn't given for just signing papers, major sacrifices are required, major betrayals. Sweden is the altar where the priests of Baal no longer sacrifice cows and pigs but profer human sacrifices. Thousands of murdered men, women and children; the blood of the citizens of Israel poured on the altar of diplomacy and international recognition in exchange for a trophy for their politicians.

We've signed papers before with Hezbollah. We did it in 1996. The papers didn't prove to be worth very much. Since then our strategy has been to get other parties to co-sign the papers for the terrorists. We tried to get America and the UN to do it but both of these worthy parties had the unfortunate tendency of only noticing defaults by our side, never by the side of the terrorists. But then the terrorists are themselves co-signed with the vast wealthy parties of Riyadh, Tehran and Islamabad and everyone knows that banks are all too willing to forgive defaults by such moneyed interests. We by contrast have only the pennies we scraped together, not given to us in black gushings from the ground but earned in bitter toil while all around us men with blades between their teeth crept towards us through the silent night.

Every now and then we look out into the darkness and think we see something but quickly we look away again. It is better not to look too long into the faces of our enemies for that in time brings on despair. We have seen them too long and done nothing and the time may be approaching when there is nothing at all that can be done and no more notes to be signed except the one turning over our country to the enemy, perhaps by way of a third party. That final disengagement not just from the 1967 territories but the 1948 ones as well. The ultimate disengagement already being trumpeted in columns in the Western press calling the existence of Israel a mistake. And what does one do with mistakes? One remedies them.

For near two thousand years the bulk of the Western world insisted that the existence of the Jews was a mistake and they did their best to remedy that with fire and sword, with axe and spear, with trenches dug in Polish earth and gas chambers and lime kilns. Today the intellectual elites continue to insist Israel is a mistake and though the good citizens of Europe no longer take sword in hand and march with torches to burn Jews in synagogues, they have discovered noble savages willing to do the work for them. Or at least they become noble savages when viewed through a distant enough lens.

True they seem less noble when they are burning cars in Paris, raping women in Oslo and plotting to bomb airplanes in Hamburg and London; but this the Europeans quickly forgive. After all such entertainments bring a little excitement into the staid bag of socialist nations ruled by memo from the environs of Brussels. And they are certain that as soon as Israel lies placidly on its deathbed with its throat cut, these noble savages will quickly abandon all their grievances and cast off their burkas and fez's to instantly become proper Europeans. In a pig's eye, as their Imams would say.

And where is Israel in all this? Is it with King David striding home swinging a giant's head under one arm and a slingshot of Uzis in the other. Hardly. we have a new king now. Meet King Ahab. Henpecked by his foreign wife Jezebel he sits fretfully by the window while the priests of Baal rampage across Judah. He has taken the wife of the enemy to his bosom and he knows something is wrong but his mind is too little to know what. He chases away the prophets who would tell him and busies himself pettily coveting the vineyards of his neighbors, accumulating power and wealth, while his own Lady Macbeth stains her hands gathering his trophies in. And if the vineyards are in Gaza and the Shomron. If she keeps the vineyards rather than passing them over to him, he is still certain he will receive his share of their wine to drink and become intoxicated and forget that of a once mighty and noble power, what remains are the idle and corrupt rich and a common people waiting for the next blow to fall.

The King suspects his wife is unfaithful to him. He has caught her at it numerous times. But each time he is assured that it will never happen again. It is his fault she is unfaithful, the servants of the foreign kings he has allowed to rule in his stead tell him. The multitude of her unfaithfulness only proves all the more how wicked he is to her. He does not quite understand this formula but slowly, grudgingly he accepts it. Each time he sighs and signs new agreements with her, giving her yet more and more of the best of his land in exchange for the same promises from her. He would escape this sham of a marriage but his own weakness entraps him. He does not dare defy the rule of the foreign kings whose aid he invited because of his weakness and whose counsel he must now keep. They now rule in Judah, not him.

Thus the king and a nation dance diplomacy's unfaithful dance, sacrificing all for pieces of paper that are violated on the very day they are signed and still the king pretends he sees nothing for his dignity is at stake and if he must be betrayed and his nation along with him, then he would rather be betrayed then be thought a fool. In for a penny, in for a pound. He signs more papers and more as if the papers were victories rather than mimeographed defeats. With each surrender his face takes on a determined look, driven to go on with the charade. Hand me more paper, he cries, I'll sign over the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Jerusalem.

In the night the enemies creeping with knives in their teeth laugh as the king clasping his invisible partner dances on.

In 1996 another weak Prime Minister who had succeeded a renowed war hero began a military campaign against Hezbollah. While Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel wrecking northern towns and causing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians, Israel launched a bombing campaign in which a UN post was hit, the shelling of Qana resulted in a worldwide cry against Israeli atrocities and Hezbollah was damaged but remained intact. Even the news stories sound indescribably familiar.

"JERUSALEM -- As Operation Grapes of Wrath continued for a second week, a palpable sense of disaster began creeping through government circles in Israel. From every point of view, the mini-war in Lebanon that had looked like a cakewalk when it was launched April 11 seemed to be turning into an embarrassing failure.

Militarily, the situation seemed to be one sustained slap in the face for one of the world's strongest and proudest armies -- the Israel Defense Force. Israel has hurled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tons of high explosives at Hezbollah targets and at other important facilities in Lebanon since the operation was launched to put an end to the militant Islamic group's Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel. But the fanatical Shi'ite Hezbollah fighters were nonetheless still shooting Katyushas at Kiryat Shmona and at a string of smaller Galilee communities all the way to Nahariya on the sea."

That was ten years ago. This time there are hundreds dead and thousands wounded and hundreds of thousands evacuated. The weapons of the enemy are more sophisticated, their range longer. The damage is no longer in the millions but the billions. Operations Grapes of Wrath ended in another useless agreement and Prime Minister Peres declared victory and lost the next election. Now we have another weak Prime Minister declaring victory coming away with another useless UN resolution. Nothing has been learned since and like Peres, Olmert must go.

Olmert committed tens of thousands of IDF soldiers to a war. Many have died, many more have been wounded, some crippled for life. He committed the nation to war and hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes and take shelter. Children spent weeks under bombings. Farmers lost their stock, fields are burned, cattle dead. Out of all this we have come away with nothing except another useless agreement and worst of all we have done what we never have before... we left our soldiers behind.

While his sons sat in Paris and LA, Olmert sent the nation's sons to war. Two of those who went to war, while his sons signed petitions stating their "moral opposition" to serving, have been abandoned under this ceasefire agreement. If they do not return to their families, there is no possible way Olmert can justify staying in office.

Kadima under Olmert\Sharon crippled the military replacing capable generals with political generals who told them what they wanted to hear. Those generals fought a disastrous war. A war demonstrating that little had been learned in a decade. But still Israel did not lose the war. Its leaders handed out the surrender to Hezbollah through the offices of the UN. No leader who surrenders while the army is in the field can remain in office.

The difference between 1996 and 2006 is that the enemy has killed hundreds and can now bombard major Israeli cities. Does anyone want to wait around to see their capabilities in 2016 or for that matter 2010 as the flow of arms from Russia to Iran to Hezbollah continues, as Hezbollah takes control of Lebanon after the victory Olmert has handed them?

Disengagement was a bloody failure. Kadima is a disaster. It's time for Olmert, Livni, Peres and Peretz to go. It's time for every member of this cabinet who voted for the ceasefire to leave. I am under no illusion that they will go willingly. I am under no illusion that their answer will be any different than Golda Meir's and Moshe Dayan's after 1973 when soldiers threw their medals at them. But regardless go they must, no matter what it takes.

Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons. When the day comes that Iran is prepeared to deploy those weapons and make good on its threats to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, Israel must have strong leaders at the helm who can do what needs to be done. Olmert must go. The survival of the nation and the lives of millions depends on it.

Olmert must go.

The enemy is already here... see full gallery here

"Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege...

However, one thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops, I made a mistake...

The day Nasrallah comes out of his bunker and declares victory to the whole world, Olmert must not be in the prime minister's office. Post-war battered and bleeding Israel needs a new start and a new leader. It needs a real prime minister."

Avi Shavit, Haaretz

(I don't usually repost mainstream media content but I don't think many people have seen this and it deserves wider distribution. Ralph Peters, a former US Army Colonel, is reporting from Israel in collumns for the New York Post that bring to mind the legendary reporting of men like Ben Hecht. Some sections of the excerpted article.)



"DRIVING north to the war from Tel Aviv, the traffic thins gradually - until you realize abruptly that your car is the only one left on the road... But as you climb the hills of Galilee, you meet ever fewer vehicles on the roads. A short convoy of Humvees heads toward the fighting, followed by a pair of old Willys jeeps painted olive drab - the Israeli Defense Forces don't all have state-of-the-art gear, but make do with many leftovers from past wars. A military flatbed loaded with 155mm artillery shells labors up a curling mountain road. In a sheltered pass, a last, defiant gas station remains open.

There is no looting. The empty houses of the refugees are safe. Israel pulls together, and no police patrols are needed to protect these businesses and homes. Remaining behind in the north, emergency personnel do what must be done. Hospital staffs work underground in bunkers and bomb shelters, treating military casualties and victims of the terror rockets. Utilities function. The water runs.

But hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been driven away from their homes. You don't hear much about that. Journalists love to think of themselves as bold individualists - but the truth is that they're herd animals...And the herd has decided that the big story of this war is the suffering of Lebanese civilians - misery exaggerated skillfully by Hezbollah's propagandists. Dead or displaced Jews? Who cares? That's yesterday's news. Today's hot fashion statement is to champion Israel's genocidal enemies. And every ambitious journalist wants to be in style.

And then there are the chickens. Not cowards. Real chickens. Thousands and thousands of them, cackling away. Still in their coops. Untended, they'd die quickly. So farmers stay on the front, putting out feed between Katyusha barrages. Vineyards need tending, but grow unkempt. Summer crops rot. Terror rockets burn the fields and set fire to painstakingly reforested hillsides. (Where's Greenpeace when you need them?) It's as if Israel's enemies are jealous even of this reborn earth.

Driving south to file this series of columns, I gave a lift to a naval officer-candidate - even in the most-desolate spots, you see military hitchhikers. The IDF moves largely by private vehicles, buses and the thumb. The young man in the carefully pressed uniform told me that he'd been permitted a quick trip home because 35 Katyushas had slammed into his little village. The media didn't report that, either. They were posing on hotel terraces in Haifa, wearing flak jackets for the camera, 50 miles from the war.

NO innocents should die on either side. But they do. That's war. Yet the one-sided coverage of this conflict is disgraceful. The truth is that all of the dead or wounded, on both sides of the border, are Hezbollah's victims. Israel longs to live in peace with its neighbors. Can anyone honestly claim that for Israel's enemies?

Where is humanity's fellow-feeling for Israel? Where is the sense of justice?
The sorry answer is that a bigoted world couldn't care less. Nobody gives a damn. Except you, my fellow Americans. Except you."

The full article here

And a previous article here , another article here

And a postscript from another Ralph Peters article

"But I see what I do because the Israeli Defense Forces have made no effort to hide this war away. Although I'm bunking in a building full of soldiers, I have no minder telling me what message I'm supposed to carry away, what I'm "really" seeing. Despite the lies in all too much of the media, the Israelis are struggling to fight a moral war - against enemies who know no morality, fanatics who trot out the same dead baby repeatedly for sensation-hungry cameras.

So I'm alone with the war for a little while, counting the time to impact of outgoing rounds and ranging detonations by ticking off the seconds between the flash and the follow-on bang.

What's striking is that every Israeli round is aimed at a military target. Even though the intensity of the firing increased today, as the IDF intensify the offensive, there's no wanton destruction - just the ugly necessity of war.

But Hezbollah's rockets aren't aimed. They're merely pointed. In the general direction of Israeli cities and towns. Simply put, the Katyushas are terror weapons. That difference sums up this war for any decent human being."

Live from the gorgeous Beirut Hills, location of that famed magic factory of dreams known as Hezbollywood, it's that one night everyone in the Muslim world has been waiting for. It's THE MOHAMMEDS. Those prestigious awards handed out for the best performances and production of faked infidel atrocities against the realm of Islam and its courageous terrorist defenders, wherever they may hide.



First up for best acting performance in a staged attack we had one clear stand-out contender known only by his non-de-plume as "Man in a Green Helmet."



Let's see a clip. The very talented Man in a Green Helmet is renowed for his acting professionalism arriving at the scene of filming even before the attacks happens and remaining for hours and even using authentic dead bodies for proper method acting.



Now for BEST ACTRESS we have Khalida Shahooda.



Khalida may not have a lot of acting range but she has nailed her part of 'Woman in Giant Hijab Mourning the Destruction of Her Home' performing the same part week after week and making it every bit as believeable as the first time. Though in reality Khalida lives in a nice villa outside Beirut, she brings a depth to her characterization that biased Western photographers looking for staged shots can't help but admire.



Next is a very crucial category. Stunt Koran.



The right stunt Koran can incite mobs to trash Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in Karachi and Mumbai and inspire Newsweek reporters to weep that America has become a Fascist (TM) state. It's difficult to get just the right Koran shot for the maximum amount of fury.

Should it be a Koran on fire? A Koran in the toilet? A Koran in high heels selling itself to passerby on Willshire Boulevard? And the winner is....

KORAN IN THE TOILET! KORAN IN THE TOILET! KORAN IN THE TOILET!



Okay now that we have that out of the way, it's time to award the prize for BEST PHOTOSHOPPED ATROCITY.



While staging atrocities can be extremely effective it is also expensive and time consuming. Photoshopping atrocities of the Israeli warmongering enemy saves money and reduces the need for extensive shooting with live models and actor's salaries and smuggled whiskey for infidel Western reporters. Now with the magic of Islam's ancient secret weapon, Adobe Photoshop CS2, we present the winner!



CHARLIE SHEEN'S GIANT HEAD OVER BEIRUT as directed by Adnan Haji. Truly a sight to terrify and enrage the tender hearts of the devoted to the sword of Allah.

Now let's have a few words from the man of the hour nominated for the SADDAM MEMORIAL AWARD, Hassan Abu Ahmed 'Donkeyears' Narsallah shown here prematurely surrendering to Israeli forces. Nasrallah is to Hezbollywood as Spielberg is to Hollywood or Ivan Ivanovich is to St. Peterwood. Let's talk to him now.



ACCESS HEZBOLLYWOOD: You've said in the past that you've been inspired by the work of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese among others.

NASRALLAH: Goodfellas! Like Goodfellas! I do trunk scene myself in Beirut. Many times.

ACCESS HEZBOLLYWOOD: So who's your favorite director?

NASRALLAH: Ayatollah Khameni. He direct millions. Kill most. Many dead. I look up to him.



ACCESS HEZBOLLYWOOD: Do you have any plans for your next big release?

NASRALLAH: Many, many projects. Many fake bombings too. Also prestige projects.

Big Pile of Corpses: A Love Story coming in 2006.

Americans Put Underwear On Heads of Martyrs: Vengance (2007)

Gay Dogs of Infidel Zionism Make Shiite Babies Cry (Spring 2007)

Islam is Religion of Radioactive Peace (Winter 2008)

Napoleon had said that the first casualty of war is your plan of battle. This is all the more true when that plan is itself based on false beliefs maintained and promoted by the establishment as a test of political loyalty in opposition to all available evidence.

For nearly a decade Israel's political and culture establishment invested all its efforts in promoting the Oslo peace plan as the solution to Israel's problems. Under their vision of the future, a Palestinian state would be created side by side with Israel, the neighboring Arab countries would reconcile with Israel, lift their boycotts, end their hatred and a new Middle East would bloom.

As dangerous and destructive as this pied piper's vision was, it penetrated the universities, the Knesset and even the man on the street; but it mostly left the military alone. The IDF after all had no real role in this bright and shiny future. The IDF was therefore able to continue functioning as one of the best militaries in the world and developing the battle plans needed to defend a country whose leaders continued to embark on self-destructive courses of action.

It was the last few years of Sharon's leadership that damaged the IDF. Unlike the Rabin-Peres utopia, Sharon subscribed to a strategic plan that closely involved the IDF. Sharon's belief was that Israel's security could be assured by pulling back from 1967 territories and erecting a wall. The reality is that Sharon's plan was little more than France's Maginot line transplanted to Israel and Israel had disastrously tried to implement static defenses once with the Bar-Lev Line during the Yom Kippur War.

But this did not stop Sharon from shoving that plan down Israel's throat and from dismantling the military in order to ensure its compliance. Sharon removed top commanders, spied on generals, replacing them with political appointees who supported his vision. This transformed the IDF command into something more like an Arab or Russian army whose generals are there because they're loyal to the man at the top, not because of their strategic and military skills. This did not worry Sharon because ultimately in any war he believed that he would be the one running it.

Now Sharon is brain dead and his political successors have no clue how to fight a war. There's an Air Force commander running the IDF in a ground war, which he first tried to fight as an air war with dubious results. The Defense Minister is a former union hack rather than a former general unlike Mofaz. Soldiers are going out underequipped to the front lines while the border guard is over equipped because Sharon's strategic vision focused on defending static borders, whose uselessness the last month of fighting has pretty thoroughly demonstrated.

Incoming soldiers received training on how to expel their fellow citizens from their homes without feeling sorry for them. They were trained to fight terrorists but while the Israeli Army had been regularly warning of a regional war and Hezbollah had been building up its power base, the military had neglected the very real possibility that Israel would be drawn into a regional war.

By retreating to the 67 borders, Israel was also going back in time strategically. By retreating from Gaza, Israel has retreated to before '67 when Jordanian snipers routinely shot away at people walking the streets of Yerushalayim and the days when surrounding Arab countries maintained terrorist camps in their own borders and sent them across into Israel to carry out their attacks. Iran is simply the modern day Egypt and Lebanon the modern day Jordan. Hizbullah is nothing more than another variation of the Fedayeen. Long before the PLO had its own state, courtesy of Peres and Clinton, they were terrorists operating out of Gaza under Egyptian rule and sneaking into pre-67 Israel to carry out their attacks. Sharon made his reputation fighting those terrorists but had forgotten that borders never kept them out, only deterence did.

But how much deterrence did Israel have left after pulling out of Lebanon and Gaza. With Sharon brain dead, there wasn't even an Israeli leader to be afraid of. When the Cedar Revolution happened, it may have harmed Syria but it opened up an opportunity for Iran to turn fight a war with Israel using a country with a weak government that could claim deniability for all of Hizbollah's actions, giving them an open playing field. And so began the game in which Iranian forces operating as Hizbollah bomb Israel and when Israel fights back, wails that the IAF is killing Lebanese children.

Israel has focused on winning the propaganda war but that is a war Israel can never win because most of the world and the media view it as an enemy to their beliefs and ideals; and the war on the ground has suffered. Hizbollah's victory comes not from any actual seizure of territory or winning ground battles but from simply inflicting casualties on Israel, further weakening Israel's image in the middle-east and its deterrence. Arab cartoons now display Israeli soldiers as weak. If not for the unintentional chaos created by the US with the invasion of Iraq and the resulting fragmentation of the Arab world, Israel would be in much bigger trouble than it is now.

As it is if Israel cannot decisively break Hizbollah and remove it from its border, the next stage will be a regional war with several Arab countries, the same war the IDF had been warning Israel will face by 2010. Time is as always running out. The Iranian crisis is melting down and the rest of the Arab world will choose sides. Few Arab countries will have any interest in joining a war against America and Israel, but many of them will rush in to fight a perceptibly weakened Israel as Jordan did in '67 to collect the spoils. Egypt's Mubarak would love to compensate for his American alliance and the pressure on the right from the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria's Assad needs to show he's the man his father was. Iraq's new government needs an outside enemy and a way to lift domestic pressure. These are just some of the countries Israel might well find itself fighting.

Yet meanwhile rather than learning the lessons of its own recent history, Israel's political establishment forgot what happened in 1948 when the Haganah chose to fight Etzel for dominance and destroyed the Altalena, a ship full of crucially needed arms. Similarly Sharon who had been involved in breaking the arms and legs of the Etzel people, whose party he would later join, diverted extensive resources to fighting the settlers and the bogeyman of "right-wing extremists' as a threat. All the intelligence and manpower resources dedicated to this would have been better focused on Israel's own border, than fighting their own brothers.

The suicidal tactic of maintaining static borders and defend rather than attack that led to the Yom Kippur War, also failed to register. Israel is surrounded by enemies who creatively adapt to the situation. They cannot be kept out by static means anymore than you can keep out any intruder who is determined to get in. If you lock the doors and put bars on the windows, he'll come through the roof or the basement or he'll just wait till you step outside or hurl bombs at you from the street. A static defense surrenders the tactical advantage and the battlefield to the enemy. We're seeing the cost of that daily in the streets of Haifa.

An enemy is kept at bay only by deterrence. The very real fear of what will happen to him should he attack. If Israel doesn't recover that deterrence, there will be no Israel left.

From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: photo sale

Hello Reuters, Adnan here from Lebanon informing you that the latest Zionist depredation has been to release the giant head of Charlie Sheen over Beirut. Will you take pictures at the usual rate?

Adnan Hajj




From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Reuters, Charlie Sheen's giant head has now been joined by Mel Gibson's giant head who has undoubtedly been intimated by Zionist blackmail into joining their unholy war against the Lebanese people. There is no telling what tragic consequences will result from the heads of two Hollywood celebrities flying around the Beirut skyline.

P.S. Note this is an exclusive. Not even CNN has this.

Adnan Hajj




From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Alert Reuters, the Zionist entity's American allies have unleashed their ultimate weapon, a gigantic enraged Al Gore breathing fire across our poor city. Entire buildings have been consumed by the fire-breathing former Vice President. Entire families have had to take shelter in soup cans and discarded luggage. If he attempts to do the Macarena, surely we will all perish.

P.S. Are there any other famous Americans you would like to see over Beirut?

Adnan Hajj




From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Reuters, a previously unknown pro-Zionist entity known only as the United Federation of Planets has dispatched a giant spaceship to bombard Beirut, manned by two known Zionists William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Fire and smoke rises over Beirut in any direction you request. Also we are infested with many tribbles which may be a sign of the end of days and the return of the hidden Imam. The news of this terrible atrocity must reach the world! Please print these pictures and pay me the usual rate.

Adnan Hajj




From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Horrors! Oh Allah! By the prophet's beard the greatest horror is upon us! The Zionists, Celtic branch, have unleashed their worst abomination upon us. Riverdance! Oh Reuters, they dance upon our poor city! Oh sure now and begorrah, tis a sad sad state of affairs it is. Think of it dozens of giant shiny black boots pounding upon Beirut in Celtic rhythm to the strains of a harp and fiddle! They will crush us all!!!

P.S. Please deposit payment in my usual account.

Adnan Hajj

It is night, Erev Tisha Bav, and I am headed downtown. I heard Eicha at the Lincoln Square Synagogue, a modern space with curves and diagonals but now I am returning to a place I haven't visited for years. A place as far from modern as you can get. The Lower East Side.

The Lower East Side is where many of America's first Jewish immigrants came. The streets are still imprinted with the sound of Yiddish, with the footsteps of Jews hurrying to shul, with the rolling wheels of their pushcarts and the legacy of their souls. It is also a dying neighborhood whose children have left it for a thousand suburbs and towns. Like the Jerusalem that once was it sits abandoned waiting for its children who will never return.

There are rockets falling on Israel now and new ruins coming into being there but I cannot be in Israel now and so I return to our oldest home in America, to another ruin. The Williamsburg Bridge, ugliest and grimiest of Manhattan's downtown bridges is a shadowy bulk in the night. Stadium lights shine over the FDR Drive's baseball fields, though there is no one there and no game expected. The bleachers are empty and the untrodden green turf gleams eerily under the glare.

The Lower East Side was once home to millions of Jews but those Jews have long gone. It is still a unique community nonetheless, one where elderly men wear gray and plaid hats and the non-religious are as welcome in the Orthodox synagogues as the most devout. The current categories of the frum world, haredi, modern orthodox, chassidic melt here. Any shul you enter will have people from all these boxes and more. They are simply Lower East Side Jews and in the era of communities segregated by minchag, hashkafah and all that pettiness, they are a valuable treasure vanishing away.



Walled in one side by the river, the city in its infinite wisdom walled in on two more sides by huge tracts of housing projects, one that is alone over 16 blocks long. In those projects any local cop could find his way blindfolded, so familiar were they were its interiors from domestic abuse, drug, suicide and shooting calls. They cut off the Lower East Side from the rest of Manhattan strangling it in a headlock of poverty and crime. Chinatown pressed in on the third side with sweatshops, tenements crowded with a dozen illegal immigrants to a room and restaurants with slaughtered pigs in the windows. The Jewish community receded to the co-ops which the Dinkins administration did their best to plant homeless people in.

Still the" infinite wisdom" of our authorities wasn't done with the Jews of the Lower East Side yet. The congressional district for the Lower East Side was gerrymandered, sliced up, sectioned off along with pieces of Brooklyn and Queens into the city's only tri-borough congressional district. The congressman who had represented the Lower East Side was gone replaced with Nydia Velasquez heading a mostly Hispanic district in which she couldn't possibly lose. Her website mentions her district as including Latinos, Chinese and Poles. As far as she is concerned the Jews of the Lower East Side are non-persons who do not exist.

Giuliani time brought with it a new wave of development, yuppies colonized the village and flowed upward bringing with them trendy stores, bars and boutiques. Chinatown wailed. The Latinos threatened action forming GOLES, Good Old Lower East Side (a vision of the neighborhood dating back to the 70's in which the Jews had no place.) The Jews as always remained silent. Their politicians as always served others leaving no one to speak for them. For the ordinary Jews and the ordinary people.



The wealth flowed in and real estate prices went up. There are now bars coating Clinton Street like ticks. There are a dozen healthfood stores, a thousand trendy fusion restaurants opening and closing by the month, their neon signs like fireflies winking in and out of the summer night. The prices went up. The real estate value went up and the bosses on the Lower East Side, the machers and the insiders heard, Sell, Sell, Sell. The co-ops privatized. Elderly men and religious families who had cheap apartments were suddenly being offered six figure sums for them. What could they do. They sold. They sold and the yuppies moved in. The co-ops have many Jews in them still but fewer and fewer of them are religious at all. The racks are full of bikes for the aging "Peter Pans" in shorts who pull down their own six figure salaries in the dot coms of Silicon Alley and the magazines of Fifth Avenue.

And the Jewish Lower East Side is vanishing.

Ratner's where Jazz musicians, punk rockers, men from the garment district with last names like Shmulewitz and Horrowitz and towards the end frum boys out of Mir and Chaim Berlin with starched white shirts and dates named Fraidy or Mindy, had dined in the quiet dignified opulence of red velvet served by elderly waiters who had seen a generation come and go, is now a Sleepy's mattress store. The lights out front which shone so many evenings on courting couples, on famous and infamous names, on saxophonists and gangsters, on Rabbis and cutters shine on displays of foam mattresses. Oi me haya lanu.



Mestiva Tiferet Yerushalayim where Rabbi Moshe Feinstein once walked between the marble plaques lining its interior is an oasis among the 99 cent stores and tenements of Chinatown where his son, Rav David Feinstein still delivers shiurim. Traditionally Jewish Essex and Orchard Streets are a strange fusion half-chinese, half-village. The Jewish bookstores are all but gone. A handful of Jewish garment stores remain. The 2nd Avenue Deli is gone as well, Katz's exists but is non-Kosher. The Jewish community that now remains is in its synagogues. Many already gone.



The noble Pike Street synagogue like a temple of ancient days, its dignified gray masonry is befouled now with the leavings of the discount Chinese store downstairs and the idols of the Buddhist temple above. The Eldridge Street synagogue like something lifted from the streets of Seville, magically born on ships to be rescued from the mad priests of the Spanish Inquisition is half-museum now, but still it stands in all its rococo grandeur.

Mysterious, the Greek synagogue endures. Chasam Sopher has a wealthy benefactor who comes to services in a limousine. It is renovated from top to bottom with a garden on the side but lacks congregants. The Stanton Street synagogue experiments with liberalism obtaining its amateur Rabbis by the bushel from Rabbi Weiss' YCT. Magen Avraham is gone. Its roof caved in one Friday night more than a decade and a half ago. Like foxes on the temple ruins, condominiums stand there now. The Bialystoker gaudily painted on the inside still dominates the remaining Lower East Side with its red and gold like a calliope. By contrast Mestiva Tiferet Yerushalayim is all brown and dust and spiders make their home above, but Torah resounds there still over the worn cracked tile. And the Home of the Sages keeps its vigil, narrow and skinny, its peers out at Williamsburg Bridge where old men in black study the words of G-d on cushioned seats and the eternal flame burns in memory of all that was lost.



My way, circular and bewildered, takes me past all these and more. Takes me like a wandering drunk through the remnants of the Lower East Side. Takes me until unknowingly my feet lead the way to what once was the First Romanian-American congregation, Shaarei Shamayim, the gates of heaven. It must have seemed very much like the gates of heaven once upon a time. A time when Moishe Oysher, Yossele Rosenblatt, Moishe Koussevitsky, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker sang there, their operatic voices soaring high to the vast ceiling, its interior a palace impossible to describe. It persevered through the lean years, gathering its minyanim from the workers in Orchard Street's clothing trade.

Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel, a man who had he not been an Orthodox Jew and in good shape, could have passed for Santa Claus, kept it all going. Tall, always with a ready chuckle, the street was renamed after him. He died and his son took over and the roof once again, the roof always falls in. The insurance company wouldn't pay to fix it and the Synagogue fell in. Of that vast palace of the King, the Creator of earth and heaven, of the synagogue named The Gates of Heaven, all that remains standing now is a single gate. Oi me haya lanu.

Rivington Street is now lined with trendy bars and the lampposts with trendy stickers advertising bands, clubs and causes. ! 'heart' Beirut stickers are glued on everywhere. The sort of trendy propaganda trendy people tend to deploy. The night congeals blue over the eastern horizon. Light, noise, laughter leaks out of the clubs and bars. It's the 20's all over again except the alcohol is legal, just not remotely cheap. It's the 20's without the Jews, the Jews are gone.



A wooden clumsy fence of boards is set around the remains of the demolished Roumanian American Congregation. There isn't even the rubble left inside. If there was a remaining Mikdash on the Lower East Side this was it. Now it is nothing but dust on the earth. No foxes roam there but perhaps mice. Around it the village continues to grow. The space will be bought up for condominiums. The money paid will filter into the community chest as it tries to put on air of confidence and keep the Jewish community going. More shuls will surely fall. A national landmark dating back to 1858, Jewish soldiers prayed there once, Beit Medrash Hagadol is endangered. Developers want to build condos there too. It recently suffered a fire and teeters as always on the edge of time's knife.

Community Board 3 those wise authorities in cooperation with the city now have a new mandate to drastically limit development on the Lower East Side. Those good people are upset over all the bars and condominiums across the neighborhood. I am no great fan of these but I recognize that the alternative is housing projects, crack vials, muggings, murders, empty liquor bottles on every corner and homeless encampments. The bars serve yuppies. The bodegas served the sort of people who when they can't afford their malt liquor will cut your throat for it instead. The bodegas though are considered a part of the community, the bars are not. CB3 wants the Lower East Side to be a ghetto, not a Jewish ghetto of course but a ghetto ghetto. A place where people hopelessly collect and cash their welfare checks and walk among the rubble and trash to the soundtrack of screams, crying children and police sirens.

Ethnic groups who have barely been on the Lower East Side for three decades claim it as their exclusive territory. Latinos insist that the bars and village eateries are crowding out their hair salons and bodegas. Jews of course said nothing when the hair salons and bodegas crowded out our restaurants and book stores. That would have been racist. A Chinese civil rights organization shouts that Orchard Street is Chinese and that any non-Chinese development is an occupation of their territory. Oddly photos of Orchard Street from 70 years back show yarmulkes by the pushcarts. Clearly an illusion of time.

Jews though make no claim on the Lower East Side but the emotional, threaten no one but only hold on to what little there is, as it dwindles away. There is no belligerence to be found. People make their plans while the real estate mavens profit from them, profit from the destruction of a neighborhood and put out cheery bulletins branding the Lower East Side as Loho and celebrating what they have wrought. The insiders who grabbed two apartments for themselves, smashed down the walls and called it a 'Break-Through' are profiting by selling those apartments for a million or more. The parasites rejoice while new funeral notices appear daily on the walls.

I tear down an 'I 'heart' Beirut' sticker and wadding it up toss it up into the night over the wooden fence where the Romanian-American Congregation once was. It falls back down to the sidewalk into the dirt and I go uptown returning home. Oi me haya lanu.