At first glance Parshas Balak appears to be confusing. It is named after Balak, King of Moav, yet Balak appears as a minor character in it. It focuses primarily on Bilaam whom G-d treats as a wicked person, yet it is not entirely clear why. After all at every turn Bilaam does nothing more than obey G-d's own commands with seeming humility. When G-d reproves him, Bilaam bows his head and accepts it. He should qualify as a righteous person but he is not. Indeed the people of Israel who repeatedly seem to be sinning, including in this very same Parsha appear to be spiritually inferior to Bilaam and yet it is them G-d chooses and not him and indeed forces Bilaam to proclaim their blessings.

Let us begin with the origin of Bilaam. Bilaam was the descendant of Lavan, the uncle of Yaakov, who took him in and repeatedly deceived him and yet at every turn, Lavan would proclaim his righteousness and declare that he is the wronged party. That kind of pious wickedness, that false hypocritical righteousness was what set him apart from his sister, who went on to give birth to Yaakov because of her very real kindness.

At every turn Bilaam displays that same false piousness, repeatedly agreeing to anything G-d says. When the angel reproves him, he says all the right things but there is no sincerity in any of it. Bilaam is in the end a hypocrite, his outer piousness masks his inner corruption. Even when he is reproved, he merely throws up another layer of hypocrisy as a defense. He defers to those stronger than him and abuses those weaker than him in the typical manner of pious hypocrites, falling before the angel, while beating his donkey.

And it is through Bilaam's own mouth that G-d presents a rebuttal to those of his kind. To those who parade themselves as righteous, G-d replies that he sees within to true righteousness and wickedness and while the Jews may sin, G-d has never rejected them. To those who believe that G-d has replaced the Jews, G-d replies that he is not a man who changes his mind. To those who contend that G-d may promise and not fulfill, G-d replies that his word is eternal. The revelation he gives to Bilaam and Balak is more than a prophecy but a revelation of his eternal hand upon history, so that where men see setbacks and reversals and a jagged line, G-d has foreseen, foretold and set into place a straight line.

The pious hypocrisy of Bilaam was meant to mask the genocidal plans of Balak. Balak praised Bilaam for his power to bless and curse, he might have chosen to have Bilaam bless his people with prosperity and strength to enable them to resist a feared invasion. Instead however he wanted to hire Bilaam for one thing alone, for destruction. Yet where he sought destruction through a curse, G-d determined there would be a blessing for G-d is the source of life where men like Balak serve as nothing more than the source of death. Having seen G-d's word only at night Bilaam believed that he could use it for evil, the revelation of G-d in the daytime overwhelmed him, causing him to prophecy while fallen with open eyes. Men like Bilaam use their phony spirituality to shield the true monsters in order to allow them to carry out their plots of destruction. They were the Bishops who went to Moscow to call for peace during the Cold War and who protect Iran today while demanding boycotts of Israel. Their righteousness is only a mask for their evil but while they can deceive men, they cannot deceive G-d or even the donkeys they ride upon.

There is no contest between the will of G-d and the will of Balak. Those who believe they can follow both and cling to the Ahmadenijads and Arafats of the world while proclaiming themselves to be righteous men of god, reveal themselves for the Bilaams of the present day and their false piety only renders their final judgment more complete. For Israel was flawed but perfect in its perfectibility but pious hypocrites cannot repent for they never recognize that they do evil. Instead above and through their plots and schemes, the voice of G-d speaks clearly in the appointed hour and crushes their false testimony, instead using them to testify to his true greatness and his true will.

Sometimes you need a little break for the weekend and sometimes you just need to take the time out to watch a terrorist get shot via a missile through a building. A relic directed by James Cameron from before 9/11 when political correctness had not yet made it impossible to do a movie with Muslim villains. Enjoy the future Governor of California demonstrating the proper negotiating tactics to be used with terrorists.


A version of my piece on Rudy appeared as an Op-Ed in the Jewish Press. It has been linked to on Lucianne and some other places.

The latest Hevel Havalim is out, go see Hevel Havalim #122 here and Our Children Are The Guarantors has a nice roundup of his favorite parts of it too.

Steven Plaut meanwhile has a good piece up on the End of the Katsav Affair.

"71% of Israelis dislike the deal, but that is because at least 50% think
Katsav is innocent, and the others probably just want an actual indictment
and trial to set the record straight... Ben Dror Yemini, an editor at Maariv, called for the Attorney General to resign, now that the whole country knows he pursued a political vendetta against Katsav and dragged the affair out unreasonably and unnecessarily, building a case on conflicting and dubious pieces of evidence, acting
unprofessionally, indicting Katsav through the media."


Lemon Lime Moon has a great post on why Europeans Hate America.

"No, you can posit all sorts of reasons why Europe hates America but it is extremely simple. They hate us because our ancestors saw through it all, hated it and left. Those whom Europe persecuted most left her dying shores and set up a thriving new nation of over 250,000,000 people. To add insult to injury, these people whom Europe hated came over and helped pull their collective butts out of the fire of two world wars, fed them, housed them and saved West Germany with the Berlin airlift.
The very ones Europe considered off-scourings.. the Puritans, pilgrims..etc. were the fathers of the kids who were now doing far better in the new neighborhood than anyone in the old."

Ted Belman at IsraPundit has a post on the impossibility of withdrawal.

"There is a growing consensus in Israel that a withdrawal from the West Bank is no longer possible. It may be possible to hide the Palestinians behind a separation fence, but it is impossible to relinquish control over them."


Debbie at RightTruth wraps up America and the world from D.C. to Qatar.

"President George W. Bush has lost the support of the Conservatives who put him in office and stood by him. His latest bouts of insanity on illegal aliens and submitting to Islam have completely done him in. This country needs strong leadership. We need leaders who put America first, not only in domestic areas, but in international matters. The following are some headlines I ran across that speak to this subject."


Maggie's Notebook covers the rescue of the Iraqi orphans by American troops.

"From what I can see and read, The Early Show's Harry Smith chose not to mention American troops, not to credit the troops, not to support the troop's valor and humanity - he totally ignored the American troop's involvement. Of Lara's comment that an Iraqi ministry is trying make America the "bad guy,"...nothing from Smith. He did not follow-up on Logan's "defense" of the troops - never a word about the troops and their part in the rescue. A MSM omission of this sort is evil, irresponsible and unpatriotic, in my opinion."

Whenever a controversy begins, typically over a remark about or involving Jews, there are quickly people who emerge to argue that the individual is question is no anti-semite. And that is likely often true as well. For example when Noah writes in Slate that John Updike is no anti-semite, that is likely the case. But then no one was arguing that indeed he was.

Anti-semitism was a word coined to describe something like a dedicated antipathy toward Jews. Anti-semitism tends to manifest itself in the extreme in obsessional behavior, conspiracy theories involving Jews and responses ranging from hatred to phobia. The milder forms of Anti-semitism result in merely social antipathy, slurs and thinly disguised hostility.

But there is a vastly larger pool of prejudices that are widely held without making one an anti-semite. When John Updike describes a character as a "Rich Jew" he is echoing back a literary prejudice regarding Jews that was widespread throughout literature. From Shakespeare to Marlowe to Dickens to Trollope to Henry Adams and O'Henry, novels, stories and plays reflected what is today described as Anti-semitic stereotypes. This is however an inaccurate description.

Most of the writers listed above, aside from perhaps Adams and Trollope, were not anti-semitic as we would understand it today. Shakespeare and Marlowe had likely never even met a Jew. They were simply dishonestly regurgitating the stereotypes they knew, without ever being able to conceive that they were doing anything wrong. It wasn't until the 19th century when Jews began to talk back to writers and some genuinely understood and changed. As was the case with Coleridge, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain.

But overall finding writers who did not see Jews in such a light up until the middle half of the 20th century was a painfully difficult task. Those prejudices are still very much alive, as liberals have helpfully managed to conclusively demonstrate over the last decade. They were simply frowned on for a while as politically incorrect. Even before disguising them as political Anti-Zionism rather than Anti-Semitism became trendy, a distinction pioneered by the Communists who playing to a liberal crowd overseas needed to be subtle in their persecution of Jews as opposed to the Nazis who quickly shed such scruples, they always existed inside.

The distinction between Anti-semitism and that kind of vaguer prejudice is tricky. An authentic bigot might say "Jew Down" but so do plenty of people who don't hate Jews per se, but do look down on them and take the stereotypes on faith. It might be the gap between the bigot and the racist. In an age when Borat exploits anti-semitism for comedy, when progressives exploit it for activism against America and Israel and the supposedly Jewish Hollywood is one of the biggest exporters of those same stereotypes on a regular basis, the issues easily become muddled.

The very pervasiveness and the ancient history of Anti-Semitism and prejudices about Jews is what makes those stereotypes and feelings so viral finding their way into the worldviews and mindsets of both Jews and Non-Jews, into literature, film, social circles and political punditry. Circumstances like the War in Iraq for the left or the Seattle Christmas Trees for the right very quickly reveal what is beneath the otherwise civil facade.

While prejudice is not the same thing as genuine Anti-semitism, one flows into the other. The modern techniques of spin and political correctness make them difficult to separate and identify. Is Mel Gibson an actual Anti-semite or just prejudiced. The difference can be bought by an expensive damage control team.

These days everyone, even Ahmedanijad, have Jews they can trot out before the cameras to vouch for them. But then prominent Anti-semites have had Jewish friends and even Jewish spouses. Henry Ford was close friends with a local Rabbi even as he was financing the printing of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hitler had fond memories of an art professor whose safe exit from Germany he took care to insure.

Nevertheless in discussing the issues it's important to try and tell the two apart. It's often the difference between sworn enemies and jerks.

The Forward in its current incarnation has never met an Anti-Semite it didn't like. Especially a Jewish one. This time out it profiles the tragic wrongdoing done to Richard Silverstein or the Tikkun Hamas blog. Poor Richard has been having a bad month. First he wailed despairingly that Palestinians are busy killing each other instead of killing Jews (as he would prefer) and then someone created a mean blogspot blog parody of him.

When normal bloggers have parody blogs created of them, they shrug their shoulders and move on but as everyone knows the biggest bullies are the first to whine when anyone shoves them back. Their cowardice is exactly what drives their viciousness in the first place. Richard Silverstein has made a career of defending terrorists who kill Jews but when a blog mocks him, Richard runs for his lawyer.

So Richard Silverstein lawyered up and began threatening to sue Google. (You would think that a blogger whose blog is subtitled "Making the World a Better Place" while supporting terrorists would have more of a sense of humor or at least irony) and his hissy fit has been picked up by The Forward.

The case of Silverstein...is but one example of the below-the-belt discourse that has taken hold in the world of Jewish blogging. Scurrilous barbs and sharp-tongued insults are routinely tossed back and forth through cyberspace from one Jewish blogger to another, appearing in long threads in the sections reserved for reader comments.

Tragic. Simply tragic. You see once upon a time the Jewish blogsphere was an oasis of peace and good fellowship and then suddenly people began turning mean and throwing "scurrilous barbs" at one another. Then we all took out our sword canes and had it out before becoming peers of the realm.

The Jewish blogsphere has like the rest of the blogsphere seen its share of fighting because like most of the internet, it's basically a place for people to hang out and talk to each other. Typical of media articles on the subject is some sort of phony pretense that the internet was once a utopia that suddenly went sour.

Richard Silverstein's case however is irrelevant because Richard Silverstein and Tikkun Hamas are not part of the Jewish blogsphere. He's part of the Palestinian blogsphere.

The fake blog, called “Little Dickie’s Diaper Droppings,” wasn’t pretty. In addition to the scatological references, the site was riddled with graphic sexual innuendo.

Oh dear. Scatological references. And scurrilous barbs. How Dickensian. Poor Richard. Poor, poor Richard. Sure he defended Hizbullah but how could he be expected to cope with scatological references. Oh poop.

In the United States, Silverstein has invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that covers copyright infringement on the Internet, in his attempts to have the fake blog taken down. Silverstein said that when he contacted Blogger.com, the Google subsidiary that hosts the defamatory Web site, to demand that the site be removed, he was only partially successful.

“Clearly the people who run these sites know they’ve violated copyright, and what they’re trying to do is thumb their noses at me,” Silverstein said. “But what they’re actually doing is putting themselves in jeopardy.”

What Silverstein is doing is trying to silence a parody of himself. And he knows it too. Sadly he's not in the UK or Israel so he has to resort to the DMCA, a bogus corporate funded law that doesn't apply here. This is nothing more than harassment because a blogger who supports the terrorists shelling and murdering Israeli civilians is too thin skinned to cope with some scatological references.

So instead Poor Richard Silverstein is doing his best to try and intimidate everyone with threats of lawsuits while at the same time baselessly slandering a variety of folks including Steven Plaut, Aussie Dave, Rachel Neuwirth and others for conspiring against him. Somehow when he threatens to sue people because his sense of humor is limited to giggling when shells fall on Sderot, it's a fight against cyberbullying. But when he slanders others and gets sued, he's still the one being cyberbullied. This pathetic whining from Richard Silverstein would be ridiculous if it wasn't being taken seriously by a major Jewish paper.

The Forward calls Richard Silverstein a liberal Jewish blogger but supporting terrorism does not make you a liberal. Certainly not Jewish. Jewschool might be a liberal blog. Maybe. Richard Silverstein is just Hizbullah's spit bucket. The Forward's claims of cyberbullying is limited to citing Richard Silverstein, Daniel Sieradski and Orthomom.

Is there any chance that the Forward would actually quote a conservative or Zionist Jewish blogger who has been targeted and harassed? I think the odds of that are about as good as Hamas and Fatah dancing the Hora together. Which speaks eloquently to the Forward's bias.

And yet Richard Silverstein whines on.

If you've been trashed by Abitbol and his minions at Jewlicious you must have something important to say to the world. Only testosterone driven bullies like them would feel it was their right, nay obligation, to trash fellow Jews who diverge from their rather narrow religious-political views.

Behold the man. Behold the whine. The defender of terrorists cries suddenly for civility. You cannot serve as the propaganda outlet for the murderers of Jews and then hypocritically demand civility. Murder is the worst form of incivility imaginable and Richard Silverstein has made his blogging career trafficking in it. For a defender of murderers to plead for civility is hypocritical. It is doubly hypocritical for a professional slanderer and cyberbully to whine about bullying.

(While rockets are falling on Sderot and the corrupt and criminal government is undemocratically clinging to power while the media is lionizing Peres as Israel's savior, the press found the time to report on Dr. Radday Raikhlin, a 78 year old retired electronics engineer and Russian immigrant who continues his fight against tyranny that he began in Russia by issuing absurd threats which promptly get him arrested. This time he's been charged with threatening to shoot Olmert and Peres.

Now I'm sure Olmert and Peres are afraid of an unarmed 78 year old man who has trouble leaving the house with assistance. But as Reichlin pointed out, "When Arabs mark the Nakba Day on Independence Day, the police do not come. But today, I hadn't even pushed 'send,' and the police were at my door." Here presented a rough, via Babelfish translation of a humorous description Reikhlin had written of a previous arrest and court date.




An Arrest From Channel Two

On July 25th 2004 I returned home late. For the entire second half of the day I stood on the road near Jerusalem together with other participants in the demonstration creating a "living chain" in defense of gush katif. I came home and went right away into the shower.

Then to my surprise, a persistent knock on the door forced me to approach the door naked and to ask as in the opera Aida "who there?" Behind the door there were men and women policemen. Their only desire was to penetrate my apartment and to have a talk with me. On what theme this conversation was to be - was a secret. Everything was very mysterious. My proposal to them to arrive tomorrow they categorically rejected. To my question, do they have any documents, which confirm their right to penetrate my apartment, they offered me their identification as policemen. This did not satisfy me, and I again proposed to them to continue the conversation tomorrow.

Conversation between us went on through the chink in the slightly open door. As soon as the chink appeared, a policeman thrust his foot into it and it was already obvious that he would not take out it.

We called for reinforcements. I rang my daughter and the policeman, he rang his chief. The policemen crowded on the stairway behind my door. The house was filled by rumbling as they knocked against my door. This was midnight. The impacts were so strong that the hanging chain and the key flew away. They broke the cast knob of the lock. A mirror fell from the wall.

Finally, the commander considered the question and sent policeman to bring tools. Working at it scrap by scrap, they tore away the stopper, and the door was thrown open. Evil and glad policemen raced through my apartment and were scattered around the rooms. The Chief grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back and put on handcuffs. I set up a howl for my left hand had an inflammation of the tendon, and any motion of it caused sharp pain to me.

The Chief roughly ordered my daughter, "gather his clothes." Under the escort of the force of policemen I was derived from the house and they seated me in the patrol car. The frightened neighbors watched the controlled pogrom and my disgrace. One of them then turned to the policeman with a question, "What's happening?" The policeman roughly answered: "not your matter". In their search for tool to break into my apartment, the policeman had asked my neighbor for a hammer. The neighbor answered: "not my matter".

In the accommodations of the police station they kept me there still in handcuffs. I attempted to doze; however, one of the detainees, a blonde Russian was screaming. He was detained on the suspicion of throwing a relative out of a third floor window. To my surprise he was not in handcuffs. It meant I was more dangerous. I can throw out of a window not only relatives, but also my enemies. It is a pity only that I am old and feeble and can't raise the window bolt.

One of the policemen wrote the protocol for my detention and I had time for contemplation.

When I attempted to call the police many times in order to deal with Arab vandalism, this proved utterly useless. I complained about the throwing of stones, spitting and threats but once I informed them that the criminals were Arabs, the Israeli police lost any interest in the crime. In order to get rid of me, they promised to send a patrol, but I already knew, they would not arrive. Written complaints about the systematic hooliganisms of Arabs did not help. Once after my complaint a policeman visited me. He was also an Arab. I turned over cassettes, photographs, copies of the previous complaints to him. This was much as the same as throwing all these materials into a slop bucket.

I threatened him: "if these hooliganisms do not cease, I will organize a pogrom of Arabs!" My threat, as I assume, acted as "material evidence". Immediately the police acted rapidly and with powerful force and I ended up here.

I asked for a physical examination. After some grumbling, policemen transported me to the RAMBAM hospital. My right hand was bloody, and doctor ordered that it be washed out. After this, appeared scratches from which the blood oozed. I described to the orthopedist the inflamed vein and pain in my left hand after handcuffing. They made an X-Ray. One of the policemen showed this vein to me in the photograph and said that "everything in the order". What this means, he did not understand, but the orthopedist arrived and he confirmed his words. My request to make an analysis of the blood received no attention.

Tomorrow I would appear in court and here then at that time the reporters will ask me about this. The problem lies in the fact that Israeli journalists are too left wing and too dull and limited. They will attempt to translate the situation from the feet to the head and to pass me off as a villain and killer, confusing the problems of the country with my person. This resembled Soviet Russia.

Thus far everything went according to my program. I dozed during the examination and "did not actively participate". They would send me to court in the morning and ask to prolong my arrest. It is necessary to await until the morning.

At eight in the morning they conveyed me into the basement of the new building of the Haifa court. I asked the policeman for copies of the papers regarding my case which will be presented to the judge. It was explained that me that I would not be given any but only to my attorney. They can give something to my attorney, but not to me...? But, if I I do not want an attorney, the paper remained with the policemen.

The preceding case involved a minor thief. His punishment was a stay in some kibbutz. Everything was free of charge there; television, trainers, library, instruction. Even a pond was constructed. I began to moan during his stories: "I a, pensioner, here must pay for all this, my taxes fund your comfort in prison".

Police conducted me to the meeting with the attorney. My face became ashen. An attorney did not enter into my plans, apparently, my daughter overdid it. To forgo him now seemed impossible. "The main thing," told me my attorney, "it is necessary to take you out of here. I will ask for a psychiatric examination." Before me loomed Soviet crazy houses, from which there is no escape to freedom. "No, I would rather sit here," I answered.

Then, in the court room, he sent me some mysterious signs, which I did not know and did not understand. Policemen, who were coming into contact themselves with me, were more frank. Two of them, after learning, what the matter was, shook my hand in the handcuffs.

The prosecutor, a woman, appeared in jeans and slovenly dressed, which did not tally to the position of an attorney and a representative of the state. My plans to make a pronouncement before the judge collapsed. The prosecutor demanded the imposition of maximum detention. It did not occur to her that arrest and detention is expensive. The money was not coming out of her pocket, and this did not bother her. The court of law was converted into a market, where the prosecutor demands the maximum, and the defense attorney the minimum. Judge decides.

This time he determined to keep me under house arrest for a week. The reasons was that it was necessary to determine who was a member of my gang and what its size was. It was stated that I was dangerous to the "entire community". By this extrapolation, I felt uneasy about my own safety as I was also a threat to myself and this made me laugh. I told the judge that I was giving up all claims to my own safety and that my gang consisted entirely of old men and women.

The Judge had a sense of humor and limited my confinement to home arrest for three days after I stated that I needed to go to physiotherapy, the drugstore and to the doctor, the Judge agreed that any absence from my house connected with my medical problems is completely permitted. My attorney was at the apex of bliss and told everyone that he had saved me from the gallows.

Journalists attacked me afterward when I returned home. The telephone continuously rang. Here now that they called from channel two and requested an interview. London and Kirshenbaum behaved like bullies: they yelled and did not give a chance to say a word to the one whom they invited for the interview. This is an interview? This is a discussion? The owner of the shop opposite my house said that in the news they reported and presented me as abnormal. They forgot to report on the broken door and the police pogrom. Surprising similarity to the Soviet press. The difference is only in the fact that there was no freedom of speech, but here it us how much you want it so long as you can get to the microphone.

Late in the evening I sat on my balcony with a young journalist from a Haifa newspaper and explained to him the social problems of Israel. As I spoke, his photographer twirled all around and lit up us with flashes. He had an entire trunk filled with solid optics and reminded me of the times, when the photographers of the KGB using enormous telephoto lenses crowded themselves near the synagogue. The journalist swore and swore, that in spite of the editor and the publisher he will publish the article, in which he will state my point of view on the social problems of the country. On the next day, I understood that my degraded personality was to be the principal feature of the article.

A new pair of reporters appeared to me on the next day. It seemed to me that their creative union had passed into the amorous. Bored from unceasing questions like, would you shoot at Avi Dichter (head of the Shabak) , I answered. "Give me this Avi and I would smother him with my own hands. It's a pity only that I am tired and both my hands hurt."

Colonel Mordechai (Moti) Yogev was a former Brigadier Commander and Reserve Deputy Commander of the Gaza Division who had served for 20 years in the IDF. He had served as the Chief of Staff of the military district of Gaza commanding the fight against Palestinian Arab terrorism on the front lines. He retired and remained a Colonel in the IDF Reserves.

Today Colonel Yogev has severe trouble walking. A severe beating by an Arab left him crippled for life. The Arab was not a terrorist. He was an Arab Druze Border Police Officer sent to smash the men and women, boys and girls who stood at Amona opposed to the plan to demolish Jewish homes there. Colonel Yogev was one of those men. Eyal Fery, one of the Border Police Officers knocked him to the ground and beat him over and over again.

At his trial, Fery stated that he had been only following orders. This is not at all surprising. At Kfar Maimon, the head of the police southern district, Niso Shaham and Roni Ohana, the Commander of the Border Police were caught on video with the following exchange.

Niso Shaham: I want arrests... And I want you to use water cannons!... S__t on them! They should all burn! Don't even think! Use cannons! Use water cannons and batons! And hit them in the lower part of the body, this is for the protocol!

Ohana: (Laughs) Now Listen, I do not hit anyone...

Shaham: No .. we know... you just do what you know how to do...

(Ohana laughs again)

Shaham: You will work, because the soldiers (IDF soldiers) will not do it. And arrests! Roni, arrests will break them all... A lot of arrests, and violence!

Ohana: OK, I understand.

Shaham: Listen to me... you know that I am an expert in Haredim (orthodox Jews) No problems, hit them with batons, the lower part of the body... I will f__k the s__t out of them!"

Today Niso Shaham, an Olmert favorite, has been promoted to Deputy Police Commander of Jerusalem. After Amona, the police attempted to release a phony video that was supposed to show the police being given instructions to behave with restraint. Unfortunately the video had a date stamp that post-dated Amona. Very few of the thugs who were responsible for the police riot at Amona were ever held accountable, complaint after complaint has been closed and when the trials have happened, they have often featured the judge outright taking the side of the defendant.

At the Moti Yogev \ Eyal Feri trial, the judge asked Eyal's Commander, Yuval Goldstein why Yogev "chose" an irreproachable and top officer like Eyal for his complaint, Yuval Goldstein suggested that Colonel Yogev's motive was "to extract money".



Colonel Yogev himself had described the scene that day. He stated that Border Policemen had been striking a group of young girls who had been trying to escape the area.

Close to 11 A.M. on the day of the incident, an entire Border Police unit descended on a group of girls who, along with their teacher, were pinned against the wall, 'begging [the officers] to allow them to leave the riot area.'

'The officers began shoving them and hitting them for no reason,' Yogev wrote in his complaint. He said that he witnessed 'horses trampling over people lying underneath their horseshoes', a police commander who ordered his officers to catch young protesters who were loitering peacefully and to 'just hit them'.

Yogev also recounts how police officers entered a building where girls had locked arms. One of the girls told an officer: 'My brother, don't hit me. I'm your sister'.

Yogev said the officer 'answered her in a Russian accent: "Shut up you Jewish bitch" and brutally struck her'

Yogev recalled how he approached an officer believed to be the commander of a police unit and requested that the security forces cease striking the girls and allow them to leave the scene under his escort. Instead the order was given to remove him. Yogev was struck in the stomach with a baton and fell to the ground writhing in pain.

Colonel Yogev asked the officer his name and why he was hitting him. At this point the beating began in earnest. Yogev was struck and kicked numerous times. His voice shaking and near tears, Colonel Mordechai Yogev testified that even worse than the pain he suffered was the pain of what he saw and the pain of a man who had spent much of his life in the IDF having to bring such a case to court.

At the trial, Eyal Fery's Commander Yuval Goldstein testified that the girls in question were, "girls were exactly most violent and they manifested the largest violence". The violence he described consisted of the girls sitting down in protest, holding hands to prevent themselves from being carried off and shouting at the policemen not to participate in this crime.

Goldstein further said that the girls had engaged in "mockery" by asking the officers to display their name tags (which the thugs among the officers routinely hid in violation of the law) or asking their names. Yogev's crime consisted of "scoffing" at the police by asking to see their name tags, interfering in the performance of their duty.

Moti Yogev was not the only high ranking officer beaten by Olmert's thugs at Amona. That number includes Brigadier General (Res) Aryeh Eldad and Brigadier General (Res) Effie Eitam. Eitam had been commanding on the ground at Entebbe. At Naffah, Effie Eitam and his Sergeant blocked a Syrian tank assault with only a few bazookas. And even this does not complete the list.

The true face of this government can be seen in the beating of Colonel Yogev by an Arab in an Israeli Border Police Uniform. It is the split that demonstrates what both sides stand for. On the one side is a Zionist future for Israel and on the other side is Israel's destruction at Arab hands. Those aiding in the destruction of Israel today sit in the government. They wear uniforms or suits or black hats and beards or turbans but they all add up to the same thing.

Israel will not much longer survive the Olmerts', Peres', Peretzs' and Baraks at the helm. It will not survive the Anti-Zionist forces now in power.

As Bloomberg coyly flirts with a Presidential run, I like millions of other Americans wait with bated breath for a man with all the leadership qualities of a cold fish in an icebox who has only held one elected office in his life to run for President.

Every Presidential race needs a crazy billionaire to enter it as a third party candidate believing that the moment the public sees his paid prime time infomercials they will fall worshipfully at his feet. Unfortunately Ross Perot was actually entertaining. Michael Bloomberg is not. Bloomberg could put a room to sleep even if he was reporting the end of the world.

Maybe he thinks that what this country needs most of all is a President with the speech delivery of Ben Stein, the warmth of an ice cube and the empathy of a DMV teller. A man whose biggest achievement is that he took over for the other New York Mayor in the race and didn't entirely screw the city up.

I like most New Yorkers can't help but remember Mayor Michael Bloomberg's fantastic leadership during the several day blackout when he mumbled something on the radio from time to time. And when he tried to imitate Mayor Koch during the transit strike, we all found it inspiring how he actually managed to make the painful effort of standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, briefly breathing the same air as us before flying back to his private island for the weekend.

Maybe in his deluded arrogance, Bloomberg seriously believes that the people of New York voted for him because they believe in him, rather than because they believed that he was marginally competent and the competition were two guys who would have turned most of New York into the Bronx within a few months of getting elected. First Governor Pataki felt the need to try and run for President. That seems to have fizzled out but not before Pataki and Joe Bruno handed over the State to the Democrats. Bloomberg is now set to do the same with the Mayor's office. Ambition makes madmen out of gray figures who should have been satisfied with what they have instead of trying for what they can't have.

The nation is not calling out for Michael Bloomberg. As the candidate of any party, his prospects would be right up there with Walter Mondale. As the candidate of his own party, his prospects are less than nil. A third party candidate has to be able to rally the troops and stand out. Instead Bloomberg has gone on a national tour of mumbling cliches into microphones and criticizing the Republican debates before admitting that he never even watched the debates.

Probably Bloomberg has watched the ascension of Ron Paul and decided that he has at least as much charisma as Ron Paul. That's probably true. A debate between Bloomberg and Ron Paul would be better than prescription sleeping aids. Just the thought of either one opening their mouth is enough to put me into a deep sleep. But Ron Paul got where he has by being appealing to Liberals as an Anti-Republican Republican while being borne on the shoulders of the loony fringes of the right and left like David Duke, Alex Jones and Pat Buchanan.

Bloomberg has no loony appeal. Unless Mayor Bloomberg begins ranting about Jewish bankers, UN concentration camps and black helicopters and calling for the secession of Texas, he can't count on the loony support that will propel Ron Paul from a defeat in the primaries to a spoiler third party candidacy to a mental institution or perhaps the Texas legislature. Where Ron Paul is King of the Fools, Bloomberg is just a merchant with delusions of royalty.

What Bloomberg does have is a private island, an air of arrogant entitlement and a whole lot of money. That should be enough to keep any crazy billionaire happy. And when he leaves the Mayor's office, we can finally get the junk modern art sculptures off the City Hall Lawn.

The failed Olmert / Barak regime can't protect the people of Sderot. Now rockets are again being fired from Lebanon into Israel. But these utter failures can protect one thing. They can protect the gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

Against the wishes of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim residents of Jerusalem, Olmert and his gay daughter got their way and desecrated a city holy to millions of people and 8000 police protected 2000 marchers who felt the need to recreate a little slice of Sodom and Gommorah in the City of G-d.

Along the way many were arrested. While the stories are full of supposed planned acts of violence by Haredim against the gay marchers, none of them are reporting the beating of two girls simply conducting a prayer protest against the parade by Yassam thugs. It gets in the way of the fuzzy stories about gay liberation and Haredi intolerance. Olmert's own favorite police thug, Nisso Shaham, who had boasted that he "knows how to deal with Haredim" by beatings in the "lower part of the body" was appointed the Deputy Jerusalem Police Commander and did his brutal best to insure that the abomination would go forward uninterrupted.

Maariv has a story on a family of Olim from Argentina who moved to Israel and now find themselves in terrible financial straits due to the father's stroke who is now on a transplant list. Donations are being raised via 050.630.0852 . They are looking for help from an organization but luckily the UJC has higher priorities like donating 200,000 dollars to the gay organizations behind the parade. At 2000 marchers, that's two hundred dollars per marcher. That's where your UJC donations go.

It is primarily US liberal Jewish groups that finance the gay movement in Israel. It is also those same groups that divert funding from helping the poor to promoting political agendas aimed at the undermining of Israel. They aren't alone. The European Union's Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian Rights issued its own statement pushing the parade. A number of foreign groups which typically hate and condemn Israel have jumped in to push the parade too.

Meanwhile Shas which hypocritically continues issuing statements against the gay pride parade when if they had any honesty and integrity, their MK's and every Haredi MK that is propping up the government should be on a parade float. Shas MK Nissim Zeev is proposing government rehab centers for gays. I propose government rehab centers for Shas and Haredi party voters where they are given the therapy they need to stop worshiping men and voting for evil just so the party leaderships can score their toll of Shekels from Kadima and go back to worshiping G-d. I'm not sure that we have nearly enough centers to accommodate them all but we can sure try.

Genuinely charitable people could set up ex-gay organizations on their own instead of trumping a bill that the vile hypocrites running Shas know perfectly well will fail but will let them go on posturing as religious and right wing. With the 250 million Shas is set to get from Peres for pushing him into the Presidency, Shas can afford to set up up rehab centers on their own. But not all who participate in an abomination wave rainbow flags, some boast long beards and a false air of piety too.

Abomination now rules in Israel, this government and this Knesset is as unclean as the parade. Even more unclean because the parade does not hide what it is but they do. And until it is finally brought down by the people, the situation will grow far worse.

The real face of the gay pride parade and Olmert's government as police brutally break up anti-parade protests. This is a government that cannot and will not protect the people against Arab terrorism but when it comes down to protecting abominations, they are always ready and willing to crack heads.

As the fighting goes on in Gaza the world watches and frets wishing those nice boys in their ski masks would stop shooting at each other and get back to their usual time honored hobby of killing Jews.

The bout of savage barbarism that exploded in Gaza and is threatening to spill over into the West Bank challenges the world's deeply held assertion that every terrorist atrocity against Israel was caused by Israel's oppression of the Palestinian Arabs. The sight of Fatah and Hamas terrorists shooting, beheading and throwing each other off tall buildings leads any intelligent person to the inevitable conclusion that Fatah and Hamas haven't been killing Israelis because they had no choice but because they are ruthless murderers greedy for power and who have no regard for human life.

That however is too difficult a conclusion for Western liberals and some conservatives who have staked so much on the belief that Palestinian terrorism is the product of oppression. Instead they adopt the Reductio Ad Occupationum. The Reductio Ad Occupationum reduces every single Arab problem across the Middle East to one primary cause, Israel.

For the last decade Arab countries from Saudi Arabia to Egypt had been insisting that the lack of human rights, the dictatorships, the oppression of women and terrorism in the region were all caused by Israel and the "Occupation". Until the Palestinian question was resolved (preferably through the destruction of Israel) the Arab world and perhaps the Muslim world was hopelessly
doomed to be a series of dictatorships, wife beaters, honor killers and exploding Jihadis.

Whenever the Bush Administration has talked about reform, the Arab dictators have promptly dragged out the Palestinians like a boy bringing a dead cat to school as a particularly gruesome piece of Show and Tell, insisting they could not reform until Israel gave the Palestinians a state. It was a particularly pathetic sight when 100 million people who fancy themselves as the greatest religion in the world and descendants of the greatest empire in history, blamed all their problems on a few million people living in a tiny strip of land.

Yet this is the nature of Anti-Semitism. Conspiracy theorists have routinely insisted that Jews control everything. The government. The Federal Reserve. Hollywood. There is a method to such madness. The Arab world by blaming Israel for everything gives up none of the control but all of the responsibility like a drunk who insists he drinks because of his wife or his kids or his boss. Arabs want the freedom to live in dictatorships, to murder their wives and daughters and make a mess of their countries and none of the responsibility. For the Anti-Semite, the Jew is the Prime Cause of everything. For the Arab world, the Jew is the reason for their own miserable failures.

Reductio Ad Occupationum has been widely adopted. Its premise is that everything goes back to the Occupation. When Hamas and Fatah began shooting each other in the streets, a host of figures from Desmond Tutu on down began insisting that the occupation was at fault. It of course doesn't matter that there was no Occupation in Gaza and that in fact the killings were happening precisely because there was no more Occupation in Gaza-- a sentiment Palestinian Arabs themselves repeatedly voiced to Western reporters. Occupation you see is a State of Mind.

In the philosophy of Reductio Ad Occupationum, Occupation becomes the Original Sin of Israel which forever deprives Palestinian Arabs of any responsibility for their own actions, instead laying the sin on Israel for all time. When Fatah kills Hamas, it is Israel's fault because Israel had backed Fatah. When Hamas kills Fatah, it is Israel's fault because Israel backed Hamas. If both kill each other, it is Israel's fault for not picking the "right" side, for not having turned over Gaza in 1997 or 1967 or 1897 and finally for simply existing.

That is what Reductio Ad Occupationum ultimately comes down to. Israel is at fault because it exists. Every instability, every fault and every flaw and misery spread throughout the Arab world is tied down to Israel. From Terrorism to Tyranny, Arab misbehavior is simply the helpless product of Israeli abuse. A 100 million Arabs are just the abused children of the few million Jews whom they spent centuries slaughtering and oppressing because those Jews finally managed to build themselves a state.

As long as the Arab world is willing to justify their sins through the Jews and as long as the world is willing to let them, the Arab World will be exactly the collection of brutal tyrannical regimes ruling over plots of dirt, exploding in frustrated bursts of rage aimed at their own governments America, Israel or their own wives and daughters. Those who are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions are also incapable of morality. They cannot repent or change their ways or improve their lives because they have already shifted the imaginary locus of control over to the Jews.

It is not the Occupation that is the Prime Cause of the Arab world's problems but their own unwillingness to take responsibility for their own ills. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.

With the unerring ability of progressives to look over a complex political situation and instantly pick the most evil side by choosing the one that hates America the most, the new love affair has begun. All across left wing sites, a Hamas victory is being cheered on against the American-Israeli puppets of Fatah and promptly praised as symbols of the Palestinian people's resistance.

Overlooked are the minor issue that at this point the "Palestinian people" seem to be fleeing Gaza and the glorious Hamas heroes of the resistance have been busy looting and shooting anyone who wasn't on their side. But when progressives decide to endorse terrorists, whether it's FARC in Columbia or Hizbullah or Hamas, such concerns are quickly overlooked. Because in the end their love affair with the murder of Americans and American allies are what counts.

Yasir Arafat's Fatah which once made the hearts of progressives flutter all across Europe and America has been rejected now and cast aside as nothing more than American puppets, much like the governments of China and Vietnam when they stopped specializing in shooting Americans and began marketing to Americans instead. Like death fetishists, progressives always have to go where the bloodiest action is.

Besides any good progressive can do the math. The evil warmonger Bush is threatening the peaceful regime of Iran, which peacefully supports Hamas while the warmonger Bush supports and arms Fatah. Clearly therefore Fatah is a puppet of the Bush\Haliburton regime and Hamas must be the genuine popular resistance of the people. Don't bother contradicting that. They can't hear you.

With the mainstream media generally supportive of Fatah, with whom they had developed extensive contacts while the left preferred the more "radically committed to Israeli bloodshed" Hamas. This of course has led the progressive folks to scream that this is further proof of the media's complicity in the American Zionist upholding of the Fatah puppet regime and all that sort of twaddle.

This is the kind of predictable split you get among the liberal moderate supporters of terrorism and the immoderate left wing supporters of terrorism. It's not actually a moral difference but more a matter of trends. The liberal moderate supporters of terrorism usually tend to be older media and foreign service professionals who just haven't managed to get on board the Hamas train yet. Once Hamas consolidates its hold fully on Gaza and makes reporters toe the line, we'll be seeing lots of stories from Gaza reporters touting Hamas and lots of stories coming out of the West Bank on the greatness of the Fatah leadership. But the world respects the biggest terrorists and right now the biggest terrorists on the black are Hamas.

And the left wing death cult sleeps happy.

Welcome to sunny cheery Gaza where after the Israeli withdrawal, the friendly Palestinian Arabs have abandoned violence and built a model democracy that is the envy of every other nation in the region. Business is booming as typical Arab ingenuity has come to the rescue with developing industries in agriculture, computers and medicine. All around Gaza, a construction boom is taking place as new high rises are going up and the residents of Gaza are all walking around with big smiles on their faces.

Now let's take a look at some of the happy news from sunny Gaza.




1. Hamas and Fatah Offer High Rise Hang Gliding Lessons

In the interest of fostering brotherhood and mutual friendship, activists from Fatah and Hamas have been offering each other hang gliding lessons. While Gaza still lacks aircraft, the locals have been making do by using tall buildings instead. Lessons are free and the instructors are always eager for new students and when a new student hesitates to take his first leap, the instructor will not hesitate to give him a little push.


2. Women's Clothing Is In!

Gaza's traditional cosmopolitan open mindedness has given rise to a festival of cross-dressing as Fatah activists show off their transvestite side by donning women's clothing and participating in a race for the Egyptian border. In their colorful black sheets, the Fatah activists look incredibly spiffy, while others have stripped down to their underwear. When you visit sunny Gaza, remember over there, women's clothing isn't just for women anymore.


3. State Department Seeks Distinction Between Hamas Guns and Hands

The State Department has announced that it wants to create a distinction between the military wing of Hamas in the form of the guns and the political wing of Hamas which pulls the triggers.

"The hand that pulls the trigger is entirely different from the gun that fires the bullets," said Horton Thurstpile the III, "we cannot afford to marginalize the moderates which are firing the guns by classing them with the extremist guns which shoot the bullets."


4. Gaza Celebrates Peres Victory With Gunfire

The friendly and helpful residents of Gaza overjoyed by Shimon Peres' presidential victory celebrated with rounds of gunfire and mortars all through the night and the next day. Numerous people were injured but a round of hugs all around quickly made up for it. Hamas leaders issued a congratulatory press release celebrating Peres' victory and promising that they plan to throw an explosive party in his honor shortly.


5. Peres Visits Western Wall: Asks God to Tear it Down

In his first historic visit to the Western Wall, Shimon Peres eventually figured out where the walls. Standing in front of the wall, Shimon Peres, echoing Roland Reagan, raised his head to heaven and proclaimed, "I Ask You Mr. God, Tear Down This Wall."

- Over in Gaza, the Hamas party is going on with the execution of such crucial figures in the Fatah power structure as Abbas' guard's cook. Human rights groups are baffled as are western observers because they've spent the last decade fervently insisting that terrorists aren't evil, just misunderstood people protesting against oppression and looking for a better life. Throwing a cook off the top of a building doesn't seem to really fit well into that bigger picture. But the fun part of viewing people through an ideological lens and insisting that no matter what they do is part of the ideology, no matter how out of whack, is that you're never wrong until they shoot you.

Someone over at DailyKos had the following solution to the problem

invite the leaders of both hamas and fatah to become partners in a solar energy water distillation agricultural project using the profits to build infrastructure that enhances the quality of life for all involved.

Somehow unless the solar energy powers death rays, I doubt Fatah or Hamas will be too interested. They've got other uses for fertilizer than agribusiness.

The best proof of that is that even Westerners living and working in Gaza still don't seem to have quite grasped that Hamas and Fatah are nothing more than armed gangs with an ideological leadership at the top. Imagine the Crips and Bloods fighting for control of L.A. and that's all you've got here. It isn't a real national liberation movement, it's a power base backed by America and Iran.

Meanwhile Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence chiefs are claiming that Al Queda is behind the fighting in Gaza, staging an attack on Haniyeh, which would suggest that Al Queda has infiltrated either Fatah or Hamas and that Al Queda is even directing house to house and street to street fighting.

It's unclear whether this is actually true or not and whether the intelligence chiefs actually believe this or are just trying to find a way to push America into intervening in the fighting before it spills over into Jordan and Egypt.

Either way we're now facing two Palestinian states, more chairs at the negotiating table and the likelihood that between Al Queda, Hamas and Fatah, Iraq is about to come home. If only the Sunnis and Shiites begin taking whacks at each other, the party will be complete.


- The nutroots are mourning the loss of Finkelstein's tenure. For a guy with all the academic publications of Jerry Lewis, whose chief specialty was hatred and whose primary occupation was smearing Israel, Jews, Holocaust Survivors and whose main supporters were affiliated with Holocaust deniers; it couldn't have come too soon. But of course the ranks are screaming, "SUPPRESSION OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM". Well you know you can't keep a good Zionist conspiracy down.

The repulsive Tikkun Hamas blog run by Richard Silverstein, the sort of fellow who would have been directing Hizbullah shelling of Haifa if he had the guts, is of course mourning the tragic loss of Finkelstein to the evil suppressive forces of the Vast Jewish Conspiracy that's also targeting poor Richard Silverstein as exemplified by Alan Dershowitz, Steven Plaut, Aussie Dave, the Dunkin Donuts guy and Screech from Saved by the Bell.


- Over at Israpundit, Ted Belman comments on the danger of a West Bank First option

- At Maggie's Notebook, who graciously cross-posted my Factionalism post yesterday, continues fighting the good fight against illegal immigration and the amnesty bill. Be sure to read it all.

- The Big Pharaoh is back and at Daled Amos there's a good roundup of posts on the situation.

- Lemon Lime Moon tells us that the solution is to reach out to G-d.

"We do not want a restrained people, we want a renewed people! A people whose spirituality is true and real. Not a people who are fake and far from G-d but glossed over with a veneer of imposed restraint.

Holiness doesn't come from things you do. It comes from the presence of G-d in the things you do. If he is not in you then there is no holiness and you are walking in a dark path. If you do the right thing with an evil heart, the presence of G-d is not with you. As it says, No evil abides with him.

No, restraints will not cut it. You need more. You need a clean, sound, G-d fearing heart that longs to do right. We can begin by cleaning up our own lives and houses and if we can't save the world, we can escape it's coming punishments as Noach did.

- At MeAnder, some photos taken over at the mall and at Ignoble, a visit to the lower east side.

- Right Truth has a dream. A Fred Thompson and John Bolton ticket. Now that would be a ticket to victory.

Shabbat Shalom and a Happy Weekend to Others.

No it didn't come from a decade and a half of broken treaties and a murderous war prosecuted by the assorted terrorists of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad against Israel and civilians within Israel. Nothing that happened, no atrocity shook the resolve of the world community to force Israel to continue making concessions to the homicidal and corrupt regime of Yasir Arafar.

For America and Europe and the Rabin-Peres governments, a Fatah regime was meant to create a serviceable Palestinian state next door that would end the fighting, pull Israel out of the territories and stabilize the Middle East. Now as Hamas fighters are cutting the expensive Fatah forces that the United States trained and armed and those same forces are abandoning their weapons and fleeing the fighting after minor casualties, the Oslo Accords finally go down in flames.

The world had put its hope in a Fatah regime that was rotten to the core all along. Arafat's government was nothing more than a nepotist clique of relatives and the relatives of political allies. The vast majority of the billions that the world poured into Ramallah went back overseas into foreign bank account and into the mansions and luxury automobiles of the Fatah elite. But when Arafat died, Fatah's ability to rule in Arafat's place ended.

Fatah was never a government. It was a collection of armed gangs personally loyal to the gang leaders all the way up to Arafat himself and his brother. Despite the occasional dispatch of the suicide bomber (civilians who were rarely Fatah fighters themselves) none of them had much of a stomach for war. The more ruthless terrorists of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has now mostly gone over to Hamas.

Hamas is a collection of armed gangs unified behind a religious ideology. Fatah has no ideology besides greed. The resulting showdown was pretty much what happened when the Viet Cong met the White Mice. Despite all the weapons and training, Fatah is running. Since Hamas' election victory, all that's propping up Fatah is Europe, America and Israel's support. But that won't save Fatah.

With the destruction of Fatah, what will inevitably follow is the creation of a Hamas run Islamic state dedicated to war with Israel, carved out of Gaza and the West Bank. The only question now is the timeline.

Hamas knows that it needs Fatah leaders as a facade to keep international aid flowing, but it may be approaching the point where it is prepared to discard the facade and meet the world on its own terms. At this point it's obvious to everyone that Abbas is helpless to negotiate any kind of useful truce because Fatah's leaders are not about to give up their power without a fight. This means that the protracted series of battles is likely to continue on and off until Hamas may decide the time is right for an all out civil war.

Barring an all out civil war the process of Hamastan may drag out further as Abbas becomes a Hamas puppet and Fatah is pushed entirely out of Gaza and out of the security forces, leaving them only tribal enclaves.

Once the end comes for Fatah, the Oslo Accords die their final death. Continued negotiations with Hamas is something that even the doves find tricky because it's hard to negotiate with people who won't agree to peace accords and only negotiate for truces in the fighting and don't recognize the people across the table from them.

The squalid Kadima run Knesset has resurrected the corpse of Peres' career but not even Peres can resurrect Oslo. It would be hard even for Beilin and Sarid to begin working out peace agreements when there is no longer anyone in power who actually wants peace.

Oslo dies but the threat it has created lives. By giving a terrorist state space within Israel, the Rabin-Peres governments created an Islamic terrorist state within their borders. With rockets pounding Israel, a wall is no longer an option. Walls can keep out suicide bombers but not missiles or shells.

Only two options remain. The military option and the surrender option. To either retake the territories and expel the terrorists or to surrender and evacuate Israel. Oslo is dead. The final phase begins.

Daniel 8:9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the beauteous land

11 It magnified itself, even to the prince of the host; and from him the continual burnt-offering was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

12 And the host was given over to it together with the continual burnt-offering through transgression; and it cast down truth to the ground, and it wrought, and prospered.

JERUSALEM: Israeli security forces arrested a pregnant Palestinian mother of eight and her niece, also a mother, as they worked to carry out a pair of suicide bombings in Israel. While several women have blown themselves up in attacks on Israelis in recent years, among them a 64-year-old grandmother, there is no record of a pregnant woman attempting such an attack.

There is no figure more sacrosanct in human society than the pregnant woman. The pregnant woman brings forth the next generation of a people. Even the most savage barbarians protect their own pregnant women. It is a fundamental biological instinct in mammals.

Islam and Arab terrorism by contrast represent the ultimate and overwhelming degradation of human life. It is Orwell's boot on the face of mankind forever. Islamic terrorism has used children in war. They've used grandmothers in war. Now they've used pregnant women in war.

Before this attack, we had already seen a pregnant suicide bomber in Iraq. But each time, Islam achieves a new depth of evil, it is worth recording if only to recognize the horror to which mankind is silently bowing its head. The horror of Islam.

There have been many ideologies that perpetrated atrocities throughout history but so very few have had this degree of callous disregard for their own. The Fatah and Hamas gunmen murdering each other in the streets are only an outgrowth of the same instinct that drives the terrorists and the suicide bombers. Like the worship of Kali, Islam is not a religion of life but a cult of death. Its goal is to create slave states that promote human degradation and misery of every kind under the veil of a false piousness. That is the real face of Islam. The one the media will not show.

Why send a pregnant woman to blow herself up? As evil as the act of murder itself is, the terrorists could have waited a few months for her to have her latest baby. But that wasn't the point. The point was for her to blow herself up while pregnant and show a complete contempt and disregard for human life. It was to show off the "courage" of a new level of horrific act on which the rabid hordes of Palestinian Arabs pride themselves on. Each new level of horror that Muslims are willing to practice on themselves, whether it is murdering each other in Gaza and Iraq, murdering their own children or murdering themselves-- whips them into a greater frenzy like worshipers dancing around a bloody altar enraptured by their own elimination of all moral borders and boundaries. Each atrocity demands a greater atrocity and another still to follow.

(Israeli paratroopers put up an Israeli flag on a fence as they stand on a wall in the Temple Mount after capturing the area during the Six Day War June, 1967)







We have just finished Parshas Shelach which tells the story of the spies sent to scout out Israel, the majority of whom returned to spread fear and doubt, claiming that the land was uninhabitable and unconquerable. Instead they want to choose a new leader and return to slavery in Egypt, which some were always eager to remind everyone, had fleshpots with plentiful fish and meat and vegetables.

This follows a week in which in our present time former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg issued a tirade stating that Israel was doomed as a Jewish state and it was time for everyone to get their foreign passports and get going. Avraham Burg had himself left his Jewish wife and moved to Europe and intermarried, leading the way back to Egypt and the fleshpots.

Burg is hardly alone. Sharon's son Omri was caught on tape talking about grabbing as much money as possible before getting out. Olmert's own sons have left Israel. So has sizable portions of Rabin's family. The same political elite which has worked overtime to sell out Israel have long since taken Burg's advice.

In this same week, Shas endorsed Peres, divider of Yerushalayim, for President. Much like UTJ and Shas's own willingness to keep Olmert in power so long as shekels come rolling in to their own schools, this too is symptomatic of the same selfish and callous mentality as the Burg's and Olmert's. UTJ and Shas may wrap themselves in the mantle of religion but their religious politicians are no different than the secularist politicians corruptly selling out the country and its citizens for some spare change.

The real struggle in Israel is between the Zionists and the Un-Zionists. Not Anti-Zionists for Anti-Zionism implies a genuine opposition to the idea of Israel. Un-Zionists are not so much opposed as they don't care. They're eager and willing to live in Israel and exploit Israel while refusing to recognize that the country has any value as a Jewish state or show any willingness to sacrifice for its survival or to even restrain their greediest impulses in order for it to survive.

The Spies were not so much Anti-Zionists. They were willing to go and look around Israel and if it had been a cushy place they could have just walked into and lived just the way they did back in Egypt, they would have gone for it. But once they realized that there would be difficulties and that they would have to fight for it, in no time at all, they began searching for the exit back to Egypt.

Yet why choose slavery in Egypt? Because even in Egypt there are slaves and there are masters and life can be comfortable for those who know how the system works. Consider that when the second temple was rebuilt, only a small minority of Jews returned. Today the majority of the Jewish people may live in Israel but that is as much by immigration as by default as the Jews of Europe, Russia and America have been wiping themselves out through generations of assimilation and intermarriage. Today millions of Jews continue to choose exile but millions of secular and religious Jews not merely choose exile but proclaim the superiority of exile, whether it be in Paris or Williamsburg. The fleshpots of Egypt come in many forms.

As terrible as exile is, the Un-Zionists choose it every time because it's what they know best and because it demands so little from them. Exile may persecute them and slavery may break them but they will have their meat and fish and their leeks. They will have their Western European Urban Bohemia or Eastern European Americanized Shtetl lifestyle. In Israel they will grab what they can, looters in the garden of G-d, clutching their ill-gotten gains to themselves and arrogantly meeting your eyes when you dare to condemn them. And when the damage is properly done, they can elect themselves a leader who will lead them back into exile from the land they never wanted for it is not they who will inherit the land.

A coalition of liberal Jewish groups is conducting a campaign to inform political candidates that Jewish voters don't actually care about Israel. Instead after a survey of a few thousand respondents at Jspot, they announced that what the majority of American Jews really care about is the environment. Another way of putting it might be, "Stop talking to us about dead Jews in Israel, we want to hear about global warming."

While millions of Jews were being butchered in Europe, too many American Jews sat by with folded hands, too busy worshiping at the altar of FDR's liberal policies to care about the ashes drifting over Auschwitz. When some activists and politicians, Jewish and Non-Jewish tried to oppose the FDR administration and fight for the rescue of Jews, the response from the Jewish establishment came down to, "Stop talking to us about dead Jews, we want to hear about the New Deal."

One is reminded of G-d asking Kayin where his brother is while Kayin replies with, "Am I My Brother's Keeper?" While Iran is making plans for the nuclear annihilation of millions of Jews, these groups are desperately working to change the subject. The thread that runs through the agitation of these left wing groups such as Jews United for Justice and Jewish Funds for Justice is that we need to stop focusing on Israel and start focusing on the rights of Mexican illegal aliens and polar bears. To stop focusing on Jewish issues and start affirming our loyalty to the liberal agenda by building up the socialist state and continuing FDR's legacy of expanding the bureaucracy-- drowning out the screams of the dying with sociological field studies on health care for illegal aliens in L.A.

While under multiculturalism all races, ethnicities and religions may work to help their own, of the Jew liberalism still demands the same old blood price set out by the great liberal progressives like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw; for Jews to "Stop being Jews and start being human beings". The poison pulsing through the veins of the self-hating Jew demands that he sacrifice his brother to prove his worth to his masters. To demonstrate that he is more than a Jew by focusing on the needs of humanity while showing callousness toward his brother and shutting out the cries of his brother's blood rising from the earth.

This is the sacrifice of Kayin. This is the sacrifice every Jewish political organization which has turned its back on its dying brethren across the world in order to win respectability with its political masters has made. This is the political sacrifice that Democrats need Jews to make in order to bring them fully under their umbrella as they disengage from supporting Israel and move toward opposing it. To cross that Rubicon they must ask their own Jewish supporters which they care more about, dead Jews or the environment. Dead Jews or the traditional liberal agenda. Kayin brought his sacrifice of the earth. The Jewish groups which preach apathy toward our brothers in the face of apocalypse bring their sacrifice of ashes.

These left wing groups which at their extreme end are affiliated with Rabbis for Human Rights, an organization that has openly promoted terrorism, displaced Jewish farmers and smeared Israel at Durban are the long tail of an effort advanced by such mainstream sources as the Jewish Week, an organ of the UJA Federation and the Jewish federations seeking funding to cover the costs of their massive bureaucracies and the six figure salaries of their executives. And the survey shows exactly what they want it to show, that what American Jews most want is more money for the assorted social welfare projects the UJC specializes in and of course for its assorted executives.

The ultimate goal remains the same. To repackage the secular liberal agenda as Jewish so that Democrats can continue to co-opt the Jewish vote without alienating liberals and Muslims by taking a stand against the greatest planned slaughter of Jews in this generation. All the while any authentic Jewish agenda meant to help Jews in Israel or America is silenced and stifled, dismissed as extremist and narrow. The votes line up to agitate for illegal aliens, polar bears, gun laws, abortion, public schools in the ghettos and turn their backs on the falling rockets and the burning soil. And as it was with FDR, once again at the voting booth, Kayin's sacrifice will be made.

I'm no fan of Senator Lieberman but the media response to his statements that the US should conduct cross-border raids into Iran against attackers who are striking at US forces from there (similar to what Turkey is doing in Iraq) is a fantastic example of deliberately mis-characterizing what he said.

The media's distortions imply that Senator Lieberman called for bombing Iran, a US invasion of Iran or even a nuclear attack on Iran. Let's consider the CBS2 Chicago story headline "Lieberman: Bomb Iran If It Doesn't Stop". In fact what Lieberman was actually proposing was hitting terrorist training camps inside Iran.

Several headlines read, "Lieberman: US Should Weigh Iran Attack" and "Lieberman: US Should Weigh Iran Attack". Of all the papers, only Australia's Sydney Morning Herald got it right with "US should attack Iran base : Lieberman". The difference is pretty blatant.

This is what Senator Lieberman actually said.

Mr. Lieberman said he supported the high-level talks with Iran, but said,
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq... By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers."

"They can’t believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans," he said. "We cannot let them get away with it.”

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Mr. Lieberman said in an interview on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

This could be achieved mostly with air attacks, Mr. Lieberman said, adding, “I’m not talking about a massive ground invasion of Iran.”

This is roughly parallel to the US strikes against Al Queda terrorists in Somalia, Sudan and Yemen and elsewhere that take place outside of any war. Senator Lieberman has made a fairly moderate statement supporting negotiations but warning that if attacks from Iran continue, the US should be prepared to strike the terrorist camps.

Then why is the media inflating his statements to such a degree, especially when Lieberman is not the first Senator to make similar suggestions? Could it be in part because Senator Lieberman is a visibly Jewish Senator that painting him as a warmonger looking for a war in Iran suits the interests of the anti-war elements in the press?

In the aftermath of the buildings' collapse I noticed that the support girders looked like parts of a cathedral standing alone and straight in the midst of devastation all around.

The tears of the people who remained were a sermon in that cathedral about the humanity and greatness of the spirit and love of the American soul that is not found in any other people on this earth.

It was the worst time, and yet we were shown what our people are made of deep in the soul where one cannot normally see. Out of the dust and the ashes rose a people of faith and hope whose love for one another transcended the hate of those miserable things who have no concern for life in any fashion.

The comparison of American to "them" was so loud, so incredibly loud. It did indeed rise above audible hearing all the way to the throne of God as a sweet music of brotherly love.

Out of all that death and devastation rose the power of their love which convicted and condemned the enemy by its very comparison. The heroism, the faith, the love for their fellows which manifested itself in all of the horror was the loudest thing I heard that day. That sound still lives and will too until all those who destroy are dust and ashes under the feet of the righteous.

(from a comment by Lemon Lime Moon)

We begin the friday afternoon roundup with Kick Olmert Out of Office, the game hopefully soon to turn live action movie.

As a public service to the people of Israel and the State of Israel, Sultan Knish presents your opportunity to kick Ehud Olmert out of office. If he won't resign just give him your best kick to send him along the way.



If you missed either of these three posts here this week, they're worth giving a look.

The Right Way, The Wrong Way and The Muslim Way

Muslims Aren't Afraid to Die-- Except They Are

America and Israel's Immigration Problem


Meanwhile, Time Out London heralded the coming Islamic takeover of Europe and particularly England, giving us a taste of the rhetorical justifications that will be used by the Dhimmis to celebrate and encourage the Islamic takeover. It is indeed a preview of 2012, but only its propaganda as Europe makes the transition from a European series of states to Islamic ones. After all people sometimes don't just want to lie down and become slaves.

You've got to talk them into it. Witness the early template for preaching the benefits of slavery to the people of England.

Is London's future Islamic? It’s the capital’s fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles... Here Time Out argues that an Islamic London would be a better place.

a hysterical, right-wing nightmare of a future Muslim London: where an cruel alien creed is forced on a liberal city. A society where women are second-class citizens, same sex relationships a crime and Sharia law enforces terrible public disfigurement and death. But the reality is a long, long way from this dark vision.

But rather than fear the inevitable changes this will bring to London, or buy in to a racist representation of all Muslims as terrorists, we should recognise both what Islam has given this city already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future.

In fact, Islam offers Londoners potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of superbugs in London’s hospitals.

Alcohol is haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As London is above the national average for alcohol-related deaths in males... Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and you’d avoid many of the 22,000 alcohol-related deaths and the £7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year.

Application of halal (Arabic for ‘permissable’) dietary laws across London would free us at a stroke from our addiction to junk food, Not eating would be important as well. The annual fasting month of Ramadan instils self-discipline, courtesy and social cohesion.

In an Islamic London, Christians and Jews – with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud – would be protected as ‘peoples of the book’. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London.

Under Islam all ethnicities are equal. Once you have submitted to Allah you are a Muslim – it doesn’t matter what colour you are. End of story.

Yes, end of story. Unless your color happens to be black. Or any race but arab. But no doubt there will be a "civilized" accommodation under the iron hand of Islam, which some liberals are already eagerly looking forward to. Remember this essay. You'll be seeing many more like it in the years to come.

The door has nearly shut on the possibility of actually turning back an Islamic minority in Europe. Now the struggle begins to prevent them from becoming a majority.


-- Meanwhile over at IsraPundit, Ted Belman has a must read article, "By avoiding war, the US and Israel are inviting war"

-- Daled Amos has a post on the bombing of the Osirak reactor.

-- Lemon Lime Moon has a post on the Tiny Synagogues of New Jersey

-- Right Truth has a good overview of the middle east strategic situation now.

-- Maggie's Notebook has A Call to Jews: Abu Ghraib is Arabic for Auschwitz?

-- Linda at Something and Half of Something remembers a hero

-- Elder of Ziyon is continuing his excellent Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs pieces. He's up to Part 4 now.

-- There's also a new photo for spring over at my photo blog, New York Minute