All Things Beautiful

"The Quickest Way Of Ending A War Is To Lose It"

"Blind Leading The Blind III" by Peter Howson 1991, Private Collection, London

As Caroline Glick reminds me of the George Orwell quip above, the Israeli Government's "desire to attempt to bolster the popularity of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak ahead of the February 10 general elections" looks set to go :

Since Tuesday it has become clear that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has decided to end the war with Iran's Hamas proxy army in Gaza as quickly as possible. That is, the government has decided to lose the war.

All so called peace proposals on the table consisting of the usual array of EU concilatory 'stop or I'll say stop again' bullshit starting with the assumption that all of Hamas' demands are met as a matter of course, thereby negating all of Israel's by definition, including the all important permanent 'cease fire'. No-one is asking it "to disarm, end its weapons trafficking or commit itself to a permanent cease-fire".

Has everyone conveniently forgotten that Hamas is genocidal? They are not interested in peace or diplomacy, they are simply interested in eradicating the Jews. Period. Hamas militants need the violent clashes. It's what they do. It's their day job, paid for through myriad and seedy channels by Iran, under the general auspice of 'Holy War'. Hamas is an illegal terrorist organization, its purpose the destruction of Israel. Hamas men are Jihadists, all boys future supplies for the course; women, necessary to keep the cycle going.

"The EU is arguably committing a war crime by accepting Hamas as a legitimate side to a dispute. In turn, by accepting the EU as a legitimate interlocutor, Israel itself gives credence to the view that Hamas is a legitimate actor. "

What the hell happened? We have in effect legalized Hamas' illegal aggression, and given it the same consideration as the legitimate defense of the sovereign state of Israel, whilst at the same time making it impossible for her to defend herself against further aggressions without attracting the wrath of the International community. The 'land for peace' in 2005 was a treacherous and ungrateful concept, which simply vindicated the warning that historically any land Israel relinquishes will be used to attack it. Hamas can now comfortably lob rockets from Gaza, giving Israelis 30 seconds to take cover. Yeah right.

The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life. The terrorists have learned how to exploit the morality of democracies against those who do not want to kill civilians, even enemy civilians.

The attacks on Israeli citizens have little to do with what Israel does or does not do. They have everything to do with an ideology that despises – and openly seeks to destroy – the Jewish state. Consider that rocket attacks increased substantially after Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, and they accelerated further after Hamas seized control last year.

The language of the Middle East is clear, why is Israel the only country not allowed to speak it? But speak it they must: "The late King of Jordan had no qualms about using his might to put down a Palestinian uprising during "Black September" in 1970. He ordered refugee camps to be bombed. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people died. The PLO then moved its headquarters to Lebanon. Arafat moved to Cairo and later to Tunis.

Former Syrian President Hafis al-Assad, the father of Syria's present ruler, pulled no punches in fighting insurgent members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He devastated the city of Hama in February 1982, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians. No one accused him of "genocide" -- and if someone had, al-Assad would have asked his critics not to meddle in the domestic affairs of his country."

When are we going to even begin to understand that the war Israel fights is our war. It is the war of today, the war with Islamist extremists who are not interested in diplomacy, and even less in the survival of the infidels. They need a swift and expedient kick in the groin delivered by the entire international community. Zero tolerance internationally, recognition that we are on Israel's side with as many politically incorrect actions as we can muster, and yes I am talking about standing up to Iran:

“......Iran is the most lethal, the most dangerous, and the most aggressive terror master in the world today.” Like the global totalitarian movements and regimes that threatened Western civilization in the last century, the Iranians come with a messianic ideology that admits no compromise with its enemies.  This war will only end with a winner and a loser, not with two contented negotiators. Forget that our enemies want us dead or dominated, they don't want a world at peace in which they will have to deal with real problems of governance.  They are waging jihad, not diplomacy.

“It follows from this that you cannot "solve" Gaza by fighting in Gaza alone, you have to win the terror war.  And to do that, you must accomplish regime change, just as Netanyahu said.  But the crucial regime change must be accomplished in Iran.  Whatever Israel accomplishes in Gaza (and the same holds for our battles in Iraq and Afghanistan), it is only a matter of time before the mullahs reorganize, rearm, and return to battle. And the next battle may involve nuclear weapons.

Hamas is simply acting on the direct instructions of the Iranian Mullahcracy that reigns supreme. Iran is the biggest threat to our way of life, the democracy that we hold dear, the freedom that we cherish and take for granted. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens that the battle over Palestine is "the prelude of the battle of Islam with the world of arrogance", the world of the West.

We are all well aware how Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad is modeling himself on Grand-Master-Über-Thug Ayatollah Khomeini (may he rot in Hell for all eternity).

We also know with certainty, that the Mullahcracy has been desperately trying to build their nuclear bomb at least since the early Nineties. We furthermore know today, that with all the various assurances given to stop production in the past, no such efforts were in fact made. Nothing but bold faced lies.

Finally, we know, that for the period of almost two decades, every promise of co-operation, extracted from the Mullahcracy at various times by the U.S., several EU member states, the IAEA, the UN and other such illustrious parties so as to prevent a nuclear Islamic Republic in the heart of the Middle East, has only ever been feigned with one aim in mind, to buy more time for the Mullahcracy to reach nuclear ecstasy.

And the only variable, determining the time-line, remains unchanged: the war will start when our Thug-In-Chief finally manages to get his dirty mitts on the nuclear bomb. Nothing else, no UNSC resolutions, no diplomatic efforts and certainly no appeasement policies will stop the lethally delusional  Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, nor his Thug-In-Chief.

Victor Davis Hanson tells it how it is:

”There is something especially nauseating about the latest Middle East war — scenes of worldwide Islamic protests with photos of Jews as apes, protesters (in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida of all places!) screaming about nuking Israel and putting Jews in ovens, parades of children dressed up with suicide vests and fake rockets, near constant anti-Semitic vicious sloganeering, Gaza mosques stuffed with rockets to be used against civilians — all to be collated with creepy Hamas rhetoric about the annihilation of Israel. This is the world in which we now live.

Almost no other issue in recent memory has illustrated the moral bankruptcy of much of the international community. Hamas has no pretensions, like the PA, of being a governing authority; it used violence to rout the PA and then bragged that its charter pledging the destruction of Israel remained unchanged. Israel evacuated Gaza; Gazans in response looted their own infrastructure, alienated both the PA and Egypt,and then sent off more than 6,000 rockets against Israeli civilians, while eagerly becoming a terrorist puppet of theocratic Iran.

Nothing could be more clear: either the fact that a constitutional republic was trying to avoid civilian casualties while a terrorist organization was intent on killing Jewish civilians as it used its own citizens as shields to protect mostly young male terrorists; or the world's craven reaction to all this.

Again all very creepy — the stuff of Tolkien's Mordor. It is now clear that the so-called and much praised "international community," the hallowed U.N., the revered EU, all pretty much are indifferent to the survival of a democratic Israel, or are actively supportive of its terrorist Hamas enemy. Only the U.S. (for now) stands by a constitutional state in its war against a murderous terrorist clique, with annihilation its aim and religious fascism its creed.”

I leave you with Barry Rubin's must read:

Today, people ask, why didn't the Jews of Poland understand the Nazis were going to wipe them out, at least in the earlier period when escape or revolt was more possible? According to contemporary and later eyewitness testimony, because they didn't think Germans would act in such an unpragmatic manner.
[...]
Answer: ideology. A doctrine and belief system will make people act in a way that doesn't fit pragmatic expectations. Why should Hamas start a war against a stronger power? Due to believing itself to be stronger and its need to mobilize mass support. Why should Palestinian leaders reject a state even if it means the end of an increasingly small degree of "occupation"? Due to belief that total victory is inevitable, that compromise is treason, and that their enemies are satanic.
[...]
No matter how much diplomatic aid, sympathy, or money the West gives Hamas — and it has saved Hamas and the PLO over and over from their own mistakes — they will not become grateful or pro-Western. Anti-Western and anti-American sentiment is too valuable and too widespread to disappear. The Palestinians — and Iran's regime, and Syria's government, and Hezbollah, and other Islamists — need scapegoats. Who else are they going to blame for their problems? Themselves?

If you save the terrorists today, they will commit more terrorism tomorrow. If you let them escape the consequences of their own extremism, you can guarantee they will stay extremist and take a lot of the masses with them.
[...]
This is the Middle East of 2008 and not of 1958, 1968, 1978, 1988, or 1998. The Palestinian issue has little effect on any other issue. The real conflict is Iran-Syria against Egypt-Saudi Arabia. Islamists are seeking to conquer the region from Arab nationalists. Radical groups are not interested in happy homelands but jihad and genocide.

And so the issue is not why Israel is attacking Hamas in Gaza now, but why Hamas in Gaza is attacking Israel now.

So fasten your seat belts, it continues to be, as it was before, just a matter of time. The Jews are fighting our war, what will it take for us to understand that? As long as we continue to make excuses at every turn and fail to acknowledge the elephant in the room, nothing will change.

But hey, what the hell, as Christians, let's rant and rave in support of Hamas' genocidal tirade of depraved indifference to human life. After all, specially designed for those who wage war against Allah, it passed a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority this Christmas legalizing crucifixion .

That nails it for me, what about you? Looking for a banner-waving chanting protest to march to, so we can spit some more insults into Israel's face? After all we need to find someone to blame for the Brits promising the same piece of real estate to the Jews and the Arabs.

Shame on us.

P.S. PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO SOME 600 COMMENTS ON PREVIOUS POSTS, THE COMMENTS ON ATB ARE BEING SHOWN IN REVERSE, I.E. LAST COMMENT FIRST.

"We Are All Jews Now!"

The famous painting by Otto Dix 'The Skat Players' 1920, Gallerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Germany

URGENT MESSAGE: Due to the large number of comments on this post (almost 400 at present), and 550 on the previous one, in order to circumvent the new Typepad system which allows only 50 per page, I have changed the display to show newest comments first. You can then click on 'next' to read the previous ones 50 at a time.

Thank you for the hundreds of e-mails of support, begging me not to stop blogging, even if it means a post a week, an image, anything. The jury is still out...

I have been temporarily torpedoed out of my Sabbatical cocoon by this e-mail, in response to my original post called The Myth of Palestine Part II, which happens to be my favorite of all time on ATB (Part I is here). The e-mail sent my heart rate pumping, and reaching for my pills. Perhaps having stayed away from blogging had weakened my stomach for these 'anonymous cowards' who frequently pollute my Inbox. Like this one, more often than not they are in response to my Myth of Palestine posts linked to above:

I disagree. They do exists and have every right to. Racist Israelis such as yourself are one of the problem in the Middle East. If anything, the UN and the US made a mistake by creating a Jewish state. You guys were wiped off by the Romans. I wondered why? Now, with the help the American tax money, you guys are wiping the Palestinians off the map.

While Americans pay attention to China's treatment of Tibet, the world is watching Israel and their annihilation of the Palestinians.

Keep hiding under your yamacas [sic], because Karma is a bitch.

For the umpteenth time....[yawn]: I am not Israeli, nor am I Jewish. I don't wear a yarmulke, I wear Prada. If that makes me 'The Devil', so be it. Just so that we all understand each other, I am a devout Christian, and I am vehemently against the tyranny of Islamofascism. Calling me a racist simply because I am pro-Jewish, is simply ignorant.

Unlike you dear Anonymous, I don't hide under a rock, you can find out who I am simply by clicking 'ABOUT' in the top right hand corner of my Blog.

I have written enough about Israel, the so called 'Palestine', and the whole mess in the Middle East, for everyone to know that I am fiercely pro-Israel. Realizing that the Arabs in Saudi are finally reaching an understanding of the realities facing the conflict in the Middle East, it is uncanny to think that, sanity is prevailing, and the region is accepting that siding with extremists is going to get them killed at best, and let them be seen to be 'sleeping with the enemy' and then get killed anyway, at worst.

I have said it before and I'll say it again: after nearly 40 years of pin-point targeted response to Arab rabid hostilities leading to this perverse situation where the West pays the Palestinian officials, synonymous with terrorism, billions of Dollars so that they can keep spitting into Israel's face, we have come a full circle.

Nothing changes. Let's just sit tight whilst Iran builds its nuclear bomb, so that we can all cry about it afterwards, like we did when we calmly watched Hitler slaughter the Jews.

One of my favorite quotes from Charles Moore @ The Telegraph published a while back, to be never more relevant as it is today:

All I want to ask my fellow Europeans [and Americans] is this: are you happy to help direct the world's fury at the only country in the Middle East whose civilization even remotely resembles yours? And are you sure that the fate of Israel has no bearing on your own? In Iran, the new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes the link. The battle over Palestine, he says, is "the prelude of the battle of Islam with the world of arrogance", the world of the West. He is busy building his country's nuclear bomb."

I believe we suffer from acute self-aggrandizement and individualistic hyperbole, which in the final analysis is nothing but ignorant arrogance as it is both hollow and superficial in all its aspects.

In many ways, the term 'Clash of Civilizations' contains the seeds of a most comprehensive truth. I am afraid though that we will have to come to terms with the fact, that the lines will prove to be much more blurred and drawn criss-cross throughout our society. Just when we reluctantly acknowledge the reality of a long-drawn-out conflict centering around religious beliefs; just when we thought that the factions could be limited to those of Judea-Christian beliefs versus Islamic ones, must we realize, that the scope is far wider: Faith versus Skepticism with all its variations such as cynicism, pessimism, disbelief, agnosticism, atheism, and anti-Semitism. In short, the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless, otherwise called Nihilism.

The lines in the sand have been drawn...as I have said before: "We Are All Jews Now"!

As Sir Winston Churchill wisely said, and my father bravely lived: "You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up for something sometime in your life."

Indeed.

Introducing The Angel Of Death (Repeat)

Crowds of people have congregated as if in anticipation of experiencing a miraculous religious vision - but instead a grotesque dead chicken lies slumped across the cliff-top in front of them. The crowd's inability to recognize the inanity of the object they are venerating, emphasized the futility of their mission.
"Chihuahua" by David Alfaro Siqueiros 1947, Museo de Arte Alvar y Carmen T de Carillo, Mexico City

By now, at the tail end of 2007, we all know who Mohammad-Ali Ramin is. But when I first wrote about him some eighteen months ago he was a relative unknown, and aside from the odd flutter at the beginning of this year, when he claimed in a December 28th interview with a Tehran-based 'Baztab' news website that Hitler was Jewish, he is keeping his powder relatively dry. I still say, fasten your seat belts, it's going to be an explosive ride:

"We will acquire this [nuclear] technology and export it to all the 150 countries. This is the power we have not yet used."

Mohammad-Ali Ramin's looks are deceptive.

He is good looking with his soft, well manicured beard. His looks are either German or Scandinavian, blue eyes, light hair. Nothing threatening, charming smile; you'd invite him to your dinner party without a moments hesitation. Well almost....

Little would you know that you would be wining and dining the very reincarnation of Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Eichmann, Dr Josef Mengele dubbed 'The Angel of Death', you name it, take your pick, improved only in looks and finesse. Pure, unabashed, soft-spoken evil. Measured in tone, deliberate and utterly confident in everything he says. He's not a psychopath, but someone who is absolutely convinced to occupy the moral high ground, certain of his convictions being sanctioned by Allah himself.

Politics Of Terror Reign Supreme

 

What the hell are these people still doing in Great Britain? We will never learn will we. No, not until the politics of terror reign supreme, the delusional denial suffocates us to a painful death and liberal deranged PC-thinking chokes us with the perpetual whining: “we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings..”....eh?

In turn, the Liberals in America have brought every argument of this nature down to accusations of racial prejudice, and ad hominem attacks of being against other cultures if you dare declare that America has a culture of it's own. They have entirely managed to kill any sense of proud heritage they once had, in favor of some sort of misplaced democracy which allows others to spit on their culture. Why? Why should the Americans and the British allow others to spit on their culture whilst living in THEIR country? What's next? We all have to speak Arabic, and live by the Law of Shari'a just so as not to upset our Islamic friends who think our infidel culture is inferior and we should all be dead or converted.

Until the West begins to pay attention to what Muslim extremists are saying in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, rather than what their apologists sprout forth for foreign consumption, the word insulting will not take on the new meaning and level of hatred it should do.

It is a matter of 'demographic time' before Islam will become the religion of the majority, ruled by the law of Shari'a. Just in case we think we are sitting cosily here, and this is someone else's problem, we need to know that Islam is the fastest growing religion in America. Today, the number of followers of Islam in the United States has reached 7 to 8 million Muslims in the United States. More than a quarter of a million people of Arab descent live in southeastern Michigan, making the area the second-largest Arab community outside the Middle East (after Paris, France).

The vast majority (80%) of American mosques are funded with Saudi Arabian money and most subscribe to 18th century Wahhabism that calls for the spread of Islam through violence. Many mosques, "Islamic Learning Centers" and Arab/Muslim Student Unions are distributing large numbers of pamphlets and leaflets attacking Judaism, Christianity and other non-Muslim religions and urging young Americans to convert to Islam.

The so called 'moderates' don't exist. There are only those who admit openly to supporting conversion to Islam through 'Jihad' and those who don't. There are only those who get their hands 'officially' dirty and those that don't. And then of course there are the 'Ellison atheists', and they belong to the 'nutball category'.

The threat of Islam is real. More so than Communism and Fascism ever was, because with Islam, Muslim activists are willing to kill and to die for the cause of spreading their religion. 'Jihad', is a sacred duty for all Muslims to perform, by any support or means available to them. Jihad is not, as asserted recently by apologists in the West a "spiritual struggle", but a Holocaust of non-Muslims.

'Show Me The Bodies'

"The Head of Medusa" by Pieter Pauwel Rubens c. 1617, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

Deborah Lipstadt, the American scholar who coined the term "Holocaust denier" and who has made it her mission to combat the contention that the Holocaust did not happen said:

"What's in the settlement? How many gas chambers would you like me to settle for? What number of Jews killed should I agree to in the letter of apology? You have to stand up for the truth of what happened."

And stand up and shout out, 'Holocaust deniers' are rabid anti-Semites, or to put it more accurately, they are racists and liars.

Released and unfortunately returning David Irving, serves as a poster child for the mindset and attitude of all those who hate Jews and who prefer for their own ideological reasons to "persistently and deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence".

Our very own Mac Brachman, who most of you know to be a frequent and valued commenter here @ ATB, was recently rightfully exasperated in the face of such determined vigor to defile the Holocaust Remembrance; apart from feeling sick to the stomach, the only thing left is to name and shame, to cut right to the chase whenever we encounter such mindless or deliberate evil.

There is only ever one purpose behind all of this: To spread hatred, animosity and envy against Jews.

No other motivation could possibly drive these perfidious proponents. And thanks to Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad and his pet conference, the true intentions and motivations in all their ugliness have once and for all been revealed for all to see.

"Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine,"

Oh really? Not quite enough rabid anti-Semitism it would seem for Carter adoring Liberals, who rather busy themselves to minimize the Holocaust Deniers' Conference as a harmless jibe at the West in response to Europe's mixed reaction to the Mohammed cartoons - our Thug-In-Chief expected of course the relentless persecution and prosecution of the cartoonists and, as Danish statutes prohibit the death penalty, the deportation of said offenders to Iran, where the just execution could have been swiftly meted out.

Interesting to note that Ahmadinejad's right hand man, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, has been appointed Secretary General to the newly formed 'World Foundation for Holocaust Studies'. I wrote about him extensively earlier this year in my article The Angel of Death (check it again if you have time) This is a dangerous man we should all be watching very carefully. Mohammad-Ali Ramin who is what Joseph Goebbels was to Hitler, appears moderate, calm and reasonable, yet his views are the same as those that led without fail to the biggest atrocities and genocidal crimes committed by man-kind.

Point Of No Return

'The Fall of Icarus' by Pieter Pauwel Rubens 1636, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

 

Just as the Iranian president does not draw any connection between the occupation and his desire to nullify Israel's existence, the world should also view the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and the Iranian threat to Israel as separate issues. Ahmadinejad does not recognize the 1967 borders - or any borders - for a Jewish state. He uses Holocaust denial to eradicate the moral basis for Israel's existence, and even says so openly. That was the explicit explanation that the Iranian foreign minister gave for why it is necessary to discuss the "myth" of the Holocaust right now. To counter this, it is necessary to create a moral, diplomatic, political and even military front - one that will be activist rather than sleepy and apologetic, and that will make the discussion of Israel's destruction unprofitable for the Iranians even before any discussion of the goals of the nuclear capabilities they are developing.

This from Haaretz today, entitled "Iran grows strong, the world yawns".

It is with deep frustration and even deeper sense of brooding anxiety, that I am forced to face this awful reality all around us; the world yawns in the face of Israel's looming doom, and never more so, than after Lebanon War II.

Articles, editorials and valued opinions are more outspoken than ever, yet in a tragic way, instead of arousing the desired sense of urgency, they seem to intensify the feeling of despondency and inevitability.

The only thing worse to a heated debate against someone, who is fuelled by anti-Semitism and bigotry is a dejected 'whatever'. It almost seems, even outgoing Kofi Annan feels a point-of-no-return has been passed:

Could It Be?

 

The Baker-Hamilton Plan is all the talk of course (Iraq Study Group - or ISG for short), which in a nutshell is a proposal to reverse the strategy of taking the war-on-terror to the murdering thugs' home in favor of embracing them à la, 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer'. Instead of fighting the Islamofascists, the ISG is opting for talks.

So, what does that mean? To be blunt, talking to the Mullahcracies in Iran communicates to the rest of the world two very important messages, both of which carrying enormous consequences:

One, conceding victory to Iran over domestic control in Iraq; fuelling bloodshed on the streets of Baghdad and getting the MSM to lay the blame on our doorstep has been a spectacular success for the Islamic spin doctors and their sympathizers/appologists all round. Surrender now would not be the consequence of failure or our inability to succeed, but because democracy has proven to be as weak and feckless a system as its adversaries assume.

The jihadi's theory of victory is simple; the West can be bullied into not lifting a finger to defend itself.

Victor David Hanson puts this first message, the all-important admission of defeat, into historical perspective when he writes, "A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists."

What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking — won at such a great personal cost — to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats — and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge — although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression. Note the recent honorary degree given to former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, whose regime has killed and silenced so many, and who himself is under investigation by the Argentine government for his role in sponsoring Hezbollah killers to murder dozens of Jewish innocents in Buenos Aires.

Two, the permanence of the State of Israel is in play; it's negotiable or as Hamas unabashedly demands "the international community correct its 1947 mistake," while in the same breath affirming that this doesn't negate its readiness to first take over the 1967 territories "without preconditions" - as per the "phased solution" model (i.e. Israel's phased destruction). Caroline Glick shouts out, "Jews Wake Up!"

'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid'....Eh?

The 1922 portrait of Dr. Stadelmann [mustache removed] by the famous Otto Dix, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, W.Landmann Collection

 

Absolutely furious, and quite rightly so, Mac Brachman kindly sends me the link to Jeffrey Goldberg's WaPo review today of President Jimmy Carter's "despicable book", sending me into a spin of unprecedented proportions on this seemingly peaceful Sunday morning.

President Jimmy 'Cowardly Appeasement Policy' Carter is a disgrace. This we know. We also know that he is a rabid anti-Semite, a coward, and acknowledge the fact that the agreement signed 25 years ago with Iran releasing the 52 American hostages was negotiated and signed by President Jimmy "Cowardly Appeasement Policy" Carter, on January 20th 1981, the day of President Reagan's inauguration, as his last glorious act as President of the U.S. just before he handed the sullied reigns over to Ronald Reagan.

As I have written before, almost all the trouble with the Iranian Mullahcracy and their murderous activities throughout the Middle East are deeply rooted in Carter's ignorance which in no small part resulted in the diplomatic obligations set out in the Algiers Accords Agreement, which codified the January 1981 deal between the United States and Iran under which the hostages were released, approx. 8 billion dollars in Iranian assets were unfrozen, and an arbitration tribunal was established in the Netherlands to settle claims between the two countries. In the first part of the document, the United States pledged that it "will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs." Elsewhere, the United States pledged to "bar and preclude" any claims filed by the hostages against Iran.

Under the Agreement, the United States is obligated "to terminate all legal proceedings in United States courts involving claims of United States persons and institutions against Iran and its state enterprises, to nullify all attachments and judgments obtained therein, to prohibit all further litigation based on such claims, and to bring about the termination of such claims through binding arbitration...."

No Sigh Of Relief Anytime Soon (Weekend Thread)

 

So, should we breathe in for the long overdue sigh of relief? Can Cpl. Gilad Shalit soon go home and restart his life? It's been over four months now; remember he was captured on Sunday, June 25th after Palestinian terrorists had dug a tunnel to attack an IDF army post in Israel. Let's hope so.

But now we need to look at the cost -- not in the sense of weighing up, of course, but rather in the way of understanding the bigger picture.

Hamas militants need the violent clashes to continue. It's what they do. It's their day job, paid for through myriad and seedy channels under the general auspice of 'Holy War', namely Jihad. [...]

Hamas is Hamas, a terrorist organization, period. It's purpose is the destruction of Israel; to them all Palestinian men are Jihadists, all boys future supplies for the course; women, necessary to keep the cycle going.

Of course they want their murdering thugs back. It's a numbers game: The more bodies to throw into the fight the sooner the genocidal dream is hoped to become a reality. Free them, and we all know, they will come back to kill and maim as many Jews as they possibly can; spare them, and you allow them to attack with increased vigor, for that is what they have been taught to be their single and only purpose in life -- oh, I forgot, apart from ensuring that every future generation carries on with the murderous objective, like so:

On Friday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar kicked things off at a rally in Khan Yunis, bringing down the house by declaring that Israel is "an abomination in the Middle East" that will someday "disappear."

"We will never recognize Israel, and in the end the [fate of] Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left," said Zahar, a founding father of Hamas.

"We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn't mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine's land."

There it is. No room for us Jews. No room for our history, our past presence here. No room for our common ancestry with the Palestinians. No room for Abraham. He was, after all, not from here. He was from Mesopotamia. Let him go back.

There it is. There's not a centimeter that we can call our own. But don't take Zahar's word for it. Listen to a speech from later that same day.

The occasion was the Silver Anniversary observance of al-Quds Day, a national festival of protests the length and breadth of Iran, meant as a tribute to the Jewish-occupied Holy City of Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic).

The speaker was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose opening reference to Israel said that there was no reason for Israel to exist.

"This regime, thanks to God, has lost the reason for its existence," Ahmadinejad told thousands at a Death to Israel pep rally in Tehran.

"Efforts to stabilize this fake (Israeli) regime, by the grace of God, have completely failed ... You should believe that this regime is disappearing," he said.

And, just in case you have been mislead to believe that Israeli violence begets Palestinian violence; that this is all one hell of a vicious circle; that U.S. and UK foreign policies are much to blame, remember the report from British policeman, Superintendent Raymond Cafferata:

"On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child's head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a[n Arab] police constable named Issa Sherif from Jaffa in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out-shouting in Arabic, "Your Honor, I am a policeman." ... I got into the room and shot him."

Jews don't cut off children's heads, are not known to commit such unspeakable atrocities. In contrast however, look around the world and place a pin on the map wherever such horrendous crimes against humanity are being committed and you will find, that Islam seems to govern almost all the actions of the perpetrators.

No difference some 80 years ago, at the time of the 1929 Hebron massacre, described so vividly by the British policeman. And that, my friends, is what Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood and all the rest of them, including the me-too clown in Syria, have in mind for every Jew they can lay their bloodstained mitts on. That is what Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad really dreams about, in all its gory detail.

The bomb is second-best, and only a last resort, should it fail to deter the international community so as to look the other way as Hezbollah & Co. do their worst.

The Pallywood Al-Durrah Affair

 

A story which I had managed to miss blogging about completely, was covered extensively by my friend neo-neocon who flew to Paris and attended yesterday the second of the three al-Durrah (four versions of spelling exist) defamation trials at Le Palais de Justice.

But first some background

French Judges are carefully examining harrowing television images of a Palestinian father shielding his son from a burst of bullets.

The ghastly television footage transformed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura into an international martyr of the second intifada and ignited a lingering controversy. Six years later, France 2, the state-supported channel that captured the exclusive video, is fighting to protect its reputation in a French courtroom, where it is suing three Internet critics who questioned the channel's veracity.

To confront its on-line detractors, France 2 is invoking the 1881 press slander law that Émile Zola defied when he published "J'accuse" in the Dreyfus affair. In effect, it is an insult law that protects individuals or groups from defamation that "strikes at honor" and reputation.

The channel's lawsuits accuse three Web site operators - an Israeli translator, a Parisian doctor and a former candidate for Parliament turned media consultant - of impugning the station and its Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, a gravelly voiced veteran whose work and writing have drawn plaudits from the mayor of Paris and President Jacques Chirac, among others. [...]

In his first report, which France 2 released without charge to other international television stations, Enderlin said simply that the father and his son "were the target of fire from Israeli positions." He was not actually there when the shooting happened but worked closely with a Palestinian cameraman who filmed the scene.

Since then, the debate has shifted from where the bullets came from - it is unclear whether it was Palestinian or Israeli fire - to whether the shooting was a form of street theater staged for propaganda effect.

Neo-neocon is in Paris covering the second trial involving "Pierre Lurçat, a 39 year old Jerusalem resident and president of an association called Liberty, Democracy and Judaism was sued because he is the leader of an organization listed as the legal operator of a Web site,www.liguededefensejuive.com, that urged readers to attend a planned demonstration against France 2 in 2002: "Come demonstrate against the lies of France 2," it said, and "the gross manipulation with an award for disinformation to France 2 and Charles Enderlin."

Those of you who are used to the free-for-all that is the internet are probably more than a bit perplexed as to what the big deal is here. That this sort of statement could be a cause of action in any court in a country that considers itself to be a modern, developed, progressive nation--not to mention a bastion of liberty--is ludicrous.

Let's put aside for the moment the question of whether the accusations this defendant made against France 2 and Enderlin are true, as blogger and historian Richard Landes (and, in the interests of full disclosure, acquaintance and friend of mine) has suggested at his website Second Draft and his blog Augean Stables.

Forget it? Isn't it of the utmost importance? Absolutely of the utmost importance. I happen to believe the evidence is strong that both France2 and Enderlin may have done exactly what Lurçat and the other two defendants have accused them of doing (at the very least the plaintiffs almost certainly lied in their original allegations that the Israelis deliberately killed the boy, and about the amount of footage they had and what it showed; I've written at some length on al Durah/France 2 before, here and here.)

Some more on her latest impressions, in case you missed "the gilded exterior with a hollow heart", whilst Richard Landes @ his blog Augean Stables has extensive backgrounder and has followed the trials personally from the beginning.

Whilst researching, I discovered this extraordinary piece dealing with the Muslims who aggressively demanded the 1741 Voltaire play to be canceled in Saint-Genis-Puilly, due to it's offensive subject. Why stop at blogging Pallywood, why not go 265 years back to the famous "French 18th Century champion of enlightenment" if you can get away with it...

The 'Humiliation Of Occupation' Rears Its Ugly Head Again

 

I give you Joseph Farah of WND

I've waited to deal with the following news development because it is so disturbing to me personally, I needed to let my rage subside.

I can now speak and write coherently about the latest ghastly statements by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concerning the Middle East. But it's not easy.

Last week, Rice said America could have no greater legacy than to divide the land of Israel and establish a Palestinian Arab terrorist state to end what she called the "humiliation of occupation." She made the statement at a dinner celebrating the third anniversary of the American Task Force on Palestine.

"The Palestinian people deserve a better life, a life that is rooted in liberty, democracy, uncompromised by violence and terrorism, unburdened by corruption and misrule and forever free of the daily humiliation of occupation," she said. "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal."

Of course, no one can argue that Arabs deserve a better life. As a matter of fact, as an Arab-American who covered the region as a journalist for many years, I can tell you they had one when they were living under Israeli control. Since they have been living under autonomy and under the control of terrorists, life has indeed been miserable.

What chance is there for democracy or liberty or a life uncompromised by violence and terrorism or unburdened by corruption and misrule under leaders sworn to destroy their neighbors and committed to unending war?

It's worth mentioning that these leaders, the ones who are going to usher into existence Rice's fantasy of democracy, liberty and an end to terrorism and corruption, consider all the Jews of the Middle East as occupiers. The only way that occupation will end is by their annihilation. And when Rice feeds their passions with this kind of talk, she is in reality paving the way for a future holocaust.

But she wasn't finished with those insensitive, misguided words.

Ignorance Is Bliss

 

Arafat learned to manipulate the West, and Abbas is even more adept at telling us what we want to hear. But behind our backs the same old message is going out: 'Humour them. One day they'll drop their guard, they'll be weak and then we'll wipe them off the map.'

Disturbing in itself, of course; but, for me, much more disturbing is the constant need to debate and persuade those around us. They are no fools, to be sure. They are 'just' ignorant of the facts. The little bit they do pick up here and there is garnered from fleeting moments on CNN and daily newspapers, in short the MSM.

Conversations go like 'Oh, that is interesting, but I remember hearing/reading quite a different account ... are you sure you have got your facts straight?...' Then the really aggravating moment follows: Eyes glaze over before even the first sentence is out. Most people just don't care either way. The saying, 'Ignorance is bliss' describes the true nature of their carefree oblivion perfectly.

North Korea's nuclear blast, whether real or hyped up, and Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad's promise to wipe Israel of the map couldn't be more disconnected as far as they are concerned. 'What has this commie lunatic to do with the Middle East conflict'. 

A lot. Apart from being a global add campaign -- don't bother building it yourself, we'd be happy to supply you with all the know-how or with as many nukes as you care to order -- it proves to the Mullahs and their jihadist armies the world over, once you've got it, nobody is going to touch you any longer.

The Russian Bear Awakes

 

I read Caroline Glick frequently and always with keen interest. Her insight is sharp and refreshingly unabashed by shackles of political correctness. Earlier this year her urgent warning call following Ilan Halimi's barbarous murder in France introduced yet another of her commanding one-liners: "Today, every Jew in the world is on the front lines of war."

As was the case seventy years ago, every Jew today is a target for our enemies, who shout from every soapbox and prove at every opportunity, that their goal is the annihilation of the Jewish people. From 1933-1945, the enemy was Nazi Germany. Today, the enemy is political Islam. Its call for jihad aimed at annihilating the Jews and dominating the world is answered by millions of people throughout the world.

Among the lessons of the Holocaust, there is one that is almost never mentioned. That lesson is that it is possible, and indeed fairly easy to exterminate the Jews. The fact that the Holocaust happened proves that it is absolutely possible for the Jewish people to be wiped off the map - just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Khaled Mashal promise.

Then came the Lebanon War II and UNSC Resolution 1701, which effectively sealed Israel's fate to face yet another war with an even better equipped and supported proxy army in the not so distant future on her northern borders.

Next, President Vladimir Putin of Russia promises the world during the Valdai Club early September, that "Russia would not use its rapidly intensifying and expanding global energy leverage to dominate others like "a superpower" would."

'The UN And The Jews' Indeed (Weekend Thread)

'Dream of Solomon' by Luca Giordano ca. 1693, Museo del Prado, Madrid

You know, I take courage when the consistently anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic UK newspaper, the Guardian expresses despair over the increasingly likely selection of, what they say is a 'faceless' successor to Kofi Annan; I am talking of course about Ban Ki-moon, the current South Korean foreign minister.

Breaking the mold of the longstanding tradition among UN officials throughout the ranks to fashion the UN into "the foremost global platform for anti-Semitism", must indeed drive senior UN officials to despair, together with their faithful MSM minions.

"The mood among staff is glum," one of the officials said. "We are not very excited about the outcome." With morale low at the UN after five years dominated by divisions, deadlock and corruption, they are sceptical about Mr Ban's ability to turn the organisation round or provide the strong, inspirational leadership they had been hoping for.

Yeah, 'strong, inspirational leadership' in the fight against the hated Zionist state is what they were hoping and looking for. Let's refresh our memory with Anne Bayefsky's incredibly crisp and concise analysis, 'The UN and the Jews', mentioned in my post 'UN's Global Mission: Reviving, Spreading And Fueling Rabid Anti-Semitism' in July.

Where the UN has fallen markedly short is in the application of these principles [meaning the principles of self-determination, which are now taken to entail not just the basic right of political independence but guarantees of non-interference by other nations, a realm of domestic jurisdiction and national sovereignty, and the preservation of historical, cultural, and religious particularities], and in no case more strikingly than that of Israel. The key factor has been the changing composition of the international body. From the late 1940’s to the mid-60’s, the original membership more than doubled. Of the 67 new states joining in this period, 80 percent attached themselves to the Group of 77—the UN’s third-world caucus, made up of many former European colonies—and some 40 percent had Muslim majorities. By 1977, the five members of the Arab League who helped to found the UN had been joined by all sixteen others.

To this radicalized and often Soviet-influenced contingent, self-determination was invoked in UN circles not as a general principle but as a tool to wield against the West, especially the U.S. and its increasingly stalwart ally, Israel. Self-determination was a right of the oppressed, to be exerted against oppressors. In the prosecution of this cause, the weight assigned to historical claims was itself selective and discriminatory: those who rejected the UN's 1947 partition plan for Palestine were labeled the oppressed, while Jewish victims, from Palestine to Europe, were characterized as the oppressors.

By this means has the UN negotiated the passage from omission to commission. Not only has it consistently failed to appreciate or even to acknowledge the state of Israel’s preservation of Jewish independence and identity, it has become the loudest and most determined foe of the Zionist project.

They don't want a man who will focus on "administrative detail"; that would curtail their gravy train. They don't want a leader who "knows to disagree without being disagreeable"; that would forgo juicy Israel bashing headlines. They don't want a man with strong convictions; that would jeopardize the continuation of mindless anti-Zionist propaganda.

In short, they don't want a man who is described as "intelligent, polite, moderate and honest" and who supports "UN reform, transparency and the free market".

We may of course find to our dismay, that Ban Ki-moon has little sympathy for a beleaguered Israel, but in absence of a confirmed anti-Semitic, Muslim candidate, I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and look forward to rid the airwaves of the spineless and hopelessly corrupt Kofi Annan.

The Palestinian Code Of Honor

"St Mark Freeing a Christian Slave" by Tintoretto 1548, Accademia, Venice

 

My friend JoshuaPundit is quite rightly enraged about the meeting that took place between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the leader of Tanzim, the so called 'military arm' of Abbas' Fatah. He asks: "Anybody remember a certain US president saying, `You're either with the terrorists or with us'?"

Because the Bush Administration wants to look good and curry favor with people like the Saudis and the EU and continue to flush more taxpayer dollars down the Palestinian rathole without actually breaking US law by funding a terrorist government, they are actively working to subvert the Palestinian democracy by supporting Arafat II because he's better at hiding his real agenda - the elimination of Israel.

This kind of hypocrisy is disgusting on every level. Not to mention damaging to our war effort.

So let’s catch up on the background here. As I have said before: The militants from both Fatah and Hamas are hell bent unstoppable on their way to have their prolonged bloodshed. Hamas is in power, Fatah is lurking in the shadows, but make no mistake about it, they are both terrorist organizations, period. Their purpose is the destruction of Israel; to them all Palestinian men are Jihadists, all boys future supplies for the course; women necessary to keep the cycle going. So, don't give me the old toffee about Hamas' charitable work and allegedly incorruptible track record, and Fatah’s wish to legitmize terrorism as their newly elected opposition has. Yeah right.

Arafat's entire life was dedicated to keep the violence going. The West periodically mixed in their pet conspiracies, charging Israel at various stages that it equally wished the violence to continue. Poppycock.

This whole charade is built on logic best illustrated by this statement: "And since Hamas is bad, Abbas must be good." Eh?

Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad Caught Red-Handed

'Jews Praying in the Synagogue' by Maurycy Gottlieb ca. 1878, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv

 

We are all well aware how Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad is modeling himself on Grand-Master-Über-Thug Ayatollah Khomeini, may he rot in Hell for all eternity.

We also know with certainty, that the Mullahcracy has been desperately trying to build the bomb at least since the early Nineties. We furthermore know today, that all the various assurances given in the past, that no such efforts were in fact made, were also nothing but bold faced lies.

Finally, we know, that for the period of almost two decades, every promise of cooperation, extracted from the Mullahcracy at various times by the U.S., several EU member states, the IAEA, the UN and other such illustrious parties so as to prevent a nuclear Islamic Republic in the heart of the Middle East, has only ever been feigned with one aim in mind, to buy more time for the Mullahcracy to reach nuclear ecstasy.

Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani feels quite evidently so secure in his conviction that we in the West still refuse to acknowledge this unyielding track record of utterly determined defiance when he, as part of a feud with a military commander over responsibility for the 1988 cease-fire, released a letter from Ayatollah Khomeini written in 1988 saying "that Iran would need nuclear weapons to win the war with Iraq". And he is right; exposing the deceitful agenda of our Thug-In-Chief and his Mullahcracy does not pass for headline news:

In the letter, Khomeini, who died in 1989, quotes the country's leading military commander of the day on the weaponry Iran would need to continue fighting. The letter also reveals that Iran's economy had been almost destroyed by the eight-year war and that the supply of military volunteers was drying up.

The letter strikes a nerve because the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has denied that Iran plans to develop nuclear weapons. He has said that such weapons would violate Islamic principles.

But the letter suggests that Khomeini, leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, had no such qualms.

We knew of course, that our Thug-In-Chief was lying through his teeth when he stated that nuclear weapons violate Islamic principals. But we couldn't quite prove it. Now we can and that should be big news, especially amongst the apologist Liberals. The word of Khomeini is as good as law for Ahmadinejad; he would never contradict it save for false pretenses in the interest of spreading the dominance of Islam.

Again, I ask my Liberal friends, which part of, "alone of the world's major faiths, Islam was founded by a prophet who used force to win converts" do you not understand"?

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah,' " Muhammad proclaimed in his farewell address to his followers in AD 632.

Spare me the intellectually challenged retort of citing missionary precedent of forceful conversions; the spotlight is directed on Muhammad and his teachings, and at the stark contrast in which they stand to those of Jesus Christ.

Instead, and on this Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we ought to remember the injustice meted out against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as it was wrongly blamed for the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. In the words of Menachem Begin:

"The whole campaign of blaming Israel for the massacre, of placing moral responsibility on Israel," he wrote, "seems to me, an old man who has seen so much in his lifetime, to be almost unbelievable, fantastic and utterly despicable.

"After the September 14 [1982] assassination of president-elect Bashir Jemayel we decided to move the IDF into West Beirut to prevent a Christian revenge on the Muslim population. It never occurred to anyone dealing with the Lebanese military units which subsequently entered the Sabra and Shatilla camps that they would perpetrate a massacre.

"The first horrific truth is that Arabs murdered Arabs. The second truth is that Israeli soldiers stopped the carnage. And the third truth is that if the current libelous campaign against Israel should go on without a reaction of outrage by decent men - yes, outrage - then within a matter of weeks or months everyone everywhere will have gotten the impression that it was an Israeli military unit which perpetrated the horrible killings."

"How right Begin was", are the closing words by Yehuda Avner, author of this moving tribute (he served on the personal staff of five prime ministers, including Menachem Begin).

I wish all my Jewish friends that you may have an easy fast!

Hope In Fear

 

Hezbollah are fighting a historical battle. The stakes couldn't be higher. The goal is Lebanon, the risk is relegation to fringe status. The allies are Iran, Syria and sympathizers such as Venezuela's Chavez ("To my aboriginal and indigenous brothers, we are the real owners of this land." Ahem, I can't wait to see the long faces of all those dimwits spewing the Israel-is-an-illegal-state mantra, when they realize how Chavez is modeling himself as the Arafat of the 21st century, so as to start claiming back US territories) and Cuba -- North Korea is more jealous than supportive. The list of enemies is growing. Worst of all for Nasrallah, the fat cats in Egypt and Saudi Arabia are seeing the writing on the wall: they're next.

Russia is a valid barometer for the true sentiment of those, who are now motivated by fear of losing their golden egg. Arab pride, grotesquely grandiloquent at best of times, usually prohibits even the faintest inkling of accepting Israel as a permanent state and neighbor. It thus carries enormous weight when the Saudi, Bahrain's and the Russian Foreign Minister independently talk of peace with Israel; the Bahrain official's regurgitation of the trite demands including Israel's full withdrawal from the Palestinian territory, resolving the problem of Palestinian refugees, and creating a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem shouldn't be given too much notice:

Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in separate interviews with The Associated Press around the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, spoke of the urgency for an "end game" that could give a glimmer of hope to both sides in the Middle East by resurrecting a process bogged down for three years.

At a Security Council meeting later Thursday, Bahrain's Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa called for initial negotiations between Israel and the Arabs with a concrete timeframe, as well as a report from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the best way to hold those negotiations. [...]

Lavrov said the mood is not limited to Arab countries; agreement also is growing in Russia and among other outside power brokers overseeing the peace process that it must be re-energized to stop more problems from developing.

But most telling is the easily overlooked statement but the Russian official:

Unless the world acts quickly to increase hope among Arab youth, Lavrov warned, it could lose a whole generation in the region to extremism.

That's the driving force, the writing on the wall, no Arab official will say out loud, but this is what all of them fear the most. Hezbollah's antics in Lebanon revealed to them that the genie was out of the bottle, that their pet terrorists (don't miss the video) had grown independent and disobedient. Too long have the fat cats enjoyed the  cushy feeling of absolving their Jihad duties remote control. Now the Jihadists are turning against them, for Iran is picking up the tab.

"We have found for the first time probably a consensus that is very significant about the need of restarting the peace process," al-Faisal told AP, wearing traditional Arab robes and headdress, and speaking in a hotel suite overlooking Park Avenue.

His emphasis on consensus was the strongest statement yet by an Arab nation on the need to revive efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and was echoed by the foreign ministers who attended the ministerial meeting of the Security Council.

There is only one emotion stronger in the Arab soul than 'pride', and that is genuine 'fear'. Good. I say, be afraid, be very afraid, and we may finally get somewhere.

And I don't mean just Israel, but also the long overdue denunciation of the rabidly anti-Semitic UN, for it has finally become the safe haven of all lunatics and murderers, whilst busily paving the way for their future reign of fear and genocide:

The conclusion is hard to resist that the U.N. effort is really about persuading America that it can "live with" an Iranian bomb, just as it lives with a Pakistani bomb, because the costs of economic sanctions or military strikes are supposedly prohibitive. But a glimpse of what the world will look like if Iran succeeds was provided on Tuesday by Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Cairo's heir apparent floated a proposal for Egypt to develop its own nuclear programs, clearly a signal that the largest Sunni Arab country will go nuclear itself to prevent Shiite Iran from dominating the region. And where Egypt goes, Saudi Arabia and Turkey cannot be far behind. Is the international system really prepared to live with five, maybe six, nuclear powers in the Middle East?

The media portrayed this week's U.N. speeches as a soap opera showdown between Mr. Bush and his adversaries. But in the matter of Iran's nuclear ambitions, it is not only the Middle East that is at risk, but the U.N., which is why Messrs. Chávez and Ahmadinejad felt so free to mock its evident failures.

Bashing Israel Sells

 

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora is first and foremost a businessman, so he is all too familiar with the concept of selling.

And what is the most important issue for the PM in Stockholm today? Yeah, it's to convince Ministers from more than 60 countries to donate as much money to Lebanon as possible. So, all depends on Siniora's impassioned sales pitch, doesn't it; getting into the 'customer's shoes', as it were.

Which leads us to the question of what Prime Minister Siniora believes to be the key 'buying-trigger' for his pitch; what he believes will most effectively promote his needy cause so as to wheedle the most donations out of today's captive audience of over 60 nations plus the officials from the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Red Cross.

Well, we have the answer: Relentless, unequivocal Israel bashing. I just listened to the live coverage of Siniora's disgraceful speech and couldn't believe my ears. This was worse than what Assistant-Thug-In-Chief Nasrallah could have come up with -- as soon as I locate the transcript, I'll add the link [updated with link below]

His diatribe against Israel put Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic tirades to shame. No mention of Hezbollah, no unprovoked murder of Israeli soldiers, no mention of the kidnappings, no Katushya rockets, no Israeli civilian deaths and displaced; nothing. As if it never occurred. 

Just Israel, who attacked on July 12 for the seventh time, killed over 1,000 innocent civilians, 1/3 of them children under the age of 12, destroyed homes, hospitals, mosques, churches, roads, bridges - all just civilian infrastructure to her promise to return Lebanon to the dark ages just when it had managed to show signs of recovery; repeatedly and deliberately violated international laws and human rights conventions; displaces over a million people, many of whom returned homeless; and on and on and on.

That, Siniora must have been certain, was what the international community wanted to hear; that is what the PM believes will yield the most sympathy and the most hard cash to be ferreted away.

Absolutely disgusting. However not disgusting enough for us not to pledge $230 mil.... despite Siniora categorically snubbing Israel, whilst the original disgracefully transparent blackmail design of a prisoner swap is back on the cards.

But then you know what, I think I must belong to a breed that is about to become extinct, because I think this is equally disgusting. Heh.

CAIR's Useful Idiots

'Personam non animum' from Henry Peacham's 'Minerva Britanna', 1612 Edition, London

 

The wise adage 'less is more' is really epitomized in my friend Glenn Reynold's take on the Mearsheimer/Walt outrage sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR):

MEARSHEIMER AND WALT:  Idiots, or anti-semites?

Do I have to choose?

Dana Milbank expertly conveys, (h/t Mac Brachman) that they are indeed both, idiots and anti-Semites, the latter of course being of no great surprise.

Apart from being a rabid anti-Semite with definite genocidal aspirations, you'd also have to be a complete idiot to believe, that the U.S., a free and democratic nation, could even for one moment allow itself to contemplate the genocidal sacrifice of another sovereign nation, in the vague and uncertain hope, to avert potential threats from terrorism - Jewish lobby or not. Because that is in a nutshell, what Mearsheimer/Walt are really advocating when they proclaim that the U.S. is facing "threat from terrorism because we have been so closely tied to Israel."

According to Milbank's report, the CAIR audience "chuckled" at this notion, which is an interesting point to debate. What caused the 'chuckles'?

Was it, as Milbank suggests, that CAIR members ridiculed the academic duo for being naive enough to promote such a singular argument - in an humorous way, naturally, as any propaganda against Israel is always most welcome news? Did the 'chuckles' perhaps reveal the kind of smug sense of superiority, which so often coexists with a much deeper understanding, in this case, the knowledge of Islam's global ambitions, than portrayed by the two useful idiots? Did the 'chuckles' perhaps express mild sneer for the extraordinary ignorance, with which the two useful idiots underestimate the need for the West to defend itself against the eagerly anticipated Islamic assault; for completely ignoring that for nearly 60 years, no other democratic nation in the world was, and increasingly is, facing the daily threat of complete destruction from all its neighbors?

Converting To Islam At Gunpoint Is Harmless

"Martyrdom of St Erasmus" by Dieric Bouts the Elder ca.1458, Sankt Peterskerk, Louvain

 

Omri Ceren is one of my favorite bloggers. His own blog Mere Rhetoric is a must read, and he also co-bloggs @ Joe Katzman's estimable Winds Of Change. Today he sent me an e-mail, as usual hitting at the core and hitting hard with his brilliant post "Just Because You Were Forced at Gunpoint to Convert To Islam Doesn't Mean You Were Harmed In Any Way". Watch out for Omri, he is the new shining star of the Blogosphere 

We know we said we were done for today, but really, these people have just lost it:

Two journalists kidnapped in Gaza were released unharmed today after being forced at gunpoint to say on a videotape that they had converted to Islam. The two journalists from Fox News - Steve Centanni, 60, an American reporter based in Washington, and Olaf Wiig, 36, a freelance cameraman from New Zealand - were held for 13 days in an abandoned garage in the Gaza Strip as hostages of a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades.

You idiot! You total blistering idiot! Being forced to convert is a harm. It might be the oldest harm short of death - being forced to renounce your faith and your god. Millions of people - literally millions - have died rather than deign to utter words that would force them to give up their faith. No wonder liberal journalists are utterly baffled by fully half of the United States - they don't think having to give up your religion is harmful. We are beyond certain that if Muslim prisoners at Gitmo were forced to convert away from Islam as a condition of their release, the New York Times would not be putting the phrase "released unharmed" into their lede. Way beyond certain. There's a deeper explanation for how paragraphs like this can get written. It's not really bias, as much as it is the blind spots imposed by any ideology. And within that dynamic are questions about the degree of myopia and the room for self-reflection that particular ideologies allow. But don't worry about that right now. Just bask in the beauty of the phrase "forced at gunpoint to say... that they had converted to Islam... were released unharmed"

The liberals have replaced religion with politics, it's hardly surprising that they don't feel threatened by converting to Islam, after all politics is so all-defining and of such paramount importance to them that it defines who they are. Faithless is in, it's cool, it's liberating....into the abyss they go. But it is important for us to know that they are not afraid, that they are brave, that there is no imminent threat and that we are simply fear-mongering at best and bellicose at worst. Do we "need to return to the Iberian peninsula of the 14th and 15th century when the Inquisition forced conversion or the Herodian forced conversions that rent apart society for no purpose" to prove it? I sincerely hope not.

As I have now joined the elite ranks of anti-idiotarian bloggers who have been labeled "Nazis" for having the temerity to identify Islamofascists as the true heirs of the Third Reich, and a racist, a xenophobe, as well as of course an Islamophobe, for daring to be in favor of preserving our sovereignty, free of Shari'a oppression, and a bellicose Christian for having the audacity to advocate it vociferously, whilst still confirming my Christian beliefs, I feel the Democrats have now been uplifted to new dizzying heights of verbal lunacy as the elections approach and they desperately rummage around for scraps of policy to cling on to.

So now even keeping English as a unified language is racist. It seems like this verbal disease is spreading through the Democratic party, down from the very highest ranks, who have proven constitutionally incapable of reining in their superciliousness, and spreading the hyperbolic invectives through the ranks to the Democratic foot-soldiers, like a deadly virus. Have these people gone completely mad? According to my friend the gracious Neo-neocon, some time ago, anger is still in style on the left side of the world.

Muslim Glory Predicates Apocalypse

 

Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad confirms it again:

If he ever became the supreme decision maker in his country, [Ahmadinejad] would "sacrifice half of Iran for the sake of eliminating Israel," Giora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. [...]

The 49-year-old Iranian president, he said, "has a religious conviction that Israel's demise is essential to the restoration of Muslim glory, that the Zionist thorn in the heart of the Islamic nations must be removed. And he will pay almost any price to right the perceived historic wrong. If he becomes the supreme leader and has a nuclear capability, that's a real threat."

Maybe Venezuela President Hugo Chavez is secretly assuring China, that he can cover any Oil supply shortfalls once Iran fulfills its promise and consequently lies in ruins following the inevitable and equally devastating retaliatory nuclear strikes. Could be one reason why Chavez is so openly supportive of our Thug-In-Chief's genocidal cause. Nah, he's just backing whoever 'opposes' his capitalist arch-enemy, the United States of America. Pathetic really, especially as in the eyes of our Thug-In-Chief, he too is nothing but an Christian infidel, who either must convert to Islam or otherwise except Dhimmitude, namely second-class status under Sharia law.

Don't you just love it; first lure Israel into a false sense of security by calling for the need of a 'robust' force of up to 15,000 in order to get 1701 passed and implemented, only to do a complete u-turn: Even though we learn today that close to 7,000 European troops will be deployed, French President Jacques Chirac tells us that a level of 15,000 troops was "excessive'' and it made "no sense'' to have such a large contingent alongside the Lebanese army in the region. Go figure...

But why worry about enemies when you have friends like the French: 

In Danger Of Complicity

"Sisters of Mercy" by Peter Howson 1989, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

 

I love clear and concise summaries that accurately portray often highly complex situations. It would be a mistake to interpret this attraction as some kind of lack of attention or, far worse, lack of interest in the nitty-gritty of detail. Far from it, the most successful campaigns in virtually all aspects of our lives have been characterized by a concise and clear understanding and the effective communication of such summaries.

'Iran Hostage Crisis, Take 2', is exactly the kind of clear and concise summary which fascinates me:

If the U.S. backs down in Iraq, Tehran's mullahs will move in and take the Middle East captive.

If the antiwar crowd and Democrats have their way, the United States will be Iran's hostage once again. An immediate pullout from Iraq would be a victory for Iran, a regime that has declared its ambitions to wipe Israel off the map and establish a  caliphate throughout the Middle East. If we allow democracy to be defeated in Iraq, it will only get harder to release Iraq and perhaps the greater Middle East from the grip of its would-be rulers in Tehran.

Decades ago, the United States underestimated the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's appeal to the Iranian masses and his ability to convert the latent hostility to modernism into political clout. Khomeini overthrew the shah and took more than 50 Americans hostage, thus delivering a significant blow to U.S. prestige and clout in the Middle East.

Now the U.S. is underestimating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his willingness to use proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Muqtada Sadr in Iraq. In the short term, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis are paying for this sneaky strategy with their lives, but in the long term, it is the United States that will suffer the most. [...]

Iraq is the crucial test of Iran's ambitions. [...]

It makes sense, therefore, that the first line of defense against Iran's ambitions is a stable, democratic Iraq, which would provide a formidable counterbalance to Iran. A pro-Western Iraq that develops its economic ties throughout the Middle East and beyond would compete over growing markets for oil with Iranian economic interests. More important, a democratic Iraq would be a long-sought beacon for the oppressed Shiites of the world, an alternative to the appeal of extremist Iran.

The U.S. military's presence in Iraq keeps Iran in check. An immediate pullout, as prescribed by antiwar liberals and demagogic Democrats, would leave Iraq to Iran — and to the likes of Al Qaeda. And that would be a hostage-taking far more harmful to the United States than the one that happened in Tehran nearly 30 years ago.

Contrast that against the intensifying rhetoric against Israel in the MSM, gradually paving the way for a time, when her existence may be questioned openly by so called respectable members of the chattering classes, always of course under the strictest pretext of wishing to earnestly explore ways to finally return peace to the Middle East. Poppycock...

The UN Staged Chicanery

 

UNSC Resolution 1701 proves to be nothing less than a deliberate and carefully orchestrated chicanery, even though the UK Telegraph Opinion leader only claims that 'UN forces fail Israel': "Whatever the Israeli commandos were doing in Baalbek - seeking to capture a Hizbollah leader or interdict arms shipments - their raid underlines the inadequacy of the Security Council's response to the crisis".

The outrage lives on in the comment section at the Telegraph, as we all come to terms with the fact, that we have been had by a bunch of underhanded UN delegates, who schemed corruption and political chicanery behind closed doors:

"It is breaking my heart that once again the world media and the UN are attacking Israel for doing exactly what EVERY government in EVERY country in the whole world is entitled to do - defend it's citizens!! What do they expect Israel to do? Just wait for another round of ball bearing (or worse) headed missiles to land on its women and children sent by these cowards.
When will the media and the UN recognize that Israel is in the vanguard for all of us.
We are all under attack by these ismlamo-fascists whether we want to acknowledge it or not."

"The major part of this problem is the French with their so-called initiative. The French met with Arab leaders in Damascus before meeting in the UN with the US John Bolton and in so doing compromised the resulting UN Resolution. Unfortunately, the US was too trusting of the French who once more displayed just how devious they are when their own self-interest is in play. Thus the fighting will resume just as soon as Hizbollah feels that it has been replenished by Iran and Syria."

"The Israel-Hezbollah situation is a plain as day: The UN will do what it does best: expensive little. The Islamist determination to destroy the Jewish State will persist. Israel will have to fight again."

The question now is however, will Assistant-Thug-In-Chief Nasrallah repeat Yasir Arafat's bungled coup to oust King Hussein in 1970, which lost him all but the certain rule over Jordan? Will Nasrallah overplay his hand or will he continue to cow the Siniora administration into submission and, with the help of Iranian petrodollars, take over Lebanon and create the next Mullahcracy, never of course taking his eyes of the ultimate goal, namely the annihilation of Israel?

The answer is an unfortunate no; Nasrallah would have studied Arafat's mistakes and learned from them. When you read the detailed account of the attempted coup led by Arafat and his PLO thugs in 1970 in 'Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography' by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin (Oxford University Press, 2003), the resemblance to the current stand-off between Nasrallah's Hezbollah and the Lebanese Government is absolutely striking.

Apart from the U.S. and Britain's notable change of heart  in the region -- in 1970, Britain had refused to help their erstwhile ally, favoring Arafat over its old friend and assuming he would take over Jordan -- nothing much has changed. Appeasing the murdering thugs is still the going currency in most parts of the West and the clear understanding that "creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would block the conquest of all Palestine" ('Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography' page 40) still dictates all Arab policies to indefinitely prolong Palestinian suffering until their common goal of annihilating Israel is achieved.

Worse, the term 'appeasement' is mutating, as it ever more stands for thinly disguised anti-Zionism, thus increasingly turning a blind eye to the nearing atomic Holocaust, which no longer just a few fanatics, but now even 'respectable' UN delegates secretly believe to be the only solution to bring peace and quite to the Middle East and the Muslim world as a whole.

Topsy-Turvy Works

'The Fall Of The Rebellious Angels' by Frans Floris, 1554, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

 

I am so tired of the same old tactic simply to copy, parrot and plagiarize all and any criticism word for word so as to hurl it back at the critics with total impudence. Even worse though, is to see it work, as we are forced to witness every day all around us.

The Iranian Press Service provides a great summary of Arab voices condemning Hezbollah and Hamas for representing Iran's and Syria's genocidal interest both in Lebanon, the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The language is clear, frank and substantiated.

Then follows the retort from Iran and Syria:

"This was a New Imperialist War [...] it is the American administration that is making the decisions in this war against Lebanon, while Israel only carries out its instructions."

"This imperialist war to which Lebanon and the [Muslim] nation are being subjected proves that these new imperialists do not respect the U.N. resolutions or the Convention on Human Rights... Their only goal is to divide our Arab region and carve it up into smaller and smaller [pieces] in order to implement their [plan for a] 'New Middle East'. [...] The disturbing question in this context is this: Will the [Muslim] nation wake up [in time] to defend its identity and honor before we all sink?..."

"[The actions of] targeting Lebanon, changing its face, and redrawing its map are merely another stage in the series of hasty, foolish and reckless actions taken by the neo-conservatives in the U.S. and by their ally Israel with the aim of suborning the region to their authority, defeating it, and breaking its will".

"It is the Bush administration that is running... this destructive and murderous war, which moves [from one country to another in the Middle East], while Olmert's government supplies the mechanism [for carrying it out]. [In light of] the failure of [the American] strategy in Iraq and its helplessness [there] after so many years... America [has decided] - in order to compensate itself and cover up [its failure]... - to expand the circle of fire and death by aiming all this criminal, blind hatred at Lebanon..."

"The war that is currently waging [in Lebanon], with its declared and undeclared goals, makes us more certain than ever that Israel and the U.S. are the forces behind the assassination of [former Lebanese prime minister] Rafiq Al-Hariri. The assassination was part of an unsuccessful attempt by the U.S. to enforce U.N. Resolution 1559. The aggression [we see] today began because Israel, as it turns out, is the only one who benefits from this resolution and from Al-Hariri's assassination.."

It's really quite pathetic, but most effective in a climate, where those, who seek to form an honest opinion based on a reasonable degree of truth and a reasonable degree of informed judgment, are few and far between.

Take the first quote for example and replace 'the American administration' with 'Iran' and 'Israel' with 'Hezbollah' and you are staring at the truth:

"This was a New Imperialist War [...] it is Iran that is making the decisions in this war against Lebanon, while Hezbollah only carries out its instructions."

UN's Fine Men Of Distinction

"Figure with Meat" by Francis Bacon 1954, Institute of Art in Chicago, Illinois

 

UPDATE: The New York Times features ATB on the Lakhdar Brahimi article page.

This won't take long. I will come right out and say it. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is definitely an anti-Zionist - my views on the UN's shameful record of deeply ingrained and widely spread, rabid anti-Semitism are of course well known.

He has to be if he choses special advisers like Lakhdar Brahimi, famous for his anti-Zionist views:

To state their beefs broadly, Brahimi's critics argue that he's an anti-Israel Arab nationalist and Saddam apologist. [...]

Brahimi told a French radio station last month, "There is no doubt that the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination … as well as the perception of all of the population in the region, and beyond, of the injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support … of the United States for this policy." When asked by ABC News about his comments, Brahimi didn't back down, saying, "I think there is unanimity in the Arab world, and indeed in much of the rest of the world, that the Israeli policy is wrong, that the Israeli policy is brutal, repressive, and that they are not interested in peace no matter what you seem to believe in America."

He has to be when he praises Brahimi as "one of the finest mediators and negotiators the United Nations has been privileged to call one of its own", and when he proudly claims that Brahimi "is one of our leading global citizens, whose wise counsel I rely on".

Now why this sudden re-emerging interest in Lakhdar Brahimi? Read today's New York Times Op-Ed penned by Brahimi and you know.

Israel’s need for security is real and legitimate, but it will not be secured in any sustainable way at the expense of the equally real and legitimate needs and aspirations of its neighbors.

And we know what those aspirations are: The Annihilation of the State of Israel, no less.

I was shaking with fury after reading Brahimi's Op-Ed. All the talk of Lebanese and Palestinian suffering and hardship, half of which were Hezbollah fighters in civilian clothing anyway, but not one mention of a single Katushya rocket, filled with ball-bearings and other goodies so as to inflict maximum human carnage, all aimed exclusively at Israeli civilians.

Instead of spreading his thinly varnished anti-Zionist mantra, which, given the true intentions and aspirations of the Arab world, is really inseparable from anti-Semitism, Brahimi ought to take a leaf out of his own book and listen to his past pearls of wisdom:

"But you've got to understand what the other guy is about, even if at the end of the process you decide that there is no ground with this man or woman except to fight them."

Who Is Émile Lahoud

 

A buffoon of the highest order, totally corrupt and a puppet figure for Assad's Syria, that's who he is.

This biographical quote is priceless:

According to The New York Times, Lahoud has a reputation for "lounging through most afternoons in his Speedos by the pool at the Yarze country club, reading Paris-Match magazine and holding a tanning mirror." The newspaper reported that Lahoud denied allegations that he went swimming on the day of Hariri's funeral. He told a group of journalists: "I swim every day — it's my workout — but on that specific day, I did not swim."

Well, not surprising, considering that he was the reason Rafik Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 until his resignation on 20 October 2004, was assassinated:

Hariri and others in the anti-Syrian opposition had questioned the plan to extend the term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, emboldened by popular anger and civic action now being called Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution".

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a recent recruit of the anti-Syrian opposition, alleged in the wake of the assassination that in August 2004 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad threatened Hariri, saying "Lahoud is me. ... If you and Chirac want me out of Lebanon, I will break Lebanon." He was quoted as saying "When I heard him telling us those words, I knew that it was his condemnation of death." [...]

Mr. Hariri reminded Mr. Assad of his pledge not to seek an extension for Mr. Lahoud’s term, and Mr. Assad replied that there was a policy shift and that the decision was already taken. He added that Mr. Lahoud should be viewed as his personal representative in Lebanon and that “opposing him is tantamount to opposing Assad himself”. He then added that he (Mr. Assad) “would rather break Lebanon over the heads of [Mr.] Hariri and [Druze leader] Walid Jumblatt than see his word in Lebanon broken”.

Irish journalist Lara Marlowe with whom Hariri talked reported similar allegations. According to the testimonies, Mr. Assad then threatened both Mr. Hariri and Mr. Jumblatt with physical harm if they opposed the extension for Mr. Lahoud. The meeting reportedly lasted for ten minutes, and was the last time Mr. Hariri met with Mr. Assad. After that meeting, Mr. Hariri told his supporters that they had no other option but to support the extension for Mr. Lahoud. The Mission has also received accounts of further threats made to Mr. Hariri by security officials in case he abstained from voting in favor of the extension or “even thought of leaving the country”.

A Pivotal Moment In The History Of The Middle East

"The Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore Géricault 1818-19, Musée du Louvre, Paris

 

I want to share with you today important words of pristine clarity and reason. Furthermore, I shan't link to the source as yet, for I would like you to allow these words to live and breathe free from any association. For those of you who recognize it, please weigh in and discuss the content without mentioning the source.

Civilians in Lebanon and Israel have suffered from the current violence, and we recognize that responsibility for this suffering lies with Hezbollah. It was an unprovoked attack by Hezbollah on Israel that started this conflict. Hezbollah terrorists targeted Israeli civilians with daily rocket attacks. Hezbollah terrorists used Lebanese civilians as human shields, sacrificing the innocent in an effort to protect themselves from Israeli response.

Responsibility for the suffering of the Lebanese people also lies with Hezbollah's state sponsors, Iran and Syria. The regime in Iran provides Hezbollah with financial support, weapons, and training. Iran has made clear that it seeks the destruction of Israel. We can only imagine how much more dangerous this conflict would be if Iran had the nuclear weapon it seeks.

Syria is another state sponsor of Hezbollah. Syria allows Iranian weapons to pass through its territory into Lebanon. Syria permits Hezbollah's leaders to operate out of Damascus and gives political support to Hezbollah's cause. Syria supports Hezbollah because it wants to undermine Lebanon's democratic government and regain its position of dominance in the country. That would be a great tragedy for the Lebanese people and for the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Hezbollah and its foreign sponsors also seek to undermine the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Hezbollah terrorists kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, Hamas kidnapped another Israeli soldier for a reason. Hezbollah and Hamas reject the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security. [...]

The conflict in Lebanon is part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the region. [...]

The Olmert Metamorphosis From Churchill To Chamberlain

 

Israel refuses to leave southern Lebanon until Lebanese forces and international forces can secure the border area. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah promised to fight as long as Israel remained in southern Lebanon. UN's Kofi Annan has confirmed the Lebanese PM Siniora to be the gofer running between Nasrallah for instructions and back to the French and Arab League patrons for approval. It's going to be a long hot summer...

Only history will tell, a decade from now, but the writing may already be on the wall.

At this moment in time it is evident that Israel's signature on the UNSC Resolution 1701 is celebrated as a clear victory by the UN appeasers and anti-Semite member states, diligently paving the way for Thug-In-Chief to fulfill his promise to wipe Israel off the face of the world.

We have also been told that "the US decision to seek a cease-fire was the result of Israel's amateurish bungling of the first three weeks of the war. The Bush administration, they argued, was being blamed for the Olmert government's incompetence and so preferred to cut its losses and sue for a cease-fire. There is no doubt much truth to this assertion.

The Israeli government's prosecution of this war has been unforgivably inept. At the same time it should be noted that the short-term political gain accrued by the US by forging the cease-fire agreement will come back to haunt the US, Israel and all forces fighting the forces of global jihad in the coming weeks and months.

By handing a victory to Hezbollah, the resolution strengthens the belief of millions of supporters of jihad throughout the world that their side is winning and that they should redouble efforts to achieve their objectives of destroying Israel and running the US out of the Middle East."

What is not entirely clear is why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert chose to fashion himself after Chamberlain instead of Churchill only days into the conflict?

What the hell happened to the unconditional release of the kidnapped soldiers. We have in effect legalized Hezbollah's illegal aggression, and given it the same consideration as the legitimate defense of the sovereign state of Israel, whilst at the same time making it impossible for her to defend herself against further aggressions without attracting the wrath of the International community.

This is not what Israel had in mind; instead the nation was hoping for a strong leader and for this kind of speech (read the whole thing, it's powerful):

In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

Today, Binyamin Netanyahu is certainly getting ready to capitalize on the current mood of frustration and dispair over Israel's failed military mission only moments after Olmert took full responsibility for having tied both hands behind IDF's back during the past 4 weeks.

Remember, We Won The War (UPDATED)

 

Eventually....

It just took us a lot longer and left millions more dead.

It started the Cold War, which, some 40 years later, we won too.

It paved the way for the Marshall Plan, which critically led to the transformation of an entirely new Europe in the form of the European Union (EU), made up of currently 25 independent states based on the European Economic Communities (EEC), practically without borders, complete with common currency, Central Bank and an European Parliament, which supervises the European Commission (EC). Simply unimaginable at the end of WWII.

It caused the Japanese to realize that US-pioneered capitalism was the way to go following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, giving us today the second largest, entirely peace-loving and democratic economy after our own.

Fast forward....

Only by looking at the bigger picture in this wider historical context am I able to fight the heavy heart with which I must accept that the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 has handed Hezbollah and its state sponsor Iran and Syria a "near-total victory". [you must read the entire piece by Caroline Glick, it's brilliant]

...and an unprecedented defeat for Israel and its ally the United States. [...] in practice it makes it all but impossible for Israel to defend itself against Hizbullah aggression without being exposed to international condemnation on an unprecedented scale.[...] By empowering Annan to evaluate compliance, the resolution all but ensures that Hizbullah will not be forced to disarm and that Israel will be forced to give up the right to defend itself. [...] the resolution rewards Hizbullah's aggression by giving international legitimacy to its demand for territorial aggrandizement via acts of aggression, in contravention of the laws of nations.[...] Moreover, by allowing Lebanon to make territorial claims on Israel despite the fact that in 2000 the UN determined that Israel had withdrawn to the international border, the resolution sets a catastrophic precedent for the future.[...] the Palestinians, Syrians and indeed the Jordanians and Egyptians will feel empowered to employ aggression to gain territorial concessions from the Jewish state even if they previously signed treaties of peace with Israel. The message of the resolution's stand on Shaba Farms is that Israel can never expect for the world to recognize any of its borders as final.[...] the resolution treats as equivalent Hizbullah's illegal aggression against Israel and Israel's legitimate military actions taken in defense of its sovereign territory.[...]

"To Be, Or To Cease Fire" That Is The Question (UPDATED)

Click Image

The YouTube link has unfortunately been taken down, but you can watch it (pay per view) here. The movie is excellent, an absolute must see.

UPDATE I:  Richard Rimbaugh directs me to the latest from Haaretz informing us that the expanded incursion into Lebanon would continue "for the time being," despite agreeing to a cease-fire resolution drafted by the UNSC (FULL TEXT OF RESOLUTION). Israel will press ahead with its military offensive in south Lebanon until Israel's Cabinet sits on Sunday, with Olmert advising it to accept the proposal. Sigh...

Strong words and critical disagreement from two retired IDF military men, giving us pause to think.

First Effie Eitam, a previous commander of IDF forces in Lebanon, condemning Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz for having delayed a ground offensive far too long and for blocking Wednesday's decision to send thousands of ground troops to reach the Litani River. He advocates, that Israel has no choice but to fight man to man; it is the only way for Israel to emerge politically and militarily strengthened from the war. The choice he presents is: "To be, or to cease fire".

We must understand that Hizbullah and its rockets have successfully captured a large section of Israel. What's at stake now is no different than crossing the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War, or pushing the Syrians off the Golan Heights, or moving the war to enemy territory during the Six Day War.

South Lebanon is the object of Israel's counter-offensive, in order to loosen the stranglehold Hizbullah enjoys over northern Israel.

Israel 's civilian home front is bearing the burden of this war with a stubbornness and a unity unseen since the War of Independence. This is the moment and this is the purpose for which the state and the army were created. The army must act now to carry out any action necessary, wherever necessary, to restore our civilians' basic right to life, even if soldiers must die to restore it.

If the prime minister and defense minister still fail to understand the fatefulness of the current situation. If they retreat into hesitation and delusion, and if they choose to hide behind empty, twisted words, or even worse – behind a phony shield that the IDF is not, it will become clear that this government does not, and never did, deserve the faith of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have born the brunt of this war so far

On the other hand, argues Avshalom Vilan, a 25-year IDF Special Forces veteran, ...

...The Cabinet decision to expand operations in Lebanon came too late, and appears like someone is trying to cover up a month of snowballing warfare, and less like someone able to strike a decisive blow in this war.

The stated goals of the war - bringing kidnapped IDF soldiers home, quiet along the northern border, getting Hizbullah out of south Lebanon and installing an multi-national force to bolster the Lebanese army - will eventually be realized by diplomatic negotiations. There is no knockout punch to be delivered that will tip the scales in our favor, certainly not deploying all the way to the Litani. [...]

This fight need not be a politicians' fight for ratings, or for our national pride, or our deterrent ability. It is about taking calculated risks, measuring cost versus benefit, military success against casualties, and mainly: The ability to translate military gains into diplomatic processes.

The process of moving from the battle field to the negotiating table must begin immediately. We must stop harboring false hopes and look at reality with open eyes. We must build a process that will lead to Syria's exit from the cycle of violence, even if we must give up the Golan Heights. [...]

The more we internalize the limits of modern military power, strong as it may be, and we understand that against a guerilla organization that doesn't count casualties and is prepared to go all the way, we will understand that the solution to the current conflict is to be found in negotiation.

It's an important debate, but one held in the dark. We don't know what Olmert and Peretz learned from massive intelligence obtained during the past 4 weeks. However, until we do, it is hard to resist judging that both may have shown themselves to be poor strategists.

The NYT's 'Dead Man Walking' (UPDATED)

 

UPDATE: Always good to know that we do make a difference after all. The NYT changes its caption and issues a correction.

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

What is it about the inimitable paper of disrepute, the mighty New York Times, that makes it constitutionally unable to tell the truth?

In these troubled times of rabid Pallywood, the NYT publishes what appears to be a staged photograph of a 'Dead Man Walking' in Tyre, Lebanon. The entire photo essay with audio, here. (note the caption has now been changed, see update above)

Have the left become so out of touch with reality in this war on terror that their unwarranted superciliousness and condescension overrides the most basic principals of journalism? Intentionally or not, they have become the driving force behind the propaganda machine of the mullahcracy of Iran in the West.

At this crucial time in history, when the world is at the brink of war with Islamofascism, nothing so illustrates the left's nihilism as does its stand against Israel and its willingness to lap up the incessant anti-Semitic propaganda spewed out by the international MSM. Die Welt's Blog wraps it up with a must read

We Are All Jews Now Part II

"White Crucifixion" by Marc Chagall 1938, Art Institute of Chicago
"Chagall’s juxtaposition of crucifixion and the immediacy of Jewish suffering creates an intense interplay of religious expectation and historical reality that challenges our facile assumptions. He does not intend to Christianize the painting, certainly not in the sense of affirming any atoning resolution of the Jewish plight. Rather, in the chaotic world of White Crucifixion all are unredeemed, caught in a vortex of destruction binding crucified victim and modern martyr. As the prayer shawl wraps the loins of the crucified figure, Chagall makes clear that the Christ and the Jewish sufferer are one." (Read more)

 

Personally, I believe Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad instructed his goons to set the Middle East on fire on July 12th after talks a day earlier with an exasperated EU Common Foreign and Security Policy Chief Javier Solana failed - we'll soon find out why our Thug-In-Chief wishes to stall his response to the incentive package, which was of course offered to sweeten the International call to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program, until August 22nd ...

Critics voiced their doubt and reasoned that Hassan Nasrallah wouldn't have simply obeyed Iran without the consequences of such an unprovoked attack to be also serving his domestic political interests. Current Affairs makes an interesting case: Apparently, most Lebanese believe that Hezbollah set off the current round of fighting because of a pending attempt, by the Lebanese government, to disarm Hezbollah.

This is called a "diversionary attack," the intention being to divert the Lebanese from their plans to disarm Hizbollah. Being disarmed would be catastrophic for the Hizbollah leadership, because many of these guys were deep into criminal scams, and collaboration with the hated Syrian army of occupation. Most Lebanese would like to see a little justice here, and the Hizbollah brass, quite naturally, would rather skip that sort of thing altogether.

That leaves of course the question, how credible is, if at all true, that the Lebanese government had indeed imminent plans to disarm Hezbollah.

It seems to me, that Hezbollah, acting in concert with Syrian orders, had already made their point with the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; after all, that was revenge not least for events in 1994, when Hariri's government ordered the military to fire on Hezbollah protesters, killing many. But more importantly, Syria held Harri responsible for UNSC Resolution 1559 and feared he'd execute it once elected. So, after that and a spree of further assassinations, I doubt that acting Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was rushing to order, what would surely have been another violent confrontation between the army and Hezbollah, thus exposing him to share Hariri's fate; especially not as long as President Emile Lahoud remains Syria's proxy Commander-In-Chief of the Lebanese army.

I mean, give me a break, this is the guy who issues a tearful plea yesterday to his Arab neighbors to rescue his country from Israel, whilst his former boss - yes, that's right, Siniora ran Hariri's bank and conglomerate - was killed by Hezbollah's murdering thugs. I don't think so.

Finally, how could Siniora have sought to enforce UNSC Resolution 1559, when his government decided only in January to call Hezbollah a "resistance" movement, not a 'militia', with the express intention to bypass the evidently suicidal mission to disarm Hezbollah. 1559 only calls for "for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias", not for 'resistant' movements.

No, I don't think disarming Hezbollah was on anybody's mind prior to July 12th. This is why President Bush and Secretary Rice are pushing so hard for a Resolution with teeth, so that finally Hezbollah's stranglehold on Lebanon, and Iran's, with Syria in tow, on the wider region, can be broken. It is high-time:

Make no mistake: Israel is fighting for its life. It faces a historically new kind of fanatical foe, political Islam, which combines three characteristics: a political-religious ideology calling for its enemies' annihilation; indifference to, even the celebration of, its own people's death (because martyrs are rewarded with a place in heaven); and virtually unstoppable technology (missiles) and techniques (suicide bombing) of terror.

Iran's Promise: 'Evolution From Life To Death'

"Blind Power" by Rudolf Schlichter 1937, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin

 

Iran commands Hezbollah, and the rest of what has now become its vast 'foreign legion', and the sooner the world realizes it the better.

All who oppose the absolute determination of the Iranian mullahcracy to spread its murderous and utterly inhumane doctrine, are fighting for the same freedom; the quicker we realize that, the better.

Iran has outsourced its war against the infidels to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to Muqtada al-Sadar in Iraq, to name but a few.

Muqtada al-Sadr was dismissed as an irrelevant aberration with little purchase on the nation’s future. The coalition and its Iraqi partners considered his behavior inconsistent, his judgment erratic, his discourse radical and his movement chaotic. Underestimating him proved costly, but dealing with that we shall leave for another day. It is just important to understand that in the grand scheme of things he enjoys a significant popular backing and a power base in the Shiite slums of Baghdad, the city of Kufa, and the governorate of Maysan; his followers, for the most part impoverished Shiites, are remarkably determined and loyal, and have caused us plenty of trouble in these last few weeks.

Iran is supplying them all with money, weapons and most damaging of all, the very doctrine, which fuels their fire. They are all very closely and dangerously interlinked.

Hezbollah for their part have managed to infiltrate every pore of the Lebanese Government, and according to the statistics 'rule' 80% of the population. By entering the Government they have managed to divide and conquer the anti-Syrian sentiment, and undermine the opposition. President Emile Lahoud is a puppet of Syria, and Syria is a puppet of Iran.

U.S interests in the Middle East region suggest, that we need to support the democratically elected Government in Lebanon. But that does not mean that the Administration can afford to ignore, that this same Government was somehow unable to block the entrance of a terrorist organization into Parliament and that Syria's puppet President Lahoud is still the Commander-In-Chief. From President Lahoud himself:

I myself built up this army following the civil war and integrated all the religious groups: Muslims, Christians and Druze. This army is there to secure internal peace, but it is not an army to fight a war. [...] Naturally the strongholds of the resistance are not known. [...] The exchange of prisoners has always worked perfectly in the past. [...] Hezbollah enjoys utmost prestige in Lebanon, because it freed our country. All over the Arab world you hear: Hezbollah maintains Arab honor, and even though it (Hezbollah) is very small, it stands up to Israel. And of course Nasrallah has my respect. [...] We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. [...]

Rhetoric, which clearly suggests, that Lahoud would gladly serve under a future Prime Minister Hassan Nasrallah, thereby effectively handing over control of the army to Hezbollah, or Iran, for that matter.

Welcome To The Middle East, Israel

"Maquette de décor pour 'Labyrinth' " by Salvador Dali 1941, Private Collection, Spain

 

'Welcome to the Middle East, Israel' as a heading introduces us to the notion that Israel has finally understood the rules of the game

Instead of abductions working against Israel, to the extent of extorting an entire country, abductions now work against abductors and their countries.

In a world where Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad and his lackey Assad dream of a "Middle East in which leading pro-US Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are weakened and Iran becomes the new regional superpower. The destruction of Israel is part of the dream, which is shared by Syria.

Iran is working hard to realize Ahmadinejad's dream, destabilizing the "Shi'ite Crescent" stretching from Iran to Iraq to Syria; and from Syria to Lebanon, where the Shi'ites are the largest minority."

President Bush understands this reality and his Administration fortunately realizes that our security is inextricably linked with that of Iraq and Israel. Never have the words 'We must win this war against the axis of evil' rang more true and have been confirmed, as during these days of bloodshed in Iraq as well as in Lebanon and northern Israel.

So how does the war against Hezbollah differ from others?

Well, this is the first time Israel has began speaking the "Middle East" language. After 60 years the Israel Defense Force has finally began to understand the rules of the region.

This is occurring to the astonishment of our enemies, who are used to seeing Israel stutter in a foreign language, detached from the region. And this is enough to change the Middle East, as the prime minister rightly said.

In the Middle East the stronger party is not attacked but rather the weaker one is, particularly when it is unprepared. Israel attacked the Hizbullah unprepared for the campaign. [...]

Civilians have never played a role in the Middle East. In the Iran-Iraq war thousands were killed, without it bothering one side or another.

What If...

'The Death of Elizabeth I, Queen of England' by Paul Delaroche 1828, Musée du Louvre, Paris

 

The famous 'What If...' question, that we all ask ourselves, when so much is at stake.

As you all know, I wholeheartedly support Israel's struggle against the murdering thugs and genocidal Islamofascists surrounding her. I also haven't minced my words in favor of uncompromising military action against Hezbollah following their nefarious attack on July 12th. The concern shared by many was that Prime Minister Olmert did not have the political will and strength to engage Hezbollah head on.

Today we know differently of course. We also have the benefit of hindsight, introducing a question, which ought to be debated at this stage:

What if Israel had decided to do nothing after initially preventing Hezbollah to transfer the hostages to Iran - you remember, the purpose of the initial bombardments was to disable air, sea and most road traffic, frustrating any attempt to move the two kidnapped soldiers as well as preventing further arms shipment from Syria and Iran. Would Hezbollah have stopped firing rockets after their so called 'reprisals'. Could Olmert have survived military inactivity in the face of Hezbollah's brazen evil?

There is no question, that Israel knew what she was up against; that Hezbollah would do everything to maximize civilian casualties when firing their rockets from densely populated residential areas, that 'civilian' casualties in Hezbollah strongholds would outnumber those in northern Israel - notwithstanding the fact that Hezbollah terrorist and so called civilians are in fact in most cases indistinguishable. Israel is also painfully aware of UN bias against the Jewish state, reflecting of course widespread anti-Semitic sentiment among a majority of UN member states.

Combined, Israel knew, that these two ingredients clearly represented a recipe for a global PR disaster, as we have witnessed both in the past and again with the Qana incident on Sunday.

What would have happened, if Israel had instead declared that it would rule out military attacks and any further bombing, and that it would issue no threats; that it would solely rely on diplomatic efforts to ensure the safe and, most importantly, unconditional return of both IDF soldiers. What if Israel had instead started a global PR campaign focusing on Hezbollah's declared genocidal goals, focusing on their military tactics of indiscriminately targeting innocent civilians.

Umh, tough call, huh? Evident however, is what the future holds for us, or rather what history has in store for the future.

The Metastasizing Hezbollah

 

For the last few days, we have been dealing with the hold Hezbollah has in every pore of Lebanon, the metastasizing cancer, which seems to be spreading with their every PR move, and all understand that this is entirely due to the Lebanese Government, who allowed the monster to spread its tentacles from within, totally unchallenged.

Along our journey, I have made a mental link to the apparent coup d'etat skillfully carried out by Hezbollah, but feel that I have not dealt with the subject thoroughly enough. I mentioned the other day Michael Totten warning us that the recent incident cemented the Lebanese public and Hezbollah together, with 82 percent of Lebanese now supporting them. "This is a disaster for Lebanon, a disaster for Israel, and a disaster for the United States. It is a tremendous boon to Syria and Iran".

Barry Meislin a reader of mine, pointed me to an important post by Anton Efendi entitled 'L'Etat Cest Moi', and prompted me to write today's post.

"Residents who have recently escaped from Mari tell of a dramatic, desperate situation in the village. The Druse residents, who have no affinity at all for Hizbullah, resisted Hizbullah's attempts to enter the village. The IAF apparently and unwittingly assisted in their resistance by bombing the roads leading into the village, cutting off the militia's ability to enter the town, at least temporarily. Hizbullah responded by cutting off the town's electricity and water supply, essentially laying siege to a town on its own side of the border, hoping that its residents would pack up and leave. Many of them have done so. My sources say that Hizbullah has been desperate to enter the village but has as of yet been unable to do so in large numbers. Residents also describe a growing humanitarian crisis in the village due to the lack of fresh water.

Hizbullah attempted to enter Mari not to defend it from attackers, but so they could fire rockets from the village toward Israel. Hizbullah's intention was to bring Israeli reprisals on the town, ostensibly to destroy or damage it significantly, and to cause greater civilian suffering. Hizbullah's MO and tactics are well-known in the south. However, Druse typically defend their own villages, and in the case of Mari (a place I have been to several times, many of whose residents I know personally), the residents have desperately tried to keep Hizbullah fighters out of their area."

The help these Lebanese seek will not come from their Government, who have offered them no assistance whatsoever in evacuating the villages, despite repeated warnings from Israel. It seems that the metastasizing cancer has embedded itself so far into the Lebanese Government and the streets of Lebanon, that it has become a crying shame and an intolerable outrage for the MSM's continual refusal to unmask Hezbollah's methodical exploitation of civilian suffering; the despicable reality that every civilian casualty furthers their murderous course; that it is not in Hezbollah's interest to save lives, but instead to hype up each and every casualty to fuel hatred against Israel.

Why Does The Left Support The Palestinians Against Israel?

Click on image to enlarge

 

Dennis Prager

"Why does the left support the Palestinians against Israel?

The question is rarely asked. It is simply taken for granted that the left -- Europe, the Western news media, the universities, the liberal churches, the arts world -- supports the Palestinians and the larger Arab/Muslim worlds in their war against Israel.

But the question does need to be asked. For it is completely inconsistent with the left's professed values to side with Israel's enemies. Just about every value the left claims to uphold Israel upholds and its enemies do not.

The left speaks about its passion for democracy ("power to the people"). Yet it is Israel that is a fully functioning democracy, as opposed to all of its Arab and Muslim enemies. Yasser Arafat [was] precisely the self-aggrandizing, corrupt dictator-type that the left claims to hold in contempt.

The left claims to have particular concern for women's rights. Yet it is Israel that has as highly developed a feminist movement as that of any Western country. It is Israel that conscripted women into its armed forces before almost any Western country. At the same time, the state of women's rights among Israel's Muslim enemies is perhaps the lowest in the world.

The left's greatest current preoccupation is with gay rights. Yet it is Israel that has annual gay pride days, while Egypt and other Arab and Muslim countries arrest homosexuals.

It is Israel that has an independent and highly liberal judiciary. It is Israel that has a leftist press. It is Israel that has been governed more by leftist, even socialist, parties than by rightist ones. Israel's enemies have none of this.

So, why isn't the left out there leading pro-Israel demonstrations?

The answer is as important as it is contemptible.

The 'Moral Equivalence Brigade' Reign Supreme

"The Brazen Serpent" by Michelangelo 1511, Fresco, Cappella Sistina, Vatican

 

There is no question that the MSM machine is working very hard at producing over and over again the same images of the bodies of women and children taken out of the block of flats in Qana, rigor-mortis and all. It is an absolute public relations win hands down for Hezbollah, a coup d'état, and a set back in public opinion, which is now being milked for all its worth.

If only we had been shown the video of Hezbollah launching rockets either from or immediately next to blocks of flats

Israeli officials noted that the Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until hours after the collapse and only when the camera crews came. The rescue team then took out the bodies of children slowly for the camera crews.

Too late, it seems, because the images of the dead bodies being carried away from Qana are now repeated over and over again; the ratio would be 100-1 in favor of Hezbollah. No surprises there....Meanwhile, Liquid, points me to this (includes video)

Eshel and the head of the IDF's Operational Branch, Major General Gadi Eisnkot said the structure was not being attacked when it collapsed, at around 8:00 in the morning. The IDF believes that Hizbullah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse.

You have to give it to Hezbollah they know how to work the PR machine like a dream

As Ed Morrissey reminds us, "let's hear a little less moral outrage over Qana, and let's start hearing a lot more moral outrage over Hezbollah's tactics."

I watched intently the live broadcast of the UN Security Council's emergency meeting held in New York, and gritted my teeth throughout the scripted speech given by Kofi Annan and throughout the lies and distortions delivered by Nouhad Mahmoud of Lebanon; yet another shameful exhibition of utter bias and relentless refusal to condemn Hezbollah's actions. The Lebanese Prime Minister Fuoad Siniora fully backed him by expressing his 'gratitude' to Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah for "sacrificing their lives for the country."

As a breath of fresh air and sparkling sanity at the UN meeting, came the unscripted speech given by Israel's Dan Gillerman, [from my own notes] who in no uncertain terms named Hezbollah as the monster the Lebanese Government had allowed to spread its tentacles everywhere totally unchallenged; who would not have taken such a massive stronghold had they enforced resolution 1559 as they were obliged to do; that the atrocities carried out by the Hezbollah thugs would not have happened.

'Grapes Of Wrath' Revisited

 

UPDATE: Flopping Aces has the Fox news video

Finally, the damning images that prove that Hezbollah terrorist militiamen dressed in civilian clothes, who seem to have gathered an inordinate amount of support in Lebanon, have indeed been using civilian, mostly Christian neighborhoods as shields against Israeli attacks, and hiding and using weapons in a densely populated area.

The exclusive photographs smuggled out of Lebanon, were obtained by the Australian News Ltd. and published by their Sunday Mail here, and Sunday Herald Sun here. Why am I not surprised...

The Melbourne man who smuggled the shots out of Beirut told yesterday how he was less than 400m from the block when it was obliterated.

``Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets,'' he said.

``Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then it was totally devastated.

``After the attacks they didn't even allow the ambulances or the Lebanese Army to come in until they had cleaned the area, removing their rockets and hiding other evidence.

I am sorry for the horrific human suffering created in the bombing of Qana, southern Lebanon today, but if these people do not care for human life they endanger, why should Israel sacrifice their own which they do care about? Hezbollah has been using Qana as a base for launching hundreds of rockets at Israel, happily waiting for the bitter memory of the Operation Grapes of Wrath propaganda to do their dirty work for them. The people there should be horrified and disgusted at what Hezbollah are doing, and at the inability and unwillingness of their own cowardly Government to disarm Hezbollah, instead of allowing the MSM to portray Hezbollah as some kind of liberating heroes. Israel cannot be held accountable for loss of life in these circumstances.

Why is Israel to blame now? After all, Hezbollah has been planning this for six years...Enough already.

Orwellian Moral Universe On Shabbat Hazon

"The Prophet Isaiah" by Raphael 1511-12, Sant'Agostino, Rome

 

My thoughts today are with hundreds of thousands of Jews who have been forced to honor Shabbat Hazon in their cellars and bunkers, having left their homes behind, in the knowledge that on Shabbat Hazon the prophet Isaiah envisages the awful suffering that God will inflict upon the Jewish people for their transgressions against God, each other, and the Temple. What are these people meant to think is next in store for them? Did we so quickly forget the 'never again'? Shame on us...

Double Standard is a rule or principle that is unfairly applied in different ways to different people or groups.

There, right there is the problem. It sounds too dry, too civilized, too abstract. It's doesn't reflect the outrage and emotional charge inherent in the rabid anti-Semitism of 'one standard for everyone else, and then an impossible one for the Jews', displayed these past weeks.

However, this dry term describes the dilemma perfectly. Hezbollah, or rather Iranian rockets are maiming and killing ONLY innocent Israeli civilians, indiscriminately. Their rockets are ONLY fired to cause maximum terror amongst Israel's civilian population; that's their ONLY military and ideological goal. Whenever talk is of any of these murdering thugs, their goal to utterly destroy Israel must be repeated, over and over again. Yet, one is hard pressed to come across a report in the MSM or UN commentary which states these facts outright and without equivocation.

On the other hand, Israel warns the civilian population to evacuate the areas known to be Hezbollah strongholds before commencing surgical attacks. If it hadn't done so, the death toll would be hundred fold. Despite international consensus on Hezbollah's tactics to launch its murderous attacks from within densely populated civilian areas; despite international awareness, that Hezbollah terrorists don't wear uniforms, but instead do everything in their power to disguise themselves as aide workers, innocent civilians, medical personnel, you name it, even fake UNIFIL uniforms and vehicles; despite all of these and many more terrorist tactics, all of which do in fact constitute war crimes, a vast majority of the international community still insists on condemning Israel's only option to stop Hezbollah's terror as disproportionate and as 'war crimes'.

Charles Krauthammer sums it up in an article that is nothing short of brilliant:

'A Voice From The Grave'

"Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée (Exploding Raphaelesque Head)" by Salvador Dali 1951

 

An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan's initial accusation that Israel "deliberately" targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were "all over" the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel's target, the deceased observer wrote.

This is clear evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, which despite being an allusion to their tactics, is nothing unusual for an army of terrorist thugs. What is unacceptable is that a UN post repeatedly allows such clear violations to take place, endangering the lives of their men, despite obvious and repeated warnings from their forces.

The outrageous claim made by Kofi Annan that the Israeli bombing of a UN post, which resulted in four UN officials being killed, was "apparently deliberate", is simply preposterous. As I have said before, it defies all reason, how a UN official of Annan's standing dares to make such an open accusation. It seems to me that even more outrageous is the fact that despite clear evidence to the contrary as shown above, and Annan's attempt to backtrack, his spokesperson Marie Okabe claims he is defiantly standing by his accusation, and will not be retracting his assertion that Israel deliberately targeted the post.

What is not very helpful, but in this instance actually irrelevant, is the apparent tainted reputation of General Lewis MacKenzie, who was accused of raping four Bosnian women (scroll down for the full story) held by Serbian forces in a prison camp in a Sarajevo suburb, during his command as Canadian head of the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Can we lose any more respect for this organization whose mission is to revive, spread and fuel rabid anti-Semitism? I guess we can.

"I Agree With Howard Dean" There, I Said It...

 

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an "anti-Semite" for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel

"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."

Well Dean is right, sorry but he is. It may be for the wrong reasons, and his agenda is less than honest, but he is nevertheless right. So why I am not happy, I start questioning my motives...until this

....leading Senate Democrats said in a sharply worded letter that Al-Maliki's "failure to condemn Hezbollah's aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raises serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East."

Then I think all is all right with the world again, therein lies the motive...But still...

The Republican National Committee rejected Dean's criticism of Al-Maliki, saying, "It is incredibly troubling that Howard Dean would seek to score cheap political points by attacking the democratically elected prime minister of Iraq."

Well he might be democratically elected, but then so was Hamas. I don't care, I still don't like al-Maliki and I don't trust him. In this instance, I agree with Dean's sentiment. There, I said it. Maliki did not denounce Hezbollah, a terrorist organization who advocate the destruction of the State of Israel, or repudiate amnesty for Iraqis who killed Americans soldiers. This is not a man who should be honored right now, and I don't care what the Administration needs to prove to the American public regarding our successes in Iraq.

As for Dean's agenda I have left that for others to ravish.

Commander-In-Chief From Hell

 

"We are redefining our relations with the world," [Iranian] Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a television program last week. "We are managing our relations with other countries based on our national interests and the way we are treated (over the nuclear dispute)."

No surprise in this statement from the Iranian Mullahs last month when Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad was shoring up support from Russia and China during the Asian security summit in China.

But we better revisit such statements pre Hezbollah attack on July 12th, knowing that they knew what was coming. We'd better sharpen our awareness to the fact, that everything the terrorist thugs in Iran were saying and doing during the past 9-12 months was said and done with the full knowledge of the plan to lighten the fuse in the Middle East via their proxy Hezbollah army. This new perspective matters not only in relation to Israel but also to Iran's expansionist strategies for Iraq and the region as a whole.

In short, U.S. Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice's mission during her visit to the Middle East must be to diminish "the power of Hezbollah's supporters; i.e. Syria and Iran", as Aljazeera noted - it's refreshing to come across accurate reporting and analysis, with the only difference that Aljazeera is of course condemning the attempt to dismantle Hezbollah and to implement Security Council resolution 1559. Yeah right.....

If Iran failed to continue to be Hezbollah's protector and supporter, it is unlikely to preserve its current position and influence in the region, which, in the eyes of the U.S.  government, is a goal worth pursuing.

And if ever you needed proof that Israel has no other choice but to flatten Hezbollah's strongholds, which aren't army barracks or military compounds, but exclusively civilian residential areas, read this interview of what must be the most pathetic commander-in-chief in living memory, and a man who will NEVER touch Hezbollah's stronghold, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud:

I myself built up this army following the civil war and integrated all the religious groups: Muslims, Christians and Druze. This army is there to secure internal peace, but it is not an army to fight a war. [...]

Naturally the strongholds of the resistance are not known. [...]

The exchange of prisoners has always worked perfectly in the past. [...]

Hezbollah enjoys utmost prestige in Lebanon, because it freed our country. All over the Arab world you hear: Hezbollah maintains Arab honor, and even though it (Hezbollah) is very small, it stands up to Israel. And of course Nasrallah has my respect. [...]

We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. [...]

'Can We Get Over It Already?' We Are All Jews Now

'The Taking of Christ' by Caravaggio ca.1598 

 

I have written enough about Israel, the so called 'Palestine', and the whole mess in the Middle East, for everyone to know that I am fiercely pro-Israel. Realizing that the Arabs in Saudi are finally reaching an understanding of the realities facing the present conflict in the Middle East, it is uncanny to think that, sanity is prevailing, and the region is accepting that siding with extremists is going to get them killed at best, and let them be seen to be 'sleeping with the enemy' and then get killed anyway, at worst. I have said it before and I'll say it again: after nearly 40 years of pin-point targeted response to Arab rabid hostilities leading to this perverse situation where the West pays the Palestinian officials, synonymous with terrorism, billions of Dollars so that they can keep spitting into Israel's face, we have come a full circle.

It's time to point the spot-light not only back at Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad and his purpose for Hezbollah, but also at Russia's tacit support for the murdering Jihadists. As much as I know of Russians, they are all fiercely anti-Semitic, and arrogantly feel that they have never quite forgiven the Jews for giving up our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just so that we all understand each other, I am a devout Christian, and I am vehemently against the tyranny of Islamofascism. I am once again clarifying my stand in case my question below is misunderstood to mean that I am neither interested in the Christian faith nor what it stands for. Caravaggio's painting depicted above 'The Taking of Christ' tells the story, and my question is this: "Can We Get Over It Already?"

I give you one of my favorite quotes from Charles Moore @ The Telegraph published a while back, to be never more relevant as it is today

All I want to ask my fellow Europeans [and Americans] is this: are you happy to help direct the world's fury at the only country in the Middle East whose civilization even remotely resembles yours? And are you sure that the fate of Israel has no bearing on your own? In Iran, the new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes the link. The battle over Palestine, he says, is "the prelude of the battle of Islam with the world of arrogance", the world of the West. He is busy building his country's nuclear bomb."

'Hezbollah Runs Lebanon' And 'Hamas Ready To Cut A Deal'

 

According to an interview not publicized in the MSM, the Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah, is under the impression that he runs the Lebanese Government.

Having listened to the Lebanese PM Fuad Saniora several times, including his interview on Larry King the other day, I suspect he may be right. He speaks of the Hezbollah terrorists as respected members of the Government; he refers to them as freedom fighters: "The government considers the resistance a natural and honest expression of the Lebanese people’s national rights to liberate their land and defend their honor against Israeli aggression and threats”; giving the excuse that for years now the Israelis have been refusing to release three Lebanese prisoners, not thousands as the propaganda machine would have you believe.

As Larry King did not see fit to tell the PM, I should like to stress, that Israel will most certainly never release Samir Qantar, the murdering thug, who butchered in cold blood three Israelis in Nahariya, including a policeman and a four-year-old girl. That's the sort of criminal who has been elevated to hero status by the Hezbollah, and now also evidently by the Lebanese PM as cries foul on International television, expressing his outrage that such Lebanese prisoners should still be imprisoned; that they should be released, meaning of course, that Hezbollah's demand for prisioner exchange should be met as a result of the initial killing and kidnapping of IDF soldiers. Yeah right....!

Not in a single interview did I hear PM Saniora condemn Hezbollah, only repeating that they are a necessity created solely as a result of Israeli 'aggression'. No mention of their genocidal goal, the destruction of Israel, which they share of course with their masters in Iran and fellow terrorist thugs, Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Perhaps even ignorant of the fact that as of today, Hamas is keen to distance itself from the liability of Hezbollah, and with the help of Egypt broker a deal involving the release of Cpl. Shalit and a mutual ceasefire, providing of course they get the doubtful approval of their  Damascus leader, Khaled Meshal.

Fatah sources said that Hamas' Gaza leadership does not want its name mixed up with the fighting in Lebanon, especially in view of the sharp international criticism of Hezbollah.

Sorry, but the goal of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the goal of Hezbollah do not seem to differ all that much. Don't give me the lame excuse that he needs to appease 'extreme Hezbollah' elements in his country. The man hasn't uttered a single word condemning Hezbollah. He patently agrees with what they are doing, irrespective of the gentle words directed at him by Secretary Rice. He squarely blames Israel for all Lebanese civilian lives lost, not Iran, not Syria and clearly not their proxy thugs, Hezbollah.

"One Foot In Terror One Foot In Politics"

President Bush as Napoleon Bonaparte, flanked by Foreign Secretary Condoleezza Rice, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as The Angel, the original painting is 'Allegory on The Peace of Pressburg' by Andrea Appiani ca.1808 (its first debut being in my 'Rules of Engagement' post)

 

Sorry about not being able to post yesterday...one of those days straight from hell...and back.

I did however manage to follow the news, as world leaders, politicians and all of us were treated to a rare display of how immensely powerful and influential true leadership can be.

I am talking about the immediate dynamic created, producing a shift in tone and attitude almost all news channels underwent immediately after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's press conference (transcript). Moments later, everywhere I looked, Rice's message had been picked up to confront Arab leaders in hitherto unprecedented clarity and directness.

Pointing to the problem that "1559 anticipated of having groups within the political process that have one foot in terror and one foot in politics. It's not sustainable over the long run. But I think the immediate problem is to get back into a political framework that can allow Lebanon to start to reassert its sovereignty."

Despite Secretary Rice being repeatedly barraged with questions as to whether she was concerned that the delay in halting the fighting and the loss of many civilian lives in Lebanon will hamper the efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, she relentlessly stood by her message that despite being concerned about civilian casualties, a ceasefire on its own was simply not good enough "...The unfortunate fact is that if we don't do this right, if we don't create political conditions that allow an end to the violence to also deal with the root cause, deal with the circumstances that produced this violence, then we're going to be back here in several months more."

Shortly after the press conference, CNN's Becky Anderson put it straight to a Syrian Foreign Minister spokesperson: "When will you stop using Hezbollah as your proxy army?"

It is now 10 days since Hezbollah abducted the two IDF soldiers and  killed eight others. Much has been said about the conflict, mostly centering around Israel's military actions and the impact for Lebanese civilians. But not until Secretary Rice spelled out, what everyone had known for 10 days, in her customary clear and unvarnished language, did the MSM pick up the beacon of truth and let it shine into the faces of those who constantly seek to obfuscate it. Will it last? Of course not, but it momentarily changed the overall tone considerably towards a more balanced approach.

It was a pleasure to watch and listen to. Diplomatic daylight may not be too far away, despite The-Thug-In-Chief having written to Germany's Chancellor Merkel, revealing his all too obvious, agenda

Just Cause

 

From The Editor-In-Chief of the Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, who seems to have an inordinate amount of understanding of the realities facing the present conflict in the Middle East, and the necessity for Israel to do the job of significantly weakening if not eliminating the terrorists, which in effect benefits the entire region. (h/t Dave)

People of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in the name of “resisting Israel.” Arab governments have been caught between political obligations and public opinion leading to more corruption in politics and economics. Forgetting the interests of their own countries the Hamas Movement and Hezbollah have gone to the extent of representing the interests of Iran and Syrian in their countries. These organizations have become the representatives of Syria and Iran without worrying about the consequences of their action.

Recently Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier and bombed Israeli settlements with locally manufactured missiles. Soon Hezbollah followed suit, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Both these organizations claimed they had kidnapped Israeli soldiers to exchange them for Arab prisoners who are being held in Israeli jails. The fact that Hamas and Hezbollah gave the same reason for kidnapping Israeli soldiers gives us a glimpse [of] their agenda, which is similar to the one followed by Syria and Iran in their conflict with the United States.

While the people of Palestine and Lebanon are paying the price of this bloody conflict, the main players, who caused this conflict, are living in peace and asking for more oil from Arab countries to support the facade of resisting Israel. With the Palestinian Authority close to collapse and the Lebanese government beginning to give up responsibility for what is happening in its territory, Saudi Arabia has been forced to come out of its diplomatic routine and indirectly hold Hezbollah responsible for what is happening Lebanon.

UN's Global Mission: Reviving, Spreading And Fueling Rabid Anti-Semitism

 

As we hold our breath, watching Israel's struggle for security and peace, we also witness, yet again, how she is held to a much more onerous standard than the rest of the world; the classic definition of anti-Semitism: one standard for everyone else, and then an impossible one for the Jews.

And the UN is leading the charge as the usual suspects apply the same old double standards when it comes to judging what statements or attitudes constitute 'anti-Semitism' in comparison to, say, 'racism' against African-Americans. Imagine the outcry, if during an official UN "anti-racism" summit the 'Lawyer's Union of the Southern States' would distribute flyers with a picture of the Confederate Battle flag and the inscription, "What if we had won? The good thing—there would be no Civil Rights Act of 1871 and no Monroe v. Pape." Now, what do you think Al Sharpton would do....

You ask, who is the 'Lawyer's Union of the Southern States'? Pure invention of mine and solely to put the terribly biased conduct of the UN into context: The 'Arab Lawyer’s Union', freely distributed at the UN's "anti-racism" summit in Durban, South Africa, just before 9/11 flyers with a picture of Hitler and the words, "What if I had won? The good thing—there would be no Israel"; they freely distributed books containing cartoons of swastika-festooned Israelis and fanged, hooked-nosed Jews, blood dripping from their hands.

How could that have been allowed to take place and why did the conference’s secretary-general, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson ignore demands to remove this anti-Semitic literature.

How come that we are now being force-fed the same one-sided reporting and UN rhetoric, much like UN’s response to Israeli military incursion into the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002? 

The conclusion, "the UN has fashioned itself into perhaps the foremost global platform for anti-Semitism", to use Anne Bayefsky's words from her damning essay, 'The UN and the Jews'.

This indifference to anti-Semitism has been mirrored by the UN’s growing refusal over the decades to support the principle of self-determination for the Jewish people—that is, Zionism. The irony, of course, is that the UN General Assembly was very much present at the creation of the state of Israel, having endorsed the postwar partition plan for British-ruled Palestine. But much has changed since 1948.

In general, and in the abstract, the UN has remained committed to the ideal of self-governing nation-states. As one characteristic declaration of the General Assembly puts it, "All peoples have a right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development." Indeed, over the years, the UN has developed and extended the principles of self-determination, which are now taken to entail not just the basic right of political independence but guarantees of non-interference by other nations, a realm of domestic jurisdiction and national sovereignty, and the preservation of historical, cultural, and religious particularities.

The Juan Cole 'Bush-Israel' Derangement Syndrome

 

The arrogant and notoriously anti-Israeli Professor and Blogger Juan Cole, somewhat of a hero in the Liberal Blogosphere, has "come away from [listening to the President's unguarded comments yesterday @ G8 summit] shaken and trembling", the President's comments being "a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth."

"Shaken and trembling?" Umh, especially when in another breath, or should I say post, he accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing, which TPM's John McCutchen extends to "a 60 year ethnic cleansing campaign." I have left the talented Tiger Hawk to tear Dr. Cole apart for that moment of sheer lunacy. It is not the first time The Professor is "caught in the act of being himself", but each time it seems his constitution is less able to deal with his unwarranted superciliousness and condescension, not to mention rampant anti-Semitism. Scott Johnson @ Powerline quite rightly concludes on the matter "The adage that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt may apply here." Addressing a man who passed "disgusting comments about "Jewish American Likudniks,"his implications regarding the dual loyalties of Jewish American neo-conservatives, or comments displaying his public vulgarity" Scott is being too kind.

Presumably the Liberal 'standard issue' hysterical anti-Israeli propaganda, coupled with the usual Bush Derangement Syndrome, and the odd conspiracy theory is enough for The Professor to pull out the anti-hyperventilation paper bags in his never ending quest to be on the decidedly wrong side of every issue .

The Devil's Arithmetic Part II

 

BREAKING: Israel sends ground forces into Lebanon.

Having written probably the longest post in the history of ATB with The Devil's Arithmetic over the weekend, I felt I owed my readers a certain respite...like a shorter Part II...lol

It's good to be reminded again 'Why They Fight': "Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake."

It was Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization that convinced the world that the issue was occupation. Yet, through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.

Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories." [...]

In 1967 Israel acquired the "occupied territories." In 1948 Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the "genocidal Islamism" (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.

You'd think that there isn't a sane person around who disputes these basic facts.

Ah, you'd be wrong (h/t Michael van der Galien).... and be tempted to join the glorious ranks of Hezbollah after reading this.

What relief then, when for a change the fingers are pointed at the real culprits:

Western Europeans lament the fact that the Bush administration, its energies sapped by the Iraq war, has not shown much appetite for the shuttle diplomacy that brokered the last Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire in 1996. But if France and others had not undermined sanctions on Iraq in the late 1990s, the case for the military alternative would have been weaker -- and the war might not have happened.

Even today, many of these freeloaders see mayhem in Iraq as America's problem. You'd think that chaos in a major oil exporter, with the potential to seed extremism all over the Middle East, would alarm all responsible governments. But the freeloaders think it's a joke. Pressed over the weekend about democracy in Russia, Vladimir Putin quipped that he didn't want a democracy like Iraq's.

How encouragingly unusual to hear the WaPo cut through the chase:

In all the diplomacy, the false lure of "evenhandedness" must not be allowed to obscure the fact that Hezbollah and its backers have instigated the current fighting and should be held responsible for the consequences.

But nothing beats our President's unguarded no-nonsense remarks - with the mike accidentally left on whilst in St.Petersburg @ the G8 summit. You tell'em, ahem, and the rest of the world (h/t Michael van der Galien) Video here (sorry but C&L have the better video)

"What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over..." [speaking to Blair]

"Well, I don't like the sequence of it," Bush said. Referring to Annan, the president added, "His attitude is basically ceasefire and everything else happens." [...]

[Returning] to the subject of Annan. "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad, make something happen," the president said, referring to Syrian President Bashir Assad. "We're not blaming Israel and we're not blaming the Lebanese government."

Bush also told Blair of his plans to dispatch Rice to the Middle East to address the crisis. "She's going," Bush said. "I think Condi's going to go pretty soon."