THERE WAS never any chance for peace because the Palestinians have no interest in making peace with Israel. As the West's favorite Palestinian "moderate," Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with Egypt's Dream TV on October 23, "I've said it before and I'll say it again. I will never recognize the 'Jewishness' of the State [of Israel] or a 'Jewish state.'" That is, Abbas will never make peace with Israel.

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So why do the likes of Sarkozy and Obama hate Netanyahu? Why is he "a liar?" Why don't they pour out their venom on Abbas, who really does lie to them on a regular basis? The answer is because they prefer to blame Israel rather than acknowledge that their positive assessments of the Palestinians are nothing more than fantasy.

And they are not alone. The Western preference for fantasy over reality was given explicit expression by former US president Bill Clinton in September.

Well congratulations America. The Obama has just lined up the United States with all the third world, repressive, dictatorial countries such as Syria, Libya, Iran, and others that routinely attack Israel and America as well.

Can you imagine that?

Where once the United States was a beacon of democracy, and known for standing up for what was right, in just two years the Obama will have dragged the country down to what is probably the lowest moral point in its history.

The Obama has given notice that he will allow all these third world countries unbridled permission and US support to attack the only true, functioning democracy in the Middle East.

The Obama has said that the defense of a fellow democracy is negotiable and on the chopping block.

However, what seems to be troubling me most is that she (Helen Thomas) is far from alone in giving voice to feelings which, for the sake of decorum, had traditionally been left for when the staff is out of earshot.

Take for example the instantaneous reaction to the Gaza flotilla raid. Before the ships had even made port there was blanket and universal condemnation from Europe, Scandinavia, the third world... and, of course, the rest of the Middle East. These statements stopped just short of accusing the IDF soldiers of harvesting the dead 'activists' organs and baking matzoh with their blood.

There was no responsible wait for solid information... no search for facts or confirmation... but rather, like an obituary that has been diligently prepared in advance, the condemnations were issued pro-forma at the first whisper of trouble so as not to miss the tide of international bile.

Likewise, the near universal outcry for an independent inquiry of the event is as predictable as it is troubling. Would any European or Asian power submit to an international inquiry of its military missteps or accidents? Would the U.S.? Would England? For that matter, I can't name one country that in recent memory has willingly submitted to such outside review of its actions?

The U.S., Russia as well as many of the European and Asian powers have all had spectacular screw ups on the battlefield, as well as in pursuit of their national defense, whose civilian death tolls far exceeded that of the current Gaza flotilla snafu. Yet each time one of these countries stumbles, as transparent, sovereign nations they are allowed to investigate themselves, learn their lessons and share their findings with the world at a pace that suits them.

Israel, on the other hand, is expected to submit its conduct, it's political/diplomatic decisions and in many cases its very sovereignty, to immediate international oversight... as if our very existence is in some way conditioned upon the tolerance and largess of others.

I'm writing for some clarification about how we are supposed to cover the Gaza flotilla story. If we, as a news organization, are supposed to be acting as a public relations arm of Hamas, or Hezbollah, both internationally recognized terrorist organizations,  or if we are supposed to be  jumping on the bandwagon of 1930's style anti-Semitism that's presently sweeping much of the world, then we are doing a fine job. If we are supposed to be acting as a news organization that covers the story objectively, then our coverage is a travesty and an embarrassment.

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In addition, remarkably, her piece made no mention – absolutely none — of the Israeli perspective in this story. For example:

The widely aired (though not here) video that clearly shows an IDF soldier being tossed over a railing, and others being beaten with sticks, was omitted.

The fact that bullet proof vests and night vision goggles were found among the "humanitarian aid" on the ship was omitted.

IDF video of confiscated knives and metal bars that were apparently used as weapons was omitted.

Information that Israeli soldiers were also wounded and injured was omitted.

Moreover, her piece included no background whatsoever on why Israel's interception ("attack" as we called it ) of the flotilla would likely have passed muster in any court outside the thug-ridden United Nations.

The NY Times currently has a story up on the front page of its website with the following headline:

4 Divers Killed Near Gaza by Israeli Navy

Judging from the headline, I would guess that since the Israeli Navy has not had its fill of violence after it killed nine humanitarian activists from the Freedom Flotilla, they decided to murder four Gazan citizens whose only crime was to go diving in an area that Israel had claimed to be part of their blockade. Such evil Israelis.

However, if you go into the actual article, you will read the following:

At least four Palestinians suspected by Israel of planning an attack via the sea were killed near the Gaza coast early on Monday. The Israeli military said that an Israeli naval force spotted what it called a “squad of terrorists wearing diving suits” and fired on them, killing some of the suspects.

Well, that changes things a little bit. It seems that the Israeli Navy spotted a "squad of terrorists wearing diving suits" in the water and fired on them. Though the selective use of quotation marks here shows how much trust the NY Times will put in the IDF.

How was this event reported in other news sources:

• Jerusalem Post: IDF Foils Attack Close to Gaza
• Haaretz: Israel Navy Fires on Armed Palestinians off of Gaza Coast
• CNN: Israel Kills 4 Palestinians off Gaza in foiled terror attack
• Al Reuters: Israeli patrol kills four militants in diving gear

The CNN article adds in another pertinent detail:

Al Aqsa -- the armed wing of Fatah, Hamas' rival -- confirmed the men belonged to their organization and were on a suicide mission.

And just for reference, here is the official statement by the IDF Spokesperson blog:

Terrorist Attack Thwarted by Israel Navy, 7 June 2010 - Earlier this morning, an Israel Navy force in the area of Nuseirath identified a squad of terrorists wearing diving suits on their way to execute a terror attack. The force fired and hit the terrorists. No casualties were reported amongst IDF forces.

Ok. So the IDF found a group of armed men in diving suits off of the Gaza coast, in a place where they really should not be. They killed some of the suspects. No details are available yet on exactly how this transpired. However, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (which is recognized by Israel and the US as a terrorist organization, and yet is part of the same Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas with whom the US is so insistent that Israel give away land to and make peace with) have confirmed that these men belonged to their organization and were on a suicide mission (a different article from The Sun quotes Al Aqsa as having said that the men were part of their organization and were training at sea - I don't think that this makes much of a difference, as we know exactly what they were training for).

So now that that has been established, why the completely misleading headline from the NY Times, which lacks any context whatsoever that would tell more about the identity of the Palestinians other than that they were divers.

Lest we think that the NY Times is the only organization that writes such blatantly anti-Israel headlines (in my opinion, the deliberate exclusion of context from the headline, and the use of language that implies that Israel has murdered innocent people out for a swim, is as anti-Israel as it gets), here are some more of the same:

• Associated Press: Four Palestinian Divers Killed by Israeli Naval Fire
• The Sun: Israel Navy Kills 4 Gaza divers
• The Boston Globe: Israeli navy kills Palestinian divers off Gaza
• FOXNews: Israeli Navy Fires at Palestinian Divers off Gaza, 5 Killed
• The Daily Telegraph: Israel navy shoots, kills four Palestinian divers off Gaza

None of these headlines are telling lies, yet all of them are presenting a skewed version of the truth. The reader who only sees the headline and does not click through will receive a completely different message from what is written in the actual stories.

I have copied all of the headlines as they appear at the time that this article is first published. I expect that some of these headlines will change over time, and it is quite likely that as more details are released that the general tone of some or all of these headlines will shift to include more descriptions of the divers like "armed", "militant" or "terrorist". However, that will not change the fact that these different news organizations act in an irresponsible (at best) or blatantly and intentionally anti-Israel (at worst) manner when they choose to introduce and headline their content in this way.

One picture cropped to remove a knife might be explained as incompetence or a simple mistake.

But now we have two pictures from the "peace activists" that were cropped by someone at Reuters to remove knives in the hands of the activists, as they attempted to take soldiers hostage.

Had the mainstream media been truly brave, outlets could have given full context, namely that the blockade of Gaza targets the Hamas government and is a joint enterprise of both Israel and Egypt.

There is no "humanitarian crisis," as claimed by the flotilla's propaganda, given that approximately 100 aid trucks enter Gaza every day. "Throughout the last few months," according to the Israel Defense Forces website, "more than 1,200 tons of medicine and medical equipment, 155 tons of food, 2,900 tons of shoes and clothing and 17 million liters of diesel fuel were transferred in to the Gaza Strip."

The "crisis" that is brewing in Gaza is Hamas' failing political status. Worsening economic conditions - a direct result of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade - have seriously undermined Hamas' standing. Media reports out of Gaza in recent months indicate that Hamas can't meet its government payroll, and ordinary Gazans are on edge.

Not surprisingly, few of these facts found their way into the mainstream media's coverage.

Read the rest of the link where they rip into coverage from the AP, Washington Post and NY Times.

Israel of course is the US's most threatened ally. And Obama's treatment of Israel has been uniquely shabby--and dangerous. Guided by his ideological worldview which argues that US support for Israel is the root of the Arab and Islamic world's animus towards the US, Obama has advanced a policy of punishing Israel and wooing its worst enemies that has radically changed the Islamic power calculus. By seeking to appease Iran and Syria for their aggressive behavior and by courting an ever more radical Turkish regime, Obama has humiliated Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties with Israel. In so doing, he has convinced the Arabs that the only way to retain and expand their power is by attacking Israel.

THIS BRINGS US to Israel's current quandary about how to respond to the international campaign against it. Israel of course can do nothing to change the potency of Jew hatred in the Islamic world. It can also do nothing to change American behavior. For as long as Obama is president, US foreign policy can be expected to remain on its current trajectory. That is, for at least the next two and a half years, the US will continue to play a destabilizing and hostile role in the region.

What this means is that Israel should adopt a strategy that minimizes the international lynch mob's ability to get close to it and maximizes Israel's ability to knock the mob off balance.

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And as to that campaign, it is time for Israel to launch a counter-offensive. Its representatives at the UN should demand an investigation into Turkey's illegal sponsorship of the pro-Hamas flotilla. They should raise such protests at every UN forum and continue to protest until they are thrown out of the meetings and then return, the next day to relaunch their protests.

Incorrect reports in Israel's largest newspaper and the well known Foreign Policy publication in the United States this week illustrate how the Arab world manipulates the United States to gain concessions and place the world's ills on Israel's shoulders. This time their target was also American public opinion.

Foreign Policy's correspondent Mark Perry, a former advisor to Yasser Arafat, added his own spin to statements by U.S.CENTOM Commander General David Petraeus', in an article called: The Petraeus Briefing; Biden's Embarrassment is not the Whole Story, so that the General's statements seemed to blame Israel for casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the general never said that.

Today, I happened to spend a bit of time looking at Google logos (a/k/a Google Doodles) -- those adorable, themed logos that Goggle releases in honor of various holidays and anniversaries. Curious as to whether Google noted Israeli or Jewish holidays, I used the search function on the logo page to search for Israel.

I then clicked through the results, and discovered something extremely disturbing. In each case where I clicked a time period to see the logos for that time period, the Israeli logos that were supposedly on the page (and that had been picked up by the search engine) were not on the current page. And yet, when I clicked through to the cached version of the page, the Israeli logos were there. At some point, the current versions of the pages had been purged of all Israeli/Jewish logos -- and only those logos.

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In each case, the Israeli/Jewish logos -- and no other logo of any other nation or ethnic group -- have been deleted from the current version of the page, an Orwellian Bowdlerization designed, it would appear, to make out of Israel an unperson.

The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost the case for Israel.

Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel. Obama wishes to pressure Israel to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.

TO DATE, Obama's loudest demand has been to officially prohibit all Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Although the demand is intrinsically bigoted, illegal and immoral, and although the consequences of the expulsion of all Jews from Gaza in 2005 show that Israeli land giveaways and ethnic cleansing bring war not peace, the Netanyahu government has opted not to get into an open confrontation with the administration on the issue.

Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have sought to treat Obama's offensive as a routine disagreement between otherwise close allies. Rather than defending the principles of Jewish national, legal and human rights and the country's right to security, Netanyahu has sought to reach an accommodation with Obama by reducing the discussion to a conversation about the inevitable natural growth of Jewish communities due to expanding families.

But what Obama's slavish devotion to his radical world view shows is that Netanyahu's decision to seek an accommodation is not simply an exercise in futility, it is a recipe for disaster. Obama and his advisers do not care that Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world. They do not care that by arguing for a complete halt in "natural" growth, they are effectively adopting a eugenics argument the likes of which no US policy-maker has dared to advance since before the Holocaust. They are looking to fight because they believe that the US is best served by fighting with its allies - particularly with Israel. Any concession Netanyahu makes will just form the basis for the next round of demands.

The overall Obama policy will be to push Israel to the brink, using financial and military blackmail against the Netanyahu government, while maintaining control over American Jews to prevent any protests or backtalk.

The more Israel will offer, the more the Obama Administration will tighten the screws. No offer will be good enough, and Israel will be blamed for every breakdown in talks and every bit of violence that takes place. The media will portray Israel and particularly Netanyahu as extremist and intransigent. Hamas will be slowly whitewashed in the media, the same way that Arafat's goons were, (assuming that they prove more willing to cooperate in creating a positive media image of themselves than Ahmadinejad is.)

The plan is to destroy Israel, and to do it by pushing Israel to the edge of the cliff and then over the cliff. Israel's enemies will be getting top of the line US military equipment. Israel will not. Israel will be squeezed economically until the Netanyahu government collapses, leaving a weak left wing leader like Livni in charge of Israel, and in charge of acceding to the new Pharaoh's demands.

Meanwhile so-called American Jewish groups will support Obama all the way, some because they were created precisely for that purpose, e.g. J-Street, and others because they have been hijacked, cowed or subverted.

The core tenets of the Obama Doctrine to date would make a charter member of the Weather Underground cheer:

We're to blame. If there are problems anywhere, they're America's fault. This central conviction of leftist ideology appears to have soaked so thoroughly into our president's consciousness during his lengthy friendships with extremists that it's now second nature to him.

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Islamist terrorism doesn't exist. The term's even been banned from government departments. As Muslim extremists slaughter innocent victims by the thousands, we're assured Islam's a "religion of peace" that contributed profoundly to our country's development. (Huh?)

It's as if 9/11 never happened. The "nonterrorists" drenching the greater Middle East in blood and threatening us as loudly as they can are just victims of our aggression. It's all our fault.

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Israel's the obstacle to Middle East peace. Palestinians are all victims. Hamas consists of struggling community activists. The terrorists are in the Israeli military.

Our nukes threaten world peace and we need to get rid of them. Other states only maintain or seek nuclear arsenals because we worry them. If we can get down to zero nukes, peace will reign on earth.

As the Arabs line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to reports published last week in Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, President Barack Obama's in-house post-Zionist, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, told an American Jewish leader that for Israel to receive the administration's support for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it must not only say that it supports establishing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, it must begin expelling its citizens from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria to prove its good faith.

With just months separating Iran from either joining the nuclear club or from being barred entry to the clubhouse, the Obama administration's apparent obsession with Judea and Samaria tells us that unlike Israel and the Arab world, its Middle East policies are based on a willful denial of reality.

Oy, oy and more oy.

Of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inflames the Muslim world in a way the Chechen one does not. But why is that, when so many more Muslims are being victimized by Russia?

Then too, why does the wider world participate in the Muslim world's moral priorities?...Why does every Israeli prime minister invariably become a global pariah, when not one person in a thousand knows the name of Chechen "President" Ramzan Kadyrov, a man who, by many accounts, keeps a dungeon near his house in order to personally torture his political opponents?

I have a hypothesis. Maybe the world attends to Palestinian grievances but not Chechen ones for the sole reason that Palestinians are, uniquely, the perceived victims of the Jewish state. That is, when they are not being victimized by other Palestinians. Or being expelled en masse from Kuwait. Or being excluded from the labor force in Lebanon. Things you probably didn't know about, either. As for the Chechens, too bad for their cause that no Jew will ever likely become president of Russia.

While the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose death toll figures have been widely cited, reports that 895 Gaza civilians were killed in the fighting, amounting to more than two-thirds of all fatalities, the IDF figures shown to the Post on Sunday put the civilian death toll at no higher than a third of the total.

...

As an example of such distortion, he cited the incident near a UN school in Jabalya on January 6, in which initial Palestinian reports falsely claimed IDF shells had hit the school and killed 40 or more people, many of them civilians.

In fact, he said, 12 Palestinians were killed in the incident - nine Hamas operatives and three noncombatants. Furthermore, as had since been acknowledged by the UN, the IDF was returning fire after coming under attack, and its shells did not hit the school compound.

Amnesty purports to be "deeply concerned about the escalation of human rights abuses following the series of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip that began on December 27th," but it fails to mention nearly all of them...Other than a pro forma reference to Hamas' indiscriminate rocket attacks, Amnesty's letter mentions none of these facts, nor any of the other human rights abuses Hamas has inflicted upon the Palestinian population under its control in Gaza, such as restrictions on religious practice, speech and due process.

Instead, Amnesty bristles at imaginary Israeli wrongdoing. Amnesty writes that "aid agencies and residents of Gaza have long ago run out of provision reserves due to the Israeli blockade" just two days after the UN's World Food Program informed the Israel Defense Forces that it would not be resuming shipment of food commodities to Gaza through Israeli crossings because WFP warehouses were already at full capacity...

(Thanks to alkimija for the reference)

Wednesday's New York Times included an appalling, sickening article in which the 'gray lady' attempted to turn Lebanese mass murderer Samir al-Kuntar - who bashed in the head of 4-year old Einat Haran HY"D with a rifle butt - into a victim of a 'difficult childhood'. In the process, the Times also pretends that Kuntar landed on the beach in Nahariya in the middle of the night 29 years ago intending to have a barbacue or a cup of tea with its residents rather than inteding to murder as many Jews as possible.

That raid went horribly wrong, leaving five people dead, a community terrorized and a nation traumatized. Two Israeli children and their father were among those killed.

Note that the Times says "five people dead." But Kuntar was only responsible for four murders: Policeman Eliyahu Shahar and Danny Haran, who were both shot by Kuntar, 4-year old Einat Haran, whose head Kuntar bashed in with a rifle butt, and 2-year old Yael Haran who suffocated while hiding from Kuntar in a crawl space. The fifth person who died that night? One of the terrorists. In the despicable leftist universe of the New York Slimes, the terrorists and their victims are all the same.

Yesterday the French appeals court vindicated Phillipe Karsenty in his accusations against French Channel 2 that they had falsified and deliberately misreported the death of Muhammad Al-Dura. Karsenty had the following to say:

Today a French court ruled that I did not defame France 2 when I said that its news report was a staged hoax. Because I refused to be brainwashed, I was sued for defamation.

Our victory today was a victory for freedom — the freedom to think and to speak one's mind; the freedom to question what one is told; and the freedom to disbelieve the solemn pronouncements of others when the individual concludes that his reasoning is correct and that the state and the state-run media — and all of the institutions they represent — are wrong.

The al-Dura lie is an assault on our ability to think, to criticize, to evaluate, and finally to reject information — especially the right to reject information on which we base our most cherished assumptions. One of Europe's most cherished assumptions is that Israel is a vicious Nazi-like entity that deliberately murders Palestinian Arab children. Moreover, polls conducted in Europe have identified Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, greater than Iran and North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. The al-Dura hoax is one of the pillars on which these assumptions rely.

I have written about the Al-Dura case previously.

This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian "refugee problem" forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars pressed by Israel's alleged victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-1950's, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation, and his findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most influential of Israel's revisionist "new historians," and one who went out of his way to establish the case for Israel's "original sin," grudgingly stipulated that there was no "design" to displace the Palestinian Arabs.

The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel's early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the "new historians," paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record. They reveal that the claim of dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What follows is based on fresh research into these documents, which contain many facts and data hitherto unreportedblockquote>

It was quite a day for Israel haters: At the same time that the Human Rights Council voted in Falk, it announced that Jean Ziegler, from Switzerland, had been elected to its advisory committee. Ziegler is on record for, among other things: claiming members of the Israel Defense Forces are no different than concentration camp guards; embracing a discredited Holocaust denier; rejecting the notion that Hizbullah engages in terrorism; and justifying the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. It's not difficult to imagine the type of "advice" he will give to the Council.

The Falk and Ziegler appointments are all the more troublesome because their bigotries were well-known to those on the Council. Pro-Israel activists strongly protested, urging members of the Council to reject their appointments. Despite - or more likely, because of - their anti-Zionist positions, the pair were welcomed with open arms. In the end, the prospect of further reinforcing the UN's animus toward Israel was just too delicious to pass up. It is hard to interpret the Council's actions as anything other than an endorsement of noxious views which, in any civilized and objective forum, would be rejected out of hand.
...

Let's give credit, however, where credit is due: one certainly cannot accuse the UN of being inconsistent. Whenever there's a chance to stick it to Israel, rest assured that leading the charge will be bureaucrats from the UN.

No translation necessary.

The refusal of the Palestinian Authority to acknowledge Israel as a legitimate Jewish state isn't a denial of reality; it is a sign of their determination to change that reality. Like Arab leaders going back a century, they seek not to live in peace with the Jewish state, but in place of the Jewish state. Olmert can show up at Annapolis bearing Palestinian sovereignty on a silver platter, with half of Jerusalem thrown in for good measure. He will not walk away with peace. On the contrary: He will intensify the Arab determination to replace the world's one Jewish state with its 23rd Arab state.

The key to Arab-Israeli peace is not Palestinian statehood. It is to compel the Arab world to abandon its dream of liquidating Israel. As a matter of national self-respect, Olmert should repeat his demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity - and make it nonnegotiable. If Israel cannot insist even on so fundamental a point of honor, it has already lost more than it knows.

Way back in the very beginning of the most recent intifada in Israel, a boy name Muhammad al-Dura was killed during a battle between IDF forces and terrorists. A reporter from French Channel 2 who was not even at the scene gave a voice over on a short clip saying that the shots that had struck the boy had come from the Israeli position. However, after-the fact, it is not at all clear that Israel was the shooter. According to some, the whole thing was a setup by the Arabs there in order to get world sympathy for their cause and condemnation of Israel (this worked extremely well - Al Dura, along with Tuvia Grossman became the poster child's for the Palestinian cause, and are used heavily in propaganda to this day.

A French blogger named Philippe Karsenty called out Channel 2 on the story, saying that their original broadcast was fraudulent, and intentionally misleading. Channel 2 sued Karsenty for libel and won a symbolic verdict (1 Euro in damages). After appeal, two weeks ago Channel 2 was finally ordered to turn over the raw footage - 27 minutes worth, versus the few seconds that were edited out to show to the world - to the judge for viewing (in an amazing display of French justice, the first judge to rule on the libel case without ever viewing the material that was the subject of the libel). It is yet to be seen whether or not they will comply with this order and what the full raw footage would show.

Philippe Karsenty just gave a press conference in New York to discuss his case and the evidence he had to back up his statements. Out of the whole press corps, one French journalist and one American journalist showed up. Pamela Geller, of the Atlas Shrugged website was the American journalist. Here is what she had to say:

What if you exposed a great lie, a lie so big that it set off a war - and you held a press conference to expose that lie and no one came? The worst blood libel of this young century.

Welcome to the 21st century.

The incitement for the violent second intifada and The justification of the cold blooded beheading of Daniel Pearl, the explosive allegations and detailed evidence blows the Pali ruse right out of the water.

The left wing jihad loving media covered the lie, perpetrated the charade - incited the jihad but scurry like rats when called to account.

See her site for a full video of the press conference (where she asks all the questions). More commentary from Carl in Jerusalem.

If roles were reversed, and Jewish-owned media in Israel was caught in a dubious position, was accused of setting up the Palestinians to look like they were firing at an Israeli youngster when they really had not, and was not able to defend itself, and the whole thing was brought to light by some Palestinian blogger who did their own research, do you think in that case that no one from the media would show up.

(I guess that is a bad example, since the world media doesn't really care if the Palestinian terrorists try to deliberately kill Israeli children, or their own...but you get my drift).

CNN's "God's Warriors," hosted by Christiane Amanpour, is a three-part series intended to examine the growing role of religious fundamentalism in today's world. Unfortunately, the first program in the series, "God's Jewish Warriors," is one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years. It is false in its basic premise, established in the opening scene in which Jewish (and Christian) religious fervency is equated with that of Muslims heard endorsing "martyrdom," or suicide-killing. There is, of course, no counterpart among Jews and Christians to the violent jihadist Muslim campaigns underway across the globe, either in numbers of perpetrators engaged or in the magnitude of death and destruction wrought.

(I guess according to CNN, I am one of God's Warriors. Yippee)

Rafa, Gaza - Four Israeli soldiers were killed in pitched battles with Hamas-inspired militants at a Palestinian refugee camp on Sunday as the worst fighting in the past year overtook Gaza.

Security sources said 15 more soldiers were wounded in the fighting with Hamas militants at Maghazi camp. There was no immediate word on militant casualties.

The army has pushed slowly into the camp, fighting close-quarter battles with Hamas militants after bombarding its positions with artillery and tank fire to try to force the group to surrender.

Witnesses said the army concentrated its latest artillery shelling on pockets still held by Hamas near the camp's main road and the northeastern area.

The camp, home to 40,000 refugees before the hostilities, has been completely destroyed and it was expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild. Its residents have sought shelter in other Palestinian refugee camps.

Yet another atrocity by the Israel Defense Forces. While responding to missile fire into Israel by Hamas terrorist cells, they managed to completely destroy a Palestinian refugee camp, leaving 40,000 people homeless.

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The story above is almost true. To see the real version, check out this story from Reuters. Or if you don't want to leave this page, substitute "Lebanese" for "Israeli", and "Al Qaeda" (or some other terrorist group" for "Hamas" (as well as the geographical locations) in the above excerpt.

Question: how shocked and appalled at Israel's alleged barbarism were you before reading the previous paragraph? Did you accept the story that Israel completely destroyed a refugee camp home to 40,000 people? (Israel actually has a history of putting its own soldiers at risk instead of just carpet bombing a residential area where terrorists are hiding).

Why is this article buried in all of the newspapers (the headline itself is that 4 Lebanese soldiers were killed - the fact that the Lebanese army completely destroyed the camp is only a number of paragraphs into the article)? Why doesn't the world care about the Palestinian "refugees" now?

[The June 27] New York Times carries a review of a film called "Hot House" that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background is here.

Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment's attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties - Hamas saw to that.

Search the CNN Web page for "Jerusalem" and here are the results:

[image listing the following locations:]

• Jerusalem, null
• Jerusalem, OH
• Jerusalem, AZ

Clicking "Jerusalem, null" brings you to the page for Israel, of course.

Could be an innocent mistake, you say? But that's not all—not by a long shot. Their "Weather Location Selector" lists Gaza and the West Bank as countries separate from Israel—and their list of Israeli cities includes several Arab villages which have not existed since 1948.

Trying to minimize the defeat, Arabs have long called the Six Day War the "naksa," or "setback," but its impact remains a deep wound.

Egyptian columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in the independent weekly Al-Fagr newspaper that Arabs blame the defeat for "everything" — from "price hikes, dictatorship, religious extremism, sectarian strife, even sexual impotence."

Well, I've heard a lot of different things blamed on the Jews, but this is definitely a first for me...

The next Prime Minister of Israel responds to the academic boycott of Israel just passed by a British academic union.

The extermination of Jews is Allah's will and is for the benefit of all humanity, according to an article in the Hamas paper, Al-Risalah. The author of the article, Kan'an Ubayd, explains that the suicide operations carried out by Hamas are being committed solely to fulfill Allah's wishes. Furthermore, Allah demanded this action, because "the extermination of the Jews is good for the inhabitants of the worlds."

The killing of innocent Jews by terrorist attacks is portrayed as Allah's plan for the benefit of humanity.

UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer gives the UN Human Rights Council a piece of his mind.

Mr. President,

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman's words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

Please go to the linked page for an approximate transcript of the entire speech, along with a video of the speech.

The funniest (and most telling) part is the last minute of the video, when the President of the UN Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba responds by basically calling Neuer rude and threatening to remove his speech from the official record of the proceedings. He does not however respond to any of the charges leveled against him and his council by Neuer and UN Watch.

El Fassed has basically cut-and-pasted this text, without attribution, into his letter. Compare the Wikipedia text with El Fasseds letter and you will see that aside from a few minor edits (done, perhaps, by the staff at Business Day and not by El Fassed himself), the text is the same. It is possible that El Fassed himself is the author of the Wikipedia text, but nevertheless he failed to cite his original source.

This sort of cut-and-paste fakery seems to be standard practice among Israel-haters. I was pondering the Wikipedia text when I suddenly realized Id heard it somewhere recently. Of course!Hadas Thier had recited chunks of it in her opening statement during our debate last week. Had I realized that, I would have called her on it; I will definitely ask future opponents about their sources.

Much false anti-Israel propaganda is circulated this way. People simply repeat what they find on various websites, without attribution, giving the impression they know what they are talking about when they are really peddling recycled garbage. False claims of Israeli apartheid, Jenin massacre and so on are given credibility in this way, proving Goebbelss propaganda tactics remain potent in the Internet age.

It is interesting to note that Goebbels actually described the technique of the big lie not in describing his own methods but in attacking British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. (Other uses of the term big lie by Goebbels seem to be unreferenced.)

In the same way, Arab states accuse Israel of racism and apartheid when in fact their own discriminatory and repressive policies are more comparable to those of apartheid South Africa. Over time, the terms racism and apartheid are actually stripped of their meaning. And when words lose their meaning, as Moynihan and others have pointed out, human rights are in danger of losing their substance.

Please see the complete article for more on the subject (I just quoted one of the most relevant passages).

It is thus easy to see that Israel is not an apartheid state. All citizens of Israel (whether Muslim or Jewish, Arab or European) have equality before the law. There is nothing close to resembling the separate provision of amenities – Muslims and Jews use the same hospitals, Muslims and Jews use the same public transport, Muslims and Jews all vote in Israeli elections, Muslims and Jews can run for election etc etc. Muslims in Israel can choose to study in the language of their preference and Arabic is even one of the national languages of Israel. In apartheid South Africa, although blacks made up over 80% of the population, not a single African language was recognised by the state.

So why does the comparison still stick? The peddlars of this fraudulent comparison often focus on the Bantustan analogy in order to push it.

The peddlars explain that the West Bank and Gaza (Palestinian territories) equate to the old South African Bantustans. It is claimed that this 'separation' is a convenient measure for the Jews to devoid themselves of responsibility for the Palestinians. (As a side note, it is this that is the real "Transfer" problem in Israel - - the transfer of all responsibility for the Palestinians to Israel. The Palestinians are never responsible for anything, not even for themselves).

The problem with the comparison is that the separation between Israel and the Palestinian territories is more akin to the separation between South Africa and Mozambique (or any other bordering state) than to South Africa and the Bantustans.

Although it is not a new phenomena, I am getting more annoyed of late at the one-sided portrayal of events in Israel designed to cast Israeli as the evil, apartheid, hate-driven society that seeks to oppress the peace-loving Muslims who "just want to get along". Here is a recent example, from a seed by Keld (titled "Apartheid looks like this").

As a result (of the many checkpoints put by Israel in the West Bank - Y), moving goods and people from one place to the next in the West Bank has become a nightmare of logistics and costly delays. At the checkpoints, food spoils, patients die, and children are prevented from reaching their schools. The World Bank blames the checkpoints and roadblocks for strangling the Palestinian economy.

Pretty clear cut case, right? Jimmy Carter sure knows what he is talking about!

Now please read the same paragraph again, this time with my comments inserted (in italics):

As a result, moving goods and people from one place to the next in the West Bank has become a nightmare of logistics and costly delays. Thus, the checkpoints accomplish their primary goal. Terrorists have had a much harder time transporting their supplies and personnel in order to set up attacks on Israeli civilians. Other terrorists gangs have been thwarted in their attempts at kidnapping and murdering Israeli citizens by these checkpoints. The existence of these checkpoints is credited with saving dozens if not hundreds of Israeli lives (Jew and Arab alike) and many more injuries. At the checkpoints, food spoils, patients die, and children are prevented from reaching their schools. Though the reader may be surprised as to why these people and items are stopped at checkpoints when there should obviously be no reason for this, Israels motive become clearer when one is made aware that in the past, Hamas, the PLO and their brother organizations have used ambulances (with patients and without), women (pregnant or not), food and medical shipments, and children as delivery vehicles for terrorists on their way to murder Israelis, or for explosives being sent to their final destination. It in reaction to this type of unconscionable behavior on the part of the terrorist organizations that the Israel security forces have responded by being cautious of all traffic crossing the checkpoints. The World Bank blames the checkpoints and roadblocks for strangling the Palestinian economy. However, many people who have read of the civil war between the PLO and Hamas over the past few months, as well as the destructive behavior of the Palestinian population in Gaza following Israel's surrendering the Strip a year and a half ago blame the leaders of the various Palestinian terrorist organizations for choosing to war over the needs of their own people and thus strangling of their own economy.

I have seen checkpoints with my own eyes. I drive through them all the time. I would be lying if I said that they are not disruptive to the Palestinian population living in Judea and Samaria. However, I would also be lying if I said something along with the one-sided rubbish quoted by the Electronic Intifada or Jimmy Carter and pretended that Israel was not actually trying to defend itself from daily threats against its infrastructure and civilian population by groups that want Israel's destruction. Israel is not completely innocent. But to pretend that they are completely guilty by painting a false picture accomplishes nothing, misinforms other people and only leads to more hatred.

Arabs and leftists uprooted a Jewish orchard and went on to plant olive trees outside a Jewish community on the Jewish "New Year of Trees." One left-wing activist hit a security guard with his car.

The incident occurred Saturday morning at Sde Boaz, a hilltop community in Gush Etzion located at the region's highest point, between N'vei Daniel and Beitar Illit.

The destroyed orchard consisted of apple, cherry, pomegranate, pear, carob and olive trees. After cutting down the trees, a dozen activists made their way to Sde Boaz. They accompanied Arabs from the PA-controlled village of El-Khader and began planting olive trees adjacent to the Jewish community.

When Jews are alleged (and more often than not, falsely accused) of destroying Arab-owned olive trees it raises international ire, calls for harsh and swift punishment .

I doubt you will hear anything in any media source other than Arutz Sheva about the above vandalism and impunity.

Tu-b'Shvat Sameach to all who care.

In response to a question, Carter apologized for a sentence in his book that he acknowledged seemed to justify terrorism by saying that suicide bombings should end when Israel accepts the goals of the road map to peace with Palestinians.

"That sentence was worded in a completely improper and stupid way," Carter said. "I've written my publishers to change that sentence immediately in future editions of the book. I apologize to you personally and to everyone here."

If that's the case, then why did he appear on al-Jazeera TV on January 14, 2007 and say the exact same thing?! Are his publishers going to change the audio for "future editions" of the interview on al-Jazeera!? Here's the al-Jazeera video (4min 13sec) and the transcript.

See the link for more nice Carter quotes, along with links to related articles.

Nothing demonstrates more clearly the defects of Jimmy Carter's latest brief against Israel, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, than the ex-president's reluctance to defend the book on its merits. Rather than take up that unenviable task, Carter has sought to shift the focus away from the criticism -- especially as it concerns the book's serial distortions and outright falsehoods -- and onto the critics.

In particular, Carter claims that critics are compromised by their support for Israel, their ties to pro-Israel lobbying organizations, and -- a more pernicious charge -- their Jewish background. In interviews about his book, Carter has seldom missed an opportunity to invoke what he calls the "powerful influence of AIPAC," with the subtext that it is the lobbying group, and not his slanderous charges about Israel, that is mainly responsible for mobilizing popular outrage over Palestine. In a related line of defense, Carter has singled out "representatives of Jewish organizations" in the media as the prime culprits behind his poor reviews and "university campuses with high Jewish enrollment" as the main obstacle to forthright debate about his book on American universities. (Ironically, when challenged last week by Alan Dershowitz to a debate about his book at Brandeis University, which has a large Jewish student body, Carter rejected the invitation.)

Bluster aside, Carter's chief complaint seems to be that anyone who identifies with Israel, whether in the form of individual support or in a more organized capacity, is incapable of grappling honestly with the issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Carter is poorly placed to make this claim. If such connections alone are sufficient to discredit his critics, then by his own logic Carter is undeserving of a hearing. After all, the Carter Center, the combination research and activist project he founded at Emory University in 1982, has for years prospered from the largesse of assorted Arab financiers.

So it seems that the official position of the United Parcel Service is that they will not deliver to places "over the Green Line" under Israeli control (for security reasons) but they have no problem delivering to Ramallah and Jenin (because it is much safer there, obviously).

Last night, I called UPS to verify this, and, in fact it is true. Not only is it true, but UPS will not recognize even parts of Israel that are within the "Green Line," such as the Golan Heights. A man from UPS read me the following statement (which is not on the UPS website--perhaps they are too cowardly to acknowledge this online):

UPS service is provided to and from most addresses within Israel and the Palestine [sic] Authority area, except for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a few remote areas in the Golan Hieghts, and the Southern Negev desert.

I asked the UPS employee if I could send a package to "Palestinian" areas of the West Bank. He said yes. I asked him if I could send a package to terrorist infested Ramallah. He said yes. I asked him if I could send a package to Arab areas in the Golan Heights. Again, the answer was "YES."

In a recent seed on the topic of Jimmy Carter and his new book (linking to an interview with carter in the LA Times), the egyptian asked the following question:

Can anyone make a real, honest argument that he is motivated by anti-Semitism

I don't know what his motivations are. I can't say whether he is motivated by anti-Semitism. But I can say that he as come into his analysis of the situation in Israel with his own preconceived notion o who is right (the Palestinians) and who is wrong (Israel). He bases this on his pronouncement that US policy is pro-Israel for the sole reason that there is a strong Israel-lobby in Washington, and he, Jimmy Carter, unencumbered by such political artifices, will lead the way in pronouncing the truth.

He claims that "the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel". Excuse me? The "Roadmap for Peace" (what a stupid name) was accepted by the PLO and rejected by Israel? Israel is 100% to blame for its failure? Did he sleep through the intifada? Through the constant pronouncements coming from the Palestinians side affirming their allegiance to the founding principles of their movement (death to Israel)?

But more damning is his uninhibited use of the term "apartheid" as his main adjective for Israel. Israel diverges in a major way from the concept of apartheid invented and popularized in South Africa: Israel is not restricting the movement of Palestinians based on racist beliefs and principles. Any time that a fence is built or a checkpoint manned, it is because were it not for these physical barriers, many more Israelis and Jews would be killed by terrorists seeking to enter Israel and commit mass-murder. Carter criticizes Israel for "abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank", yet never once pauses to question whether this is being done for the purpose of anything more than making a land-grab. This is ignoring reality. When Israel allows free passage of Palestinians into Israel, Israelis die. It is a very simple equation. Though Carter admits that the "apartheid" is not based on racist motivations, by using that very term (with all of the emotional and historical weight that it carries), it is impossible to avoid accusing Israel of that very act.

Carter indicts Jewish organizations who would dare to criticize him (after all, he own the Nobel Peace Prize, so he has to be a good guy, right?) since they would be "unlikely to visit the occupied territories". Well, I will then go ahead and criticize Carter for the same sin. While he may gleefully visit Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jenin to converse with "the beleaguered residents", I don't remember him ever visiting Beit El, Jerusalem, Kochav haShachar, Haifa or Kedumim to commiserate with the Jews who live there about how he wishes that they did not have to live with the daily fear that an Arab would try to kill them for the crime of Driving-While-Jewish.

Three weeks ago, a Palestinian flag was found on the fence around my community (3 miles North of Jerusalem, in the "West Bank"). The next day, armed terrorists cut a whole in the fence and attempted to infiltrate the neighborhood next to me. Thankfully, the IDF was on hand to chase them away (no casualties) and put on extra guards. I guess in Carter's eyes I am just one of a "minority of Israelis" who is seeking to "confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine" (where?? Oh, and the place that I live was a barren hilltop before a few Jews came here with tents 20 years ago and built from the ground up a nice town. It only becomes a "choice site" after the Jews get there). I guess Carter would not see me (and hundreds of thousands of others) as an "innocent civilian" against whom he would "condemn acts of terror".

If Carter is not motivated by anti-Semitism, then he is propelled by ignorance and propaganda. He bases his conclusions on an incomplete, one-sided analysis of the situation, and the presumption that any action done by Israel is done not for the sake of defense and security, but rather with the malicious intention of colonization and oppression, while ignoring or sweeping under the carpet any intimation that perhaps the PLO and Hamas (organizations that are committed to the destruction of Israel) are interested in anything other than Jimmy's vision of how things should be done.

I pass this monument and the two small trees that kept it company nearly every day on my way to and from work... and I probably wouldn't have bothered to mention them here except for the troubling fact that not long after the memorial had been erected along the side of the road, some local Arabs took it upon themselves to deface the stone marker and to cut down the trees. If you didn't see the post and pictures I encourage you to do so.

Since then, there have been several additional incidents at the site. Swastikas and Arabic curses were spray painted on the stone, and a fire was set agsaint the monument so as to blacken it.

Each time an act of vandalism ocurred, friends and/or family of the murdered man came to try and scrub away the paint... the soot... the hate.

A longtime aide to Jimmy Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president's new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors.

Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center's first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter that bluntly criticized the book to Carter and others.

Stein wrote that the book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," was replete with factual errors, material copied from other sources and "simply invented segments," according to an excerpt of the letter published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

See here for more on Carter's latest publication

The 1988 Hamas charter (an acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement" in Arabic) is both political and genocidal — yet the United Nations has never denounced it. It claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Egypt in 1922. Hamas is against any Middle East peace process: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors" (Article 13).

And then there is the Hamas slogan, which has inspired countless jihadist bombers: "Allah is its goal, The Prophet its model, the Qur'an its Charter, jihad its path, and death for the cause of Allah its most sublime belief" (Article 8).

Hamas is committed to continuing jihad against "the Jews" until Allah's victory is implemented. The land of Palestine, it affirms, must be cleansed from their impurity and viciousness. Muslims are obligated by order of the Prophet to fight and kill the Jews wherever they find them. This call to genocide is justified by a hadith which concludes article 7 of the charter:

The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to implement Allah's promise, whatever time that may take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until the Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them), until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: Oh Muslim! Oh Abdullah!, there is a Jew behind me, come on and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

Israel's military, which has been accused of abuses in its war against Hezbollah this summer, has declassified photographs, video images and prisoner interrogations to buttress its accusation that Hezbollah systematically fired from civilian neighborhoods in southern Lebanon and took cover in those areas to shield itself from attack.

Lebanon and international human rights groups have accused Israel of war crimes in the 34 days of fighting in July and August, saying that Israel fired into populated areas and that civilians accounted for a vast majority of the more than 1,000 Lebanese killed.

Israel says that it tried to avoid civilians, but that Hezbollah fired from civilian areas, itself a war crime, which made those areas legitimate targets.

In a new report, an Israeli research group says Hezbollah stored weapons in mosques, battled Israelis from inside empty schools, flew white flags while transporting missiles and launched rockets near United Nations monitoring posts.

(Put that in your pipe and smoke it!)

I am under no delusion that this will affect in any way the banter of those who ceaselessly criticise Israel for any perceived misdeeds. However, I am gratified that Israel has released this information so that inquiring minds may see the evidence for themselves before deciding who is really to blame for civilian deaths in Lebanon.

Sudan's President Field Marshal Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir claimed Tuesday that reports in western newspapers of hundreds of thousands dead in his country's brutal civil war are all part of an Israeli-led worldwide conspiracy.

Obviously, what is going on in Sudan is the Jews fault.

If the State Department has a religion, it's Palestinian statehood. On its altar, diplomats are eager to sacrifice the security of America's only reliable Middle East ally and, ultimately, our own security as well.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the high priestess of this cult – muttering mystic incantations about Palestinian suffering under the brutal Israeli occupation and how a Palestinian state would be the crowning achievement of American foreign policy, much the way the Munich pact was the Olympic gold of British diplomacy.

Her recent address to the American Palestine Task Force was modestly described by the Zionist Organization of America as the "most pro-Palestinian Arab, anti-Israel speech in memory by a major U.S. administration official."

In her remarks, Rice confessed, "I believe that there could be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state for a people who" suffer the "daily humiliation." of living under the so-called Israeli occupation.

This is the way our secretary of state chooses to characterize the nation that has been our steadfast friend for 60 years (brutal occupying power), to demonstrate her devotion for a people who celebrated the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 by dancing in the streets of Ramallah.

A New York Times story published online a few minutes ago has the following headline: Israel Storms British Embassy and Captures Palestinian Gunman. The story begins as follows:

Israeli police commandos stormed the British Embassy late Thursday and captured a Palestinian gunman who had scaled the fence and demanded political asylum. There were reports of injuries.

The three paragraph story (based on some very recent occurrences in Tel Aviv) continues to give more background.

If I read this headline and story, and was not able to access any other news site, I could very easily come to the following conclusions:

• Israel "stormed" the British Embassy of their own accord, thus invading sovereign British territory.
• Israel's goal in doing this was to retrieve a Palestinian who was seeking political asylum in Britain
• Israel has once again gone ahead and "broken international law" and has disrespected diplomatic proprieties in yet another show of Israeli machismo

However, if I check out some other sources, I find out the following (from a Jerusalem Post article entitled: Armed Man Infiltrates British Embassy:

British officials took an immediate decision to invite Israeli police to enter the embassy compound, which is considered sovereign British territory. According to embassy officials, security guards asked their commanders whether they should attempt to apprehend Injaz, but were told to wait for Israeli police teams.

The New York Times did not falsify anything in their article. Every word is accurate. However they did fail to report some very important details (to which they most certainly had access) and carefully crafted the headline of the story to give an implication of Israeli guilt in this matter (when in reality Israel was invited in to save the day, and the man was running away from the Palestinian Authority who were going to kill him). While they told only truth, the end-result is a misrepresentation of reality.

There is instead a drawing of a Jew with a very large nose, a nose so large it obscures his entire head. Across his chest is the word Holocaust. Another drawing shows a vampire wearing a big Star of David drinking the blood of Palestinians. A third shows Ariel Sharon dressed in a Nazi uniform, emblazoned not with swastikas but with the Star of David.

"It is not that we are against a specific religion," said the show's curator, Seyed Massoud Shojaei, making a distinction that visitors to the show are certain to question. "We are against repression by the Israelis."

Mr. Shojaei said none of the images were intended as anti-Jewish, only anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli — and of course, anti-American and anti-British. As evidence, he said Iranians lived peacefully with this country's Jews.

They are not against a specific religion. Just Jews and Israel.

For all those who are supportive of questioning the holocaust (and I know that there are lots of you on Newsvine, judging from previous articles, posts and comments on the subject), those who claim that anyone who connects anti-Israel and anti-Jewish are doing so with no basis, and those who have no problem condemning the connection of Jews to Israel as being racist while maintaining that your position is completely devoid of racism, it looks like you are in good company with Iran and Ahmadinejad.

(Oh, and for some reason I doubt there are going to be violent flag-burning protests outside of Iranian embassies all over the world, led by irate Jews calling out "Death to Iran" in response to the insult made to the Jewish religion. In their effort at "exposing what some here see as Western hypocrisy" they have done exactly the opposite - they have shown exactly how repressive their culture is in comparison to those that they are so eager to condemn)

On the night of July 23, 2006, an Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles at and struck two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations, causing huge explosions that injured everyone inside the vehicles. Or so says the global media, including Time magazine, the BBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and thousands of other outlets around the world. If true, the incident would have been an egregious and indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by the state of Israel.

But there's one problem: It never happened.

Read this article for some very interesting analysis of the actual photgraphic evidence relating to this incident that very much calls into question the "official" version of what happened in this incident.

Noam Chomsky and his hard left gang of Israel bashers are at it again. This time it is about the current crisis in the Middle East, which they blame entirely on Israel.

Chomsky is circulating a letter which he got two naïve Nobel Prize winners--the playwright Harold Pinter and the poet José Saramago--to sign.

It is vintage Chomsky, beginning with its first sentences: "The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press." Chomsky typically cites obscure news reports in languages no one can read. This time it's "the Turkish Press." The problem with Chomsky's assertion is that a five minute Google News check reveals that the incident he points to was widely reported by the English language press, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, BBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press. (Lie number one).

Read the rest of the article for more lies.

Much of the conversation relating to Israel today (on Newsvine and beyond) features some very polarized view points. Many commenters (myself included) are strong supporters of Israel, her policies and actions. Many other commenters have the exact opposite view: they are against Israel's policies and think that Israel's actions are wrong (or racist, genocidal, criminal, etc). Some people in the anti-Israel group admit that they think the world would be better off without Israel. Others claim that as long as the racist, ultra-national Zionists are out of the picture, everything would be fine.

In nearly all of these discussions, at one point or another, someone will bring in an accusation of anti-Semitism. The exchange will go something like this (PI = Pro-Israel, AI = Anti-Israel):

AI: (Says one or some of the following) Israel is wrong, their leaders are criminals, they respond out of proportion, Hizballah is not a terrorist group, suicide bombings are ethical, etc, etc

PI: Your comments are so anti-Semitic. It is really disgusting. Now everyone knows how you really feel.

AI: I am not anti-Semitic. How dare you call me that. Just because I am anti-Israel doesn't mean that I am anti-Semitic

I have seen this exchange take place countless times, in some form or another. Personally, I do not think that every anti-Israel statement belies an anti-Semitic viewpoint. I make statements that are anti-Israel (if you consider a statement critical of the Israeli government to be anti-Israel) and I do not consider myself to be anti-Semitic. There are others on Newsvine who are more consistently anti-Israel, whom I am pretty sure are not anti-Semitic. However, there are others from whom the anti-Israel statements are made with such venom and conviction, and with such consistency that I really do think: "this person hates Jews".

Of course, up until now these thoughts have been mere speculation, and the exchanges usually end up reverting to the "am not"..."are too"..."am not" pattern. Unless someone says something that is obviously anti-Semitic, it has been very hard to say whether or not a connection exists, whether the accusation of anti-Semitism is coupled with anti-Israel too often and whether this is really a fair accusation to make in a serious discussion.

Up until now anyway.

On July 5, two professors from Yale University, Edward H. Kaplan and Charles A. Small, who are involved in a seminar on anti-Semitism, released a paper titled "Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe: A Statistical Study" (PDF link). The abstract of this paper reads as follows:

In the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, extreme criticisms of Israel (e.g. Israel is an apartheid state, the Israel Defense Forces deliberately target Palestinian civilians) coupled with extreme policy proposals (e.g. boycott of Israeli academics and institutions, divest from companies doing business with Israel) have sparked counter-claims that such criticisms are anti-Semitic (for only Israel is singled out). Our research shines a different, statistical light on this question: based on a survey of 500 citizens in each of 10 European countries (for a total sample of 5,000), we ask whether those with extreme anti-Israel views are more likely to be anti-Semitic. Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors, we find that anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic, with the likelihood of measured anti-Semitism increasing with the extent of anti-Israel sentiment observed.

In other words, there is a very direct relation between the prevalence and intensity of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel opinions (check the end of their report for all of the raw data, charts, calculations, etc for the statistically-inclined).

What significance does this have for our discussions here and elsewhere regarding Israel? For me personally it will definitely give me pause when I am considering whether or not to enter a discussion where the commenters display an over-zealous tendency to blame, criticize and lambaste Israel without considering the possibility that some of Israel's actions may be legitimate and that some of Israel's opponents may be in the wrong. I am willing to participate in a discussion relating to Israel where the other people participating are there to contribute what they know to best present their opinions and are open to the possibility that they might be mistaken in some points. However, if the person with whom I am "conversing" is using his anti-Israel opinions as a mask for his anti-Semitic views I really have better (and more productive) things to do with my time.

It also strikes me as being an interesting new addition to the common exchange mentioned above. We read (and I myself have written) responses quite often that are along the lines of "don't just accuse someone of anti-Semitism because they are anti-Israel. The two are not the same!". Does this study make the equation of the two a more valid statement?

(Hat tip: Cross-Currents)