I am now going to break the silence about what are very probably egregious human rights violations in Palestine.

But first, you must excuse these personal and intimate questions: Are you seeking dialog and solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians? Are you European or American, female, between the ages of 17 and 40?

Uh, er, are you a virgin? (I did warn you that this is going to get personal and intimate).

If you are looking for an adventure of a new and different kind, then you should probably head for the Palestinian territories, where you can do a real service to the oppressed Palestinians and at the same time get first hand experience of solidarity and intimate dialog with Palestinian Arabs, who, it seems, rape American and European female activists.

Once again, we are hearing a deafening silence from the media and Israel's political left regarding the anti-democratic assaults on civil rights which have arisen since President Bush arrived in Israel yesterday.

This silence is apparently because the right of peaceful assembly/demonstration has only been suspended for those on the political right.

...

PM Olmert has made public statements that Israelis are ready to make serious concessions in order to arrive at a final status agreement with the Palestinians. Yet every poll conducted to date has indicated that the overwhelming majority of Israelis are against dividing Jerusalem, and that a more modest majority hold an unfavorable view of any discussion of territorial concessions before a full cessation of terror activities (e/g/ rocket, mortar, shooting, Molotov cocktail and stone attacks on Israelis) is enforced.

It is clear to me that the only way Olmert can claim to have a mandate borne of national consensus is to illegally quash all public debate that opposes his views.

I have long defended the rights of groups like 'Women in Black' to protest 'the occupation' and have been pleased to see that their weekly demonstrations are not disrupted by police. So why is it that when anti-democratic, heavy-handed tactics are employed to stifle dissent from the Israeli right, the media and the Israeli left suddenly go deaf, blind and mute?

Are we really going to see the media and the left give their tacit approval to near-dictatorial abuse just as they did during disengagement? Didn't we learn anything from that dark period??? Doesn't anyone care the Israel doesn't come close to passing Natan Sharansky's famous 'Town Square Test'?

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).