|  |  |  | | | | | Elder of Ziyon | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Bikya Masr:
The small street seller had all the European club jerseys ready for sale on Saturday evening, as passersby wanted to grab their favorite international shirt ahead of this month's Euro 2012. But for Portugal fans, the jersey was nowhere to be found.
"We are not allowed to sell the jersey because it shows a cross," the shopkeeper told Bikyamasr.com. "I still love Portugal and will be rooting for them, but we are an Islamic country and don't want to get people angry," he added.
While it is not officially banned in the country, a number of Islamic clerics have voiced their concern over the jersey, which has a large cross on the front, highlighting Portugal's Catholic faith. But in Malaysia, symbols often find themselves under attack by the country's virulent Muslim clerics.
Portugal is not the only jersey to be pulled from the shelves. Brazil, which also boasts a large cross, has been barred by clerics. Manchester United, the world's most popular club team, has also sparked the ire of clerics in the Southeast Asian country over its nickname, the Red Devils.
Despite the Old Trafford side having an estimated 81 million followers in Asia, one senior cleric said: "You are only promoting the devil."
"This is very dangerous. As a Muslim we should not worship the symbols of other religions or the devils," another added, in a Forbes report.
"It will erode our belief in Islam. There is no reason why we as Muslims should wear such jerseys, either for sports or fashion reasons."  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | While racism must always be condemned, the next time you read an article about how Israelis are supposedly racist for mistreating illegal African immigrants flooding the country, keep in mind how Egyptians treat them.
From CNN, last November:
"I wanted to build a good future for my family, but I failed," a weak Issam Abdallah Mohammed said in a videotaped statement.
The refugee from the Darfur region of Sudan was trying to illegally cross the border from Egypt to Israel when he was discovered and shot by Egyptian border guards.
Less than an hour after taping the statement, Issam was dead, succumbing to the wounds inflicted by the gunshots.
Every year, thousands of refugees, mostly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, attempt the dangerous journey from their war-torn countries to Israel in search of economic prosperity and stability.
Very few make it, and the results of the failed migration can be seen in the morgue of the central hospital in the Egyptian port town of El Arish.
On any given day, the morgue will be packed with the bodies of African refugees who died trying to make it to Israel.
Hamdy Al-Azazy spent the past seven years helping the refugees. Many are enslaved and tortured and the women raped by the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai if they are unable to come up with large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families, to smuggle the refugees across the border into Israel. As a result, many remain imprisoned in camps on the Sinai Peninsula.
"They are chained and kept in camps in the open with no bathrooms and little water and food and treated worse than animals," Al-Azazy said.
"Some of them are taken to Libya, but 80% of them are smuggled to Israel. Those who escape are shot by the Bedouins, and others who make it to the border are sometimes shot by the Egyptian authorities and transferred to hospitals before spending a year in different prisons in Sinai and deported back home."
The CNN crew found two victims in the hospital in El Arish, handcuffed to their beds and awaiting their transfer to an Egyptian detention center and eventual deportation.
One of them, Mahary Taklay Abraham of Eritrea, says he hit his head falling off a rock while trying to cross the border and was caught by Egyptian border guards. But before making it to the border, Mahary says, he spent about two months with the Bedouins.
"They beat and tortured me continuously and demanded money from my family," Mahary said.
Al-Azazy says this is a common scheme. The refugees will pay Bedouin tribes in the border area between Sudan and Egypt around $2,000 to be smuggled out. The smugglers then sell the refugees to the Sinai Bedouin, who blackmail the refugees and their families back home.
Ibrahim Yehia of Eritrea says he fell prey to the Bedouin.
"When we arrived to Sinai, the Bedouins tied me up with metal chains in the desert. They tortured us. Many of us died," he said, displaying his wounds, including scars that he says came from electroshock torture.
"They wanted me to pay $12,000 and forced us to call our families to transfer the money. My family sold all their lands and even their donkey to collect the money. They transferred $6,000 to the Bedouins."
After his family paid, Yehia says, the Bedouin finally let him go.
"I spent three months tied up in the camp close to the Israeli border. After I paid, the Bedouins drove me to the border crossing and set me free. I was then shot by plainclothes men close to the wired fence at the Israeli-Egyptian border. The military took me to the hospital."
Some of the refugees are forced into slave labor, often working marijuana fields that flourish all over Northern Sinai, Hamdy Al-Azazy says. Refugees who made it across the border into Israel have told harrowing accounts of rape, torture and slave labor.
Women are especially vulnerable. CNN spoke to one victim who made it to Israel and spoke on condition of anonymity. She said she was raped almost daily on a journey that took several months to get to Tel Aviv.
"Every night, they took me separately, and they did whatever they wanted to my body," the Eritrean said.
Al-Azazy hears stories like this all the time. "The women and men are kept in open areas. These Bedouins don't have any morals or conscience. One girl told me that three Bedouins had raped 14 girls in one night," he said. How many articles have you read in 2012 about Egyptian murder, rape and enslavement of African migrants? 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A developing story in Australia, an effigy of Victorian State Premier Baillieu was burnt by anti-Israel protesters outside a gala dinner to celebrate the 64th anniversary of the creation of Israel, the Israeli Ambassador was also attending.
Later: Function Sizzles, Demo Fizzles
"Around forty demonstrators were part of a group which burned an effigy of Victorian premier Ted Baillieu outside Melbourne's Hotel Windsor in which Victorians were celebrating Israel's 64th birthday.
The demonstration was staged in an attempt to disrupt the Yom Ha'azmaut party inside at which more than 400 members of the community heard speeches from from the Victorian premier and Daniel Andrews the Leader of the Opposition" Jewish News coverage (Video inc clips of speeches)- Flames of protest fail to mar spirits
Chanting "from the river to the sea" (video)- Protest outside Zionist Council of Victoria dinner with Premier Ted Baillieu
They appear to amazed at this thing called fire (video)- Free Palestine demo Melbourne 5 June 2012
As always give them thumbs down in YT.
Rabbi Arnold J. Wolf, the Socialist, anti-Israel Rabbi Who Taught Obama What He 'Knows' About Judaism
"For example, along with radical MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Wolf helped found the Committee on New Alternatives in the Middle East (CONAME) a philosophical grandparent to today's faux pro-Israel group J Street. .....An investigation by the Near East Report revealed that CONAME's signature appeared on telegrams urging Congress to send no arms to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel was attacked by Syria and Egypt on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar."
MEMRI
Dr. Subhi Al-Yaziji, Dean of Koranic Studies at the Islamic University of Gaza: We Hope to Conquer Andalusia and the Vatican
Munich Olympics terror victims deserve a minute of our time
The Real Purpose of Boycotts
What goes unmentioned is that the boycott called for by the Palestinian Authority is a violation of the April 29, 1994 Paris Agreement between Israel and the PLO which expresses "respect for each other's economic interests," and recognizes "the need to create a better economic environment for their peoples and individuals."
Palestinians Blackmail Washington over True Refugee Numbers
Palestinians: Refugees forever?
UNRWA was created to punish Israel
Saudis block blog for hosting religious police mall video! How we got censored by the Saudis
Fox map of ME only shows Gaza? Fox News Omits Israel
Barbara Walters apologises over links to Syrian aide of Bashar al-Assad
The same aide was behind the Vogue's whitewash.
Vogue Defends Syrian Glow Job
Walters and Wintour part of Assad's PR spin machine and big Obama supporters.
IDF Video
Learn How To Defend Yourself: Krav Maga 101 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From AFP:
Gaza's sole power station shut down again on Wednesday after running out of fuel, a source at the plant told AFP, as the territory's energy crisis deepened.
"The electricity plant has stopped work because of a lack of fuel," the source said.
The plant has stopped working several times this year as the Gaza Strip lives through its worst-ever energy crisis which has been brought on by a drop in fuel supplies from neighbouring Egypt.
On Wednesday, a delivery of 30 million litres of Qatari fuel was to have entered the Hamas-run Gaza Strip from Egypt, after being transported through Egypt's Al-Awja crossing into southern Israel, then into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.
But on Wednesday afternoon, Raed Futuh, an official at Kerem Shalom said the delivery had been delayed for the fourth time in three weeks, citing "technical issues."
Last month, Israel gave the green light for the fuel to be transferred through its territory after receiving a request from the Egyptians, an Israeli security official said. This doesn't add up.
Israel continues to supply, every day, roughly the same amount of fuel it has supplied since April when the PA agreed to pay for Israel to send fuel through Kerem Shalom. Nothing has changed. Yesterday over 270,000 liters were sent through. If the PA would pay more, Israel would supply more. And Gaza's power plant, while not at close to full capacity, has been running fine since then with only a few unexplained glitches.
Since Hamas has a history of manipulating supplies of vital goods to Gaza in order to score political points, it seems plausible that Hamas is trying to pressure Egypt to allow the Qatari fuel to get to the sector sooner rather than later.
(I'm cynical enough to wonder if Egypt is siphoning off some of that fuel to stave off its own impending fuel crisis.) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
 | | "The neck of the bottle - the Straits of Tiran" Rose al Youssef, Egypt, May 29, 1967 |
 | | "The Zionist to Hell," Syrian army newspaper, May 30, 1967 |  | The mouths of the guns of eight Arab countries: Sudan, Algeria, United Arab Republic, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Al Jarida , Beirut, May 31, 1967
|  | Armored forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Al Hayat, Beirut, May 31, 1967
 | | The clubs fall on the head of Israel: Israel asks: Where can I run? Al Goumhourya , Baghdad, June 6, 1967 | 
"Holy war" Al Goumhourya, Cairo, June 8, 1967
|
 | | "Using the Star of David," Al Manar , Baghdad, June 8, 1967 |
 | | "The Zionists into the sea," Al-Arabiya Al-Jamahir , Baghdad, June 8, 1967 |
 | | "The barricades of Tel Aviv," Al-Jundi Al Arabi , Damascus, June 6, 1967 |
 | | Nasser kicking the Jew (Israel) into the sea, with the armies of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq supporting him. Al-Farida, Lebanon | Most images from here, last one from here. 
Media Files
61.jpg (JPEG Image)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | An op-ed by Gidon Shaviv:
What do you get when you combine a radical activist who volunteers as a human shield for terrorists with a former Palestinian Authority spokesman? The Israel research department for Amnesty International.
"Impartiality" is a core value of Amnesty's statute. Further, Amnesty's editorial guidelines state, "Media content produced by Amnesty International should be fair and objective."
These claims of "impartiality" and "objectivity" are the foundation of Amnesty's reputation as one of the leading promoters of human rights. In Israel's case, however, Amnesty ignores its own values and instead allows people with clearly biased agendas to produce its reports. This is apparent in Amnesty's upcoming report on Israel's use of administrative detention, to be released on June 6. Amnesty lists two workers with clear conflicts of interests - Deborah Hyams and Saleh Hijazi - as the report's media contacts.
Hyams joined Amnesty in 2010, after a long record of pro-Palestinian activism. In 2001 she volunteered as a "human shield" in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, to deter Israeli military responses to recurrent gunfire and mortar attacks targeting Jewish civilians in Jerusalem. In a 2002 Washington Jewish Week article, "Hyams said that while she does not condone suicide bombings, she personally believes they 'are in response to the occupation.'" In another instance she defended the use of violence, stating "occupation is violence… and the consequence of this action must result in violence." This background precludes any reader of Amnesty's report from accepting it at face value.
As with the case of Hyams, if Amnesty wants to maintain impartiality, it should disqualify Saleh Hijazi from working on Israeli issues. Hijazi, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem and raised in Ramallah, has a clear lack of objectivity in this regard. In 2005, he worked as a Public Relations officer for the Office of the Ministry of Planning in Ramallah and in 2007 he was listed as contact for the NGO "Another Voice" – under the group's signature "Resist! Boycott! We Are Intifada!"
Hijazi has a "special" conflict of interest with regards to administrative detention in particular. On March 9, 2011, while as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, he spoke at a UN conference where he described how his father was supposedly arrested by the Israeli authorities "when the Israeli military could not find an activist neighbor." How can Hijazi be impartial when he is simultaneously claiming to be a victim of the very same country on which he is reporting?
...When human rights organizations are co-opted by people with a specific political agenda, they are incapable of fulfilling their mandates. Amnesty's choice to staff its Israel section with clearly biased researchers has made it tragically irrelevant for the championing of human rights in the region as a whole. Those who value human rights should be the most outspoken against the political hijacking of one of the world's most powerful NGOs. I've documented Amnesty's anti-Israel bias many times. For starters:
Amnesty UK's duplicity, bias and false accusations against Israel
Sky News bias and Amnesty hypocrisy
Amnesty implies the ICC is a Zionist tool
Amnesty officially calls Turkel report a "whitewash" - with no proof (More details here.)
Amnesty blames Israel for PalArab abuse of women
Amnesty International: When even-handedness is stupid
Amnesty supports a confessed Hezbollah spy
Amnesty's hateful bedfellows
JCPA just published a paper showing how HRW and Amnesty treat targeted killings (TKs) differently when done by Israel and when done by every other Western state. And once again, the bias of human rights groups against Israel is clear (although HRW's is, as usual, much worse):
In total, the author has identified 14 AI documents denouncing the Israeli TK policy.
AI has released precisely the same number of reports regarding Western TKs. In other words, AI has released the same number of reports criticizing a single country's policy, as the number it has released concerning the same policy employed by several countries – the U.S. and its allies – in numerous theaters since 9/11 (including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan). Although the Israeli TK policy and the Western TK policy have been implemented for approximately the same period of time, the Western TK policy is used far more frequently, in at least five countries, with a far greater incidence of collateral damage. In contrast, the Israeli TK policy is used only in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with a very low rate of collateral damage. Therefore, the number of AI's critical reports targeting Israel appears unbalanced, verging on biased – a clear violation of the principles to which AI is supposedly committed.
AI's material is characterized, moreover, by inaccurate and disparate terminology. In every document released by AI which mentions Israeli TKs, Israeli TK policy was branded as categorically "unlawful" and Israeli TKs were consistently referred to as "assassinations" and/or "liquidations." As discussed in detail in Part II, Section B, supra, killing militants during an armed conflict cannot, under the laws of war, be considered "assassination," or "liquidation," nor be "unlawful." Moreover, at the time that AI made these statements there was no consensus that Israeli TKs – or Western TKs, for that matter – were unlawful. In fact quite the opposite is true....
Meanwhile, AI has never used this terminology, which in and of itself implies illegality and culpability, concerning Western TKs. AI has never clearly and irrevocably condemned Western TKs, choosing instead to neutrally refer to them as "air raids,""air strikes,"220 and "missile strikes."In fact, AI has rarely, if ever, expressed clear reservations regarding the Western TK policy – other than perhaps when referring to the TK in Yemen in 2002.  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Why has Queen Elizabeth II never visited Israel?
[A]midst all the accolades, state dinners, and thousands of "Jubilee beacons" being lit around the world, one aspect of the Queen's resume stands out for its inexplicable absence: In six decades of reign she has made hundreds of royal visits to 129 different countries, though never once been to Israel.
No comparable nation has been even remotely ignored in this way. There are only two incidents of British royal family visiting Israel over the past 64 years – Prince Philip at a ceremony honoring his mother, and Prince Charles attending the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin. Yet both times the British were careful to emphasize that these were private, non-official visits.
...Surely Israel doesn't need the Queen for recognition or legitimization. However, upon this occasion of her diamond jubilee, what a propitious time for Queen Elizabeth to make a strong statement of support by visiting the Jewish State! This would go a long way to dispel the lingering cloud of delegitimization. It would surely be another jewel in the Queen's glorious crown.
Donald Rumsfeld thinks that the Obama administration very possibly would leak any Israeli plans to attack Iran. (Breitbart)
CAMERA notes how the NYT allowed a lie to be published in an anti-Israel op-ed:
In the racist state of California, there are over 50 laws on the books that discriminate against Latino citizens.
Actually, that's a lie. But it is a lie that the New York Times, according to editors, would have no problem publishing.
We know this because the newspaper recently published an Op-Ed containing the outlandish claim that Israel has "over 35 laws" that "discriminate against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens." This falsehood, the latest version of a shopworn anti-Israel canard, was cleared for publication by fact checkers despite journalism's ethical guidelines calling for opinion pieces to be held to the same standards of accuracy as news stories.
CAMERA has asked editors to provide substantiation for the allegation, which appeared in a May 23 Op-Ed by Yousef Munayyer entitled "Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal."
They have yet to provide a credible source. And it seems clear that this is because no such source exists.
Even the hyperlink from the passage about "35 laws" in the online version of the column leads to a web page that fails to substantiate, and in fact contradicts, Munayyer's claim. That reference discusses "bills" and "legislation submitted to the Knesset" as well as laws, which are said to discriminate against minorities including "refugees and migrant workers." In other words, it includesproposed laws that if passed would supposedly discriminate against non-citizens (as laws sometimes do — see the right to vote).
But even the website Munayyer and the Times link to fails to name the supposed 35 laws and bills. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately is the better word), we already know what such a list would look like. Cyberspace is littered with anti-Israel web pages that wildly twist and contort to present evenhanded and innocuous laws as discriminating against Arab citizens.
The BBC on how some Germans are thinking of re-evaluating their policy towards Israel.
Melanie Phillips on "A Jewish Pathology":
The part played by these Jews in the global bullying of Israel, and the tacit or explicit support they are thus lending to those whose aim is the extermination of the Jewish state, cannot be overstated. For those in the wider world who want Israel destroyed not only use the bogus arguments of these Jewish Israel-bashers but also use their Jewishness as a human shield, to insulate themselves against the charge of Jew-hatred.
How can there be anything bigoted about these arguments, they say, if Jews and Israelis are themselves using them? Very easily, actually; throughout the long centuries of Jewish persecution, the terrible fact is that Jews themselves have always been prominent in such murderous campaigns. The Judeophobic malice of today's left, indeed, which can be traced back to the French Revolution, was supplied with rocket fuel by Karl Marx whose own Jewish ancestry managed to morph into virulent hatred of Judaism and the Jewish people.
(h/t John W., Yerushalimey) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In the introduction to his influential 2001 book "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World," Avi Shlaim writes:
The book was not only a sensation, but the entire introduction with this prologue was published in the New York Times website.
This anecdote spread like wildfire in the anti-Zionist world. It was quoted widely in scholarly journals and books and in fact became the basis for the title of a book by Ghada Karmi called "Married to Another Man" where she argues that Israel must not exist as a Jewish state.
And no wonder. Avi Shlaim is an acclaimed revisionist historian and this myth that Jews muscled into Israel and stole the land away from the Arabs is all the more compelling when it appears that they did it knowingly, in stark terms of stealing a bride away from a loving husband.
However, Shai Afsai in the latest Shofar journal proves that this story is a myth. He tracks down the truth starting with Karmi:
Where did Karmi get this story from? For some time, she did not respond to e-mails requesting information on her source, but in 2010 she furnished this reply: "The story's origins has caused me problems. I got the citation from Avi Shlaim at Oxford, who gave me a reference for it, which turned out not to be correct. I then searched hard for the source and have come up with a blank. I fear it might be apocryphal, much as I had not wanted that. Sorry!" She later added that Shlaim told her "the story had appeared in a book by Muhammad Hassanein Heikal. But it was not there." By then, she had already been repeating various versions of it for several years, in essays, lectures, interviews, and an entire book titled after the story. Her scholarly paradigm assumed the immorality of Zionism, and she found support for her essential position in a fabrication. Shlaim, as Afsai notes, has lots of footnotes in his book - but none for this story:
As with Karmi and Pagden, Shlaim provides no source for the "married to another man" story he tells, despite there being twenty-one pages of notes at the back of The Iron Wall. Responding to a question about his source, Shlaim wrote in a 2009 e-mail that it was Mohamed Heikal's Secret Channels (1996). This book is listed in Shlaim's bibliography, along with two other works by Heikal, a prominent Egyptian journalist, author, and commentator, who was the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram for many years, as well as an adviser to (and mouthpiece of) Egypt's President Nasser. In Secret Channels, Heikal writes:
Herzl convened the first World Zionist Congress, which brought together Jewish representatives from many countries. It was held in Basel, Switzerland on 23 August 1897 and is regarded by Jews as a landmark in the creation of the state of Israel. The World Zionist Congress was created with the aim of establishing "a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law." After the Basel conference the rabbis of Vienna decided to see for themselves what Herzl was talking about, and sent two representatives to Palestine. A cable sent by the two rabbis during their visit became famous: "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." It was a message Zionists did not wish to hear, and the inconvenient husband was never acknowledged.
As with Karmi, Pagden, and Shlaim's accounts, no source for the Viennese expedition and its "famous" cable is provided in Heikal's Secret Channels. In fact, the book has no endnotes at all, nor does it contain a bibliography, which raises the question of how Shlaim could consider Secret Channels an adequate source for the veracity of the "married to another man" story. In his preface to The Iron Wall, he writes of his method:
Like the British historian E. H. Carr, I believe that the main task of the historian is not to record but to evaluate.
Carr also described the writing of history as a perpetual dialogue between the historian and his sources. A word about the sources used in the writing of this book might therefore be of some interest . . . wherever possible I have preferred to rely on primary sources, whether in English, French, Hebrew, or Arabic."62
Somehow, the "married to another man" story Shlaim found in Heikal's book warranted no evaluation, needed no dialogue between the historian and his source, and did not require seeking out a primary source for it in any language. The story is, in other words, a lie.
Yet that lie persists. For example, in a recent interview with David Wilder, Egyptian/Belgian journalist Khaled Diab quotes it twice to make the point that Jews knew that the land belonged to Arabs.
This is one of those stories that the anti-Zionist world finds "too good to check." The "rabbis" aren't named, no sources are cited, and it is just regarded as truth because it is what the anti-Israel crowd desperately wants to believe, so they have elevated the story to mythic status.
Will we be seeing any corrections from the many "Middle East scholars" like Anthony Pagden, Ghada Karmi and Avi Shlaim who quote a lie without checking?
(h/t Diana Muir Applebaum and Challah Hu Akbar for research) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Here's a reminder as to who has been treating Palestinian Arabs like garbage over time.
From Timatic Web, a comprehensive travel information site:
National Palestinian Territory (PS)
Destination Lebanon (LB)
Lebanon (LB)
Admission and Transit Restrictions:
- Admission and transit is refused to holders of Palestinian passports. And:
National Palestinian Territory (PS)
Destination Syria (SY)
Syria (SY)
Admission and Transit Restrictions:
- Holders of Palestinian documents are not allowed to enter, even if holding a valid visa. These passengers can only enter if:
- they obtain approval from Syrian Immigration Headquarters upon arrival, which has to be arranged prior to arrival; or
- they are holding a residence permit of any country, except Egypt, Iraq, Jordan or Libya. So Lebanon and Syria, who always say how much they support the Palestinian Arab people, refuse to allow them to use their own travel documents to enter their respective countries.
But the US does accept the PA passport:
The U.S. Department of State has determined that the Palestinian Authority Passport/Travel Document meets the requirements of a passport as defined in Section 101(a)(30) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and therefore is acceptable for visa issuing purposes and travel to the United States.
However, according to an official at the U.S. Department of State, the United States does not recognize Palestine as a country, and therefore the Palestinian Authority Passport/Travel Document does not confer citizenship. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Isn't primal, irrational hate a wonderful thing?
From Ahram Online:
Egypt's censor has halted production of a film for allegedly promoting the normalisation of relations with Israel, Al-Ahram Arabic has reported.
Mohamed Kenawy who wrote the film, Regheef Aish (Loaf of Bread), denied the accusation and said the film promotes peace and cooperation among all people regardless of sex, race and religion.
The story revolves around an Egyptian, a Palestinian and an Israeli, and examines life in the Arab region and the world.
The film had been under production for two months before filming was halted. Westerners assume that everyone in the world actually wants peace. They cannot imagine that such a concept would be considered controversial, let alone anathema.
Welcome to moderate Egypt. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From the IDF Blog:
Forty-five years after the Six Day War – one of the most significant chapters in the history of the IDF – new images taken by Israel Air Force pilots during battle have emerged. The photographs taken from above provide a rare perspective on the war.
More at the site. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | For the third time, Egypt has delayed a planned delivery of fuel from a Qatari ship to Gaza that has been promised for several months.
The fuel was expected to be transferred today to Israel to ship to Gaza via the pipeline at Kerem Shalom.
No specific reason was given for this further delay, just that it was for "technical reasons."
No new date for delivery was promised but there were vague mentions of Thursday or next Sunday.
For some reason, the world is not up in arms when Egypt drags its feet in helping Gaza. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | AFP reports:
A Bangladeshi court has issued an arrest warrant for the writer of a 2003 novel that allegedly contains insulting remarks against the Prophet Mohammed, a lawyer said Tuesday.
The court in Dhaka issued the order in response to a petition from a Muslim activist accusing author Salam Azad of hurting religious sentiment in his banned book "Bhanga Math" ("Broken Temple").
"We told the court that the book contained slanderous remarks against the Prophet Mohammed and Islam. The judge accepted the petition and issued a warrant of arrest," the petitioner's lawyer Ekhlas Uddin told AFP. Reuters writes:
A Kuwaiti man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.
And in the Maldives:
An outspoken Maldivian blogger known for his liberal views on religion was in intensive care on Tuesday after being stabbed by an attacker outside his home in the capital Male, police said.
Ismail Rasheed, who is better known as "Hilath", had his blog blocked late last year by the Maldivian telecommunications authorities who claimed it contained anti-Islamic material.
The 37-year-old, who has received death threats in the past, was later arrested following a rally he organized in December in support of religious tolerance and spent nearly a month behind bars.
"We don't know who attacked him. His condition is said to be stable now," police spokesman Hassan Haneef told AFP by telephone, adding that they were trying to track down the assailant behind Monday evening's attack.
The Maldivian government condemned the stabbing, but said Hilath should have sought protection.
"We condemn this attack. Hilath must have known that he had become a target of a few extremists," Human Resources and Youth Minister Mohamed Shareef told AFP. In Pakistan a couple of weeks ago:
Pakistan on Sunday blocked access to Twitter in response to "blasphemous" material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said.
"They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content," he said.
Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and about 1,000 other websites for nearly two weeks in May 2010 over blasphemous content.
And last month:
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today expressed grave concern over the Kuwaiti Parliament's approval last week of severe new penalties for blasphemy. The Emir of Kuwait has 30 days to approve these penalties before they would become law. The new provisions would impose the death penalty on Muslims who refuse to repent after being found to have insulted God, the Prophet Mohammad, his wives, or the Qur'an. For non-Muslims, the punishment would be up to 10 years in prison; for Muslims who repent, the punishment would be up to five years or a fine.
For twelve years, Muslim states have been trying to get the UN to pass "anti-blasphemy" resolutions, an initiative that they have only recently said they would downplay. There is no doubt, however, that the desire is still there. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From YNet:
Researchers at the Kaspersky Lab said Tuesday that one of the Flame virus' main objectives was to copy confidential technical drawings pertaining to Iran's secret military and nuclear facilities.
"Flame" hit Iran in late may and has since been hailed as "the most sophisticated cyber-bomb to date."
Tehran said it was able to contain the malware, but had admitted that significant amounts of data have been corrupted.
According to the BBC report, the hackers controlling Flame "used a number of complex fake identities in order to carry out their plans."
Kaspersky's researches said that the fake identities – complete with fake addresses and billing information – were "used to register more than 80 domain names used to distribute the malware."
Researchers were also able to put together statistics on the extent of the Flame strike. The information was gathered via "sinkholing."
Vitaly Kamluk, a senior researcher at Kaspersky, explained that, "Sinkholing is a procedure when we discover a malicious server - whether it is an IP address or domain name - which we can take over with the help of the authorities or the (domain) registrar.
"We can redirect all the requests from the victims from infected machines to our lab server to register all these infections and log them," the BBC quoted him further.
Kamluk added that the attackers had a "high interest in AutoCad drawings, in addition to PDF and text files"; further cementing reports suggesting the Flame was on a complex reconnaissance mission.
"They were looking for the designs of mechanical and electrical equipment," Prof. Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, told the BBC. The thing is, Kaspersky seems to be overstating Flame's sophistication.
The Register, a well-regarded British security publication, says:
Flame may be big in size but it's nothing like the supposedly devastating cyberwarfare mega-weapon early reports of the malware suggested. This new nasty is quite complex by design, yet researchers are still hunting for any truly evil and innovative attack techniques, or similar threats, within the code.
Rather than redefining cyberwar and cyberespionage, as Kasperky researchers initially claimed amid Iranian warnings that the malware was "a close relation to the Stuxnet and Duqu targeted attacks", Flame is bloated and overhyped, according to rival security vendors.
Flame is a precise attack toolkit rather than a general-purpose cyber-weapon, the argument goes. It hasn't spread very far and might well be restricted to systems administrators of Middle East governments.
"While it really doesn't do anything we haven't seen before in other malware attacks — what's really interesting is that it weaves multiple techniques together and dynamically applies them based on the capabilities of the infected system," Patrik Runald of Websense explains.
"Also, Flame has been operating under the radar for at least two years, which counter-intuitively may partially be attributed to its large size."
...A lot was made of the modular design of Flame but this isn't new either. Chris Wysopal (AKA Weld Pond), a former member of Boston-area hacking collective L0pht and who later founded the application security firm VeraCode, noted with some disdain that the Back Orifice 2000 hacker tool included modular functionality when it came out 12 years ago.
Hungarian security researchers at CrySyS reckon that Flame was "developed by a government or nation state with significant budget and effort", the one point on which there's general agreement.
The experts reckon a military sub-contractor was likely to have carried out the work rather than an intelligence agency. To support this theory, it cites job adverts by Northrop Grumman for a software engineer to work on offensive cyberspace missions. Lots of other defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, have positions for this type of project, F-Secure adds. As far as registering Internet domains with fake credentials - that is ridiculously easy to do, hardly an indication of a super spy network. Many domain registrars don't require proof of identity.
No doubt Flame was created by a government, and no doubt it is powerful, but the original description was filled with hype. Its looking for AutoCAD drawings, not to mention its Bluetooth sniffing, indicates it is an espionage tool.
It is not unusual for directed malware, meant only for a small geographic area and only infecting a comparatively tiny number of machines, to not be noticed for years.
Which means that it is entirely possible that there are lots of Flames out there. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From IBA:
The CFCA notes a report from France that shows that there were over 400 anti-semitic attacks there in 2011 - a number that has increased this year.
It also gives examples of extreme anti-semitism in an online newspaper in Volyn, Ukraine.
A new report shows one in eight Norwegians hold clear prejudices against Jews.
(h/t O) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the World Economic Forum Middle East yesterday in Istanbul.
As usual, his speech was filled with lies, threats and demands - par for the course for a despot.
Here is part of his speech:
I am pleased today to speak before this conference, which includes prominent international figures in the fields of economics and politics, to discuss many issues, especially the democratic transition, and its impact on the economy and sustainable development, peace and stability in the region and the world.
This from a person who is in office years past the date he was supposed to leave.
[The WEF] discussed the many economic development initiatives and investment in the region, in order to provide prosperity and stability, helping to create a suitable environment for the negotiations and the political process between us and the Israelis; However, despite all efforts the peace process remains stalled without reaching a just solution to end the Israeli occupation of our land, and put an end to the suffering of our people and the agonies extended for more than sixty-four years since the Nakba; However, our people will not lose hope for a better tomorrow for us and our neighbors, and we will continue our quest for peace and stability. As long as it doesn't involve negotiations or compromise.
I am pleased to take this opportunity to express the State of the brother Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey, our sincere thanks and appreciation, for inviting us and hosting this important conference throughout this beautiful country, which reflects the extent to which you attach, your Excellency, to achieve security, peace and stability in the region, and to ensure a just and comprehensive solution to the Arab - Israeli conflict... Yeah, Erdogan is a real peach.
On June 5 it has been 45 years since the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and the peace process is on the horizon of a dead end, where there is still a draft two-state solution and great obstacles, because of illegal Israeli settlements, which devours the Palestinian Territories, and cut apart, and isolates East Jerusalem from its Palestinian Arab neighbors, and changes the historical and cultural features, as well as settler attacks daily in East Jerusalem, and throughout all the West Bank, and their attacks on unarmed Palestinians and their property and houses of worship, and lack of commitment by the Israeli government reference, international, two-state solution based on 1967 borders, according to the Roadmap, the Arab Peace Initiative, and the resolutions of international legitimacy. But the daily attacks on Jews, daily incitement in Palestinian Arab media, official government denial of Israel's existence in all PA maps, are fully justified and completely compatible with peace, right? Which residents of the territories live behind fences because of fear of attacks - Jews or Arabs?
Notice also that Abbas denies any Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, so his accusations on that point are more than hypocritical.
On the Palestinian level, we fulfilled all our obligations in agreements, and initiatives of the international Quartet, and made our position and intentions, and we have all that is required of us in this regard, and to meet the aspirations of our people's national living in an independent sovereign state is committed to international law, and in the 1967 borders, living in security, peace and stability with the state of Israel, and believes the Charter of the United Nations. See above. They show no desire to live in peace with Israel, especially by praising terrorists as recently as this week.
In the context of constructive cooperation with the international community finished building the institutions of the state, recognized by more than 132 countries and has diplomatic representation in most countries of the world. However, the embodiment of its independence and its sovereignty over the land is still subject to end the occupation and the Israeli settlements on our land, including East Jerusalem, the capital of our Palestinian state, which requires the demarcation of the border between the two countries based on the 1967 lines, and ensure the security of third parties; and resolving final status issues all, including the creation of a just and agreed according to the Arab peace initiative for Palestinian refugees, who have been displaced from their homes, robbed of their rights, and still waiting for justice to the international community for them, also includes the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Arab states have no responsibility for keeping Palestinian Arabs stateless and miserable for 64 years, of course. Abbas wants them to remain that way, and has said so, taking away their own freedom to choose citizenship elsewhere. He is a lying, opportunistic, dictatorial, sickening hypocrite who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus in order to fulfill his own fantasies of destroying Israel, one step at a time.
Our region needs to build bridges of cooperation and peace and dialogue, and not to create walls and the expansion of settlements, but to initiate serious negotiations leading to the desired peace. Yet Abbas is the one who has refused to negotiate for four years now.
[Our people have made] a great sacrifice, desiring a state on less than a quarter of historic Palestine, do not turn away for this opportunity available today, which may not remain available for a long time, the region experiencing rapid and successive developments, and if we want the victory of democracy and human rights, then we have to make a just and comprehensive peace, which guarantees a better future for our region and our future generations, and avoid the consequences of our children and your children return to the squares of violence and the cycle of conflict. The opportunity ha sbeen available since Oslo, and Abbas and his gang have refused to accept a state. That's the bottom line. Instead they threaten, support terror, teach their kids to hate and continue their demand to destroy Israel demographically.
And, of course, Abbas must trot out his lie about "historic Palestine."
If they really wanted peace and if they really wanted a state, they would have had it years ago. But their demands are not for a state or peace, but for a bizarre definition of "justice" where they are the judges, and of a world without a Jewish state.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I couldn't make it to the Salute to Israel parade on Sunday in New York, but I found one decoration along Fifth Avenue that the city forgot to take down.
Since the Empire State Building photo got the anti-Israel crowd so riled up, I figured this scene might cause them a collective aneurysm as they sputter about "kosher taxes" and other idiocies.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | On Sunday afternoon, a group of Jews visited the Jordanian tourist site of Kerak in Jordan, where there is a Crusader castle and other sites.
So the Jordanian residents stoned them.
Al Jazeera (Arabic) reports:
Salem Jeradat - who owns a grocery in the town - was surprised Sunday afternoon by a delegation of Jewish men and women who wear wearing the clothing of religious Jews, which led him to throw his shoes at them.
"Then the people of the town immediately came to the group and they threw shoes and stones, and they kicked them out of town immediately." Jeradat continued, "The people of Jordan do not accept the Jews entering their homeland, and the Wadi Araba treaty between Jordan and the Zionist entity does not represent us."
The idea is that those who occupy Palestine and desecrate holy places should not be allowed to roam freely in Jordan. Citizens of the town gathered in the evening in a grocery and committed themselves to prevent Jews from returning to their town. A Jordanian website helpfully added that the Jewish tourists were wearing "provocative hats."
None of the articles mention "Zionists." Just Jews.
But don't call them anti-semitic. They get angry. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | You don't have to live in Israel to be a "settler!"
From Anamnalquds.com:
25 settlers in a group from the American Zionist Movement on Monday desecrated the courtyards of the holy Al Aqsa Mosque near the Moroccan Gate as the Israeli occupation police protected them. According to eyewitnesses, "the settlers had to take off their shoes and wandered around the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque while a guide spoke of the establishment of the Zionist temple in is place."
Here is one of the horrible photos of the desecration:
Hmmm...why would they need protection from the "occupation police"? 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Arutz-7:
A firebomb was thrown, Sunday evening, at a home on the Mount of Olives, east of the Old City of Jerusalem. According to PalArab media, it was two bombs thrown, and they claimed there was damage.
Meanwhile,
A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza exploded on the outskirts of Sderot at noon on Monday.
And on Friday:
A mortar shell fired from northern Gaza exploded in an open area in southern Israel.
There's an entire "low intensity conflict report" coming out detailing carjackings, rock attacks and more. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The vicious attack over the weekend by mob of apparent Arabs against three Jews in Lyon is not anomalous:
Jewish communal leaders in France say an attack on three Jewish men Saturday night was just the latest in a line of anti-Semitic incidents against the country's Jews.
"There has been a series of acts like the one in in Villeurbanne," said Richard Prasquier, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), according to Le Figaro.
Police are still searching for the culprits behind the incident Saturday night near the southern city of Lyon, in which 10 attackers assaulted three 18-year-old Jewish men outside a Jewish center in Villeurbanne. Two of the victims were taken to the hospital after being beaten with a hammer and metal rod.
Police believe the attackers are of North African extraction.
Joël Mergui, president of the Central Consistory, an umbrella organization working to coordinate local Jewish communities, said the country's Jews were under constant attack. "Not a week passes without anti-Semitic assaults in France. I refuse to believe Jews will be forced to choose between security and their Jewish identity."
The chief rabbi of the Grand Synagogue in Lyon, Richard Wertenschlag, called the atmosphere "unbearable."
"These incidents are becoming more and more frequent, so much so, alas, as to make one take them for granted," he said.
In March, a rabbi, his two children, and an 8-year-old girl were killed outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, by Algerian-French terrorist Mohamed Merah. Following the attack, French authorities vowed to crack down on Muslim extremism and anti-Semitic incidents.
But CRIF Vice President Ariel Goldman told Le Figaro that incidents had in fact ramped up.
"In the month following the Merah terror attack we counted 140 such acts," said Goldman. "This amounts to a third of the violent incidents we had in 2011."  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades English website:
Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades (E.Q.B) the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, mourned on Monday morning, June 4th, 2012, the death of the Qassam member Ahmed Mohammad Qalajah ,25, from Al Yarmouk district in Gaza city.
The brigades confirmed in a press statement released on Monday morning, that the martyr Ahmed has died while in a special Jihadist mission in the Strip, adding that he was martyred after a long bright path of Jihad, hard work, struggle and sacrifice
Al Qassam Brigades mourn the death of the Mujahed, reaffirms the commitment and determination to continue the resistance against the belligerent occupation forces. The Arabic version includes the desire that he enters Paradise, because they are afraid that perhaps that is not the fate of the "martyrs" who never managed to kill any Jews. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Recently there have been some isolated attacks by Israelis against African would-be immigrants into Israel.
While the problem of these illegal immigrants is a serious one, nothing justifies racism, and nothing justifies physical attacks against these people.
The irony is that the Arab media is essentially celebrating these attacks as "proof" of Israeli racism. An op-ed in Al Quds today even says:
Palestinian people who have been the brunt of these racist practices for sixty-odd years have an affinity with these Africans and solidarity with their plight, just as they had sympathy with the Jewish immigrants who fled the persecution of Europe early last century, and, they were rewarded with expulsion and deportation and mass killings, ethnic cleansing; here are innocent African migrants who are tasting some of this Israeli racism...
The idea that Palestinian Arabs feel an affinity for Africans of any type is almost as laughable as the idea that they felt sympathy for Jewish Holocaust victims (they did everything they could to keep millions of Jews in Europe to be slaughtered.)
I noted an Economist article last week that detailed systematic racism against blacks and Asians in the Arab world (an article that was completely ignored by the Left that claims to care so much about this very issue.) There were few anguished op-eds in Arab newspapers about this clear, institutionalized racism. (Here is one exception.) No articles by such luminous moderates like Hussein Ibish calling for an end to Arab racism. Nothing.
To his credit, Robert Fisk was even more outspoken about the problem.
Arab societies are dependent on servants. Twenty-five per cent of Lebanese families have a live-in migrant worker, according to Professor Ray Jureidini of the Lebanese American University in Beirut. They are essential not only for the social lives of their employers (housework and caring for children) but for the broader Lebanese economy. Yet in the Arab Gulf, the treatment of migrant labour – male as well as female – has long been a scandal. Men from the subcontinent often live eight to a room in slums – even in the billionaires' paradise of Kuwait – and are consistently harassed, treated as third-class citizens, and arrested on the meanest of charges.
But sometimes the truth about Arab racism against blacks can be seen in a much more personal way.
In an advice column for the (Hamas-oriented) Palestine Times, an 18 year old Palestinian Arab girl writes:
I am an 18-year old girl, and my skin is brown. I believe I am beautiful to some extent, but people close to me don't, because they see me as "black." I often wish my mother would bleach my skin in order to whiten my skin, therefore, I am sparing no effort to buy creams to lighten my skin color. Unfortunately, members of my family like my younger sister, as her skin is white and beautiful. What's worse, the mother said this to my sister but not to me, which makes me jealous of my sister. My parents favor her even to the point that my father and my mother always argue as to which of them my sister resembles. I even thought about suicide. Please Help me I am broken and too pre-occupied... The racism is so deep that even within a family there is preference for the daughter with whiter skin!
Arabs of course were instrumental in the slave trade, kidnapping tens of millions of Africans throughout the centuries, something that still exists (especially in Gulf countries) with African domestic workers who are effectively indentured servants.
Their glee at seeing some isolated and condemned acts of Israeli racism is more than a bit hypocritical.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | And Arabs are overjoyed.
From the JRMiP homepage:
'3.3 million Jews can change the life of 40 million Poles'
The founding wish of the JRMiP is to write new pages into a history that never quite took the course we wanted. We call for the return of 3.300.000 Jews to Poland to symbolize the possibility of our collective imagination – to right the wrongs history has imposed and to reclaim the promise of a utopian future that all citizens deserve. Our destiny is not tied to the fate of Jews – or Poles – we welcome into our ranks all those who believe in the strength of dreams and political will to achieve more. Members of the movement are migrants, intellectuals, workers, artists, out-casts and thinkers: People who recognize that the Europe of today needs to be re-thought, that Israel must change to be part of the Middle East and that as citizens we have the ability and responsibility to imagine the world differently. Now, the movement needs you. Together, we can be strong in our weakness.
In the words of the JRMiP manifesto: 'This is the response we propose for these times of crisis, when faith has been exhausted and old utopias have failed. Optimism is dying out. The promised paradise has been privatized. The Kibbutz apples and water melons are no longer as ripe. We direct our appeal not only to Jews. We accept into our ranks all those for whom there is no place in their homelands – the expelled and the persecuted. There will be no discrimination in our movement. We shall not ask about your life stories, check your residence cards or question your refugee status.'
Join us and Europe will be stunned.
The JRMiP was initiated by Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana in 2007 and since then has garnered international recognition and support. In May 2012 the JRMiP will meet for the first time in Berlin to formulate their future agenda. The desire seems to be that if Jews of Polish ancestry would return to a country that always treated them as second-class citizens, then the remaining (mostly Sephardic) Jews in Israel could melt into a Middle East and return to becoming second-class citizens as well.
This is considered "utopian."
The heralded JRMiP Congress was apparently held three weekends ago - yes, on Shabbat - and perhaps three dozen "delegates" were scheduled to attend.
I can find no news stories about it.
In fact, the entire idea may have been a publicity stunt for the Israeli artist Yael Bartana, who created a trilogy of films about a fictional JRMiP in faux documentary style.
However tenuous the idea's relationship is with reality, Israeli Arab newspaper Elaph loves the idea. What's not for Arabs to love? It pushes their idea that Jews properly belong elsewhere.
The script could have been written by Helen Thomas! 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Egypt Independent:
Egypt has struggled to obtain bank payments for its fuel purchases, trade sources said, delaying diesel supplies for transport, industry and agriculture ahead of the second round of an election vote.
The payment problems have caused shipping delays and prompted some suppliers to think again before offering oil into a forthcoming US$1 billion import tender, half a dozen trade sources, including current suppliers, told Reuters.
They said delays of up to two weeks in deliveries were a regular occurrence ahead of peak summer demand for diesel, blaming Egypt's difficulties in obtaining letters of credit from banks.
An official at the Egyptian General Petroleum Corp (EGPC) denied this.
A trader involved in the transactions said banks were increasingly nervous with loans and required additional assurances as Egypt's stretched finances made it harder to pay for its heavy fuel subsidies bill.
"There has been a queue of (oil) product vessels in Egypt that are waiting for letters of credit," said a second trader working for a Swiss-based trading house.
Fuel shortages have already caused anger this year and have delayed the harvest. Long lines at fuel stations in central Cairo were forming on Thursday, causing large traffic jams in some main thoroughfares.
Shipping delays can cut or eliminate oil traders' profit margins through additional waiting fees — "demurrage" costs.
Traders said these amounted to between $15,000-$25,000 a day depending on the size of the vessel.
The recent delays could further shrink Egypt's pool of suppliers participating in tenders, which has already fallen since the revolution, the traders said.
"Taking into consideration extra demurrage for sure there are some companies not offering anymore," said a trade source. Another source said that those able to continue supplying Egypt are likely to ask for premiums on fuel sales. Things are going to get much, much worse in Egypt. And it is going to happen sooner rather than later, since peak energy usage is in the summer.
 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This evening I saw the most stunning rainbow of my life - a full 180 degrees. I captured part of it in two photos at a parking lot.
Phone cameras cannot do justice to a rainbow, but you work with what you have...
And until this very minute I didn't even realize that it was a double rainbow!
This is as good an excuse as any for an open thread....
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Ian:
Israel A Country Fenced In (video)
from Daphne Anson
Why Israel Should Not Return To The 1967 Borders
Democratic House primary turns into ethnic proxy war over Israel
Pascrell in recent weeks has waged a charm offensive in the Arab community, campaigning alongside a Hamas-sympathizer and many who have expressed hostility towards Israel.
James Zogby, president of the American Arab Institute, recently helped Pascrell collect more than $50,000; Zogby is a longtime critic of Israel who has accused the U.S. of "being the coat holder and cheerleader" for the Jewish state.
Pascrell also has embraced Imam Mohammad Qatanani, a controversial Passaic spiritual leader who stands accused by the State Department of hiding a conviction in Israel for having ties to the terror group Hamas.
Last Friday, Pascrell held a high profile event at a local mosque where he was joined by Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn), a prominent ally of the fringe group J Street and the first Muslim member of Congress.
German controversy over Israel boycott
Politicians reject German mayor's Israel boycott. Schröter: goal is to label goods from 'illegal' settlements.
"Critics accused Schroter, 57, the Social Democratic mayor of Jena in Thuringia state, of fostering modern anti-Semitism with his support for a call by the German branch of Pax Christi, an international Catholic "peace movement," to not buy Israeli goods."
President Obama Shuns Lech Walesa
According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no.
Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too "political." A man who was arrested by Soviet officials for dissenting against the government for being "political" is being shunned by the United States of America for the same reason 30 years later.
Meanwhile, one of the recipients of the Medal was Dolores Huerta, the honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. So socialist politics are acceptable, but not the politics of a man who stood up and fought socialism.
Australian hi-tech investor unveils audacious 30-year Jerusalem master plan
Greg Sheridan in The Australian on some of the wasteful exercises of diplomacy being carried out in your name
According to Gillard government officials in devastating Senate estimates committee testimony this week, one Bashir al-Kheiri* was president of UAWC from 2008 to last year. He is closely associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a proscribed terrorist organisation, and has served substantial jail time for terrorist offences. There are many other connections between UAWC figures and the PFLP.
The government's entire defence on this matter has rested on the narrow legal argument that in funding the UAWC it is not breaching laws against funding terrorists because there is no formal organisational connection between UAWC and PFLP, and there is no diversion of funds.
No doubt the government is right that it is not breaking the law. But what possible reason is there for Australian taxpayers to labour so that they can provide resources to individuals associated with the PFLP? It is complete madness, morally repugnant and against common sense.
*alt spelling - al-Khairi
(unfortunately the full Sheridan article is paywalled, his broader point was that money is being recklessly spent on aid rather than on diplomatic staff who could supervise aid spending, advise the government and build relationships.)
Bonus
Best Israeli English Class Ad Ever - NSFW
Also:
Israeli subs from Germany can carry nuclear weapons
JE Dyer: Just a reminder: Iran still closing in on bomb
Racism in Poland and Ukraine football (BBC, video seems only available in UK)
...But the British team is visiting Auschwitz before the tournament
Another warning from Iran. Yawn.
A scene in a Saudi mall
Ben Dror Yemini on the African refugee problem (Hebrew)
(h/t Ben, O., Alan S., Yoel) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Xinhua:
Under Gaza's glittering waters of the Mediterranean, a strategic gas reservoir that is capable of ending the crippling power crisis in this Palestinian enclave has been lying out of commission since it was discovered 12 years ago.
Now, electricity outage in Gaza is suffered up to 12 hours per day, as the only power plant lacks enough diesel to run its turbines. Cars stop in long queues for hours at petrol stations, hospitals warning that fuel for generators is running up and cooking gas suffers sporadic shortages.
In 2000, the U.K.-based energy firm BG Group plc and its partners -- the Lebanese Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)'s Investment Fund -- announced the discovery of a gas field 36 km off the Gaza coast. Later in the year, the consortium said it drilled two wells (Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2), with estimated resources of around 1 trillion cubic feet.
"There are no real obstacles preventing us from extracting the gas," said a source from BG group. "The only problem is that we are still searching for a market." The source says that despite talking to several regional and foreign potential buyers, no agreement was reached. No explanation for this was offered from the source.
BG Group spent seven years in negotiations with Israel as a possible purchaser of Gaza gas, but the negotiations stopped in 2007 and the company closed its Tel Aviv office. Sources from the company say Israel wanted to get the gas for two U.S. dollars per cubic feet, below the market's seven-dollar price.
Also in 2007, Islamic Hamas movement wrested control of the Gaza Strip, leaving the PNA's rule confined to the West Bank. As Al-Khatib and the BG Group source downplayed the partial responsibility of the Palestinian split for not extracting gas, another BG Group source did not. "If there was no split, the gas field might have been developed." Of course, the article can't resist false Israel-bashing:
As part of the Israeli sanctions against Hamas, shipments of diesel to the station from Israel were limited. For a year, Hamas managed to smuggle the fuel from Egypt, but the process was interrupted by the beginning of 2012. Um, no. Israel was sending all the fuel it was being paid for through Kerem Shalom. Hamas stopped the shipments for over a year and refused to resume them for months as Gaza went dark.
Observers believe that Israel's monopoly on the Palestinian energy resources aim at preventing any unilateral step of independence by the Palestinian leadership. Those "observers" wouldn't happen to be rabid Israel haters, would they?
(h/t Meryl Yourish) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Israel's unilateral return of the bodies of the most heinous terrorists last week is most perplexing, as the only consequence from that act has been a huge amount of praise given to these terrorists by the Palestinian Arabs.
One of those whose bodies were returned was Reem Riyashi. From Wikipedia:
Riyashi detonated a 2 kg bomb inside a building where the thousands of Palestinians who cross each day from Gaza to work in a neighbouring industrial zone are processed.[2]
The Israeli army reported that when she reached the metal detector at the terminal, Riyashi pretended to be crippled and claimed to have metal plates in her leg which would sound the alarm. She asked to have a body search instead. After being taken to an area where a group of soldiers and policemen were checking bags, she was told to wait for a woman to come and search her in a cubicle. It was then that she detonated the explosive device.
Two Israeli soldiers, a policeman and a civilian security worker were killed. Seven other Israelis and four Palestinians were injured. Riyashi posed with her two small children, one who was 3 years old and the other 18 months old:
Most Arabic media in Egypt and Lebanon praised her at the time. Typical was the reaction of Lebanese MP Walid Jumblatt:
"Yesterday, the Palestinian mother Reem Al-Riyashi sacrificed herself, and by so doing joined the columns of the brave Jihad warriors and broke the atrocious and troublesome Arab silence, the helplessness, and the retreat that precede failure and disintegration. She offered hope in a sea of complacency, indecisiveness, and fear. It is a new Intifada. It is the Intifada of the revolutionary Palestinian woman and of the land, opposing the 'Jewification' [of Palestine], the Jewish reality, and the Arab regimes. Did it come out of despair?
"No, and again no. It is an act of belief and it is the correct path, because the fall of one Jew, whether soldier or civilian, is a great accomplishment in times of decline, subservience, and submissiveness, as a way to undermine the plan to 'Jewify' all of Palestine." 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Every time an Israeli is killed, terrorist media love to show photos of grieving Israelis. And the killing of Netanel Moshiashvili on Friday morning near Gaza is no different.
Hamas' Palestine Times features a photo essay with some 15 photos from Moshiashvili's funeral.
The title of the story is "Zionists crying and bemoaning the dead."
The reason? To them, seeing Jews crying shows their supposed weakness.
Beyond that, it shows that Arab terrorists aren't irrelevant - which is their biggest fear. They are proud to know that they have the ability to affect people's lives in Israel! (They have similar photo essays of Jews running to bomb shelters whenever they shoot rockets towards Israel.)
Significantly, Palestine Times showed no photos from the funeral of the Arab who infiltrated Israel and was killed. Usually when they do, the prevalent emotion is not sadness but anger; in this Reuters photo we see one of the "mourners" with a rifle.
While wire services will show mourning Arabs, the Arab media is much more reluctant to do so - again, because they regard sadness as weakness, and they want to channel all emotions into anger and terror. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From AFP:
A delivery of 30 million liters of Qatari fuel, which was to have entered Gaza on Sunday, has been delayed yet again, officials said, prompting an angry reaction from the Palestinian energy authority.
The Hamas-run Gaza Strip has been living through its worst electricity crisis in living memory, with the Qatari shipment expected to help ease the situation.
But Raed Fatuh, head coordinator for the Palestinian Authority at the Kerem Shalom crossing between southern Gaza and Israel, told AFP the delay was the result of "technical issues" on the Egyptian side.
He said delivery of the fuel, which is to be transported through Egypt's Al-Awja crossing and into southern Israel, then into Gaza through Kerem Shalom, would take place on Tuesday.
It was the third such delay in less than three weeks and prompted an angry outburst by the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority (PENRA), which said the shipment had been sitting in the dock at the Egyptian port of Suez "for a month and a half."
"There has been a change of roles between the Israelis and the Egyptians in suffocating the Palestinian people and continuing the siege on Gaza," a statement posted on the PENRA website said.
"This continued delay in the arrival of the Qatari fuel will extend the electricity crisis in Gaza, especially with summer approaching."
Last month, Israel gave the green light for the fuel to be transferred through its territory after receiving a request from the Egyptians, an Israeli security official said. The fuel was in Egypt two months ago, but Egypt only requested to transfer it through Israel last month, and Israel approved the shipment.
Proving yet again that Gaza is being blockaded - by (post-revolution) Egypt.
Notice that AFP still cannot figure out that Hamas created the fuel crisis by refusing for months to accept fuel from Israel. Qatar's two month supply is free, showing that Hamas' cynical abuse of its citizens in Gaza pays off. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From CNN last week:
Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the only person convicted in connection with the Lockerbie airline bombing that killed 259 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 on the ground, went to his grave protesting his innocence.
And there are others who believe that Megrahi, who died on Sunday from cancer, was not responsible for bringing down the jet over Scotland in 1988, including some of the victims' families.
...TV producer and author John Ashton has spent many years studying the case, and worked as a researcher with al Megrahi's defense team between 2006 and 2009. He believes al Megrahi was innocent and presents his reasons in his book "Megrahi: You are my jury - the Lockerbie evidence.'"
He believes that Iran is the likely suspect behind the bombing, using the Palestinian group The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) to carry out the attack.
He told CNN he believed the group operated from Damascus but had a cell inside Germany, and alleges the attack was in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet by the Americans in July 1988 with the loss of 290 lives. Missiles from USS Vincennes hit the plane as it flew over the Persian Gulf. Now, the Herald Scotland says it is going to publish evidence that the British government tried to suppress:
It has been hidden, blocked and kept secret by the UK Government for more than 20 years, but The Herald can reveal for the first time the contents of the top-secret Lockerbie document that the UK tried to prevent us from publishing.
The highly classified document, which has never even been aired in public or shared with the courts, originally came from Jordan and indicates that a Palestinian terrorist group was involved in the bombing that killed 270 people – something the UK Government has vehemently denied.
The UK Government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent details of the document – which casts further doubt on the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi – being published by The Herald.
It has threatened legal action to stop publication of the newspaper and asked the paper to sign up to a court-approved gagging order.
Our decision to publish details of the document, which was obtained by the Crown Office but never shown to the defence team, will prove highly embarrassing to the Crown, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Office of the Advocate General, whose lawyers have worked tirelessly to prevent it ever being even discussed in public.
The document incriminates the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) in the Lockerbie bombing.
The PFLP-GC were the original suspects in the investigation into the biggest terrorist atrocity ever to have been committed in mainland Britain. However, by 1991 police and prosecutors were entirely focused on Libya. Since then politicians and the investigating authorities have denied the possibility of their involvement, instead blaming the whole atrocity on Libya.
Repeated, high-level attempts to block the report indicate it is vital to unearthing the truth about the Lockerbie bombing. The UK Government arranged for the document to be covered by Public Interest Immunity on national security grounds. This prevented it from being shared with the defence but does not prevent publication by a newspaper. There are no details in this article. But many others have pieced together evidence that the PFLP-GC was behind the bombing, as this 2007 London Review of Books article details.
The PFLP-GC works closely with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It had been responsible for a number of bomb attacks on airlines in the 1970s, as well as a number oof high-profile attacks in Israel including Kiryat Shmona and the Avivim School Bus Massacre.
(h/t Akusia) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Empire State Building was lit up in blue and white this weekend in honor of Israel's Independence Day in New York:
The Empire State Building in New York will form the focal point of Manhattan's Israel independence celebrations from June 1-3 when it will be lit up in blue and white in honour of the Israeli flag.
The New York landmark will also mark the route of the largest ever parade to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Jewish State on Sunday, on Fifth Avenue.
More than 200 groups from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Israel will take part in the event - which is organised by the The Community Relations Council of New York, in conjunction with the City of New York, the Israeli Consulate in New York and Israel's Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs – with 35,000 anticipated participants and 29 floats. Hundreds of thousands of New York City spectators are expected to follow the event in the city's streets.
The Israel parade will be televised live in the New York metropolitan area for the second consecutive year. There has been a bit of controversy over the fact that some left-wing groups that advocate boycotting Israeli goods are being allowed to march in the parade. I think it is appropriate to heckle them as they pass by; but I strongly disagree that the parade itself should be boycotted because people disagree with a tiny minority of those marching. It is far more important to show up and express support for Israel.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From MEMRI:
The Syrian newsman's logic afterwards - that lies must continue to be broadcast - is truly classic. As if Syria allows the opposition to broadcast their alleged "lies."
Meanwhile, the Arab League asked Arab satellite channels to discontinue broadcasting Syrian news channels, exactly because of the many provable official Syrian lies.
Predictably, Syrian officials are incensed, claiming that not only is this unacceptable "violation of media ethics," but that this is a form of - wait for it - "terrorism."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Guy Bechor wrote a very powerful op-ed last week about the looming crisis of African migrants to Israel:
When we published an article in 2007 about the nightmare facing Israel from Africa, many were shocked. Today, this vision has become a reality (Then, 400 infiltrators stole over the border from Africa each month; currently, about 4,000 come here illegally every month).
I realize today that I too was naive back then, when I wrote the article. I did not see the depth of the picture unfolding before us. Then I thought that the primarily reason for the infiltration was to improve the lives of the Africans who came here, as it is with the migration from Mexico to the United States, but now it appears that the image is unique to Israel.
The truth is that millions of Africans would like to immigrate to Israel to improve their lives, but it turns out that in Israel there are those who want to exploit this to change our country's demographic balance. After they failed to let in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into this country, these people now expect a migration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Africa to Israel. It's not a war on immigration that lies ahead of us, but a war over the continuation of the Jewish majority in Israel.
A number of associations, NGOs and others have encouraged this African immigration to Israel. They begin by directing the emigration from the countries of origin, preserving it, preventing it from running into obstacles in the Sinai Peninsula, and providing it with a warm home in Israel. They have spread and continue to spread the rumor in Africa that Israel is a paradise, and that it can be reached by foot.
These are not migrant workers who stand before us, and not refugees, but a majority of African Muslims who come here to settle, and never leave.
...
And what is the plan hatched in secret by those organizations of "human rights?" When the numbers reach a quarter of a million or half a million, and we're getting there fast, the organizations will turn to the High Court of Justice and to the United Nations, demanding that Israel grant residency to these "immigrants" and even citizenship, as is customary in the West.
With that, the percentage of Muslims in Israel will jump immediately to between 30% and 35%, with all the demographic implications that you can imagine.
Being residents, then citizens, the Africans will naturally be able to bring their family members, and the numbers will double. For those who did not want the Jews in Uganda, Uganda will now come to Israel. Being a small country, these processes will occur very fast, faster than in Europe.
Now we understand that the Muslim infiltrators from Africa (the migrants from Sudan are all Muslim, and most of the Eritrean migrants are, too) are not weak, but rather their Israeli absorbers. They are not the ones being threatened, because they are not war refugees, but rather Israel is being threatened.
The "human rights" organizations have easy access to the media, and they do not hide their desire to see Israel as a state of all citizens and no longer a Jewish or Zionist state, and from this perspective, the Muslim migrants from Africa suit their cause very well. These organizations bear direct responsibility for the new plague that has befallen Israel. They direct the migration, organize it, preserve it from the authorities, help the migrants get permits and papers, empower them, teach them how to stand up to the authorities, how to conduct demonstrations that will touch the sensitive nerves of the Israelis, and even made them a newspaper, in African languages, which is funded by the UN. I am always reluctant to post a charge like this, that NGOs are encouraging this migration, but some proof comes from a monograph recently put out by the UNHCR:
[O]ne NGO worker argued that civil society organisations advocate a perception of 'universalistic citizenship', where everyone should have rights. "They do not see the nationality issue as relevant, but publicly, it is not stated. In today's public atmosphere, we will not say it out loud because it does not serve the struggle and the strategy." As the same NGO worker argued: "the central issue here is [one that addresses] the nature of Israeli civil society, the struggle is about the character of Israel as a state, and the refugees are not really sharing this struggle, they are rather disempowered by it".
Rotter.net also translates an interview with one of the Sudanese migrants who names the left-wing Israelis associated with the New Israel Fund that helped him come into the country.
It is not the spontaneous flight of refugees from Africa that the media is implying.
(h/t Ruchie) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Pravda, in an article defending Assad against those evil Westerners:
The U.N.'s human rights office said that most of the 108 victims of a massacre in Syria last week were shot at close range, some of them women, children and entire families gunned down in their own homes, and that most of the dead were killed execution-style, with fewer than 20 people cut down by regime shelling.
This incident is exactly according to the modus operandi of NATO/FUKUS sponsored terrorists, operating around the globe, and most recently in Libya and Syria. I've heard of NATO, but what the hell is FUKUS?
Ah, apparently I don't read Pravda enough. It was defined a couple of months ago, by a different Pravda writer:
For a start how can the world act with one single voice after what the FUKUS Axis (France, UK US and Israel) did in Libya and after the mission creep their no-fly zone warped into? Of course Israel is part of FUKUS - we all know how heavily involved the IDF was in Libya and now is in Syria - but it must be an invisible and silent I, just like Israel is. "FUKUSI" doesn't quite have the same effect, sounding somewhat Japanese.
And IFUKUS sounds anatomically difficult.
The Soviet Union might be gone, but we still have Pravda!
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Classic science fiction, with a Jewish twist:
The Golem by Avram Davidson The grey-faced person came along the street where old Mr. and Mrs. Gumbeiner lived. It was afternoon, it was autumn, the sun was warm and soothing to their ancient bones. Anyone who attended the movies in the twenties or the early thirties has seen that street a thousand times. Past these bungalows with their half-double roofs Edmund Lowe walked arm-in-arm with Leatrice Joy and Harold Lloyd was chased by Chinamen waving hatchets. Under these squamous palm trees Laurel kicked Hardy and Woolsey beat Wheeler upon the head with a codfish. Across these pocket-handkerchief-sized lawns the juveniles of the Our Gang comedies pursued one another and were pursued by angry fat men in golf knickers. On this same street—or perhaps on some other one of five hundred streets exactly like it. Mrs. Gumbeiner indicated the grey-faced person to her husband. "You think maybe he's got something the matter?" she asked. "He walks kind of funny, to me." "Walks like a golem,," Mr. Gumbeiner said indifferently. The old woman was nettled. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "I think he walks like your cousin Mendel." The old man pursed his mouth angrily and chewed on his pipestem. The grey-faced person turned up the concrete path, walked up the steps to the porch, sat down in a chair. Old Mr. Gumbeiner ignored him. His wife stared at the stranger. "Man comes in without a hello, goodbye, or howareyou, sits himself down, and right away he's at home … The chair is comfortable?" she asked. "Would you like maybe a glass of tea?" She turned to her husband. "Say something, Gumbeiner!" she demanded. "What are you, made of wood?" The old man smiled a slow, wicked, triumphant smile. "Why should I say anything?" he asked the air. "Who am I? Nothing, that's who." The stranger spoke. His voice was harsh and monotonous. "When you learn who—or, rather, what—I am, the flesh will melt from your bones in terror." He bared porcelain teeth. "Never mind about my bones!" the old woman cried. "You've got a lot of nerve talking about my bones!" "You will quake with fear," said the stranger. Old Mrs. Gumbeiner said that she hoped he would live so long. She turned to her husband once again. "Gumbeiner, when are you going to mow the lawn?" "All mankind—" the stranger began. "Shah! I'm talking to my husband … He talks eppis kind of funny, Gumbeiner, no?" "Probably a foreigner," Mr. Gumbeiner said complacently. "You think so?" Mrs. Gumbeiner glanced fleetingly at the stranger. "He's got a very bad color in his face,nebbich, I suppose he came to California for his health." "Disease, pain, sorrow, love, grief—all are nought to—" Mr. Gumbeiner cut in on the stranger's statement. "Gall bladder," the old man said. "Guinzburg down at the shule looked exactly the same before his operation. Two professors they had in for him, and a private nurse day and night." "I am not a human being!" the stranger said loudly. "Three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars it cost his son, Guinzburg told me. 'For you, Poppa, nothing is too expensive—only get well,' the son told him." "I am not a human being!" "Ai, is that a son for you!" the old woman said, rocking her head. "A heart of gold, pure gold." She looked at the stranger. "All right, all right, I heard you the first time. Gumbeiner! I asked you a question. When are you going to cut the lawn?" "On Wednesday, odder maybe Thursday, comes the Japaneser to the neighborhood. To cut lawns is his profession. My profession is to be a glazier—retired." "Between me and all mankind is an inevitable hatred," the stranger said. "When I tell you what I am, the flesh will melt—" "You said, you said already," Mr. Gumbeiner interrupted. "In Chicago where the winters were as cold and bitter as the Czar of Russia's heart," the old woman intoned, "you had strength to carry the frames with the glass together day in and day out. But in California with the golden sun to mow the lawn when your wife asks, for this you have no strength. Do I call in the Japaneser to cook for you supper?" "Thirty years Professor Allardyce spent perfecting his theories. Electronics, neuronics—" "Listen, how educated he talks," Mr. Gumbeiner said admiringly. "Maybe he goes to the University here?" "If he goes to the University, maybe he knows Bud?" his wife suggested. "Probably they're in the same class and he came to see him about the homework, no?" "Certainly he must be in the same class. How many classes are there? Five in ganzen: Bud showed me on his program card." She counted off on her fingers. "Television Appreciation and Criticism, Small Boat Building, Social Adjustment, The American Dance … The American Dance—nu, Gumbeiner—" "Contemporary Ceramics," her husband said, relishing the syllables. "A fine boy, Bud. A pleasure to have him for a boarder." "After thirty years spent in these studies," the stranger, who had continued to speak unnoticed, went on, "he turned from the theoretical to the pragmatic. In ten years' time he had made the most titanic discovery in history: he made mankind, all mankind, superfluous; he made me." "What did Tillie write in her last letter?" asked the old man. The old woman shrugged. "What should she write? The same thing. Sidney was home from the Army, Naomi has a new boyfriend—" "He made ME!" "Listen, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is," the old woman said, "maybe where you came from is different, but in this country you don't interrupt people while they're talking … Hey. Listen—what do you mean, he made you? What kind of talk is that?" The stranger bared all his teeth again, exposing the too-pink gums. "In his library, to which I had a more complete access after his sudden and as yet undiscovered death from entirely natural causes, I found a complete collection of stories about androids, from Shelley's Frankenstein through Capek's R.U.R. to Asimov's—" "Frankenstein?" said the old man with interest. "There used to be a Frankenstein who had the soda- wasser place on Halstead Street—a Litvack, nebbich." "What are you talking?" Mrs. Gumbeiner demanded. "His name was Frankenthal, and it wasn't on Halstead, it was on Roosevelt." "—clearly shown that all mankind has an instinctive antipathy towards androids and there will be an inevitable struggle between them—" "Of course, of course!" Old Mr. Gumbeiner clicked his teeth against his pipe. "I am always wrong, you are always right. How could you stand to be married to such a stupid person all this time?" "I don't know," the old woman said. "Sometimes I wonder, myself. I think it must be his good looks." She began to laugh. Old Mr. Gumbeiner blinked, then began to smile, then took his wife's hand. "Foolish old woman," the stranger said. "Why do you laugh? Do you not know I have come to destroy you?" "What?" old Mr. Gumbeiner shouted. "Close your mouth, you!" He darted from his chair and struck the stranger with the flat of his hand. The stranger's head struck against the porch pillar and bounced back. "When you talk to my wife, talk respectable, you hear?" Old Mrs. Gumbeiner, cheeks very pink, pushed her husband back to his chair. Then she leaned forward and examined the stranger's head. She clicked her tongue as she pulled aside a flap of grey, skinlike material. "Gumbeiner, look! He's all springs and wires inside!" "I told you he was a golem, but no, you wouldn't listen," the old man said. "You said he walked like a golem." "How could he walk like a golem unless he was one?" "All right, all right … You broke him, so now fix him." "My grandfather, his light shines from Paradise, told me that when MoHaRal—Moreynu Ha-Rav Löw—his memory for a blessing, made the golem in Prague, three hundred? four hundred years ago? he wrote on his forehead the Holy Name." Smiling reminiscently, the old woman continued, "And the golem cut the rabbi's wood and brought his water and guarded the ghetto." "And one time only he disobeyed the Rabbi Löw, and Rabbi Löw erased the Shem Ha-Mephorashfrom the golem's forehead and the golem fell down like a dead one. And they put him up in the attic of the shule, and he's still there today if the Communisten haven't sent him to Moscow … This is not just a story," he said. "Avadda not!" said the old woman. "I myself have seen both the shule and the rabbi's grave," her husband said conclusively. "But I think this must be a different kind of golem, Gumbeiner. See, on his forehead; nothing written." "What's the matter, there's a law I can't write something there? Where is that lump of clay Bud brought us from his class?" The old man washed his hands, adjusted his little black skull-cap, and slowly and carefully wrote four Hebrew letters on the grey forehead. "Ezra the Scribe himself couldn't do better," the old woman said admiringly. "Nothing happens," she observed, looking at the lifeless figure sprawled in the chair. "Well, after all, am I Rabbi Löw?" her husband asked deprecatingly. "No," he answered. He leaned over and examined the exposed mechanism. "This spring goes here … this wire comes with this one …" The figure moved. "But this one goes where? And this one?" "Let be," said his wife. The figure sat up slowly and rolled its eyes loosely. "Listen, Reb Golem," the old man said, wagging his finger. "Pay attention to what I say—you understand?" "Understand …" "If you want to stay here, you got to do like Mr. Gumbeiner says." "Do-like-Mr.-Gumbeiner-says …" "That's the way I like to hear a golem talk. Malka, give here the mirror from the pocketbook. Look, you see your face? You see the forehead, what's written? If you don't do like Mr. Gumbeiner says, he'll wipe out what's written and you'll be no more alive." "No-more-alive …" "That's right. Now, listen. Under the porch you'll find a lawnmower. Take it. And cut the lawn. Then come back. Go." "Go …" The figure shambled down the stairs. Presently the sound of the lawnmower whirred through the quiet air in the street just like the street where Jackie Cooper shed huge tears on Wallace Beery's shirt and Chester Conklin rolled his eyes at Marie Dressler. "So what will you write to Tillie?" old Mr. Gumbeiner asked. "What should I write?" old Mrs. Gumbeiner shrugged. "I'll write that the weather is lovely out here and that we are both, Blessed be the Name, in good health." The old man nodded his head slowly, and they sat together on the front porch in the warm afternoon sun. The End
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Last week's Latma got under the skin of the head of Peace Now:
Yariv Oppenheimer, who heads the ultra-leftist Peace Now group, is angry about a satirical imitation of him, in the form of a character named "Yariv Googleheimer" on the Latma website.
While Googleheimer is a regular on Latma's weekly Tribal Update shows, it seems a particularly strong satire in the latest Update caused Oppenheimer to lose his cool.
The skit is a version of a number from the 1960s musical Kazablan. The original version of the song – "We are All Jews" – celebrates Israelis' solidarity with each other despite the differences between the ingathered communities.
The takeoff is named "Jews united against Israel" and notes the disproportionate representation of Jews among Israel's worst rivals. It bitterly portrays George Soros, Naomi Chazan, Thomas Friedman and a list of other Jewish leftists as competing with each other over the right to castigate Israel on the international scene.
"In this way, systematically and cunningly, the right is attempting to portray whoever does not think like they do as anti-Israeli, as a traitor, as an enemy within," Oppenheimer wrote on his Facebook page. He said he was being similarly demonized by grassroots groups Im Tirtzu and Yisrael Sheli, the Yesha Council, and "Kahane's people."
Here's this week's episode:
 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From TheJC:
The Scottish Church will no longer consider the Israeli perspective when campaigning on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its General Assembly has voted.
Delegates in Edinburgh at the annual conference of Scotland's largest church, which has over 450,000 members, overwhelmingly voted against a motion to "ensure a proper balance between the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives" at a session on Gaza.
It followed the adoption of a special report and vote instructing the church to lobby the British government to "end the inhumane blockade of Gaza and related violence". The report suggested the church may stop support for a two-state solution, but also condemned rocket attacks on Israel.
When urged by a delegate to reverse the one-sided approach at last Monday's assembly meeting of the Church and Society Council, convenor Rev Ian Galloway said: "There could never be a truly balanced view between Israel and Palestine".
The vote means future reports and resource material produced by the church for its members would not present an Israeli narrative.
A Church of Scotland spokesperson said: "After debate the Assembly agreed overwhelmingly that the [Gaza] report was balanced as it stood. The thrust of the report was not to inform commissioners or congregations about the political explanations of either side but to report on the experiences shared by people living and working in Gaza." It did not take long in looking a this "balanced" report to immediately see two examples that show how it deliberately twists facts.
The first comes from the first paragraph:
The Council's report to the 2008 General Assembly detailed the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip, quoting a report from Ha'aretz of 19/12/07. "Gaza", it said, "is surrounded and starved." If you look at the actual Ha'aretz article, it is not a "report" but a typical anti-Zionist op-ed and its characterization of Gaza as "starving" is not factual but hyperbole. (After watching reports out of Gaza for nearly eight years now amid charges of "starvation" by people like Jimmy Carter, I have still not seen a single example of someone who starved to death. Even the media finally realized the lie of starvation and changed their memes on Gaza a couple of years ago, something the Church apparently hasn't caught up with.)
Another proof of deliberate bias comes from this:
Exports from Gaza are very limited. In the first two weeks of October 2011 no exports left Gaza whatsoever. The reason? Because the harvest for Gaza exports begins in November! Given that this report was written after seven months of exports of tons of goods from Gaza, this is clearly a purposeful distortion of the situation. It simply doesn't bother to mention the 600 tons of strawberries, 250 tons of tomatoes, 50 tons of pepper and 10,000,000 flowers exported since then.
Because the truth is not what the Scottish Church wants to push - but a one-sided agenda.
At least they are now up front about it.
(h/t Ron) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | David G has been doing this for a while and notes that this is the first month he's recorded that the NYT had not even a single pro-Israel op-ed.
New York Times Op-Ed Index For May 2012
A) Syria's Threatened Minorities by Jonathan Randal - May 4, 2012
Then, that September in neighboring Lebanon, Maronite Christian militiamen, egged on by allies in Israel's invading army, slaughtered hundreds of unarmed Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
My usual rule is that in order to qualify for inclusion in the index, the op-ed has to be substantially about Israel. I will bend the rule this time. By charging that Israel "egged on" the Phalangists, Randal is rehashing the false (though, according to a jury, not libelous) charges Time Magazine made against Ariel Sharon. What happened, according to Daniel Pipes, didn't reflect well on the IDF - "...their culpability was in fact limited to giving the Phalangist militia access to Palestinian camps and then not intervening to stop them" - but it wasn't the same as encouraging the massacre.
It's also worth mentioning that, in the credits, it mentions that Randal's book is being republished by Just World Books. Just World Books is run by anti-Israel activist and terrorist cheerleader, Helena Cobban. Anti-Israel advocacy rather than accuracy is apparently emphasized.
Anti-Israel - 1 / Pro-Israel - 0
B) Power with Purpose - by Thomas Friedman - May 23, 2012
Whenever a nation or leader amasses this much power, with no checks coming from anywhere, the probability of misreading events grows exponentially. Bibi could be assuming that the Palestinians in the West Bank can be pacified simply with better economic conditions. Don't count on it. Humiliation remains the single most powerful human emotion. It trumps economic well-being every time. Bibi could be assuming that the Palestinian security services will indefinitely act as Israel's forward police force in the West Bank — absent any hopes of Palestinian statehood. Not likely — eventually they will be viewed as "traitors." Bibi could be assuming that Israel could strike Iran — and upend the world economy — and still continue to build settlements in the West Bank. I would not bet on that; the global backlash could be severe. Bibi could be assuming that the West Bank Palestinian leadership will always be moderate, secular and pro-Western. If only ... Friedman here is arguing that unless Israel placates the Palestinians there will be violence. Aside from blaming Israel for Abbas's refusal to negotiate, Friedman is effectively saying that terror would understandable if not excusable, if the Palestinians don't achieve statehood.
Anti-Israel - 2 / Pro-Israel - 0
C) Iranians Taking Solace in the Past - By Camelia Entekhabifard - May 22, 2012
Today, life in the Islamic Republic is more difficult than it has been since the eight-year war with Iraq. International economic sanctions, the harshest since the 1979 revolution, have squeezed the struggling middle class even further. Ordinary Iranians live in constant fear that Israel — one of Tehran's strongest political allies before 1979 — may soon decide to bomb them. So many of the country's best and brightest students have left Iran to study abroad, and are certainly not willing to come back. It's true that Israel is only mentioned twice in this op-ed. On the other hand, both times it is to make the point that the average Iranian fears Israel.
Anti-Israel - 3 / Pro-Israel - 0
D) Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal - By Yousef Munayyer - May 23, 2012
Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport is on the outskirts of Lod (Lydda in Arabic), but because my wife has a Palestinian ID, she cannot fly there; she is relegated to flying to Amman, Jordan. If we plan a trip together — an enjoyable task for most couples — we must prepare for a logistical nightmare that reminds us of our profound inequality before the law at every turn. This is a very skilled piece of propaganda. Various disconnected facts are presented all attributed to a single cause. But much is left out. For example, why does Munayyer's wife have a Palestinian ID rather than a Jordanian one? The history, law and rules that keep the Munayyer's apart are varied. Munayyer suggests a single cause: Israeli prejudice. There are of course many real causes, such as the Arab refusal to accept Israel and terrorism that led to the situation he described. Honest Reporting noted that another recent article in the Australian had made similar charges and suggests that this might be a coordinated effort.
Munayyer is a contributor to Peter Beinart's Open Zion. This is a further indication that Beinart's goal is not to support Israel but to attack it.
Anti-Israel - 4 / Pro-Israel - 0
E) Going Directly to Israelis and Palestinians - Shlomo Ben-Ami, Thomas C. Schelling, Jerome M. Segal and Javier Solana - May 30, 2012
Once UNSCOP-2 successfully identifies a set of compromises that both peoples can support, perspectives may shift. Possibly, in response to a directive from the Security Council, both sides will accept the UNSCOP plan as the basis for resumed negotiations. If that is not possible, the Security Council will have to consider its next step. As much as I'd like to call this "anti-Israel" because of co-authors Jerome Segal (who is a pro-Palestinian activist) and Javier Solana, this is really just an unrealistic proposal that will never come about. Yes, it treats both sides equally, which is frustrating, but it isn't overtly anti-Israel. NEUTRAL.
Final Tally: Anti-Israel - 4 / Pro-Israel - 0
Methodology: I searched the archives for the New York Times for op-eds and unsigned editorials from the New York Times from May 1 - 31, 2012. I did not include letters to the editor or articles that were not mainly about Israel or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - though this time I made one exception. The impetus for these exercises was a 2007 column, The Danger of one sided debate, in which the previous public editor, Clark Hoyt, justified giving a column to a Hamas spokesman, lest the paper's opinion section be too pro-Israel. As I've regularly found, there hasn't been any danger that Israel's views would be overrepresented in the opinion pages of the New York Times in recent years. I've been tracking the New York Times opinion pages and this is the first month in which I have not seen even one pro-Israel essay.  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Since it is the two year anniversary of the Mavi Marmara incident, it is reasonable to remind people:
IDF soldiers were shot on board the ship, and the IHH terrorists shot first. Bullet casings were found that did not match any IDF soldier weapons.
We have photos of some of the guns from one of the passengers' cameras:
And we also have testimony from the soldiers who were shot and who witnessed IHH members with guns.
So even if you want to forget the fact that IHH members prepared knives, iron bars and chains to mercilessly beat and stab soldiers as they rappelled down, remember that they were armed, too. They are in no way "peace activists."
I don't think that this will be mentioned in the Turkish media today as they continue to demonize Israel on this anniversary.
Here are my Mavi Marmara posters:
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From the LA Times:
If your budget is too tight to actually stroll along the banks of the Seine or trek through Jerusalem, Google is now offering a virtual alternative -- digital tours of famous sites across the world. The World Wonders Project uses the same Street View technology that allows people to virtually navigate their neighborhoods through Google Maps, but the cameras are focused on historic and treasured sites such as Florence, Stonehenge and ancient Kyoto instead. Although many of the images are gathered with cars that have a camera mounted on top, more difficult-to-reach spots, or publicly inaccessible sites, have been recorded on a pedestrian "trike" and other devices. The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO and the World Monuments Fund are partnering with the company to provide information about the treasured spots. Here is how this project describes Jerusalem:
As a holy city for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem has always been of great symbolic importance. Among its 220 historic monuments, the Dome of the Rock stands out: built in the 7th century, it is decorated with beautiful geometric and floral motifs. It is recognized by all three religions as the site of Abraham's sacrifice. The Wailing Wall delimits the quarters of the different religious communities, while the Resurrection rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre houses Christ's tomb.  | | The Kotel in the 1870s | This description was directly taken from UNESCO.
First of all, no Jew calls the Kotel the "Wailing Wall." That term was made up by Europeans in the 19th century, possibly as a translation from the Arabic "al-Makba," the "place of weeping." Using that term today shows, in its most charitable interpretation, gross ignorance.
Secondly, UNESCO doesn't even know what the Wall is. This description indicates that they think that the "Wailing Wall" is what separates the Jewish, Armenian, Christian and Muslim Quarters of Jerusalem. This description, not surprisingly, minimizes the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem, making it appear that it is derivative of Abraham's sacrifice - the Muslim motif of the Temple Mount - and that there was never a Jewish Temple there nor a Jewish nation centered there.
Other UNESCO documents are hardly better, and UNESCO still refers to the Kotel as "The Wailing Wall" even today.
But this is hardly surprising from an organization that once called Maimonides a Muslim and that refers to Rachel's Tomb by the completely modern, artificial name "Bilal bin Rabah Mosque."
See also my UNESCO posters here, here and here.
(h/t Daled Amos)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Yemen has been at war with al-Qaeda in recent months, and on May 21 a suicide bomber killed 96. A featured article in Yemencom describes how sick the people are of Islamist terror:
During the past few months many Yemeni cities, particularly Aden and Sanaa, have seen terrorist bombings carried out by suicide bombers that booby-trapped their bodies, in an assembly line for the production of the culture of death...they carry out suicide bombings targeting a large number of civilian sites as well as military and police, security and armed forces during performance of their duties; the massacre in the capital Sanaa on the morning of Monday, May 21, 2012 is further evidence that confirms the seriousness of machine-like production of the culture of death on society and the state at the same time.
A large number of researchers in the affairs of political Islam believe that all entities and extremist groups popped up like mushrooms from the robe of the Muslim Brotherhood, but this group denies the validity of this belief. For quite some time the Muslim Brotherhood has been making up slogans of democracy and human rights and try to join U.S. and EU projects for the promotion of democracy and liberalism in the Middle East in particular and the Arab and Muslim world in general. No doubt also that there are differences in attitudes between different groups of the jihadist spectrum under the umbrella of political Islam, but they have a common desire to seek to restore the caliphate... The author goes on to give a history of the Muslim Brotherhood and how it has been the basis for Al Qaeda and other groups, many under the umbrella of the "World Islamic Front for Fighting Jews and Christians."
It is interesting that the author describes the culture of death so well - but doesn't notice that on this day in particular, Palestinian Arab society has united in their fond memories of the "heroism" of the suicide bombers and other terrorists whose bodies were given to them today.
The culture of death is not limited to Al Qaeda. It is alive and well in the Palestinian Arab territories. Today.
Unfortunately, we will never see an Arabic-language article condemning the essentially universal Palestinian Arab love of terrorist murderers the way this article slams the culture of death in Yemen.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This looks great:
From an interview with the filmmaker, Ami Horowitz:
Many conservatives in the United States are critical of the U.N. because they believe it threatens U.S. national sovereignty. Many progressives would be livid at some of the corruption you expose in your film. Which of these two broad groups (and I realize we're dealing with generalizations and labels here) would you say U.N. Me has resonated with the most? Do you think this could be an issue where concerned Americans can unite across the partisan divide in support of substantive solutions?
Horowitz: I knew that conservatives were going to be attracted to this movie. That was the basis of our entire model. It was the liberals that were going to be the wild card. At first, the working assumption was that they would reject the movie as conservative claptrap. But once we began screenings, the opposite was true. Liberals began to change their entire viewpoint on the United Nations after seeing the movie. The only distinction between conservatives and liberals, was that liberals were so outraged by what they saw on screen, the humor got in their way. Conservatives, on the other hand, were aware of many of the issues that we discussed, so they were able to enjoy the humor far more.
Has any general ideological group, or specific individual or organization been especially hostile to the message in your film?
Horowitz: I find that Europeans generally are particularly hostile to the movie. They find the idea of a moral high ground to be an obnoxious thought. They also find that preaching against a particular ideology, for instance radical Islam, is dubious, possibly even racist. Their moral compass has been broken for years. They find that my focus on corruption and wastefulness borders on greediness.
You've got a gutsy, humorous approach to documentary-making, especially as highlighted by some of the segments in your trailer. I see shades of Michael Moore in places (in a good way– referring to his dead-pan humor and sense of irony, not some of his deceptive editing practices). Who are your influences and inspirations when it comes to documentary-making?
Horowitz: Obviously I am influenced by Michael Moore. Say what you will about his politics, he has taken the staid documentary genre and turned it on its head. Sasha Baron Cohen, who is not, strictly speaking, a documentary filmmaker, has an interview technique that I have emulated in many ways. I was so enamored with both of their styles, that I hired much of their teams.
(h/t EBoZ) 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From Variety:
Followers of global politics will be surprised to learn that Bernard-Henri Levy is responsible for the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi, but that's the story Levy tells in "The Oath of Tobruk," co-helmed with Marc Roussel. Levy is France's media star philosopher, a peculiarly Gallic creation whose immaculate tailoring and savvy self-promotion make him the darling of celeb rags and higher institutions. With "Tobruk," he's finally been subsumed by his own ego, placing himself front and center of Libya's revolution and barely acknowledging other forces. Such self-aggrandizement will play to only acolytes at home.
[H]is nonstop theatricalized narration, interminable use of the first person, and treatment of the Libyan desert as little more than a "GQ" fashion shoot with himself as model don't make for a sympathetic portrait. Nor together do they say much about the real nature of Gaddafi's defeat.
BHL entered Libya in March 2011 together with sidekick Gilles Hertzog (Ed McMahon to Levy's Johnny Carson). His appearance was informed by 20 years of guilt, when his cry for intervention in Bosnia (the subject of his 1994 docu "Bosna") went largely unheeded. Convinced that the West must intervene in Libya, he crisscrossed the globe, using his access to the halls of power to spur leaders into military action.
According to "Tobruk," that's pretty much all it took. Interviews with Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and others are edited to reflect BHL's importance and glory, while scenes of adulatory crowds cheering him in Benghazi testify to his skills in selling himself as the embodiment of First World action. The chaotic nature of the opposition is nowhere seen, and there's little sense of what was happening on the battlefields. I admit to being confused as to how philosophy and self-promotion are in harmony.
At any rate, if a self-absorbed Jewish figure says that he is the reason Western powers decided to act in Libya, the Arabs are more than happy to believe him.
Al Manar uses this documentary as proof of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to foment chaos in the Arab world.
If Levy thinks that releasing such a film would have a positive effect in, say, Syria, it is possible that his own ego is now more pronounced than his analytic abilities. 
| | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
No comments:
Post a Comment