Israellycool

VOA has an infuriating article containing an interview with Cindy and Craig Corrie, in which they talk about their daughter Rachel.

A documentary play that’s met with both praise and controversy is heading to Seattle, Washington, following a two-month run in New York City and original productions in London. My Name is Rachel Corrie tells the story of a young American human rights activist who traveled to the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip in 2003, and died there. The play has also revived questions, still not answered, about the death of Rachel Corrie.

Actress Megan Dodds originated the part of the 23-year-old Rachel Corrie in the one-character drama, which is composed of emails, phone messages and journals by the real Rachel Corrie, compiled after her death. Corrie was a student and human rights activist who hoped to become a writer. The play tells the story of her last few months, when she left her hometown of Olympia, Washington, to volunteer in Gaza. She had joined the International Solidarity Movement [ISM], a Palestinian-led movement of activists from abroad that non-violently opposes the Israeli occupation. The ISM activists were living with families in the town of Rafah, where the Israeli military was building a large steel wall near the border with Egypt.

“And when they construct that wall, they then destroy the houses for some hundreds of meters into the Gaza strip, into the Palestinian territories, away from that wall,” her father, Craig Corrie, said in an interview. “So, Rachel was staying, as other members of the International Solidarity Movement, was staying often with families who had houses right along that border.”

 

Craig and Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, said their daughter was in Gaza in part to help protect those homes.

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Cindy Corrie said that independent investigations have found that the demolition of Palestinians’ homes is unjustified.

“It’s important for people to know,” she says, “that the position of third parties like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, which is an Israeli human rights organization, is that these demolitions are against international law, and that they happen for clearing reasons, in order to take control of an area, as in Gaza. They happen because people don’t have [building] permits, as around Jerusalem - but Palestinians can’t get permits to build homes. And some happen because they are punishing individuals who have done violence against Israel, but even those demolitions are illegal under international law, because it is collective punishment against all the other family members.”

A spokeswoman for the group, Hope Winters, said, “The reason there was so much suffering in particular in Rafah at the time, why there were checkpoints and bulldozers, is that it was the height of suicide bombing in Israel. Just before Rachel arrived,” Winters said, “there were 70 underground tunnels discovered, tunnels that were bringing explosives, bombs, from Egypt, which is right next door to Rafah, into Rafah - so they could be strapped onto suicide bombers and suicide bombers could then walk into Israel, and blow up innocents in pizza parlors and bus stations.”

Ms. Winters’ group critiqued the play on other factual grounds, too, and allege that Rachel Corrie was being used by the International Solidarity Movement, and that the group is not, in truth, dedicated to non-violence - a charge the ISM firmly rejects. The pro-Israel demonstrators also point out that Palestinian suicide bombers have deliberately killed many innocent people, whom they say died in part because activists like Rachel Corrie are used as pawns by Palestinian terrorists.

However, Israel has never said that there were tunnels concealed by the house that Rachel Corrie was attempting to protect. It was owned by a family never accused of involvement in violence, and who later received visas to travel to the U.S. The house remained standing for some months after Corrie’s death, the last in a neighborhood of demolished homes - but it, too, was later knocked down.

Since their youngest child’s death, Craig and Cindy Corrie have become activists for Middle East peace. They say that they, like Rachel, are not pro-Israeli, or pro-Palestinian, but pro-all the people in the region. And they hope their daughter’s story, which is memorialized now not just in the play, but in several films and songs, will also draw attention to the plight of the people of Gaza.

And that about says it all.

A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometres away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.

 

Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday.

 

Instead of arriving “down under”, Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana.

 

“I did wonder but I didn’t want to say anything,” Gutt told the Bild newspaper. “I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States.”

 

Gutt’s airline ticket routed him via the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, to Billings, Montana. Only as he was about to board a commuter flight to Sidney — an oil town of about 5,000 people — did he realise his mistake.

 

The hapless tourist, who had only a thin jacket to keep out the winter cold, spent three days in Billings airport before he was able to buy a new ticket to Australia with 600 euros in cash that his parents and friends sent over from Germany.

 

“I didn’t notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers,” his mother, Sabine, told Reuters.

See below for updates

Looks like Saddam was well hung.

Yes, I do realize that this is already old noose news, but in my defence, it was the Jewish Sabbath, and I had no idea until a few minutes ago that the evil one had met his grisly end.

So given that I cannot really add too much to what has already been said about his execution, I will point you to some of my previous posts making fun of the tyrant.

Excerpts from Saddam Hussein’s Memoirs - Parts 1,2,3,4,5
One Day in Court
Saddam on the Offensive (Smell)
Saddam Separated at Birth: Lion Edition
Saddam Separated at Birth: Captain Caveman Edition
Saddam Separated at Birth: Mad Max Edition

Enjoy! And remember: the evilness factor in the world dropped a couple of percentage points today.

Updates (Israel time):

8:20PM: Mourning in the palestinian-controlled territories:

The execution of Saddam Hussein sent many Palestinians into deep mourning Saturday as they struggled to come to terms with the demise of perhaps their most steadfast ally.

Unlike much of the rest of the world, where Saddam was viewed as a brutal dictator who oppressed his people and started regional wars, in the West Bank and Gaza he was seen as a generous benefactor unafraid to fight for the Palestinian cause, even to the end.

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Saddam’s final words were reportedly, “Palestine is Arab.”

“We heard of his martyrdom, and I swear to God we were deeply shaken from within,” said Khadejeh Ahmad from the Qadora refugee camp in the West Bank. “Nobody was as supportive or stood with the Palestinians as he did.”

During the first Gulf War in 1991, the Palestinians cheered Saddam’s missile attacks on Israel, chanting “Beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv,” as the Scud missiles flew overhead.

He further endeared himself to the Palestinians during the recent uprising with Israel by giving US$25,000 to the family of each suicide bomber and US$10,000 for each Palestinian killed in fighting. The stipends amounted to an estimated US$35 million.

Saddam’s support for the Palestinians, whose cause is deeply popular with Arabs throughout the Middle East, was at least partially aimed at gaining widespread support throughout the Arab world.

“Saddam was a person who had the ability to say, ‘No’ in the face of a great country,” said Hosni al Ejel, 46, from the al Amari refugee camp near Ramallah.

“He wanted the Palestinian people to have a state and a government and to be united. But God supports us, and we pray to God to punish those who did this,” said Ghanem Mezel, 72, from the town of Saeer in the southern West Bank.

Others were happy to hear Saddam’s final words, knowing that his support for them remained unshakable until the end.

Palestinians in the West Bank town of Bethlehem opened a “house of condolences” where people can gather to mourn Saddam. The organizers hung Iraqi flags, pictures of Saddam and broadcast Iraqi revolutionary songs.

Mohammed Barghouti, the minister of labor in the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet, said that although his Islamic group was often at odds with the secular Saddam, his execution was wrong.

“The Palestinians had bonded with Iraqis in brotherhood,” he said.

8:55PM: Looks like Saddam was born on Tatooine (thanks to Israellycool reader Mark for the Saddam picture)

Tikrit with (L-R) his sons Uday and Qusay, daughters Hala and Ragad,

and first wife Sajda Kher Alain (4th R) in an undated photo from the

private archive of an official photographer for the regime.

Photo: Reuters" src="http://www.israellycool.com/saddam%20house.jpg"/>

10:40PM: Would you like fries with that? Saddam reportedly had a thing for infidel food..right to the end.

British newspaper The Daily Mirror reported that the ousted president, who was so virulently opposed to American presence in the Middle East, spent his last days eating some of the foods most associated with the United States – hamburger and fries.

According to the same report which relied on one of Saddam’s military aides, Saddam liked to eat hamburgers and fries and deliberately chose to eat Western fare during his last days.

11:20PM: Via WND is this footage of a newsreader choking at news of the croking.

A flatulent turtle set off an aquarium’s fire alarm after being fed a Christmas treat of Brussels sprouts.

 

It broke wind and the bubble it created was so strong, it set off an emergency sensor inside its tank at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, Dorset, yesterday.

 

It indicated the water was at a dangerously high level, so marine biologist Sarah Leaney rushed to the aquarium.

 

Last night, she said: “When I got there, all seemed fine. I looked at the tube containing the sensor and saw a turtle beneath it.

 

“As I watched, a few large bubbles emerged from beneath him and rose to the surface next to the tube. Straight away, I realised what must have happened.

 

“We like to give all our animals a treat at Christmas and sprouts are a really healthy choice for sea turtles.

 

“But they do produce similar side-effects to those experienced by humans who eat too many sprouts.”

A New Zealand woman is in critical condition in hospital after being crushed by a dolphin that leaped on to her boat, media reported on Wednesday.

 

The 27-year-old woman had been watching from the bow of the small boat cruising among the marine mammals off the North Island’s Coromandel Peninsula on Tuesday when the bottlenose dolphin landed on her, the New Zealand Herald said.

 

She suffered serious head injuries and was flown to hospital in Auckland.

 

The dolphin also smashed the boat’s windshield and bow rails before jumping back into the ocean, witnesses told the Herald.

 

Coast guard official Steve Taylor said the dolphin probably got over-excited and jumped on to the boat, although he had never heard of such an incident before.

A common parasite can increase a women’s attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

 

About 40 per cent of the world’s population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

 

Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite’s eggs excreted by an infected cat.

 

The parasite is known to be dangerous to pregnant women as it can cause disability or abortion of the unborn child, and can also kill people whose immune systems are weakened.

 

Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.

 

“Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women,” Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

 

“Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

 

“On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

 

“In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens”.

Environmentalists have asked Australia’s military to wage war on cane toads, which have spread across the country’s north in near-plague proportions.

 

The toads, introduced in a batch of 101 from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed bid to control native cane beetles, have spread 3,000 km (1,900 miles) from northeast Queensland to Darwin in Australia’s tropical north. There are now more than 200 million.

 

“We need as many people on the ground as we can possibly get, and if the military can work out strategies for controlling toads on their ground, well that’s fine with us,” Frog Watch spokesman Ian Morris told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Wednesday.

 

Cane toads are one of Australia’s worst environmental mistakes, ranking alongside the catastrophic introduction of rabbits.

 

The spread of the toads, whose skin is poisonous, has led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls. A quoll is a cat-sized marsupial.

 

Killing the hardy toads with anything from golf clubs to air rifles has become a northern Australian pastime, and their carcasses are turned into comic tourist ornaments and fertiliser.

—-

Since their introduction cane toads have evolved bigger legs to help them move faster, expanding their territory westward by around 40 km (25 miles) a year.

A member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ security force plays with the snow in Abbas’ headquarters throws rocks at IDF tanks in the West Bank city of Ramallah December 27, 2006.

With Israel giving and giving, it is great to see the palestinians getting into the post Xmas spirit with some mistletoe missile.

The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the Kassam attack on Sderot that wounded two ninth-grade boys, one critically, on Tuesday evening. The rocket was the seventh to have been fired at Sderot since Tuesday morning.

Shortly after 10 p.m., the Red Alert alarm sounded throughout Sderot; 10 seconds later, the rocket landed near a group of schoolchildren who were headed for the nearest shelter. Ninth-graders Matan Cohen and Adir Bassad, however, had no time to reach the shelter and were hit by shrapnel.

The two were evacuated to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, where doctors began operating.

—-

Doctors told an Israel Radio interviewer shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday that Bassad, who suffered hits to his chest and stomach, was not yet stabilized, and a surgical team was battling to save his life.

Cohen, whose major wound was to his leg, was reported stabilized.

A number of other people were reported in shock.

One of the medics who treated the boys reported that one of them was likely to lose his legs. One of the boys had a bone sticking out of one of his legs, he said, and the other’s ankle was completely twisted.

Please keep the boys in your prayers. And while your’e at it, how about throwing in a few prayers that our joke of a government will grow a backbone, and finally decide that appeasement has to give way to some serious terrorist butt-kicking.

What is Heroes? Only the most awesomest new TV show to hit the airwaves this year. NBC’s Heroes is basically X-Men meets Lost meets Battlestar Galactica. If your a comic book geek like I am then you have to watch this show.

One of the cool things that Heroes does is in between episodes they put out this comics online. They can be spoilery, but at the same time they give you information you won’t learn from just the TV show.

 

Currently the show is on a 7 week break which is common after November sweeps and heading into the December/January months. During the break NBC has continued to put out new comics.

 

Today they released the newest comic and it is a 4 part introduction to the newest Heroes cast member. The newest Hero will be a woman named Hana, who comes from a long line of proud Jewish woman who have served the Jewish nation as heroes.