Israellycool

While palestinian first-graders are learning how to become martyrs, their Israeli counterparts are learning the regular things first-graders learn. You know…reading, writing…astrophysics and astronomy….

Pupils in Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood can now aspire to reach the stars, thanks to a new curriculum from first grade that includes astrophysics, astronomy and space studies. It will be offered this year at the Ilan Ramon Elementary School, named for the late Israeli astronaut who died during the ill-fated Columbia space shuttle mission in 2003. Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski will visit the children and the modern, well-equipped science labs when school opens next week.

The Jerusalem Municipality also announced that pupils in the 11th and 12th grades in state schools throughout the city will be sent to the Belmonte science labs on the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus to focus on astrophysics, cosmology and space studies.

Well, how are we supposed to take over the world without advanced education?!

 The palestinian Ma’an News Agency reports:

A Palestinian citizen was killed by Israeli forces on Monday, east of Al Bureij refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical sources informed Ma’an that 43-year-old Farid Abu Thahir died on the eastern border of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli forces opened fire at him while he was cultivating his land.

Palestinian ambulance workers delivered the corpse to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza Strip.

Earlier, Israeli sources claimed that the military assassinated a Palestinian while he was attempting to plant a mine.

So can we agree that he was planting something?

Update: Now for some context.

Also Monday, IDF troops shot and killed a Palestinian near the security fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel, the army and Gaza medical staff said.

The middle-aged Palestinian was found, unarmed, in a no-man’s land along the fence south of the Karni border crossing with Israel, Palestinian doctors said.

Palestinian sources identified him as Farid Abu Zaher, a 43-year-old farmer.

The IDF said, however, that troops suspected the man had tried to lay an explosive and saw him climbing the fence. When the man saw the troops, he jumped off the fence and began to flee. The soldiers fired at him and saw he was hit.

The soldiers did not know if he was armed, the military said.

Palestinian militants frequently lay explosives against patrolling troops in the area, the army said.

Not quite the same thing as opening fire on some guy minding his own business while planting turnips.

Having already targeted Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, and Diana, the late Princess of Wales, Germaine Greer has now set her sights on……cuddly toys.

Teddies and bunnies are taken into exams and sat on the desks, as if to be without them for three hours would induce hysteria and fainting spells. Soft toys are left along with the flowers at the scenes of fatalities. Wherever they are, they are truly hideous, beyond kitsch. By making our children fall in love with such ugliness, we are preparing them for a life without taste.

Given Greer’s penchant for making tasteless comments, I am assuming she was up to her (hairy) armpits in teddy bears as a child.

Hamas has reportedly received instructions from its leaders in Syria to carry out a mega terror attack.

Hamas leaders in Damascus instructed the group’s loyalists in the West Bank to carry out a large-scale terror attack in Israel, the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] deputy director said during Sunday’s cabinet meeting.

No surprises that Hamas would plan the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians, considering their goals. And no surprises that they would receive such instructions from their leaders in Syria, which continues to provide terror leaders a safe haven and logistical support, despite Syria’s claims of desiring peace.

And still on the subject of Syria..

A member of the Arab Nationalist Movement’s liaison department, Ahmad Mahmoud Al-Jamal, died on Saturday.

Al-Jamal was born in 1940 in the Palestinian village of Lubya. He was one of the founders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Al-Jamal worked in the PLO’s Damascus-based office until his death.

That the same PLO that is controlled by “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas’ and his Fatah buddies. Which begs the question: if they are truly our peace partners, why would some of their leadership be located in this terrorist safe haven?

I think we all know the answer to this.

The palestinian Ma’an News Agency reports:

The Nafha prisoners’ society on Sunday condemned what it described as the Israeli prisons’ authorities neglect of healthcare in Israeli jails and maltreatment of Palestinian prisoners.

The society issued a statement decrying the terrible conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and stating that the prisons are miserable and unbearable.

The society urged human rights organisations to intervene, and advised Palestinians to bridge gaps in order to confront the Israeli occupation in a united way.

Such as sticking to the same story (just as a suggestion).

Mohammed Kharaz wanted to get away. He longed to escape the stretches of boredom broken by intense eruptions of violence that are a teenager’s life in this strife-ridden city. So, for a break, he got himself thrown into an Israeli jail.

The idea wasn’t even his, the 17-year-old confesses. He first heard it from a kid who sat beside him in class: If you get yourself arrested by the Israeli army, they send you to a prison with digital television, interesting books and even a decent soccer pitch. In short, everything you don’t find in Nablus, a city cut off from the rest of the West Bank by a series of Israeli military checkpoints.

To Mohammed, it sounded like a dream vacation. So on Feb. 25, he tucked a kitchen knife under his shirt and headed toward the concrete barriers and metal turnstiles that block the road south to Ramallah. It played out just as his friend described. When he got to the front of the long, slow-moving line of Palestinians seeking to leave Nablus, an Israeli soldier told him to lift up his shirt. With a sniper’s rifle pointed at his chest, Mohammed pulled out the knife.

“Two soldiers jumped on top of me and started beating me up, but I didn’t care,” Mohammed recalled. “Getting arrested was like a fashion trend. It was the thing to do.”

It’s the latest peculiarity in a region already full of contradictions: Palestinian youths, who speak openly of their hatred for Israel, willingly putting themselves into Israeli custody because life in jail is seen as being better than life at home. Call it teen angst gone awry in a conflict zone.

“It’s a real phenomenon,” said Jacob Dallal, a spokesman for the Israeli army. He said soldiers had seen dozens of cases like Mohammed’s, coming from both Nablus and nearby Jenin. “It’s sort of a backhanded compliment to the [Israeli army] and the prison service. It passes from word of mouth that the conditions are not so bad in Israeli jails.”

The first few nights after his arrest — he was held with five others in a tiny cell just outside the Hawara checkpoint where he had been arrested — were a gruelling disappointment for Mohammed. But 12 days later, he got the break he was hoping for: a transfer to Ofer prison, an Israeli jail for Palestinian prisoners just outside Ramallah.

Conditions in Ofer, the site of large-scale prisoners’ riots late last year, have come under attack from human-rights groups alleging the torture and mistreatment of detainees. But Mohammed, as his classmates had promised him, had a different experience.

—-

“Ofer was like paradise. You could go to the toilet whenever you wanted, and we had a good time playing football and table tennis in the big courtyard. I started reading good books in there,” he said, his hair short and gelled, and a hint of future stubble ringing his thin face. With a shy glance at his father, he added, “And I could stay up as late as I wanted.”

Mohammed was pleased to get a seven-month sentence. He was crestfallen when his father, Qasim, paid a $250 bond to get him released early. “I was disappointed. My classmate who was sitting next to me went to jail two days before me and he’s still there,” he said jealously, suffering his father’s glare. “In prison, there’s digital television. You can watch everything. Out here, there’s nothing.”

While the stern Mr. Kharaz isn’t impressed with his son’s antics, he understands the motivation. “When a person becomes a young man, he starts looking for entertainment, and there are no good sports centres around here. All the sports fields in Nablus are all made of asphalt.”

Other youths who have gotten arrested at the Hawara checkpoint did so in hopes of helping their families out of increasingly dire financial situations. Until a cut in Western aid forced the Palestinian Authority into effective insolvency earlier this year, the government paid a monthly stipend of about $200 to Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Samira Tabbouq’s son Mahmoud just celebrated his 18th birthday inside Ofer. Mahmoud has gotten himself jailed twice in the past two years in hopes of getting money for his family, and his mother glows with pride describing her son’s crafty efforts to get the Israelis to arrest him.

Last year, Ms. Tabbouq said her son got arrested at Hawara checkpoint while carrying a smoke bomb he had made from sugar and coal. When the Israelis released him from jail 2½ weeks later, he began plotting to get sent back.

The teenaged Mahmoud became the sole breadwinner for the family of eight when his father, a construction worker, was injured in a workplace accident five years ago.

At first, Mahmoud struggled to find after-school work in this economically depressed town that has been largely isolated from the outside world since Israel built the checkpoints during the height of the recent Palestinian intifada.

“His father pressured him to bring home money, to be a man, to help us with our poverty,” Ms. Tabbouq said. “He would come home with nothing and his father would beat him.”

On Feb. 4 of this year, he headed toward Hawara with a knife under his shirt and, ever since, has been in jail awaiting trial. Even though the Palestinian Authority’s cash crunch means he’s not helping his family financially, his mother, who visits him regularly, says he’s as happy as he’s been for a long time, reading books and dreaming of getting married and moving to Syria.

“My son is in jail because he has a big brain and is very intelligent. He thought about it a long time and realized the only way out of his economic and mental crisis was in prison,” Ms. Tabbouq said.

Ironically, another reason Mahmoud wanted to go back to jail was to concentrate on his studies. His 17-year-old sister, Yusra, said that her brother, who was good in school, had spoken longingly of prison ever since he was released the first time.

“He couldn’t stand the guys from the refugee camps who were always carrying weapons. He felt like he was suffocating. He told me, ‘I can’t achieve in school with this chaotic environment around me.’ ” Her brother is now applying to take his high-school exams from behind bars, Yusra added.

Mr. Kharaz, Mohammed’s father, said that while he hoped his son wouldn’t try to get jailed again, it was possible as long as life in Nablus continued to worsen.

“If the situation continues the way it is, everybody will be doing it,” he said. “Young and old.”

Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman, Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopedia, has written an interesting column in the Gulf News, which, although containing some factual errors, is worth reading for the fact that he recognizes his people have a lot to learn from Israel.

A wise man once said that “if you know your enemy, you would gain half the victory; but when you come to know both yourself and your enemy, then you have total triumph”.

For decades, we were told there is nothing called Israel, and liked to label the Israelis as groups of aliens who were brought together from all corners of the globe and who formed the Jewish state.

We saw the social structure of the Zionist state, with all its divergent components - Ashkenazim and Sephardim, destitute and wealthy Jews - and concluded that they were nothing more than an incoherent conglomeration of people, in a state where there was racial discrimination. We saw it as a place that would ultimately accelerate the pace of its own destruction.

But even though Jews were never classified as one nation throughout their long history, as each group maintained its own political and religious features, one is amazed by their unity and the desire to adopt an identical course.

No Jew tries to eliminate or defame another. Thanks to this unity, they were successful in achieving their goals and in founding the state with a name associated with their faith.

Meanwhile, Israel, probably, has no fundamentally controversial issues internally. The Israelis only differ on means of realising their goals.

And Israel has done a good job of mobilising Jewish communities abroad, which have always stood by its side, rendering financial and other forms of aid, and establishing a solid political support base for Israel abroad.

The fact is that Israel’s political system is designed to accommodate its political and ethnic contradictions. Hence the Israelis are all concurrent on important issues, and ultimately unified in face of what they call external threats.

In spite of being brought to believe there is nothing positive about Jews, we must take the example of Israel and review the values that govern Palestinian (and Arab) society in dealing not only with political issues, but also our day to day lives.

That would enable us underline many a flaw and heel many a wound. Divisions and differences are so abundant in our life that some of us cannot tolerate others. We forget that pluralism is actually desirable.

How long will we be content with words and slogans while the Palestinian people are being slaughtered daily by their own people in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip? How long will the mentality of exclusion and non-engagement persist? Do a few conspirators within Hamas and Fatah aim to transform us into the new aliens in this land?

Obstinacy

We have become contaminated. Under distrust and obstinacy, which run counter to leniency and wisdom in dealing with the other for the sake of the national interest, fratricide has brought us to a temporary separation between the West Bank and Gaza, and our daily living conditions have fallen under domination of warlords, murderers, mercenaries and arms dealers.

So much has changed. The popularity of the just Palestinian cause in the world has declined; many of its supporters feel discouraged.

As a result, we have found shelter in illusions, and have killed each other in the name of freedom and the homeland, and ultimately lost even more through the Hamas-Fatah fighting.

It’s a regrettable situation that urgently demands a solution. We need to probe the actual reasons of this deviation in our course and find effective and prompt solutions.

True, human history knew no injustices as those that befell the Palestinian people. Neither does human tragedy record catastrophes as those inflicted upon the Palestinians. But it is absolutely unacceptable to turn the Palestinians to new aliens.

Let’s differ, but in the “Jewish manner” this time: when killing a Jew is forbidden for another Jew. Whereas Israel was fortunate in bringing Jews together, inside and outside Israel, we have failed to unify the Palestinians inside the homeland itself.

While the Jewish state has adopted pluralism, we are still addicted to tribalism, factionalism and blind partisanship. While every corrupt leader in Israel, including its head of state, is brought to justice, we’ve rejected a necessary building process based on transparency and democracy.

And finally, whereas the Israeli public go to the street demanding the punishment of every erring official, we have refused accountability and collective examination. Jews were the “aliens” in the past, and today we are how they were. Can we accept that?

Fresh from creating Farfur, the Mickey Mouse knock-off, those crazy, murderous folks over at Hamas are hedging their bets on more Disney cowardice, and have now knocked off another Disney fan favorite.

Introducing the no-named Simba the Lion knock-off.

After killing off its Mickey Mouse-lookalike, Hamas has turned to another Disneyesque character — televising a cartoon with a “Lion King” wannabe to portray the Islamic group’s victory in the Gaza Strip over the Fatah movement.

The cartoon depicts Fatah members as sneaky rats, brandishing guns and being showered with U.S. dollars, while Hamas is portrayed as a confident, calm lion that resembles Simba in the 1994 Walt Disney Co. movie “The Lion King.”

The five-minute video, titled “A message to the criminal gangs in the occupied West Bank,” is the second production of the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV enlisting a famous Disney character.

—-

Hazem Sharawi, an executive with Hamas TV, said the cartoon of the lion vanquishing the rats was broadcast Thursday but quickly pulled off the air for revisions. He said it was “flashed” for one day to counter what he called anti-Hamas propaganda coming from Fatah in the West Bank.

The cartoon also was posted on the Web site of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors the Arabic media.

The piece shows rats trampling over Gaza, burning houses, stepping over homes, uprooting trees, firing at mosques and desecrating the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

Their leader is clearly a portrayal of Fatah’s former Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, who has fled Gaza. Wearing a tie and smoking a cigar, the chief rat grabs a microphone and tells the crowd: “Move back and let Hamas shoot me.” Dahlan made that comment during the showdown with Hamas, and his voice is dubbed into the scene.

Throughout the video, the lion silently watches the rats, preparing his claws and shaking his mane. When he pounces, the rats flee in terror as he knocks them about with his claws. Injured and limping rats then say: “Off to the West Bank.”

After Hamas’ victory in Gaza two months ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah member, formed a new government in the West Bank, where many top Fatah officials in Gaza have taken refuge.

“Viewers from all over loved it. They called in to praise it,” Sharawi said of the cartoon.

He said the final version will be toned down before it is broadcast again, with the Dahlan scene among those to be cut.

But he said there were no plans to erase the Lion King references, including a final scene showing the victorious lion standing on a hill overlooking Gaza with his mane flying in the wind.

“Disney stole a lion from the forest. We stole another lion,” Sharawi said chuckling.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if he stole that chuckle from Muttley.

Update: Here’s the video:

In an article entitled The most embarrassing moments in my diplomatic career, veteran Israeli diplomat Yehuda Avner reminisces about the time he presented his ambassador’s credentials to the queen.

Escorted into the queen’s chamber by a chamberlain dressed like the Duke of Wellington, I executed the rehearsed choreography with due aplomb: bowing at the door, walking two steps forward, bowing again, two more steps forward, bowing once more and proclaiming, “Your Majesty, I have the honor to present to you my credentials as the ambassador of Israel to the Court of St. James’s.”

“Thank you,” said the queen, taking the embossed document in her white-gloved hand and passing it to her chamberlain. Then, in a voice that sounded mystified, she said, “I do believe this is the very first time I have ever received credentials from a foreign ambassador actually born in this country. How did you manage that?”

Anticipating the question, I had rehearsed a rather high-minded response:

“Your Majesty,” said I, “though physically born in this country, I was spiritually given birth to in Jerusalem, from whence my ancestors were exiled by Roman legions 2,000 years ago.”

“Were they really?” said the queen. “How unfortunate!” and she began to talk about the weather.

And that’s about all you need to know about the queen.

Reuters reports:

At a beachside camp run by the Islamist movement Hamas, youngsters race into the sea carrying the green flags of the group, which took over the territory in a civil war against the Fatah group of President Mahmoud Abbas two months ago.

At a camp run by the secular Fatah, yellow flags dominate, and boys and girls perform the Debka folk dance together - a mixed activity frowned on by Islamists.

I’m guessing that involves dancing around while making a whole lot of unsubstantiated claims that mostly prove to be untrue.

Update: If you are someone who actually thinks Debka is reliable, then take note of this:

Shamis (one of the founders of the Debka site - Aussie Dave) concedes some Debka reports haven’t panned out, but says his site is as reliable as the mainstream media.

Oh how times have changed.

Read more…

Don’t blame the camel.

The husband of a woman who was killed by her pet camel told mourners at her funeral yesterday they must forgive the beloved animal.

Pamela Weaver died when her hand-reared camel trod on her in a paddock near their home at Mitchell, in outback Queensland, on Saturday.

“You have to forgive the camel, he loved her very much,” Noel Weaver said as he broke down in tears at his wife’s memorial service.

Perhaps a little too much.

Has to be this woman.

Police arrested a woman who stole a pair of Crocs shoes when she returned to the store hours later to exchange them because they did not fit her son, a police spokesman said on Friday.

“The store clerk identified her from security camera footage and called us,” said Amos Shimoni, police spokesman in the northern town of Safed.