Israellycool

The ISM have long tried to represent themselves as supporters of “non-violent”means of resistance only, and as opposing terrorism. For instance, they state on their FAQ page:

Attacks on innocent civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinian, are forbidden under international law. The ISM seeks nothing more for Israelis and Palestinians than implementing international law, and we oppose any action of any kind against civilians, including suicide bombings.

Well, it looks like ISMer “Nick” didn’t get the memo.

Why don’t the residents of Sderot ask this question to their government?

Can you please stop the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza?

BBC news reported the resignation today of the Mayor of Sderot, Eli Moyal. Eli Moyal is fed up with the situation and says the Israeli government is not doing enough to stop the missiles coming from Gaza nor is it re-enforcing houses in Sderot to protect local residents from rocket attacks on their homes.

The Israeli government controls all aspects of life in the Gaza strip. Israel has recently reduced electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza and threatens to reduce them further. Food and basic supplies are monitored and prevented from entering and people in need of treatment are prevented from getting to hospital. The people of Gaza live in a large prison.

When Israel does send its army into the Gaza strip to search for Hama’s militants it often results in civilian deaths. Israel collectively punishes the citizens of Gaza for the rocket attacks on towns such as Sderot, but also kills innocent men, women and children, who already live in a prison, in search of those responsible for firing the rockets.

The rocket attacks are a response to Israel’s brutal treatment of Gaza residents. If the citizens of Israel were to be treated as the Palestinians are currently being treated in Gaza they would also be fighting back as best they could.

However, the general public in Israel seem happy to allow the collective punishment of Gaza, unwilling to challenge the right-wing members of their government who care not for how many Palestinians die as long as they can get their Jewish state.

Local residents in Sderot are not happy. Unlike their fellow Israeli’s living in Tel Aviv they must endure the results of Israel’s constant oppression of the Palestinian’s.

And rightly the Ex-Mayor of Sderot blames the Israeli government. Eli Moyal has every right to be upset that rockets are falling down on his township. But what Eli Moyal has requested, that the government make an incursion to get those who shoot the rockets and to re-enforce houses to make them more resistant to rocket attacks, is not going to stop the rockets being fired upon Sderot.

The collective punishment of Gaza will stop the rockets falling on Sderot.

The killing of innocent civilians will stop the rockets. Talking to Hama’s, who represent over half of the Palestinian people, will stop the rockets. And no, requesting Gaza militants to stop firing the rockets before allowing Gazan residents to live like human beings will not work because Hama’s know that if they stop first, Israel will just keep destroying the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza less any consequences. Israel’s treatment of Gaza is wrong, many members of the international community who don’t have vested interests in the suffering of the Palestinians have said it is wrong. It must stop.

Eli Moyal should be asking the Israeli government, pleading in fact, to stop the collective punishment of Gaza. Why do the residents of Sderot not see the root of the problem and accept that the government they voted in collectively punishes 1.5 million people and that this may have consequences, which are in the form of home made rockets.

The next Mayor of Sderot can do something for his township and the people of Gaza. He can ask the Israeli government to stop practicing numerous human rights abuses in the Gaza strip. He can ask the Israeli government to allow Gazans to live as human beings free of fear, which is created by military incursions, threats to cut electricity, limited staple goods, not knowing when food is next available, army incursions and rockets from fighter planes, just as rocket attacks on Sderot bring fear to its local residents.

The next Mayor of Sderot needs to ask Israel to respect the rights of 1.5 million people in Gaza so 22,000 residents in Sderot can be free of rocket attacks, which mind you, is something the people of Gaza also put up, along with so much else.

Nick doesn’t sound to me like someone who opposes the terrorist attacks on Sderot at all; in fact, it is clear that he supports them as the legitimate actions of an oppressed people.

Of course, in order to hold such a morally repugnant position, an ISMer like Nick has to lie. Here are some examples, along with my responses.

The Israeli government controls all aspects of life in the Gaza strip.

Hamas controls most of the aspects of life in the Gaza strip. If Israel controlled all aspects of life in the Gaza strip, palestinians certainly would not be afforded the opportunity to fire rockets into Israel.

The rocket attacks are a response to Israel’s brutal treatment of Gaza residents.

If the rocket attacks were a response to “Israel’s brutal treatment of Gaza residents”, why did they increase after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, leaving the palestinians more in control of their own destiny? The fact is that the cause of the rocket attacks was the withdrawal itself, with the palestinians, emboldened by what they perceived as an Israeli surrender, launching rockets from the very areas Israel abandoned (as Hizbullah did after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000).

If the citizens of Israel were to be treated as the Palestinians are currently being treated in Gaza they would also be fighting back as best they could.

Here, Nick suggests that Israeli citizens would fight back like the palestinians do if they were treated as badly. A number of points:

1. The treatment of Israeli citizens at the hands of the palestinians is worse than the treatment of palestinian civilians at the hands of Israel. For a start, palestinians deliberately target Israeli civilians, while the IDF does not target palestinian civilians. And when was the last time you heard of a palestinian wandering in Jerusalem being lynched by a mob of Jews?

2. Despite this treatment, the Israeli public has never endorsed the use of a terrorism as a means to counter our treatment at the hands of the palestinians. The rare instances of terrorist activities have been condemned, with the perpetrators brought to justice. Yet the palestinians encourage terrorism, and those who perpetrate terrorist attacks are lauded as martyrs, even by the so-called “moderate” PA leadership.

And no, requesting Gaza militants to stop firing the rockets before allowing Gazan residents to live like human beings will not work because Hama’s know that if they stop first, Israel will just keep destroying the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza less any consequences.

If the terrorists stopped firing rockets on Israel, Israel would certainly ease restrictions on Gaza, as evidenced by our unilateral withdrawal from the area. The reason requesting a cessation of rocket attacks will not work is because the terrorists’ end game is the destruction of Israel.

(Nick also seems to ignore the fact that it is not only Hamas firing on Israel).

One can envisage someone like Nick - who clearly lies to further his agenda of supporting palestinian terrorism- going one step further and actively assisting terrorists with their “just cause.”

Update: Someone like Rachel Corrie, for example.

Corrie’s supporters claim she acted as a human shield to prevent a bulldozer from demolishing a house in Rafah. And while the IDF denied they were going to demolish the house in question, the fact remains that the IDF has demolished houses to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip. And while we have photographic proof of these tunnels, we now also have an admission from a palestinian smuggler that Rafah houses made for great smuggling tunnels.

“The houses in Rafah were right along the border, before the Israelis bulldozed them all, and you could dig for 50 metres and be on the other side. Because the tunnels were so short and because the borders were more open then, it was easy to get cheap wood so you could have props to hold up the whole length of the tunnel. Now we’re having to do without wooden props and dig tunnels that can be 1500 metres long.”

Given what we know of the ISM and people like Nick, there’s no doubt in my mind that Rachel Corrie was trying to prevent the IDF from finding these arms smuggling tunnels.

Last year on my blog I declared Jerusalem Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna to be the 2006 Dhimmi of the Year for his consistent, slavish adherence to the Islamist position on pretty much everything, including religion. He is a man who can be counted on to consistently blame Jews for everything that happens in the Middle East, including Arab attacks on Christians.
Today, he is desperately trying for two in a row. In an Arabic interview during a trip to Algeria, he states that there is no reason for dialogue recently proposed by the Vatican between Muslims and Arab Christians, because they are fundamentally identical:(autotranslated)

Dialogue, which I referred to the Vatican for the Catholic Church or the West, but for us Orthodox church, we believe that we do not need such dialogues with our fellow Muslims, we are the sons of one region and the builders of civilization and one of our Arab Oriental, and the Orthodox Church has not come out of wars or Alafranjh With the arrival of Western colonialism, but is the daughter of the East, where Christ was born the Church of the Nativity in peace, that is approximately the age of the Church of the Millennium.

…We believe that Muslims and Arabs are our brothers, [who] share the same concerns and we look forward to a common destiny.

…we feel that any harm to Islam or one of its symbols are [attacks on us as well], and anything that affects on Islam or Muslims affects us, and we have denounced the abuses against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, and we have our position clear through statements and positions.

We particularly welcome the Western delegations in Palestine and hold conferences and participate in many international forums, which are trying to provide the right image for our fellow Muslims and followers of Islam. Personally, I think that the crisis involves the West”ignorance”of Islam.

[Declaring Israel to be a Jewish state] is totally unacceptable to us, because it means the [abrogation of] the right of return …and the deportation of more than a million and a half Palestinians from the occupied territories [of] 1948!

He also recently said that Jerusalem should be Judenrein:

We as a church will fight any smuggling of real estate to Jewish organizations.

Does one get the impression that this man is an Islamist or a Christian? Normal Dhimmis accept the supremacy of Islam; Hanna goes beyond that to accept the legitimacy of Islam more than his own purported faith.

(cross-posted on Elder of Ziyon)

Ma’an News Agency, which I quote frequently on here to show their, err, creativity with the truth, are at their creative best with this report:

The director of the statistics department in the Palestinian ministry of Prisoners and Freed Prisoners, Abdul-Nasser Farawnah released on Sunday a comprehensive report about the long term Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails showing that many of them have entered the Guinness Book of Records .

According to the report, Palestinian prisoner Sa’id Al-Ataba has been detained for more than 30 years which is the longest imprisonment in the world. No other political prisoner had served such a long period ; Nelson Mandela had served 26 years, and Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of former US president John Kennedy served 28 years in prison.

As David Bogner (my source for this story) posted on his blog

For what it’s worth, here’s a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being ’sentenced’ to his record setting ‘term of incarceration’… served, apparently, in a long, wooden subterranean cell:

Heh.

Will Smith has reacted angrily to reports suggesting he thought Hitler was basically a good person, with the Hollywood celebrity stating unequivocally that he was misinterpreted.

Will Smith is angry over celebrity gossip Web site articles that he said misinterpreted a recent remark he made in a Scottish newspaper about Adolf Hitler.

Will Smith was upset that a remark about Hitler was misinterpreted by a writer, and then gossip sites.

In a story published Saturday in the Daily Record, Smith was quoted saying: “Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today.’ I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good.’ ”

The quote was preceded by the writer’s observation: “Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good.”

Over the weekend, dozens of celebrity gossip Web sites posted articles about the comment, many saying that Smith believed that Hitler was a “good” person.

“It is an awful and disgusting lie,” Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. “It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation.”

“Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet,” read the statement.

Unlike the last man who claimed he was misinterpreted, I am inclined to believe him.

Former Argentinean soccer player turned Goodyear Blimp, Diego Maradona, continues to be a poster boy for the ill effects of frequent drug use.

Former Argentinean soccer player Diego Armando Maradona expressed his desire on Monday to visit Iran and meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In a meeting with Iranian Charge d’Affaires to Buenos Aires Mohsen Baharavand, the former soccer player, whose infamous “Hand of God” goal knocked England out of the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal and whose life has been plagued with years of cocaine abuse, presented his autographed T-shirt to the Iranian nation.

“With all my love to Iranian people,” Maradona signed the T-shirt.

Expressing his deep affection for the people of Iran, Maradona, who was thrown out of the 1994 World Cup finals in the US after failing a drugs test, said: “I am with the people of Iran by all my heart, I support them. I say it because I feel it, because I mean it.”

The former player, who is an outspoken critic of US President George W. Bush, told Baharavand that he backs Ahmadinejad’s government.

“I have already met (Cuban President) Fidel (Castro), and (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez, now I need to meet your president, Ahmadinejad,” said Maradona.

Sounds to me like “Hand of God” is about to shake Hand of Satan. The blimp hearts the chimp. The crackhead likes the crackpot.

But let Iran have Maradona. After all, we have Madonna.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida reports that on Sunday, mortars were fired towards Sderot - by the Fatah al-Islam group, known for its affinity to al-Qaeda and its fighting against the Lebanese army this year: (autotranslated, cleaned up):

Dubai - a. P. B - The group “Fatah al- Islam,” associated with Al-Qaida, said that it fired a missile Sunday at Sderot in southern Israel, according to a statement by the Palestinian branch reported yesterday on an Islamist website.

According to the statement, “The Fatah movement in the land of Islam Rabat (Palestine) that the Sheikh Osama bin Laden battalion launched Sunday at 00 pm local time 15 shells of the type Zarqawi. The statement said that” your brothers in the battalion Sheikh Osama bin Laden managed to December 23 when 00 t 15 hours of launching missiles of the type of manufacturing a local Zarqawi, on the settlement of Sderot. “and added that the perpetrators of the attacks” were able to withdraw safely “after the attack, without specifying where it was launched missile.

The statement could not immediately ascertain the validity of the independent source confirms that the attack on Sderot, which will broadcast a video tape on it “as soon as possible” falls within the “chain operations aimed at revenge for our computer in the Cold River” in northern Lebanon.

Somehow, I don’t think that it was in retaliation for a computer crash in Lebanon so the auto-translation is unclear there, but it is apparently a reaction to the Lebanese army siege on the Nahr el-Bared “refugee” camp (”Cold River”) last summer. But in that unparalleled Arab terrorist logic, if Arabs attack Arabs the blame must be laid on the Jews and the residents of Sderot must pay.

Notice also how the terrorist groups love to refer to mortars as “missiles” and they name them after other terrorists, showing their huge pride in violence and terror. And although Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza strenuously deny any ties to al-Qaeda, I don’t think we are going to see any Hamas actions against this group in Gaza - if it even exists (hyperbolic press releases may be Gaza’s greatest export.)

(cross-posted to Elder of Ziyon)

Wishing all of my Christian readers a..

Merry Christmas!

Thanks for supporting this blog and, more importantly, supporting Israel in our fight against those who would very much like to prevent your celebration of this holiday.

May G-d bless you and your families.

In the lead-up to Christmas, a number of mainstream media outlets have been lamenting the misery inflicted on Gaza’s Christians. And no prizes for guessing who the Grinch is.

Exhibit A: This report from ABC Australia:

In the Palestinian territories, being a Christian is not so easy this Christmas.

Christians in the Gaza Strip have been attacked, and in Bethlehem - as in the rest of the West Bank - the number of Christians has been dwindling.

But some brave Christians are attempting to bring a little cheer to the Holy Lands.

In the run-up to Christmas, it is an unseemly sight - a dozen Santas ending up in a scuffle with Israeli troops.

Leader of the Santas, Sami Talhami, says the Santas want to bring a hopeful message.

“From Bethlehem, from where Jesus was born, from where the apartheid wall is being built around our villages and cities, we say, yes there is hope and there is a chance for peace,” he said.

“It needs the world to realise that there is injustice happening here, and for the world to say we will work for peace in the Holy Land.”

Mr Talhami was leading a group Palestinians, and western peace activists, dressed as Santa to demonstrate against the barrier Israel is building to separate the Jewish state from the West Bank.

The barrier has already been built across Bethlehem, making access difficult to the birthplace of Jesus.

Retired Catholic archbishop Francis Carroll has visited Bethlehem as part of a high-level Australian church delegation.

“I come from there with very mixed feelings,” he said.

“I suppose the sight of the wall, the barrier almost being in sight all the time, it’s very sobering, but I found it a very profound thought, that a land in which Jesus was born probably bore a great deal of resemblance to the present in that sense of occupation.”

Exhibit B: This report from Canada’s CBC News:

Israel will let 500 Palestinian Christians living in Gaza travel to the West Bank to spend Christmas in Bethlehem. But for the 2,500 staying behind, their first Christmas under Hamas rule will be sombre.

Their priest preaches hope, but sometimes even he despairs.

—-

“Christmas is destroyed, it’s smashed in Gaza,” says Father Musallam Manue of Holy Family Church. “There is no more joy in Gaza and because of that there is no more peace in Gaza.”

These are tough times in the territory, the CBC’s Nahlah Ayed reports.

Under an Israeli blockade imposed after Hamas fighters seized control of Gaza in June, the economy has collapsed, prices have gone through the roof and Gaza is even more isolated than in the past. That’s why so many Christians want out, even if just for the holidays.

—-

Border crossings are mostly sealed. Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, and under its rule militants regularly fire rockets into Israeli territory. The Israeli government has responded with military strikes.

With most imports and exports blocked, seasonal supplies bound for Husam Mourtaga’s shop have been sitting in port for months, and few have come to buy his old Christmas stock.

“This Christmas is very bad, really, very bad for all people,” he says. “For me, I think, and for people.”

Call me old fashioned, but I would have thought there’s nothing like fearing for your life to spoil your Christmas. And surely no longer having your local bookstore to pick up a book of carols - not to mention the bookstore owner - would put a dampener on things. Yet these things are not mentioned in the aforementioned MSM reports, save for a reference to attacks on Christians (but by whom?), and a reference to “Hamas fighters” (not “terrorists”) seizing control of Gaza.

Ahhh, there’s nothing like the sweet smell of media bias to bring on that holiday cheer.

Update: And then there’s this AP report which although does mention Hamas’ murderous campaign against Gaza’s Christians, minimizes it with this:

Community leaders say an unprecedented number of Christian families are already migrating from Gaza — rattled by the religious tensions and tough economic sanctions Israel imposed on the area after the Hamas takeover.

Update: Frequent Israellycool contributor Elder of Ziyon has some more examples.

Update: I guess it’s an obvious topic: Aaron Klein says the same thing.

Hollywood actor Will Smith recently told Zoo magazine that women want to bed him because he makes them laugh.

“No one believes me, but comedy is better than muscles, money or looks. If you can make a girl laugh out loud, you’re in there”, says Smith, whose movie I Am Legend opens in Sydney on January 3.

“It’s almost like the pressure of the laugh makes her panties fall off.”

Well hold on to your panties, women, because Will has just come up with some comedy gold.

In an interview, the 39-year-old family man and former all-around good guy says he sees the good in everyone, including Adolf Hitler.

“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.’ I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good.’ Stuff like that just needs reprogramming,” Smith told the Daily Record.

And I’m sure Smith didn’t wake up going ‘Let me say the most stupid thing I can say today.’ But that didn’t stop him.

Given that Smith seems like a decent guy - albeit in dire need of some modesty - I can only guess that he has gone the route of so many Hollywood celebrities before him and tried to be profound.

I just wish Homey didn’t play dat.

Update: It seems like Homey don’t play dat.

Ma’an (Arabic) reports that a series of articles being authored by longtime Arafat aide Marwan Kanafani in Egypt’s Al Ahram will say that it was Yasir Arafat himself who created the Black September organization in 1970.

Black September was behind many of the highest-profile terror attacks in the early 1970s, including the murder of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Tel, the Munich Olympic massacre, the May 1972 hijacking of a Belgian airliner from Vienna, dozens of letter bombs including at one that killed an Israeli politician in London, and the murder of two US diplomats in Khartoum.

The PLO always used Black September for plausible deniability, claiming that the deadliest BSO attacks had nothing to do with them. Although many historians had already made the connection between the two groups, the US State Department wrote a confidential memo in 1973 (released in 1981) showing connections between the groups, and the State Department also had linked Fatah and Arafat directly to the Khartoum murders, this appears to be the first confirmation by someone in Arafat’s inner circle that it was Arafat himself who was the founder of Black September and personally in charge of operations.

And we know that the current Palestinian Arab President Mahmoud Abbas was also involved in Black September, specifically in the Munich massacre.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

Introducing out latest weapon: Invisible Zionist Blindfolds of Death.^TM

Blindfolded Palestinians, detained during an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, stand aboard a vehicle near Kibbutz Kissufim December 20, 2007. Israeli tanks and troops backed by helicopter gunships raided the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least four Palestinian gunmen, militant sources and hospital officials said. REUTERS/Amir Cohen (ISRAEL)

The only people wearing blindfolds are those who take at face value anything Reuters reports.

Heck, for a second there I thought I made the New York Times.