Israellycool

From Ma’an:

A Hamas police officer was killed and several other Palestinians were wounded on Thursday when an explosive device detonated in a police station in Gaza City.

A spokesperson for the movement, Islam Shahwan, said the device had been discovered earlier in the day within the Hamas controlled territory and taken to a police station to be dismantled.

While experts took apart the bomb, it exploded, causing several secondary blasts, as well, Shahwan said.

I’m no expert, but if one was going to try to transport a bomb somewhere to be dismantled, wouldn’t an open field be a better place than a police station?

YNet adds:

Interior Ministry spokesman Ihab Elghseen later said that the man, a police officer and an engineer, died “as a martyr“.

Which makes this good news all around.

More amazing pumpkin art here

Radical Israeli Arab leader Sheik Raed Salah, pictured in front of his last bowel movement, explains to the media how he overcame his constipation.

Update: The real caption is:

Sheik Raed Salah, leader of a radical branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement speaks at a press conference against the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to resume the construction of a museum dedicated to tolerance and coexistence in Jerusalem, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008. Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected appeals by Muslims fighting construction of the museum, on a site covering part of an ancient Muslim cemetery.

I think even this man would consider that ironic.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Interviewer: In relation to mixing within the community obviously that’s an issue to be faced today with people like John Howard saying that they have to learn English.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: Was that something that you experienced here in Perth in relation to there being an obligation to blend with the wider community, to become more Australian?

Dad: No, it was different in those days. Much different. I was going to Hale [School], and I had enough problems. I wanted to do boxing in school, Saturday morning but no go, synagogue, okay. Then when I became friendly with boys at Hale and we’d go out together. The boy I was most friendly with - his parents were clients of my parents - explained to me said, “Look, we’re friends, we’re together but I don’t go to your house and you don’t get invited to ours.” That was the attitude, the feeling.

Interviewer: How did you sense the wider community?

Dad: Not like that. I took it to be typical Hale School. I even discussed it with Mr Johns. For instance when I first went to Hale School after being there a couple of weeks, Mr Johns asked me “Have you got a tennis racket?” I said, “Yes, I got one from my Barmitzvah.” I had never played tennis in my life. He said, “Bring your tennis racket and shorts to school.” And he arranged for a couple of boys, Lloyd and Irvine, (and there was supposed to be a fourth but he couldn’t make it), and we played tennis. And I was very friendly with Michael Perry. We’d go fishing on the Swan and stay overnight. He came to my barmitzvah and he was very happy.

Interviewer: So there was no sense of an, ‘us and them’ scenario?

Dad: No, no we lived the same life.

Via Ynetnews:

Livni to Mofaz: You are my number 2

Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni  told Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz on Thursday that she considers him her “no. 2″ in the party, regardless of the technical issues related to securing him a spot on Kadima’s Knesset roster.

And you thought politics got ugly in the US.

The Huffington Post eulogizes one of its writers, Carol Anne Burger, who took her own life:

The Huffington Post’s OffTheBus is deeply saddened to report that one of our writers, Carol Anne Burger, died on Friday, October 24.

The circumstances of her death remain unclear; police believe she may have taken her own life after learning that her roommate - and former partner - had been found dead.

Carol Anne, an award-winning photojournalist and former editor, was an OffTheBus Election Correspondent. She used her background in journalism to bring us ground reports from her home state of Florida - and was very excited to be writing about the presidential election and filed multiple stories a week. She covered a wide range of stories including early voting in Florida, a summit on green jobs with Barack Obama and swing-state governors and a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation event. Her high energy and curiosity kept OffTheBus editors on our toes. Vermonter Christian Avard - who worked with Carol Anne on her final dispatch - wrote that she was “always fun to work with, cheerful, and always very supportive. We are all very lucky to have Carol Anne be a part of the Off the Bus family. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of Carol Anne Burger and Jessica Kalish.”

This coming week, Carol Anne had planned on using her background in financial reporting to cover how the economic crisis is affecting food bank donations and the poor in Florida.

Carol Anne will be deeply missed. Please use the comment section below if you wish to offer her family and friends your condolences.

Update: For further details on Carol Anne Burger’s death please click here.

If you click on the link, it takes you to this report:

Carol Anne Burger killed her former lover by stabbing her 222 times with a Phillips-head screwdriver and then took pains to hide her crime, police said Wednesday.

Jessica Kalish, who shared a house with Burger despite breaking up with her more than a year ago, was found last Thursday stuffed in the backseat of her gun-metal BMW sedan, abandoned behind a medical office at 2300 S. Congress Avenue. Her blood was splashed around the rear end and undercarriage of the car, as if her killer had tried to load her into the trunk. The driver-side window was shattered.

Examining the body, detectives absorbed what had been done to her. Stab wounds were clustered around the back of her head and stitched across her back and arms and face. Most were between an inch and an inch-and-a-half deep. A blow to Kalish’s neck probably killed her, investigators determined.

At a news conference Wednesday, police laid out what they’d learned during a week of investigation. They said the evidence pointed to one conclusion: Burger killed Kalish, a 56-year-old software executive whom friends described as worldly and intelligent, and then tried to throw investigators off her trail.

—-

Burger, a 57-year-old writer, did yoga, had a fondness for Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and preferred to watch musicals in theaters with Dolby Sound. She recently stopped drinking coffee. She thought Jackson Browne’s For a Dancer was good to listen to when you were sad, and she refused to take anti-depressants despite her relationship problems with Kalish.Their situation really was a bad one, friends said, but for financial reasons Burger and Kalish had continued to share the house they’d bought together in 2000.

Burger, who on Oct. 7 was tapped to cover the election for the Web site, The Huffington Post, still sometimes felt sad and isolated. Kalish, whom Burger had married in Massachusetts in 2005, had met another woman.

At 3300 Churchill Drive, Burger had her half of the house, a room and office where she would write and read and surf the Internet, and Kalish had hers, where she would spend hours absorbed in cyber dates with her new companion, friends said.

All in all, the former couple seemed to be doing the best they could as their lawyer drew up plans to sell the house and divide the money. But secretly, police said, something was building up in Burger that would explode in a sudden, sustained burst of rage.

Minutes after someone called their home and said he had found Kalish’s wallet and keys near 548 E. Gateway Boulevard, Burger reported Kalish missing Thursday afternoon. She told police Kalish left for a workout Wednesday night and never came home.

As investigators studied the case, several telltale signs, including the ferocity and personal nature of the attack, pointed to Burger, they said.

But before they could question her, Burger walked out into her back yard, pressed a gun up under her chin and pulled the trigger, police said. Detectives found her body there last Thursday but couldn’t locate a suicide note.

In the days that followed, detectives and crime scene investigators put together this theory:

On Wednesday night, Kalish exercised at LA Fitness at 2290 N. Congress Ave. and was home by 9:30 p.m. A confrontation ensued, and she probably was dead by midnight.

After stabbing Kalish, Burger put her in the BMW and drove her to the Congress Avenue site. She walked home, a distance of about 2 1/2 miles.

Burger cleaned up the garage and used the washing machine and bathroom sink, where traces of Kalish’s blood were later detected. She got into her Toyota Celica, drove to Gateway Boulevard and tossed out Kalish’s keys and wallet.

On Tuesday night, detectives proved their theory, said Lt. Gary Chapman, who heads the department’s major crimes squad.

Using Luminol, a chemical agent that causes blood traces to fluoresce under ultraviolet light, they found a “tremendous amount of blood” splattered throughout the garage, where the attack must have taken place, Chapman said. The Luminol also revealed Burger’s glowing sneaker prints on the garage floor, mapping her steps after she walked through her old flame’s blood.

“We believe the process of killing Jessica was pretty lengthy, in and out of the car,” Chapman said. “She obviously was out of her mind.”

Now granted that perhaps the HuffPo did not have the full set of facts when it first posted the eulogy. But when these facts came to light, why would they post only a blink-and-you-miss-it line containing a link to the story of the murder?

If I was family of the victim, I would be fuming.

Freaky.

Someone has found about my secret ambition to set up a Muslim-Gothic/Gothic-Muslim dating site.

Alice (http://www.muslimfriends.com) wrote:
Dear webmaster,

This is Alice from Muslimfriends.com, I wonder whether you have interest in running your own Gothic dating site or work-at-home business. We would like to work with you setting it up.

You can pick the name for your own Muslim dating site , own the domain and brand. We take care of all the backend and engineering work.  Also customer service work. You can earn money if you can get users registering at your Gothic dating site.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me. I am looking forward to your reply.

Alice
Marketing manager
www.muslimfriends.com

Update: Apparently the two do go together.

The Free Gaza freaks are so far in debt, they apparently charged their idiot passengers about $1000 for this latest trip!

Look at this graphic on their site (they apparently had a typo which I correct):

The FGMers have so far spent $740,000 and have raised $325,000 - but $300,000 came from “donations” and $25,000 from “passenger fees”.

There was no mention of “passenger fees” on their website when we previously looked at their bizarre thermometer graphic.

Since their latest trip to Gaza, where they were greeted by their Hamas terrorist pals and a tiny crowd, included 27 people, it appears that they are so broke that they are charging their “humanitarian” passengers about $1000 to get their publicity.

Comparing their numbers, they’ve spent $190,000 since September - and only raised $75,000, even including their passenger fees. And this was after the massive amount of publicity they received from their first trip.

Clearly their leftist pals aren’t willing to pony up the bucks for them to continue these public relations stunts, and nobody is buying the boats they are trying to sell (for quite inflated prices.)

What will they try next?

Note: I am trying to get this message to the Israeli government, as an important way to counter the Free Gaza movement’s war against Israel. If any of you have contacts with the Israeli government, please pass this on.

And if you are a blogger, feel free to help publicize this.

Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead McGuire, who arrived in Gaza on the “Free Gaza” boat, left, holds a gift from Gaza’s Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, right, at his office in Gaza City, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. The boat carrying international protesters sailed into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to bring attention to Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory. The 27 passengers include McGuire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.

If this doesn’t already speak volumes, allow me to make things clearer for you.

Hamas Charter:

Preamble

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

Article Six

The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine..

Article Seven

…”The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

Article Eleven

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up…..

Article Thirteen

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

Free Gaza mission statement:

May 2008 marks the 60-year anniversary of the Nakba, “the catastrophe”, when the overwhelming majority of Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their ancestral homeland to create the state of Israel. In contravention of International law, human rights, and basic principles of morality, Israel continues to deny these refugees and their descendants their right to return home. Israel has neither acknowledged nor attempted to amend this historic injustice that gave birth to the Jewish state. Instead, more than 5 million Palestinian refugees languish in refugee camps, while their homes, farms, and properties are inhabited by Jewish immigrants who arrived in Palestine from around the globe.

The historic illegal appropriation of Palestinian land, home and heritage is at the heart of the Middle East conflict. It has given rise to the largest ongoing refugee population in the world. It paved the way for subsequent land theft in 1967, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing that has squeezed Palestinians in the West Bank into ghettos and bantustans surrounded by 27-foot walls, sniper towers, and military guards. It has created the open-air prison of Gaza with an impoverished and overcrowded population of 1.4 million inhabitants.

McGuire and her fellow Free Gaza tools are not peace activists. They are supporters of Hamas and their goals. They do not want a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict, but rather a one state solution - a palestinian state.

Update: Here’s a similar photo from two months ago.

A British activist gestures as she receives a Palestinian passport from senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (2nd R) in Gaza August 28, 2008. Two boats carrying foreign peace activists who had defied an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip left the Hamas-ruled territory on Thursday for Cyprus, taking with them seven Palestinians.

The gesture is a “V for Victory” sign, something arch terrorist Yasser Arafat was particularly prone to flashing.

In other words, not quite a symbol of peace.

Contrary to the Free Gaza tools’ claims that Israel backed down from threats to deny them entry to Gaza only after we realized we could not operate outside of Israel’s territorial waters, the real reason has emerged.

And in another flying pig moment, it looks like soon-not-to-be Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a correct decision.

A boat carrying 27 far-left protesters docked in Gaza Wednesday morning, after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reversed course and decided against barring the vessel’s entrance.

This was the third small boat chartered by the US-based Free Gaza movement that has sailed from Cyprus to Gaza to draw attention to the Israeli blockade of the Strip.

Two other boats that set sail together in August were also let in by the Israeli authorities, who wanted to deny the protesters publicity.

Government officials said that a decision was taken “at the highest governmental levels” a number of days ago to stop this new boat and arrest the protesters.

But Olmert - after consultations with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi - changed the decision at the last moment, apparently concerned about the negative publicity.

Representatives of the National Information Directorate, as well as the media specialists at the Foreign Ministry, who were preparing for the boat to be intercepted at sea, were not involved in the consultations.

One senior government official said Israel’s decision to let the boat pass was made after it became clear exactly who and what were on the boat.

He also said Israel “wants to keep these agitators guessing, and not play into their hands.”

The official said that the decision to let the boat in Wednesday was made on a one-time basis, and did not represent a blanket policy. He added that no decision has been made whether Israel would allow the boat to sail back, as it did in August.

Now if the government would only take my advice. Which they don’t seem to be doing at this stage.

Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev, meanwhile, said that the protesters and organizers of the boat were not the only ones who wanted a “free Gaza.”

“We are also interested in freeing Gaza,” Regev said. “We want to free the civilian population of the Gaza Strip from the authoritative, totalitarian, Taliban-type regime that is oppressing it.”

Acknowledging that the protesters and organizers of the boat want a “free Gaza” makes it sound like this is really all they want. We should be mentioning that really what they want is a”free palestine”, meaning the end of the state of Israel.

An Israeli PR person who knows what they’re doing.

Austria’s PR man of the year for 2008 is no other than Israeli Ambassador, Dan Ashbel.

While the Foreign Ministry has been criticized over the years over its representation of Israel, especially regarding the Middle Eastern conflict, Ashbel, the ambassador to Austria has been greatly improving the country’s image and has succeeded in creatively marketing a different Israel.

In recent days the Israeli Embassy in Vienna was informed that the Austrian Public Relations Association (PVRA) has elected Ashbel as their man of the year, beating prominent Austrian figures such as a Viennese judge, the president of the Salzburg Festival, the Belvedere Museum curator, and head of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ branch in Austria.

Ashbel was nominated by a board of judges made up of members of the media, and PR figures. Voting was carried out via the PVRA’s website for a period of two weeks.

The yearly title is given to candidates that do not work in the PR field themselves, but have stood out with their public activity.

The project headed by Ashbel that gained much success was the “Israel” tram – a cable car that runs through Vienna while given the passengers a taste of Israel’s culture. Passengers enjoy Israeli foods, music and movies on the tram.

“I am very happy to be chosen,” Ashbel told Ynet, “my election proves that we have succeeded in opening a window into Israel and gotten the Austrian public curious about other subjects related to Israel – art, high-tech, developments and culture, and not just the cliché of the conflict in the Middle East.

“It proves that the effort on the part of the embassy’s team in improving Israel’s image has paid off. We have succeeded in arousing curiosity about Israel.”

The substantial change in Austria’s attitude towards Israel, according to Ashbel, is due to the fact that Israel has also changed its approach in the fight over the country’s image.

“It is true that we do have political problems and disputes with a great part of the world,” said Ashbel, “Sitting at home, it’s easy to say ‘the world is against us’. But it’s not against us, it is debating with us. We tried to say – we don’t agree with everything either and we are not always right, try to get to know us before you judge us.”

Ashbel is already thinking of his next unconventional plan to improve Israel’s image – duplicating Tel Aviv’s shores on the banks of the Danube River.

“We are now looking into the possibility that for Tel Aviv’s 100th year, we lead a joint project between Vienna and Tel Aviv’s municipalities, in which part of the Danube is allocated for the project,” he said.

Jorge Haider was unavailable for comment. For obvious reasons.