The Day in Israel: Tues Mar 24th, 2009

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  • Likud and Labor launched a marathon negotiation session before Labor votes on whether to enter the coalition. Meanwhile, Labor Chairman Ehud Barak was to ask his party to grant him unprecedented authority to determine which of the party’s 13 Knesset members will be appointed to ministerial positions.
  • Senior Hamashole Moussa Abu Marzouk said his terrorist group is ready to resume talks with Egyptian officials in order to reach a prisoner exchange deal with Israel as soon as possible.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:00PM: IDF Lieutenant Nina talks about being a medic during Operation Cast Lead.

9:13PM: Here is some of the other news I missed while I was busy at my day job:

  • Labor will be joining the coalition
  • Palestinian terrorists fired a Qassam into Israel for the first time in 10 days.
  • Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on a prisoner swap deal are set to resume tonight
  • Police were able to plant fake bombs at 3 Haifa shopping centers, just 3 days after the failed (real) bombing attempt at a Haifa mall.
  • It was revealed that two planes almost collided at Ben Gurion airport on Saturday
  • Irony alert: 3 Jerusalem Arabs have been charged with the attempted murder of an American student in east Jerusalem’s “Peace Forest”.

9:00PM: Today, a group of Right-wing protesters marched through the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm. The Arabs were apparently not too thrilled with this, and voiced their displeasure with the (legal) march in the way they know how: violence.

Police Commissioner David Cohen on Tuesday said his officers protected Israel’s democracy by quelling violent protests held against a march by far-rightists in the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm.

“This morning, 2,500 policemen went in to ensure the existence of the democratic process in the State of Israel,” said Cohen.

Twenty-eight people were wounded during clashes between police and demonstrators near the march on Tuesday morning. The far-rightists began the march at 10:00 A.M. and ended it about 45 minutes later. The clashes, however, continued for some two hours after the march had been concluded.

The police chief added: “The events finished after a number of policemen were wounded by the throwing of stones and police employed various techniques to disperse the demonstration, although all-in-all this was a process that began about two months ago with a request for a legitimate protest.”

Deputy police commissioner Shahar Ayalon and fourteen other policemen were wounded by stone-throwing demonstrators; twelve Umm al-Fahm residents were hurt in scuffles with police, according to Magen David Adom emergency services.

Despite the fact that the Arabs instigated the violence, the mainstream media has predictably misreported these events.

Take this photo with the following caption:

Arab Israeli and Israeli peace activists protest against a march by Jewish extremists in the northern town of Umm Al-Fahm on March 24, 2009. Israeli riot police clashed with residents of Umm Al-Fahm, a bastion of Israeli Arab nationalism where far-right Jewish extremists held a court-sanctioned march led by Baruch Marzel and Michael Ben Ari. Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population of nearly seven and a half million, and are the descendants of those who remained in Israel following the creation of the Jewish state and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Reference to the Arabs and their supporters as “peace activists”? Check.

Reference to the Right-wing Jewish protesters as “extremists”? Check.

Suggestion that Israeli police clashed with Arab residents, with no mention of the Arab-instigated violence? Check.

Seemingly irrelevant information on the Arab population in Israel to provide “context” to today’s violence? Check.

And here’s another one:

UMM AL-FAHM, ISRAEL – MARCH 24: Israeli police take aim at stone-throwing Arabs after a provocative march of flags by right-wing Israelis descended into violence, on March 24, 2009 in Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel. More than 2,500 police officers had deployed in and around Israel’s largest Arab city ahead of the rally, for which the far-rightists had received High Court approval.

Notice the implication that the Right-wing march provoked the violence, which just happened to occur.

But despite this deliberately misleading reporting, the MSM censors have been caught napping, allowing through a picture and caption that indicates who really instigated the violence, and betrays the pretense that the counter-protesters were “peace activists.”

An Arab Israeli man waves an axe at Israeli riot policemen during clashes in the northern town of Umm Al-Fahm on March 24, 2009. Israeli riot police clashed with residents of Umm Al-Fahm, a bastion of Israeli Arab nationalism where far-right Jewish extremists held a court-sanctioned march led by Baruch Marzel and Michael Ben Ari. Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population of nearly seven and a half million, and are the descendants of those who remained in Israel following the creation of the Jewish state and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

6:26PM: Yes, I am still alive. Just drowning in work. Help.

6:12AM: George Galloway’s Viva Palestina group is under investigation by Britain’s charity watchdog, which is trying to find out how they use their money.

No mysteries there. Galloway and his group clearly gave money to the Hamas terror organization.

6:00AM: Here is footage from yesterday’s roadside bombing that killed Fatah leader in Lebanon Kamal Medhat.

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