Now comes the Palestinian reply:

The star-studded soccer team Barcelona FC will host two soccer clinics for children in the Holy Land in August, one in the West Bank and one in Israel. The events, scheduled for August 3 and 4, aim to promote “peace between Israelis and Palestinians through the values of sport,” the club announced on Wednesday. But a planned exhibition match, pitting Barcelona against a joint Israeli-Palestinian team, has been cancelled because of Palestinian objections.

And who made the call? Jibril Rajoub:

“Because of the behavior of the Israelis, that targets sport and athletes, our movement is limited,” Palestinian football Association head Jibril Rajoub told Reuters in early May. “I believe that it’s too early to talk about a joint match because of the discriminatory behavior, even on the playing field, which is being practiced by Israel,’’ he said.

Yes, the same guy who recently said he’ll use an atomic bomb on Israel if he had one, and that Israel is their main enemy.

And now you know why after 65 years there still isn’t peace in the Middle East. FC Barcelona will have better luck teaching pigs how to fly, than teaching Palestinians about alternatives to zero-sum games.

So let’s all go back in time to the happy early 2000′s, to see the Israeli entry to the 2000 Eurovision in the Netherlands.

Yes, that is indeed the worst song of all time, made even crappier by the hippie Syrian love.

In that time period, there were talks about Israeli-Syrian peace treaty that thankfully did not materialize.

Operation Guardian (“Shomer”) was an attack on Syrian dams carried out on 16–17 May 1973 by Israel Air Force No. 69 Squadron, subsequently known as the “Hammers”, using a specially developed “floating bomb” invented and developed by Rafael. The Khiam and Al-Mazour Dams were breached, causing catastrophic flooding of the Euphrates valley and of villages in the Khabour valley, while the El-Watan dam sustained only minor damage. The damage was mitigated by rapid repairs by the Soviet engineers stationed in Syria, with production returning to normal in September.

The two direct hits on the Khiam dam resulted in a breach around 250 feet (76 metres) wide and 292 feet (89 metres) deep. The destroyed dam poured around 330 million tons of water, equivalent to a cube measuring 687 metres, into the western Mazarib region. A torrent of water around 32.5 feet (10 metres) high and travelling at around 15 mph (24 km/h) swept through the valleys of the Euphrates and Khabour rivers. A few mines were flooded; 11 small factories and 92 houses were destroyed and 114 factories and 971 houses were damaged. The floods washed away about 25 roads, railways and bridges as the flood waters spread for around 50 miles (80 km) from the source. Estimates show that before 15 May 1973 water production on the Khabour was 1 million tonnes, this dropped to a quarter of that level after the raid.

The greatest impact on the Syrian armaments production was the loss of hydroelectric power. Two powerplants (producing 5,100 kilowatts) associated with the dam were destroyed and seven others were damaged. This resulted in a loss of electrical power in the factories and many households in the region for two weeks. In May 1973 Oil production dropped by 400,000 barrels which Syrian sources accredit to the effects of the raid.

According to the recent sources, at least 1,650 people were killed: around 70 in the Mazarib Valley, and at least 1,579 bodies were found along the Euphrates and Khabour rivers, with hundreds missing. 1,026 of the bodies found downriver of the Khiam Dam were foreign prisoners of war and forced-labourers in different camps, mainly from Iraq. Worst hit was the city of Al-Busairah at the confluence of the Euphrates and Khabour rivers, where over 800 people perished, among them at least 43 citizens from the Soviet Union.

Ok, you got me. I might have edited the story a bit.

It’s not 1973, but 1943. The instigator isn’t Israel, but the UK, and the attacked isn’t Syria, but Germany. The names of the places were changed to more Arab-sounding ones, but that’s it.

The death toll is accurate.

You see, what was once hailed as a necessary attack on the Nazi war machine, will today undoubtedly be labelled a “War Crime” by newspapers in the countries that fought Germany for 6 years – If it was about Israel.

The plethora of condemnations and tirades about Israel’s “impunity” and “Tribalism” - like the Guardian’s pet anti-Zionist Glenn Greenwald - regarding the preemptive strikes on Syria, should paint a bleak image for those of us old enough to remember WWII or mature enough to understand the concept of defence.

In today’s world, the winners write the history books, thereafter the text is edited by a post-modern reality.

Like the Allied forces didn’t need any excuse to flatten whole cities and flood valleys, so does Israel not need any excuse to protect and defend its citizens from missiles and rockets that have been fired on us before. No amount of words and tantrums spewed on the papers can take away the right – nay, duty – of Israel to protect it citizens.

Moreover, unlike the wars of yesteryears, Israel didn’t flatten whole cities like the UK did or Assad is doing, but used precision weapons on predefined targets, in an effort to minimize collateral damage and deaths.

You know the saying: One man’s defence is another man’s war crimes…

Making its first appearances in the fall of 2012, Liwa’a Abu Fadl al-Abbas (Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades or LAFA) represents a new addition to the Syrian battlefield and serves as another example of increased sectarianism in the Syrian Civil War. The organization claims its role is to defend the Sayida Zaynab Shrine and surrounding Shia populated neighborhoods located in southern Damascus. The group is made-up of a mixture of a small number of native Syrian Shia with a majority of foreign Shia Muslim fighters.

LAFA has also maintained an outward appearance which mirrors the same type of spirit once found with the volunteer International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Despite the presented narrative, this does not necessitate the group is an ad hoc collection of individual Shia Muslims. The group heavily utilizes fighters originating from Iranian-backed organizations (such as Iraq’s Kata’ib Hizballah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq), has uniformed personnel, new weapons, a recognizable leadership structure, and openly identifies with Lebanese Hizballah. These factors point to an extremely organized fighting group and deeper levels of Iranian involvement in the organization.

Unlike larger and more established militant Shia Islamist groups such as Lebanon’s Hizballah or Iraq’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, LAFA has no official website or official online forums. The group finds most of its internet representation through a mixture of quasi-official Facebook pages and YouTube stations. In fact, for the Western and Arabic-language press, LAFA’s existence only came to light when a YouTube music video featuring the group’s fighters was made public. Thus, fifteen pro-LAFA Facebook pages, five Facebook pages associated with Lebanese Hizballah, one Hizballah forum, three pro-Muqtada al-Sadr forums, and five pro-LAFA/pro-Hizballah YouTube stations were reviewed for this study.

One such Facebook photo is this picture, where Abu ‘Ajeeb, LAFA’s “Secretary General”, and other militants drink Pepsi.

Abu ‘Ajeeb and other LAFA militants drinking Pepsi

This isn’t Pepsi’s first connection to terrorism, if you may recall the Pepsi sponsored Hamas football game in Gaza.

It seems there’s something about Pepsi that is savoury to the tongue of terrorists, though in reality, all the money used to buy these drinks goes to Israel, for Pepsi is actually an acronym for Pay Every Penny, Save Israel.

FYI, this video is from Al-Aqsa TV, who almost had its terrorist members honoured on the Newseum memory wall.

CNN’s take on the KGFC story by Brad Lendon brings us this falsehood:

When employees last month had a taste for some finger-lickin’ good stuff, they called a friend just over the Gaza border in al-Arish, Egypt, and asked him to order some up. He did so and sent it to Gaza through one of the hundreds of tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border used to get goods into Gaza prohibited by Israeli restrictions, things such as weapons and cars.

Cars aren’t prohibited, in fact, there are too many cars!

In CNN’s report on the Arab Idol contestant from Gaza, Samira Said writes this dissonant trope:

It was no small task for Assaf to travel to Cairo to audition for the wildly popular show.

“He needed a visa (to cross the Gaza-Egypt border), but he didn’t have one,” his father, Jabar, told CNN from Khan Younis, a refugee camp in Gaza. Israel imposes a blockade on Gaza, leaving residents without access to an airport.

Palestinian officials had to make special arrangements for Assaf to leave Gaza, his mother, UmShadi, a math teacher, explained. By the time he arrived in Cairo, the doors to the venue where auditions were held had already closed.

“So he jumped the wall,” she said. Security guards seized him and were going to escort him out when a Palestinian official with the show recognized Assaf from his performances in Gaza and gave him a candidate number, allowing him to compete.

She just HAD to include the part about Israel, when the whole story revolves around the border between Egypt and Gaza, where Hamas and Egypt are involved in a pissing contest on who can make the life of Gazans more miserable (Israel has no presence there whatsoever).

Just another normal, Israel bashing day at CNN.

Update: Speak of the devil:

Egyptian policemen block crossing with Gaza

Egyptian policemen blocked the crossing into the Gaza Strip on Friday to protest against the kidnapping of Egyptian security forces in the Sinai, witnesses and sources said.

Locals said police had placed barbed wire across the entrance to the border and closed the gates with chains, leaving hundreds of Palestinians stranded on both sides of the fence.

He’s the designer that created the banner for the 1960′s Paul Newman movie Exodus, based on the novel with the same name.

This banner has an uncanny resemblance to the Hezballah flag.

7 months ago, I posted how the BBC told a false story on what attacked the INS Hanit during the second Lebanon war.

An Israeli navy ship was damaged by an explosive drone in July 2006.

It wasn’t a drone, but an anti-ship missile.

Sky News did a report on the Israeli Navy, and included this tidbit:

The “Islamic Resistance” at [sic] it calls itself, has been trying to get its hands on strategic weapons that could maintain a balance of threat with Israel.

These include surface to air and surface to ship missiles – the latter sank [sank] an Israeli missile carrying ship during the 2006 war.

Let’s ignore the typing, grammatical and descriptive errors (what’s a missile carrying ship?!). Not only did the INS Hanit not sink, it was put back in service a few weeks after the incident.

The only ship that was sunk by Hezbullah was a Cambodian merchant vessel.

There’s something about the INS Hanit that turns journalists into idiots. Even looking at the Wikipedia entry one can see the ship was definitely not sunk.

Fact-checking? Na, let’s just print whatever Hezbullah says.

Update:

Success! two days later, Sam Kiley corrected his error.

@judgedan48 you are quite right. Slip of the pen.

— Sam Kiley (@kileysky) May 13, 2013

It now reads:

The “Islamic Resistance” at [sic] it calls itself, has been trying to get its hands on strategic weapons that could maintain a balance of threat with Israel.

These include surface to air and surface to ship missiles – the latter badly damaged an Israeli missile carrying ship during the 2006 war.

Oh well…

Kudos to Kiley for replying and correcting the error, yet these shouldn’t even happen in the first place. Is it too much to ask for that what is being reported as facts be verified, or at least spotted by the editor?

The Telegraph has an article about Wigan’s goalkeeper, the Omani Ali Al-Habsi, and how he became the first ever Middle Easterner to play in the FA Cup final.

Wigan’s Ali Al Habsi today becomes the first Middle East player to play in an FA Cup final. He tells Jim White about his personal journey.

For Wigan the next one is the biggest in the club’s history. And for Al Habsi himself, it offers the chance of rehabilitation. He has played in every round of the FA Cup, was recalled for the semi-final against Millwall last month and is cheerfully hopeful that he will be stepping out at Wembley this afternoon. If he does he will be making history himself: the Omani will be the first player from the Middle East to play in an FA Cup final. The very thought has been making national news back home.

“I feel that honour,” he says. “Everywhere in Oman people are speaking about the Cup final. Not just in Oman, actually, but across the Middle East. Everyone wants Wigan to win now. Except maybe in Abu Dhabi.”

That is, of course, not true.

There’s this small country in the Middle East – you might have not heard of it – called Israel, which for the past 2 decades has been sending football players to play in the English Premier League.

One such player is former Israel national team captain, Yossi Benayoun, who 7 years ago played in the FA Cup final with West Ham United against Liverpool FC, (and please, no pig jokes).

But he’s not the only one.

3 years ago, Tal Ben-Haim, then playing for Portsmouth, was in the roster for his team – though didn’t play – in the  2010 FA Cup final against Chelsea.

I don’t know why Jim White wrote this fallacy, but one can only hope that it’s because of oversight, short memory, or the lack of fact-checking, and not some more sinister belief that erased Israel from the Middle East.

Well to be exact, I don’t see “retweeting” a tweet on MSM as quoting, but rather as being lazy, but hey, that’s Sidner for you.

One tweeter, Ali Abunimah, observes: “Amazing how many Israelis on Facebook want Stephen Hawking dead, electrocuted or made to suffer in other nasty ways.”

And like where she didn’t explain why there was a war with Hezbullah, she doesn’t mention who Abunimah is, or what Death-to-Israel site he runs.

There’s also a lengthy suck-up to Barghouti:

Omar Barghouti, one of the founding members of the movement, told CNN: “Stephen Hawking is the most prominent academic today to respect the Palestinian boycott guidelines and to refuse to visit Israel. This reminds us of the moral weight of academics in the boycott of apartheid of South Africa.”

He said Hawking had been convinced by the “unanimous Palestinian voice” he heard from his contacts within the Palestinian community.

“There is deep appreciation among the Palestinians for Professor Hawking’s respecting the boycott, and we sincerely hope that we convince many hesitant academics to follow suit and to shoulder a moral responsibility of boycotting Israel until it complies with international law,” Barghouti said.

Unanimous? Not only does Barghouti himself not boycott Israeli academia (as he has a Master’s from Tel Aviv University), but it appears that the Palestinian speaker in the aforementioned convention, Munib Al-Masri, couldn’t care less about said boycott and will attend.

How insidious is Sarah? So much so that instead of giving an actual bio on Chemi Shalev, she just copy-pastes from his Twitter account.

Haaretz writer Chemi Shalev, who describes himself as a “political junkie, proud father, concerned Israeli, veteran journalist,” tweets: “My take: Stephen #Hawking is now the academic boycott movement’s unlikely poster boy.”

Seriously!

Stay classy Sara.

On Sunday, the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL — the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon — intensified their patrols along the border with the Palestinian territories, Lebanon’s national news agency reported. It said the move followed the alleged blasts and “intensified Israeli Army patrols” along the ‘Blue Line’ within the occupied territories.”

Sidner is apparently so thick, she doesn’t realize that these “occupied territories” are Israel. She automatically assumes that whenever “occupied” and “territories” are thrown about, it must mean Palestinians, and therefore added the bolded phrase above with “Palestinian territories”, when that doesn’t appear in the original NNA report:

Lebanese Army and UNIFIL ran intensive patrols along the borderline region with occupied Palestine between Al-Naqoura and Bint Jbeil on Sunday, NNA correspondent reported.

This move came in the wake of intensified Israeli Army patrols along the “Blue Line” within the occupied territories, which coupled with increased enemy raids over the border region.

Not only has she demonstrated sloppy journalism, she also has no clue as to where she is and what borders what.

Bonus round! Hezballah whitewashing!

Hezbollah is a Shiite militant group regarded by Israel and the United States as a terrorist organization

And the Netherlands, and Bahrain, and Canada, and France, and Australia

although its political wing is a key player in Lebanon’s government

Still doesn’t exclude them from being terrorist. For more detail on “political Wing” see here.

It has been linked to a number of attacks against Israeli, U.S. and other Western targets.

Sidner neglects to mention the attacks against Lebanese and Syrians, in Syria and Lebanon, as well as possible intervention against uprising in Iran.

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights which ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.

No mention of how the war started, and also note the recurring meme of starting the history of Hezballah in 2006, and not the 2 decades of terror beforehand.

Stay classy Sara.