The Israeli army dispersed the weekly nonviolent protest located in Bil’in village north of the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday midday with gas, guns and grenades.local sources reported.

A number of civilians reported suffering from gas inhalation and for the first time Israeli troops threw smelly manure at the protestors.

I couldn’t find any wire service photos from today’s Bil’in protest, but yesterday’s Naalin protest which the IMEMC also described as “non-violent” was captured by this AP photographer, showing a non-violent protester punching an aggressively violent IDF soldier in the face. (Also a picture of some non-violent rock hurling with slingshots.)

Ah, but that’s not the half of it. The Arabic media is reporting that the nefarious IDF did much, much worse things in Bil’in, calling this “field testing” new weapons (autotranslated):

The march started from the village centre and headed towards the wall, where participants tried to cross into their confiscated land , but the occupying soldiers fought them with fire hoses (using) contaminated wastewater cow dung and chicken (dung) with some chemicals, thus leading to the injury of dozens of cases Altakiu , Where demonstrators surprised color green and fragrant water stinking, and that became his clothes for several hours.

Just imagine the infrastructure necessary to weaponize cow dung and wastewater. You gave to fill out the necessary paperwork, requisitioning the manure for the purposes of stopping non violent protests; you have to establish a relationship with the manure bendor, you have to test the manure to make sure that it has the correct consistency for flinging at the optimum distances (you don’t want blowback!) which means having farms dedicated to creating consistent diets for cows and chickens in order to ensure quality dung; you need a good mechanism for dung delivery which means that weapons need to be created for each type and size of manure bullets or cannons (as the case might be), you have to have a way of loading the weapons without getting dirty or smelly, meaning special gloves and clothing….and that’s just the dung. For the wastewater you need to transport it in special trucks just for the purpose of putting down protesters….

Wow, my respect for the IDF’s logistics personnel just went up a hundredfold!

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Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Interviewer: You wouldn’t necessarily have taken much notice that there was a war coming on but do you remember people talking about that? Do you remember conversations being had about what was going on at home?

Dad: Well yes. They’d left everybody behind. My father his mother. My mother, her family, a very large family. She was very worried about them because they were in a bad part of what had become Poland. Also they were slightly more prominent than my father’s family, financially speaking. My mother’s family had a small abattoir, a tavern which was like a pub and something like a motel except instead of cars, there were horses. Human nature being what it is, they were singled out first. Germans had barely crossed the border, started World War Two, when my grandfather on my mother’s side was beaten to death by Poles. My grandmother and her family ended up in the Warsaw ghetto. My mother had a brother and a sister who was married with a young girl. The sister with the young girl went together with my grandmother into the Warsaw ghetto. The brother was a bit more astute - he was supposed to have been a bit of a rogue - and he got away. My grandmother survived the Warsaw ghetto, her daughter and granddaughter didn’t, and she ended up in Auschwitz.

And this is where my memory gets a bit romantic because I was very fond of my uncle, my mother’s brother. He came and took her out of Auschwitz. He bribed a guard or two. The story goes he knocked out somebody’s gold teeth and he used them as bribes. My grandmother then was left with a Polish family. She spoke fluent Polish and she became the housekeeper, masquerading as a Catholic Pole. During the rest of the war she had to listen to them celebrate every time there was a German victory or Jews were killed. Anyway, she got away with it. Ended up in a D. P. camp where my mother found her through correspondence in ‘46. But she was old and she was ill. She was in her fifties.

There was a quota system here in Perth, Australia for three, and my grandmother missed the quota and things were pretty tough. I think ‘46 was the worst year in the D. P. camps. They hadn’t realised just how bad people were living there. So my mother went and tried everything. She had a friend, a school teacher, a Miss Harrison who had later told her she had some Jewish blood and she said, “I think I may be able to help. I’ve got a cousin, he’s just got back from the war and he’s been elected MP for Fremantle, Kim Beazley, senior.” (father of Kim Beazley, former leader of the Australian Labor Party - ed.). So she arranged for my mother to meet Kim Beazley, and he said, “Look I can’t help, I’ve just been elected, I have nothing to do with Immigration. There is nothing I can do.” He spoke nicely. Anyway, as we were leaving he took my mother by the arm and he gently said, “Now if it was my mother, I would get her to England if you have relations there, and from England I would get her to America, and from America I’d get her to New Zealand and once you have her in New Zealand you are home because no papers are necessary to get from New Zealand to Australia. And that’s what my mother did. She mortgaged and borrowed and begged - didn’t steal – and got her mother here some time in ‘47. It took about a year.

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An injured Palestinian is helped by foreign activists after clashes between demonstrators and Israeli border police officers erupted during a protest against Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank village Naalin, near Modin, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008. Israel says the barrier is necessary for security while Palestinians call it a land grab. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

In case you are indignant that I would accuse this man of over-acting (or even acting for that matter), consider that there is not even one news story - not from the palestinian sources nor “human rights” organizations terror enablers such as the ISM - mentioning anyone injured at Naalin yesterday (see update below). And trust me, when a protester suffers as much as a scratch, they’re sure to mention it.

This is reinforced by the captions accompanying the other photos taken of this man.

Take this one from AFP/Getty Images:

Activists hold a comrade who was hurt during a scuffle with Israeli soldiers at a protest against the construction of Israel’s controversial separation barrier in the West Bank village of Nilin near Ramallah on August 7, 2008. Over the last four years the village of Nilin has been the scene of near daily demonstrations against Israel’s barrier of concrete and steel that cuts through parts of the West Bank. Israel says that the barrier is needed for its security, critics describe it as a land grab. Earlier in the week a young Palestinian boy was fatally shot in the back of the head at one such demonstration in the village.

A scuffle is a minor fight or altercation. You would not expect someone from a scuffle to emerge looking like Jim Morrison after a bad trip.

Now consider this next picture and caption from Reuters, in which the caption writer does not even make mention of any injury.

A Palestinian reacts during a protest against the construction of the controversial Israeli barrier in the West Bank village of Nilin near Ramallah August 7, 2008. REUTERS/Fadi Arouri (WEST BANK)

Yep, that’s some reaction.

Once again, proof that for the palestinians and the mainstream media, the whole world really is a stage.

Update: I have subsequently found a palestinian report claiming demonstrators were injured after being “showered with rubber-coated metal bullets and sound bombs.” However, I still smell a rat, especially considering Ma’an’s track record in unreliability, as well as the captions mentioned above.

Update: Commenter Ms Missive writes:

It looks more like an epileptic seizure which, in all seriousness, can be triggered by stressful situations.

Again, I am sure the palestinian media, as well as the likes of the ISM, would have reported such an occurrence had it occurred. And the caption writers from Reuters and AFP would not have written of a man merely “hurt during a scuffle” or “reacting.”

If I am proven wrong, I’ll retract my contention that this seems like an act. But until then, I stand by it.

Update: Soccer Dad raises a good point:

I thought something looked off about the picture. But notice something else. There’s a guy off to the left with a kerchief over his mouth standing around nonchalantly holding a water bottle. If there was a real emergency, I don’t think that’s the pose he’d likely have. Even if he weren’t among the throng attending to the eye-rolling guy, he’d be looking at them - not looking away.

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The song, “Poontachat”, was written and performed by Ido Mosseri, who plays Zohan’s friend Oori in the Adam Sandler hit. It was recorded in LA about a year ago, when Mosseri was busy shooting the movie. Now Mosseri is back in Israel, co-starring in the local stage revival of “Fiddler on the Roof”, and working as the voice talent on the latest “SpongeBob SquarePants” season (he is the voice of SpongeBob in Hebrew).

“You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” has become a huge hit in Israel, selling nearly 200,000 tickets so far, and outperforming “Iron Man” and “Indiana Jones”.

Meanwhile, I just realized I have never seen Rob Schneider wear anything but a Hawaiian shirt.

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Hat tip: Shy Guy

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This little piggy stayed at home.

This little piggy had roast beef,

This little piggy had none.

And this little piggy said “Why the hell am I flying?”

Arabic news channel Al Jazeera has apologised to Israel for its “unethical” coverage of the release of a convicted Hizbullah terrorist from Israeli prison last month.

Samir Kuntar, who spent 29 years in prison for killing four persons, including a four-year-old girl, was released by Israel last month following a swap deal with the Lebanese guerilla faction.

In an official letter, Al Jazeera’s General Director, Khanfar Wadah, has written that “elements of the programme” broadcast in Kuntar’s honour on the night of Saturday, July 19, “violated (the station’s) Code of Ethics,” and he “regards these violations as very serious,” daily Ha’aretz reported.

Given that whole programme was a birthday party for Kuntar, which elements did not violate (the station’s) Code of Ethics?

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He might just poke an eye out.

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Palestinian sources said that two men tried to assassinate Jihad Jaara, one of the Palestinians exiled by Israel to Ireland following its siege on the Church of the Nativity in 2002.

According to the sources, two men opened fire at Jaara while he was making his way to the Palestinian embassy in Dublin on Wednesday.

Ramattan tried to phone Jaara but he could not talk as he was at the Police station in Dublin.

His comrades, exiled to Gaza, told Ramattan that Jaara survived shooting. But a vehicle crashed into his car in an attempt to dropp it into a nearby valley.

They added that Jaara was lightly injured and the Irish police arrested two suspects.

Palestinian sources in Ireland told the Israeli Ynet news that “this is beyond any doubt an assassination attempt by the Israeli Mossad.”

Beyond a doubt, eh? This from the palestinian Ma’an News Agency:

Jihad Ja’ara, who was deported from the West Bank after Israel laid siege to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002, was on his way to the PLO office in Dublin at the time of the attack. Gunmen opened fire at him and swerved their car towards him. Ja’ara was reportedly injured.

The website of the Security Forces added that Irish security arrested then gunmen who appeared to be a Palestinian man with foreign citizenship and a Moroccan man.

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As Kate writes:

As a Canadian, he is taking a stand for all of us and deserves our support. I would like to suggest a show of support by buying his books. Of course, his books are not carried by Chapters-Indigo. Try Amazon or you can order directly via his website. Or you could just write a few lines of support on his blog.

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An animal rights group has tried – and failed – to run a newspaper ad comparing the beheading of a passenger on a Greyhound bus last week to the treatment of animals by the meat industry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said on its website it would run the ad in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic.

However, city editor Tara Seel said the newspaper had no intention of running the ad, which uses imagery of “an innocent victim’s throat” being cut, in reference to the slaughter of cows, chickens and pigs on factory farms.

“His struggles and cries are ignored … the man with the knife shows no emotion … the victim is slaughtered and his head cut off … his flesh is eaten,” reads the ad, which is posted on the website.

“If this ad leaves a bad taste in your mouth, please give a thought to what sensitive animals think and feel when they come to the end of their frightening journey and see, hear and smell the slaughterhouse.”

Ms. Seel would not specify reasons for why the newspaper was choosing not to run the ad, except to say it wasn’t something they wanted to do. She noted the newspaper had been inundated with calls from other media since the posting to the PETA website.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean, who was stabbed and decapitated aboard a Greyhound bus on July 30.

Mr. Li has been ordered by a judge to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

“Like human victims, animals in slaughterhouses experience terror when they are attacked by a knife-wielding assailant,” Lindsay Rajt of PETA said in a news release. “We are challenging everyone who is rightly horrified by this crime to look into their hearts and consider leaving violence off their dinner plates.”

Ms. Rajt said the ad was intended to be shocking and is meant to spur people to think about the terror and pain experienced by animals who are raised and killed for food.

Meanwhile, they continue to treat women like meat.

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