How to Clear Minefields: A Guide | Israel Defense Forces.

 1) Enter the minefield with a small team of sappers, and with the use of mine-detecting devices, clear a path across the field by discovering the first mine is every row. Mark the path with white tape to minimize risk of anyone walking out of line. Designate the exact location of the mines with special devices placed on the ground above them.

This step 1 would be problematic in most countries and would lead to a lawyer suffering a nervous breakdown upon learning that it had been published.

2) Meanwhile, prepare the explosives that will be used to detonate the existing mines via another team positioned outside the field .

Again, would need a hand number of “don’t try this at home” warnings and perhaps a Blue Peter style “please get an adult to help you with the explosives”. I particularly like the handy hint of preparing the explosives outside of the existing minefield: that’s a good safety tip children!

3) Withdraw from the field to take the explosives from the other team, then enter the field again to plant them in strategic locations.

You put your left leg in, your left leg out….

4) Connect all the explosives with a special fuse, then wire them to the mines themselves.

5) Back away at least one kilometer.

Two, maybe three, be generous.

6) Detonate the minefield.

7) After you’ve calmed down a little, return to scan the field for surviving mines, and start over.

Thankfully you don’t have to, ‘cos these guys do it for you:

Here again, from their own explanation of why to boycott Osem are our suggested reasons why you might consider giving Osem your patronage by buycotting them:

Osem is Israels 4th largest food & beverages company (by turnover) after Tnuva, Strauss and Coca-Cola. It has a turnover of $712 million and nearly 5000 employees with 14 factories in Israel.

Its brands include Beit Hashitah (pickles), Of Tov (frozen meat products), Habait (ready made cakes) and Sabra Salads (ready-made salads and spreads). Osem also owns 58% of meat-substitute manufacturer Tivall Foods.

According to Osem’s website its products are sold in Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury and Morrison, with each store marketing them under their own label. Waitrose online site Ocado sells a range of Osem products from soups, crackers and croutons. Tesco online sells a range of Osem cakes.

In April 2009, Osem UK announced its acquisition of Yarden GB. Yarden GB’s product range includes chilled meats and Yarden wines from the Golan Heights Winery, located in Katzrin on the occupied Syrian Israeli Golan Heights (liberated from the brutal Syrian regime thus saving their residents from the ongoing suffering of those left behind in Syria). Golan Heights Winery exports 38% of all Israeli wines, its wine brands also include Gamla and Golan [BoL: my regular evening glass of red wine is usually an inexpensive Cabernet Sauvignon or a Merlot from the Galil]. According to Yarden GB’s website its products are available in Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Morrisons, Budgens, Somerfield, Waitrose and Harrods. Waitrose online site Ocado sells a range of Yarden meat and houmous products.

Which all adds up to countless reasons why it’s easy for you to help an Israeli company and buy fine products which you’ll actually enjoy.

This has been another in the Israellycool Buycott series based on the poster put out by Islamic groups in the UK and distributed for free to Mosques all over the UK.

Saudi Arabia Will Not Let Oil Go Above $100: Prince

Bin Talal, the billionaire member of the Saudi Arabian royal family who runs the Kingdom Holding Co., said the fear comes from “what may happen with Iran and the possibility of closing the Hormuz Strait.”

But Saudi Arabia has already said it will not let the price of oil, which closed Monday around $97 a barrel, go above $100, bin Talal said.

“We can use our leverage, our excess capacity to be sure to pump more [oil] if needed so it will not impact the consumer countries while they’re getting out of their recessions slowly but surely,” the prince said.

But what really matters to him:

He said the European debt  crisis is “pulling down the growth of the world economies” and it is important for the European Union countries to “get their house in order because this can’t go on indefinitely.” Greece leaving the EU would set a bad precedent, he added, and could lead to the disintegration of the euro.

Is that his massive investments in Europe will go down the pan if they squeeze us too hard.

We have to shift this balance. We the consumers need to control the price of oil not these guys. They’re playing with us and I don’t like it.

As I’ve said before, I don’t believe in carbon taxes, global warming or any of the other nonsense, but we must use less of their oil and let our brains, creativity and inginuety allow us to escape the shackles of big oil and break their evil monopoly for ever.

h/t Mike Granoff from Better Place.

T’u B’Shavat (the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shavat) is traditionally Israel’s tree planting holiday. You can order trees to be planted on your behalf on the mountains of Israel, Samaria. A certificate will be sent to you with dedication message in honor of the dear one of your choice. Payments can be made by contacting David Ha’Ivri via e-mail with special directions and tree order configurations .

Opportunities for planting large plots for congregations or families are available. Being that transparency is very important to us, we would be overjoyed to take you to see the site of the trees planted with your help. So please let David Ha’Ivri know when you plan to be in Israel!

Contact David via twitter or by email: info @ yeshuv . org

Most of the “official” Republicans don’t show much sign of understanding real personal freedoms in a framework of personal responsibilities either.

So like our frequent commenter here, juvanya, you’re drawn to the one man who, especially on domestic economics and personal freedoms in the US, says all the right things. I do get that.

And I also listen to the No Agenda Podcast and they love Ron Paul for most of the same reasons.

But on foreign policy he either doesn’t have a clue how it should be done or he’s evil. I veer toward the former. Barry Rubin picked apart a particular plank of Ron Paul platform on foreign issues: they hate us because we bombed them. It turns out if you actually look at Iranian history concerning the rise of the Shah instead of believing media soundbites, you learn something. When it comes to the 7th century form of Islam that rules Iran and as espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere: they hate us. Why? Because we exist and continue not to bow down and submit.

But that’s just one aspect. The following started off as an email to Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak relating to things they said on No Agenda yesterday, but if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for Israellycool readers!

1. The Israelis I know (real people) don’t want American GI’s fighting for us: we didn’t want Gulf War 1 or 2 and when the Scuds were falling the country had to forcibly restrained from fighting back. Iraq wasn’t Iran and even when the US et al went to Iraq the 2nd time, Israel was quietly screaming that Iran was the problem. All we ask is that if the shit really kicks off, you’ll help us with guns and bullets so we can hold our own: we don’t need guys, girls, gays or pilots: we have our own. In the past this hasn’t happened and in our hour of need we’ve been let down.

2. During the last war with Lebanon thousands of real Iranian and Syrian supplied rockets landed on real homes and real people in northern Israel. I know them. I know where they landed. I know my brother in law was wounded by an Iranian re-manufactured Chinese anti-tank missile. The ONLY reason we had so few civilian casualties was because we all (even me here in Tel Aviv 1 km from the sea) have mandated safe rooms in all new homes. In the north those saved countless lives. Some Israeli Arabs break the law and build without these expensive rooms: in the last war a disproportionate number of Israeli Arab civilians in the north died from Hezbollah’s rockets. Hezbollah called them Martyrs. Nice.

3. I know you guys follow the mantra “words matter” and they do, but your quibbling (and Dr P’s) about the exact words Ahmedinnnerjacket uses to wish me dead don’t matter in English translation. In the end it all comes down to the following because both Sunni and Shi Islam take the following line from the stories of the life of Muhammad as, well, “gospel” and very very seriously:

“The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Add in that, like saying Voldermort in the Harry Potter books, Ahmedin-Jihad (which is what his name really means), can’t say Israel (there is a perfectly good Farsi word for us) so he uses various constructs around Zionist regime or Zionist rulers. There has never been any sane person who claims that should any Muslim army conquer present Israel, the result for us 6 million Jews (we’ve hit that number here now) living here would be pretty.

Update: I threw in the line above separating out the Jihad sound from the end of Ahmadinejad’s name more as a rhetorical flourish than a serious exegesis. I’m grateful to juvanya in the comments for the following:

As for Ahmadinejad, you are absolutely wrong about what it means and I highly recommend you correct this. Ahmadinejad means “from the race of Ahmad”.

There’s so much more not to like in Islamic scripture but if I had to pick only one it would be that one. It’s no coincidence this is a favourite passage when rulers want to whip up a mob. There’s no escaping that Muhammad by his own hand murdered hundreds of Jews: and he is the perfect man to be emulated.

Iran’s regime (and not just front man and puppet Ahmadinejad) are firm believers in an Iranian apocalyptic end of days form of Islam. The really are nuts: MAD doesn’t work with these guys and that is why we’re worried. I’ve also read the IAEA reports (I even have some inside info) but that agency was so thoroughly broken especially under El Baradi that we can’t trust anything it says (even when it says they are working on bad stuff).

In the end, and I know why you guys are suspicious of your government, there is one obligation I believe the Israeli government does take seriously and that is summed up by Never Again. The media in the US and the West never showed the photos of the train tracks, they never showed the photos of the camps and nothing was done. We’re not going quietly again. And after they showed it and after the “liberation”, the British kept as many Jews out of Israel as they could even (you don’t know this) cutting the food rations of the 100,000 survivors in the Displaced Persons camps in Europe if they tried to get to Israel.

BTW I, like many others in Israel, would prefer not to get the loan guarantees we get from the US with which we must buy US weapons. I’d prefer we made more of our own and exported them back to you but the realities of modern weapon systems are such that we don’t have the scale the US has. We already do that with upgrades as most of your top weapon systems have been improved here (again I have personal first hand experience with this). The F15 is only still in service because of Israeli upgrades.

I ain’t going back to the UK and America has turned me down once already. This is my home and we’ll fight to keep it.

Read it from left to right, top to bottom

• “An Israeli soldier inappropriately touches a Palestinian girl”
• “An Israeli soldier inappropriately touches a Palestinian cat”
• “An Israeli soldier grabs an old Palestinian”
• “An Israeli soldier poisons a Palestinian kid”
• “An Israeli soldier kicks a Palestinian kid in the ball”
• “An Israeli soldier drops a Palestinian kid”
• “An Israeli soldier is involved in illegal gambling with a Palestinian kid”
• “An Israeli soldier pushes an elderly Palestinian against the wall”

The whole 20 minute drone can be found here, but I’ve snipped out the end where he starts railing against the US for being pissed off that China and Russia vetoed the condemnation of Syria and where, of course, he directly compares this to all those times the US has had to veto revolting anti-Israel resolutions.

The UN is over, go read Melanie Phillips.

In July 1998 Danone opened its R&D facility in Israel – the Danone Insitute (sic), and later the same year in October 1998 Mr. Franck Riboud, on behalf of Danone received the Jubilee Award by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.[Jubilee Award]

Danone owns a 20% share of Israel’s second largest food company, the Strauss Group. Danaone Israel is the hub supplying Danone products to the whole Middle-East including Turkey, Greece, Egypt and Jordan. [I bet that's popular: if it's good enough for Egypt you'd think it would be good enough for the UK.]

This has been another in the Israellycool Buycott series based on the poster put out by Islamic groups in the UK and distributed for free to Mosques all over the UK.

Howard Schultz, the founder, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Starbucks who also owns 31.6 million shares of Starbucks stock (worth around $1.4 billion in Nov 2011) is an active zionist (Draft note: are we allowed to write money grabbing Jew?) .

In 1998 he was honoured by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah with “The Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award” for his services to the zionist state in “playing a key role in promoting close alliance between the United States and Israel”. The ultra-right wing Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah funds Israeli arms fairs chaired by the butcher of Jenin, General Shaul Mofaz, and the zionist media pressure group the tireless and dogged seeker after truth and honesty, honestreporting.com, they were also implicated in the production and distribution of the infamous islamophobic credited with working on the critically acclaimed film uncovering the roots of Islamic Jew hatred, ‘Obesession’. Starbucks proudly displayed the award on the company’s website under the section of ‘awarda(sic) and accolades’ the Starbucks company has won, however, once the boycott started to bite the award mysteriously disappeared from its website.

Howard Shultz work as a propagandist public relations ambassador for Israel has been praised by the Israeli Foreign Ministry as being key to Israel’s long-term PR success. On April 4th 2002, whilst the Israeli army was slaughtering carefully rooting out terrorists hidden within the civilian Palestinians in Jenin Howard Shultz made a provocative speech blaming the Palestinians, suggesting the intifada was a manifestation of anti- Semitism, and asked people to unite behind Israel. Starbucks also sponsors fund raisers for Israel.

At a time when other businesses were desperately pulling out of the economy of Israel was booming, Starbucks decided to help Israel’s floundering economy and open Starbucks in Israel. The venture failed but Shultz has vowed Starbucks will “return to Israel in due course”.

Starbucks has opened outlets in US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the illegal torture centre in Guantanamo Bay. Customer Relations say “Starbucks has the deepest respect and admiration for U.S. military.. who risk their lives to protect Americans and our values of freedom and democracy”. Petty Officer Barry Tate who is serving in Guantanamo Bay agrees that Starbucks is helping “lift the morale” of the guards and interrogator’s at Guantanamo Bay.

It is completely correct that Starbucks failed commercially in Israel. The reasons are probably complex but I put it down to their poor food offering. Just ask Jackie Mason what matters more to Jews after a theatre show: drinks or food? Whatever the precise reason, Tel Aviv in particular and the whole of Israel already had so many fantastic coffee places when Starbucks arrived, they didn’t add much to the local market.

But I can tell you, many, many Israelis, when they are abroad, hold a soft spot for Starbucks and appreciate the many good things the company has done for Israel!

This has been another in the Israellycool Buycott series based on the poster put out by Islamic groups in the UK and distributed for free to Mosques all over the UK.

In February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution — returned triumphantly to Tehran on an Air France flight from Paris after 14 years in exile.

Now, 33 years later, that return was reenacted in a bizarre ceremony that saw guards carrying a giant cardboard cutout of Khomeini down the stairs of a passenger plane and a waiting crowd paying their respects to “him.”

Iranians have been faced with many unusual and absurd events in the past three decades of the rule of the clerics. The February 1 ceremony, however, may have topped them all.

Below is a small collection of Cardboard Khomeini’s from Mehr News.

Update: It looks like someone has created a blog all about our friend Cardboard Khomeini.