US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice responded to the Goldstone report.

“We have very serious concerns about many of the recommendations in the report,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said Thursday in response to the findings of a UN team that investigated the recent war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

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Rice told reporters following a Security Council session that the US “is reviewing very carefully what is a very lengthy document. We have long expressed our very serious concern with the mandate that was given (to Goldstone’s team) by the Human Rights Council prior to our joining the Council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.

“We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council (in Geneva) and that’s our strong view. And most importantly, our view is that we need to be focused on the future,” she said.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

5:30PM: Here is a nice rebuttal of some Goldstone report findings by a non-Jewish, Aussie blogger.

1:52PM: Yet another example of what miserable failures we are at ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Four Magen David Adom teams evacuated six Palestinians to the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv and the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Zerifin after suffering serious burn wounds from a gas pipe explosion in a restaurant in Gaza on Thursday.

All six are members of the same family and four of them are children. They were transferred to Israel through Erez crossing.

1:35PM: Gorilla boy aka the poisonous midget has delivered his Rosh Hashanah message:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday the Holocaust was a “lie” and a pretext to create a Jewish state that Iranians had a religious duty to confront.

“The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false … It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim,” he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of annual anti-Israel Quds Day rally.

“Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty,” the Iranian president said.

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“This regime [Israel] will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it?. This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end,” he said in the speech broadcasted live on state radio.

And..

“If the Holocaust was planned by the West, why won’t you allow any research on the Holocaust? The Holocaust has turned into a black box and they won’t let anyone open it and examine it… If this is such an important event, why won’t you let us reveal the reality to the entire world?”

Ahmadinejad reiterated his past “proposal”, to have the Jews immigrate to other country. “Why don’t they immigrate to Canada or the United States? They can go live in other countries. The Palestinian people don’t have to pay for your crime. What is the Palestinians’ sin?

“The Zionists are the greatest criminals in history. Resisting the Zionists is a national duty and a religious commandment and a human duty. The Zionist regime is a tree with rotten roots,” Ahmadinejad said.

He added, “It’s clear that this fake regime was established for colonialist goals, and there is no logic behind its establishment.” The crowd responded by chanting, “Death to Israel.”

And a happy new year to you too, big little guy.

1:25PM: Amir Mizroch of the Jerusalem Post:

During his investigations into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during Operation Cast Lead, Judge Richard Goldstone asked a group of prominent South African expatriates living in Israel to persuade government officials here to cooperate with his commission.

Goldstone told them the commission’s findings and recommendations would be more balanced if Israel made its case.

The expats traveled to Jerusalem with the message, but after a relatively short briefing with Israeli experts, the delegation did a complete about-face and supported Israel’s position of having nothing to do with the UN fact-finding mission.

The trick: Israeli officials briefed the visitors on what Goldstone’s commission was already doing in Gaza, on the makeup of the UN Human Rights Council and on the rancid history of the HRC’s deliberate targeting of Israel.

Officials in Jerusalem say the decision not to cooperate with Goldstone has been vindicated, because the commission largely ignored, or twisted, the information already made available to it to suit its needs.

12:28PM: Here’s some women you don’t want to mess with.

10:30AM: The latest Jerusalem Post caption blooper could actually work well as a slip of the Freudian kind.

I mean, they both don’t seem to be taking the Iranian threat seriously.

10:05AM: One of the ploys used by opponents of Israel is to point to the relatively low number of Israeli casualty figures. For example, we just saw Richard Goldstone mentioning the number of Israelis killed by rockets compared to the number of palestinians killed.

But what about those who were lucky enough to survive terror attacks, yet were still injured? This next heartbreaking video should give you an idea as to the devastating impact of palestinian terror attacks, which reaches far beyond the official casualty figures.

Outgoing IAEA (potato) head Mohamed ElBaradei called the Iranian threat “hyped,” saying there is no proof the Islamic republic will soon have nuclear weapons.

“In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped,” ElBaradei told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in an interview released Tuesday.

“Yes, there’s concern about Iran’s future intentions and Iran needs to be more transparent with the IAEA and international community,” he told the Chicago-based magazine. “But the idea that we’ll wake up tomorrow and Iran will have a nuclear weapon is an idea that isn’t supported by the facts as we have seen them so far.”

“About Iran, I’ve been told, ‘Mind your own business; you’re a technician.’ And yet, at other times, on other matters, I have been told that I’m the custodian of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – sometimes by the very people who tell me to mind my own business when it comes to Iran,” he continued.

“I don’t put much stock in either designation.

I have another designation for him, but since I try to keep this a relatively family friendly site, I won’t mention it here.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:08PM: More on today’s meeting between Israeli Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Cooperation Silvan Shalom and PA Economics Minister Bassim Khoury (bonus: Seth Green lookalike news anchor).

10:22PM: The Jerusalem Post displaying more of the patented brilliance that sees them head the list of popular Jewish news sites in the US.

In other words, we don’t actually have a photo of an Iranian nuclear site, so here’s a photo of some other site instead. But we’ll still refer to it as an Iranian nuclear site.

8:24PM: Sky News reports that palestinians are not happy that Madonna said all those nice things about Israel and draped herself with the Israeli flag at the end of her concert last night (see video). Like, d’uh.

8:12PM: From the Department of Apparently Superfluous Adjectives:

‘Shi’ite Bernard Madoff’ held in custody in Lebanon

Actually, it’s not referring to the..err..real deal (if I can call him that).

6:28PM: Here’s footage taken of Madonna saying those nice things about Israel at last night’s concert.

6:18PM: Israeli Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Cooperation Silvan Shalom and PA Economics Minister Bassim Khoury have met to discuss how to improve the lives of palestinians.

This is all well and good, but I would also like to hear of Israel and PA officials meeting to discuss how to improve the lives of Israelis, like those in Sderot and other communities in the firing line.

1:58PM: The Jerusalem Post is reportedly the most popular Jewish news website in the US.

A recent study – not commissioned by The Jerusalem Post – has revealed that of all Jewish news Web sites, Jpost.com is the clear leader in the United States, garnering more than twice as many readers as its closest competitor, and almost twice as many readers as all American Jewish news Web sites combined.

Although the Post was unaware of the study until after it was published, the newspaper welcomed the data as a sign that it was maintaining a critical lead in the cutthroat world of Internet news.

In mid-August, 4Wall, which operates the JInsider site, conducted what it called “the Jewish Internet Metric Study,” borrowing from the practices of McKinsey & Company to analyze Internet use and its business implications and applications.

The study found that Jpost.com hosted 1,454,649 unique visitors per month, while competitor Haaretz.com lagged far behind, with 691,467.

All of the American Jewish news sources combined – including the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Jewish Journal, New York’s The Jewish Week, the Forward, Philadelphia’s The Jewish Exponent and The Jewish Press – received barely half of Jpost.com’s traffic figures, with 808,516 unique visitors.

Not only did Jpost.com leave other sites far behind, but the study also found visitors spent “significantly more time per visit” on the two Israel-based sites, and that “many more of those visitors are ‘regulars’ [people who visit more than once per month] and addicts [people who visit more than 30 times per month.]”

“I think that our success can be attributed to a combination of great original content, a never-ending pace of news flow, the power of the brand name and the fact that every day at 3:30 p.m. Jerusalem time, as far as we’re concerned, we enter US time,” explained Jpost.com Managing Editor Shani Rosenfelder. “We look at our North American audience in terms of what stories should be highlighted and what issues take center stage in those readers’ eyes.”

Color me surprised. Of the three main English news sites in Israel, I consider the Post to be the worst. It frequently borrows from other sites, and is often slow on stories. And regular Israellycool readers would already be aware of their buggy picture caption generator thing-a-me-bob, which provides constant grist for my mill.

Aussie Dave’s guilty confession: I prefer the Ha’aretz site. Sure, the op-eds annoy the daylights out of me, but the site is way more up-to-date than the others, and I find the site layout to be easier to follow.

I’m hoping Israellycool is on the list next year. Help me get there by telling your family and friends about it, and sending them posts of mine that you like.

10:50AM: The EU’s rapporteur on piracy (apparently a real job title), Admiral Tarmo Kouts (apparently his real name), has told TIME that Israel was likely behind the July hijacking of a Russian-manned ship en route to Algeria.

“There is the idea that there were missiles aboard, and one can’t explain this situation in any other way,” he told the magazine, becoming the highest-ranking official to date to support the theory. “As a sailor with years of experience, I can tell you that the official versions are not realistic.”

Meanwhile, it looks like everyone is a comedian, whether it be the Jerusalem Post..

Until today, no government official of any kind has gone on the record to accuse Israel as being behind the hijacking, but many have admitted that the story – or at least the official version – does not appear to hold water

..or former Israeli deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh:

“There is something fishy about this whole story, no doubt about it,” former Israeli deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh told The Media Line. “But I can’t comment further on this.”

6:04AM: Pop star and FoTz (Friend of Tzipi) Madonna played in front of 50,000 fans last night, showing her love for Israel in the procees.

“I shouldn’t have stayed so long away,” she told the adoring crowd midway through the show, as she broke away from the script to express her affection for the country.

“Every time I come here, I get so supercharged with energy,” she said. “I truly believe that Israel is the energy center of the world. And I also believe that if we can all live together in harmony in this place, then we can live in peace all over the world.”

Meanwhile, judging by the pictures, I would say she also showed a whole lot more. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu was not available for comment.

5:54AM: Guess who’s coming to dinner? Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren yesterday attended a White House Ramadan dinner.

Israel responded to yesterday’s Qassam rocket attack by striking a smuggling tunnel. Yes, I’m sure you’re shocked.

And in more shocking news, the palestinians are lying.

Hamas described the target of the Israeli air strike as “open ground” but witnesses said it was a building with two rooms and a courtyard, which were ravaged by the attack.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

7:55PM: Former NBA player Allan Houston is here in Israel. And unlike the Elders of Moron, he’s actually doing some good and learning in the process.

Chen Kabasa has a pair of New York Knicks shorts. He even went to a Knicks game last Passover.

But for some reason, unclear even to him, when the 17-year-old Sderot resident left his house Thursday to meet former Knicks star Allan Houston, he put on his LA Lakers shorts instead.

Houston, who held a basketball clinic in Sderot on Thursday with about 20 kids from southern Israel, didn’t seem to care about the disloyalty.

He was all business, determined in his task of teaching the young Israelis the fundamentals of shooting a basketball and to encourage them to follow their dreams to play in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem – or maybe even in the NBA like new Sacramento Kings recruit Omri Casspi.

“Hopefully something like this inspires them and creates some joy for the moment,” he told The Jerusalem Post while taking a break from the training session.

A three-time NBA all-star and Olympic gold medal winner, Houston played for three years with the Detroit Pistons before moving to the Knicks as a free agent in 1996. In his nine seasons with the team, he helped take it to the playoffs six times.

His career is best remembered, perhaps, for a game winning shot in the last seconds of Game 5 of the 1999 Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Miami Heat, eventually leading the team to advance to that year’s Finals.

Houston, 38, who now works as an assistant to the Knicks’ President of Basketball Operations, is in Israel for a week with his wife Tamara on a mission of civic leaders sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.

In addition to meeting with politicians, journalists, and community leaders, Houston had two basketball clinics on his schedule – one in Sderot and another on Sunday in the Arab town of Iksal in the north.

A devout Christian, Houston said he feels this trip has given him a greater understanding of the Bible, which he said has “leaped off the pages for him,” and a better grasp of the significance of Israel for Jews.

In 2001, Houston was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League for comments he made during a team prayer meeting about Jews persecuting Jesus, which were quoted in a New York Times magazine article, and which he said were taken out of context.

” The thing that really sticks out to me most on this trip is the Jewish identity and how the Jewish people have held on throughout the years to their faith, their hope, and their identity,” Houston told the Post.

While he said it will take him time to fully appreciate everything he has experienced in Israel, he has made an effort to capture the people and sights around him through recordings on his video camera and posts to Twitter from his iPhone.

“Man this Israel trip is serious. Now leaving Ashkelon where we visited Barzilai Hospital where patients are treated from rocket attacks,” he tweeted on Thursday morning, before heading to Sderot.

Houston was visibly impacted by the words of Shalom HaLevy, a representative of the Sderot municipality who spoke to the group over lunch about life in the shadow of rockets from Gaza.

“It’s hard for me to picture having the experience of waking up and not even knowing when I’m gonna have 15 seconds to run for my life,” Houston said.

He said he hoped the basketball clinic would help the kids, who came not only from Sderot but also Beersheba, Kiryat Gat, Gadera, Ofakim, and some of the kibbutzim in the area, to forget about the political situation for a while and to focus on basketball.

“I would imagine that if this were somebody’s reality every day, that this [clinic] would be something that would take them away from it for a moment,” he said.

“Just to see them laugh, to me, to see their minds off of that for an hour, gives me hope that maybe they will remember it.”

Both Houston and the kids spent a lot of time laughing. At one point, after finishing a drill on shooting, Houston stepped to the three-point line and asked the kids how many baskets they thought he could make in a row.

“Three!” “Four!” “Ten!” the audience shouted. He made sixteen, and the group erupted in applause and smiles after he missed the seventeenth.

“I won’t even tell you what my record is,” Houston said to them.

Before leaving, Houston and the JCRC presented coach Yisrael Baruch with two new NBA regulation basketballs.

In return, Houston received a red and white Maccabi Sderot jersey, which he said he plans to hang up when he gets home.

But in the end, the kids may have gotten the most out of the afternoon.

“I’m leaving here with a big smile and a lot of good basketball tips,” Kabesa said.

“And an autograph and a picture,” he added.

For the record, here’s Houston’s famous series winning shot of Game 5 of the 1999 Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Miami Heat.

7:35PM: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been indicted on multiple corruption charges including fraud, breach of trust, falsifying corporate records, receiving illicit benefits and tax evasion.

The former prime minister has now been charged with accepting cash envelopes from American businessman Morris Talansky.

He is also suspected of illegally double-billing charities and a government ministry for the same flights he booked through Rishon Tours, sending them falsified receipts for travel expenses and using the surplus to finance personal and family trips abroad.

The Investments Center affair, which was first reported in Haaretz, concerned allegations that Olmert granted personal favors to his old law partner, Uri Messer, who was acting on behalf of a company, an act which would constitute a conflict of interest, breach of trust, and fraud.

The charges against Olmert include fraud, breach of trust and failure to report income, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

I was thinking about doing a limerick, but I already met my daily quota of 1. Plus the old “bending over for the soap” joke only works well in moderation.

5:22PM: Palestinian terrorists have fired shots at IDF soldiers who were fixing the Gaza border fence.

4:50PM: A limerick.

Fuad Shubaki was that real dope

Who organized a weapon-laden boat

He was caught and convicted

For those he afflicted

Now he better not bend for the soap

1:56PM: This next story illustrates just how deluded the Left really are.

The Israeli Left reacted with dismay over the weekend to the results of a Jerusalem Post-sponsored Smith Research poll published on Friday that found only 4 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that US President Barack Obama’s policies are more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian.

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Meretz and Peace Now said the survey indicated that Israelis did not yet realize the potential benefits of the regional peace initiative that Obama was advocating, but they expressed confidence that they eventually would.

Right. That’s what it indicates. It must be a problem with Israelis not realizing what’s good for them, as opposed to the Left not realizing they are completely out of touch with reality.

11:05AM: Like the rest of the world, the Elders of Moron have a blog.

While I find it generally irritating (like the Elders themselves), there is also some unintentional humor.

(hat tip: Soccer Dad)

6:15AM: Israel has slammed an ambiguously worded IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program released Friday, accusing the IAEA of “hiding critical information on Iran’s nuclear progress.”

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said:

“This is a harsh report, but it does not reflect all the information possessed by the IAEA on Iranian efforts to advance its military program, on its continuing efforts to hide and deceive, and on [Iran's] noncooperation with the IAEA and the demands of the international community.”

“…we’re talking about information that would be far more incriminating for Iran.”

“The 35 member states of the IAEA can’t let [the organization] get away with hiding critical information on the dangers of the Iranian program.”

6:02AM: What is going on with kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit?

a) The German mediator in the talks for his release has presented Hamas with a new, comprehensive proposal to which Hamas would have three days to respond.

b) Chief Hamashole Khaled Meshal is due to arrive in Cairo to approve a deal for his release.

c) There has been limited progress in finalizing a deal for his release.

And the answer is d) All of the above if you are to take notice of all the media reports.

5:54AM: Forget the Elders of Moron. We need more people like these for there to be hope of peace.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said Monday the agency needs more transparency from Syria and other nations to determine whether traces of uranium found at a site reportedly bombed by IAF planes indicate Damascus was building a nuclear reactor there.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed that the radioactive material was found at the site, but said the source was inconclusive.

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ElBaradei made the comments during and after a speech to business leaders in Dubai, just days before the IAEA is expected to circulate a confidential report to board members outlining the status of his agency’s investigation.

“We still have a lot of work to do. We haven’t yet reached a conclusion whether that was a reactor or not a reactor,” ElBaradei said.

Diplomats told the AP earlier this month that soil samples collected at the bombed site revealed minute traces of processed uranium.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said last week that the leaks to the media about the uranium were meant to put pressure on the country, which has denied any wrongdoing.

The IAEA chief called specifically for more cooperation from Damascus, saying it needs “a lot of transparency on the part of Syria.” He said he was hopeful that Syria would allow inspectors back into the country to carry out further tests.

But he also said Israel needs to provide more information to address Syrian allegations that the uranium may have come from Israeli bombs allegedly dropped on the site during the September 2007 raid.

Why do I get the feeling the only evidence ElBaradei will accept as proof of a Syrian or Iranian nuclear reactor is this?

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says he will step down if major powers launch a military strike against Iran over its nuclear program, PressTV reported.

That’s what I call a win-win situation.