• 3 days ago, I posted DeltaGate Part Deux: This Time It’s Political

• Later that day, according to commenter sam on Israellycool and commenter Juda Engelmayer on Jumping the Zionist Shark, as well as Shurat Hadin, Avi Mayer, David Haivri & Ben Hartman on Twitter, Delta removed the word “Occupied”.

• Today, Challah posted Delta, Can You Fly Me To Ramallah?.

• Also today, according to Dr Mike Cohen on Twitter, Delta removed the remaining “Palestinian Territory” from that page.

So… I guess this means victory is ours, right? Right?

Yeah, not so much. This is that same Delta SkyMiles web page, as of about an hour ago, and still the same as I click the publish button. As I’ve been saying for a while on the original Israellycool post, on my blog, and on Twitter, when you click on the words “Middle East” on the “Within Middle East” box at the top of the mileage award chart below, it brings up an internal popup window that still says “Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

So which is it, Delta? Make up your mind, so we can get this over with already. There are other, more interesting things I’d like to write about, but since I started this, I feel like I have to see it through to the bitter end.

UPDATE: I Think You Forgot About Clearing Your Browser’s Cache, Zionist Shark

Epic Fail Is Mine!

Earlier today, commenter Brian Goldfarb pointed out that he wasn’t seeing what I was seeing, asking whether he was missing something. To answer your question, Brian, no you weren’t missing anything; I was. After reading Brian’s comment, I did something I should have done before posting this – I cleared my browser’s cache. This time, when I went back to the website, those words were gone.

So while my original post was valid, this one was not. Mea Culpa.

In a world…

Where multiple airlines defer to the prejudiced demands of the Saudi regime…

One airline…

Kicks it up a notch.

Coming this February to an in-flight movie near you…

DeltaGate Part Deux: This Time It’s Political

Last summer, there was a big brouhaha over whether Delta airlines was enabling Saudi Arabia’s discriminatory policies in the name of big bidness.

However, while Delta and other airlines do sanction the bigotry of the Saudis, the fact that Delta was a passive accomplice rather than an active partisan relegated the story to the back burner. And as the news cycles have generated many larger, more rage-worthy stories since then, we haven’t heard much about it in recent months.

Well, it’s sequel time, and this time, passive intolerance has metastasized into malignant political bias. This one’s not going to be as easy for Delta to explain away by saying all the kids are doing it.

Our scene opens with a wide shot of the Middle East SkyMiles mileage page on the Delta website:

Suddenly, a red oval appears, drawing the viewer’s eye to the action.

The camera zooms in on the text, revealing a fictional locale, highlighted in red.

Cut to the “Middle East” popup for another angle. Still there.

Aaaand scene!

Hmm. It ends a little abruptly. Ah, forget it: we’ll fix it in post.

Couple of announcements:

It seems Delta will be flying all of us to “Occupied Palestinian Territory” for the wrap party. Not sure what city the airport’s in, though.

Wait, here it is: Tel Al-Rabi.

Finally, Craft Service is being sponsored by Delta today, so let’s make damn sure there are no Israeli products on the table this time, people.

That’s lunch!

(h/t @DrMikeCohen)

"When it comes to helmets, I certainly like the color green. But will it protect against shoes and stones?"

Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images.

Background here.

Significance of a green helmet here.

Today he tweeted the following:

The link takes us to the following report:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – Officials say cyber attacks have shut down the websites of the two main Palestinian news agencies, the official Wafa and the privately run Maan.

Wafa’s chief editor, Ali Hussein, and Maan’s technology supervisor, Haitham Moussa, said they don’t know who is behind Tuesday’s attacks. Hussein says the website of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement was also targeted.

The attacks came several days after hackers disrupted the websites of an Israeli hospital, a leading newspaper and Israel’s official cultural festival.

Those attacks were seen as part of a politically motivated cyber attacks against Israeli sites. The Israeli Haaretz daily said at the time that its site was hacked by a group calling itself Anonymous Palestine

Notice how the report does not accuse Israel or her supporters of being behind the attacks. In fact, the report explicitly states that Wafa and Ma’an representative don’t know who is behind the attacks. At best, there is an insinuation that those in the pro-Israel camp would have the motivation to do such a thing in light of the attacks against Israeli websites. Yet Silverstein takes this report to definitely state that “Hasbaritas” (i.e. pro-Israel people) brought down Ma’an!

As our very own Challah reported, Mahmoud Abbas himself is suspected of ordering the hacking of sites critical of him. So there is clearly motivation for his opponents to hack the Fatah site in retaliation. As for the Ma’an site, an organization like Hamas would certainly have the motivation, given Ma’an’s criticism of them.

So there is no proof that Israel or her supporters hacked the Ma’an site, and certainly others have the motivation and means to do so.

In short, Silverstein’s one sloppy dick.

Many already suspected this not to be the case, since that is not what an IDF uniform looks like, and the weapon – a Kalashnikov AK47 - is not IDF issue. Plus the IDF already denied its authenticity last year, after an investigation.

But in order to put this libel to rest once and for all, I can confirm the photo is not of an IDF soldier and palestinian girl. Rather, it is of actors playing an IDF soldier and palestinian girl during street theater in Bahrain, taken in December 2009 (hat tip: EoZ)

If you come across this pernicious lie, you can now point people to the truth.

HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images

Not quite. According to the real caption:

An injured Palestinian construction worker screams in pain after an Israeli army driver drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs, as he tried to block him when Israeli forces stopped workers on January 25, 2012 from building a house in al-Dirat village, south of Yatta in the southern Bank town Hebron region.

Now far be it for me to make fun of an injured man but..well, that’s just the thing:

Yet, after checking with both Palestinian and Israeli sources, it seems that the man was not at all injured, and there is no evidence that he was run over. On the Palestinian side, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), which provides comprehensive weekly reports about all injuries, fatalities, incursions, and other incidents in both the West Bank and Gaza, makes no mention of this alleged injury in its report for Jan. 19- 25. In addition, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency did not cover the alleged injury, even though it does report on Israeli army activity that day nearby in Tel Rumeida. And Ma’an also reported a hit and run incident, in which a Palestinian teen was hit by an Israeli driver at a checkpoint this morning. Presumably, then had this worker actually been run over and injured on Wednesday, Ma’an would have carried the story. Nor does it appear that any English-language wire service or other media outlet covered the alleged injury.

On the Israeli side, Capt. Barak Raz, spokesman for the Judea and Samaria division who had spoken to soldiers at the scene, told CAMERA the following: IDF soldiers were on site to provide security for the Civil Administration, which was preventing Palestinian construction in an area not permitted for building. One Palestinian worker was lying on the ground next to the trailer when he started to scream that he had been run over. Nobody saw him get run over. First he complained that his left leg was injured. An army medic checked him and saw nothing. The medic did, nevertheless, wrap him in a bandage since the worker was carrying on that he had been run over. The man then subsequently claimed that it was his right leg which was injured. According to Raz, the Palestinian Red Crescent, which was also on the scene, checked him, and likewise found absolutely nothing wrong with him.

In short, at worst, this incident is staged, as Raz contends, and the man pretended to be run over and injured, while neither happened. At best, there is zero independent confirmation that he was injured. If neither AFP nor IHT can substantiate the claim, it ought to be immediately retracted.

So it looks like the only thing being trampled on here is the truth, while the lies gain traction.

In other news, there are Republican palestinians.

Now it seems the hackers agree they made an awful mistake. Regarding Ha’aretz (hat tip: EoZ).

Apologizing for bringing down Ha’aretz, but not Israeli hospitals treating Israelis and palestinians alike, speaks volumes about the hackers.

Not to mention Ha’aretz.

Pro-Palestinian hackers brought down Haaretz’s Hebrew website on Wednesday, after several Israeli websites were targeted earlier in the day.

Haaretz Hebrew website was brought down in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, as a cyber war between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers continued.

In a Twitter message, Anonymous Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack: “haaretz.co.il Tango Down ”.

The attack came hours after hackers attacked the websites of two Israeli hospitals, managing to bring down the sites for several hours.

According to the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, the Mossad identified multiple attempts to break into the hospital’s website, similar to previous cyber attacks on websites of important Israeli institutions.

As a result, Sheba’s website was paralyzed for several hours, saying that its security system is “attempting to identify the source of attack the problem in order to block threatening activity.”

The Sheba website, as well as that of Assouta Medical Center, Tel Aviv were able to be fully recovered, however, the extent of the damage caused to the patients’ personal files has yet to be seen.

Palestinians are the recipients of care at the Sheba medical center. Here is a recent, well publicized example:

Some 1,000 Palestinians received hearing aids recently as part of a humanitarian project organized by the American Friends of Sheba Medical Center, the Starkey Hearing Foundation and the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel organization.

Under the direction of Dr. Rafi Walden, the deputy director of the Sheba Medical Center and a member of Physicians for Human Rights, a team consisting of 20 doctors, medical students, and a speech therapist set out on a three-day humanitarian mission in the West Bank city of Tulkarm.

They conducted hearing tests and hearing aid fittings for those who need them. The hearing aids, which were donated by the US-based Starkey Hearing Foundation and cost $1 million, were distributed two months later.

Palestinians – children, women and the elderly – who suffer from hearing impairment and are disconnected from the surroundings, to hear again,” he said.

The same goes for Assouta Medical Center.

So I have to wonder how many of the patients whose personal files may have been damaged are palestinian.

As for Ha’aretz…need I even explain?