Oh and Hagit Yasou is religious and comes from Sderot, that’s right, the small town that’s been under near continuous rocket barrage for years. Magnificent.

Aussie Dave adds: I posted about her before – singing in Arabic!

(hat tip: Blank Pages of the Age )

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled his date with pop sensation Justin Bieber over the singer’s refusal to meet with children living in communities affected by Gaza rocket fire, Channel Two reported on Tuesday.

The prime minister was scheduled to host the young singer at his office in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, before Bieber’s Thursday night concert.

Taking advantage of the PR opportunity presented by the meeting with Bieber, Netanyahu’s advisers invited a group of children from communities near the Gaza border to attend.

The children had disembarked from a school bus just before it was hit by a Hamas rocket last Thursday, critically wounded a teen and moderately wounding the bus driver.

Bieber reportedly refused to meet the children, which led Netanyahu to cancel the meeting.

 Bieber has returned fire (so to speak)

Justin Bieber claims he’s very much pro-kid during his stay in Israel, despite what appears to be a pissed off Prime Minister who abruptly canceled a meeting with the pop star.

According to Israeli news reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 86′d a scheduled meeting with the Biebs, after he reportedly refused to meet with kids who survived a recent rocket attack in Gaza.

Bieber’s rep is not denying Justin wouldn’t meet the kids, but says it’s more of a scheduling thing:  “Despite some logistical challenges, Justin is enjoying his first trip to Israel.” 

P.R. guru Matthew Hiltzik adds, “Justin welcomes the chance to meet with kids facing difficult circumstances, regardless of their background, and in fact, he has already invited children from the Sderot area to be his guests with other fans at his concert in Tel Aviv on Thursday night.”

It seems to me like two things may be at play here:

• Bieber does not want to be seen as “taking sides” in the conflict
• Bieber just wants some “alone time” (as reinforced by this report) 

So much for saying the Shema.

Here O, Israel

The Lord is Our G-d

The Lord is One

Either way, Bieber is choosing himself over others. Sure, he is just a kid and entitled to some R&R. But he also happens to be a role model and – like it or not – has the ability to make a difference. If meeting him will provide cheer to some youngsters affected by daily rocket fire, Bieber should put aside his own selfish needs and meet them.

As it stands, Helen Thomas would be proud.

Update: The thick plottens (yes that is deliberate):

However, officials from the various communities in the south denied the children had ever been invited to take part in such a meeting, further complicating the Prime Minister’s Office in conflicting reports.

“What meeting?” asked David Tietz, 10, who was on the school bus that was hit by an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza. He mentioned, however, that free tickets to Bieber’s upcoming show had been offered to the younger residents of the rocket-plagued area.

Sderot Municipality also denied hearing of such a meeting, but confirmed that it had received 200 tickets to the show. “We know nothing about a meeting, with Netanyahu or Bieber,” said spokeswoman Sima Gal.

Bieber’s manager also denied the singer was in any way opposed to supporting the children of the south, claiming that he had willfully donated tickets to his show and would “love to see them there”.

Braun told the Yedioth Ahronoth reporter who contacted him that he was the first to notify him of such a meeting and its evident cancelation.

So Bieber does not deny refusing to meet the kids, but the kids deny being invited to meet Bieber in the first place.

I’m thinking that perhaps he did not write the lyrics to that song, judging from this beautifully articulated letter to washed-up, pro-BDS rocker Roger Waters (hat tip: Daphne). 

Dear Mr. Waters,

I was deeply disappointed to learn that you have decided to build a wall between yourself and your Israeli fans. We love you here in Israel. Surely, you must know that from the warm reception you received when you performed here five years ago at the Jewish-Arab village of Neve Shalom.

What you may not realize is that most Israelis believe in a two-state solution. But this vision is not as easy to turn into a reality as you may think. Instead of recognizing the situation’s complexity, you have joined the campaign to boycott Israel, appointing yourself as a judge in a conflict between Middle Eastern tribes. (How British of you!)

I’m surprised that you would choose to side with the extremists who don’t believe in dialogue. I come from a small town in Israel called Sderot. My hometown is frequently bombarded with missiles from Gaza — eight years of children living in fear, eight years of running to bomb shelters. Yet I meet and play music with my Palestinian colleagues. When there is bad news, we do not boycott each other; we argue. Even when it’s hard, we try to keep in touch, because we know that peace starts with musicians playing together, with the two peoples getting to know each other.

Unfortunately, the Middle East isn’t the most stable place, so Israelis know we have to be very careful as we pursue peace. We could sign an agreement with a moderate regime and suddenly find ourselves confronted with a fundamentalist enemy. We withdrew from Gaza and got Hamas. We pulled out of southern Lebanon, and now Hezbollah dominates the Lebanese government. We gave back the Sinai, and now Egypt is a great unknown.

Still, we yearn for peace. We try to talk with our neighbors in the Palestinian Authority, where life is getting better for ordinary Palestinians. If Hamas’s leaders would stop the bombardment of Israeli civilians and stop calling for our destruction and start having a normal relationship with their brothers in Ramallah, I’m sure that most Israelis would want to talk to them, too. And our wall, which you want to see dismantled, will fall when we have lasting quiet. Insha’Allah.

But in the meantime there are events like the murders in Itamar. Terrorists sneaked into a family’s home while they were sleeping and cut their throats. That settlement was outside of our security fence — they did not have this “appalling edifice,” as you called it, to protect them. A father, a mother and three kids — one a 3-month-old infant — paid the price.

Should we give up the fence that has made the last few years mostly free of suicide bombers? If we did, would you stand by our soldiers when they go out to intercept terrorists, or would you continue tying our hands while we fight to protect our citizens’ lives? I didn’t hear your voice, or the voices of your friends in the BDS movement, when thousands of Qassam rockets were being launched at my hometown and neighboring communities after we got out of Gaza. We only heard the world’s voice when we fought back.

Lastly, I want to ask, when you demand that we “promote” the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, do you understand that this means Israel would no longer be a Jewish state? If so, why should the Jews not be allowed to have their one state, while the Palestinians get four states? (Let me count them for you: the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the Hamas state in Gaza, Jordan with its Palestinian majority ruled over by a Hashemite king and an Israel that would have a majority of Palestinian citizens after millions of refugees’ descendants move here.)

Jews have come home to Israel after centuries of living under Christian and Muslim “hospitality.” My own parents immigrated to Israel from Tunisia; they had to give up all their property and start their lives over. Jews from around the world came to Israel to fulfill our ancient dream of returning to our homeland, and to bring an end to our long nightmare of having no country to call our own.

Now you, in effect, are demanding that we forget all our dreams and become a minority in our own homeland. Are you serious? Have you not seen how the Coptic minority is treated in Egypt? Have you not seen how the Kurds have suffered in Turkey and Iraq? We won’t share their fate — we have had enough of that already.

At your age you ought to be suspicious of open-and-shut narratives of the sort embraced by the BDS movement, and be willing to look more deeply at the other side. Of course, we Israelis have plenty of room for improvement and could do more to pursue peace. But you should understand that if we are cautious, it is because our very survival is at stake.

If you truly want to be helpful in bringing about peace, embrace the power of dialogue, not boycotts. Music is for breaking down walls, not for building new ones.

Looks like he tore that areshole a new areshole.

Passersby in Washington Square Park on Monday may encounter a terrifying situation.

A group of nonprofits that support Israel have created an immersive multimedia exhibit called The Bomb Shelter, in an attempt to give New Yorkers a taste of the terrorism fears that many Israelis live with on a daily basis.

From 1 p.m. until 4 p.m., a siren will sound periodically and participating park goers will have 15 seconds to get from where they are in Washington Square to a bomb shelter that will be installed in the park. That is the same length of time that people facing rocket attacks in Israel have to reach safety before the rockets strike. Then, in an attempt to simulate what people experience living in Sderot, a town in Southern Israel that often comes under attack from rockets launched from Gaza, visitors will hear the sound of explosions all around them.

“(We) wanted New Yorkers to viscerally feel what Israelis went through this week during the bombing of a Jerusalem bus stop and repeated rocket strikes,” said Craig Dershowitz, president of Artists 4 Israel, the nonprofit that created the installation.

The bomb shelter will be decorated with work by graffiti artists from New York, and will include pictures made by the children of Sderot. After New York, The Bomb Shelter exhibit will travel across the country to college campuses. Birthright Israel Alumni Community, a group of people who have gone on the free “Birthright” trips to Israel, is funding the project for an undisclosed amount.

“After so many years, it becomes easy for Americans to just read past the headlines,” said Natalie Solomon, associate director of the Birthright Israel Alumni Community. “We hope this will help people better understand what it is like to live under terror and renew their passion to see it end.”

The exhibit isn’t the only art project currently addressing the Arab Israeli conflict. The new Julian Schnabel film, Miral, about the plight of the Palestinians, opens Friday. It is already creating an uproar from the Jewish community.

REUTERS/Amir Cohen

IAF jets have struck two smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza in response to a Qassam which hit the roof of a building in an educational institution located in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council, outside of Sderot.

This follows the IAF striking a Hamas-linked terror activity site in northern Gaza, a weapons-manufacturing warehouse in central Gaza, and a weapons-smuggling tunnel in southern Gaza, in response to the grad rocket fired at Israel on Friday morning, which hit the city of Ashkelon (pop. 125,000).

As the IDF Spokesperson blog notes, more than 100 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israeli territory since the beginning of 2010, and over 400 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel since the end of operation Cast Lead.

Meanwhile, Ha’aretz refers to this latest violence as “tit-for-tat”, as if there is some kind of equivalency between the initial attack (aimed to kill civilians) and Israel’s response in self defense. I would suggest the only “tit” here is the Ha’aretz reporter.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

8:25PM: The palestinian police trainee yearbook makes a return after a five-year absence!

7:14PM: In his latest piece, the detestable Robert Fisk admits he can’t possibly compare Israel with Hamas.

Because Israel is so much worse (hat tip: EoZ via CiF Watch).

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.

There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that’s OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We’d still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I’m not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).

Read more if you have the stomach for more of this bile, include accusations Israel helped kill Afghans!

It’s no wonder this poor excuse for a journalist and even poorer excuse for a human being triggered a new verb.

6:42PM: Hamas: The Next Generation

4:28PM: The educational institution hit by the Qassam last night was a children’s hydrotherapy rehabilitation center in the heart of Sderot’s Sapir College.

The silence is deafening.

3:54PM: Mandatory reading of the day: Demonizing Israel is bad for the Palestinians (written by a Jordanian of palestinian heritage).

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the international media have been unhesitant in criticizing the Jewish state on almost everything. This has evolved into a media culture by itself, to the point that many internationally renowned newspapers would have a button labelled “Israel” or “Israeli-Arab conflict” on their Web sites including very little positive content about Israel. Media hostility toward Israel has been mainly focused on its military operations and, in more quiet times, on the living conditions of the Palestinians in Israel.

Amazingly enough, the international media, and particularly the Western ones, pay very little attention to the conditions of the Palestinians living in Arab countries, despite the extreme oppression they have been enduring for decades in most Arab countries.

These Palestinians do not have someone to speak for them in the global media, possibly because a news story about countries other than Israel is less interesting or “sexy” by media standards. This tendency to blame Israel for everything has lead to the development of numerous myths about the situation of the Palestinian there that have provided an excuse to purposely ignore and compromise the human rights of the Palestinian in many Arab countries.

THE EXAMPLES for that are plentiful and sometimes cross the line into tragic comedy. While the world is crying over the Israel-imposed blockade on Gaza, the media, for some unknown reason, choose to deliberately ignore the conditions of the Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon.

Lebanon, a country with some of the most hostile forces to Israel, has been holing up Palestinians inside camps for almost 30 years. Those camps do not have any foundations of livelihood or even sanitation and the Palestinians living there are not allowed access to basics such as buying cement to enlarge or repair homes for their growing families. Furthermore, it is difficult for them to work legally, and are even restricted from going out of their camps at certain hours. Compare this to the fact that Palestinian laborers were still able to go to work every day in Israel while Hamas was carrying out an average of one suicide bombing per week a few years ago, and until recently launching missiles daily on southern Israel. Not to mention the fact that Israel allows food items and medications into Gaza if handled through the Palestinian Authority.

The Lebanese atrocities toward the Palestinians have been tolerated by the international community, not only by the media. Today, while some Israeli military commanders have to think twice, in fear of legal consequences, before they visit London or Brussels, well-known Lebanese leaders who had directly participated in mass killings of Palestinian civilians, during and after the Lebanese civil war, are becoming world-respected political figures – Nabih Berri, for example, the leader of Amal Shi’ite militia who enforced a multi-year siege on Palestinian camps, cutting water access and food supplies to them. The Palestinians underBerri’s siege were reported to be consuming rats and dogs to survive. Nonetheless, he has been the undisputed speaker of the Lebanese parliament for a long time. He travels frequently to Europe and criticizes Israel for its “crimes against the Palestinians” on every occasion.

MANY OTHER Arab countries are no different than Lebanon in their ill-treatment and discrimination against the Palestinians. Why do the media choose to ignore those and focus only on Israel? While the security wall being built by Israel has become a symbol of “apartheid” in the global media, they almost never address the actual walls and separation barriers that have been isolating Palestinian refugee camps in Arab countries for decades.

While Palestinians targeted by the IDF are mostly fighters pledging war on Israel, the world swiftly overlooked the Sabra and Shatila massacre in which Lebanese Christian and Shi’ite militiamen butchered thousands of Palestinian women and children. Unsurprisingly, the international media accused Israel of being responsible for the massacre, despite the fact that live testimonies aired by Al-Jazeera satellite television a few years ago show massacre survivors confirming that IDF commanders and soldiers had nothing to do with the killing.

The demonization of Israel by the global media has greatly harmed the Palestinians’ interests for decades and covered up Arab atrocities against them. Furthermore, demonizing Israel has been well-exploited by several Arab dictatorships to direct citizens’ rage against Israel instead of their regimes and also to justify any atrocities they commit in the name of protecting their nations from “the evil Zionists.”

This game has served some of the most notorious Arab dictatorships, and still does today, as any opposition is immediately labelled “a Zionist plot.”

This model had served Gamal Abdel Nasser in ruling Egypt with an iron fist until he died, and was the main line for Saddam Hussein, who was promoting that “Iraq and Palestine are one identical case” in his last years in power.

The global media must be fair in addressing the Palestinians’ suffering in Arab countries and must stop demonizing Israel. It should start focusing on the broader conditions of the Palestinians in the Middle East region.

There is much to see.

2:52PM: I’ve posted this incredible interactive map on Middle Eastern Strategic Threats designed to show the global range of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon‘s missile capabilities (via JCPA).

11:56AM: Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat claims the PA has submitted a far-reaching peace proposal to the Obama administration that is more generous to Israel than the demands presented by Mahmoud Abbas to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, and will end the conflict with Israel and resolve all palestinian claims.

“I presented Senator George Mitchell with a series of official documents,” Erekat said, referring to the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East. “We gave him maps and papers that clearly state our positions on all the final-status issues: borders, Jerusalem, refugees, water and security. Thus far we have not received any answer from the Israeli side.”

When asked if the Palestinian positions were similar to those presented during talks with Olmert, Erekat replied: “It’s more than that. I cannot go into details on what exactly was proposed, but Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] offered more in these documents than what he proposed to Olmert in the past. Abu Mazen took bigger steps to reach peace.”

Earlier this year Erekat distributed a document to European diplomats saying the PA had offered Olmert a swap that would let Israel annex 1.9 percent of the West Bank. The document also claimed that the PA had expressed a willingness to accept an Israeli proposal to allow 15,000 Palestinian refugees to return to the country every year over 10 years.

International media outlets reported earlier this year that the PA had agreed to land swaps equaling 2.3 percent, while another report said it had accepted a swap of 3.8 percent. Erekat confirmed to Haaretz that the Palestinians have become more flexible on this issue.

Meanwhile, Erekat has also denied reports that the Obama administration had threatened sanctions against the PA if Abbas did not agree to enter direct talks with Israel over a final-status agreement.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian lawmaker and a member of the PLO central committee, told the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi that Washington “applied tremendous pressures on the Palestinian Authority so that it would move to direct talks.”

Ashrawi said the United States threatened to downgrade or even sever ties with Ramallah.

Another Arab language newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported that Obama had sent a special communique to Abbas last month that said Washington would not work to extend the Israeli construction freeze in West Bank settlements if the Palestinian leader continued to oppose direct negotiations. According to the report, Obama made clear to Abbas that the United States would reject any Palestinian efforts to appeal to the Security Council in lieu of direct talks with Israel.

During an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Thursday, Abbas said he had been subject to intense pressure to agree to direct talks. Erekat confirmed that many Arab leaders sought to persuade the Palestinian leader to reconsider his position, but he denied any suggestions that Washington had threatened the PA.

“[The communique] stated that if the Palestinians do not enter direct discussions, reaching a two-state solution will be even more difficult and the Americans’ ability to help in that regard will be even more limited,” Erekat said. “There were no threats.”

I have yet to hear Erekat speak the truth, so treat everything he says with extreme caution.

8:56AM: Israeli President Shimon Peres has gone on the offensive against the English, accusing them of antisemitism.

Shimon Peres said England was “deeply pro-Arab … and anti-Israeli”, adding: “They always worked against us.”

He added: “There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.”

His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had “got it wrong”.

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron’s remark that Gaza was a “prison camp”, as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England’s attitude towards Jews was Israel’s “next big problem”.

“There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that’s the difference between getting elected and not getting elected,” he said.

“And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment.

“They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 UN partition resolution … They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s … They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.”

By contrast, relations with Germany, France and Italy were “pretty good”, he added.

He made the comments in an interview with the historian Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published last week in Tablet, a Jewish news website.

The wide-ranging interview covered Mr Peres’ role as one of Israel’s longest-serving political leaders – an MP for 48 years, twice prime minister, and holder of other ministerial posts over the decades. He is firmly on the Israeli Left.

He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for his part as foreign minister in the peace talks which produced the landmark Oslo Accords.

But following his comments, James Clappison, the Conservative MP for Hertsmere and vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “Mr Peres has got this wrong.

“There are pro- and anti-Israel views in all European countries. Things are certainly no worse, as far as Israel is concerned, in this country than other European countries.”

The MP added that he could “understand the frustration” that people in Israel felt with “certain elements of the British broadcast media” which present an unbalanced view of Israel.

He said: “I can understand Mr Peres’ concerns, but I don’t recognise what he is saying about England.”

Yet in Israel, Mr Peres is far from alone in holding such views, which have gained a wider following, particularly on the Right, since the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over accusations that Mossad sent agents using British passports to assassinate a Hamas commander in Dubai.

Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, accused Britain of working against Israeli interests for decades – ever since it “betrayed” its promises to build a Jewish homeland when it governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

“Both governments from the right and the left prefer Arab interests over Israeli interests,” said Mr Eldad, whose father Israel was a leading figure in the Stern Gang, the most radical of the Jewish terror groups that fought British mandatory rule.

“The other layer is an ongoing, subtle form of anti-semitism. It is not as overt as it was in Germany, it is a quiet, polite form.”

Some leading Jewish commentators in Britain disagreed. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, minister of Maidenhead synagogue and a writer and broadcaster, said: “I am surprised at Peres. It is a sweeping statement that is far too one-sided.

“Britain has supported both Israel and Arab causes at different periods over the last 50 years. There are elements of anti-semitism but it is not endemic to British society.

“The tolerance and pluralism here make Britain one of the best countries in the world in which to live.”

Mr Peres found support, however, from other pro-Israeli groups. Jacob Vince, the director of Christian Friends of Israel, said there was anti-semitism in the UK although many people had a positive view of Israel but were unwilling to express it publicly.

Mr Vince said it was “difficult to see how many MPs would not be influenced by the number of Muslim voters in their constituencies”.

The Government was not treating Arabs as the underdogs but rather was trying to appease them, he said. “The question is how well they understand those with whom they are seeking conciliation.”

Mr Peres is “measured and moderate,” he added.

He said: “His comments have serious connotations and I am sure would not be said lightly.”

One Israeli politician expressed disbelief that the doveish Mr Peres had launched such a broadside against the British.

Benny Begin, a cabinet minister whose father Menachem was prime minister and before that leader of Irgun, the group that killed 91 people in an attack on Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946, said: “Peres? I simply can’t believe he said that.”

I wonder if this means Peres’ will be handing back his honorary knighthood.

6:20AM: ITN News report on Friday night’s IAF strike, which refers to Gaza as “occupied” – which is only true if they are referring to Hamas’ occupation (hat tip: Anon)

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Wow, the last time a Leonardo made it’s way to Israel, it was accompanied by a pretty girl. I wonder if that will be the case this time.

Meanwhile, Berlusconi is taking the visit seriously, especially his speech to the Knesset.

A few days ago, the Knesset received a telegram from one of Berlusconi’s advisers stating that the prime minster did not intend to miss his visit to the Israeli parliament. The adviser wrote that the visit is one of the highlights of his career,” and he sees the speech he is to give to the Knesset plenum as the most important speech in his life along with the speech he gave to the U.S. Congress.

As is Israel.

The Knesset House Committee is expected today to vote to permit Berlusconi to address the Knesset in Italian.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:55PM: The former head of El Al explains to Fox News why the underwear bomber would never had made it on to an El Al flight.

8:15PM: From nuclear to nookie? Nuclear “whistleblower” (I hate that term) Mordechai Vanunu claims he was arrested for meeting his Norwegian girlfriend.

Vanunu was released after claiming during a court hearing that the relationship between him and the Norwegian woman he met with is of a romantic nature, Channel 10 news reported.

“He is not accused of divulging any information,” said Vanunu’s lawyer Avigdor Feldman, according to Channel 10. “She is not interested in nuclear matters. She is interested in Mordechai Vanunu, who seems to be interested in her.”

Assuming he is telling the truth (a huge assumption to in itself), I wonder what pick-up line he used. My bet is:

“There’s a whistle in my pocket with your name on it.”

7:56PM: It’s time for another round of “Blame the Zionists.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday opposition rallies were a foreign-backed “nauseating masquerade”, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“This is a nauseating masquerade that the Zionists and Americans organized and bought a ticket for, and for which they are the only spectators. The Iranian nation has seen a lot of such masquerades,” Ahmadinejad added.

It was the first public speech the president had given since the eruption of reformist protests in his country a few days ago, which have so far claimed the lives of at least 15 people. At least 20 have been arrested.

The nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was one of the victims of the protests, and the conservative Kayhan paper ran an editorial blaming Mousavi for his death. The editor, Hossein Shariat Madari, also claimed that the opposition leader had ties with “Zionists” and received orders from the Israeli Mossad.

“Since the beginning of the riots all evidence shows that there is a connection between the leaders of the struggle to the Zionists and that they have received orders directly from the Mossad and the CIA,” wrote Madari, who is known as an associate of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The barbaric and bloodthirsty enemies and the agents who accept orders from Israel did not even refuse to plan the murder of their own nephew,” he added.

I wonder if they actually believe this rubbish.

5:50PM: Yet another example of the word “women” being used loosely.

Mrs Doubtfire called. She wants her look back.

4:50PM: George Galloway once again voices his support for terrorism.

4:28PM: A 50-year-old Israeli man has been granted a divorce for an Israeli-record 11th time.

He apparently has no grey hair.

Go figure.

1:06PM: Sderot, one year after Operation Cast Lead.

1:04PM: Nu nu Vanunu: Israeli traitor Mordechai Vanunu – previously incarcerated for 18-years for revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program – has been arrested on suspicion he met with foreigners in direct violation of his parole orders.

Perhaps he missed those long summer nights in prison..

11:32PM: Lebanese paper Al-Nahar has reported that the UN is holding talks with Israel and Lebanon, concerning an Israel withdrawal from the northern part of the village of Ghajar* by the end of January.

According to the report, the UN and the United States hope that Israel’s withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar will lead to an ease in tensions between Israel and Lebanon.

Not very likely, considering Hizbullah has made it clear they won’t rest until Israel is destroyed.

* Not to be confused with this

9:00AM: From the Karma’s-a-Bitch Department: Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse, who along with the appropriately named Mads Gilbert, collaborated with Hamas in helping to disseminate anti-Israel propaganda during Operation Cast Lead, was recently stabbed in Gaza.

Per an unauthorized translation from Aftenposten:

I take it as a sign of how desperate people are. They have cause to be dissatisfied with the west, he says.

Why do you think precisely you were attacked?

Because I was the only blond western present. I understand that people are frustrated with the west. It is an expression of desperation. But of course one cannot stab people for this reason. The man who attacked me was a disturbed person, says Fosse.

He says there was only a small wound, since the knife-blade broke.

Notice how Fosse is so willing to exonerate the attacker and blame it all on the West. It is inconceivable that palestinians would murder, maim or wound anyone without valid justification. It must be because they are oppressed or disturbed.

As this blogger states:

Another interpretation might be that Fosse’s attacker was frustrated with Hamas, the genocidal movement Fosse and Gilbert insist the west acknowledge as a legitimate organization and pressures Israel to negotiate with.

When Hamas went to war against Israel through a sustained rocket-barrage which lasted for years, the NORWAC doctors looked the other way. When Israel struck back and Hamas hid behind the unfortunate civilian population, the doctors published a book filled with photographs of maimed children. And now that Fosse is stabbed, it is the west’s fault.

(hat tip: Brian of London)

6:20AM: PA politician Mustafa Barghouti claims that Jesus was the first palestinian.

Well, if you invent an entire nation, what’s the big deal with reinventing the history of one individual?

An insight you won’t get from the mainstream news media coverage of events here in Israel.

Dear Granny and Grandpa,

I wanted to thank you so much for the beautiful card you sent me for my 18th birthday. I love getting birthday cards from you, they’re always so unique.

I’m really excited this year, I finally feel a little grown up, living in an apartment in Sderot with 7 other girls. I live in a very nice neighborhood with both religious and secular families and a lot of cute kids. (It’s great to earn some extra money babysitting).

As you probably know already, I’m teaching about Judaism to secular kids in kindergardens, elemantry schools, junior highs, and in nearby kibbutzim. The job is tiring. We work about 11 hours a day. In the mornings we’re teaching and in the afternoons and nights preparing for our next classes. We’re only four girls in this program, so it’s really hard work, but very enjoyable and satisfying. The girls I’m working with are all fun and very dedicated. Even though it’s only been a couple of months, we’ve been through so much together that it seems like we’ve always known one another. They’re really nice girls (one girl, I discovered, was with me in kindergarden- it was very funny).

We all pitch in to keep the apartment at least a little clean and try hard to eat proper meals, though it’s really hard. For one thing, food is so expensive and we get paid so little. We mostly eat bread and pasta. A lot of pasta. Pasta, past, pasta…

In Sderot itself, we’re all together twenty four girls doing national service. Some girls are counselors in high schools, some are the heads of the youth group that I used to be in, called “B’nei Akiva”.  Some are tour guides, some work in soup kitchens. I recently decided to spend some of the little free-time we have, volunteering as a counselor in a youth group for girls called “Ariel”. I’m in charge of about twenty-five screeching little munchkins. It’s weird being a counselor again (remember when I was a counselor in Beer Sheva two years ago for two years, for boys and girls around the same age as these munchkins), but I love kids! and these girls are so sweet!

Sderot is a very special city, not only because it gets bombed so often, but because so many of the people who live there are so amazing. For one thing, they’re always inviting us over for meals, and despite everything they’re going through, the fear for their houses and constant worry for their children – when they’re at school and when they’re at home, the lack of customers at their stores & restaurants, they smile and talk to you on the street.  People in Sderot are happy to share what they have. They have this special warmth in them, which helps you have courage.

About the “kassamim”. Technically, there is a cease fire, and before last week only once in a while they still shot a rocket or two just to remind us that they don’t mean it… Last year there were days when sixty rockets would fall. This week the IDF found a tunnel that the terrorists had dug next to the border in order to kidnap and kill more soldiers. When our soldiers went in to destroy the tunnel, there was a battle and they killed six of the terrorists. As revenge, they fired forty rockets towards the settlements around Gaza, including Sderot. I’ve been in Sderot when a “kassam” fell, but the experience I had the other day was a little different. At four-thirty in the morning the siren that gives us 17 seconds to find shelter went off: A voice on a loudspeaker blaring “tzeva adome” “tzeva adome” (“color red, color red”), telling us that a rocket had just been fired. My friends and I jumped out of our beds and ran to our protective room and shut the door. A second later we realized we had forgotten to wake two of the girls. Somehow they didn’t hear the siren and were still sleeping. We felt so bad that we didn’t wake them, but we all went back to bed thanking G-d that no one was injured from that rocket and that we were all! safe.

The next day, at school, we asked the kids how they felt. One little boy answered that he was tired, because like all of us (well, most of us) he woke up in the midle of the night from the siren and couldn’t fall back to sleep. This is how people have been living for the last 7 years!  I hope we won’t need to experience anymore of this running and hiding, it’s pretty annoying I can tell you. Unfortunately, everyone knows it is far from over.

I’m so glad I finally found time to write to you. I love you so much and so want to hear about how you’re doing. So, are you happy about Obama’s win?

I miss you. Do you know when you’re coming yet? I can’t wait to see you guys.

Write when you get a chance.

Have a great Shabbat, I love you guys so much!
Tzippora

Israeli children gather at the site where a rocket, allegedly fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza, landed in the southern town of Sderot Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008. Police say a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza has exploded in an Israeli town just across the border fence. They say the rocket hit an open area in the town of Sderot. It set a fire, but no one was hurt. It was the first rocket attack in nearly three weeks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket attack.(AP Photo / Tsafrir Abayov)

“Allegedly fired by Palestinian militants“? Does this mean that AP is leaving open the possibility that Israelis are firing rockets at each other and blaming it on Arabs from Gaza, which only the looniest of the loonies claim? Or perhaps they don’t consider people who shoot potentially fatal rockets targeting civilains to be “militant” enough to be called militants?

It’s not like AP can see where the rocket landed; they can only claim that the Israeli police say that the rocket landed in Sderot. It is of course possible that those notoriously unreliable Israeli police are lying and they just took one of the old rockets out of inventory and placed it there for the benefit of the AP photographer – you can never be sure! And the person who suffered from shock and was hospitalized – could be fake. You never know.

And the fact that Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for this attack? Well, that didn’t make the deadline, and only when Palestinian Arab terrorists say something can you report it as fact.

Israeli pro-Palestinian activist Jeff Halper was arrested in Sderot on Tuesday for illegally entering Hamas-ruled Gaza, police said.

Halper reached Gazan shores on Saturday with dozens of Free Gaza Movement activists on two boats aimed at “breaking the siege” of the Strip.

Halper, who also heads the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, crossed into Israel via the Erez border crossing, police said.

He was questioned at Sderot’s police station, and will be charged for violating the IDF’s Southern Command Front order which forbids Israeli citizens from entering Palestinian areas without permission, a Lachish police spokesman said.

“Halper will be taken to court tomorrow,” the spokesman said.

No doubt he didn’t plan on showing solidarity with the besieged people of Sderot while he was there.

He just better hope he gets out of there before the next Qassam attack. After all, there is a lot of Jeff Halper. He’s not that easy to miss.