[click image to enlarge]

I should have clarified that by “impressive numbers”, I did not mean the quantity of pro palestinian protesters, but rather their combined ages.

Update: The old codger with combover and knee high socks looks a lot like Noam Chomsky.

Group of Eight leaders had to soften a statement urging Israel and the Palestinians to return to negotiations because Canada objected to a specific mention of 1967 borders, diplomats said on Friday.

Canada’s right-leaning Conservative government has adopted a staunchly pro-Israel position in international negotiations since coming to power in 2006, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying Canada will back Israel whatever the cost.

Diplomats involved in Middle East discussions at the G8 summit said Ottawa had insisted that no mention of Israel’s pre-1967 borders be made in the leaders’ final communique, even though most of the other leaders wanted a mention.

“The Canadians were really very adamant, even though Obama expressly referred to 1967 borders in his speech last week,” one European diplomat said.

A spokesman for Harper would not comment on the line Canada had taken, saying only that the final communique would make positions clear.

In the final communique, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, the leaders call for the immediate resumption of peace talks but do not mention 1967, the year Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt during the Six-Day War.

“Negotiations are the only way toward a comprehensive and lasting resolution to the conflict,” the communique said.

“The framework for these negotiations is well known. We urge both parties to return to substantive talks with a view to concluding a framework agreement on all final status issues.

“To that effect, we express our strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by President Obama on May 19, 2011.”

In his speech last week, Obama said pre-1967 borders should be a basis of talks to achieve a negotiated settlement, although he also acknowledged any agreement would ultimately involve land swaps on either side of the border.

That position was rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Israel would be indefensible if it returned entirely to the borders that existed before 1967.

Canada’s strong backing for Israel was cited by diplomats last year as one reason why Ottawa failed to win a rotating two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Harper has made is position on Israel very clear, saying last year: “When Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.”

Conservative leader Stephen Harper completed the trifecta of his dreams: a majority government with seats in the city of Toronto, a crushed Liberal party and the decimation of the separatist Bloc Québécois.

“Whether or not you cast a vote for us today our government must and will stand on guard for all regions, and we will do so faithfully,” a triumphant Harper told a crowd that had swelled to more than 1,500.

“The business of government will resume tomorrow,” he declared, promising to hold at its core the values of Canada of the “true north strong and free.”

The crowd cheered wildly at Harper’s victory speech. His wife Laureen wiped away tears as Harper addressed his family directly to thank them for their love and support. “You’re the love of my life.”

He vowed to work with his new Opposition leader Jack Layton and expressed respect for both Michael Ignatieff as a formidable opponent, and Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe despite their different views of the country.

In the cavernous Telus Convention Centre of the evening, big cheers erupted at 10:40 p.m. when Global’s election broadcast declared Harper had finally won his coveted majority Conservative government.

As Ontario Liberals went down to defeat, the crowd of Conservatives who had been holding their breath for word of whether it would be a majority, then burst into applause again and again. Harper remained holed up in a Hyatt hotel suite watching the early nail-biter results roll in, surrounded by friends and family.

National campaign chair Guy Giorno said the majority only became clear as the lead “crystallized in Ontario.”

Giorno explained the Conservative formula for success: “Continued focus on the economy.”

“Look at the leaders. Who were the two leaders talking about the economy? Stephen Harper and Jack Layton,” Giorno told the Star.

“It’s a government for all Canadians. Stephen Harper is governing for everyone,” he said.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s booming voice was projected on a big screen as he announced it was a “very exciting night, unexpectedly so.” He congratulated Harper for having won a majority and two minorities, Jack Layton for having “become the incarnation of change. He is a bon Jack, a good guy,” said Mulroney.

But the former Progressive Conservative prime minister summed up the “story of the night. What has happened to the famous Liberal brand.”

“I’m feeling good for the Conservatives but good for the country too,” said Preston Manning who first hired Stephen Harper to be the Reform Party’s policy director.

“The biggest change that central Canada’s gotta figure out is that the old Ontario-Quebec alliance which produced majorities regardless what Atlantic Canada and Western Canada thought, is over. The new alliance is Ontario and the west.”

Manning said it would take 10 years for the Liberals to rebuild “just like the old Conservatives.”

Meanwhile, here’s a reminder why I am fond of Stephen Harper.

The Palestinian Authority complained to Israel recently that Shin Bet officers were in contact with high-level Hamas members around Jenin, senior Palestinian sources told Haaretz.

The Palestinian sources said that 10 days ago a number of low ranking Shin Bet officers met with senior figures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Among the Hamas figures was the former Hamas Prisoner Affairs minister, Wusfi Kabha, a Jenin resident; Fadil Busnak a lawyer representing mostly Hamas men, who also resides in Jenin; and A’san Zreydi, an important Hamas figure in the area and a former prisoner. Also at one of the meetings was Adnan Hader, a member of Islamic Jihad from the village of Arabe.

None of the four are considered to be involved in armed resistance and are all recognized as political figures.

According to the Palestinian sources, the Shin Bet officers visited the four in their homes late at night, were permitted to enter and then explained that they did not intend to arrest the four, but to talk “over a cup of coffee.”

Unless the Shin Bet slipped something into their coffee, I can’t see the real benefit of such a meeting.

Do you think it went something like this?

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

8:20PM: Pamela Anderson performs on Israel’s version of Dancing With The Stars.

7:34PM: Good for you, Mr Prime Minister:

“Jerusalem isn’t a settlement – Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” the statement by the Prime Minister’s Office read. “Israel has never put any sort of limits on construction in Jerusalem, where some 800,000 people reside, and didn’t do so during the 10-month settlement freeze in the West Bank either.”

5:30PM: Funny Israeli skit on organ donation (note: while it is in Hebrew, non-Hebrew speakers will still understand it)

5:18PM: Seemed like a good idea at the time?

All-expenses-paid trip to Israel   – mistress and nephew included. The miners rescued from the depths of a Chilean mine say they will give an affirmative response to Israel’s invitation to vacation in the country, on the condition that their families can join them.

Two weeks ago, Israel invited the 33 miners who were trapped in a Chilean mine for 69 days to visit Israel over the Christmas holiday.

Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov, who initiated the invitation, wanted to bring the miners and their significant others to Israel for “a spiritual journey in the holy land over the Christmas holiday, during which they would say prayers of thanksgiving for their safe rescue”.

The Tourism Ministry offered them a fully-funded five to seven day stay which would include flights, accommodation and tours of the Christian holy sites.

The initiation was presented by Israel’s ambassador to Chile David Dadon to the governor of the Atacama region, where the miners were rescued.

Last weekend, the governor told the Israeli ambassador that the miners would be happy to come to Israel and sent him a full list of the miners and their family members.

However, the list wasn’t limited to the miners and their partners: It also included a long list of additional names. The list included 33 miners, 31 partners, two mothers of two single miners, the miners’ 33 children, one grandchild, one nephew and one partner’s daughter.

And if that wasn’t enough, one miner asked to bring both his wife and his mistress.

5:16PM: He’s still getting his pension?

5:15PM: In his keynote address to the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in New Orleans, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was heckled by a shmekel.

This is not the first time. I like Netanyahu’s retort from last year.

4:58PM: US President Obama:

“This kind of activity [Israel's plan to construct 1,300 new homes in East Jerusalem] is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations.”

Aussie Dave:

“President Obama is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations.”

11:55AM: Photo of the day: Courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson…

Home Front Command Search and Rescue Drill

The combat soldiers of the Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Unit train for a possible combat scenario in central Israel. This unit is comprised of both male and female combat soldiers.

10:38AM: It’s official: Former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri was killed for impersonating John Kerry.

[click on image to enlarge]

9:40AM: Here’s video of Stephen Harper’s speech (hat tip: David).

9:38AM: The PA has arrested a blogger for the crime of speaking out against Islam.

Residents of a conservative northern West Bank city were surprised when security forces detained a controversial blogger whose postings on Facebook had infuriated Muslims.

A high-ranking source in the general Palestinian intelligence services told Ma’an that the detainee, who was not identified, was arrested in Qalqiliya. He refused to give specific details and would not identify the detainee. However, Ma’an has learned from other security sources that the man “who claimed divinity” is a 25-year-old university student.

The sources say security services have pursued the man for more than two months until they finally caught him at an internet café in Qalqiliya while updating his Facebook profile on which he claimed he was God and that he was angry with his subjects.

Conservative Muslims had been angrily following the blogger’s postings, many of them altered verses from the Koran, the Muslim holy book, as well as caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that had been published in Danish newspapers. Hundreds of Facebook groups had asked that the man’s account be deleted. After Facebook closed his group, the young man started a blog, Enlightenment of Reason.

Although he had not been identified by the PA, supporters of the blogger have indicated that he is 26 years old. He has identified himself as Waleed Al-Husseini and, in an August blog post, defended his beliefs.

“Muslims often ask me why I left Islam,” he wrote. “What strikes me is that Muslims can’t seem to understand that renouncing Islam is a choice offered to everyone and that anyone has the right to do so. They believe anyone who leaves Islam is an agent or a spy for a Western State, namely the Jewish State, and that they get paid bundles of money by the governments of these countries and their secret services. They actually don’t get that people are free to think and believe in whatever suits them.”

He added: “I would like to emphasize that by writing this article, I did not mean to imply that Christianity or Judaism were better than Islam, and the reader should not fool himself into thinking that I only reject Islam among religions, all of which are to me a bunch of mind-blowing legends and a pile of nonsense that compete with each other in terms of stupidity.”

Although secular political beliefs are not uncommon in the occupied Palestinian territories, the expression of views seen as hostile to the dominant religion is viewed by many as incitement rather than free speech.

The positions taken by the blogger were so out of the mainstream that many in Qalqiliya were surprised to learn that he was Palestinian. Even members of his family said the student, who worked as a barber, ought be prosecuted and sentenced, although it was not clear if he had been charged with a crime. It was also not clear if he had a lawyer.

The blogger has received some support online since his arrest.

A Facebook group, “In Solidarity With Waleed Al-Husseini,” responded, “Criticizing religions is pretty much allowed in countries with Muslim majority; people publically criticize Christianity and Judaism in mosques, published books, national and pan-Arab TV stations, and even in public schools. It’s criticizing of Islam that is only not allowed.”

The post added: “Allowing such action is not only double standard, but a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also could make a dangerous precedent that may open the door for further persecution, than already is, for irreligious and other religious minorities in societies with major Muslim population.”

9:18AM: You have to hand it to Pamela Anderson. She’s an optimist.

While in Israel, Anderson also said she plans to use her “powers of seduction” on ultra-Orthodox Jewish lawmakers to get them to ban fur.

8:52AM: G-d bless Stephen Harper.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday delivered a pro-Israel  speech at a parliamentary conference which dealt with ways to fight anti-Semitism. Harper implied that his country did not secure a seat at the United Nations Security Council due to its failure to cooperate with an anti-Israel policy.

The Canadian prime minister stressed that while there is room for fair criticism against the Israeli government, Canada is obligated to come to the Jewish state’s defense when it is attacked by others.

“And like any free country Israel subjects itself to such criticism, healthy, necessary, democratic debate,” he said. “But when Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.”

Harper said Canada must oppose demonization, double standards and de-legitimization.

“Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tell us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us,” he said.

“Whether it is at the United Nations or any other international forum, the easiest thing to do is simply to just get along and go along with this anti-Israel rhetoric, to pretend it is just about being even-handed, and to excuse oneself with the label of honest broker,” Harper added.

The Canadian prime minister suggested that this was the reason his country lost the recent vote for a temporary Security Council seat, saying “I have the bruises to show for it.”

Harper stated in his speech that “as long as I am prime minister… Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost.”

In his speech, the Canadian prime minister warned that anti-Semitism was on the rise worldwide, including in universities in his own country.

He said the “evolving phenomenon” of anti-Semitism targets Jews by portraying Israel as “the source of injustice and conflict in the world, and uses perversely the language of human rights to do so.”

“We must be relentless in exposing this new anti-Semitism for what it is,” Harper concluded.

I’d say that under Stephen Harper, Israel has no better friend in the world than Canada.

6:20AM: Preview for a new Turkish film on Israel’s boarding of the flotilla, which has us talking turkey..and in Turkish.

Can’t say I’m surprised they painted us as evil killers. It’s what they do.

Meanwhile, I am thinking of developing a film about a man and a horse.

6:10AM: In a soon-to-be-released (as in today) memoir, former US President George W. Bush reveals much about his policies regarding Israel, not to mention the “leadership” of former Israeli PM Ehud “Odie” Olmert.

Former US president George W. Bush indicates that both Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas were willing to publicly back Olmert’s proposed peace agreement before Olmert’s ouster as prime minister ruined the deal, according to a memoir to be released on Tuesday.

Bush also excoriates the US intelligence agencies that famously concluded in late 2007 that Iran had halted production of a nuclear weapon, denying him any possible military option, and notes that he rejected an appeal by Olmert earlier in the year to bomb a Syrian nuclear facility.

“We devised a process to turn [Olmert’s] private offer into a public agreement,” Bush writes of the secret peace deal worked out between the then-prime minister of Israel and Palestinian Authority president. “Olmert would travel to Washington and deposit his proposal with me. Abbas would announce that the plan was in line with Palestinian interests. I would call the leaders together to finalize the deal.”

That agreement was to include handing over the “vast majority” of the West Bank to the Palestinians, building a tunnel to connect it to the Gaza Strip, allowing a “limited number” of Palestinian refugees into Israel, establishing Jerusalem as a joint capital and entrusting control of the holy sites to “a panel of nonpolitical elders.”

But then Olmert was forced to resign his premiership because of corruption allegations, and Abbas “didn’t want to make an agreement with a prime minister on his way out of office,” Bush relates.

The 497 pages of Decision Points detail the difficult choices Bush made over the course of his two-term presidency, including on Iraq, Afghanistan and the economic crisis. While he occasionally expresses compunction, as when he acknowledges, “I regret that I ended my presidency with the Iranian issue unresolved,” he mostly justifies the decisions he made and draws positive lessons even from adverse outcomes.

Even though the peace deal between Olmert and Abbas was never sealed and has been followed by many more months of stalemate, Bush says that at the same time as he felt disappointment that an agreement hadn’t been reached, “I was pleased with the progress we had made.”

When it comes to his push to include Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the US, in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of 2005 – which the Islamist movement won – Bush remains resolute.

“America could not be in the position of endorsing elections only when we liked the projected outcome,” he explains, adding that the vote “forced a decision in Hamas” about whether it would govern or revert to violence.

Following Hamas’s coup in Gaza in 2007, Bush notes his support for Israel’s blockade excluding only the most basic humanitarian needs from Gaza so Palestinians there “would see a vivid contrast between their living conditions under Hamas and those under the democratic leader, Abbas.”

Bush’s tone is less sanguine when it comes to Iran and the first presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his professed messianism combined with verbal attacks on Israel and the Holocaust. “I started to worry we were dealing with more than just a dangerous leader. This guy could be nuts.”

Amid his rising conviction that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon, Bush settles on a policy of sanctions and multilateral diplomacy while stressing, “Military action would always be on the table, but it would be my last resort.”

But he expresses outrage at learning that his own intelligence agencies had undercut that option.

He describes the “eye-popping declaration” on the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate judging with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program.

“Israel and our Arab allies found themselves in a rare moment of unity. Both were deeply concerned about Iran and furious with the United States over the NIE,” he says of the report’s immediate backlash.

Bush told King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia soon afterward, “The NIE was produced independently by our intelligence community. I’m as angry about it as you are.”

Bush speculates that the intelligence agencies were trying to avoid the mistakes made in Iraq – when they had been over-zealous in their intelligence conclusions – but he concludes, “whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact – and not a good one.”

Bush writes positively about the importance of the US relationship with Israel and the Jewish state’s justified concerns over its security, relating how a helicopter ride he took with Ariel Sharon, “a bull of a man,” in 1998 while he was governor of Texas made him “convinced that we had a responsibility to keep the relationship strong.”

At one point his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, even referred to him as the first “Jewish president” after his landmark speech in 2002 calling for a democratic Palestinian state run by a new leadership, i.e. not by then-president Yasser Arafat.

“Shortly after the speech, Mother called,” Bush relates. “‘How’s the first Jewish president doing?’ she asked. I had a funny feeling she disagreed with my policy. That meant Dad [former president George H.W. Bush] probably did as well.” Even so, Bush “laughed off the wisecrack,” though he knew he was in for criticism for taking a position his vice president, secretary of defense and secretary of state opposed.

Still, Bush doesn’t shy away from pointing to disagreements he had with Israel during his tenure, including criticism of Olmert’s handling of the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Bush notes that he was supportive of Olmert going after Hizbullah following its cross-border attack on IDF soldiers.

He also held the international community at bay to give time for Israel to badly damage the terrorist group and its backers in Damascus and Teheran.

“Unfortunately they mishandled their opportunity,” he says, pointing to Israel bombing campaigns “of questionable military value,” including of sites in northern Lebanon.

Bush also castigates Olmert for declaring that he wouldn’t attack Syria, a major Hizbullah patron.

“Removing the threat of retaliation let Syria off the hook and emboldened them to continue their support for Hizbullah,” he chides. Eventually, as more of the world shifted against Israel, Bush lifted his opposition to a UN-brokered cease-fire, to avoid alienating the international community he wanted to join him in isolating Syria and Iran.

His esteem for Israel’s military capabilities was only restored after, he states, Olmert authorized a pinpoint operation on a nuclear site Syria was constructing in 2007. Bush describes how Olmert urged the US to take out the target, but Bush wanted to use diplomacy instead to pressure Syria.

Once the attack was completed, Bush urged Olmert to make it public to use it against Damascus, but Olmert wanted to keep it quiet so as not to provoke a Syrian backlash.

“This was his operation, and I felt an obligation to respect his wishes. I kept quiet, even though I felt we were missing an opportunity,” Bush writes.

“The bombing demonstrated Israel’s willingness to act alone. Prime minister Olmert hadn’t asked for a green light and I hadn’t given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel,” Bush writes.

AP

Ahmed Qurei, a senior PLO official and former Palestinian Authority prime minister, has said he does not rule out the possibility that the Palestinians will launch an “armed resistance” against Israel if the peace talks fail.

Qurei, who was one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, was speaking at a seminar that was held in Cairo earlier this week.

An Israeli official said Qurei’s threat was “regrettable.”

“It is indeed regrettable that there are still senior Palestinian leaders in the Palestinian Authority who talk about using the path of violence,” the official told The Jerusalem Post. “It is clear that the path of violence is a dead end and only through direct negotiation can peace be achieved.”

—-

Qurei, 73, who is better known by his nom de guerre Abu Ala, said that the peace talks, diplomatic efforts and “all forms of resistance” should be among the Palestinian negotiators’ options.

“All options are open to us,” he declared. “Negotiations, popular activities, sit-in strikes, civil disobedience or armed resistance.

We shouldn’t drop any of these options, but what is more important now is to achieve Palestinian unity.”

Notice where he made the comments – in Cairo. His words were intended for the Arab and Muslim world, where palestinian leaders have a habit of being truthful, as opposed to western audiences where they speak with forked tongue.

Nevertheless, none of this should come as any surprise to those who follow the palestinian news and watch the MEMRI and Palestinian Watch clips from PA television.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:25PM: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin would have supported bolstering security along the border.

“When referring to the Palestinian entity that would be established, Rabin spoke of ‘less than a state’. I don’t know what he meant at the time. Today we speak of a demilitarized state that recognizes the Jewish state.”

“We do not want to take away from the Palestinian the right to self-definition,” Netanyahu said. “We want the Jewish state to be recognized and protected. Our insistence on security is not an excuse.”

“We left Lebanon and now Iran is touching the fence. We left Gaza and now Iran is touching that fence.” Netanyahu elaborated. “We cannot let this happen a third time… There is no doubt that Rabin, as a man of security, would have agreed to this insistence. “

He’s right. From Rabin’s last speech to the Knesset:

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

5:54PM: Mandatory reading of the day: The first paragraph of Thomas Friedman’s op-ed in the New York Times.

Some of Israel’s worst critics are fond of saying that Israel behaves like America’s spoiled child. I’ve always found that analogy excessive. Say what you want about Israel’s obstinacy at times, it remains the only country in the United Nations that another U.N. member, Iran, has openly expressed the hope that it be wiped off the map. And that same country, Iran, is trying to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is the only country I know of in the Middle East that has unilaterally withdrawn from territory conquered in war — in Lebanon and Gaza — only to be greeted with unprovoked rocket attacks in return. Indeed, if you want to talk about spoiled children, there is no group more spoiled by Iran and Syria than Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia. Hezbollah started a war against Israel in 2006 that brought death, injury and destruction to thousands of Lebanese — and Hezbollah’s punishment was to be rewarded with thousands more missiles and millions more dollars to do it again. These are stubborn facts.

I say the first paragraph, because the rest of his op-ed is poor.

Instead, read this fisking of it.

5:30PM: My latest animated short: Peanuts, starring Jimmy Carter.

2:55PM: Meet Ahmed, the palestinian burning flag salesman.

He’s a riot.

2:45PM: I stand corrected: there are photos of those injured from the Hamashole work accident.

1:45PM: 12 palestinians – including 5 children and 3 women – have been injured in an explosion at a Hamashole training site

Locals said a “huge explosion” occurred in the Tel As-Sultan neighborhood, causing damage to residents’ windows.

No doubt we won’t see any condemnations, UNSC sessions discussing the issue nor photos of the injured people because Israel was not to blame.

1:10PM: Hizbullah to UN: “We would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”

10:18AM: A senior Canadian official has called the Dubai Police Chief a big fat liar denied the Dubai Police Chief’s claim that Canada had arrested a suspect in the assassination  of senior Hamashole Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

According to The Globe and Mail daily, Canadian officials speculated that the claim was an attempt by Dubai to embarrass Canada amid an ongoing row over airport rights.

One senior Canadian official called Tamim’s claim “baseless,” the newspaper reported, but Canada has yet to issue an official statement on the matter.

Two senior sources at the Canadian Embassy in the UAE told The Globe they did not inform the Dubai police chief about any arrest. “We are trying to verify this information with our colleagues in Ottawa,” one of them told the newspaper. “Tamim said we gave this info to the Dubai police, and we didn’t.”

8:42AM: An Israeli man kidnapped in Nigeria by a local gang was released later in the day, presumably because the $170,000 in ransom had been paid.

I guess the scam mail business isn’t so lucrative any more.

An Israeli man who was kidnapped in Nigeria by a local gang was released later in the day. The assumption is that following negotiations, the $170,000 in ransom that the kidnappers demanded had been paid.

6:12AM: Interview with the mother of Mavi Marmara passenger and terror enabler Ken “KOK” O’Keefe, who like her son, does not look like someone you want to meet in a dark alley.

Meanwhile, Turkey (as well as the palestinians) have slammed the committee.

So much for establishing a committee with “Turk” in the name.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:25PM: Republican Whip Eric Cantor urges the Obama administration to defend Israel and veto any UN resolution calling for an international investigation of Israel’s raid on the Gaza flotilla.

7:50PM: Comment of the day: It’s actually from yesterday, courtesy of Walt, who had this to say about folk singer Devendra Banhart who cancelled his Israeli shows:

charlie manson looking mother, doing a bad take on 60s sf folk psychedelia

the only reason anyone ever paid attention to the freak, was that he was dating natalie portman….i always thought she had taste…guess not

Anyone else find the sight of him prancing around in underpants singing “I feel just like a child” really disturbing? (Even more disturbing than the idea of Natalie Portman dating him).

7:45PM: This is going to go down well (so to speak): Turkish terror-supporting organization IHH plans on sending another flotilla to Gaza next month, in addition to the Iranian and Lebanese ships planning to go to Gaza later this week.

A Turkish pro-Palestinian group said on Wednesday it will send another aid flotilla to Gaza next month, again trying to break an Israeli blockade after its last convoy was the target of a deadly Israeli raid in May.

The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Aid (IHH) told members of the European Parliament it had assembled six ships for the next flotilla and put out an appeal for others to join.

Meanwhile, Israel on Wednesday issued a stern warning to Iranian and Lebanese organizers who plan to send three more aid ships to Gaza later this week.

Attempts by the Iranians and Lebanese to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza would be seen not just as a provocation and a breach of law, but as a “hostile” act because the ships and their cargo are from enemy states, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor

“They are under a different status,” he said, referring to the earlier aid flotilla forcefully intercepted on May 31, which had carried aid and activists mainly from European states including Turkey, Greece and Ireland.

—-

“They are coming from an enemy state and it means that of course the treatment is different, because legally they are different,” Palmor said of the Iranian and Lebanese ships.

5:05PM: Today’s comedy gold comes courtesy of those perennial comedians of Hamas.

Workers at the Hamas TV channel’s office in Syria staged a sit-in Wednesday to protest the decision by a France-based satellite provider to halt its broadcasts to Europe and parts of the Arab world.

The French decision came because of concerns that the channel spreads incitement. It’s expected to deprive the Gaza-based al-Aqsa TV of most of its viewers.

About a dozen employees took part in the protest outside the French Embassy in Damascus. They carried banners denouncing the French decision as “outrageous” and illegal.

They also handed over a protest letter to the French ambassador in Syria urging the French government to reverse the decision.

Hamas has denounced the decision as a “flagrant violation” of freedoms of opinion and information.

They’d know all about that.

4:46PM: A number of the flotilla guerrillas are seething that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not buy into their propaganda.

3:48PM: Lebanese national Moussa Hamdan finds himself in deep sh’ite after he was arrested on suspicion of funneling money to Hizbullah in Paraguay.

12:02PM: Remind me why exactly we returned the Sinai?

Photo: Getty Images Bank

The head of Egypt’s  Actors Guild, Ashraf Zaki, has decided to launch an inquiry against Egyptian actor Khaled Nabawy for “normalization with Israel” over his role in Doug Liman’s American film “Fair Game” alongside Israeli actress Liraz Charhi.

Nabawy was criticized by Egyptian officials after being photographed embracing Charhi on the red carper during the Cannes International Film Festival, where the movie has its world premiere and took part in the official competition.

The different professional associations in Egypt forbid any type of normalization with the Jewish state and strongly condemn any association member who challenges this demand.

Zaki told a London-based website that he would meet with Nabawy this week and inquire whether he knew in advance that Charhi had an Israeli citizenship. If Nabawy is found guilty, he is expected to be suspended from the association for a long period of time.

Arab websites that reported the affair noted that Charhi was “an Israeli actress of American descent, who served in the army for two years before turning to acting and appearing in a number of American films.”

Zaki told the Reuters news agency that he would bring the matter to the Actors Guild council in the coming days. “I asked to meet with Nabawy. After we meet, I will write a memo to the council so it can make a decision.”

He refused to elaborate on the punishment Nabawy may face if he is found guilty.

The Israeli actress involved in the affair told Ynet on Tuesday that “the picture of the two of us did not change anything. Nabawy already knew that he would pay the price for our cooperation on the screen.

“Even before he was cast for the role, there was another Egyptian actor who withdrew from the production after receiving threats that he would be dismissed from the association,” Charhi added.

“At this stage I was certain that they would let me go. But then Nabawy arrived, a professional actor who came to work. When we met during rehearsal I noticed that he was a bit indrawn, and I waited a while before I approached him.

“I knew that it was all very sensitive, so I was very gentle. But during the filming period we became friends. We played a brother and sister, and it didn’t seem strange to either of us.

“When they arranged the seats for the screening, they put us together and we both didn’t mind. He didn’t say anything when we stood together for the photo shoot. I was sure that they would be angry at him, but I didn’t believe that they would launch a suspension procedure against him. I’m shocked.

“We saw this film as work, not politics, and hoped that seeing us getting along would convey some kind of message. But I never imagined that the voices against him would be so hostile,” she concluded.

6:12AM: Those of you who think this conflict is about land should see this interview with one of the coordinators of the Algerian delegation to the flotilla (you might need to read between the lines since he is very subtle and softly spoken).

6:00AM: Spanish politician, journalist and activist and member of the far left Pilar Rahola has published this 2008 speech of hers on her blog (translated version follows):

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist and member of the far left. Her articles are published in Spain and throughout some of the most important newspapers in Latin America:

Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona?

Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?

Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan?

Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?

Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism?

Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist?

Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism?

And finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.

And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!”

Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom. The resulting consequence of these ideological pathologies is the manipulation of the press.

The international press does major damage when reporting on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On this topic they don’t inform, they propagandize.

When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter’s code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her.

At the same time, this press never discusses Syrian and Iranian interference in propagating violence against Israel; the indoctrination of children and the corruption of the Palestinians. And when reporting about victims, every Palestinian casualty is reported as tragedy and every Israeli victim is camouflaged, hidden or reported about with disdain.

And let me add on the topic of the Spanish left. Many are the examples that illustrate the anti-Americanism and anti-Israeli sentiments that define the Spanish left. For example, one of the leftist parties in Spain has just expelled one of its members for creating a pro-Israel website. I quote from the expulsion document: “Our friends are the people of Iran, Libya and Venezuela, oppressed by imperialism, and not a Nazi state like Israel.”

In another example, the socialist mayor of Campozuelos changed Shoah Day, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, with Palestinian Nabka Day, which mourns the establishment of the State of Israel, thus showing contempt for the six million European Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Or in my native city of Barcelona, the city council decided to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, by having a week of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Thus, they invited Leila Khaled, a noted terrorist from the 70’s and current leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization so described by the European Union, which promotes the use of bombs against Israel.

This politically correct way of thinking has even polluted the speeches of President Zapatero. His foreign policy falls within the lunatic left, and on issues of the Middle East he is unequivocally pro Arab. I can assure you that in private, Zapatero places on Israel the blame for the conflict in the Middle East, and the policies of foreign minister Moratinos reflect this. The fact that Zapatero chose to wear a kafiah in the midst of the Lebanon conflict is no coincidence; it’s a symbol.

Spain has suffered the worst terrorist attack in Europe and it is in the crosshairs of every Islamic terrorist organization. As I wrote before, they kill us will cell phones hooked to satellites connected to the Middle Ages. An yet the Spanish left is the most anti Israeli in the world.

And then it says it is anti Israeli because of solidarity. This is the madness I want to denounce in this conference.

Conclusion:

I am not Jewish. Ideologically I am left and by profession a journalist. Why am I not anti-Israeli like my colleagues? Because as a non-Jew I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.

As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a person from the left who loves progress, I am obligated to defend liberty, culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles.

Principles that Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a non-Jew, journalist and lefty I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too.

The struggle of Israel, even if the world doesn’t want to accept it, is the struggle of the world.

(Hat tip: Perat).

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According to Egyptian sources, Israel provided Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with an outline of Qatar’s proposal, which would allow it to bring construction materials and other goods into the Strip.

The Qataris would have undertaken reconstruction of infrastructure and earned an Israeli declaration recognizing Qatar’s important status in the Middle East. In exchange, the Israeli diplomatic mission the Qataris closed during Operation Cast Lead would reopen.

Israel’s rejection of the plan, it seems, resulted largely from Egyptian opposition.

An Egyptian source said his country was acting in coordination with Israel and the Quartet (the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia ). The source added: “Egypt has barred free passage of goods across its border into Gaza, despite criticism from other Arab countries and from the Egyptian public, and it would be inappropriate for Israel, in an effort to serve its own interests “to harm these agreements and put Egypt in an impossible position of being the only party blocking the passage of goods into Gaza.”

Relations between Qatar and Egypt are tense, in part because of the sharp criticism voiced on Al Jazeera of Egypt and its Gaza policy. The TV station is owned by the emirate’s ruling family. Qatar has been pursing its own independent foreign policy. It is seen in Egypt as an Iranian ally acting contrary to Arab interests. It is also, however, an American ally.

In case you thought Arab countries like Egypt really care about their palestinian brethren..

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

7:05PM: Israeli model Bar Refaeli may star in the next Transformers movie.

Rumor has it she plays a transformer who is disguised as an iPad.

7:00PM: Iran is once again threatening Israel.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, said Wednesday that if Israel attacked Iran it would be destroyed within a week.

Speaking at a political conference of ultra-conservatives in Iran’s north, Mashaei said, “If the Zionist regime attacks Iran, the Zionists will have no longer than a week to live.”

The semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying that the Islamic Republic would destroy Israel “in less than 10 days”.

No longer than a week or less than ten days? He sounds a little indecisive to me.

10:34AM: Israel has released Hamashole “Carrot top” Mahmoud Abu Tir(d).

8:44AM: Gaza – world’s “largest concentration camp” and huge party city.

8:12AM: Photo of the day:

Palestinian workers destroy watermelons grown in Jewish settlements , near the West Bank city of Jenin, Tuesday, May 18, 2010. A Palestinian law, signed in April 2010 prohibits the sale of Israeli settlement products in the West Bank. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

Either people in Gaza are not really starving, or the palestininians would rather score cheap political points against Israel than help their people.

8:04AM: Meet the IDF soldier from Canada who’ll be hitching a ride with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Courtesy of Israel's Government Press Office

Everyone who knows Jonathan Fader heard about his conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was covered in the Jerusalem Post and the former Richmond, B.C., resident’s face was all over Israeli television.

His friends posted messages on his Facebook wall and soon there was a picture of the camouflaged and smiling Fader standing in front of the Israeli prime minister.

His mom? She read about it on Facebook, too.

“It’s definitely going to be a moment in life that I’ll always remember,” Fader said in a telephone interview with CTV.ca from the kibbutz he lives on southeast of Haifa, recalling the meeting that resulted in an unexpected ticket home to Canada.

It all transpired Tuesday when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited an Israeli Defense Forces training exercise.

The military picked the two closest soldiers to have a chat with the prime minister. That turned out to be Fader and another officer.

“It was very overwhelming,” said Fader, who was among a throng of reporters and security guards as he spoke with Netanyahu.

In a short chat in Hebrew — a language Fader is still learning — the prime minister asked him where he was from.

When Netanyahu heard he was from Canada, he mentioned that he was “going there next week.”

Then he asked if Fader wanted a lift home.

“I thought he was joking,” said Fader.

But he wasn’t.

A ride on ‘the Air Force One of Israel’

Back home in B.C., his friend Jon Samuel said he was surprised to see pictures of Fader standing face-to-face with Netanyahu.

“It’s great that he got to meet the prime minister,” Samuel told CTV.ca in a brief telephone interview on Friday.

When the prime minister leaves for Ottawa later this month, Fader will be on what he describes as “the Air Force One of Israel.”

Fader has been told that they will be making a stopover in Paris for one day, which is just another bonus for the soon-to-be 23-year-old who has never before visited the famous city.

He doesn’t have an itinerary yet, but he’s been given the general details.

In the army, you tend to be told things “at the last minute,” Fader said.

It’s the first furlough — or leave — he’ll have taken since joining the Israeli army in December.

So far, he’s completed his four months of basic training and has passed the exam to be a sharpshooter in the Givati Brigade — a part of the Israeli ground forces that specializes in sea-to-land operations.

He’s still training and Fader expects he’ll eventually be put on the front lines, likely on guard duty somewhere along the Gaza Border.

“That’ll be my life,” said Fader, who once considered serving in the Canadian Forces before signing up with the IDF.

It’s a two-year commitment that could lead to more opportunities in the military if he finds it to his liking.

In Israel, soccer is hot, hockey is not

While he’s met a few Canadians serving alongside him in the IDF, Fader has been away from his family for about a year and is admittedly “very, very homesick.”

His sister lives in Edmonton and his parents are still back in B.C., along with some friends he’s looking forward to meeting up with.

“I’m really happy to be going home for a vacation,” said Fader.

He misses watching mixed-martial arts and hockey, which is hard to follow when you are involved in army training and don’t have access to the Internet.

But he’s still managing to keep up with his hometown hockey team.

“I was a little upset that the Canucks lost to the Blackhawks for the second year in a row,” he said.

Samuel said Fader was sent a care package a few months ago, that included some Canucks memorabilia to put up on his wall.

Back when his buddy was in B.C., they used to “watch the games religiously,” Samuel said.

As for Fader’s upcoming flight with Netanyahu, the B.C.-bred hockey fan said he isn’t nervous about making conversation with an ex-commando who has twice been elected as Israel’s leader.

“I’m not the kind of guy that plans these kinds of things,” said Fader. “I’m just going to wing it.”

Meanwhile, I was once on Israeli television shaking hands with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as he made his way through Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda. I didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt.

7:25AM: CNN report on Israeli sketch comedy show Eretz Nehederet.

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"We have morals. And I don't have a huge ugly wart on my nose."

Senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Zahar on Monday condemned the animation video released by Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The propaganda video shows Noam Shalit, kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit’s father, walking the streets of Israel  in another 20 years, clutching a picture of his son, who is still in captivity.

After a meeting between Hamas parliament members and a parliamentary delegation from South Africa, Al-Zahar told reporters that the video “does not reflect Hamas’ official stance.”

The senior figure denounced the insinuation made in the video, according to which his organization might kill Shalit. “We have not killed in the past and will never kill captive Israeli soldiers,” he said, “Our morals prevent us from doing so.”

Al-Zahar emphasized that the video is “not a political or humanitarian attempt and does not reflect the faction’s position, which objects killing captured soldiers and does not allow it, in order not to justify the Israeli position vis-à-vis Palestinian and Arab prisoners.”

Tell that to Nachshon Wachsman.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

7:38PM: CNN interviews Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren about the growing Iranian threat.

7:22PM: Photo of the day:

In this photo taken Monday, April 19, 2010, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, left, gives a Palestinian man a piece of chicken as residents of Arura attempt to create the world's largest dish of Musakhan, a specialty of chicken on a bed of bread, onions and almonds in the West Bank village of Arura, near Ramallah. Fayyad has quietly changed some of the rules of the Arab-Israeli conflict with a simple credo: Palestinians cannot wait for a state to fall into their laps and have to start building it now. The U.S.-trained economist has been showered with praise by foreign leaders and dovish Israelis for doing more than any of his predecessors to set the stage for statehood. Yet he never gained much street credibility in the tribal world of Palestinian politics. The former professor is now going about changing that, by reaching out to Palestinians directly and bypassing the old political networks, including the Fatah movement of his boss, President Mahmoud Abbas. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Is it my imagination or is Fayyad feeding the elderly man from his hand?

And if so, is this to give the impression that the elderly man is so famished that he simply couldn’t wait long enough to pick up the chicken himself and eat like a civilized person?

Because if so, you should be reminded that the photo was taken during the palestinian attempt to create the world’s largest dish of Musakhan, which I would have thought is hardly the act of a starving people.

5:55PM: Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt has let the Egyptian FM know we don’t appreciate being referred to as an “enemy state.”

Israel’s Ambassador to Cairo Yitzhak Levanon has protested on behalf of the Jewish state over statements made by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who described Israel as an “enemy state” during a visit to Lebanon.

In a press conference in Beirut on Tuesday, the Egyptian minister was asked whether the visit was intended as a warning message from Israel to Lebanon. Aboul Gheit denied and said the purpose of his trip was not to relay messages “from the enemy to a sister Arab state.”

He stressed that Egypt would stand by Syria and Lebanon should they be attacked.

The statement was featured in headlines in a line of Arab newspapers, including the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat and al-Hayat, the Saudi al-Madina, the Kuwaiti al-Rai and more. Egyptian media chose to downplay the remarks.

As Aboul Gheit and other Egyptian ministers were out of the country, Israel’s ambassador met with head of the Israel department in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and stressed that the Jewish state regards the affair with gravity.

Levanon expressed Jerusalem’s official protest while seeking clarifications.

Israeli state officials said that the Egyptians claimed that Aboul Gheit was misunderstood and in fact meant to say he couldn’t deliver a message from Israel to Lebanon, which Israel considers an enemy state.

It seems a little fishy that the Egyptians claim Aboul Gheit was simultaneously misunderstood and meant to say something else.

Also interesting: in this Egyptian “clarification,” it is Israel who considers Lebanon to be an enemy state – and not vice versa – even though the problematic words “”from the enemy to a sister Arab state” could conceivably support the latter explanation but not the one actually provided.

Fail!

3:25PM: Honest terrorist of the day:

A 17-year old Palestinian youth was arrested by Afula Police Monday morning after telling the security guard at the entrance that he was sent into the city “in order to kill Jews”.

The youth, a resident of the West Bank was transferred to the Shin Bet for questioning.

He arrived at the police station around 2 am, carrying a large knife in a plastic bag. The security guard and sapper standing at the entrance to the station asked him what he was doing there.

“The boy didn’t hesitate and told them he was sent to kill Jews,” Superintendant Aryeh Elkobi, who heads the station’s interrogation and intelligence department, told Ynet.

A quick search uncovered the knife, and the Palestinian was arrested.

1:20PM: Google has made its first ever acquisition in Israel – LabPixies, a developer of personalized website gadgets for Google’s personalized search page iGoogle, as well as for mobile devices.

12:02PM: Britain continues its downward slide.

The shooting in Israel of a British television series called “Palestine” is coming to a close and is expected to be broadcast soon. The series contains anti-Israel messages similar to those in a Turkish series that hit the airwaves in recent months.

Interviewed on Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew journal on Tuesday, actor Mickey Leon said he turned down a part in the series despite the professional and monetary implications, because the part was that of an Israeli army captain who was going to separate an Arab girl from her mother to use the girl as a human shield to allow soldiers to go from one end of an Arab village to another. Leon said other actors responded the same way.

He added that he tried to get the producer to remove the scene but only succeeded in getting the line “That’s Israel Defense Forces procedure” removed from the script. The producer later said the idea of the human shield came from a Gaza activist.

7:25AM: Almost two weeks ago, Canada Post and Israel Post issued the first joint stamp issue between Canada and Israel, a joint international rate commemorative stamp marking “more than 60 years of friendship and strong diplomatic relations between the two countries.”

Seething has ensued (hat tip: Bruce)

Canada had declared the issuance of a “Canada-Israel Diplomatic Relations” commemorative stamp to celebrate 60 years of relations between the two countries. This stamp will serve as a historical witness and reminder, for many future generations in the whole world, of the inhuman, unethical and immoral Canadian association with and support to the ultimate religiously racist, self-worshipping, rogue, international-law-breaking, murdering, genocidal, ecocidal, and terrorist bastard state of Israel.

Israel is established and based on the ultimate supremacist racist ideology. It is a religious ideology that has surpassed all other racist ideologies Man had ever known throughout history. Whereas German Nazism is a social ideology, and Italian Fascism is a political ideology, that can be opposed, debated and debunked, Israel’s “God’s chosen people in God’s promised land” is a supremacist ideology cloaked within a religious cover. Its opposition is labeled atheism, its debate is called blasphemy, and its debunking is claimed a sin. This ideology is, after all, a divine contract between God and Abraham signed by circumcision in the foreskin of Abraham’s penis. Jewish Israelis consider themselves God’s gift to this world. All other nations, Goyims, non-Jews, are considered animal souls incarnated in human bodies, whose sole purpose of existence is to serve the Jews. One needs only read the Old Testament, the Talmud, Jewish religious books, and Rabbinical texts and pamphlets to learn and to confirm this supremacist ideology.

Israeli Jewish religious supremacy and self-worship beliefs are reflected in their Rabbis’ teachings and statements.  This religious arrogance is expressed clearly in Rabbi Ginsburgh’s justification of the Israeli army murdering Palestinian civilians when he declared that: “Jewish blood and a goy’s (gentile’s) blood are not the same … every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, and is thus part of God, thus killing isn’t murder if the victim is a Gentile.” Israeli chief Rabbi Yosef Obadia described Palestinians as cockroaches that should be crushed. Such ideology is the basic fundamental teachings Judaic Yeshivot (religious schools) incorporate in their so-called religious curricula.

Unlike all other countries Israel has no acceptance or tolerance to other religions. Although supremacist Judaism is tolerated and Jews are permitted free worship in every Christian and Moslem country, even in Iran, falsely accused of being fanatic Islamic, Arab Christians and Moslems are harshly rejected, persecuted, and equally ethnically cleansed in “Jewish only Israel”. Jews were persecuted by all western Christian countries for the last two thousand years. They found refuge and acceptance only in the Middle Eastern mainly Islamic Arab countries. Yet instead of expressing any form of simple gratitude they have forcefully occupied Palestine. They are now evicting Christian and Moslem Palestinians out of their own country and especially out of their holiest city; Al-Quds (Jerusalem), and are denying them worship in their holy places during their religious holidays. Israel had destroyed hundreds of mosques and bombed and burnt many churches.

Many western Christians are deceived and are misguided by the so-called Zionist-Christianity and Judea-Christianity. These are antithetical terms, for Judaism considers Christianity its arch-enemy. Judaism considers Virgin Mary a whore, and calls Jesus Christ a pervert, Satan, and charlatan. Jews had crucified Jesus for his teachings of loving God, who loves all his creations equally without any favoritism to a specific nation.

Israel is a genocidal state. Israeli Jews like to proudly trace their history back to Moses and his commandments. An objective study of Moses’s Five Books reveals that Moses was the most genocidal figure in the history of mankind. He, himself, had broken all his ten commandments. Moses had preached many other commandments that are racist to the core in the form of laws and regulations for the favor of only Jews. He and his racist God had destroyed Egypt seven times. He had ordered his followers to utterly annihilate other nations including babies and pregnant women (Numbers 31:17). Even the homes, the crops, the farm animals of other nations were ordered killed, burnt and destroyed; “you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them; the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusites, just as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deuteronomy 20: 16-17) Moses ordered the Israelites.

He and his God were genocidal even against their own followers; Moses’s God supposedly annihilated the Israelite tribes of Korah, Dathan and Abiram in a fiery earthquake for objecting to Moses’s leadership (Numbers 16), and Moses ordered the sons of Levi to murder their Jewish brothers, companions and neighbors (Exodus 32: 27-28). Moses had even killed his brother Aaron (Numbers 20: 23-29), who was allegedly “gathered to his people” at mount Hor.

Moses’s genocidal crimes are grotesquely documented in his five books in the Old Testament. The Israelites eventually got fed up with his genocidal frenzy that he “mysteriously”, or divinely as they claim, disappeared and no family member of this divine prophet was ever mentioned in the Jewish history since then.

Unfortunately Moses’s genocidal commandments had become so fundamental Judaic teachings that all present-day chief Rabbis of Israel are quoting them to incite and to justify Israeli genocide and holocaust of Palestinians. The Old Testaments tells us how Jewish Rabbis and so-called prophets commanded their people, in the name of their God, to annihilate non-Jews, to destroy their cities, to kill their animals, and to cut down their trees.

Today’s Israeli Jewish Rabbis are no better than their ancestors. They, too, call for the extermination of Palestinians, the destruction of their towns, the killing of their farm animals and the cutting down of their fruit trees. Israel’s former chief Rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu encouraged the Israeli army to mass murder Palestinian civilians; “even murdering a million”. The Hasidic Rabbi Manis Friedman urged the Israeli army to murder Palestinian civilians regardless of their age. He declared: “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: destroy their holy sites, kill men, women, children, and cattle.”

Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of a Yishuv in illegal colony of Yitzhar in usurped Palestinian city of Nablus in the Occupied West Bank, had published a religious book distributed to Israeli soldiers before their onslaught against Gaza December 2008. The book called “The King Torah” is based on the halachic (Jewish religious) laws for the killing of non-Jews. Shapiro wrote that “Jews have the right to kill non-Jews in just about every circumstance … If we kill a gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the (Jewish) seven commandments … there is nothing wrong with the murder.” Jewish Rabbis’ disregard to non-Jewish nationals was exposed when Israeli Rabbis and Israeli army officers were caught traffic with human body parts in Palestine and in Haiti.

Before the illegal declaration of Israel, Jewish terrorist groups such as Lehi, Irgun and Haganah had perpetrated many massacres against civilian Palestinians. These terrorist groups merged together to form the terrorist Israeli army. For the last 62 years this terrorist army had committed numerous massacres against all its Arab neighbors; Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Their murdering and assassination arms have reached far other countries such as South Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Algiers, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and lately Dubai. This so-called most moral army finds its morality in spreading terror through the use of the American most sophisticated weapons against unarmed Arab civilians especially women and children. To understand why Israel had waged so many wars throughout its short history one should know that Israel is an army with a government rather than a government with an army. Its survival depends on perpetual conflict; the real reason for Israel’s continuous rejection of all Arab peace initiatives.

Besides crimes against humanity Israel is committing daily crimes against mother earth and against the environment. Israelis keep claiming that they came to a desert and made it bloom. The reverse is true. Part of what is known as the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent, Palestine is a very fertile land. Its fertility had been for thousands of years the target of all colonial powers. In their genocidal fever the Israelis had uprooted millions of fruit trees, especially olive trees that were cared for by Palestinians for two thousand years.

The 2007 report published by Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem documented that Israel had uprooted 1,000,000 fruit trees in the Occupied West Bank between 1967 and 1999, and an additional 1,405,658 trees from 2000-2006. The building of the Israeli apartheid wall has caused the uprooting of at least another million trees.

Israel’s use of nuclear (DU), biological, and chemical weapons during its aggression against Lebanon and Gaza had contaminated earth and rivers. The razing of fertile land, the poisoning of water wells, the destruction of farm land, and the aerial chemical spraying of Palestinian crops and trees, which are part of a deliberate plan to destroy Palestinian economy, are grave crimes against Mother Nature and against the environment.

Israel is the most anti-Semitic country. Arabs are Semites, while the majority of Israeli Jews are Khazars and Germanic. Israeli Jews are not one ethnic nation. Walking through any Israeli city one encounters highly differentiated people, who came from different countries with different backgrounds that have nothing to do with Semitic people. Judaism is a religion that is adopted by people from different parts of the world and rather than an ethnic nationality. Not all Jews are Semitic the same way that not all Moslems are Arabs and not all Christians are part of one particular race.

Since the first Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland up to this very day, every Zionist leader and every Zionist Rabbi had openly called for the ethnic cleansing and forceful eviction of Palestinian Arabs from Palestine. The Zionist Koenig Memorandum encouraged Israeli army to use terror, assassination, intimidation, eviction and land confiscation among other terrorist tactics to terrorize Palestinians out of their country.

It would take large volumes to enumerate Israel’s crimes against humanity and against mother earth. With their at least 200 nuclear bombs and their aggressive posture continuously threatening to bomb their neighbors back to stone age, it is the fanatic self-worshipping Israelis, not the Iranians, who pose the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and threat to global peace.

With such criminal history I ask descent Canadians whether they really want to associate themselves with such a terrorist state and become a terrorist-sponsoring country. I urge Canadians, specifically, and peace loving people in general, to express their disappointment in Canada’s decision to issue such a shameful postal stamp by writing/emailing to the minister responsible for Canada Post Corporation; Mr. John Baird ( baird.j@parl.gc.ca This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and to Minister of State Rob Merrifield ( Merrifield.R@parl.gc.ca This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Tell us how you really feel.

Notice how the author – a palestinian named Elias Akleh – does not even bother hiding his contempt for Judaism and Jews in a bid to claim he is only against Zionism.

6:12AM: Footage from Sunday’s NYC rally in which thousands came out to protest against Obama’s policies against Israel.

More videos here.

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The 60th anniversary of Israel’s birth is a milestone as was every other such anniversary going back to that defining moment for Jews and non-Jews alike when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed independence of the Jewish state in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948.

After nearly two millenniums of wandering in strange lands — following destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the Romans and forced exile from the land of their prophets — the birth of Israel has offered Jews a secure home where they may prosper without any fear or apology.

Israel’s birth was assisted by Britain, joined by France, which carved Arab states in lands that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire. If Israel had been born 10 years earlier then a great many Jews who perished in Hitler’s death camps likely would have survived and Britain’s eventual withdrawal from the region probably would have been less acrimonious.

For Ben-Gurion’s generation Israel’s birth was a small promise made even smaller by the UN partitioning British-mandated Palestine, and then arriving so terribly late, even as smoke from the ruins of war-devastated Europe hid the full disclosure of the Jewish devastation in the Holocaust.

There is no parallel in modern history to the story of Israel defying the rancour of old and new enemies of Jews.

This is the story of a people about whom it can truly be said are indestructible despite whatever their enemies have thrown at them.

INSIGNIFICANT FRACTION

The present world population is over six and a half billion people, and Jews are an insignificant fraction of this number, estimated somewhere around 14 million, or a mere 0.2% of the total.

Yet Jewish contributions in the making of the modern world tower above that of any other people in relative terms and the immense odds of survival as a people given the level of hostility directed at them.

From imagining the fundamentals of monotheism to conceiving the fundamentals of space-time relativity of modern physics, Jews have been an immensely creative people through nearly four millenniums of human history.

Their achievements have earned them admiration, envy and implacable enmity of non-Jews.

But Jews have survived through the ages. They first entered recorded history in pagan times while their contemporaries — the ancient Hittites, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Philistines and the Phoenicians — have vanished totally.

Of the ancient peoples from the age of Moses only the Egyptians, the Hindus and the Chinese survive, but their culturally dynamic moment as civilizations lie in the past. And of these three people from ancient times, Egyptians became Arabized as most of them converted to Islam and disowned their pre-Islamic culture.

Israel is a tiny sliver of land in a vast tempest-ridden sea of the Arab-Muslim world, and yet it is here the ancient world’s most enduring story is made fresh again by Jews to live God’s covenant with Abraham as told in their sacred literature.

Jewish survival as a people maybe providential, but turning a desert into one of the rich economies of the world few imagined six decades ago is a minor proof of how much more could be achieved if those fighting Jews joined with them instead by turning their swords into plowshares.

Happy anniversary, Israel.