And by alleged war crimes, I am referring to alleged war crimes by Israel. No-one is interested in discussing Hamas’ actions.

UN officials say 18 of the council’s 47 members signed a motion calling for the debate. The backers are: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

Egypt and Jordan, eh? Peace!

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

8:00PM: Going Gaddafi on Goldstone: Here is Knesset member Danny Danon ripping the Goldstone report.

Literally.

Full story here.

7:46PM: Ha’aretz reports:

1,700-year-old footprints discovered under Lod mosaic

Which begs the question: what the hell was Shimon Peres doing under a mosaic floor?

7:38PM: PA Prime Minister Salam Fayad says he refuses to have a “Mickey Mouse” state.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayad on Wednesday called the demilitarized Palestinian state envisioned by Israel “a Mickey Mouse state,” and said the Palestinian people would not accept such a plan.

“By all indications, [Israeli officials] have a Mickey Mouse state in mind” Reuters quoted Fayad as saying in a press conference in Ramallah.

Besides, he’s more of a Farfur kind of guy.

7:32PM:

US actress and human rights activist Mia Farrow leaves a tent erected on the site of a house destroyed during Israel’s January incursion in Gaza, during her visit to Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009. Farrow is on a 4 day visit to Israel, West bank and Gaza as a good will ambassador for UNICEF. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Why do I get the feeling that the chances of Farrow visiting children in Sderot are about as slim as her getting back together with Woody Allen?

(Although her lawyer son seems to recognize some double standards when it comes to Israel).

12:20PM: Here is a copy of the draft resolution the palestinians plan to submit ahead of the UNHRC’s deliberations over the Goldstone report

6:00AM: The US has criticized Turkey for canceling the NATO military drill due to Israel’s participation.

Neither the Turks nor NATO has confirmed that Israel’s participation in the exercises over Turkey was Ankara’s reason for canceling it.

US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday, however, that “as to the question of whether there was a government that was invited to participate and then removed at the last minute, we think it’s inappropriate for any nation to be removed from an exercise like this at the last minute.”

He was asked whether that was what happened, and if Israel was the spurned country. He confirmed both.

So much for being cryptic.

Meanwhile, Syria has commended the decision.

“We held our first joint land military exercise (with Turkey) last spring. And today we have agreed to do a more comprehensive, a bigger one,” said Syrian Defense Minister Ali Habib, speaking at a news conference.

I somehow imagine Ali Habib and his fellow Syrian officials like this after those comments.

Want to learn how to shoot with top Israeli anti-terror experts? Click here for more details.

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The PA has been waging a diplomatic campaign against Israel for the past two weeks over what it terms “provocations” on the Temple Mount

According to reports that have reached Israel about Fayyad’s meeting with the ambassadors, the PA prime minister described last Sunday’s clashes as “an assault by extremist religious settlers on the Temple Mount compound” and said it was “a provocation planned in advance that was aimed at sabotaging the peace process and derailing [U.S.] President [Barack] Obama’s peace initiative.”

Warning that the situation on the mount was flammable and could swiftly deteriorate, he added, “I remind you that this is where the Al-Aqsa Intifada began, after [Ariel] Sharon’s visit” to the mount in September 2000. “The Palestinians’ popular response stems from the Israeli aggression, and we are liable to lose control over events.”

Sounds like a threat to me.

Of course, if there is another “intifada”, just know that it won’t be a spontaneous outpouring of emotion, but something very deliberate and planned.

Meanwhile, even the Left wing Ha’aretz knows where the blame for this recent violence lies.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:50PM: Israeli television has shown pictures proving the Islamic movement had prepared for the riots, hiding rocks inside Al-Aqsa Mosque, contrary to Arab claims that Israel started the confrontation by denying Arabs entry to the Temple Mount.

As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Earlier Monday, Jerusalem police explained their decision to allow only worshipers over the age of 50 into the Temple Mount, revealing that wheelbarrows filled with rocks had been discovered throughout the Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday.

Palestinians had filled the wheelbarrows with stones and bricks in preparation for riots in the Old City, police assessed.

The discovery of the wheelbarrows, in addition to intelligence information and the call on Palestinians to “come and defend” Al-Aqsa, led the police to restrict entrance to the Temple Mount.

It’s 2000 all over again.

10:32PM: The PA continues to show its true colors, urging its people to “confront” Israel and imploring the world to stop us from worshiping our religion in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority on Monday evening condemned Jerusalem’s decision to restrict entrance to the Aqsa Mosque compound, calling on Palestinians to confront Israel in light of the “Israeli aggression.”

“We call on the Palestinian public to confront Israel and its plans, that are intended to prevent the Palestinian people from fulfilling their aspirations of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied territories,” read a statement issued by the government of PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad in Ramallah.

The PA government publicly decried “Israel’s attempts to conduct Jewish prayer services in the Aqsa compound” and urged the world “to force Israel to halt is efforts to Jewify the city.”

Earlier Monday, Jerusalem police explained their decision to allow only worshipers over the age of 50 into the Temple Mount, revealing that wheelbarrows filled with rocks had been discovered throughout the Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday.

There is no chance of peace with a people who deny our thousands-year connection to the land of Israel and the holy city of Jerusalem, and will resort to violence at the drop of a hat.

3:50PM:

Palestinian women take part in a protest in Gaza City calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails October 5, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA POLITICS CONFLICT)

Palestinian women take part in a protest in Gaza City calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails October 5, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA POLITICS CONFLICT)

I’m thinking of conducting my own protest….calling for the release of palestinians from really bad photograph poses.

10:25AM: The latest Richard Goldstone interview with CNN.

Pay special attention to the following:

• Goldstone stating “We didn’t look at whether Hamas is entitled to use military force to gain independence for the palestinian people. We looked at what methods Hamas used,” (1:06) the implication being his acceptance of the notion that Hamas’ aim is solely to gain independence for the palestinians, rather than being its stated aim to rid the land of the Jews.
• Goldstone’s claiming a lack of time did not allow his team to find that Hamas did, in fact, operate out of civilian areas  (1:20), despite the ease of accessing such evidence on YouTube.
• Goldstone stating definitively that the infrastructure to Gaza had no military justification, mentioning specifically the bulldozing of agricultural land (2:30). I am no military expert, but I can imagine military purposes such as establishing a buffer zone. Goldstone does not even entertain this prospect, and states his views as fact.
• Goldstone repeating the laughable idea that both sides (i.e. including Hamas) can now use the report as a roadmap for investigating themselves (5:55)

7:20AM: Our peace partners, the Jordanians, are doing the best to calm the situation on the Temple Mount.

By adopting the palestinian narrative of events, of course.

Jerusalem is a “red line” to Jordan, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said here on Sunday.

“UNSC permanent members are urged to act immediately and shoulder their responsibilities, so as to halt Israeli unending violations,” Judeh told reporters, adding that Israel must be pressured in order to actually commit to achieving peace and re-launching negotiations.

“Dangerous violations, such as allowing Jewish extremists to barge into courts of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as continuing excavations in Muslim holy places, destroying houses and displacing the Arab population in a bid to alter the demographic landscape in East Jerusalem are all condemned and rejected,” Judeh stressed.

Earlier today, Judeh, in a meeting with EU Middle East representative Marc Otte, warned against the Israeli escalation and violations in occupied East Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque.

In a related development, the Jordanian foreign ministry summoned the Israeli ambassador in Amman and handed him an objection note over unremitting violations on Muslim and Christian holy places in East Jerusalem.

“All Israeli procedures are illegal, as they signify a breach to Israel’s commitments in its capacity as an occupying force in the West Bank,” a ministry statement said.

Such procedures, the statement carried on to say, represented a major obstacle before efforts to launch serious negotiations that would result in achieving the two-state solution, and eventually, inclusive peace.

A Jordanian boy holds a toy gun, wears a ribbon, reading in Arabic ‘Al-Qassam brigades’, the name of the armed wing of the Hamas movement, during a sit-in organized by the Islamic Action Front (IAF), protesting the Israeli aggressive actions against the Islamic sites in Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, in Amman, Jordan, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009. (AP Photo/Nader Daoud)

Introducing “accumulated differences.”

A Jordanian man has been arrested for allegedly killing his wife and chopping her body up into small pieces over what a security official on Sunday called “accumulated differences”.

“The suspect, who was arrested two days ago, has confessed to the murder, which took place last December in Ruseifa, north-east of the capital Amman,” the official said.

He said the man, whose name was not supplied, reported his wife missing in December.

“But investigations revealed that he killed the woman and chopped her body up into small pieces after drugging her. Then he hid her remains in different places to cover up his crime,” the official added.

“The suspect blamed the killing on accumulated differences with his wife during their 18-month-old marriage.”

#246: Some Israelis have a hard time spelling “Jordan.”

Photos courtesy of yours truly.

King Abdullah II was urged on Sunday to pardon a Jordanian soldier who is serving a life sentence for killing seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997.

“After around 12 years in prison, Ahmad Dakamseh deserves your majesty’s special pardon,” a group of 70 Islamists, unionists, lawyers, human rights activists and former officials said in a signed letter to the king.

In March 1997, Dakamseh fired an automatic weapon at a group of Israeli schoolgirls as they visited Baqura, a scenic peninsula on the Jordan River near the Israeli border, killing seven and wounded five others as well as a teacher.

The attack came almost three years after Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty, only the second between an Arab country and the Jewish state.

“Following the recent release of Arab prisoners, we hope to see Dakamseh free again,” they said, referring to Israel’s prisoner swap with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group last week.

The signatories Islamic Action Front secretary general Zaki Bani Rsheid, former prime minister and intelligence department director Ahmad Obeidat, Jordan Bar Association head Saleh Armouti, and Hani Dahleh, president of the Arab Human Rights Organisation.

“The current political stage requires a policy that would make people happy and ease their socio-economic and political pressures. Pardoning Dakamseh will have a great effect on people,” the letter said.

It remains to be explained exactly what kind of people would become happy that a mass murderer is freed in their country.

Notice that the president of the Arab Human Rights Organization is one of the people urging the release of this murderer. Apparently, the “human rights” of Arab murderers to walk around free is more important than the rights of Jewish schoolgirls to live.

Let’s hope that King Abdullah will remain as aghast at this crime as his father was and let the killer rot. At the time, King Hussein went to Israel to pay his condolences to the families and truly condemned this act, not like the fake “condemnations” that we are used to hearing from Palestinian Arab leaders.

On the other hand, Daqamesh’s mother defended him on Al Jazeera TV:

“I am proud of my son, and I hold my head high. My son did a heroic deed and has pleased Allah and his own conscience. My son lifts my head and the head of the entire Arab and Islamic nation. I am proud of any Muslim who does what Ahmad did. I hope that I am not saying something wrong. When my son went to prison, they asked him: ‘Ahmad, do you regret it?’ He answered: ‘I have no regrets.’ He treated everyone to coffee, honored all the other prisoners, and said: The only thing that I am angry about is the gun, which did not work properly. Otherwise I would have killed all of the passengers on the bus.”

Although at his trial, his mother was quite willing to say something different in order to get him a lighter sentence: “I know my son is mentally ill because he used to have fits of rage and faint.”

At least one terror group has named itself after Daqamesh, showing yet again that even the most heinous murderers of Jews are heroes in some Arab quarters.