The answer seems to be hell yeah.

Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud) confirmed on Saturday that Israel was operating intelligence-gathering networks within Lebanon.

Speaking at an event in Be’er Sheva, Ya’alon said that “the moment Hezbollah renewed their attacks, we began to collect intelligence. We will stop when Hezbollah disarms itself and the [Israel-Lebanon] border is a border of peace.”

“When we are in conflict with an enemy,” he continued, “we gather information about them.”

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

6:45PM: Now it’s Ha’aretz’s turn to use the word “terrorist.”

Which the guy is, if he did what he’s accused of.

4:58PM: Fascinating CNBC story on Israel as a leader of business innovation.

4:46PM: Sakher Habash, a co-founder of Fatah and former member of its Central Committee, has died in Ramallah. So far, no accusations of Israeli involvement in his death. But give it time.

Habash once said:

“To us, the refugee issue is the winning card which means the end of the Israeli state.”

12:42PM: Netanyahu to palestinians: “Get a grip.”

No, really.

9:42AM: PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has actually used the “T” word (”Terrorist”).

But no need to bring out the flying pig.

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Saturday condemned an attack during which Israeli settlers shot a Palestinian and injured four others in occupied East Jerusalem.

Five relatives, three of them over 60 years old, were hospitalized after right-wing Israelis attacked the Salah family, shooting one, in a bid to take over their home in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa on Friday.

“This terrorist settler attack on the lives and property of Palestinian citizens demonstrates the necessity of providing immediate international protection for our people in Jerusalem,” Fayyad said, speaking alongside US Consul General Daniel Rubenstein and other American officials at an unrelated event near Ramallah.

Interestingly enough, this alleged attack has not been reported anywhere besides some palestinian news sites. Which is curious, considering the mainstream media are normally more than willing to publish such reports, even when based on unsubstantiated claims.

9:30AM: Photo of the day:

“The hills are alive with the sound of settlements.”

Ok, I’m paraphrasing but you hopefully get my point.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

1:26PM: Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations has warned that Israel is planning to attack his country.

Presumably after we stop planning to attack our own.

7:25AM: A number of US senators visiting Israel seem to understand the insanity that is the Goldstone Report.

In the wake of the Goldstone Report and amid the nuclear threat from Iran, 10 state senators, through the American-Israel Friendship League and the National Conference of State Legislatures, are on a study tour of Israel.

With a jam-packed itinerary, the NCSL delegation is meeting with officials such as Ron Dermer, senior adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Daniel Taub, director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Law Division.

No. 1 on the meeting agenda? Goldstone.

According to Georgia State Sen. Don Balfour, president of the NCSL, the Goldstone document is misunderstood in the United States.

“Yesterday we had a meeting about the Goldstone Report. The average American says, ‘Hey, war crimes? [with a shocked look on his face],’ but then you read it and you see almost everything we [US] do is a war crime.

“Sometimes there are civilian casualties, which is horrible. But is that a war crime? If so, that changes the way we define war,” he said.

If indeed the IDF is accused of war crimes, “Every soldier is going to be a war criminal. If you bomb an al-Qaida terrorist and one of their family members dies, that would be a war crime,” Balfour said.

(Indeed John Bolton, a former American ambassador to the UN, has argued that the Goldstone Report has strong implications for the future of the US and warfare. “In the UN, Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the US, particularly concerning the use of military force preemptively or in self-defense,” Bolton wrote in an October 19 Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Accordingly, UN decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the US. Mr. Goldstone’s recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel’s head – or, in the future, to America’s.”).

On September 29, 32 US senators signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the Obama administration to block any punitive measures against Israel at the UN on account of the report.

Sponsored by Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia) and Kristen Gillbrand (D-New York), the letter focuses on Israel’s right to protect itself after years of rocket attacks from Gaza.

The US State Department has criticized the “one-sided mandate” of the Goldstone Report and cited “serious flaws” in the investigation.

Balfour said he agreed with the US government’s disapproval of the Goldstone Report, saying, “I wouldn’t even say that the report is one-sided. It is perverted and it changes the game of war.”

Meetings with Israeli politicians have been eye opening for the state senators, who have learned about Israel’s past, present and future pressing issues, he added.

During a meeting at the Knesset on Wednesday, the senators heard an MK describe the battle of Jenin in 2002. In the midst of the second intifada, the IDF entered a refugee camp that had served as the launching site for many terrorist attacks. Rumors circulated that the ensuing battle had been a “massacre” against the Palestinian people.

The Knesset member explained, however, that the army went door-to-door looking for terrorists rather than immediately bombing a suspected house. The IDF put soldiers at risk to save Palestinian bystanders. This was the kind of information that slipped through many media reports, Balfour said.

He added that during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, “People will read an article and say, ‘Israel bombed Lebanon?!’ What they do not know, however, is Lebanon sent 10,000 bombs [to Israel],” he said, referring to mortar shells and Katyusha rockets.

If Mexico were to fire rockets into the United States, Balfour said, the US would probably react after one or two rockets hit. Americans simply do not realize that thousands of rockets have been launched into Israel, prompting a reaction.

In the case of Goldstone, many Americans are also not aware that the IDF warned civilians to leave areas where gunmen were operating. Balfour praised the army for dropping leaflets and urging civilians to evacuate. “People don’t do that kind of thing historically,” he said.

Moving forward, the problem facing politicians worldwide was how exactly to define a war crime, he went on. Balfour suggested a definition, one from Operation Cast Lead itself.

“When they set up terror missiles next to a school, on top of a hospital, in front of a kindergarten, that ought to be a war crime,” he said. “When they set up missiles on schools and hospitals, you eventually have to take those missiles out.”

Meetings with Israeli officials have enhanced the senators’ understanding not only of the Goldstone Report, but of how it directly impacts the Israeli people and government, he said. The delegation is focusing on education and cooperation, and meetings have been informational, without political pressure of any sort.

The state senators will not only go home with a greater knowledge of Israel, but a greater knowledge of America, he said. “The goal of the trip is to become familiar with Israel – the issues and the country,” Balfour said. “Israel gives us perspective on how to solve our problems. We will go back wondering and thinking how we can work similarly.”

7:20AM: Yesterday, I posted the Daily Show interview with palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and anti-Israel activist Anna Baltzer.

Anyone watching the interview and not familar with Baltzer’s real views may have been under the impression that Baltzer is “pro-peace” rather than “anti-Israel.”

Not so much.

Viewers knowledgeable in Middle Eastern affairs are probably familiar with Barghouti, a moderate member of Fatah and one of the prominent Palestinian signatories of the Geneva Initiative, an unofficial peace plan drafted by Israelis and Palestinians. But the name Baltzer may not ring a bell.

A 29-year-old Columbia grad and Jewish American, Baltzer says on numerous videos posted on YouTube that she became a pro-Palestinian activist after visiting the area and witnessing Palestinian plight.

At one point during the interview, Stewart asked Barghouti and Baltzer whether they believed in Israel’s right to exist.

While the Palestinian Barghouti has publicly supported Israel’s right to exist, Baltzer has said she believes having a Jewish State in the Middle East is unjust.

Here’s what she said in May 2008 at a University of California, Irvine pro-Palestinian rally under the header of “Never again? The Palestinian Holocaust.”

“What Israel is doing is doing to the Palestinian people is not a perversion of what Israel could be or should be,” she said at the UC-Irvine event. “It is an inevitability of having a Jewish state in a place where the majority of the people who have rights to the land are not Jewish.”

During the interview Baltzer evaded Stewart’s question regarding Israel’s right to exist, choosing instead to focus on human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians.

6:10AM: Swedish “journalist” Donald Bostrom, who in August accused IDF soldiers of harvesting organs from palestinians, is scheduled to arrive in Israel for the Dimona Media Conference.

It will be interesting to see if he wakes up drugged and in an ice-filled bathtub.

6:00AM: Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans has confirmed that Israeli and Iranian officials did in fact meet at a nuclear non-proliferation conference in September in Cairo, despite Iranian and Israeli denials.

The Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead will not go away even if Israel launches an independent inquiry into the campaign, UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said Wednesday.

“There are no legal questions here – and we shouldn’t be deluding ourselves that the report will disappear if we launch a probe,” Shalev said during a discussion held at the Israel Democracy Institute. “We are seeing a murky wave against the State of Israel the likes of which has not been seen in many years.”

“It reached the point of de-legitimizing our existence as an independent state,” she said.

“We are doing a poor job of explaining our position,” Shalev added. “What we have here is an indictment against Israel, against freedom of expression, against the legal establishment, and against the army.”

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

6:02PM: A state memorial ceremony was held today marking 14 years since the assassination of formerPrime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Besides the obvious human tragedy, Yitzhak Rabin’s murder led to others co-opting his name to advance their own agendas. For instance, those who advocate a palestinian state like to refer back to Rabin and the Oslo process, yet conveniently leave out Rabin’s own views on the subject.

From his speech on the ratification of the Israeli- Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:

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.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says similar things and he is derided as an extremist.

5:26PM: There is nothing humorous about this Daily Show interview with palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and Jewish anti-Israel activist Anna Baltzer.

Stewart does not challenge them on any of the blatant lies, including the corker from Barghouti that “90% of the palestinian struggle has been non-violent. Today, it’s maybe 99;5% non-violent.” (05:55), although even Stewart’s B.S detectors activate when Baltzer claims that “Jews lived better within the Arab world than virtually anywhere within the Western world” (05:45).

9:48AM: Lebanon has sprung into action following the Katushya attack on Israel a few days ago, already identifying the culprits.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman says Israel is behind the Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon on Tuesday. In an interview to Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, the president did not conceal his concern over the recent incident.

Suleiman said the rocket “is an excuse for Israel to keep violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and immediately use it to continue its intelligence activity in Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s presence.”

The president explained that the rocket attack from Lebanon coincides with Israel’s interested and said the shooter was an Israeli agent. “Therefore, I do not rule out the possibility that Israel is the one behind the Katyusha attack,” he said.

8:45AM: Ha’aretz headline:

White House slams Obama’s poor standing among Israelis

The problem is, there is no indication of any such “slamming” in the report itself, which does mention this though:

Obama’s advisers are worried about his lack of popularity and the expressed feeling that he is hostile to Israel. They believe this seriously harms his ability to advance the peace process with the Palestinians. Obama’s advisers see this as the reason why Israelis view his diplomatic initiatives on both Iran and the Palestinians so negatively.

Recent weeks have seen a number of meetings on the matter in the White House, and one of the ideas under discussion is an Obama visit to Israel. It was decided at this stage to wait and send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Jerusalem; she is to arrive Saturday night.

I don’t know if that will work either. After all, if the below Jerusalem Post picture and caption is anything to go by, Israelis do not think much of her either.

8:35AM: As if we didn’t have enough problems.

The reliability of a breathalyzer device widely used by Israeli police has been called into question: A new study found the device is vulnerable to external conditions, and prone to registering innocuous substances as alcohol.

The defense team for a suspect charged with driving under the influence hired an expert to test the breathalyzer, manufactured by the German firm Draeger and widely used by the Israel Police.

The expert – Dr. Igal Bar-Ilan, head of the Analytical Chemistry Department at the research institute MIGAL in Kiryat Shmona, and a lecturer at the city’s Tel-Hai Academic College – found that external conditions such as temperature, humidity, and the length and speed of inhalation can affect reported BAC levels, making the driver seem intoxicated when he is not.

Bar-Ilan also found that the device is likely to incorrectly interpret compounds like acetone and acetic acid as alcoholic substances.

The study was conducted under police supervision and in cooperation with Draeger.

The device reported alcohol in Tirosh brand grape juice and the energy drink XL, the experiment found. When small amounts of alcohol were mixed with these beverages, the device reported the quantity was larger than it actually was.

Eran Ben-Ami, the attorney who initiated the study, said thousands of Israeli motorists may have been wrongly convicted of driving under the influence – an offense for which drivers may lose their licenses for two years.

5:50AM: The UN General Assembly announced it will meet next week (November 4) to consider the Goldstone Report.

12:45AM: While Syrian Dorktator Bashar Assad’s statement that Syria is ready to continue peace talks with Israel has been widely reported, not many news outlets are reporting claims by a Kuwaiti news site that an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister in New York (auto-translation):

Arab normalization: Syrian official adviser had met with Netanyahu

New York – Palestine Media – newspaper (Gazette) Kuwait on its website, quoting informed sources in Jerusalem said the Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad recently met in New York Yitzhak Molkho adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

She explained that the meeting was held in the Helmsley Hotel in New York under the auspices of the rich American of Jewish origin Ron Lauder, known for his close ties with Damascus.

Kuwaiti newspaper quoted the sources mentioned as saying that the meeting was cordial and took two hours, during which the parties talked about the circumstances and climates conducive to the resumption of negotiations between Israel and Syria under the auspices of an American, referring to the Israeli side has confirmed his intention to hold talks without conditions. These sources added that Molkho Mekdad reported that Netanyahu is ready to make peace.

The same sources confirmed occurrence of other events at different levels between the Syrian and Israeli officials with the knowledge of authorities on both sides.

Hamas’ political leader has said that his Islamist organization is willing to form an investigative committee to present “the facts” of its actions during the winter conflict with Israel, following a United Nations report which accused both sides of war crimes during the hostilities.

“When Hamas deals seriously with the Goldstone report, with some reservations on it, this is evidence that Hamas respects the international law and is ready to cooperate with this law,” Khaled Meshal told the Web site Palestine Note in an interview from his base in Damascus.

“If the report or any other side has any reservations on Hamas’ actions, we are ready to explain them and we will form an honest and neutral investigative committee in Gaza to give Goldstone and its committee and the international community the facts.”

—-

But Meshal rejected the claim that Hamas had deliberately targeted Israeli civilians during the fighting, when thousands of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip – which it controls – into Israeli communities.

“Hamas does not aim to kill civilians. Hamas does not want to target the civilians,” he said. “Hamas defends itself, but because it has simple abilities and its rockets are inaccurate in targeting, so it reaches the civilians, but we do not intend to do that.”

The Hamas leader also said that the group is willing to abide by any international attempts to secure a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and that Hamas is willing to accept the borders that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War.

—-

Meshal said that the Palestinians, including Hamas, would be willing to accept a peace deal based on the 1967, and warned that this was the only option for peace.

“…[I]f the Arabs and the Palestinians found seriousness from the American administration in pressuring Israel to withdraw to 1967 borders, and recognize the Palestinian and Arab rights and stops its occupation and aggression, I’m telling you that the Arabs and Palestinians will cooperate with the American administration and there will be peace in the region,” he told Palestine Note. “Without that, the struggle will remain and all the American and international attempts will fail because in brief they’re not moving in the right direction.”

You can watch the interview here.

[Warning: Fast moving subtitles may cause severe dizziness. As may trying to comprehend the ridiculousness of Meshaal's answers]

The only thing more infuriating than Meshaal’s audacity in believing people will swallow his blatant lies is the fact that in this regard, he’s right.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:52PM: Disturbing report on the largest cult in Israel – Scientology.

Pay special attention to what the reporter says about Tom Cruise.

7:50PM: Anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein has posted about the J Street conference (http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/10/28/2-12-cheers-for-historic-j-street-national-conference/). Here’s his reaction to Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel getting mocked.

Returning to the blogger panel, Blumenthal had one of the more memorably funny quotes of the day criticizing Elie Wiesel’s address to Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel national event (the joke refers to Wiesel’s investment losses with Bernie Madoff):

The last person Elie Wiesel trusted this much was Bernie Madoff.

Nice guy, huh?

Meanwhile, here’s Silverstein’s version of the infamous “blogger ejection incident.”

Another denizen of the right-wing Jewish deep slime, Hillel Stavis, crashed the panel, taking pictures of the panelists and attendees without authorization and had to be escorted from the room.  Since he was a registered conference goer, J Street allowed him to remain in the hall even though he wrote a scummy report at his own blog complaining of his “shabby” treatment.

Notice how Silverstein does not mention his own role in Stavis being escorted from the room (he was the one who approached security), nor the fact notification was not given to participants that filming or recording was prohibited.

6:00PM: Here is a debate on the Goldstone Report with perhaps the worst representative of the Israeli side I have ever seen – aggressive, rude, inarticulate, and showing more than a passing resemblance to Dr Evil.

Of course, the Iranian they chose to debate him is very articulate.

Ouch.

It’s a shame they didn’t invite someone like Richard Landes or other Understanding the Goldstone Report contributors instead.

5:25PM: Israelis are increasingly getting cheesed off with Turkey.

An employee stands behind a sign depicting a crossed out Turkish flag taped to the window of a coffee shop in Tel Aviv October 27, 2009. A manager at the coffee house said the decision not to sell Turkish coffee was made in protest at Turkish criticism of Israel over its military offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. Israel this month summoned a senior Turkish diplomat to protest a Turkish television drama that depicted an Israeli soldier shooting dead a Palestinian baby. Picture taken October 27, 2009. REUTERS/Amir Cohen (ISRAEL FOOD POLITICS CONFLICT)

If you think this is harsh, consider the kinds of signs displayed in Turkish shop windows.

1:00PM: Lebanese troops have found and dismantled four rockets ready to be fired into Israel, in the same area from where yesterday’s Katusha was fired.

Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gabriela Shalev has filed an official complaint with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council president over yesterday’s rocket attack, expressing concern over the rise in hostile activity from Lebanese territory and stressing that Israel holds the Lebanese government responsible for any attack to come from its territory.

6:05AM: Lawfare: Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has faced possible arrest on war crimes charges during an official visit to the UK.

Ayalon returned to Israel on Tuesday evening after a two-day visit to London, during which pro-Palestinian activists attempted to use a section of British law to have him arrested.

The International Criminal Court Act of 2001 and the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 allow for private individual complaints of war crimes to be lodged against military personnel, even if they are not British citizens and the alleged crimes were committed elsewhere.

Ayalon and his advisers received the news on Monday evening before he was scheduled to give a keynote speech at the London School of Economics. His team took the necessary precautions and, after consulting with the Israeli Embassy, decided that he would continue with his trip.

On Monday night, Ayalon spoke at LSE. However, a student wearing a keffiyeh held up proceedings by shouting at the minister as soon as he took to the podium to deliver his speech, “The Situation in the Middle East: The View from Israel.”

Despite appeals from Prof. Michael Cox, head of LSE’s International Relations department and chairman of the event, the student refused to stop hurling abuse at Ayalon. Eventually the audience turned against the student, after the chairman lost control, and the minister was able to give his speech and engage in debate afterward.

—-

Ayalon’s advisers believe that the material advertising the university event was the catalyst behind the call for his arrest, as it described him as a former IDF officer: “Mr. Ayalon is a former captain in the Israeli army who served as foreign policy adviser to prime minister Ariel Sharon and as Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006.”

No further details were available at press time regarding who demanded the arrest.

Earlier this month, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, a former chief of General Staff, declined an invitation to travel to the UK to speak at a Jewish charity fund-raiser, for fear that he might face arrest on charges of war crimes.

On Tuesday, Ayalon had meetings with government officials, in which he raised the absurdity of Israeli officials facing possible arrest under the universal jurisdiction law when they visited the UK. The minister also discussed the boycott call by a number of British trade unions, and bilateral relations.

Ayalon has yet to tweet about his experience.

I don’t know about you, but I feel that giving back the Sinai really paid dividends.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:40PM: A few months ago, this video from northern Israel of a horse trampling a car was making the rounds.

Now comes this video from southern Israel, in which the horse comes off second best.

11:30PM: Another case of premature explodation.

8:40PM: Terrorists fired a Katyusha-type rocket into Israel earlier this evening, in what the IDF called “a grave incident.” A fire broke out at the rocket’s impact site, near the northern town of Kiryat Shmona, but there were thankfully no casualties.

Channel 2 reported that IAF planes carried out strikes in southern Lebanon within an hour of the rocket being fired.

While there has been no claim of responsibility, Israeli security sources believe the rocket was not fired by Hizbullah, but rather by a small palestinian organization.

8:32PM: Here’s a firsthand account of events from the blogger whom Richard Silverstein attempted to have kicked out of his panel discussion.

“We know that there are people here who disagree with what we believe, but we welcome them to our conference.”  — Jeremy Ben Ami in his opening remarks to the “Driving Change” Conference

This is not the first blog to accuse J Street of duplicity in ballyhooing its”Pro Israel” brand.  But today at its gala conference in Washington, I saw the real face of diversity J Street style.  I registered with my real name and paid the admission price and actually believed what Jeremy Ben Ami declared in his welcoming speech.

At 12:45 on Monday, the “Bloggers’” panel convened at the Grand Hyatt to a packed- to- overflowing room to hear the stars of the ultra-left blogosphere – including the inimitable Richard Silverstein of Tikkun Olam.  Just as his fellow bloggers were finishing up their  vilification of Jeffrey Goldberg, whose less-than-hard-hitting interview of Jeremy Ben Ami apparently enraged the leftosphere,  Silverstein leapt up from his seat, pushed his way frantically past the audience and said to a J Streeter, “Get security.  We’re going to kick this guy out.”  I, like many others in the crowd, were filming the event.  No notification was given to participants that filming or recording was not allowed.  Later, I was told by a security guard that anyone could film any event and that he had received no instructions to bar recording devices.  Much of the conference was live-streamed, as a matter of fact.

The next thing I knew was that two J Street officials were dragging me out of the room demanding that I stop filming.  I complied with their request and asked them why they were singling me out.  Amy Spitalnick, J Street’s chief spokesperson then told me that only authorized persons could film a discussion.  I expressed surprise and suggested that they were singling me out at the behest of one of their bloggers (Richard verified later that he was on a panel for J Street).  I asked for an apology from Amy, but she refused, saying that no one except for authorized persons could photograph the discussions (I witnessed many audience members photographing sessions – no one was dragged from the room and chastised).

As the late, lamented TV pitchman, Billy Mays was wont to say, “But wait, we’re not through yet!”  Later in the day I happened to be seated near Mr. Silverstein at a panel on Iran.  When the session broke I went up to him and said, “Richard, let me buy you a cup of coffee and we’ll sit down and discuss this like adults” whereupon he literally ran over to a security guard who then proceeded to demand identification from me.  It seems that Richard told the guard that I was at the conference under an alias and that I did not pay to attend.  I produced the necessary identification which satisfied the put upon man.  At that point I had had just about enough from the hysterical Mr. Silverstein.  As I mentioned, the guard told Mr. Silverstein that anyone could film the conference as he had received no instructions to the contrary.

The harassment didn’t end there.  I was brought to the J Street desk by the guard with Richard leading us demanding that I be ejected because, “I didn’t belong here.” He continued harassing me by telling the guard that I had registered under a false name, a charge that was quickly proved false.

I recounted the events to Amy Spitalnick of J Street and demanded an apology for J Street’s harassing and embarrassing behavior.  She refused.  I then asked if she would speak to Mr. Silverstein, who was at the conference at J Street’s invitation.  She replied that she would.  Finis.

Yes, I disagree with many of J Street’s  positions and statements.  I also agree with some of them, especially their condemnation of terror as the state policy of Hamas.  Jeremy Ben Ami set a welcoming tone for people who disagree with J Street’s agenda at the outset.  That that tone was betrayed by the uncivil and harassing conduct of his chief spokesperson reveals the darker side of J Street’s view of freedom of speech.

5:50PM: Here is an open letter to Richard Goldstone, written by Israeli doctor David Zangen (hat tip: Richard)

Dear Judge Goldstone,

My name is Dr. David Zangen, I am a consultant in Pediatric Endocrinology and diabetes at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Over 50% of my patient population is Palestinian from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. I speak Arabic and initiated the first training program for Palestinian physicians in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology. The trained physicians were fully respected and were included as first authors on our studies that are published in world leading professional journals.

But, at the same time I happened to be the chief medical officer of my brigade during the Defensive Shield Operation in Jenin 2002. I was responsible for the medical treatment of our soldiers but also for enabling the hospital in Jenin to provide full medical services to the civilian population and I was personally involved in numerous medical treatments that Palestinians (including warriors) received from Israeli physicians.

During and after the operation the director of Jenin hospital was a source to what has been falsely called the “Massacre in Jenin where 5000 people were massacred” this same person Dr. Abu Rali has also claimed that one part of the Jenin hospital was destroyed by Israeli tank missiles “12 tank rockets were shot at the hospital …” etc

You should know, honored Judge that these statements have been proved and documented as straight lies not only by Israeli sources but also by the Human Rights Watch and the UN organizations counting only 52 dead people on the Palestinian side (23 on the Israeli side). These organizations and photographs of Jenin hospital following the operation showed no evidence for any destruction at the hospital buildings etc.

This Dr. Abu Rali a director of a hospital, a physician, lies and incites in the service of the Shahids. It is hard to believe that a director of a hospital can give such an obvious false testimony. I can’t understand it and you can’t understand it but unfortunately this is what has happened. Even persons who would usually be considered reliable sources become advocates of straight lies.

Tragically, moral misbehavior of doctors in the Palestinian Authority is not new. The Pediatrician George Habash sent his terrorists to kill children in Israeli schools and so did the Hamas leader the pediatrician Dr. Rantisi…and so continues to do the Pediatrician encouraging the sending of rockets from Gaza on innocent Israeli schools Dr Mahmud Zaher.

Please judge Goldstone, you should really be careful when such straight liars serve as the basis for your report. I am sure that you mean well but being an eye witness both to the events in Jenin and to the subsequent media and initial false UN reporting I do understand what happened to you. How a person of such stature and integrity could become associated with such a faulted report.
Look Judge Goldstone at your report on the Al Fakhura event on January 5-6th 2009 (paragraphs 651-688). You do report how Israel was accused for directly bombing the UNRWA school. It took 2 weeks to withdraw from this accusation but you, honored Judge, went back to get your testimony only from the same people who spread the blood libel of bombing the school. Moreover when analyzing the scene you claim that you could not verify the numbers of 24 dead and 40 wounded but these numbers are not considered exaggerated. Finally in the Factual findings part you already determine that 24 people were killed and 40 injured!

Did you by any chance try to validate any of these invented and inciting details? Did you look at the Al Jazeera or BBC reports from the same very date of the event? Did you try to validate your “factual findings” conclusions by getting at least Emergency Room charts on the people admitted to their trauma department on this very day? Did you go over the I.D.’s of the “dead” people and the place or cemetery where they were supposedly buried?

Well you didn’t!

In all the scene of “40 dead and 40 wounded” filmed by Al Jazeera and other channels reporters and screened at the same day all over the world you could not see bodies or blood spots in the streets beside two or three casualties and one footage of a single wall damaged by a bomb. As a physician who was at terrible suicide events with smaller number of casualties I can testify how it looks like for hours following the event….The media documentation of the Al Fakhura event does not verify and definitely does not go along with the fantasy and lies of your witnesses.

As a judge I must be sure that you did not mean to hurt Israel, I try to believe that you came to Gaza without prejudice…but a judge is expected to look at least for some evidence and verification (media, ER registration, burial places  etc….) of the testimonies and not accept impossible “facts”. You have let yourself to be misled by fabrications made by either terrorists or even doctors such as Dr. Abu Rali from Jenin.

I and my colleagues in Israel are proud of the medical service that is given equally to every human being regardless of his origin; we are also proud to belong to a nation that has the imprint of having higher moral standards than others.

The price that we pay for this status is very high. The Palestinians and other Muslims around the world, either common people or even respected doctors, use straight lies as part of the war against us. The Western world media criticizes us and tries to find where we were not behaving up to the extremely high moral standards that we made ourselves.

I call on you Judge Goldstone take this Al Fakhura event, look at the media coverage from the very same date…see the events in the context…try to live one day with the responsibility for the existence of this small nation of 6 million Jews threatened constantly by 300 million Muslims. I call on you to try and not draw conclusions from such lies and misleading witnesses even if they come from so-called professionals. In the modern world propaganda and lies are definitely a part of the war and as a judge you should not serve as a tool for augmenting hatred and conflicts.

We look for peace , we love peace and we do try our very best to fight for our right to exist in the highest possible moral standards even at the cost of our lives.

David Zangen M.D.

3:20PM: Regarding the frightened palestinian boy in one of Reuter’s “Pictures of the decade” (see last update), here he is right before he wet his pants:

Funny how this picture did not make the cut.

1:40PM: Reuters seems to be running a Picture of the Decade series. And as usual, they are finding it hard to hide their anti-Israel bias.

Two pictures, two boys. One palestinian and one Israeli. The former portrayed as terrified, the latter as angry and aggressive.

REUTERS PICTURES OF THE DECADE. A young Palestinian protestor is arrested by Israeli border police in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 6, 2001 after clashes broke out following Friday’s Muslim prayers. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein (JERUSALEM)

REUTERS PICTURES OF THE DECADE. An angry Jewish settler boy looks out from inside a synagogue as Israeli policemen and solider storm the Neve Dekalim settlement in the Gush Katif, August 18, 2005. Israeli troops stormed two Gaza Strip synagogues and dragged out screaming settlers and supporters on Thursday in assaults on the last bastions of resistance to a pullout from the occupied territory. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj (GAZA)

I am sure there are many photos of young Israeli boys looking terrified and worried, and I am already aware of the thousands of photos of palestinian boys looking aggressive and angry (especially while shooting guns, or throwing rocks and petrol bombs). Yet somehow the “Pictures of the Decade” series features photos supporting the “Israelis as aggressors, palestinians as victims” narrative.

8:50AM: This should tell you everything you need to know about J Street.

J Street’s university arm has dropped the “pro-Israel” part of the left-wing US lobby’s “pro-Israel, pro-peace” slogan to avoid alienating students.

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“We don’t want to isolate people because they don’t feel quite so comfortable with ‘pro-Israel,’ so we say ‘pro-peace,’” said American University junior Lauren Barr of the “J Street U” slogan, “but behind that is ‘pro-Israel.’”

Barr, secretary of the J Street U student board that decided the slogan’s terminology, explained that on campus, “people feel alienated when the conversation revolves around a connection to Israel only, because people feel connected to Palestine, people feel connected to social justice, people feel connected to the Middle East.”

She noted that the individual student chapters would be free to add “pro-Israel,” “pro-Israel, pro-Palestine,” or other wording that they felt would be effective on this issue, since “it’s up to the individuals on campus to know their audience.”

8:40AM: US “”allies”, the Saudis: Saudi University Professor Salman Al-Abdali explains the difference between suicide bombings in Israel and Saudi Arabia.

6:02AM: Solomon has more on the J Street conference and the Silverstein panel blogger ejection, including this gem.

It gets better. Stavis tells me that Mr. Silverstein was sitting in front of him at another (formal) J Street panel. Hillel approached Mr. Silverstein and asked him if he would like to sit down and discuss matters calmly…Whereupon RS motored immediately to a security person and insisted that Mr. Stavis was a fraud, that he wasn’t who he said he was (cuckoo, cuckoo…who exactly does he think Stavis is?)…the guard asked for Stavis’ conference badge and ID. Everything checked out. So of course our Mr. Stavis insisted he do the same for Silverstein.

Solomon also links to this article, which describes how Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was mocked at the conference.

Blumenthal went on to trash Elie Wiesel for speaking this past weekend at the Christians United for Israel conference in San Antonio. After mocking Pastor John Hagee, the founder of CUFI, Blumenthal said “the last time Elie Wiesel trusted someone so much it was Bernie Madoff.” Wiesel admitted earlier this year that he lost “everything” he had in Madoff’s ponzi scheme. The audience erupted with laughter at Blumenthal’s tasteless joke.

Peace lovers, huh?

5:52AM: In their latest report, Amnesty International has accused Israel of “denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies” which “unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.”

NGO Monitor has identified some major issues with the report, not least the timing of its release.

NGO Monitor notes that Amnesty International’s 112 page report titled “Troubled Waters – Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water”, is timed to strengthen the Israel boycott campaign, coinciding with a US speaking tour linking the water issue and Israeli ‘apartheid’.  The report itself is a political document which promotes an imaginary and highly distorted version of international law.  In addition, it omits critical context to the conflict in order to promote the Palestinian narrative, thereby continuing the NGO-led political warfare against Israel.

• This report is the latest episode in Amnesty’s campaign against Israel.  Amnesty International headquarters issued over twenty statements overwhelmingly critical of Israel during and in the aftermath of the Gaza conflict.
• Amnesty’s report provides legitimacy for a speaking tour beginning November 1 at universities in the US organized by the Palestinian Cultural Academic Boycott of Israel (PCABI) movement entitled, “Israel’s Control of Water as a Tool of Apartheid and means of Ethnic Cleansing.”  The main speaker, Omar Barghouti, is a leader of the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
• Amnesty’s report ignores evidence that not only does Israel provide West Bank Palestinians with more water than required under the Oslo framework, but that Palestinian water thieves are responsible for stealing up to 50% of supplies in some areas.
• Amnesty claims that levels of Palestinian water consumption (60-70 liters per person per day), are “the lowest in the region.” Amnesty omits easily available evidence that this is a similar level, if not better than major regional cities such as Amman, Tunis and Algiers.
• The report is based on the claim that Israel is violating Palestinian human rights, because the Oslo framework, on which current water arrangements are based, “codified inequality in access to water resources”.  This approach patronizingly assumes that the Palestinian leadership is incapable of negotiating agreements, and creates the spectre of future agreements that will be abrogated on similar ground.
• The report invents standards of international law, by erroneously claiming (including on the front cover) that Israel has an “obligation to respect, protect and fulfill the right to water” based on the International Covenant of Economic, Cultural & Social Rights (ICESCR).  Amnesty falsely implies that the ICESCR demands a right to water when no such right is even mentioned in the treaty. In fact, the legislative history of the ICESCR indicates that the State parties deliberately omitted water issues.

Quite frankly, this is a real possibility, given Hizbullah’s love of the stage. Plus they seem to have had trouble getting their story straight.

Lebanese news outlets reported earlier Sunday that espionage devices placed by the IDF were located and destroyed in an explosion in south Lebanon on Saturday.

The devices were reportedly discovered near a town close to the Israel-Lebanon border, and destroyed in a midnight blast, apparently by the Lebanon-based militant Hezbollah organization.

There were also reports, however, that the Lebanese army blew up the device, as well as claims that the IDF was behind the blast.

The Hezbollah-affilited Al-Manar reported that a drone destroyed the device. The paper said that when Hezbollah operatives arrived near the site, they found another device.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

8:45PM: And now over to Tawil Fadiha, the Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage (hat tip: Jawa Report).

7:38PM: What took them so long?

After accusing the United States and Britain of involvement in the suicide attack that took place in south Iran on Sunday, the Islamic Republic on Monday claimed that Israel was also involved in the terror attack.

Revolutionary Guard chief Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari said Monday that the Sunni rebel group, known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, is at work to disrupt security in Iran and he vowed to deliver a “crushing” response.

“New evidence has been obtained proving the link between yesterday’s terrorist attack and the US, British and Pakistani intelligence services,” state TV quoted Jafari as saying. “Evidence shows that US, British and Pakistani intelligence supported the group.”

He said the attack was “undoubtedly” planned and ordered by the three nation’s intelligence services and that a delegation would soon travel to Pakistan to present evidence.

When asked how those responsible for the attack would be punished, Jafari said, “The American and Israeli intelligence agencies are behind this. We must pay them back in order to punish them, and, God willing, we hope to be able to do so.”

7:30PM: As expressed in his Jerusalem Post op-ed, Richard Goldstone sees his Jewishness as a motivating factor for accepting the task to head the commission which ultimately produced his report damning Israel. At the same time, he seems clueless to the possibility that others likely also saw his Jewishness as a motivating factor to offer him this role in the first place.

Now, opponents of Israel are predictably using the fact of Goldstone’s Jewishness to argue that the report must be accurate and objective.

Case in point: George Galloway.

5:00PM: Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte on the Goldstone report.

That’s what you get when you adopt a policy of neutrality instead of getting behind the forces of good: the inability to distinguish between right and wrong (hat tip: Media Backspin).

1:18PM: Here’s some Goldstone reading for your pleasure:

• Richard Landes with yet another glorious fisking, this time of Goldstone’s JPost op-ed.
• John Bolton argues that joining the UN Human Rights Council was a mistake Obama should correct.
• An op-ed in The Australian positing the Goldstone report has damaged the UN’s credibility (now that’s an oxymoron)

9:18AM: Here is the half-time entertainment at yesterday’s Maccabi Tel Aviv-New York Knicks exhibition game at Madison Square Garden.

A different sort of cheerleading, to be sure.

6:10AM: According to Ha’aretz, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero “We solved the matter of the settlements with the Americans..I cannot say more than that. If you are interested in hearing more details, ask in Washington.”

I’m not sure what Netanyahu meant, but given our leaders’ track record in giving in to international pressure, I am guessing it is not a good thing.

Meanwhile, the Ha’aretz report contains this curious (read: disturbing) paragraph:

Zapatero told Netanyahu of his visit to the White House two days before his arrival in Jerusalem. He said he was obsessed with Obama, and that there will never be another chance where a man who professes values such as his will be president, and everyone must help him realize his vision.

6:00AM: Richard Goldstone seems to be feeling the pressure, as he has written the following op-ed in the Jerusalem Post to respond to the attacks on his fact-finding mission and report (my sources tell me he approached the Post and not vice versa).

Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors’ motives and those who approve it rely on its authors’ reputations.

Israeli government spokesmen and those who support them have attacked it in the harshest terms and, in particular my participation, in a most personal and hurtful way. The time has now come for more sober reflection on what the report means and appropriate Israeli reactions to it.

I begin with my own motivation, as a Jew who has supported Israel and its people all my life, for having agreed to head the Gaza mission. Over the past 20 years, I have investigated serious violations of international law in my own country, South Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and the alleged fraud and theft by governments and political leaders in a number of countries in connection with the United Nations Iraq Oil for Food program. In all of these, allegations reached the highest political echelons. In every instance, I spoke out strongly in favor of full investigations and, where appropriate, criminal prosecutions. I have spoken out over the years on behalf of the International Bar Association against human rights violations in many countries, including Sri Lanka, China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Pakistan.

I would have been acting against those principles and my own convictions and conscience if I had refused a request from the United Nations to investigate serious allegations of war crimes against both Israel and Hamas in the context of Operation Cast Lead.

AS A Jew, I felt a greater and not a lesser obligation to do so. It is well documented that as a condition of my participation I insisted upon and received an evenhanded mandate to investigate all sides and that is what we sought to do.

I sincerely believed that because of my own record and the terms of the mission’s mandate we would receive the cooperation of the Israeli government. Its refusal to cooperate was a grave error. My plea for cooperation was repeated before and during the investigation and it sits, plain as day, in the appendices of the Gaza report for those who actually bother to read it. Our mission obviously could only consider and report on what it saw, heard and read. If the government of Israel failed to bring facts and analyses to our attention, we cannot fairly be blamed for the consequences. Those who feel that our report failed to give adequate attention to specific incidents or issues should be asking the Israeli government why it failed to argue its cause.

Israel missed a golden opportunity to actually have a fair hearing from a UN-sponsored inquiry. Of course, I was aware of and have frequently spoken out against the unfair and exceptional treatment of Israel by the UN and especially by the Human Rights Council.

I did so again last week. Israel could have seized the opportunity provided by the even-handed mandate of our mission and used it as a precedent for a new direction by the United Nations in the Middle East. Instead, we were shut out.

As I stated in response to a recent letter from the mayor of Sderot, I believed strongly that our mission should have been allowed to visit Sderot and other parts of southern Israel that have been at the receiving end of unlawful attacks by many thousands of rockets and mortars fired at civilian targets by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. We were prevented from doing so by, what I believe, was a misguided decision by the Israeli government.

In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands, industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are not military targets. I have not heard or read any government justification for this destruction.

OF COURSE the children of Sderot and the children of Gaza have the same rights to protection under international law and that is why, notwithstanding the decision of the government of Israel, we took whatever steps were open to us to obtain information from victims and experts in southern Israel about the effects on their lives of sustained rocket and mortar attacks over a period of years. It was on the strength of those investigations that we held those attacks to constitute serious war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The refusal of cooperation by the government of Israel did not prevent us from reacting positively to a request from Gilad Schalit’s father to speak personally to our mission at its public session in Geneva. No one who heard his evidence could fail to have been moved by the unspeakable pain of a parent whose young son was being held for over three years in unlawful circumstances without any contact with the outside world and not even allowed visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The mission called for his release.

Israel and its courts have always recognized that they are bound by norms of international law that it has formally ratified or that have become binding as customary international law upon all nations. The fact that the United Nations and too many members of the international community have unfairly singled out Israel for condemnation and failed to investigate horrible human rights violations in other countries cannot make Israel immune from the very standards it has accepted as binding upon it.

Israel has a strong history of investigating allegations made against its own officials reaching to the highest levels of government: the inquiries into the Yom Kippur War, Sabra and Shatila, Bus 300 and the Second Lebanon War.

Israel has an internationally renowned and respected judiciary that should be envy of many other countries in the region. It has the means and ability to investigate itself. Has it the will?

International lawyer Alan Baker has responded here.

Excerpt:

While indeed the mission heard, saw and was persuaded by the very one-sided picture elaborately staged by Hamas in Gaza, including hand-picked witness testimony and internationally televised and web-circulated public hearings, Goldstone’s complaint that they were not provided with input from the Israeli side is simply untrue to the point of being ridiculous. Several prominent Israeli and other international lawyers (including myself) and Jewish organizations forwarded to the mission and to Goldstone personally, vast amounts of information, including the official papers issued by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, legal opinions, facts and media cuttings regarding the Hamas rocket barrages, violations, ambulance hijackings and the like.

I appeared before the mission in Geneva, together with a senior delegation of Magen David Adom (MDA), in an attempt to persuade it of the seriousness of the terrorization of Israel’s southern population by the Hamas rockets, and the psychological effect on the public. The delegation detailed the wide-ranging activities by MDA in treating those affected – including Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. Others, including representatives of Israeli families harmed by Hamas, appeared before the mission.

But obviously all this was to no avail, since Goldstone and his team chose, for whatever reason, to ignore this extensive information in favor of a Hamas-organized production and some very selective Israeli and foreign non-governmental organizations known for their criticism of Israel.

Read the entire response, and then go to this site for an extensive treatment of the Goldstone report, which renders Goldstone’s assertion that “there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance” as laughable.

5:38AM: The UN have sprung into action regarding the alleged detonation of the alleged Israeli spy devices in Lebanon, with UNIFIL releasing the following statement:

“Preliminary indications are that these explosions were caused by explosive charges contained in unattended underground sensors which were placed in this area by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) apparently during the 2006 war,” UNIFIL said in a statement.

Meanwhile, I don’t recall seeing any UNIFIL statement on last week’s explosion at the Hizbullah official’s home, for which there exists strong “preliminary indications” that Hizbullah violated UN resolution 1701.

Those of us who have constructed Understanding the Goldstone Report, have been following the claims under contention since the events themselves almost a year ago, and have read the report in detail.  We offer a wide range of analysis, from careful examination of specific incidents and controversies to broader legal and conceptual issues.  In so doing, we have come to the following conclusions:

• The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.
• The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.
• The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.
• At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.
• The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.
• The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.
• The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

In all our analyses and conclusions, we have adhered to principles of empirical evidence and consistent reasoning.  Since the skeptical reader might well accuse us of making up our mind in advance, we emphasize that one should not agree or disagree with us because of how one feels about Israel or the Palestinians, but because of the evidence. We invite readers to examine our arguments without prejudice, make up their own minds and, where they see problems, challenge our arguments. Sweeping and inflammatory rhetoric not welcome.

I have also played a behind-the-scenes role with this website, although admittedly not as much as I would like due to time constraints.

I encourage anyone genuinely wanting to understand the Goldstone report to visit the site and evaluate the evidence and analyses presented.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:45PM: There have been reports that Hizbullah terrorist Abdel Nasser Issa, his son, and three others have been killed in a blast in Issa’s home in southern Lebanon.

For their part, Hizbullah has denied anyone was killed, or that the house was being used as an arms depot, instead claiming the munitions that caused the blast were IDF leftovers from the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

7:35PM: I am guessing this is the closest the palestinians will ever come to cloning.

Hamas supporters, playing the role of judges (R) and of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, hold a mock trial for Abbas in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip October 12, 2009, following his decision to postpone action on a U.N. report that criticized Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Abbas on Sunday defended his decision to back the deferral of a vote on a U.N. war crimes report, saying he wanted to secure broad support for the document.

It is good to see that Hamas and their supporters can still find time from their busy schedules helping the “starving” people of Gaza to stage a lame propaganda event such as this.

Naqba Dwarf adds:

No-one asked me to take part in this.

I could have played the part of the jailer, or Mahmoud’s cellmate.

Screw ‘em!

1:50PM: According to Ma’an News, an Egyptian News site has reported the reason for the PA’s decision to defer submitting the Goldstone Report on time was Qatar.

Qatar’s representative to the UN Human Rights Council Abdullah Dosari was the one who pressured Palestian Ambassador Ibrahim Khreisha to defer submitting the Goldstone report on time, according to an Egyptian news site.

The Cairo-based Rosonline reported on Sunday that the Palestinian Authority came under pressure after it was accused of complicity in deferring the report, and thus requested an exceptional emergency session of the Human Rights Council to discuss it.

The PA would have needed support from 16 of 47 member countries.

However, according to the Egyptian website, Qatar surprised the Palestinians with its stance, which was believed to have stemmed from increasingly good relations between Qatar and Israel. Despite that, the website alleges, Qatar has been leading a campaign against the PA on Al-Jazeera TV, which is based in Qatar, accusing the PA of treason for deferring the Goldstone report.

In the same regard, the PA minister of economy, Bassem Khoury, was interviewed by Al-Jazeera two days ago, and during the interview, he accused Qatar of complicity to defer the report “because it contains criminalization of Qatar’s friends, Hamas and Israel.”

When asked about the validity of the allegations that Israel stipulated allowing a new Palestinian mobile company to deferring the Goldstone report, Khoury said 51 percent of the company was owned by a cousin and son of the Qatari emir.

He asserted that the ball was in Qatar’s court on Goldstone, and said that if they were really against deferring the report, they could simply demand it be considered since Qatar is a permanent member of the Human Rights Council.

So whichis it? Qatar’s business interests in a mobile phone company or increasingly good relations between Qatar and Israel? And how could a country be simultaneously good friends with Hamas and Israel?

12:40PM: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has implored the Arab world to ignore lies that Israel is planning to dig under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

“There is an extreme minority that has spread lies according to which Israel is planning to conduct excavations beneath the Temple Mount,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said regarding the recent unrest in east Jerusalem.

“I want to make it clear that these are lies, and I call on the majority of Arabs in Israel not to believe these lies,” said the PM at the onset of Monday’s cabinet meeting, “The vast majority of Israel’s Arabs are not being dragged in by these provocations.

“I want to tell the Arab citizens of Israel – those who want to lead normal lives – that you are a part of the State of Israel. The government is working to make certain that you (Arab sector) enjoy full equality in every field, be it education, economy, employment or infrastructure,” he said.

In response, a spokesman for the Islamic Movement has taken the “No, he’s a big fat liar” approach (a favorite amongst school children).

Islamic Movement spokesman Attorney Zahi Nujidat said in response to Netanyahu’s statements denying that Israel is digging beneath the Temple Mount: “Netanyahu’s statements amuse us. We are the ones saying – don’t believe Bibi’s lies.”

6:05AM: In the wake of Turkey’s decision to bar Israel  from an air force drill, leading to the cancelation of the entire event, Israeli officials called an emergency meeting at the Foreign Ministry to discuss the crisis between the two countries.

A senior source at the ministry told Haaretz about concerns that strategic ties with Turkey are in jeopardy after Operation Lead Cast in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Foreign Ministry sources confirmed that the meeting had taken place following instructions by ministry director general Yossi Gal, but they declined to give details.

Officials are debating the depth of the crisis. One view holds that “strategic ties” has become a unilateral description of the situation and that Turkey’s government under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not interested in such links.

“It may be that the reality has changed and the strategic ties that we thought existed have simply ended,” said a senior Israeli official. “Maybe we need to be the ones who initiate renewed thinking regarding our ties and must adopt response measures.”

Supporters of this approach point out that of the countries with diplomatic ties with Israel, Turkey might be the most hostile.

But other officials argue that the situation can be saved. “There is a serious crisis and we need to address it quickly,” said a senior official who has experience with the Turkish file.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon is clearly of the latter opinion.

“Our interest is not to reach a point of friction or crisis with Turkey. We consider Turkey an important strategic partner of Israel’s and an anchor of stability,” Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon said Sunday night, in hopes of calming the storm that followed Turkey’s decision to bar Israel  from an air force drill, leading to the cancelation of the entire event.

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Ayalon hinted that the Turks also have something to lose from the move: “The commitment to strategic partnership is two-sided. It is important for both sides to maintain the meaningful strategic bond in Israel’s ties with the Turkish government, which has proven to be moderate in the past.”

I doubt Turkey has reciprocal feelings about the value of its strategic relationship with Israel. After all, they barred Israel from the drill in the first place.

Perhaps they’ll have second thoughts once Iran achieves its nuclear capability goals.

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Israeli President Shimon Peres gave plenty of people a big scare last night when he collapsed at an event.

Peres was standing up and replying to questions by the audience at a Rabin Center function when he collapsed. The president’s personal paramedic on behalf of the national bodyguard unit was present at the scene and administered initial treatment.

According to initial reports, Peres was able to recover and stood up within several minutes. He is said to have left the stage on his feet and was talking to those around him. Magen David Adom ambulance teams rushed to the scene and treated Peres at Dalia Rabin’s room at the site.

The president’s close associates said that he fainted because of a drop in his blood pressure. The sources said that after regaining consciousness, the president yelled at medical teams and his aides, telling them “I want to return to the Presidential Residence, I’m fine.”

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

9:15AM: 95 aid trucks are scheduled to cross into Gaza today.

9:00AM: A UNIFIL spokesman blamed “radicals from Palestinian refugee camps” in southern Lebanon for firing the two Katyusha rockets into Israel on Friday. September 11.

8:58AM: Anne Bayefsky looks at the UN’s treatment of Israel.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon – Indian and Spanish UNIFIL officers proposed building an iron fence around the Baathaeel water pool to prevent cows from Israel from wondering into the area, allowing Lebanese shepherds full access to the pool.

Because everyone knows the pressing issue for UNIFIL to deal with is the disturbance caused by those darn Zionist Death Cows.^TM

A Palestinian sprays gasoline on an Israeli flag using his mouth, during a protest demanding an end to a blockade on the Gaza Strip by Israel, in Ain el- Hilweh refugee camp near the port city of Sidon, southern Lebanon November 29, 2008.