Meanwhile, a terrorist-swap deal for Gilad Shalit is reportedly nearing completion, with Hamas handing over to Israel a new prisoner list with 70 new names aimed at replacing 70 to which Israel strongly objects.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

4:00PM: PA “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas is advocating “resistance”:

In an interview to the British Broadcasting Corporation in Arabic, the Palestinian leader implied that his people may adopt a new type of struggle against the occupation.

“Those who have to resist are the people, and there are different types of resistance, like in (West Bank villages of) Bilin and Naalin, where people are injured every day,” he said.

In case you think he is preaching non-violence, be aware that in these places, the “protesters” are throwing rocks and other projectiles.

Even more worrying (but hardly surprising to anyone following this blog and my contention that Abbas and Fatah are just terrorists in suits):

He went on to point a finger at the Hamas organization. “Hamas talk about the importance of resistance, but why aren’t they resisting now. There is a truce between them and Israel, and since the war in Gaza Hamas has not carried out any act of resistance.”

And I assure you here, he is not talking “just” about throwing rocks and other projectiles.

3:45PM: Some recent new immigrants to Israel….from China and India.

1:18PM: Fatah has reportedly made a strategic decision to declare a third intifada against Israel, thus implementing a decision made during its recent sixth convention.

This intifada is supposedly to be in the form of “unarmed resistance”, in order to garner more sympathy for their cause, as well as to embarrass the Israeli government (not because murder is immoral).

1:04PM: While Israelis endeavor to repair bones, palestinians endeavor to break them.

6:16AM: Photo of the day:

This Nov. 16, 2009 photo shows Palestinian teacher Gada Aby Ward teaching in the Omar Ben al-Khattab School. Twenty years after the U.N. adopted a treaty guaranteeing children’s rights, fewer youngsters are dying and more are going to school, but an estimated 1 billion children still lack services essential to their survival and development, UNICEF said Thursday.
(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Oh, I get it. A palestinian teaching about the human heart, while meanwhile those bad heartless Israelis are making them suffer. How symbolic.

I guess there’s a chance the AP photographer just happened to be in the classroom while the palestinian teacher was teaching about the human heart of all things, but there just seems to be too many coincidences when it comes to foreign press photographs.

And Syrian dorktator Bashar Assad also says he supports negotiations.

With a little bit of terrorism on the side.

“The essence of peace is not just negotiations but rather, resistance as well,” state-run SANA news agency quoted Assad as saying.

Speaking at a conference of Arab political parties in Damascus, Assad said that by supporting “resistance” he also supports the peace process.

Armed fighting and peace talks are parts of the same “axis” to recover legitimate Palestinian rights, the Syrian leader said.

Sounds like someone we should deal with!

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

7:24PM: Photo of the day

Omm Ahmed, right, a woman militant in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), poses for a portrait in a house of a fellow fighter, in the Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009. Founded in 1969 the DFLP is a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist, secular political and military organization. Approximately 40 women militants for the DFLP started training 6 months ago as a response to Israel’s January offensive. They range in age from 17 to 53 and many are married with children. (AP Photo/ Tara Todras-Whitehill)

The caption writer seems to have omitted to mention the elephant in the room, which is actually more like a child.

Then again, as we saw a few days ago, Ms Todras-Whitehill has a tendency to leave out relevant details.

4:52PM: Here’s the interesting story of an Israeli-Russian boxer out to kick butt.

And become a Rabbi.

Bonus: His surname is Foreman.

1:20PM: It is not every day that I agree with Shimon Peres about something. But today I do.

Richard Goldstone, who authored the United Nations report accusing Israel of perpetrating war crimes in its Gaza offensive earlier the year, is a man devoid of any real sense of justice and is intent on harming Israel, President Shimon Peres told Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during their meeting in Brasilia on Wednesday.

“Goldstone is a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence,” Peres told his Brazilian counterpart, adding that the South African jurist “was on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.”

Referring to Goldstone’s recommendation to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, Peres said, “If anyone should be investigated, it should be him.”

5:46AM: University lectures on trains! Is there anything those crafty Jews haven’t thought of?

12:05AM: Still on the subject of Syria, look who’s a fan.

Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie is planning to adopt a child from Syria, OK! magazine reported Wednesday.

The actress, who was recently in Syria with partner Brad Pitt to visit Iraqi refugees, has reportedly started the adoption process to bring home a baby girl.

—-

“It is clear that the Syrian people, no matter the challenges or difficulties they may face, have always shown generous hospitality to people in need,” the magazine quoted Jolie as telling local news agency ChamPress during her October trip.

I agree that Syria has shown generous hospitality to people in need, if by “people in need” Jolie means terrorist organizations.

(I wonder if this news is going to ruin the recent reconciliation with her father).

Clue: It involves a place on his anatomy where the sun don’t shine.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:30PM: Media bias of the day:

In this picture taken Saturday, Nov. 7, 2009, a domestic cat – an unlikely edition to an aspiring zoo, is seen climbing its cage at the Marah Land Zoo in eastern Gaza City. There’s little to do for entertainment for Gaza’s 1.4 million residents because of a two-year Israeli and Egyptian blockade, and the territory’s zoos became a popular form of past time. In 2008 the Marah Zoo was a fully functioning zoo, but during Israel’s January offensive, 90 percent of the animals died. Due to restrictions of the Israeli and Egyptian blockade – new animals can not be obtained – unless they are transported through the tunnels. As a result, there are not as large a variety of animals as before, but Gazans still flock to the zoo, due to the lack of sources of entertainment in the Gaza Strip.
(AP Photo/ Tara Todras-Whitehill)

Despite this Wikipedia entry of a caption, Ms Todras-Whitehill did not see it fit to mention another important aspect of the zoo, which incidentally could also account for some of the animals dying during Operation Cast Lead. But then again, given the lengths she seems to have gone to in order to take a picture of a cat and turn it into a piece of anti-Israel propaganda, I’m not surprised.

9:56PM: Israeli President Shimon Peres has offered Brazil ‘100 years of friendship.’

Which means he’ll probably still be alive when that time period runs out.

7:48PM: Reasons to hate the French #869: Their Foreign Minister.

France fears that Israel no longer desires a Middle East peace deal, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday, adding that Paris remained deeply opposed to settlement building in the West Bank.

—-

Speaking on France Inter radio, Kouchner made clear he was not expecting any swift break through in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

“What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace,” Kouchner said.

“It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it,” he added.

Why do you think that is, Douchner?

I posit that it is due to Israelis waking up to the fact that the more we appease palestinian terrorism, the further away from peace we move.

7:40PM: Music interlude, dedicated to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

5:18PM: Dang! We’ve lost our number one ranking in the Al Qaeda Enemy charts to the Shi’ites who have reached number one with a bullet.

The leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Penninsula warned Tuesday that Shi’ite Muslims, particularly Iran, posed more danger to the world than either Jews or Christians.

“They [Shiites] are being driven by a greed to take over Muslim countries and they are full of a wish to annihilate Sunnis,” Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Rashid said in an audio recording carried by the U.S. monitoring group SITE Intelligence.

“Their threat to Islam and its people is much bigger than that from Jews and Christians,” he added.

3:48PM: Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in an interview with Danish TV.

Note: Don’t panic when you hear the interviewer at the beginning sounding like the Swedish chef. The interview itself is in English.

8:52AM: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama have met for almost two hours, followed by a standard photo and press conference only a White House statement that “The president reaffirmed our strong commitment to Israel’s security, and discussed security cooperation on a range of issues.”

Hmmm.

5:48AM: Of buses and barriers:

A Palestinian child is reflected on the glass of a bus as it drives past a section of Israel’s controversial separation barrier in al-Ram between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem.(AFP/Daniel Bar-On)

While on the subject of the barrier and buses, look here for a reminder of why the barrier exists.

Meanwhile.. France and Britain to the rescue?!

A joint French-British UN initiative would call on Israel and the Palestinians to hold immediate, independent investigations into war crimes allegations stemming from the war in Gaza, as part of a bid to send the Goldstone report back to Geneva and out of the hands of the Security Council or the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

The proposal comes before the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled Wednesday to deliberate on the Goldstone report on the war in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

A source at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the details of the initiative during a telephone conversation.

Netanyahu asked the French President to take action among European Union partners in an effort to form collective opposition to any resolution at the UN on the Goldstone report.

The initiative is a list of “red lines” which was adopted by the 27 members of the European Union. Its main points:

1. A resolution brought for the approval of the General Assembly will not include operational steps, like taking the matter to the Security Council or the International Court of Justice.

2. The resolution would call on Israel and the Palestinians to embark on an independent investigation into the events of Operation Cast Lead, and the allegations of war crimes.

3. The handling of the Goldstone report will return to the Human Rights Council, the UN body in Geneva. The parties will have to report to the council on the findings of their investigations in a few months.

According to the Foreign Ministry source, the document was delivered yesterday by the British and French permanent representatives at the UN to the Palestinian Authority delegation at the international body, as well as the representatives of Arab states, and the members of the Security Council.

Arab representatives at the UN are expected to complete Tuesday the first draft of a resolution that will be brought to the General Assembly for a vote.

The French and British has emphasized in their exchanges with the Arab representatives that if the “red lines” are not part of the resolution being prepared, the European Union will abstain, and may even vote against it – and expects that much of the international community will too.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

6:12PM: Here is the latest example of a PA official denying the Jews’ history in the Land of Israel

For a comprehensive treatment of this issue, see here.

6:00PM: An interesting article on Israeli innovation.

Americans think of war or religion when they think of Israel. But Israel is also an unusual high- tech success story.

A survey last May of non-American companies on the Nasdaq counted three Korean companies, five Irish businesses, five from the U.K. and six from Japan. Israel had 64.

In 2008, Israel drew more than twice the venture capital per citizen than the United States. It drew 30 times as much VC cash as continental Europe, and 350 times more than India.

There are some pretty familiar ethnic explanations for the Israeli tech miracle. Jews are supposed to be smart. Jews from overseas will fund Israeli companies regardless of quality. And so on.

But those explanations don’t suffice, as Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in “Start Up Nation.” (Senor is my colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations). The Israeli record of innovation has less to do with tribe and more with policy. The Israeli military has also played a surprising role in the process.

The story starts with the old Israel, its suspicion of capitalism and its counterproductive affection for trade unions and communal farming. A decade and a half ago the Israeli government established a tech fund that it dubbed Yozma. Yozma’s goal was to lure venture capital to join it in creating Israeli projects. The very signal that Yozma’s creation sent changed Israeli attitudes about business dramatically. One executive paraphrased John Lennon on Elvis to describe the shift. “Before Yozma, there was nothing.”

Education, Women

But other forces contributed. The high level of education for both men and women meant new companies had someone to hire. During his tenure as finance minister earlier this decade, Benjamin Netanyahu pulled his own Margaret Thatcher by cutting taxes and government jobs and privatizing El Al, the national airline, and the Bezeq, the state-owned telecom company. Netanyahu phased out high-return government bonds, thereby forcing domestic capital to find an alternate place to invest. Financial reforms made the marketplace relatively transparent.

The authors identify several less-intuitive factors. One is Israeli tolerance for failure — bankruptcy isn’t the end of a career. Another is immigration. Sure, the immigrants from the former Soviet Union had degrees, but what mattered as much was the immigrant personality, that of the self-selected risk-taker willing to start over, and therefore, also “start up.” It also helped that academic and business doors were open to the immigrants.

Soldiers of Commerce

Yet the secret weapon of Israeli innovation is the Israeli military. The Israeli draft doesn’t merely ask soldiers to serve for two years; they serve for much of their adulthood, returning each year. This sounds like a career disrupter. But the Israel Defense Forces’ elite units end up functioning as the sort of fruitful techno clusters that Michael Porter of Harvard University identified as so hospitable to innovation.

The advantage of being associated with an Israeli elite unit — two famous names are Talpiot and 8200 — is like the advantage of going to Harvard Business School, only greater, says Israeli Tal Keinan.

Keinan is an Israeli investor and a 2001 graduate of Harvard Business School, so he’s able to put in American terms what the Israeli network does. He points out than a Harvard Business School reunion happens only every few years, and it is among people who shared only spreadsheets, not tents or rifles. Says Keinan of the IDF bond: “Imagine a reunion every year, and that it lasts two to four weeks.” Israelis are that much closer and more likely to help each other on projects.

Democratic Authority

Beyond the advantage of networking are a flatter hierarchy and the democratic habits of the Israeli military. The challenges of war on the house-to-house level have forced the Israeli military to hand authority down the chain. The skills even junior officers garner get them civilian jobs from people who themselves have served, and therefore know how to read a military resume.

An example of the military-high tech dynamic came when the president of PayPal Inc., Scott Thompson, was on the hunt for software to detect fraud, something American innovators believe they produce better than anyone else.

As a favor to an investor, Thompson met with Shvat Shaked, a co-founder of the Israeli company Fraud Sciences. To Thompson’s astonishment, Fraud Sciences was able to predict the likelihood of fraud better than any mechanism PayPal or others had developed. While at 8200 tracking terrorists, Shaked and fellow 8200 veteran Saar Wilf had discovered a special characteristic of those doing something wrong — they try to hide their traces. The innocent, by contrast, don’t. They had used that knowledge to write the most competitive software.

Muslim Opportunity

Soon investors nurturing projects in Muslim-majority countries will have their own Yozma, the new Global Technology and Innovation Fund that President Obama is touting.

But the Israeli record suggests that such public-sector funds, while exciting, aren’t the most important reason for high-tech innovation. “Most of these countries,” Senor says of the Middle East, “are not behind because they lack money.”

Senor suggests that strengthening the talent pool by allowing women in the workforce, strengthening the right to question and vote out officials within the military or outside it, capitalizing on the value of immigration, and voting in a government that encourages experiments all matter more.

The second message here is for U.S. companies, which tend to value veteran officer candidates less than their Israeli counterparts. U.S. veterans’ time in combat may translate into an ability to make the difference at some of our own start-ups.

4:15PM: Picture of the day:

An unidentified Palestinian man holds a pipe as he tries to push back Jewish settlers into a house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem November 3, 2009, in this handout picture released by the International Solidarity Movement. Jews took over the Palestinian home in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday after an Israeli court ruled in their favour in a lengthy land-ownership dispute — a practice repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. REUTERS/International Solidarity Movement/Handout

Wow, Reuters are surely not even hiding their bias if they are publishing pictures from the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement.

Bonus bias points for the wording “An unidentified Palestinian man holds a pipe as he tries to push back Jewish settlers.” Yes, he certainly looks like he merely wants to push them back. As opposed to striking them with it, for example.

4:05PM: Sorry, had no time for updates so far today.

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.

An inflammatory anti-Israeli television show in Turkey on Tuesday did what Ankara’s cancellation of Israeli participation in an international military exercise last week failed to do – lead the foreign ministry to call in Turkey’s envoy to register a protest.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement Wednesday night announcing that the Turkish envoy would be summonsed to protest the “inciting” television program that appeared Tuesday evening on prime time on the popular state-run station TRT1.

In the first episode of a series on a Palestinian family living in the West Bank, IDF soldiers are variously seen killing a baby, a young girl, and lining up Palestinians to be shot before a firing squad.

Lieberman, currently holding meetings in Austria, issued a statement saying the airing of this show, on a government controlled station, represented the “gravest form of incitement.”

“This series, which has absolutely no connection to reality, and which presents IDF soldiers as murderers of innocent children, is not fit to be broadcast even in the most hostile countries, and certainly not in a country that has full diplomatic relations with Israel,” he said.

Since the start of the current diplomatic tension with Ankara, Israel has opted to take a very low profile, not wanting to exacerbate the situation with harsh public comments.

Tuesday’s airing of the television show – on top of the cancellation of Israel’s participation in the military exercise, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan harangue Monday accusing Israel of killing children with phosphorus bombs in Gaza, and the announcement of joint military manoeuvres with Syria – has now changed the situation.

To make matters even more complicated, Turkey – in the midst of all this tension – is not currently represented by an ambassador in Israel, as the previous ambassador left the country a few weeks ago, and his replacement has not yet arrived. Some diplomatic observers in Israel doubted this was a mere coincidence.

Here’s an example episode of the show. Although it’s in Turkish, you’ll still get the drift.

While this all seems to be happening at once, none of this should come as a surprise to those of you closely following the news this year. Remember this from January?

Of course, Turkey has still been more than willing to take our tourist dollars (at one point estimated at $300 million annually), and otherwise continue to trade with us where it benefits them.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:18PM: As I mentioned earlier today (1:35PM update), Hollywood actress Mia Farrow planned on visiting Sderot, which she did. But while her visit to Gaza prompted her to comment on the trauma suffered by palestinian children who “deserve better”, her visit to Sderot elicted a rather different response.

She also appealed to Gazan militants to stop launching rockets onto Israel.

“On a personal note, I would like to ask the people of Gaza not to give the international community ammunition to view you in a negative way … If [rocket] offenses could stop then there would be more support, though I understand the impasse. I’m a mother of 14 children, I know about conflict.”

In other words, the rocket attacks should stop not because they could kill or and traumatize people, but because they do not serve the palestinian’s interests.

10:30PM: The UK has seemingly grown a pair.

8:20PM: The Jerusalem Post really might want to invest in better picture-caption technology. Not to mention better punctuation.

[click image to enlarge]

Regarding the Hizbullah video (which does anything but refute the IDF video), since I posted my observations of the discrepancies between the videos, a reader has framed the issues as follows:

1. the hezbollah video was shot in broad daylight, whereas the IDF footage was taken at night, shortly after the blast occurred.

2. the position of the truck in the hezbollah version and the IDF video are not the same. in the hezbollah version the truck is backed up directly to the loading dock and there are two men shoving the debris into the back of the truck. in the IDF footage, the truck is parked a little bit away and there are at least 5 men carefully carrying the disputed object and loading it onto the truck.

3. In order for the Hezbollah video to disprove the IDF footage, their video has to be of the same event, which is impossible given points 1 and 2.

4. If it is not of the same event, and the Hezbollah video was shot the next day, then that does not disprove anything, since they could have shown up, and started clearing debris while filming themselves. This would also account for the presence of the Leb. Military and UNIFIL since Hezbollah gave them access to the explosion site several hours after the explosion, after they had removed various items.

5. The IDF video shot shortly after the explosion shows Hezbollah cordoning off the area, loading items which could be a missile onto a truck and then driving the trucks 4km away to a known Hezbollah arms depot in another village. After they were done clearing the house, they let UNIFIl and the Leb Military enter the area.

6. a couple of questions:
-If they were not clearing the area of weapons, why would they have sealed off the area?
-why would they have transfered the objects (whatever they may have been) to known weapons depot?
-and why would they have gone through the trouble of making this video when it is so blatantly proves nothing?

8:08PM: Hillel Neuer of UN Watch is liveblogging the UNHRC emergency session on the Goldstone Report on Twitter.

5:45PM: Today’s Worst-refutation-of-an-Israeli-claim award goes to Hizbullah*, who have claimed that the IDF footage showing Hizbullah terrorists closing down the area around the warehouse in which an explosion occurred, driving in two trucks and removing weaponry from the site, is a fabrication. They have then proceeded to release their own video showing what they claim to be the true events surrounding the site of the explosion – just a few guys loading a door on to a truck in front of the building.

The website of Hezbollah’s al-Manar television channel reported Thursday that the supposed missile in the IDF footage  of weapons being smuggled out of a Hezbollah activist’s residence where an explosion  occurred earlier this week is nothing more than a metal door being taken out to the garbage.

The site claimed that the door successfully threw off the sophisticated, top-of-the-line espionage equipment used by the Israel Air Force.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military released footage it said was shot by one of its drones in the area of the explosion. It said the grainy, black and white video shows Hezbollah members sealing off the explosion site, recovering rockets from the home and driving them away in two covered trucks.

Hezbollah slammed the video as a “fabrication” by Israel and broadcast its own video on Thursday depicting what it said were the true events around the blast.

The video, aired on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV and other local stations, shows two persons loading what appears to be a steel garage door onto a white covered pickup truck in front of the building where the blast allegedly occurred.

The video, which showed no actual aftermath of the blast, also shows two uniformed UN peacekeeper and a Lebanese soldier standing nearby as the pickup is being loaded. The UN mission did not immediately comment on the Hezbollah video.

“The random explosion that occurred in Tayr Filsay in south Lebanon that made a stir in some of the Arab and Western media has returned to its natural proportions despite efforts made by the Zionist enemy to exploit it in its repeated claims that Lebanon and Hezbollah are violating Resolution 1701,” wrote the al-Manar website.

The website posed the question: “What were the Israeli spy planes doing in the skies of Tayr Filsay when they shot the pictures that the occupation’s leadership was not ashamed of publishing in the media outlets, some of whom rushed to adopt the Israeli position and to exaggerate the event, speaking of casualties, wounded, and mass destruction?”

According to the website, “The inflation is fundamentally unfounded, the Israeli footage is fundamentally unfounded, and whoever builds on this lie is also unfounded.”

The website issued criticism that “without any investigation or pre-examinatino, the television stations were quick to broadcast news flashes on the screens of Lebanese, especially those who live in the south of the country, and to publish a shower of items about casualties, wounded, and destruction.”

According to the article, tensions were only high the night the story broke, but that in the morning it became clear that only a small explosion took place that caused only light damage and no casualties.

“In the Israeli footage that was released, two people are seen transferring something from the site of the location. According to the Israelis, this is a missile, but in the footage itself, one can clearly see that the people are moving quickly and carrying something light, which cannot logically be a missile,” wrote the website.

Of course, Hizbullah do not explain:

• Why they filmed the apparently mundane task of carrying a door to a truck
• Why their footage was taken during the day, while the IDF footage was taken at night
• Why the building in their footage shows no signs of damage
• Why the events in their video do not match those of the IDF’s aerial footage (such as different movements of people, different position of vehicles, absence of a car parked in front of the truck as shown in the Hizbullah video)

* The Turkish television producer comes in a close second

5:06PM: Believe it or not, Iranian and Israeli officials reportedly met and engaged in serious discussions on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament last month. And it took an Aussie to help make it happen.

Australia has helped accomplish the seemingly impossible – bringing Israel and Iran into the same room for high-level talks on nuclear weapons.

The meeting took place with little public fanfare in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, last month as part of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, an expert panel assembled by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to help rid the world of nuclear arms.

Coming only days after Tehran revealed it had secretly constructed a uranium enrichment plant, participants said there was a ”very robust exchange” between the Israeli and Iranian officials.

—-

While careful not to claim any breakthrough at the talks, sources have told The Age both sides engaged in ‘’serious discussions” and canvassed the idea of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

Contact between Israeli and Iranian officials is sporadic and only takes place at international forums – no formal meetings between the two countries have occurred since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Officials from Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and other regional countries also took part in the three-day meeting and it is believed the talks floated an idea for a further regional conference – possibly hosted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon – to outline the broad aims of a treaty to create a Middle East nuclear-free zone.

Similar ideas have stalled in the past over the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict and questions of security guarantees for Israel. But last month’s talks in Egypt attempted to skirt such obstacles by focusing on proposals to safeguard any fissile material in the region that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons.

Iran’s senior envoy to the meeting was its ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.

Israel sent the director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Merav Zafary-Odiz. Israel’s former foreign affairs minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, was also at the meeting in a non-official role.

The high-level representatives are believed to have impressed regional diplomats who observed the proceedings.

3:32PM: And back to being really confused. The Ynet report on the Turkish television producer’s response also suggests he is claiming the soldiers being depicted are not Israeli.

He added, “The uniforms are not IDF uniforms, they only look similar. The Turkish and American militaries have uniforms like that as well.”

At the start of each episode it is clearly stated that it is not a true story, but a fictional one. Cobanoglu said, “Clearly it must be real enough for the viewer, but these are not the same uniforms. It is very important that I stress that we love the people in Israel. We love the Israelis.

“We know that Israel didn’t do these things, but there are small groups who did things like this sometimes, they killed children and things like that. We made the series about them, not about Israel directly,” he said.

So the question is which “small groups” did these things?

I was about to provide my answer but then I noticed someone else beat me to it.

TRT1’s television producer Saljuk Trubanulad responded to the allegations mentioned in the previous post about their show.

“The show is not about IDF soldiers, we also wrote this in a warning that appeared on the screen at the beginning of the program,”

The first episode is the story of a “Palestinian” family living in the West Bank.

Ah-huh. So exactly which army is it in the West Bank? The Jordanians?

“…this show isn’t about Israeli soldiers but rather about a specific group that is responsible for all the murders.”

And who might that group be?

“These soldiers are not Israelis, we know the Israeli public does not justify the operation. It’s just a small group of soldiers who murdered Muhammad al-Dura, the Palestinian boy.”

Well now he’s making sense. The riddle is unraveling.

Mohammed al-Dura was killed by Palestinian soldiers.

Saljuk says he’s not talking about Israeli soldiers.

And we know that the only other soldiers in the West Bank are “Palestinian” soldiers.

The only logical conclusion is that these are Palestinian soldiers in the show massacring their own people.

That does make sense when you put his words in the right context.

2:55PM: Ok, this report dealing with the last item makes more sense than the Jpost report.

2:38PM: Turkish gobbledegook: The Turkish television producer of the anti-Israel TV drama has responded by saying the soldiers depicted in the show are not Israeli soldiers.

At least that is what I think  he is saying. See if you can make any sense of this.

In an interview full of contradictions, Turkish television producer Saljuk Trubanulad, whose anti-Israeli TV drama led Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to summon the Turkish envoy for a meeting, told Israel Radio on Thursday that the soldiers depicted in the drama “are not Israeli soldiers” and stressed that all of the program’s staff love the Israeli people.

“The show is not about IDF soldiers, we also wrote this in a warning that appeared on the screen at the beginning of the program,” the Turkish producer said.

In the first episode of a series on a Palestinian family living in the West Bank, which appeared Tuesday evening on prime time on the government-controlled station TRT1, IDF soldiers are seen killing a baby and a young girl, and lining up Palestinians to be shot before a firing squad.

In Thursday’s interview, Trubanulad stressed that “all of our staff loves the Israeli people, that is, this show isn’t about Israeli soldiers but rather about a specific group that is responsible for all the murders. We love the Israeli people.”

“These soldiers are not Israelis, we know the Israeli public does not justify the operation. It’s just a small group of soldiers who murdered Muhammad al-Dura, the Palestinian boy,” he explained, referring to a 12-year-old Palestinian boy whose footage cowering next to his father during a firefight and then slumping dead became the symbol of Palestinian suffering in the early days of the Second Intifada, despite it being entirely unclear that the cause of the child’s death was indeed IDF bullets.

“These are not Israeli soldiers, their uniforms aren’t Israeli uniforms. It’s a small group that killed all the people and all the children. We say this group is not of Israeli soldiers, neither [those shown murdering citizens] in Gaza nor in Beirut,” he told the radio station.

He went on to stress that the production team based the screenplay on historical facts. “We sent our script to Israel, we checked it,” he said.

I’m still scratching my head.

1:35PM: Actress Mia Farrow has commented on her trip to Gaza.

US actress and outspoken human rights activist Mia Farrow said on Thursday that children living in blockaded, impoverished and war-wracked Gaza Strip deserve a better life.

“The children appear traumatised,” Farrow told a media conference in the Palestinian enclave on the second and final day of a visit as goodwill ambassador for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“The teachers say that when they hear a loud noise they (the children) look to the sky and cry out and weep. They don’t know what the future holds,” she told the joint media conference with Egyptian actor Mahmoud Kabil, also a UNICEF ambassador.

“They deserve better,” she said.

Of course, when the children are pictured next to palestinian terrorists firing weapons in the vicinity, they never seem to be crying and weeping. Nor when they hear of successful terror attacks (it is hard to cry with a mouth full of candy).

Meanwhile, it looks like I was wrong and Farrow does intend to visit Sderot after all.

Later on Thursday Farrow was due to visit the Israeli town of Sderot, which for years has borne the brunt of Gaza militant rocket fire.

12:58PM: Turkey has continued it nastiness towards Israel with news it intends to impose a heavy fine on Israel  if we do not deliver 10 unmanned drones by the end of the year, and take us to the International Court of Commercial Arbitration if there is any further delay.

In other litigation-related news, Hamas is threatening to prosecute PA President Mahmoud Abbas for his “smear campaign” against them, as well as his actions during Operation Cast Lead.

“We demand Abu Mazen name those he claims hid,” said al-Zahar. “I want him to say exactly where he thinks we ran to. This man must stop trying to spread his lies, especially now that the Goldstone fiasco has been exposed, now that the Israelis exposed him as the one who wanted to prolong the war in the Strip. That is why he chooses to slam us instead of apologizing.”

6:10AM: Headline of the day:

China voices deep concern over humanitarian situation in Gaza

The irony is delicious.

6:02AM: Here’s a report about a Muslim student protest at the University of Kentucky against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was speaking there.

Notice the bizarre ending to the report.

5:50PM: Head Hamashole Ismail Haniyeh continues to use the Goldstone report for propaganda purposes, contrasting his “government’s” reaction to that of Israel.

Speaking at a sit-in protest in Gaza organized by victims and families of victims of Israel’s war on Gaza last winter, Haniyeh explained, “If there is a concern about how the report will affect the peoples’ right to resistance vis-à-vis the Goldstone report, that in no way means we have withdrawn our support for the document in general.”

Haniyeh said de facto government personnel would offer up their total support to the Goldstone report mission, “offering all we can to convict the Israeli occupation.” The Hamas leader also said he hoped Israeli leaders would be held accountable at the International Criminal Court.

“We are for a serious, national effort ahead of dealing with this document and implementing its recommendations,” he said, comparing the de facto government’s reaction with the Israeli position.

Hamas, like Israel, understands clearly that the report is good for terrorists who use their people as human shields, and bad for those fighting them.

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A senior PA official in Ramallah claimed that some of Abbas’s advisers had misled him into thinking that there wasn’t enough support among members of the UN Human Rights Council for the Palestinians’ request to endorse the findings of the Goldstone commission.

“Some advisers misled the president and lied to him,” the official said. “They did not tell him the truth.”

Abbas was now considering firing the advisers, “because of the huge damage they caused to the Palestinian Authority’s credibility,” the official said.

I don’t know what I find more amusing. The idea of a palestinian being surprised that some of his fellow palestinians lie, or the idea of the Palestinian Authority having credibility to begin with.

Meanwhile, methinks the senior PA official is lying, and is trying to blame the decision on these “advisers”, when Abbas himself made it based on US pressure.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:36PM: CAMERA has prepared this helpful and important summary of the many examples of factual errors and double standards in the Goldstone report.

10:08PM:Israeli police have arrested Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, on suspicion he incited to violence and incited riots in light of remarks he made in recent days during the clashes at the Temple Mount.

Here is a photo from his first night in prison.

Meanwhile, even some of his fellow Arabs have condemned his behavior.

MK Ibrahim Sarsour (UAL-Ta’al), of the Islamic Movement’s more moderate southern branch, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that he could not understand why Salah and his supporters were heralding a tournament where “medals will be handed to all those who participate in the race for Al-Aksa.” Sarsour asserted that his northern counterpart’s incitement of aggression was counterproductive to the Arab cause.

7:42PM: The Western Wall Rabbi has called on religious leaders (read: Muslim clerics) in Jerusalem to restore calm.

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz on Tuesday called on religious leaders in Jerusalem’s Old City to work towards restoring the calm shattered by clashes between police and Arab rioters in recent days.

“I call on religious leaders in the Old City to find a way to bring sanity back to the holy city, so that everyone can come to the holy sites without encountering fear and hostility,” the rabbi said in a special message released late Tuesday afternoon.

Speaking after a relatively quiet day in the capital, Rabinovitz said that forces outside of Jerusalem (read: Arab and palestinian leaders -ed.) were operating to stir up religious tensions in the Old City.

“Ludicrous claims about excavations under the Temple Mount are an absolute lie,” he said in the message. “To claim that the Jews are digging [under] the Temple Mount site is like claiming that day is night.”

5:45PM: Lebanese intelligence services have detained a woman suspected of committing the unforgivable crime of contacting an Israeli foundation seeking information on missing Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad.

10:52AM: Yes, yes, yes.

In the wake of the Arab riots in Jerusalem, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom and National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau on Tuesday called for the Islamic Movement, accused of inciting the violence, to be outlawed, while Interior Minister Eli Yishai stressed that Israel is the sovereign “in the eternal, united capital of the Jewish people.”

“[Islamic Movement northern branch leader] Sheikh Raed Salah should be behind bars, and so should [deputy head] Kamal Khatib,” Shalom told Israel Radio. “I intend to raise the issue in the next cabinet meeting.”

While Shalom praised the police for doing its job, he stressed that “it’s time for the State Prosecution to start acting….enough is enough.”

7:45AM:

A Palestinian youth suspected of stone throwing lies on the ground after being detained by Israeli police in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud October 5, 2009. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM CONFLICT POLITICS)

Shirt around neck, stones all over the ground. What’s the bet he actually threw stones?

And what’s the bet the photographer/caption writer knew this, yet decided to describe him as being a mere suspect nonetheless?

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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)

Asaf Ramon, killed in yesterday’s F16 crash, is to be buried next to his father, in a ceremony attended by the Prime Minister of Israel, who is postponing his meeting with US special envoy George Mitchell to attend.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

6:38PM: Together again: A few hours ago, Asaf Ramon was laid to rest next to his father Ilan Ramon.

5:05PM: Today’s must-read comes from my friend Richard Landes, who deals with the susceptibility of Western news media to palestinian disinformation.

4:40PM: Bizarro World: If George Galloway wasn’t the George Galloway we have to come to know and loathe.

4:22PM: Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu has stated there will not be a complete freeze on “settlement” building and that building in Jerusalem will proceed as usual.

“”The Palestinians expect a complete halt to building; it is now clear that this will not happen.. Jerusalem is not a settlement and the building [there] will continue as normal.”

“We clarified to the U.S. that we would continue building around 2,500 units whose construction had already begun. Two days ago, we authorized 450 additional units. I stated that we would consider reducing the extent of our building.”

“The reduction in building will be for a limited time and there is not yet an agreement with the U.S. on the period of time.”

11:00AM: Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (or someone impersonating him, if you subscribe to the view that he has been roasting in hell for some time) has warned the American people over their government’s close ties with Israel in an apparently new audio tape posted on an Islamist website.

“The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby,” Bin Laden’s latest tape said.

“The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine.”

Bin Laden/Bin Laden impersonator is capitalizing on the West’s (misguided) belief that the Arab-Israeli issue is the root cause of terrorism and the existence of groups such as Al Qaeda. This is simply not true. As Dore Gold wrote in his paper Israel is Not the Issue: Militant Islam and America:

A 1998 fatwa (religious ruling) issued by bin Laden jointly with militant Islamic leaders from Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh provides an insight into the sources of his anti-Americanism.9 The document calls “on every Muslim…to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.” True, bin Laden uses language like “the Zionist-Crusader alliance” that sweeps in the issue of Israel, but the primary justification for doing so is that “for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, [and] terrorizing its neighbors.” Having helped to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s with other Arab volunteers, bin Laden has now turned his attention to the remaining superpower, the United States. U.S. forces are specifically described as “Crusader armies spreading…like locusts.”

A second bin Laden grievance is “the continuing aggression against the Iraqi people.” The “guarantee of Israel’s survival” appears only as the third reason for criticizing U.S. policy. Bin Laden also refers to the Jews’ “occupation of Jerusalem,” but gives no indication whatsoever of accepting Jewish statehood within any borders. In fact, in 1998 he was critical of the Saudis for their support of “Yasser Arafat’s regime” against Hamas.10 Israel’s very existence is the issue — not the status of the peace process. It is not surprising that the planning and training for the September 11 attack is believed to have begun several years ago, well before the current Palestinian intifada and the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. There simply is no correlation between the new terrorism facing the U.S. and the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Meanwhile, look who has emboldened the terrorists:

The speaker also appeared to refer to criticisms former US President Jimmy Carter made in June of Israel’s Gaza invasion earlier this year.

5:45AM: Well done to the AP, who’s bias is so pronounced, they can manage to make a group of homeless-looking palestinians the focus of a photo dealing with the tragic death of Asaf Ramon.

Bonus points for using the words “warplane” (twice) and “combat helicopter.”

A Palestinian family walk on a hill as an Israeli air force combat helicopter flies over the crash site of a F-16 warplane that was flown by Assaf Ramon, the son of an Israeli astronaut who died in the space shuttle Columbia disaster, near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Pnei Hever, west of Hebron, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009. The son of an Israeli astronaut who died in the space shuttle Columbia disaster six years ago was killed Sunday when his F-16 warplane crashed on a routine training flight, the Israeli military said. (AP Photo)

A Palestinian girl is carried by an Israeli policeman to safety following a stampede as Palestinian women crowd the Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah September 11, 2009. Thousands of Palestinians lined up as they tried to reach the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on the third Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar.

And you’ll find other examples like this and this.

I have plenty of opportunity to slam Reuters for their media bias, so when they depict the truth – without any manipulation shenanigans – I have to acknowledge it.

And speaking of manipulation shenanigans…

The Girl and the shadows : The shadows of Israeli soldiers are cast on a concrete barrier as a Palestinian girl waits near the Bethlehem checkpoint in the West Bank. (AFP/Musa al-Shaer)

Update: Hamas is using one of the “Israeli soldier pulls kid to safety” pictures to paint Israel in a bad light – by altering the caption and leaving out some critical words.