Dozens of #Egyptians dead after soccer-related clashes in #PortSaid & #Cairo. Countdown to blaming the #Zionists in 3…2…

— Zionist Shark (@ZionistShark) February 1, 2012

The very next day, Elder of Ziyon and MEMRI were kind enough to show everyone that Zionist Shark is not only Zionist, but also clairvoyant.

EoZ: Egyptian MP blames soccer deaths on – well, you know who.

Aww yeah! I win the Irrational, Conspiracist, Blame-the-Zionists-for-What-Ails-Your-Country-Internally pool! W00t!

Who has 12 fins (most sharks have 8, but my crafty, clever, evil Zionist overlords engineered 4 secret ones) and called it as it was unfolding?

THIS shark!

Of course, I’m probably tooting my horn a little much here. After all, this kind of thing happens so often, it was really low-hanging fruit, wasn’t it?

Anyhoo…since you’re already here and all, wanna play Spot the Evil Zionist with me?

Do you see any Zionists here?
Here?How ’bout here?

Bonus: It paints Israel in a positive light.

“Flying Pig” bonus: It is from the New York Times

This city is one of Israel’s smallest, a hardscrabble place with a population of 23,000 that is less than two miles from the Lebanese border and through the decades has repeatedly found itself caught in the crossfire of Arab-Israeli strife

In 1974, Kiryat Shmona was the scene of a terrorist attack in which 18 Israelis, many of them children, were killed. Rockets have clobbered the town during cross-border fighting. Underground shelters are as familiar to the city as traffic lights. And jobs can be scarce.

Yet somehow, Kiryat Shmona’s professional soccer team has become the runaway leader of Israel’s top league, has captured a separate tournament that concluded this week and has begun to turn perceptions of this often-beleaguered community upside down.

For now, the king of soccer in this country is a team that plays in a 5,500-seat stadium, has a diverse 23-man roster that includes six Israeli Arabs and is still adjusting to the curiosity it is creating.

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The team’s rise can largely be traced to one man — Izzy Sheratzky, a millionaire from Tel Aviv who made his money in Global Positioning System devices that help track stolen cars and who founded the club 10 years ago.

Sheratzky, a native Israeli, began investing heavily in Kiryat Shmona after being moved by images of its being pounded by Katyusha rockets 13 years ago. Eventually, he decided to buy two local clubs and merge them with a dream of taking his new team to the highest level of European soccer.

“In 1999, I saw the wars and the Katyushas and many bombs,” he said in an interview last Saturday an hour before his team took the field. “Many people left Kiryat Shmona. The situation was very bad. There was no work and there was the bombs. I decided to take care of Kiryat Shmona and to help them.”

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It will try to do so with a combination of journeyman players, young prospects, a handful of foreigners — including a 27-year-old Argentine-American midfielder, — and, perhaps most significantly, a mixture of Israeli Arabs and Jews.

“For us, this is very important,” Edri said of the roster’s makeup. “With football you can do peace, the Arab and Israeli living together.

Read the whole thing.

He also thought it a good idea to show it off on Facebook.

Let me guess: Zionist Death Ref^TM?

In a matter of seconds, a victory celebration of a game-winning soccer goal turned into a crime punishable by a public lashing for two Iranian soccer stars.

Mohammad Nosrati and Sheys Rezaei, who played with the Tehran club “Persepolis,”  jumped on a pile of their teammates following the goal Saturday at the Sardar Jangal Stadium in Rasht, a town to the northwest of Tehran. But then the players engaged in what Iranian authorities called  “immoral acts,” as Nosrati groped Rezaei’s butt as Rezaei balanced in the air.

Now, members of parliament, sports officials and judges have called for punishment for Nosrati and Rezaei, according to the Fars News Agency.

Iran’s football federation  suspended both players and fined them nearly $40,000 each, Fars reported. But public officials have tried to take it further, calling for the players to end their careers forever.

In a matter of seconds, a victory celebration of a game-winning soccer goal turned into a crime punishable by a public lashing for two Iranian soccer stars.

Mohammad Nosrati and Sheys Rezaei, who played with the Tehran club “Persepolis,”  jumped on a pile of their teammates following the goal Saturday at the Sardar Jangal Stadium in Rasht, a town to the northwest of Tehran. But then the players engaged in what Iranian authorities called  “immoral acts,” as Nosrati groped Rezaei’s butt as Rezaei balanced in the air.

Now, members of parliament, sports officials and judges have called for punishment for Nosrati and Rezaei, according to the Fars News Agency.

Iran’s football federation  suspended both players and fined them nearly $40,000 each, Fars reported. But public officials have tried to take it further, calling for the players to end their careers forever.

A judiciary official told Fars that Nosrati and Rezaei could also face public lashings, to be carried out on the soccer field where the behavior occurred.

According to an Iranian judge, the offending action “can be considered a violation of public chastity,” the news agency reported. “The punishment of this crime is prison up to two months and 74 lashes.”

Here’s the infamous butt grope:

While I obviously don’t condone either player being punished, I think Rezaei is particularly hard done by. I mean all he did was jump up on his teammates in celebration. His butt happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time – within reach of Nosrati’s mischievous fingers. It’s not as if he painted a sign on his buttocks saying “Goose me!”

In any event, both players should realize it could be worse.

This “Jihad” banner did not appear in Gaza. Nor in Iran.

It appeared in Poland, at a soccer game.

Anti-racism groups have called on European football’s governing body UEFA to punish Polish club Legia Warsaw after fans brandished a “Jihad” banner during a Europa League match against Israeli side Hapoel Tel Aviv.

“This is yet another case of anti-Semitic behaviour by extremist groups active in Polish football stadiums, and it could have been predicted,” said Rafal Pankowski of the campaign group Never Again.

At the start of Thursday night’s Group C home game in Warsaw – which Legia won 3-2 – a group of fans unfurled a huge banner stretching across three blocks of a stand.

Written in Arabic-style letters, it read “Jihad Legia”. The banner was green, which is one of Legia’s colours but also that of Islamist groups.

“Some Legia fans have been known for anti-Semitic and extreme-right behaviour for years and they had a chance to express their hatred of Jews again when Legia played an Israeli team, this time adopting a pseudo-Islamist guise,” added Mr Pankowski, who runs the UEFA-backed Football Against Racism in Europe network.

Who do these Legia fans think they are? Feyenoord fans?

The U.N. has placed as many as half a dozen security guards on administrative duty pending an investigation into their involvement in a violent brawl on Friday with the security detail for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, U.N. sources told Turtle Bay.

The melee began after the Turkish prime minister was blocked by U.N. security guards as he sought to walk from a meeting room outside the General Assembly hall to the General Assembly chamber, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was preparing to deliver his historic speech announcing plans to declare its bid for membership in the United Nations as a state.

The brawl, which landed at least one U.N. official in the hospital with badly bruised ribs, involved a misunderstanding over the route Erdogan and his entourage took to reach the General Assembly, officials said. The exit they were trying to proceed through, according to U.N. officials and sources close to the Turkish delegation, didn’t actually lead to the General Assembly. But Erdogan and his security staff insisted on pressing ahead.

It remains unclear exactly what happened next, but a Turkish journalist, Kahraman Haliscelik, of Turkish Radio Television (TRT), said two of his colleagues, who were traveling with the Prime Minister, claimed that U.N.  guards threatened “to stop them with force,” and that the two sides began pushing. “There was some physical contact with the prime minister and so that set off the Turkish security” agents, Haliscelik said.

—-

But the U.N.’s response to the incident has infuriated U.N. rank and file security guards, according to several U.N. sources, who claim that the Turkish security agents have bullied their way around the Turtle Bay headquarters during the General Assembly session.

—-

The email, which was written by the second vice president of the U.N. Staff Union, Timothy J. Kennedy, and obtained by Turtle Bay, said the “entire Security and Safety Service has been dealing with the aggressive nature of the security apparatus of this particular detail all week long. It has shoved many officers, fraudulently utilized ministerial ID’s for access, and assaulted at least one of our officers (previously, as well as today). I have advised our officers who’ve been injured and/or assaulted to make police reports to the 17th [precinct], and have themselves checked at the hospital; as well as take picture of their injuries.”

Sounds to me like the Turkish security have been acting like thugs, and an apology is in order. 

Meanwhile, on a more positive note, Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer club has written the following letter to thank UEFA, the Turkish team they recently played, as well as Turkish authorities.

Israel's Biram Kayal looks on prior to the friendly football match between Ivory Coast and Israel on August 10, 2011 in Geneva. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)

[source]

Biram is an Israeli Arab. He is on record as saying:

“What the television shows about Israel is totally different to what happens. The life between the Jews and the Arabs is very good. I’m an Arab and my agent is Jewish but we’re like family.”

“The Jews and the Arabs live together in Haifa, which is a mixed city. Maccabi Haifa has seven or eight Arab players and that’s normal. The only difference is their religion, but there’s no conflict.”

Note: There is some dialogue in Hebrew, but you will understand the humor without any translation.

After months of speculation, David and Victoria Beckham have announced they have decided to call their little girl Harper Seven Beckham.

David confirmed the news on his Facebook page after he and wife Victoria welcomed the baby, who weighed 7lb 10oz, at 7.55am yesterday morning.

The footballer wrote: ‘I am so proud and excited to announce the birth of our daughter Harper Seven Beckham. She weighed a healthy 7lbs 10oz and arrived at 7.55 this morning, here in LA.

The Seven in the name is believed to be a reference to David’s football number when he played for Manchester United and England, while the Harper could be referring to Harper’s Bazaar magazine or perhaps To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee.

I don’t have a problem with Harper, but Seven? Who could dream up such a name?

Oh, wait.