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“To be honest, there’s nothing I want to talk about less than politics. I’d rather vomit and lick it up. I like Obama, but he’s not gonna win. Trust me, I know my people.”

- Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders

1. It shows while US Muslims claim they are being victimized and are the victims of hate crimes, members of their community are victimizing and perpetrating hate crimes against others.

2. It is a great metaphor for what is happening in the Middle East.

3. The bad guy gets hurt.

A 25-year-old Israeli rabbinical assistant was assaulted by a group of Arab teenagers screaming “Allah akbar” in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening.

Uria Ohana, originally from Kfar Chabad, entered a subway station in the affluent Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn Tuesday evening, on his way to a lecture in Manhattan, when he noticed a group of Arab teenagers congregated on a bench in the station.

Ohana did not exchange words or make eye contact with the group, but proceeded upstairs to his train.

On his way, he felt someone grab his kippa from his head and then heard laughter. Ohana decided to chase the boys to retrieve his kippa.

The 18-year-old boy who grabbed the kippa left the subway station and ran into the street, where he was hit by a car, breaking his leg.

While Ohana chased the boy, the other teenagers began chasing him, screaming “Allah akbar.”

“They screamed at me, ‘Did you see what happened to him because of you?’” said Ohana, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical assistant who works in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Two of the Arab boys then started kicking and punching Ohana in the face.

“As soon as they started screaming, I understood [the attack] was racial,” said Ohana.

The crime is being investigated as aggravated harassment and a possible bias crime, according to a New York Police Department spokeswoman. “I am almost sure it will be charged as a hate crime,” said the spokeswoman.

“I’m sad that this kind of attack is coming to New York after seeing this in Israel,” said Ohana. “An Arab teenager attacking a Jew for being a Jew scares me as a Jew.”

Ohana said one police officer brushed the incident off as a case of a teenager who “doesn’t know what ‘Allah akbar’ means.

“This scares me in a global context, Arabs taking national pride one step forward,” said Ohana.

The youth who was hit by the car was taken to the Lutheran Medical Center to be treated for his broken leg and was placed under arrest. The other two boys fled the scene and have not yet been apprehended.

I say this story is a great metaphor for what is happening in the Middle East, because it involves the following scenario: Arabs attack Israel, Israel responds, resulting in Arabs getting hurt. Arabs then blame Israel for Arabs getting hurt, and perpetrate further violence in response. And of course, the police officer’s response is a great metaphor for world indifference to Jewish suffering at the hands of the Arabs.

However, the metaphor does not completely hold.

CBS reported that Hussein has been charged with grand larceny, petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.

In the Middle East, it are the Jews who are blamed, charged with crimes at the UN, and judged harshly in the court of public opinion.

Update: The story reminds me of the following joke told to me by former senior advisor to Ariel Sharon, Ra’anan Gissin:

Three hunters are out on safari — an American, a Brit and an Israeli. They are captured by cannibals who start getting the cooking pots ready. The cannibal chief tells the hunters they can have one last wish.

“What’s your last request?” he asks the American.

“I’d like a steak,” he replies.

So the cannibals kill a zebra and serve the American his steak.

“What do you want?” the cannibal chief asks the Brit.

“I’d like to have a smoke on my pipe,” which they let him do.

Then the chief asks the Israeli: “What’s your last wish?”

“I want you to kick my rear end.”

“Be serious,” says the top cannibal.

“C’mon, you promised,” says the Israeli.

“Oh, all right,” says the chief, who delivers the requested kick. Whereupon, the Israeli pulls out a gun, shoots the chief and a few other cannibals while the rest run away.

The American and Brit are furious.

“Why didn’t you do that in the first place, so we wouldn’t have had to go through all this?” they demand.

Replies the Israeli: “What? Are you mad? The UN would have condemned me as the aggressor!”

Having said that, I would like to draw your attention to the following report from the palestinian Ramattan news agency:

A Palestinian youth from Gaza is working hard in day and night as a for free volunteer appealing the American citizens to vote for the US presidency democratic candidate Senator Barak Obama.

Ibrahim Abu Jayyab, 23, living in the besieged Gaza Strip, decided to support Obama in his harsh competition against the republican Hillary Clinton in the running US presidency election campaign.

Abu Jayyab, who studies media in Gaza, says that he uses a for-free internet communication soft ware programs to call as much as possible US citizens calling them to vote for Obama.

He spends long hours on internet and watching TV news to follow up any developments on the running elections in the United States.

Abu Jayyab tries to realize the state or city where the elections are going to be held, and then he phones people at the same state.

“I phone tens or hundreds of random phone nombers calling them to vote for Obama because he is the man of the future,” Abu Jayyab told RNA reporter.

He thinks that if Obama becomes the US President he will help the Palestinians to achieve their dreams.

“We can not achieve our dreams because of the Israeli occupation, the world did not help us to end the Israeli occupation,” he said “we hope Obama will achieve what the world could not, to help us to live in peace and to achieve our dreams.”

Abu Jayyab believes that as Obama from an Islamic origin and from those who oppressed a long the history, he thinks that he will absorb the suffer of the Palestinians and will not hesitate to help them.

The media student also faces the problem of the frequent power cut in the Gaza Strip that prevents him to use his PC or to follow the updated news of the elections.

The Israelis reduced fuel to the sole power plant in Gaza as a part of the siege on Gaza saying that such procedure is retaliation on firing home-made projectiles on Israeli towns.

Abu Jayyab is preparing to “launch new campaign” in Ohio and Texas states on the 4th of the coming March.

He says that he is admired in the personality of Obama and his skill in convincing others in his statements and debates.

However…

But, Abu Jayyab is so “disappointed and upset” because of Obama because he did not mention to the suffer and the security of the Palestinian people when he said that the security of Israel is “holy”.

“Why Senator Obama did not mention to the daily killing the Palestinian people lives in, why he did not talk about the siege on Gaza? What about security, is it not sacrosanct?” he said.

In TV discussion issues of anti-Semitism, with Hilary Clinton, Obama said Tuesday: “… I have been a stalwart friend of Israel and supported the special relationship we enjoy with it… they are among our most important allies and their security is sacrosanct.”

But Abu Jayyab mentioned that he has exceeded such issue and would continue his campaign to support Obama.

Update: And in the interests of fairness, I will also post this link to part of a Ynet interview with Obama, in which the latter presents his views on Israel, the palestinians and Iran.

This week, Senator John McCain took heat because of an interview that he granted two years ago to Amir Oren, a credible journalist from the Israeli newspaper HaAretz, on May 1, 2006, in which Mr. McCain declared that his administration “would send “the smartest guy I know” to the Middle East …. “Brent Scowcroft, or Jim Baker though I know that you in Israel don’t like Baker.”

Mr. McCain added “I would expect concessions and sacrifices by both sides.”

When Mr. Oren asked Mr. McCain if that meant a “movement toward the June 4, 1967 armistice lines, with minor modifications? McCain nodded in the affirmative.”

To deflect criticism that he has encountered on the 2008 campaign trail, the McCain campaign has been quoting an article by John B. Judis., senior editor at The New Republic who wrote in an article in that publication on October 25, 2006 that Mr. McCain was “miffed at his portrayal in HaAretz,” saying that “after reading the HaAretz article and subsequent report in The Jewish Press [in New York],” he felt the need to “clear up several serious misimpressions.” Mr. McCain said that “in contrast to the impression left by the HaAretz article, I’ve never held the position that Israel should return to 1967 lines, and that is not my position today.”

The senator repeated this week what he said to the New Republic which was that “in the course of that brief, off-the-cuff conversation, I never discussed settlement blocs, a total withdrawal, or anything of the sort.”

Reached at his desk in Tel Aviv, Mr. Oren told The Bulletin that Mr. McCain is simply “not telling the truth”, and that he would gladly invite him to a polygraph to see who is telling the truth. He said Mr. McCain indeed recommended Mr. Baker and Mr. Snowcroft as his potential candidates to deal with the Middle East, and that he clearly answered in the affirmative when it came to Mr. McCain’s expectations of Israel, and how it should relate to further withdrawals. Mr. Oren said that Mr. McCain stated clearly that Israel’s policy should be one of “defending itself and withdrawing, defending itself and withdrawing.” Far from an off the cuff conversation, Mr. Oren told the Bulletin that this was a formal interview that Mr. McCain provided him at the the Brussels Forum for American-European Relations, following an interview that Mr. McCain provided to the Washington Post. Mr. Oren mentioned to the Bulletin that the interview was conducted in the presence of Mr. McCain’s aide, Richard Fontaine.

Coming on an auspicious day when Israel faced more than 20 missile attacks from the Gaza area from which Israel withdrew its troops and citizens from only two years ago, at the insistence of the U.S. government, these words from Mr. McCain may not ring favorably with American voters who do not want Israel to be pushed by future American administrations. To conduct further withdrawals of troops and citizens to the 1967 lines – which would provide further areas in Judea and Samaria from which Palestinian terrorists would launch be able to launch further missile attacks on the vast majority of Israel’s population, would be unacceptable to many. It would position Israeli citizens who live along the coastal region of Israel, inside the pre-1967 lines, between six and 12 miles from the hilly region that would come under Palestinian control – and Israel’s only airport, in Lod, less than five miles from Palestinian missile sights.

Mr. Oren was clearly upset to hear Mr. McCain was challenging the veracity of the interview from two years ago. In Mr. Oren’s words, Mr. McCain should “show the same courage on the campaign trail that he showed in Vietnam.”

The United States has agreed in principle to provide Israel with better “smart bombs” than those it plans to sell Saudi Arabia under a regional defense package, senior Israeli security sources said on Sunday.Keen to bolster Middle East allies against an ascendant Iran, the Bush administration last year proposed supplying Gulf Arab states with some $20 billion in new weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits for the Saudis.

The plan has angered Israel’s backers in Washington, who say the JDAMs, which give satellite guidance for bombs, may one day be used against the Jewish state or at least blunt its power to deter potential foes. Israel has had JDAMs since 1990 and has used them extensively in a 2006 offensive in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government dropped its objections to the proposed Saudi deal in July after securing U.S. military aid grants worth $30 billion over the next decade.

Two Israeli security sources said the United States further mollified the Olmert government with an “understanding in principle” that future JDAM sales to Israel would include advanced technologies not on offer to Saudi Arabia.

“We are checking which of the top-of-the-line JDAMs will become available to us. The agreement is that Israel’s qualitative edge will be preserved,” one source said.

This is idiotic on a number of levels.

First of all, Saudi Arabia can have a trillion dollars’ worth of weapons; they are useless in a kingdom that has no decent army, no military expertise, and utterly no ability to deter any Iranian offenses. If Iran would decide for some reason to attack Saudi Arabia, it would be the US that defends it anyway – the Saudis would crumple on their own no matter what advanced weaponry they own (and they already own quite a bit of it.)

The Saudi arsenal is nothing more than a tempting target for terrorists to get their own hands on advanced weaponry for uses that are far from their conventional intent.

Moreover, in a world where asymmetric warfare is the prevailing wisdom, giving Israel a “qualitative edge” in having “smarter” bombs doesn’t help Israel’s defense a bit. Is there any chance that the Islamists who might end up with Saudi weaponry would care that Israel is somewhat better at hitting back purely military targets? They’ll be using this advanced weaponry against population centers in Israel. As Lebanon showed, Geneva no longer applies in the Arab wars against Israel and giving Israel better offensive weapons does not help much against an enemy for whom death is desirable.

Now, if the US would give Israel technology that can defend against the Saudi bombs – if an encrypted backdoor was placed in the JDAM software that could disable the weapons remotely, for example – then this might make sense. But the fact that Israel’s theoretical future versions of JDAMs might have an accuracy of 3 meters rather than 6 meters is pretty much meaningless.

None of this makes sense. Iran is not deterred in the least by these moves, on the contrary it gives them even more incentive to build nuclear bombs.

This deal might benefit defense contractors but pretty much no one else.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)

But Rice on Monday clarified that the US believes that portions of east Jerusalem are considered to be “settlements” and that Israel must stop building there as part of its commitment to implement the first phase of the road map.

The land that Har Homa is on was legally purchased by Jews from Sheikh Shehade al-Faghuri, through an Arab middleman named Ibrahim al-Dajani, in 1944 (source: Army of Shadows – read my review of the book here).

Much has already been written about her book criticizing any archaeology that indicates a presence of an Jewish kingdom in what is now Israel, even though she has no archaeology experience herself. Her pre-conceived notion that there were never ancient Jews in the Middle East is so overpowering that she essentially dismisses the entire field of archaeology as being hopelessly biased against her version of the truth.

This was the only book she ever wrote, and it seems on its own to be pretty powerful evidence that her scholarship is suspect, to say the least. But what most people haven’t caught on to is that more recently she has been doing to the field of genetics what she had previously done to archaeology – to reach the identical conclusion. In an article in American Ethnologist she says modern genetics has disproved the idea that the Jewish maternal line originated in ancient Israel (what she calls “Palestine” even when she is talking about a kingdom that predates that term.)

It is an amazing coincidence that she has looked at two disparate fields, neither of which she is an expert in, and reached the identical conclusion – the Jews have no historic right to live in Israel. The fact that she is of Palestinian Arab origin surely has nothing to do with this eerie juxtaposition of separate proofs by assertion.

Perhaps if her only “scholarship” was concentrated in deconstructing archaeology, a case could be made that she is just doing the same as what other postmodernists do. But the fact that she uses her anthropology background as a blunt instrument to pretend to be a scholar in two separate, specialized fields of which she has no real knowledge shows not only that El-Haj is no scholar, but that she has a purely Jew-hating agenda. It is almost beyond belief that such a person, who can only be described as a bigot, can reach such a level at any university, let alone one as formerly prestigious as this one.

Columbia University (of which Barnard is part) certainly has seen its reputation collapse in the past year.

(cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon)