Yourish.com

04/30/2007

Baby Assad openly proclaims Syria works against the U.S.

Filed under: Syria — Meryl Yourish @ 10:45 pm

It’s gotten so bad that the Dorktator, fresh on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s visit, now openly declares Syria’s anti-U.S. agenda.

In fact, he’s bragging about it.

Syrian President Bashar Assad predicted Monday that the US vision for a “new Middle East” would fail as the region’s conflicts continue to escalate.

His comments come days ahead of a conference on reducing violence in Iraq that will bring together Iraq’s neighbors – including Syria and Iran – and representatives of the big five UN Security Council members, including the US.

“Results until now do not seem in favor of this project, and what we are seeing now in the east is a resisting Iraq, and in the west a resisting Lebanon, and in the south a resisting Palestinian people,” Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted Assad as saying. “And we in Syria are in the heart of all these events.”

Way to go, Dems! Way to make me want to vote for you. Nancy Pelosi goes to Syria, and Bashar Assad admits that he’s working against American interests in three different parts of the Middle East.

It is so time to take down this rabid little yip dog.

Heroes discussion, pre-episode, possible spoilers

Filed under: Television — Meryl Yourish @ 5:00 pm

I think I’ll be putting up Heroes discussion posts for the rest of the season. I had a good email discussion going with a couple of people. And people had some interesting comments last week about Mama Petrelli (super power of prescient dreaming, which would explain Peter’s dreams in the first episodes).

The online graphic novel fills in a lot of knowlege gaps, but it also (for once) managed to give a bit of a spoiler. If you’ve been reading it, you found out before last week’s show that Linderman had power, and what that power was. (Healing! And here I thought Linderman was the big guy behind the Superhero Kidnapping Factory.)

One of the things I love about the show is how they make you think, “Ooh, bad guy! I hate him!” and then turn around and make the character shades of grey. Except Sylar. Him, we still get to hate. Please let it stay that way.

In any case, “String Theory” is the name of tonight’s episode, and the theory itself posits that there are an infinite number of alternate universes. SF writers have used that particular aspect of string theory to their advantage. (I love the idea myself, because I’d like to see what would have happened to me in the alternate universe where my parents stayed together, or the one where I went to college in Seattle instead of NJ, or even the one where I said, “Buy stock in Yahoo? Sure, why not, I’ll take a hundred shares” instead of “Are you nuts? Who’d ever want to invest in a Yahoo?”)

I think that Future Hiro hasn’t changed his present because he can’t. Our Hiro couldn’t save Charlie, even though he tried. I think that they can only affect a different timeline. It’s too late for Future Hiro, but it’s not too late for him to help our boy prevent Sylar from nuking New York. Or Ted. We’re not yet clear on who does the deed in our universe.

We can talk about the episode later tonight, at least, those of us on the east coast can. If you don’t want to read any spoilers for this episode, I suggest you not read the comments here. However, please don’t post spoilers for future episodes in the comments. I really like being surprised.

A Jewish WWII hero?

Filed under: Holocaust, Jews — Meryl Yourish @ 2:30 pm

But—but Pat Buchanan and his buds all say that Jews don’t serve in the U.S. armed forces. (Tell that to my father and two uncles. WWII and Korea.)

Robert Rosenthal, a World War II bomber pilot who twice survived being shot down in raids over Europe and later served on the U.S. legal team that prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, has died at age 89.

[...] With 16 decorations including the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for heroism, Mr. Rosenthal was a quintessential example of the young Army pilots, some barely out of their teens, who defied seemingly hopeless odds to carry out daylight strategic bombing raids against Germany’s industrial war machine from 1942 to 1945.

Despite being able to absorb punishment, the B-17 Flying Fortresses, carrying 10 crew members, took staggering losses over Germany, especially when flying raids beyond the range of their England-based fighter escort.

Mr. Rosenthal’s 52 missions included one, on Oct. 10, 1943, in which his aircraft was the only one of 13 to return from a raid on Munster, the rest having been downed by anti-aircraft fire and waves of Luftwaffe fighters. Mr. Rosenthal’s B-17 reached England with two of its four engines gone, severe wing damage and two wounded crew members.

But that’s not all. Look what else he did.

Born in Brooklyn on June 11, 1917, Mr. Rosenthal was football and baseball team captain at Brooklyn College, a summa cum laude graduate of Brooklyn Law School and was working at a Manhattan law firm when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He enlisted the next day and insisted on being trained for combat.

“I couldn’t wait to get over there,” he told Donald Miller, author of the 2006 book, “Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany.”

[...] After Germany surrendered, Mr. Rosenthal was training to fly B-29 Super Fortresses over Japan when the war ended in August 1945. He returned home to a law practice but soon returned to Germany as part of the American legal team chosen for the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Aboard the ship bound for Germany, he met Phillis Heller, another attorney, whom he married in Nuremberg. During the trials, he interviewed ex-Luftwaffe commander Herman Goering, the highest-ranking Nazi defendant, who would evade the hangman by committing suicide, and former general Wilhelm Keitel.

Ooh, that’s gotta hurt. First he drops bombs on the Nazis, then he puts them in prison after the war.

Mr. Rosenthal is survived by his wife, sons Steven of Newton, Mass., and Daniel, of Weston, Conn.; a daughter, Peggy Rosenthal, of Manhattan; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

He and his wife had nine descendants. They’re from the same generation of Jewry that was decimated in Europe. I always wonder—always—how many more Jews there would be in the world, if Hitler had not risen to power. A million and a half children were murdered… how many descendants would they have had? At a guess, tens of millions more Jews would be alive today.

Most jaw-dropping press description, ever

Filed under: Jews, Media — Meryl Yourish @ 1:15 pm

Found this incredibly strange description in The Scotsman, which is often an anti-Israel propaganda rag. My great-grandfather settled in Glasgow after he escaped from Latvia (and being impressed in the Czar’s army), and my grandfather was born and lived the first fourteen years of his life there. My family left when the U.K. went into WWII on the side of the Soviet Union, which my great-grandfather loathed. Count me as extremely happy he emigrated to Brooklyn. Here’s the story:

THE city’s Jewish community have praised a German baker for producing kosher food for one of the faith’s weekly traditions.

Since Edinburgh’s last kosher bakery closed on East Cross Causeway over a year ago, Edinburgh Jews have been forced to either produce their own kosher bread or visit the nearest bakery in Manchester.

However, thanks to Bruntsfield baker Falko Burkert, who has worked with local Rabbi David Rose, they are now able to enjoy the traditional Jewish plaited loaf “challah” – which forms the centrepiece of the shabbat dinner, consumed every Friday evening.

Okay. It’s a puff piece on a good German baker offering kosher challahs. Good for him, and yay, and all that. But here’s the jaw-dropper.

Jewish woman Stephanie Brickman, who works at Edinburgh University, praised the baker for his help.

WTF? WTF? WT effing F? Jewish woman Stephanie Brickman? What, that’s a description, like, “Member of Parliament John Smith”?

I’m absolutely stunned. Did a quick Google News search to see if I could find a similar label for, say, a Christian woman. Nope. Muslim woman? Nuh-uh.

The other thing I am at a loss about is exactly how to interpret this. It’s just wrong on so many levels, that I am flummoxed.

I am tempted to put it off on Jew Cooties. But I’m really not sure what to do with it.

Suggestions?

On George Tenet and the blame for 9/11

Filed under: Terrorism — Meryl Yourish @ 12:30 pm

Did you watch the 60 Minutes interview with George Tenet last night?

He was a great interview, and the 60 Minutes crew were thrilled to death with everything they got from him. Emotional, agitated, full of great quotes and serious looks on his face when talking about the toll 9/11 took on him, on his agency, and on the nation.

60 Minutes found him passionate, combative, apologetic, defiant, and fiercely loyal to the people of the CIA and their fight against terrorism.

“People don’t understand us, you know, they think we’re a bunch of faceless bureaucrats with no feelings, no families, no sense of what it’s like to be passionate about running these bastards down. There was nobody else in this government that felt what we felt before or after 9/11. Of course, after 9/11, everybody had that feeling. Nobody felt like we felt on that day. This was personal,” Tenet tells Pelley.

Here’s the part of the interview that I found the most revolting.

“Two of the 19 hijackers, in your files, in Langley, Virginia, a year and a half before 9/11 … they don’t get on a watch list. They don’t get on a no-fly list. You know these are bad guys,” Pelley remarks.

“Scott, they don’t. And honest people doing honest work, for whatever you know, all of these people who are doing the best that they can, and understand this in great granularity, understand all of this and feel this pain, we all know this. I can’t dress this up for you,” Tenet replies.

What happened?

“People were inundated with data and operations. And they missed it,” Tenet acknowledges. “We’re not trying to intentionally withhold—human beings made mistakes.”

But the 9/11 Commission accused Tenet’s CIA of being bureaucratic and failing to recognize al Qaeda for the threat that it was.

“All these commissions, and all these reports never got underneath the feeling of my people. You know, to see us written about as if we’re idiots. Or if we didn’t understand this threat. As if we didn’t understand what happened on that day. To impugn our integrity, our operational savvy. You know, the American people need to know that’s just not so,” Tenet says. “We’re the ones that stand up and tell you the truth about when we’re wrong. It’s a great thing about this government. The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We’ll tell you, you don’t have to drag it out of us. You didn’t have to serve me a subpoena to tell me I didn’t watch list Hazmi and Midhar. We knew right away; and we told everybody. Truth matters to us.”

See, here’s the thing. 9/11 happened, and nobody lost his job. 9/11 occurred, and Tenet had been CIA Director for four years, and Deputy Director for two years prior. And he still, to this day, refuses to acknowledge that the biggest intelligence failure in the history of the nation was in any way the CIA’s fault.

Your job, Mr. Tenet, was to ferret out the risks to your country. You blew it. Three thousand people died, and now we’re at war in two separate nations.

The nation doesn’t think you’re a bunch of idiots who couldn’t connect the dots. We think you’re a bunch of intelligence experts who didn’t do their jobs.

This isn’t a corporation that failed to meet its annual Wall Street projections. This is an agency tasked with the protection of America from foreign agents who wish to do her harm. The Millennium Bomber was foiled not because of intelligence work, but because of an alert customs agent. That was another Al Qaeda plot the CIA missed. Under Tenet’s tenure. Another “mistake.” And still, no one was ever fired. No one—until the Bush Administration finally edged out Tenet three years after 9/11.

Throughout the interview, Tenet kept on praising the work of the agency. Went on and on about the great work the CIA did in Afghanistan. Yeah, that’s the country where they missed bin Laden. Great work. Yep. Wonderful. Good to know Osama isn’t around anymore to plot against America. Oh. Wait. Guess that’s another of the CIA “mistakes” under Tenet.

You know, the CIA doesn’t get a bye with me for being human and making mistakes. Not unless after 9/11 they, for instance, conducted an audit of what went wrong, found the problems, rectified them, and set in effect new guidelines to prevent this from ever happening again. That’s not what I heard from Tenet. And we know now that the FBI and CIA are still not working well together.

Tenet should have been fired the week after 9/11. But this is twenty-first century America, where no one bears personal responsibility for anything anymore. The buck stops nowhere.

I won’t be buying Tenet’s books. Particularly after reading the outright lies already being exposed.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has now learned of a second, more stunning error in Tenet’s book (which is due to appear in bookstores tomorrow). According to Michiko Kakutani’s review in Saturday’s Times,

On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming ut of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear esponsibility.”

Here’s the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday.” And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

He’s only human. He makes mistakes. That’s the explanation for the error, I’m sure.

Azmi Bishara – not guilty by virtue of…

Filed under: Israel, Politics — SnoopyTheGoon @ 11:30 am

Apparently, by virtue of having a big mouth. His seemingly erratic behavior, starting with his mysterious disappearance, artfully designed to provide as much fodder as possible to the rumors mill, his dramatic reappearance in Israeli embassy in Cairo to submit his resignation from the Knesset, the content-less articles by his supporters, unable to dispel the cloud of suspicions but preparing the background for an hysterical campaign – all this does nothing to answer the question of Bishara’s guilt, but does everything to paint a picture of a martyr for the cause.

And now another step in the well-orchestrated campaign has started:

Thousands of protestors took part in a demonstration in Nazareth on Saturday held in support of former MK Azmi Bishara. Among the protestors and speakers were representatives from each of Israel’s Arab political parties and members of Bishara’s family.

To remind our readers: the details of the investigation and its results were not published yet. The file was not yet delivered to the AG office that has yet to decide whether there is a sufficient case for the courts.

In four days the gag order preventing complete coverage of the investigation into Bishara will be lifted.

So, you may very well ask, why not wait a bit? Why had Bishara flown so conveniently? Why does he try to preempt the publication of the investigation? Why this hysterical propaganda war, getting absurd:

Former Balad chairman Azmi Bishara on Friday accused MKs in Israel of carrying out massacres. “Most MKs behaved violently in their lives and during their army service,” the former Arab-Israeli MK added in an interview with a French television channel on Friday.

Bishara went on to say that he did not have any information to give to Hizbullah but claimed that Hizbullah had “more information about the IDF that it could have ever dreamed of.”

Quite a telling statement, isn’t it? To top it, Bishara is already complaining that the insidious Mossad is out to rub him out. And his steely resolve to return to Israel to stand trial isn’t worth much as well, if your read the following carefully:

According to Bishara, he would face a lose-lose situation were he to return to Israel now. “Were an Israeli court to convict me, it would harm the legitimacy of the national Arab movement in Israel,” he said. “Were I to be acquitted, it would be seen as an acquittal from supporting resistance.”

Hardly consistent with his readiness for martyrdom, is it? But the Soviet-trained rubble rouser is hardly inconvenienced by this inconsistency.

Bishara spoke by telephone to the protesters, stating “our intellect and our words are our weapons. Never in my life did I draw a gun or kill anyone.”

I believe him – after all, rubble rouser does not have to shoot, there are enough simpletons he brainwashes to do the job.

Many of the demonstrators were also heard chanting, “With blood and fire we will redeem you Azmi.”

Whose blood do they have in mind?

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

So, about that supposed moderation of Hamas

Filed under: Hamas — Meryl Yourish @ 10:30 am

Yeah, I called it over a year ago. Moderation? Never.

Hamas Leader Threatens Renewed Violence
The supreme leader of Hamas threatened violence if an international aid embargo isn’t lifted and demanded in an interview published Monday that Israel release top Palestinian leaders in return for a captured soldier.

By the way, it takes the AP three more grafs before they get to the meat of the story. Why is that again? That’s right. The majority of newspapers cut off the story after paragraph three in the “World News” section. So of course, this is paragraph four:

“We are doing the impossible to end the embargo on our people … If, God forbid, it continues … the results will be serious,” Khaled Mashaal told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayam. “The explosion will be in the face of the Zionist enemy.”

So, is that a threat for suicide bombs or rocket attacks? Because, well, rockets are falling now, and bomb attacks keep getting (thankfully!) prevented by the very excellent Israeli intelligence services.

Or maybe he’s just saying that Hamas is going to pull a Hizbollah. They’ve prepared for it, digging hundreds of tunnels and smuggling in thousands of rockets.

Then again, the Arab world is fond of saying “Give us peace or we’ll kill you.”

Yeah? You and what five armies?

So much bias, where to turn?

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 9:30 am

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli traitor who handed over state secrets to the British press, is once again lionized in the media.

And it’s in so many different flavors! What to choose? What to choose?

UPI:

Israeli whistleblower in trouble again
An Israeli court has convicted nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu of violating an order to avoid contact with foreign journalists.

Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s main nuclear reactor, served an 18-year-prison sentence after he was convicted of leaking documents that led experts to conclude Israel had a nuclear weapons arsenal that ranked sixth in the world, the Post reported.

AP:

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu could end up back in jail after an Israeli court convicted him on Monday of violating an order forbidding him contact with foreigners.

Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s nuclear plant near the southern town of Dimona, spent 18 years in prison for giving details of the country’s atomic program to a British newspaper in 1986.

Ynet! (Via Reuters, and Ynet should be ashamed for not editing this crap out.)

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was convicted Monday by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order prohibiting him from talking to foreign journalists and leaving Israel.

[...] Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years behind bars in 1986 after giving an unauthorised interview to a British newspaper about his work at Israel’s Dimona reactor. The disclosures all but blew away the secrecy around an assumed Israeli atomic arsenal.

And Reuters says that like it’s a good thing.

The JPost, also via wire services:

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court convicted nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu on 14 counts of violating a court order to avoid contact with foreign journalists.

[...] In 1986, Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s main nuclear reactor, gave pictures and documents to the London-based Sunday Times that led experts to conclude that Israel had a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal, ranking it sixth in the world. Vanunu served an 18-year prison term for his disclosures.

The lie has solidified. Vanunu is no longer a traitor who leaked classified information to a foreign newspaper. He is now a “whistleblower,” a term used to describe a member of a corporation or organization who goes to the press to complain about bad or illegal company policies and actions.

Because of course, Vanunu was right in the anti-Israel media’s eyes, to disclose government information. Anything that portrays Israel in a negative light is something everyone has the right to know. That’s one of the unwritten rules of reporting on Israel (and America).

Shame on you, Jerusalem Post editors, and shame on you, Ynet editors, for falling into the “whistleblower” trap. Mordechai Vanunu is a spy and a traitor, nothing more, nothing less. The man so hates Israel (and himself) that he converted to Christianity to try to erase the last vestiges of his heritage. I’d say good riddance, but he did immense damage to Israel, and I’m perfectly fine with leaving him to rot where he most hates to be.

04/29/2007

Haveil Havalim is up

Filed under: Linkfests — Meryl Yourish @ 8:29 pm

And there are so many places to look, I barely know where to tell you to go.

This one is on the New York Times being awarded the Self-Hating Jew Lifetime Achievement Award, and you have to see the award to believe it. Funny and disgusting at the same time.

Jews of the Caribbean—but not pirates.

Why Apartheid doesn’t fit the Israel model.

Funny. Very funny.

CAIR makes more incursions into the Democratic party.

Okay. I will link again to Yid With Lid, especially because I like the title of that post, but then I’m going to link to my rant about reverse type. Substitute crappy color schemes and you get my drift. That’s me, still working to save the eyes of the middle-aged blogosphere.

Benjamin Kerstein has no sympathy for poor, oppressed billionaires. Shame on you, Ben!

Don’t buy Whole Foods or Peet’s Coffee. JoshuaPundit tells you why. (Hint: Terror-supporting compinkosymps.)

I was going to write about thousands of Arabs surrounding a few dozen Jews on Independence Day. Now I don’t have to.

YouTube shuts down a pro-Israel videoblogger. Color me unsurprised.

All right. Now those links are ALL from this edition of Haveil Havalim. Go look at the rest of the links, and click on them. That’s what they’re there for.

Do I have to do everything for you?

Sing along with Rahel

Filed under: Teaching — Meryl Yourish @ 1:54 pm

Long-time readers will doubtless remember that this is the time of year that I am driven absolutely crazy by my Daled class students. Spring hits Richmond very early each year, but we have class through the end of May. By this time of year, I have gotten nearly through our curriculum, my students have finished or nearly finished their mastery skills, and the sun is bright and warm and there are bugs and birds and trees and flowers to distract my nine- and ten-year-olds.

In short, this time of year is really tough if you’re a Hebrew school teacher trying to impart knowledge into young, impressionable minds. It’s an uphill battle when it isn’t gorgeous out. Add springtime to the mix, and if my students get out of class having learned only one piece of new information, I consider it a victory.

Which is why I try to do things outside the curriculum in late spring. This is the time of year that I scour the internet for something that I can bring in that will keep my students’ interest and yet still teach them about being Jews. Today, I brought in my laptop to take advantage of the synagogue office WiFi. I showed my class the Miri Ben-Ari video that’s been making the rounds. I asked them to tell me if they recognized the music—it’s the Uzi Chitman version of Adon Olam that the rabbi taught them this year (my favorite!). I also asked them to watch the video and tell me what it was about. They caught on to both immediately. Of course, then I had to explain interpretetive dance to them. (“Weird” and “silly” were the words most used most frequently to describe the dance.) And then I had to tell them no, the dancers were not naked, those were flesh-colored bodysuits.

Some of the students were watching more Miri Ben-Ari videos while I worked on a mastery skill with the others. One told me that a box had popped up and was saying something. Turns out that Rahel was IM’ing me. I told her I was in class and asked her to connect her microphone, and then “called” her with Google Talk. I asked her to please tell my students where she was calling from. When they heard “Jerusalem, Israel,” they were awestruck. So, since we had Rahel on Google Talk, and we had just finished listening to my class’ favorite version of Adon Olam, we proceeded to have a sing-along with Rahel. My students sang the first verse, then I asked Rahel if she would sing a verse. The kids got even more awestruck, because if you haven’t heard Rahel sing, you are missing out on something wonderful.

We finished the song, and thanked Rahel, said goobye and went on with our lessons.

It was a wonderful, wonderful lesson. My students all loved it, and even the madrich was impressed. Best of all, I had my camera today. So Rahel, here they are, singing along with you, 6,000 miles away.

Oh, and the kids all think you have a shot as a professional singer and should pursue that. (Yes, after they said that, I reminded them that I’d already brought in your CD for them.)

I really have to figure out a way to get Rahel to my Bat Mitzvah in November. I do believe there will be a fundraiser for her airfare before long.

Israel boycott con?

Filed under: Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — SnoopyTheGoon @ 8:35 am

I have borrowed this headline from a remarkable (aren’t they all?) article by Ami Isseroff. In the article Ami states and proves the main point: that in many, if not all, cases the boycott initiative has a hidden goal – cheap advertisement, and in most situations this goal is reached.

Vote to spend more money on hospital missions in Africa and you might merit a back page notice in the religion section of a newspaper. Vote to ask for better pension plans for your members and your union might get a notice in a trade newspaper. Vote to boycott Israel and you are instantly an international celebrity. You and your union are front page news.

There is more proof there in the article, and it is an excellent reading anyway, so do yourself a favor. Without going into psychology (or psychiatry) of the various initiators of all these boycotts, which is a separate issue and clearly a subject for the experts, I would say that my personal attitude to these cases was more or less the same. I have even tried, in my own humble way, to coin a term “doing a Gibson” for cases and people like these boycotters.

However lately I have started to feel that we dismiss the boycott flare-ups too easily. Indeed, in most cases a boycott is a result of a micro-putsch organized in the best tradition of the genre. In most cases the result does not reflect the opinion of majority of the members in whose name the voting was undertaken, and in majority of the cases the practical side of the matter is close to nil.

The final push that changed my opinion was a remark made by Jon Ihle, quoted below:

Don’t be fooled, Snoopy. These guys are playing a long game and they are making incremental progress on the boycott front, which serves to normalise and institutionalise a characterisation of Israel as uniquely disgraceful.

I think that Jon hit the bull’s eye here. It is not an individual boycott as such that matters, it is the whole picture of slow, gradual erosion of public opinion, having its ultimate goal to delegitimize everything Israel stands for. And we should be wary of the whole business, even if it is being carried out by small groups of Israel-haters, even if they are more shrill and hysterical than significant.

And now I can easily agree with the closing paragraph of Ami’s post:

Pro-active vigilance can stop the boycotters however. It has nipped a few of them in the bud, before they got started. It is only necessary in most cases to be attentive, to note the published agenda of board meetings and to marshal the forces needed to quash the initiatives before it is too late.

That too…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

04/28/2007

Podcast assistance needed

Filed under: Podcasts — Meryl Yourish @ 8:27 pm

If anyone out there has a decent audio capture program, and can get me the Harry Reid audio from this YouTube video, I’d appreciate it. My capture program is freeware that has a tinny sound to it.

Thanks.

Update: Got it, thanks.

Why I still read Lair Simon

Filed under: Bloggers, Humor — Meryl Yourish @ 3:36 pm

Because even when he’s so busy he barely has time to post on his own blog, he comes up with gems like this. It’s called “Captain’s Blog,” and it’s funny. You should read it. Even if you don’t like Star Trek.

Sounds like he’s locked onto a new series.

Media bias: Only on days that end with a y

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Hamas — Meryl Yourish @ 3:18 pm

If the day ends with a “y,” you can be guaranteed at least one biased media piece on Israel. Like this one.

3 Hamas Militants Slain Near Gaza Border

Notice how the Palestinians did not “die,” as they did in yesterday’s story. They were “slain.”

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israeli troops on Saturday killed at least three Hamas militants who were en route to carrying out an attack, throwing a shaky truce along the Gaza-Israel border further into question.

The border clash came just a day after moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held rare talks in Cairo with Hamas’ supreme leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, to find ways of rescuing the cease-fire.

It was not clear whether Hamas’ military wing acted with the backing of the political leaderhsip. There has been growing dissatisfaction among Hamas’ hardliners with the coalition government formed in March between Hamas and Abbas’ pragmatic Fatah movement.

Isn’t it amazing how the AP can pretend that there’s a cease-fire even after Hamas has not only declared it over, but then proceeds to shoot rockets and plant bombs? And hey, let’s check out how Abbas is “rescuing” the cease-fire.

Exiled Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal on Saturday described rockets attacks on Israel this week as “self defense” and claimed they were justified, while the camp of the moderate Palestinian president urged the preservation of the five months’ truce.

[...] “It’s the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves,” Mashaal said, adding the attacks came in revenge for the killings of nine Hamas Palestinians by Israel. “These are violations that needed a retaliation.”

Uh-huh. “Self-defense” equals sending rockets at civilians. But wait, because the AP is equally as insane.

Saturday’s incident marked the second time in four days that Hamas breached the cease-fire reached in November. Earlier this week, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets toward Israel, causing no injuries, after Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in fighting.

“The truce cannot be for free. There is a possibility to consider a temporary truce, on the condition that is mutual. Otherwise there will be no free truce,” Abu Obeida, a spokesman of the Hamas military wing, told a local Palestinian radio station.

Hamas has sent mixed messages about the truce in recent days.

Okay. Now rockets and bombs are “mixed messages.” That’s a new one in the AP euphemism dictionary. But hey, this is the Middle East, where Alice in Wonderland actually makes sense.

While the military wing said it considered the truce to have ended, citing Israeli violations, political leaders said the future of the cease-fire depended on Israeli actions.

Ayman Taha, a Hamas government spokesman, said Saturday that the group has the right to target Israel. “The problem is not with the resistance, it is with the occupation,” he said.

You see? It is never their responsibility. Not. Ever. Gilad Shalit is still being held captive not because Hamas kidnapped him, but because Israel refuses to release the prisoners that Hamas wants released. It isn’t Hamas’ fault that they are sending rockets into Israel, planting bombs, and trying to kill and kidnap Israelis on a daily basis. It is Israel’s fault. Because she exists.

These people will never, ever give up this attitude until they are utterly defeated. The world needs to back off and let Israel clean out the terrorists, once and for all.

Of course, it won’t. We all know that. And so you get pretend truces, whose “breaking” is always blamed on Israel, no matter what.

The Red Queen has leaped from the pages of Lewis Carroll and taken life in the words of Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Qaeda, and their sympathizers.

04/27/2007

Have you voted in the JIB awards yet?

Filed under: Bloggers, Religion — Meryl Yourish @ 12:01 pm

Well, have you?

You should. Go vote.

Best Post has been delayed for a while, so I’m suggesting you vote for someone other than me. There are a lot of fine Jewish and Israeli bloggers out there. Go look at the categories, and click onto their blogs.

Your daily dose of media bias

Filed under: Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

Palestinians were killed at the Rafah border crossing, but the media aren’t picking it up, because they weren’t killed by Israelis. But don’t count on Israel not being blamed for this. As far as I can tell, only the BBC has picked up the story to date. Oh, and the BBC does that passive voice thing in the headline.

Man dies in Rafah border shooting
Palestinian medical officials say an off-duty security officer has been shot dead in an exchange of fire at the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

Several others were injured in the incident at the Rafah crossing.

Witnesses said the shooting started after Palestinian officers tried to stop at least one man barging his way through controls at the crossing.

Yep. He “dies” when shot by Palestinians. Palestinians are “killed” by Israelis, though.

The AP/Ha’aretz version:

A Palestinian security officer was killed Friday in an exchange of fire between Palestinian Presidential Guard officers and Gaza residents at the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, security and medical officials said.

Three other people, including a civilian, were wounded in the incident.

[...] The incident began when a man tried to pass through the crossing by force and started firing at the Presidential Guard officers stationed at the crossing.

You won’t be reading about this incident in too many other places, I suspect.

Projection

Filed under: Israel, Politics, Terrorism — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

The Middle East Times collects a roundup of Arab newspaper editorials. Be prepared to start laughing at the astonishing hypocrisy.

A commentary in Jordan’s Ad Dustour said the Israeli campaign against Arab Knesset member Azmi Bishara indicated Israel was becoming more like Arab countries and that its democracy was no longer an oasis in the midst of the Middle East political desert.

The mass-circulation daily added that if an Israeli ruling group succeeded in issuing a new law under the “Bishara bill,” it would become possible for one lawmaker to dismiss another.

It claimed that, according to Israeli news reports, the proposed bill would allow a Knesset member to level accusations against a colleague while the latter was abroad to avoid resignation, subsequently freezing all the accused lawmaker’s assets if he or she failed to present his or herself in court.

The paper, which describes itself as independent, but is partially owned by the government, opined that such a law targeted Israeli Arabs, in general, and their political leaders, in particular.

Jordan is a nation where the unelected king can dissolve Parliament at a whim, appoints all the ministers who approve his decisions, appoints the nation’s judges, and has, well, all of the power of the American President plus most of the power of Congress thrown in. Oh. And did I mention he’s not elected? And this is one of his newspapers, talking about the “lack” of Israeli democracy, proven by a bill that hasn’t gone further than being proposed.

Our pals the Kuwaitis, for whom we shed blood and treasure to rescue them from Saddam, on the U.S. military’s attempt to stop the Sunnis and Shiites from murdering one antoher:

A commentary in Kuwait’s Al Qabas wondered what Americans were doing building a wall in Baghdad, and what they hoped to achieve by provoking Iraqis in the way Israelis were doing with the Arabs.

The pro-government daily said the US barrier being raised in Baghdad’s Adhamiya district was a form of collective punishment for the Sunnis, “in which they are banned from entering and leaving from specific gates guarded by the American army.”

Moreover, it added, the wall would become a symbol of Sunni and Shiite hatred and bloodshed, and in this way, the US military would “facilitate [violence] for … extremists [by identifying] where Sunnis and Shiites live, so that killing according to [sect] becomes easier.”

The paper insisted that the idea to construct a wall had been suggested to the US by the Israelis, who “[had walled in] themselves behind a barrier out of fear of the Palestinians,” adding that the US-erected wall in Baghdad “gives the impression that the animosity between the Iraqis is the same as the animosity between the Arabs and the Jews.”

But this is my favorite part:

Meanwhile, “it has become clear that President [George W.] Bush has failed in everything … even in his attempt to ignite a sectarian war in Iraq,” the paper claimed.

“The day will soon come when the American people will demand his impeachment … to put him on trial for what he did in Afghanistan and Iraq, [and for the] unprecedented chaos in the Middle East.”

Once again, we have the mouthpiece of a government newspaper from a so-called friendly state slamming democracy—in a state that is run by yet another unelected monarch. And you can’t vote in Kuwait if you’ve been a naturalized citizen less than 30 years. Sure. Tell us all about impeachment, asshats. We wait with bated breath to hear the opinions of a bunch of backwards xenophobes and misogynists. Well, no, we don’t, and we think you dress funny, too.

Lastly, we turn to our friends the Saudis, via their London mouthpiece:

The London-based Asharq Al Awsat reported Thursday that there were more than 200 non-Iraqi Arab prisoners being held in a northern Iraq prison.

The Saudi-owned daily said it was the first newsgroup to enter the Soussa Prison near the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya and to interview the detainees.

[...] “They said they are not terrorists and [had come] to Iraq for different reasons before they were arrested,” reported the paper, distributed in many Arab capitals.

It added that 56 of the prisoners were Saudi nationals, sentenced to jail terms ranging from seven years to life.

“During Asharq al Awsat’s tour of the prison, [the phrase,] ‘I’m innocent,’ was repeated by most, and prison officials say the majority of the detainees being held on terrorism charges” deny them, the paper said.

Yeah, never heard that before from prisoners. Not anywhere. And check out the numbers: A quarter of the non-Iraqi prisoners are Saudis. Imagine that. Wonder what the Saudis were doing in Iraq?

One Saudi inmate said he was married to two Iraqi women and had entered the country in 2003 to visit his maternal aunt in the Sunni town of Fallujah, when he was arrested.

Another Saudi claimed he had come to Iraq originally to sell his car.

Oooooh. He came to Iraq to sell his car. Of course! Why else would he be there? What’s that you say? Starts with a “j” and ends with “ihad”?

Interesting reading, this site. I will be using it more frequently in the future.

04/26/2007

Open the gates of hell watch

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas — Meryl Yourish @ 5:01 pm

We haven’t had a threat to open the gates of hell in quite some time, so I thought I’d give you the latest one.

Anticipating Israeli military action, Hamas gunmen took up positions overnight near Gaza’s border with Israel, covering themselves with tree branches as camouflage.

“The Zionist enemy should understand that any thought of raiding the Gaza Strip will open the gates of hell and hundreds of rockets will be launched against (the southern Israeli towns) of Sderot and Ashkelon and beyond,” said Qassam brigades spokesman Abu Ubaida.

Not that I believe him, but Olmert has already said no to letting the IDF hunt some terrorists in Gaza.

Shame.

The faux truce

Filed under: Gaza — Meryl Yourish @ 4:42 pm

Mahmoud Abbas says there’s no reason for Israel to go into Gaza. The “truce,” he says, is holding.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that calm had returned to Gaza and he appealed for Israel to refrain from embarking on a large-scale military operation in the coastal strip.

“There is a truce between us and the Israelis, which was impinged on,” he told reporters during a trip to Geneva. “We don’t want … to lay blame on who impinged on the cease-fire, but the important thing is that there is calm and there is nothing there to justify an assault on Gaza.”

Really?

Members of the Salah al-Din Brigades fired a Qassam rocket at the western Negev Thursday morning. The rocket landed in an open area, and no damage or injuries were reported.

Palestinian armed factions renewed their commitment to a Gaza Strip truce on Thursday but said rocket barrages from the territory could resume if Israel did not halt military operations in the West Bank.

Once again, the goalposts are moved. The “truce” is now supposed to cover the West Bank, which was never agreed upon in the first place.

Trees make me sneeze

Filed under: Cats, Life — Meryl Yourish @ 1:41 pm

So do grass pollen, mold, and dead dust mites.

And apparently, according to the allergist, so does this:

Gracie

No, seriously. I tested positive for this, too:

Tig

I just laughed at the allergist. I have never in my life entered a house with cats and sneezed or teared up or shown any other allergic reaction. In fact, I have never had any major reactions until I moved to Virginia, where I am apparently allergic to cedar tree pollen, ragweed, and one other pollen that I forgot.

My two little allergens are both inside at the moment. Gracie is playing on the sofa in her nest, yowling for me to come wave the ribbon toy at her. We’ve just started playing a new game that she and I both thoroughly enjoy. She plays and looks goofy, I wave the ribbon toy and laugh and try to take pictures.

I told the allergist there was no way I would ever be without cats. I’ve had cats most of my life, and I intend to have cats as close as possible to the day I die. (I figure if I’m in my nineties and my then-cat dies, I may not replace him/her, so as not to have to worry about who’d take care of my cat.)

Besides, I’m pretty sure that if I took away all the other allergens, I’d have few or no symptoms of my cat allergy. I get cat hair in my eyes on a regular basis. Tig sleeps next to me more often than not, and sleeps in my lap as often as he likes. Gracie has had a dander problem her entire life, which I notice especially when I brush her. I can spend half an hour brushing Tig with zero allergic symptoms during or after. I sneeze when I dust the furniture, however.

I had my cats for eight years before Virginia’s excessive pollen and mold made my latent allergies symptomatic. I’m thinking my cat allergies are the least of my problems.

But now I have a new nickname for my cats. They’re my little allergens. Or my big allergen, in Tig’s case.

Yes, please

Filed under: Israel — Meryl Yourish @ 1:11 pm

Get rid of this moron who should be called the Indefensible Minister.

Associates of Amir Peretz said on Thursday that the defense minister would be willing to accept the position of finance minister immediately, after Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ruled earlier that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could not fill the post indefinitely.

Put someone who actually knows about, gee, warfare, in the position.

Off to the allergist

Filed under: Life — Meryl Yourish @ 8:42 am

Posting will be light this morning while I get stuff put on me and then react to it. Or not.

04/25/2007

Abbas asks for a do-over

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Hamas, Israel — Meryl Yourish @ 12:00 pm

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how if the IDF even looks at a Palestinian, it’s a violation of the “truce,” but Hamas can outright say they’re breaking the truce, and then a few hours later say “Well, not really,” and everyone pretends they believe them this time.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, speaking in Rome after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, said the rocket attacks were a “one-time violation of the truce.”

He called on Israel to show restraint in order to avoid a “deterioration” in the region.”

Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema said that Rome was concerned about the renewed rocket attacks, and called on Abbas to adhere to the principles set by International Quartet – especially the recognition of Israel.

Earlier in the day, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing said the group considered the truce over.

You see? Everyone knows the Palestinians are lying, they’ve seen it happen over and over again, and yet, they all pretend that the Palestinians mean it when they say they’re “keeping” the faux truce. The effing AP won’t even acknowledge that the rocket attacks were a truce violation. Look at this lame excuse for a news report:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday authorized the army to carry out limited operations in the Gaza Strip, but ruled out a large-scale ground offensive in response to a new round of rocket attacks, Israeli officials said.

The decision was made at an emergency meeting that Olmert held with senior security officials following the fresh rocket fire by Hamas militants in Gaza. The violence has threatened to unravel a five-month cease-fire.

Even Hamas says the cease-fire is over, but not the AP.

I’m sorry, but my cup of outrage is so far overflowed that I can barely garner a raised eyebrow for all of this. It is simply breathtaking anti-Israel bias, and yet, it now seems so normal to me… that must be the result of five years of reading crap like this. Oh, for the days when I knew that Israel was always being screwed, but didn’t pay attention to the media bias because I didn’t like to read the news.

Syria readies for war

Filed under: Israel, Syria — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

The Syrians are building up their arms and army, moving closer to the border, and installing thousands of rockets after the Hizbollah fashion of last year’s Lebanon war. But they want peace, they say. Uh-huh. And of course, the Israelis are being told they’re imagining things. The Syrians are just talking when they threaten to take back the Golan Heights by force.

No tangible evidence exists, Israel told the U.S., that Damascus is planning an all-out war with Israel. But it is believed that Damascus has concluded that Israel might respond to various Syrian actions and that would be the cause of a full-blown confrontation.

[...] Such evaluations have been made before and proven mistaken. However, facts on the ground show the Syrian army is increasing its battle readiness, munitions production (especially of rockets and missiles), emergency stores and is acquiring more weapons systems from Iran. It has purchased a large number of advanced anti-tank missiles from the Russians, with whom it also negotiating the purchase of Russia’s latest anti-aircraft missiles.

The Syrians have deployed Iranian naval missiles (originally Chinese), the C. 802. The destructive power and range of Syria’s rockets and missiles has clearly grown in recent years. Israel does not rule out a possible Syrian grab for the Golan, assuming that if Israel counter-attacks the Syrian lines it will incur heavy losses. Thus, the IDF’s power has also increased, especially that of the Israel Air Force.

So, when I say “Oh yeah? You and what five armies?” to the Syrian threats to destroy Israel, let’s count how many are already there: Hamas, Hizbollah, Saudi Arabia by proxy (as always), Iran (via the terrorists and Syria), and, well, the rest of the Muslim world that sends money to the terrorists. They’re almost at five armies, though.

This summer will not be a good one for Israel, I think.

“Moderate” Iranian ex-prez curses Israeli reporters

Filed under: Iran — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

That “moderate” Iranian ex-president, whose speech at Harvard on September 10th last year was titled “Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence” is not a practitioner of what he preaches.

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami has called for peaceful dialogue with the West, but last week cursed Israeli journalists who approached him at the sixth Eurasion Media Forum in Kazakhstan.

[...] Nevertheless, despite his calls for “dialogue,” Khatami refused to speak to the Israeli reporters present at the talks.

Channel 10 later reported that Khatami, heading for his suite, had cursed them, saying, “Go to hell!”

On Friday, Khatami decided to skip the scheduled panel on Iran’s nuclear program because an Israeli representative was slated to speak.

Yep. Surely the signs of a “moderate” leader of Iran. Surely the signs of a tolerant man.

Israel’s traitors within

Filed under: Israel — Meryl Yourish @ 9:15 am

The gag order was finally lifted on the Arab Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara’s criminal allegations, and they are crimes against the State of Israel, and even worse, during wartime.

Former MK Azmi Bishara is suspected of acting against the security of the State of Israel during the Second Lebanon War, according to details of the investigation against him released Wednesday after a court partially lifted a gag order on the probe.

The suspicions include aiding Israel’s enemies during wartime, passing intelligence to the enemy, contacts with foreign agents, some of which allegedly took place during the Second Lebanon War.

Bishara is also suspected of breaking the law against money laundering, by allegedly personally receiving large amounts of money from abroad, some of which was transferred during the war last year.

No wonder he left the country and isn’t coming back. He’s a terrorist and a traitor. He was aiding and abetting the enemy during a war.

Israel has a real Fifth Column in its midst. But watch for the news analyses to blame Israel’s treatment of its Arabs for Bishara’s treachery. Just watch. It will happen.

04/24/2007

How much is that Gracie in the basket?

Filed under: Cats — Meryl Yourish @ 11:12 pm

The one with the scraggly tail
How much is that Gracie in the basket?
I hear that she really can wail.

Gracie in the basket

Because sometimes, you just need to post cat pictures.

Israel is 59

Filed under: Holidays, Israel — Meryl Yourish @ 2:45 pm

I think this recording of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp survivors singing Hatikvah says it all, particularly the last line: “Am Yisrael Chai—the children of Israel still live!”

Random funereal thought

Filed under: Meanderings — Meryl Yourish @ 12:00 pm

Do they bury you barefoot? I mean, in Jewish burials.

I love going barefoot. I was born barefoot. Iwouldn’t mind if I died barefoot. And I would like to be barefoot when they put me in that pine box.

I wonder if the rabbi would think it an odd question at our monthly “Ask the Rabbi” service.

More on the tough guys

Filed under: Juvenile Scorn, Life — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

If you go to the New York Times Flash presentation of the Tech timeline, a couple of things leap out at you right away. Go to image 6. You’ll see that Rooms 204 (image 15) and 205 (image 14) had the highest survival rate. Everyone in Room 205 survived. Here’s why:

The small group of 10 in Haiyan Cheng’s computer class heard the loud banging outside. She thought it was construction noise at first, but it distracted her. No, they were pops. Then silence, then more pops. Cheng and a female student went to the door and peered out. They saw a man emerge from a room across the hall. He was holding a gun, but it was pointed down. They quickly shut the door. More popping sounds, getting louder, closer. The class was in a panic. One student, Zach Petkowicz, was near the lectern “cowering behind it,” he would later say, when he realized that the door was vulnerable. There was a heavy rectangular table in the class, and he and two other students pushed it against the door. No sooner had they fixed it in place than someone pushed hard from the outside. It was the gunman. He forced it open about six inches, but no farther. Petkowicz and his classmates pushed back, not letting up. The gunman fired two shots through the door. One hit the lectern and sent wood scraps and metal flying. Neither hit any of the students. They could hear a clip dropping, the distinct, awful sound of reloading. And, again, the gunman moved on.

Room 204 was Liviu Librescu’s class, where he blockaded the door as long as he could, giving his students a chance to escape.

The other factor that made a difference in the survival of the students: Rooms 204 and 205 were the last ones that Cho got to. By the time he tried to get into the rooms, the teachers and students had figured out that something horrible was going on, and barricaded their doors. That’s also how the wounded survived in Room 207—after Cho left, they blocked the door with a table.

The Tough Guys who think the students should have fought back and disarmed Cho don’t seem to have twigged to the fact that many of the students did what they could to fight and survive—without facing a man carrying two semiautomatic weapons loaded with hollow-point bullets. The ones that did face Cho did what I’d probably have done: Dove for cover while he was shooting at them.

And one more thing: How many of you readers have ever heard live gunfire, in person? Do you know what semiautomatic gunfire sounds like? Do you know why people say it sounds like firecrackers? Because it does. That’s a fact that, unfortunately, I’ve come to know in person due to my neighborhood having gone downhill these last few years.

I heard shots fired in my neighborhood again last night. It’s gotten so I stop to listen, count the number of shots, and then call the police and tell them how many shots and where I think they came from. When the shots come out like this: “powpowpowpowpow”—I know someone’s got a semiauto in the neighborhood and is having a little fun with it.

If I’d been in one of those Tech classrooms, I’d have known that someone was firing a gun down the hall—because I know now what gunfire sounds like. But when I was in college, I most emphatically did not know the sound of a gun being fired, except for the ones I heard on TV.

Most of those kids didn’t know what hit them. Especially the ones in the first class he entered.

The attacks were over in ten minutes. I fail to see what more the students could have done.

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