Murder mystery in Texas?

My friend Mary Madigan has a most interesting article at Pajamas Media today, A 'Non-Violent' Palestinian Activist Dies in Texas

On April 16, the body of teacher and activist Riad Hamad was spotted floating in Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. Witnesses said the man's body had been "wrapped with duct tape." According to News Radio 590, the police were not sure if foul play was involved. When Hamad was reported missing, the family mentioned that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts.

And then there's the matter of $500,000...



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Chile: Palestinians look for a new future in South America

Chile: Palestinians look for a new future in South America

A group of 117 Palestinian refugees trapped in the no-man's land between the Syrian and Iraqi borders are migrating to the Chilean capital, Santiago, to begin a new life.

The refugees, expected to arrive in Chile on 17 March, all come from Iraq and some were expelled from Syria after seeking refuge there.

The group are the first of three accepted by the Chilean government after a plea from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Initially they will get financial help:

"The refugees will be given economic aid for two years, which will decrease as the months go by, and the amount will be proportional to the size of the family", said Gonzalez to AKI.

"This money will take into consideration basic sustenance, healthcare needs, education, job training and recreational activities."

The newly-arrived refugees will be given an intensive one-year Spanish course and will be taught about Chilean society.

Chile is believed to have the largest community of Palestinians outside the Arab world, consisting of five percent of the population.

Palestinians and their descendants, most of them Christian, now number over 300,000 people, making it the largest community outside the Arab world.

Palestinians are also well integrated into Chilean economic, political and cultural life.

It will be interesting to see how the new arrivals adapt to modern Chilean society.

(h/t insubria)



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Victor Davis Hanson goes fishing with his son

I adore VDH's writing, and this post is particularly good,
World Gone By
Some 20 years ago I went fishing in the California mountains and had the best trout ever, and would eat the trout I fish now (rather than throw it back in the water), which obviously means I'm of the "older generation" mindset. But not to worry, I'll continue lying about my age for as long as I'm able to lie.

Hanson also has a few thoughts on Gazitis,

Any examination of the multimillionaire spoiled brat Bin-Laden, or the aristocratic and snobbish Egyptian Dr. Zawahiri, or the other middle-class 9/11 killers might suggest that poverty is no requisite for jihadism. In fact, most of the worst of the this very sad bunch are affluent and have had exposure to the Western affluence and liberality.
...
One should read about the life of Sayyid Qutb, intellectual architect of the Muslim Brotherhood that we now apparently wish to embrace. He hated the very thought of Jews, though he had seen few if any in Egypt, and was only to encounter them in any real number in America. This middle-class Egyptian—subsidized generously by his own government, treated well and embraced by Americans—grew to detest the West for its liberality, its equality of the sexes, its material wealth, its friendship with the Jews.

In other words, his wretched life reminds us that envy, jealousy, anger at lost stature, these primordial emotions fuel jihadism. They may be enhanced by general misery, acerbated by statist failures and authoritarian governments, but ultimately the nihilist rages are attributable to the lethal mix of Middle East tribalism and Islam’s utter failure to account for and live with modernity.

Thinking that radical Islam will soften itself or evolve is analogous to a victorious Confederacy voluntarily ending slavery about 1870, a kinder, gentler Soviet Union without the gulags, Hitler in his dotage dismantling Auschwitz, or Tojo in the 1950s turning his old zeal to flooding the Co-Prosperity Sphere with cars and radios.

And VDH also has an installment of his novel.

Good stuff.
------------------------------------------------------
Dr Krauthammer calls it the Last chance for Abbas.

I disagree. For as long as the UN and the EU sympahtize with Fatah, there will always be another chance.

Sicko, and Friday round-up

Updated
Via Larwyn, Prepare to be Sickened by SiCKO

Literally every day, the mainstream media in the countries whose government-run medical systems Moore holds up as superior models publish stories documenting the failure of mandatory, no-opt-out, state-run medical care. The laundry list of ills, in the U.K. alone, includes patients waiting months or even years for critical drugs and treatments (sometimes becoming disabled or dying because of the delay or lack of care), people denied therapies altogether because of rationing or cost (see, for example, an article last February in The Scotsman, “Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS”), an explosion in the size of the medical bureaucracy, and thousands of physicians taking to the streets earlier this year to protest.

One bottom line, so to speak, is particularly telling: Moore, who is obese, would most likely be denied a number of common health care procedures and treatments in one of his favored government-controlled socialist medicine systems, the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS), because of his excessive weight. Recently, the cash-strapped NHS actually started limiting or prohibiting therapies for residents who are fat or who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.

In Princeton, the Public Library has been banging the drum on socialized health care for a while, inviting Paul Krugman to ignore the facts about the French healthcare system and featuring a film on Cuba's healthcare at the Princeton Human Rights Film Festival, by which they not only managed to ignore Cuba's huuman rights record but also Cuba's apartheid health care system, even when three members of the audience tried to talk about it.

I expect the PPL will be showing SICKO soon.

Update: Michael Moore's Shticko: His health care jeremiad won't win any converts

And I won't be surprised if Sicko has wonderful things to say about the Venezuelan healthcare; too bad Michael didn't bring along any Norwegian reporters

Speaking of Venezuela,
Remember the fallen viaduct in Caracas?

Well, a new one's up.

In other Venezuelan news, The constitutional changes draft has been leaked: the path to an eternal Chavez dictatorship and kiss what's left of your private property good-bye. Update Dymphna has more on Hugo's latest.
--------------------------------------------------------
Joe finds some Academic Fantasies Exploited

Abbas: Hamas Creating ‘Empire of Darkness’ unlike Fatah's sweetness and lignt. The Guardian blames the US and Israel, of course.

Tony Blair's going to Rome

Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of secular Britain. Indeed.

El Cafe Cubano continues the Friday fast for all political prisoners

Unlike the Brits who allowed themselves to be taken hostage, the Aussies repelled an Iranian attempt to capture a boarding party. Update: Richard North has more on the story and how it's covered by the blogs and by the MSM.
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Via Irwin, June 20, 2007 Paul Krugman Four Years Ago Today. Krugman's wrong on things other than French healthcare, too.
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Via Bob, Harvard Dean of Freshmen Advertises "Scintillating and Sexy" Talk, since college students don't think of sex at all.
--------------------------------------------------------

George not-in-my-back-yard Clooney


technorati: SICKO
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A few thoughts by the beach

Every day when I first wake up I pray a Rosary in thanks, for I live a most privileged life filled with blessings.

Some of it may have to do with my name.

In Spanish, the name Fausta is most unusual for a woman. There are many Faustos, but women are usually named Faustina, which carries a softer connotation as the ina ending is also used as a diminutive. There are very few diminutive aspects to my personality, as those who know me well will tell you.

Faust in any language, to anyone familiar with Western opera and literature, connotes being gypped by unsavory characters. Frequently the person inquiring about my name is not fully familiar with the Faustian plot, and I have been asked if I was named after the devil. (I have developed a number of cutting remarks which have come in handy for those inquiries, thanks. Some day I'll post about that.) Classical scholars do know that Fausta was the wife of Constantine the Great, and she was up to no good. Probably becasue of this, many new visitors to this blog think Fausta is a pseudonym, when it actually is my real name.

I'm happy to report that I have not engaged in any Faustian dealings and that I was named after my grandma, a nice little old lady with flawless fair skin and snow-white hair, not after any conniving Roman empresses.

Fausta, on the other hand, is also an adjective in Spanish, meaning fortuitous, and also, happy in a splendid way. So I have been blessed with the life my name invokes.

Granted, mine is a simple mind and I derive great joy from the simplest things. Like stair-climbing, for instance.

Yesterday I went up and down four flights of stairs several times during the day. It was a hot and humid day and I was perspiring heavily (almost as much as that time I went to the aerobic yoga class, but not quite). To me it is a wonder that I can actually do that. It is an outright miracle. Several years ago I was really sick and despaired of ever doing such a simple thing again.

So there I was yesterday, going up the stairs for the umpteenth time (yes, the building has an elevator, but I wanted to go up the stairs because I could) and my heart was singing. No, it wasn’t palpitations. It was sheer delight. As I reached the fifth floor, I nearly said to a lady who was heading down, Look, I can do this!.

I'll never know if I woul feel that way if I hadn't been so ill. All I know is that I do now. I can not go back to find out, since there is no going back.

I derive a great deal of enjoyment from the most common things.

A fresh peach, eaten on the balcony overlooking the ocean.

The smell of the early morning.

The feel of cool clean linens.

The sight of a four year old hosing off the sand from his bellyboard.

The sound of a groom and his best man hugging each other in silence, just before they head to the wedding.

Blogging and podcasting are two other things I truly enjoy. Blogging and podcasting enrich my life in many wonderful and surprising ways. If I weren't blogging I would have never witnessed this wonderful event yesterday, for instance.

Yes, I have a most privileged life filled with blessings.

Since I'm on vacation I have had a chance to ponder these things while I haven't been keeping up on the news as much as usual, but I have heard from friends who do. Several of these friends I have met because of blogging, and they are very well informed.

They are expecting that things are not going to get better; indeed, they are expecting things to get a lot worse for a long time. Several of those friends are preparing for the worst.

They certainly have good reason to.

• A glance at the so-called newspaper of record shows the complicity of the mainstream media with crackpot Communist dictators.
• Academia has debased itself into a morass of dogmatism and moral blindness to the point where 87 faculty members of a major university judge three young men as guilty by "reason" of their race and background.
• Unprincipled secular societies in the West can not ever begin to understand fundamentalist Islamists because they are unable to fill a void with a void.
• We are in an existential struggle and Democrat candidates are running on the premise that there is no war at all. Listen up, democrats, look at what really happened in the Middle East. There have been 8,638 terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001. It's not Methodists doing it.
• The leadership in Washington is faltering in ever-worse ways. Both parties are out to find the most disastrous way in the least time.
• Even when I'm not keeping up with the news I know that the US and Israel will be arming Fatah. Have they lost their minds? We are arming our enemies. The enemy of my enemy will turn against us. They have before and will again.

So while I'm enjoying everyday pleasures and posting about them, I too have the temptation of wanting to go back to the the age of 1990s blindness, where a corrupt president was lauded by the media and where terrorist attack after terrorist attack was ignored and pushed aside because it didn’t fit the script of Clintonian happiness so many want to return to today.

They think that by bringing back the same-old same-old and singing the new campaign song it's all going to be Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So lets sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again,as if the words alone would make it so. It didn't happen in the 1930s. Then, as now, appeasement didn't work. But oh, those words would make anyone feel so good.

The problem is, words alone are not cutting it. Being blessed with a name does not alone make for a happy life as of itself. Ignoring an enemy set on destroying our very culture where I can write these words will not win a war.

There are many things I don't know, but there is one thing I know: there is no going back.

Don't close your eyes to reality.

Enjoy every moment you have.

And pray.



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Hamas wins in Gaza

UPDATED
Welcome to Hamastan

Hamas captures Fatah security HQ

Hamas militants have seized the headquarters of their rival Fatah's Preventive Security force, tightening their control over the Gaza Strip.
...
Hamas also seized control of the town of Rafah as it targeted security and political command centres across Gaza.

Meanwhile, the top Palestinian umbrella group, the PLO, has recommended that the unity government be dissolved and a state of emergency declared.

The road to Hamastan

Hamas may pull back from a final showdown in Gaza, forcing Fatah to sit down and negotiate. But some predict a total split between a “Hamastan” in Gaza and a West Bank ruled by Fatah. No Israeli leader—including Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, who this week won the Labour party’s primary election and could return to power next year—will feel any pressure to talk peace with a Palestinian leadership that is so definitively divided

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred:

If Hamas wins the civil war, their ideologies and beliefs will no longer be camouflaged. we will know how to deal with these same ideologues that supported Saddam Hussein. If the PA wins the civil war, they will have to make some serious choices, or the cycle of internal violence will repeat itself. The only thing that is certain is that neither the western democracies or Israel will allow for another 40 years of Arafat type obfuscation, double talk and hypocrisy from the Palestinians.

Betsy poses a few questions:

"We want them to vote and vote and vote again" on Iraq, said a senior Democratic senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss party strategy. "They are going to have to vote on Iraq until they are sick of it."

The tougher-talking Reid is taking a decidedly harder line on Iraq at a time when anti-war activists are stepping up their criticism of Democratic leaders for not forcing a quick end to the conflict in Iraq.
...
Remember that these are the same sorts who kept pushing for "peace in the Middle East" by forcing Israel to pull out of the Gaza and the West Bank. Well, Israel unilaterally did just what was advised and pulled out of Gaza. And it descended into chaos with Hamas and Fatah conducting their own civil war. Hamas has now won in Gaza giving Iran their little terrorist puppet state there on the borders of Israel and Egypt.

Do Harry Reid, the Democrats, and his blogger pals think that there would be any different fate if we just pulled out of Iraq now? Do they want to see Iraq becoming like Gaza except with more territory, more possible victims, and all that oil that can be used to fuel more terrorism abroad?

Oh, and by the way, how does Nancy Pelosi, diplomat at large, think about her pals in Syria now that they've assassinated another democracy leader in Lebanon? With the assassination of members of the anti-Syria majority in the Lebanese parliament, Hezbollah is trying to literally exterminate that majority. Does she still think that the path to peace travels through Syria?

That is, does she willingly continue to be a pawn?

Update: Hamas Takes Gaza- Executes Fatah Members In the Streets

Update 2, Via LGF, Video: Murderous Hamas Rampage in Gaza

Victor Davis Hanson: Gaza — It’s All Our Fault: Blaming America on CNN is all the rage



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A Beeb and blog round-up

Students go on rampage in China

Hundreds of students have rioted against the police in central China.

Witnesses said the unrest, in the city of Zhengzhou in Henan province, was sparked on Wednesday after a student was beaten by police.

She had been selling items on the street, apparently without a license. There was an argument and reports say officials broke her front teeth.

At this point other students began to gather round and witnesses say hundreds clashed with police and burned cars.

-------------------------------------------
While the G8 guys fret about Global Warming, Cold snap prompts Peru emergency and April freeze hurts Kentucky farmers

Meanwhile the North Koreans are firing missiles and the Lebanese are bombing Palestinians and no one at the G8's complaining. Imagine if Israel was doing that...

Speaking of the G8, this would be a good picture for a caption contest:

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The Anchoress has an excellent discussion over immigration, and another one on Pres.Bush that are must-reads.
-------------------------------------------
Gerard has the Memo from Israel to Palestine (h/t Larwyn)
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PBS: EXCLUSION AND POLITICAL DISCRIMINATION
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Via Maria, Who is Nicolas Sarkozy? What to expect from France's new president, scion of one of the oldest Jewish families of Salonika, Greece
-------------------------------------------
In a lighter mode:
Separated at birth?

• Arrogance has to be earned. Tell me what you've done to earn yours - Dr House
• Believe fervently in miracles, so that you too can be plucked from the Sea of Stupidity - Siggy

On the other hand, has anyone seen Hugh Laurie and Siggy in the same place at the same time?

Today in the Beeb?

Israel army attacks deep in camp

The fighting has intensified over recent days and nights

The Israeli army is shelling militant positions deep within the besieged Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, as its operation to force a surrender continues.
The army says militants from the Fatah al-Islam group have been cleared from the edges of the Palestinian camp during heavy fighting since Friday.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the group as a "terrorist gang", and said there would be no negotiation.

A militant spokesman said they would fight to "the last drop of blood".

"We will not surrender," vowed Fatah al-Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha.

No, the BBC was not talking about Israel and Olmert, it was talking about Lebanon and its PM, Fouad Siniora. But imagine the outcry if Israel had been defending itself.

Via Dr Sanity, Steve Huntley looks at the Double standard in Mideast

The rocket attacks are what preoccupies the Israelis these days. In only two weeks, Palestinian terrorists have fired more than 250 primitive Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, aiming principally for the town of Sderot. Two people have been killed. Others have been wounded, many temporarily evacuated and probably all of them traumatized by the terror of any moment being shattered by an incoming rocket.

Israel is constantly warned by the likes of the European Parliament not to react "disproportionately" to Palestinian violence, without anyone ever quite defining what would be proportionate.

Syria's Useful Idiots: Why are so many commentators denying the obvious about Lebanon? Michael Totten writes that Al Qaeda has moved into Lebanon---------------------------------------------------
For more insanities, Dr Sanity has the Carnival
l

The Hamas Farfur/Mickey family, and Disney's reaction

I had previously posted on May 14 on the Farfur/Mickey terrorist children's program, which you have already seen on YouTube,


Here are a couple of related items,
Via Greta, Disney Explains Reaction to Hamas Show

The Walt Disney Co. didn't speak out when Hamas militants used a Mickey Mouse look-alike to preach Islamic domination because the company felt it would be ineffective, Disney's chief executive said Monday.
...
The show was removed from the channel "for review" after Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said the character represented a "mistaken approach" to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.

Iger said Disney had nothing to do with the decision to pull the program, although the company did speak to several government officials. Iger did not elaborate on those discussions.

Gateway Pundit was able to make a video of the France2 report showing a Palestinian family with twelve children in Gaza reacting to the Farfur/Mickey TV show (in French):

Anchorman David Pujadas introduces it as "an example of Islamist propaganda in the Palestinian territories."
The report was filed by Charles Enderlin, Israel correspondent for France2 (Neo-neocon has posted about him), who has been known to send Palestinian stringers to the locations.

The video shows the portion of the Farfur/Mickey program that you can see on the You Tube video above. Then they show the whole family, with twelve children, gathered in front of the TV.

The girl, unnamed, says that "it's a good program because Farfur/Mickey shows us respect and how to be good muslims."

The man, identified as "Hazam, a school teacher," says that it's a good program and that Islam is against violence.

The woman, fully covered except for her eyes, says it was good because "it keeps children off the street, where they can come under bad influences".

Fathi Hamad, programming director for TV Al Aksa, says that the Israeli propaganda had done his station a great favor: a million dollars' worth of publicity.

In other Gaza news, Snapped Shot points out a lack of relevant information (h/t Atlas Shrugs:

In case you don't already know, "metal bars" like that are routinely used by Hamas to build those "home-made rockets" you've been seeing, one of which that killed an actual poor, innocent Israeli civilian yesterday

As Captain Ed points out,

The terrorist phenomenon started with the Palestinian people, and Lebanon should know that better than most. They have conducted terrorist attacks since 1964, when they first formed the PLO under Yasser Arafat.

TV Al Aksa retired Farfur/Mickey, but will continue to contribute to the depraved mentality.

And one can't help but wonder if Disney didn't complain out of cowardice.

Update, Wednesday 23 May: From Maria, A Taste for Terror: The long Palestinian suicide

The truth is that other Arabs want the Palestinians to continue to suffer. It's useful as an excuse for all their failings. They have about as much sympathy for the refugees as all those good Germans had for the Jews whose real estate was suddenly available.

But the ultimate victims of this round of Palestinian violence are the Palestinians themselves.

After passing up so many chances for peace and statehood, they can no longer be classed as victims of Zionism. Yet the Palestinians are victims - of the other Arabs who exploit them and neglect them. And of the madmen spawned from their own kind.

If you need someone to blame for the current carnage, blame the Palestinian terrorists for whom violence has become a way of life (and death). Forget the rage of the dispossessed and all that sanctimonious claptrap. For the Palestinians preying upon their brethren, terror's a business.

And business is good.

Another update Tarranto on Disney;

You'd think that Iger would be fierce as a tiger, not timid as a mouse. Not only that, but why is he quoting Daffy Duck, who works for rival Warner Bros.? Doesn't Donald have anything pithy to say?

I wonder if Nancy has her scarf ready....

Via Jihad Watch, Islamic militants, security forces battle in Lebanon. The AP calls them Islamic militants, the NYT calls them Islamists, and people are dying:

Eight civilians were killed by shelling today, according to Reuters, adding to the 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants killed in the fierce fighting on Sunday.

Witnesses said that militants belonging to Fatah al-Islam fired rocket-propelled grenades as well as machine guns today at army posts on the camp perimeter, according to Reuters.

The continuing violence is one of the most significant challenges to the Lebanese army since the end of Lebanon's bloody civil war.
...
Many of the complex crosscurrents of Lebanon's politics have been visible in the crisis. The camp in Tripoli has been off limits to the Lebanese army under an agreement with the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries. On Sunday, Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.

Syria, which Lebanon accuses of backing Fatah al-Islam, closed several border crossings in the area. And the fighting broke out as the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution to try suspects tied to the February 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria has been accused in previous investigations of ordering the killing, but vigorously denies any connection.
...
Fatah al-Islam has been a growing concern for security authorities in Lebanon and much of the region. Intelligence officials say that the group counts between 150 and 200 fighters in its ranks and that it subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda.

The group's leader, Shakir al-Abssi, is a fugitive Palestinian and former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last year in Iraq. Both men were sentenced to death in absentia for the 2002 murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.

Christians are targeted

I haven't figured out why the BBC's using scare quotes, Lebanon clashes 'kill civilians' but the death toll is significantly higher than the AP report shows. Update: The WaPo states that 50 combatants were killed in the first day of fighting Sunday

Here are some Facts and figures on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

Gateway Pundit posts that

One of the men killed in Sunday's fighting, Saddam El-Hajdib, was a suspect in a failed German train bombing a sign that Nahr al-Bared refugee camp had become a refuge for militants planning attacks outside of Lebanon.

A spokesman for the Lebanese government was interviewed by the BBCA newscast and blamed Syria for the bombing. Certainly the Lebanese media's clear about it: Lebanon media see Syria behind violence.

Michael Totten links to Why Syria, why now?

The Lebanese citizen says, "justice is a principle above all. Security on the other hand has its own logic; you kill this guy, you spare that guy..."

Yeah, but you don't understand, as Assad's court scribe Patrick Seale put it, "Syria cannot tolerate a hostile government in Lebanon"! So it must kill all politicians that it doesn't like! But hey, "it doesn't mean the end!"

Will Nancy don her scarf again and go ask her buddy to stop?

Via Pajamas Media, From Beirut to the Beltway, explains that even if the Lebanese army wins this one, the battle will not be over and that,

In other words, Hizbullah is siding against the Lebanese government and army by not even acknowledging Fatah al-Islam, or its sponsor, and blaming it on a US-Israeli conspiracy.

I'm sure Nancy can't wait to sink her teeth on that, too.

Meanwhile, you wouldn't know that Israel is under attack by reading the headlines.

Update Captain Ed asks,

And where is the UN in all of this? It's their refugee camp which has fostered these groups and allowed them to operate openly. Shouldn't the UN be disarming people in refugee camps? Or have they abandoned that mandate, as they have abandoned others?

Update 2: Welcome, EU Referendum readers. Please visit often, and if you have a chance, listen to my Blog Talk Radio podcasts, including my most recent ones on on Tony Blair, and on Israel

The Hamas Mickey: "good because it keeps the kids off the street"

Tonight's France2 newscast had a report (Propagande islamiste: le mickey du Hamas 20h19m32s), on the Hamas Mickey who is called Farfur, and they interviewed a family unit with a dozen children. The oldest daughter and the father thought the program was good because it teaches what Islam is about. The mother, her face fully covered except for her eyes, said it was good because "it keeps children off the street, where they can come under bad influences". Only the father's name, Hazem, was shown. The mother and daughter remained unnamed.

Fathi Hamad, programmin director for TV Al Aksa, said that the Israeli propaganda had done his station a great favor: a million dollars' worth of publicity.

Another day in the cult of death.

Update, Tuesday 15 May: David Horowitz Sees What Jorge Luis Borges Saw


Cross-posted at DNN

Special podcast: Judith and Mary in Israel

Starting at 5PM today:
Judith Weiss of Kesher Talk and Mary Madigan of Exit Zero will be talking from Israel.

Update This was a most interesting podcast. Ben of Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite and Noah Pollak, editor of Azure, the current affairs journal of the Shalem Center, joined in the conversation. Please listen in, you'll enjoy the discussion on Israel, the Middle East, and world politics.

SC&A's series: a must read

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred has a series of posts this week that you must read.
Starting with Birth of a nation, a garden blooms on the birth of Israel,
continuing with Temptations And Choices,
examining The Poison,
and looking at The Promise,
Siggy concludes his series today with The Third Rail Of Palestinan Failure.

Siggy did me the honor of being my most recent Blog Talk Radio guest, and it is a privilege to recommend his excellent posts.

Fausta's blog talk radio live today at 12 noon EST

***UPDATED***
Please listen to the podcast
and visit the links

Today at noon!

Today's guests: Allyson Rowen Taylor of Stand With Us and Judith Weiss of Kesher Talk.
UPDATES
You can listen to the archived show. Just click on the link above.

You can watch the livecam for The Israel Antiquities Authority Excavation at the Mughrabi Ramp

Israel 101 can be ordered from Stand With Us on line, or by writing to them, Stand With Us, PO Box 341069, Los Angeles CA 90034

These are the books Allyson recommended:

Ambassador Dore Gold did a most interesting Blog Talk Radio interview with Pamela of Atlas Shrugs.

I also recommend:


Read Judith's posts on the Temple Mount:
Unlayering History
Temple Mount blogburst: The Mount since 1967
Temple Mount blogburst: Israel past present and future
Temple Mount blogburst: Jihadism and reality

Layla of The Hill Chronicles posts on today's Blog Talk Radio - thank you Layla!

Maria sent this article by Nathan Sharansky, Anti-Semitism has leapfrogged from isolated attacks against Jews to incitement to genocide -- the actual elimination of the Jewish state.

History is being not only re-written, but also erased. It is up to each one of us to make sure the truth stands.

Cross-posted at Maverick News Media
Update Don't miss this History slide show
----------------------------------
Don't miss next week's show. My guests will be Jose Miguel Guardia of Barcepundit and John Chappell of Inside Europe: Iberian Notes, who will be talking about the March 11 terrorism trials in Spain, and about illegal immigration in the EU.

The Temple Mount ramp

In today's headlines Turkey is to send an inspection team to survey excavation work being carried out near the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem

You can watch via livecam

Via The American-Israeli Patriot,


More background on the destruction of the Temple Mount antiquities, via SC&A.

Update, Friday 16 February
History, Stones And The Palestinians Orwellian Dance

To deny Jewish/Christian history in Jerusalem and Israel is to deny the beliefs of Jews and Christians and to deny both the Old and New Testaments (both of which precede the birth of Mohammed and the Quran). Jews and Christian believe that it was upon Rock of Abraham was the site where the Patriarch Abraham showed his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, only to be told that God demanded not sacrifice (Jihadis and shaheed wannabes, take note), but rather that he parent his beloved child and instruct that child in the ways of the Lord.

If you really are Afif Safieh

I've been away most of the day and just noticed a comment on this post by a person claiming to be Afif Safieh. The comment reads,

What I have said in the lecture is "I never compare the Palestinian Nakba/ Catastrophe to the Holocaust. Each tragedy stands on its own. I never indulge in comparative martyrology. If I were a Jew or a gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most horrible event in History. If I were a Native American it would be the arrival of European settlers that resulted in almost total extermination. If I were a Black African, it would be slavery in previous centuries and Apartheid during last century. If I were an Armenian, it would be the Ottoman/ Turkish massacres. If I were Palestinian- and I happen to be one- it would be the Nakba. Humanity should condemn all the above. I do not know of a way to measure suffering or how to quantify pain, but what I do know is that we are not children of a lesser God." I believe these are not the words of a sick person or of an ethno-centered tribalist, but of a universalist.

If the person who wrote the comment cares to go back and read that post and the prior two related posts, they can plainly see that I have not called Mr. Safieh names ("sick person", "ethno-centered tribalist").

If you, the person who left that comment, really are Afif Safieh, I and other bloggers would like to ask you,

• As a Christian whose father is buried in a Catholic cemetery, how can you associate yourself closely with a man who weaponized people to kill others by committing suicide when suicide is the most grievous sin in Christianity?


• Why was there no push for a Palestinian state when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza, before the 1967 war?


• Israel's three conditions are:
  Cessation of hostilities and terror
  Secure borders.
  Diplomatic recognition of Israel.
  What exactly is one sided and unfair? What possible reason could the Palestinians have for not going along with the plan? In doing so, the floodgates of foreign aid, investment and all kinds of benefits would open?

Those are the questions we have for the real Afif Safieh.

More on the Safieh lecture

My neighbor TigerHawk posted on Afif Safieh, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization Mission to the United States, speaks at Princeton just now. He's as surprised as I was on the warm welcome,

The University went to great pains to report that Safieh was first invited to speak at Princeton by Abraham Udovitch, "the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East," and that virtually every campus organization joined in the invitation. When Safieh stepped to the podium, the crowd applauded more loudly than I have ever heard at a Princeton lecture.

Indeed, more loudly than when Eli Weisel was introduced when he was on campus. TigerHawk continues,

It is, I think, a measure of the chicness of the Palestinian cause on college campuses that a man who joyfully worked for Yassir Arafat for almost twenty years would be received with such warmth and acclaim.

Speaking as he was to an essentially converted audience (there were a few obviously grumpy old townies and a few probably Jewish students who asked edged questions, but they were in the deep minority), Safieh was explicit in his objective -- to influence his audience to campaign for an American foreign policy that would be "non-aligned." True to his billing, Safieh was extremely polished and charming, and spoke as if he were giving a stump speech in a long campaign, a speech he had given many times and that he would give many times again.
...
This is a relentless Palestinian theme -- that there is moral equivalence between suicide bombings targeting civilians and Israeli strikes against members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, or unintended civilian casualties related to those strikes. This attitude is extraordinarily widespread in the world, as we all saw law summer when the globe's chattering classes weighed the unintended casualties from Israeli strikes far more heavily than the directed casualties from Hezbollah's missiles.

Read his entire report.

Update Don't miss Atlas Shrug's post.

Prior posts: A friend's question
Report: Afif Safieh at Princeton University

Update, Friday, January 18 If you really are Afif Safieh

Report: Afif Safieh at Princeton University

Yesterday Afif Safieh, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization Mission to the United States, gave a lecture at Princeton University on his perspective on the relationship between Palestine and Israel. There were approximately 300 people in the standing-room audience.

The title of the lecture was "Israel/Palestine: History Is Undecided" but Mr. Safieh essentially declaimed (almost word-by-word) his 2001 lecture (PDF file) Diplomacy in the Middle East: The art of delaying the inevitable, and parts of his 2004 lecture Which way is forward?, while repeatedly asserting, "I am a victim of the Israelis", and that the reason the peace process has failed is "not the Arabs' rejection of Israel, but Israel's rejection of the Arab acceptance of Israel".

Following Mr. Safeih's declamation, there was a question and answer session:
Q. 1 Going by the premise that it's morally wrong of both Israel and suicide bombers to kill, how does one get Arab leaders to appear on CNN and condemn suicide bombers?
and, following the Iranian Holocaust denial conference, how does one get Arab leaders to denounce it?
AS: "I have condemned every single suicide bombing, and am glad to point out that in 2006 there was only one suicide bombing.
"Whoever doesn't condemn Israeli invasions and Israel's untargeted and unqualified assassinations has no grounds for moral judgment.
"The Iranian conference was in extremely poor taste. As a person who has suffered, I have great sympathy for what they have suffered. Every national tragedy stands on its own: the Native Americans with the whites' arrival, the blacks with slavery, the Armenians under the Ottomans, and yet there is a need for soul searching: A community who doesn't understand the suffering it inflicts won't understand why it's causing it."

Q. 2: Regarding the road map, does the Bush administration care?
AS: "The quartet (US, EU, UN, and Russia) diplomacy's construction of a road map should have in mind the final destination of the road map: the return to the 1967 boundaries." Safieh's interested in the final destination: "we need acceleration".
He went on to repeat that diplomacy in the Middle East is the art of delaying the inevitable for as long as possible, and quoted Nahum Goldman as saying that "we should agree on a final destination at the beginning, deal with it now, and move forward".
Safieh believes in the importance of the American role, and "we should work on the nature of the Americans' advice."

Q. 3: What would be the final destination for the city of Jerusalem?
AS: "There are eight residential neighborhoods within Jerusalem and my family came from there... The international community and the Vatican also believe in two capitals in one, two national aspirations, and three religious rites of equal importance. I would like to see Jerusalem undivided".

Q. 4: What is status of the Geneva plan? Is it a possible approach?
AS: Safieh was not involved but the Palestinian parties had the blessings of Yasser Arafat. On the Israeli side, the people involved were not key players, were mostly from the left wing of the Labor party, and didn't have the blessings of the country's leadership.

Q. 5: Does AS hold Yasser Arafat responsible for walking away from the Clinton administration's peace negotiations?
AS: "People are rewriting what happened. First of all, if one goes by what the minister of Israel is saying, the Camp David of 2000, from what I have read was the most chaotic event in the history of humanity" (the audience chuckled). "Unfortunately we still suffer from the perception of what happened and Arafat is seen as having to carry the responsibility." AS mentioned a Washington Post article where it said that Israel should have shown more independence, and had Clinton proposed in July what he proposed in December, they would have come to an agreement.
"Now we deal with mutilated reality... Barat is a very complex person, and he came without a coalition and wanted to humiliate his political adversaries, and went back saying we no longer have a Palestinian partner".

Q. 6: Do you think that recent actions of the American administration are contributing?
AS: "The decisions are not wise" ... AS regrets that the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report are not followed. "It is the unresolved nature of the Palestinian problem that has soured recent events"...
When it comes to American politics vis-a-vis Palestine, "the superpower has the choice of being loved and respected, or feared and hated."

Q. 7: A student who went on a trip to Israel told of a soldier telling them to not go on a tour of the Christian quarters "because there are Arabs there".
AS: What we need is peace guaranteed by the international community, deployment of foreign troops, and a symbollic presence by the Security Council of the UN, so the Palestinians will be welcome in Jerusalem".
(note: He stressed the symbolic aspect).

Q. 8: "You mention the Israeli rejection of Arab acceptance, but the 2000 Camp David agreement specified that Israel would return 90% of the land" (the student asking the question went on to specifically detail all the provisions)... "How is it that you see Israel's rejection of Arab acceptance?"
AS: AS complimented the student on his knowledge, "if you think 90% is acceptable. I believe in 100% peace, yet it was not even 90%, it was 85%. and was not offered Jerusalem... In Jerusalem, Israel wanted the Western Wall, which is 400 meters long, with 2/3 of the old city of Jerusalem". He went on to blame the "Israeli refusal of Arab acceptance", and said that "Within Hamas the majority school of thought is that of pragmatism: if Israel withdraws to the '67 borders".

The lecture concluded with a long round of applause by the audience.

TigerHawk was there, too. I'll link to his post when it's up. Here's his post

Update Follow-up post: A friend's question.
More on the Safieh lecture
The Daily Princetonian also carried a news item.

Update, Friday, January 18 If you really are Afif Safieh