Nonsense from Norway's Ambassador to Israel...

Nice to see Dershowitz write about this....

In a recent interview, Norway's Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. His reasoning is that, "We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel." In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on "an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture." It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.

I can't remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any "occupation". The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews—many old, some quite young. Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s. Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders. If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?

I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian Ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel. Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway's Foreign Minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his Chief of Staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it. In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.

The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway's anti-Semitism that "caused" the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.

Hezbollah: Party of Fraud...

Just a terrorist organization that moonlights as a huge criminal gang...arrest Nasrallah now...

Signs of Hezbollah’s increasing reliance on criminal activity quickly began popping up across the globe. In February of this year, U.S. prosecutors indicted seven U.S. citizens -- one of whom is a known Hezbollah associate -- for allegedly conspiring to aid the Taliban. Drug Enforcement Administration agents recorded meetings in Benin, Ghana, Romania, and Ukraine between the defendants and confidential DEA sources posing as Taliban representatives. According to the tapes, some of the individuals agreed to receive, store, and move tons of Taliban heroin. Others offered to sell substantial quantities of cocaine that the Taliban or their agents could then resell, either themselves or through drug dealers, at a profit in the United States. One of the indicted individuals, Alwar Pouryan, an Iranian national described by one of his co-conspirators as “a weapons trafficker affiliated with Hezbollah,” planned to sell weapons to Taliban representatives, giving DEA agents the details about the proposed deal. According to the indictment against Pouryan and the other six suspects, the list included surface-to-air missiles, antitank missiles, grenade launchers, and AK-47 and M-16 rifles. Hezbollah operatives have demonstrated their willingness to sell drugs and arms -- even for ostensible adversaries such as the Taliban -- to supplement their revenues.

The discovery of this Hezbollah-linked conspiracy to support the Taliban followed the U.S. Treasury Department’s decision in January of this year to blacklist the Lebanese narcotics kingpin Ayman Joumma, along with nine people and 19 businesses involved in his drug trafficking and money laundering. An extensive DEA investigation revealed that Joumma laundered as much as $200 million a month from cocaine sales in Europe and the Middle East to operations located in Colombia, Lebanon, Panama, and West Africa through money exchange houses, bulk cash smuggling, and other schemes. According to U.S. prosecutors, the majority of those drug profits were funneled back to Hezbollah. Two weeks later, the Treasury Department designated the Lebanese Canadian Bank as a “financial institution of primary money-laundering concern” for colluding with Joumma to launder his illicit profits and direct them to Hezbollah. The depth of Hezbollah’s relationship with Joumma and with LCB, Lebanon’s eighth-largest bank, with a reported $5 billion in assets in 2009, suggests just how intricate and ambitious Hezbollah’s criminal activities have become.

The list of Hezbollah-linked criminal projects continues. In Miami last October, a group of businessmen pled guilty to attempting to ship electronics to a shopping center in South America that the U.S. Treasury Department designated as a Hezbollah front. In Philadelphia in 2009, ten individuals were charged with conspiring to provide material support for Hezbollah through trafficking counterfeit goods. The defendants in the case transported stolen laptop computers, passports, Sony PlayStation 2 systems, and automobiles to raise funds for Hezbollah, and attempted to procure weapons for the organization as well. Authorities tracked the shipment of stolen goods to places as disparate as Benin, Venezuela, and the United States. A separate criminal complaint in Philadelphia that same year charged Dani Nemr Tarraf -- a German national who maintained a home in Lebanon -- with spearheading a plot to obtain 10,000 machine guns and a shoulder-fired missile system capable of destroying an F-16 that could be shipped to Iran or Syria.
Despite being discovered in these several cases, Hezbollah operatives continue to run one of the largest and most sophisticated global criminal operations in the world. These criminal activities have strengthened Hezbollah and made it more difficult for Western nations to undermine it. Yet they have also exposed Hezbollah to unprecedented risk. Well trained by Iran in the arts of counterintelligence and operational security, Hezbollah prefers to keep its actions out of the public eye. Its crime network, however, has placed the organization under unprecedented scrutiny from law enforcement agencies worldwide, offering a new opening for international action to weaken it like never before.

Going crazy over gas...

Hezbollah threatens Israel because of off-shore gas..

Both Israel and Lebanon have trillions of cubic feet of underwater natural gas and can benefit tremendously from these resources. All they need is the goodwill to negotiate a sea-border demarcation agreement. This usually occurs through bilateral negotiations or mutually agreed arbitration—not through U.N. border-dispute mechanisms, as Lebanon is now demanding.

In 2000, the U.N. meticulously traced the Israel-Lebanon land border when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. At the time, the U.N. did not establish a maritime border between the two countries and no one seemed to mind. Lebanon has made no hydrocarbon discoveries since, but it does seem eager to discover another border conflict: It's only now that Israel has identified substantial natural gas in the Tamar and Leviathan fields that Hezbollah, the Iranian and Syrian regimes' long arm in Lebanon, has decided to make an issue of the maritime borders.

Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated government has called Israel's proposed border an "aggression" and is now threatening to attack any Israeli gas projects—even those in undisputed waters. It wants the U.N. to arbitrate the border dispute under the Law of the Sea Treaty, to which Israel is not even a party. More troubling still, the U.S. State Department has reportedly endorsed Hezbollah's preferred solution of throwing the matter to the U.N.—despite the fact that the U.S. never ratified the treaty either.

The flotilla folk....

United in their hatred of Israel....

When news emerged that “Freedom Flotilla 2” was tied up in Greece for weeks and unable to carry out its plan to breach Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, a song from Camelot came to mind. Queen Guinevere asks, “What do the simple folk do... when they are blue?” and King Arthur tries to explain.

You have to ask the same question about the Flotilla Folk. Who are they, what do they do and why do they do it? Almost 1,500 of them from around the world planned to fly to Greece, board ships and sail across the Mediterranean to the Gaza Strip in July.

The Flotilla Folk say they are just ordinary folk committed to human rights. But how do ordinary folk have time for the complicated preparations necessary for such an adventure, and for spending weeks in Greece and Gaza? Don’t they have jobs? Or do they get their summers off? And how do ordinary folk have the funds to buy ships, fly to Greece, and spend weeks in hotels waiting to launch the latest publicity stunt they have concocted to smear Israel?

How do they pay for their expensive human rights hobby? Apparently they don’t have to do much preparing. Established radical groups affiliated with Hamas take care of all the details, like the Union of Good (UoG), a coalition of European charities affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The ISM has praised Palestinian suicide bombing as “noble,” spent the last 10 years training international volunteers to sabotage Israel’s security, and received official invitations from Hamas to come to Gaza.

These groups raise the money through their various affiliated “charities,” which sometimes generate funds through mainstream businesses. Or they raise money by misinforming well-meaning people about their purposes, as the US delegation to Gaza did by having the audacity to name its boat after President Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope.

But why would Flotilla Folk spend their vacations trying to violate Israel’s legal naval blockade of Gaza in order to visit and embrace Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the territory? Flotilla Folk leaders like UoG and ISM support Hamas and its battle against Israel’s existence. Others, like Medea Benjamin, Col.

Ann Wright and Hedy Epstein have turned activism against Israel into full-time careers. Some Flotilla Folk are well-meaning people who simply accept, uncritically, the distorted facts used to demonize the country. Still others were once on the front lines of the battle for civil rights and against Apartheid.

BUT WHAT do such idealistic folk do when the problems they once fought have been resolved? Many, like Alice Walker, try to recapture those idealistic, heady times and camaraderie by seeing the same injustices even where they don’t exist, and ignoring them where they do exist. They gullibly accept the misinformation propagated by the UoG and ISM, and superimpose the lens of the civil rights or anti-Apartheid movements on the Arab-Israeli conflict. They are entirely unaware that the multicultural Jewish state is among the most progressive in the world and has sought peace with its Arab neighbors since it was reestablished in 1948.

The growing presence of Iran in South America....

World to Obama: This is right in your backyard...

The world needs to act to counter the growing presence of Iranian-supported terrorist organizations throughout South America, former chief of staff of the Peruvian Armed Forces, Gen. Francisco Contreras, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Contreras served as the head of the Peruvian Military until about half a year ago, when he retired after 42 years of service. He was in Israel this week on a private visit.

“We definitely need to be concerned with the growing presence of Iran in South America,” Contreras said. “It appears that Iranian organizations provide support to other terrorist organizations, and that there is cooperation between them.”

Hezbollah is known to maintain strongholds in South America – particularly in the area connecting Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay – where its supporters are actively involved in drug-smuggling, arms-trafficking, money-laundering, fraud and intellectual-property piracy.

Israel and the Untied States are also increasingly concerned with the alliance Venezuela has forged with Iran.

According to Contreras, countries like Israel and Peru need to increase cooperation to combat the growing terrorist threat.

“There is something strange in the relationship [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez has forged with Iran, as is the presence of the Iranian defense minister in Bolivia on a recent visit,” he said.

Iran boycotts race because of Israeli....

Fun and games at the World Swimming Championships...

The Israeli swim team has expressed disappointment after an Iranian competitor withdrew from a heat against one of its athletes at the world championships. Mohammed Alirezaei of Iran did not start a heat that also featured Gal Nevo in the 100-meter breaststroke Sunday.

“Unfortunately, this is what usually happens − it’s crazy,” Yitzhak Kramer, the head of the Israeli delegation, told The Associated Press yesterday. “This competition is about sport, not politics, and you need to separate the two. That’s what is supposed to be nice about sport.

Palestinians ramp up arms smuggling into Gaza...

And, no one really cares about this except for the Israelis..

In the past few months, Hamas has acquired improved high-trajectory rockets, ready-made explosive devices, anti-tank missiles and possibly anti-aircraft missiles, the sources told Haaretz.

Anti-aircraft missiles could impinge on the unchallenged freedom of Israeli planes and helicopters over Gaza's skies. For years, the air force has been assuming that Gaza militants might have such missiles, but there has been no evidence that such weapons have been fired.

In recent years much of the weapons smuggling into Gaza has been coordinated by Iran, rising steeply after the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip in 2005. The Iranians have operated on two main routes. One has been by sea, from the Persian Gulf to Sudan and from there in convoys to Egypt and the Strip. The other has been by air, from Tehran to Damascus via Turkey, and then to the Syrian port of Latakia, to Alexandria and on to Gaza.

Israel has responded by taking over cargo ships on the open sea, and, according to foreign reports, by attacking weapons convoys in Sudan from the air. Such operations have forced Iran to reconsider its moves.

But the civil war in Libya opened new opportunities for weapons smugglers after the Libyan army lost control of vast weapons stores in the east of the country. Local arms dealers made contact with Gaza smugglers, and new weapons began to flow by a much shorter and easier route than the ones originating in Iran.

The situation has been exacerbated by the anarchy in the Sinai, former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter told Haaretz. "The Sinai went from being an area through which they smuggle weapons to an area through which they simply transfer weapons," he said. "No Egyptian security official dares to confront the Bedouin anymore."

Leaked! Memos from Jack!

Read them all in one blog...

Egypitan TV...

An important new book from Terry Glavin!

Terry Glavin's new book, Come From the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan, is coming out in October and I just can't wait. There's nobody in Canada who knows more about Afghanistan than Terry and this book will turn some heads. I was lucky enough to read the prologue and it blew me away.

Some people think that Terry is the Christopher Hitchens of Canada - they actually have it backwards. Hitchens is the Terry Glavin of the United States. He's a great journalist and cares passionately about the people of Afghanistan.

The Free Thinking Film Society will be hosting a book launch for Terry in Ottawa, so stay tuned.

Here are some mini-reviews of the book:

"Glavin’s forensic demolition of pious myths about Afghanistan and fierce defence of liberal values is persuasive and exhilarating."
Ophelia Benson, co-author of Why Truth Matters, Jul 13, 2011

“The Afghan people have friends around the world who have courageously joined us in our fight for our freedom and civil liberties, but few have been as devoted to our cause as Terry Glavin. His journalism gives our silenced voices the power to be heard in the West.”
Fawzia Koofi, Afghan MP and author of Letters to My Daughters, Jun 27, 2011

"The best journalism exists to refute self-serving and self-satisfied prejudices. With reporting from the ground and historical scholarship, Terry Glavin demolishes our illusions about Afghanistan, and produces a book that is at once an assault on received wisdom and a humane defence of the rights of subjugated peoples."
Nick Cohen, author of What's Left?, Jun 22, 2011

"Terry Glavin is the West's most eloquent advocate of the cause of Afghan liberty. His voice is a powerful counterweight to the many others who relentlessly counsel abdication of that cause."
Sohrab Ahmari, co-editor of Re-Orient, a forthcoming anthology of essays by young Mideast reformers, Jun 22, 2011

The New York Times most foolish story on Israel....

Protesting is just a regular normal activity in Israel...

It is an old cliché that for journalists history is what happened the day before yesterday. Ancient history is what happened last week. No better example of this axiom can be found than in today’s New York Times story about various protests going on in Israel. The conceit of Ethan Bronner’s feature is that the wave of protest movements that spread across the Arab world this year has had some influence on the Jewish state. According to Bronner, Israelis have been inspired by their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria to demonstrate against their government’s economic policies.

The foolishness and sheer ignorance of the country’s history of protest movements is staggering. Not only is there no analogy or even the faintest connection between Arab efforts to overthrow authoritarian tyrants, the idea Israelis needed Arab inspiration to generate protests against the government of the day is simply absurd.

Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time in Israel can tell you that street demonstrations, protest tents or movements based on dissatisfaction with the status quo is not only not an innovation, it is a staple of the country’s political culture. I can say from personal experience that in my visits to the Knesset or the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem during the past decades, I am hard pressed to remember a time when there weren’t protests of some sort going on. If it wasn’t Ethiopian immigrants wanting the government to bring their relatives left behind to Israel, it was the families of prisoners of war, victims of terror, the elderly or the poor.

Leaked! The Latest Memo from Jack!

July 22nd: The Next Big Idea!

The BDS Sewer....

Another false accusation against a father....

What a way to try and get a house!

Winning a dream home in a lottery was not enough to rescue a tumultuous marriage and instead the fancy digs became the focus of a messy divorce case.

In a decision published this week to an online legal database, a Saskatoon judge has determined how the home, valued at $710,000, should be divided.

Justice Geoffrey Dufour said the husband will get to buy-out the wife's interest in the home, move her out and move himself and their sons in.

The judge noted the couple had been married for 19 years but "it was stormy and punctuated by not infrequent periods of separation."

During one separation period the husband, Michael, bought a lottery ticket and won a fully furnished dream home.

The couple tried getting back together in the new place, but that did not last more than a few months.

Justice Dufour noted that the wife, Rhonda, wound up living in the 2,500 square-foot home by herself.

"Michael testified that he was forced out of the family home without warning and in a startling fashion," Dufour wrote. According to the decision, Rhonda made a complaint to police that she had been physically assaulted. That led to charges against Michael and an interim order that he stay 200 metres away from Rhonda.

When that case went to trial, Michael was acquitted.

"I can only conclude that Rhonda gave a false statement to the police," Dufour said in his decision on the divorce. "This was a very effective way to have the family home all to herself: make a false allegation of assault and have Michael charged with a criminal offence so that he would have to stay away. Neat trick. A model of efficiency."

The judge noted that while Rhonda enjoyed living in the large home, Michael and the sons slept, for a time, in sleeping bags on the family room floor at his mother's house.

An idiotic civil servant...

If he believes this stuff...what else does he believe????

Heritage Minister James Moore is investigating allegations someone in his department used a government computer to slag Israel during office hours.

Moore was responding to a report by Sun Media columnist Ezra Levant who identified Monzer Zimmo as the financial and business development adviser to Moore, and a part-time anti-Israel blogger.

“In this one particular case I have asked my deputy minister to do an investigation to find out exactly what went on in office hours and what was said and whether it can be attributed to a particular employee,” Moore said in Vancouver on Tuesday.

“Obviously the comments that had been made online are outrageous and unacceptable and if someone was using work computers to spread that kind of nonsense they should be held accountable.”

Levant reported that someone using the name Monzer Zimmo blogged last week - during office hours and on a Heritage Canada computer - that he was proud to be part of the Gaza flotilla to deliver aid to Palestinians and expressed his support for Hamas, a Palestinian group the Canadian government considers terrorists.

Zimmo denied writing those things from his department desk, and speculated he was being framed by one of the 1,200 bureaucrats in the ministry.

In an entry last year to NDP MP Libby Davis, Zimmo called Israel a rogue state, accused it of piracy and murder, and called B’nai Brith a hate group. Zimmo didn’t deny writing the entry, but said he couldn’t remember if he worked that day.

Zimmo also stands by his view that it’s an open question who was to blame for the 9/11 attacks despite Osama Bin Laden’s repeated claims he masterminded the al Qaida terrorist attack.

Memo to John Baird: Stop Groveling...

This is so embarrassing..how could he say such things????

When a representative of the Epoch Times, a newspaper with links to China’s Falun Gong movement, suggested Mr. Baird’s language did not match the actions of a Chinese Communist Party regime that has killed millions, Mr. Baird argued history should not get in the way of relations.

“When you say millions have been killed by the regime, I mean, obviously countries we work well with like Russia and Germany have been through challenges in their history, but we now count them as allies,” Mr. Baird said.

Russia and Germany have gone through challenges??? Russia is now an ally? Is China now our ally? I expect more from John Baird.

All Jewish Children Must Die!!!

A taxi driver in the UK gets upset....

A taxi driver ranted racial abuse outside a Jewish school after getting stuck in a traffic jam.

Taha Osman shrieked ‘All Jewish children must die!’ after his car was hemmed in by parents picking up pupils outside King David School in Crumpsall.

Two mums on the school run and a teaching assistant were singled out in a foul-mouthed and ‘frightening’ tirade witnessed by kids, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Osman – an Iraqi Kurd who has settled in Britain – also shouted that Jewish people were ‘animals’ who ‘should not be allowed in this country’.

The 36-year-old denied causing religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress in a trial, but was found guilty by the jury.

Sentencing him to a community order, Judge David Stockdale QC said it was a ‘particularly nasty offence’ – but did not warrant a jail sentence.

The court heard that Osman, who was off-duty from his job with a Manchester firm at the time, now faces having his private hire licence withdrawn.

The court heard Osman launched his tirade on October 5, after a traffic jam formed on Seymour Road outside King David School.

Osman was on his way to Tesco when he got stuck in the congestion lost his temper at the driver in front of him, Sigal Bar-Ilan.

Caroline Franks told the court that she had collected her children, aged four and six, from the school, when she saw him shouting at Mrs Bar-Ilan.

When Mrs Franks got out of her vehicle to help the woman manoeuvre her car, Osman screamed vile racial insults at them both.

Mrs Bar-Ilan said her daughter began to cry and her son asked ‘Why’s the man shouting at you mummy?’ She told the jury the incident ‘scared the hell out of my children and out of me’.

New of the World vs. Wikileaks....

Hmmmm...which one was worse???

How does this year's phone hacking scandal at the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World—owned, I hardly need add, by News Corp., the Journal's parent company—compare with last year's contretemps over the release of classified information by Julian Assange's WikiLeaks and his partners at the New York Times, the Guardian and other newspapers?

In both cases, secret information, initially obtained by illegal means, was disseminated publicly by news organizations that believed the value of the information superseded the letter of the law, as well as the personal interests of those whom it would most directly affect. In both cases, fundamental questions about the lengths to which a news organization should go in pursuit of a scoop have been raised. In both cases, a dreadful human toll has been exacted: The British parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, led to the false hope that their child might be alive because some of her voice mails were deleted after her abduction; Afghan citizens, fearful of Taliban reprisals after being exposed by WikiLeaks as U.S. informants.

Both, in short, are despicable instances of journalistic malpractice, for which some kind of price ought to be paid. So why is one a scandal, replete with arrests, resignations and parliamentary inquests, while the other is merely a controversy, with Mr. Assange's name mooted in some quarters for a Nobel Peace Prize?

How not to have a Palestinian state...

A nice article by Jose Maria Aznar...

A declaration of Palestinian statehood by the United Nations General Assembly will be an act of political manoeuvring that will only make it even more difficult to find a solution. Unilateral action will have unforeseeable consequences, so the only true way forward is through a bilateral agreement.

This is not the time for destructive gestures: it is time to encourage everyone to sit down and negotiate, face to face, with no pre-conditions other than mutual and unequivocal recognition.

There cannot be two states, living in peace side by side, unless Palestinians accept that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and the Israelis accept that the Palestinian State will be the state for the Palestinian people. Absent that basis, no genuine progress will be made.

The government in Jerusalem has said on numerous occasions that it is ready to talk. Now is the moment of truth for the Palestinians. They must choose negotiation, with all that negotiating entails, including concessions by both parties.

The alternative is for the representatives of the Palestinian people to continue demonizing their only possible negotiating partner, while expecting the international community to tilt the scales in their own favour. But blackmail will lead to disaster. Negotiations must be conducted in good faith and not as a means of exerting various forms of international pressure.

It is time for the international community, starting with the UN, to say that the time for game-playing and wishful thinking is past. Serious negotiations can only be conducted by Israelis and Palestinians themselves, no matter how much help or goodwill is provided from the outside. A unilaterally declared Palestinian State, which is not the product of bilateral negotiations, is a demand that Israel accept the unacceptable.

Diplomacy demands, above all, negotiation and agreement, not unilateral demands imposed with contempt.

Syria accelerates the arming of Hezbollah....

More missiles, bigger missiles...

SYRIA has accelerated its supply of weapons, including advanced ballistic missiles, to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon in a move that could further inflame an already destabilised region.

According to intelligence sources in the West and the Middle East, the unrest facing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has not halted its build-up of military hardware.

With the help of experts from Iran and North Korea, Damascus is pressing ahead with its development of sophisticated missiles at a secret site nicknamed "missile city" built into Jabal Taqsis, a mountain near the opposition stronghold of Hama.

The missile program is allegedly run by the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in Damascus, an organisation that is already on a US sanctions list.

With financial and political support from Iran, the Syrians have also stepped up their military assistance to Hezbollah, which must now rank as the most powerful non-state military force in the world.

The Times reported last year that Hezbollah had taken delivery of two advanced Scud D surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 700km.

Since then, the Syrians have handed over eight more of the ballistic weapons, which have been assembled with the help of North Korean experts.

The projectiles, which carry one-tonne warheads, are accurate to within tens of metres and bring all of Israel, Jordan and large parts of Turkey within Hezbollah's range. Hezbollah has also been given M600s -- surface-to-surface missiles based on the Iranian Fateh-110 -- with a range of 250km and 500kg warheads.

"A new reality has dawned," an intelligence report seen by The Times said.

"This is the first time that a terror organisation has obtained a missile of this type, which . . . is considered 'strategic'. In the past, this type of missile has been held only by national armies."

Palestinians want 100%...

They will no compromise...the latest from Khaled Abu Toameh...

The Palestinians are divided today into two camps – one that is radical and another that is less radical -- or "moderate" in the words of the West.

The radical camp is headed by Hamas and other extremist groups such as the Islamic Jihad organization.

This camp's message is: We want 100% of everything and we will not make any concessions to Israel. We want all the land, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. We want to replace Israel with an Islamic state where Jews who wish to could live as a minority.

There is no point in talking about the possibility of negotiating with this radical camp about peace, especially as its declared goal is to eliminate Israel -- not make peace with it.

The only thing Israel could talk to the radicals about is how and when to dismantle the Jewish state and send Israelis to Europe, Russia, the US and their Arab countries of origin.

The less radical camp, headed by the PLO and a minority of secular Palestinians, is also saying that it wants 100%, but only of the pre-1967 lines -– meaning the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Like the radicals, the "moderate" camp is also saying that it will not and cannot make any concessions to Israel on its territorial demands.

With such positions, it is hard to see how the peace process could lead to anything positive. The radicals do not want to negotiate with Israel because they do not recognize its right to exist and believe it should be wiped off the face of the earth. The so-called moderates say they are ready to return to the negotiating table, but only if Israel agrees in advance to give them 100% of their demands.

The Palestinians make incredible demands...

At every step, they refuse to really engage in any sort of peace process...

The Palestinians also refuse to halt all demands from Israel once a peace deal is signed, and oppose demands to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people as well as to modify their education to cease all enmity towards the state, sources say.

Leaked! Latest Memo from Jack!

July 12th: Grandstanding!

Stun Gun found on JetBlue flight...

How did it get on board???

Authorities are trying to determine how a stun gun got aboard a JetBlue plane that landed at Newark Liberty International Airport.

The crew was cleaning up after the 10:20 p.m. flight arrived from Boston on Friday and found the stun gun tucked into the back of a seat.

Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman told The Star-Ledger of Newark it's not clear who the weapon belonged to or how it got on the plane. Coleman says there's no indication the weapon had been fired.

Port Authority police turned the stun gun over to the Transportation Security Administration. The agency is responsible for screening those who boarded the flight.

Why aren't gays protesting Hamas????

A good article on Queers Against Israeli apartheid by Benjamin Weinthal...

Dr. Shimon Samuels, the international director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Post on Saturday that QAIA is ignoring Hamas’s violent homophobia. “It is complicity by omission and stupidity,” Samuels said. QAIA is “defending homophobia and the enemies of democracy.”

Critics have charged QAIA and its partner organization, Siege Busters, with providing de facto support to Hamas. Siege Busters previously used the center’s facilities to raise money for efforts to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. The NGOs have many members in common.

What is perhaps not common knowledge among members of the LGBT community are the positions of Hamas toward the West and LGBT communities. Hamas cofounder Mahmoud Zahar has said, “You in the West do not live like human beings. You do not even live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?”

In an April broadcast on Hamas’s Al-Aksa TV, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Syrian academic Muhammad Rateb al- Nabulsi said, “Homosexuality involves a filthy place, and does not generate offspring. Homosexuality leads to the destruction of the homosexual. That is why, brothers, homosexuality carries the death penalty.”

The British gay news website Pink News has reported that Zahar blasted rights for gays in Israel and said, “Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?” All of this helps explain why experts in gender studies have condemned QAIA. Dr.

Phyllis Chesler, a professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies at City University of New York, termed the activists “Queers for Jihad.”

“The members of QAIA seem to know nothing about real apartheid which is Islamic gender and religious apartheid... They are scapegoating democratic and gayfriendly Israel for the enormous sins and crimes of the Muslim world,” Chesler told the Post on Friday.

More Palestinian TV...

UN rules Gaza blockade is legal....

And, they found the Israeli inquiry was pretty good!

More bad news for the dwindling number of flotilla activists hanging around the ports of Greece. The now completed UN Inquiry on last year’s Gaza flotilla incident aboard the Mavi Marmara found that Israel’s blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza is legal and the Israeli government owes no apology or reparation to Turkey.

The UN investigative committee, headed by former Prime Minister of New Zealand and internationally renowned jurist, Geoffrey Palmer, actually criticizes Turkey for not doing enough to prevent the flotilla from setting sail and for also providing a somewhat anaemic and lacking investigation into the events of May 2010.

Now the part that is going to really take the starch out of the flotilla activist’s kafiyehs is that in its examination of the Turkel Committee’s report – the committee conducting Israel’s official investigation – aided by Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble and former Canadian Forces former Judge Advocate General, Ken Watkin QC, is its conclusion that the Israeli investigation (in stark contrast to
Turkey’s) was conducted in a professional and independent manner.

For a UN report, the summary is astoundingly tepid in its criticism of Israel’s actions and constitutes a very mild slap on the wrist. The report mentions that while international law allows Israel to intercept ships far from its territorial waters, the navy would have been better off waiting until the flotilla was closer to the blockade line some 20 miles off shore. There is also the bromide of Israel using excessive force, but nobody disputes that when faced with attackers wielding iron bars, knives or axes, there is every justification for ditching the paintball gun for a real weapon in self-defence.

What will have them out in the streets in Ankara and Istanbul however, is that Palmer does not demand that Israel apologize to Turkey or pay any kind of reparation. In short, the UN report vindicates Israel and authoritatively rebuts the many false and contradictory versions of events spread by last year’s flotilla activists. Only last year, Victoria resident and dissembler-in-chief of the Mavi Marmara crew, Kevin Neish (currently cooling his heels with the rest of the Grecian formula flotilla activists) was questioned on the many inconsistencies he presented in his version of events to the CBC’s Carole MacNeil, who he huffily accused of, “Taking the Israeli position.” I have no doubt that this will be their same bafflegab in response to the UN’s report.

Charles de Gaulle airport now under Israeli occupation...

I always suspected something was funny...

At Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport, fifty pro-Palestinian activists arrived at the Lufthansa terminal hoping to board a flight to Israel, and then refused to leave the terminal after they were blocked from boarding the plane, Israel Radio reported.

Olivia Zemour, leader of the EuroPalestine organization that is arranging the "air flotilla," said that the blacklist includes names of 347 activists.

"Charles de Gaulle Airport is under Israeli occupation. We are peaceful people and have no interest in causing disorder at Ben Gurion Airport," Zemour was quoted by Israel Radio as saying.

Leaked! Latest Memo from Jack!

July 8th: Libby Returns....

Guns, Guns, Guns...

California's long term cooling trend....

But, the media spin it differently...

Want to know why global warming alarmists and climate scientists in general have lost credibility with the American public? Consider a new study released today — and the unintentionally hilarious weasel words of its author — as Exhibit A.

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle today, a meteorologist did a 30-year survey of temperature and precipitation data for most of the largest cities up and down the state of California. Conclusion? In 75% of the sites, the weather has grown colder and rainier than it used to be...

Of course, this “inconvenient truth” was not what either the study’s author nor the Chronicle‘s reporter wanted to see, so the spin cycle goes into overdrive right from the headline, which manages to use the word “warmer” first despite there being only two warmer cities in the entire study: “CA climate: inland warmer; coast cooler and wetter.” Uh-huh. But that’s just the aperitif. How does the author, a meteorologist named Jan Null who also happens to be on the global warming bandwagon, explain away the trend he uncovered? Behold:

The data may appear to bolster the arguments of global warming skeptics, but Null said the findings actually fit in with the predictions of scientists who believe the climate is changing as a result of human-caused carbon emissions.

“People say, ‘Wait a minute, what about global warming? Shouldn’t it be warmer?’ ” Null said. “Well, if you have more warm days in the Central Valley, you are going to have a stronger sea breeze so you will cool off the coastal areas. That certainly does not contradict any of the models about global warming. This is what is to be expected.”

Here's what should be at Gay Pride in Toronto...

Finally, a float against Ahmadinejad...

More proof of Iranian meddling in Iraq...

Just how much evidence does the US need before it does something???

Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are using more sophisticated weapons than in the past to target U.S. troops and military installations in Iraq, according to senior U.S. officials.

James F. Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said Tuesday that fresh forensic testing on weapons used in the latest deadly attacks in the country bolsters assertions by U.S. officials that Iran is supporting Iraqi insurgents with new weapons and training.

“We’re not talking about a smoking pistol. There is no doubt this is Iranian,” Jeffrey said in an interview.

“We’re seeing more lethal weapons, more accurate weapons, more longer-range weapons,” Jeffrey added. “And we’re seeing more sophisticated mobile and other deployment options, and we’re seeing better-trained people.”

In some cases, insurgents made no effort to remove from the weapons identification numbers suggesting that they came from Iran, “which in itself is troubling,” Jeffrey said.

The Churches against Israel...

This is discouraging...

The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical Christian body based in Genève and boasting 590 million worshippers, just ended a four-day conference in the Greek city of Volos. Not a single word of criticism was uttered there against the Islamists who are persecuting Arabs who believe Jesus.

Lutherans arrived to Volos from the United States, Catholics and Protestants from Bethlehem and Nazareth, Orthodox Christians from Greece and Russia, lecturers from Beirut and Copts from Egypt. The conference declared the Jewish State "a sin" and "occupying power," accused Israelis of "dehumanizing" the Palestinians, theologically dismantled the "choseness" of the Jewish people and called for "resistance" as a Christian duty.

The conference denied 3,000 years of Jewish life in the land stretching between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, took sides against the very presence of Israel, likened the defensive barrier that has blocked terrorism to "apartheid," attacked Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria invoking the name of God and conceptually dismissed the Jewish state, imagining it to be a mixture - Islamic, Christian and perhaps a bit Jewish. It even legitimized terrorism when it talked about the "thousands of prisoners who languish in Israeli jails," proclaiming that "resistance to the evil of occupation is a Christian's right and duty."

Copying Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric

In the last few months we have seen a radical and dangerous increase of attacks on Israel by the Protestant and Catholic churches. While the US is home to many Christian supporters of Israel, the groups more closely linked to global public opinion, European bureaucracy, the media industry, the United Nations and various legal forums are all violently anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. They are paving the way for a new Jewish bloodbath by the theological exclusion of Israel's Jews from the family of nations.

The patriarch of the Antioch Church, the Catholic Melkite Gregory III Laham, proclaimed that there is a "Zionist conspiracy against Islam," reviving old conspiracy theories that led to infamous pogroms. In Antwerp, once called "the Belgian Jerusalem," a highly respected and government-funded Catholic school, the College of the Sacred Heart, just hosted a "Palestine Day" replete with anti-Semitic references and activities for youngsters. One stall at the event was titled "Throw the soldiers into the sea," allowing children to throw replicas of Jewish and Israeli soldiers into two large tanks.

The most influential international Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, just promoted a boycott of Israel's goods "in the name of love." The most hated Israeli product includes Ahava, the famous Israeli cosmetics company, whose shop in Covent Garden, London, has just been closed by the company after years of demonstrations. Strangely, Ahava body lotion tubes have been chosen as a satanic symbol of Jewish colonialism.

Today, most of the divestment campaign against Israel is driven by Christian groups such as the Dutch Interchurch Organization and the Irish Catholic group Troicaré, both funded by the EU. The United Church of Canada, a very popular and mainstream Christian denomination, just voted to boycott six companies (Caterpillar, Motorola, Ahava, Veolia, Elbit Systems and Chapters/Indigo) and South African bishop Desmond Tutu convinced the University of Johannesburg to severe all its links with Israeli fellows.

Last year the Methodist Church of Britain voted to boycott Israeli-produced goods and services from Judea and Samaria. The catholic Pax Christi is also leading the campaign glorifying Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower who had converted to Christianity.

La Civiltà Cattolica, the Vatican magazine reviewed by the Holy See secretary of state before publication, in January opened with a shocking editorial on Palestinian refugees. Adopting the Islamist propagandist word "Nakba," just recently invoked by Arab mobs to breach Israel's borders, the paper declared that the refugees are a consequence of "ethnic cleansing" by Israel and that "the Zionists were cleverly able to exploit the Western sense of guilt for the Shoah to lay the foundations of their own state." Indeed, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric is alarmingly similar.

Hitchens has some questions for the flotilla idiots....

Good questions, too...

However, given the luxury of time, might it not be possible to ask the "activists" onboard just a few questions? (Activist is a good neutral word, isn't it, with largely positive connotations? Even flotilla, with its reassuring diminuendo, has a "small is beautiful" sound to it.) Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered coverage. I would like to know a little more about the political ambitions and implications of the enterprise.

It seems safe and fair to say that the flotilla and its leadership work in reasonably close harmony with Hamas, which constitutes the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of this organization is headquartered mainly in Gaza itself. But its military coordination is run out of Damascus, where the regime of Bashar Assad is currently at war with increasingly large sections of the long-oppressed Syrian population. Refugee camps, some with urgent humanitarian requirements, are making their appearance on the border between Syria and Turkey (the government of the latter being somewhat sympathetic to the purposes of the flotilla). In these circumstances, isn't it legitimate to strike up a conversation with the "activists" and ask them where they come out on the uprising against hereditary Baathism in Syria?

Then again, Syria's other proxy party in the region is Hezbollah, which operates a state-within-a-state and maintains a private army on the territory of Lebanon. Senior associates of this group have recently been named in a U.N. indictment concerning the broad-daylight murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. Hezbollah's leadership and propaganda organs, while refusing all cooperation with the United Nations, are currently expressing undying solidarity with the Assad regime, which relies additionally on heavy support from the dictatorship in Iran. Again, the Hamas leadership seems compromised at best by its association with this local Tehran-Damascus axis. Surely there must be some spokesman for the blockade-runners who is able to give us his thinking on this question, too? At a time of widespread democratic and pluralist revolution in the region, Hamas imposes its own version of theocracy on Gaza and seems otherwise aligned with the forces that stand athwart the hope of continued and deeper change. Who wants to volunteer time to make this outfit look more presentable? Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation, it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder.

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn't any journalist want to know whether the "activists" have discussed this element in their partners' world outlook? Does Alice Walker seriously have no comment?

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don't mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any "activist" claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

Leaked! The Latest Memo from Jack!

July 4th: Feedback from Canada Day!

Arrest Nasrallah....

Hezbollah is an organization that murders..time to arrest Nasrallah...

After much delay, the prosecution of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon finally delivered its indictments last week against those responsible for the murder of Lebanon’s late prime minister Rafik Hariri. The indictments point to Hezbollah members as the main suspects behind the massive blast that killed Hariri along with many others. Backed by Syria and Iran, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah seemed to have confidence in his organization’s ability to avoid any blame. But, it turns out, Nasrallah’s self-assurance was misplaced, as the UN-backed tribunal submitted its indictments and arrest warrants to Lebanese State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza on Thursday.

Saboteurs blow up (once again) the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline...

Third attack on the pipeline...

Saboteurs blew up a pipeline carrying gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan on Monday, forcing a shutdown in the flow of gas, Egyptian security sources said.

The explosion took place in the early morning at a station along the pipeline in the northern Sinai Peninsula at Bir Abd, 60 km east of the Suez Canal, the sources said.
Egypt-Israel gas fire, April 27 2011, AP.

It was the third attack since early February on the pipeline, which supplies natural gas to Israel and Jordan, local cement plants and a power station.

Happy Canada Day!

Here is my Canada Day message from Canada.com....

We’ll have to stare down China and promote Taiwan; we’ll have to actively support Iranian opposition groups; we’ll have to push the West into coherent positions on the Arab spring; and we’ll have to prod NATO from time to time. Want the CBC to do something useful for a change? How about CBC Farsi uniting Iranians around the world? Sure beats Little Mosque on the Prairie, no?

Please read my whole article...