PDavidHornik

Can you imagine that, just killing people?

Now hear this:

The coordinator of the Irish ship Saoirse, bound for Gaza in an international flotilla, told Ynet Thursday Israel had sabotaged the ship so that it would sink in mid-sail, not in order to prevent it from sailing.

 "This was a potentially murderous act," said Dr Fintan Lane, who also owns the vessel.

"If we had not spotted the damage as a result of a short trip in the bay, we would have gone to sea with a dangerously damaged propeller shaft," he said.

"One of the most shocking aspects is the delayed nature of the sabotage. It wasn't designed to stop the ship from leaving its berth; instead, it was intended that the fatal damage to the ship would occur while she was at sea and this could have resulted in the deaths of several of those on board."

Shocking!

First of all, this is of course false. Israel (which indeed can safely be assumed to be the saboteur) didn't intend for the damage to be discovered only after embarking; it wouldn't exactly be a PR coup for us to be blamed for lots of drowning deaths.

Note, though, the source of the complaint. These people are Hamas lackeys, terror groupies. Can you imagine that, just killing people? It's OK if it's Israelis.

Great work, saboteurs! Keep it up!

 

America's Chamberlain steps down

So says Alan Dershowitz about Robert Gates, set to retire after five essentially disastrous years as defense secretary in which he nixed doing anything (anything that's not a totally ineffective joke) to stop Iran's march to nukes. And "persuaded the Bush administration to change Israel’s green light to yellow and then to red, as it related to United States approval of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities." The light has remained red during Gates's tenure in the Obama administration, of course, and it can safely be assumed it was even easier for him to convince Obama of that redness than it was to convince Bush. We're marching to disaster. I hope to write a piece tomorrow about the latest stories and rumors in Israel regarding the political and security elite's attitudes toward the Iranian issue.

Quote of the day

It goes to Robert Spencer in a powerful article calling on America to come home from its Afghan entanglement:

The foremost lesson of America’s misbegotten Afghan adventure is that our national unwillingness to face the unpleasant truths about Islam, and particularly Islamic supremacism, costs us lives, costs us money, and makes us even more vulnerable to jihad attack than we already were. It’s time not just to bring the troops home from their foredoomed mission, but to begin a searching and encompassing reevaluation of all our national policies regarding Islam and Islamic states.

But under Barack Obama, that is about as likely as the possibility that he will make his next speech from Jerusalem, proclaiming it Israel’s capital and calling upon the Palestinian Arabs to end their jihad.

Very cloudy, rain and thunder anticipated

David Solway gives a masterful overview of the bad, ominous state of global geopolitics, with that incompetent unfit-to-serve abandoning the cockpit in Washington:

In a certain sense, assigning blame for the coming eruption is a useless enterprise. Al-Qaeda and the Iranian Shi’ite regime are only acting in character; they are the carnivores of the current political world and cannot be expected to begin acting like herbivores....

But if responsibility for the gathering storm is to be ascribed, it is to the United States of America, in virtue of its pre-eminent position on the global stage and of its failure, under the most dangerous and politically corrupted president in its history, to address the looming threat....

Read it all, not to put a smile on your face but to face the truth.

 

 

Barak on the ball

Defense Minister and former prime minister Ehud Barak is a difficult, problematic figure but there's nothing wrong with what he says here. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza; the "crisis" is the ongoing arms buildup and the ongoing unspeakably cruel captivity of Gilad Shalit; the flotilla is an unnecessary provocation and "I ordered the IDF to block the ships. If there is a conflict or damage, it will be the responsibility of the flotilla organizers."

And: "The Iranians have missiles that can reach far. They are continuing to develop abilities to attack. We are following the[ir current] drill and its influence."

Even some generally realistic analysts say Israel should let Iran go nuclear and then deal with the situation through a combination of missile-defense systems and deterrent threats. They say Netanyahu and Barak don't see it that way. Sure hope that's true.

Wouldn't Palestinian statehood be a great thing?

Such a wonderful culture, so much to offer the world, so deserving of a seat in all the august international bodies. Read all about it.

Israel's delegitimizers will always find pretexts

"In a self-interested world lacking objective moral standards, legitimacy is no more than fiction. It is a fluid term that is certainly not objective. Hence, Israel cannot gain 'legitimacy' and Israel’s enemies cannot lose it." Rarely have I seen so much insight and truth packed into a short article as in this one by Israeli columnist Dani Magner.

Another well-deserved tribute to Glenn Beck

Sammy Levine goes to the heart of the matter.

Sarah Silverman is a despicable creep

And of course, and I don't know who it was, some despicable morons or other had to invite her to Israel. If you're curious you can find her whole video of "Holocaust humor" on YouTube. Seemingly that should have been enough to get her ostracized in disgust.

The kind of education Israeli kids could get

Poignantly set forth by Robert Gordis. Israeli education is heavily oriented to getting a matriculation certificate and getting a job. Important things, no doubt. But on the way, Israeli young people could be much more challenged to engage in reading, thinking, and discoursing for their own sakes--and could get much more educated. So far as I know, Gordis's Shalem Center is doing great pioneering work in this area. I hope it catches on. The abandonment of Western civ (and in Israel's case, for the "secular" majority, of the roots of Jewish civ as well) is a far-reaching and ominous Western malaise. Someone who gets some kind of advanced degree and has no idea what Genesis, Plato, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy are is someone who may achieve great professional heights but is not educated.