Friday, August 13, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

He ain't a heavy, he's turkey

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 12:42 PM PDT

Here are 4 articles from the New York Times about different incidents in which Israel was quickly condemned as the bad guy. Regardless of what emerged afterwards, this was the default position of the New York Times. (If you feel that I'm exaggerating, click on the links and see if my presentation is accurate.) I attempted to find the first report in each of these cases.

January 29, 2010

Hamas Official Murdered in Dubai Hotel
Another Hamas leader, Khalil al-Hayya, told reporters that Mr. Mabhouh was "not the first one the Mossad's hand has reached."

"We reserve our right to respond to this crime in a suitable time and place," Mr. Hayya said. But, he added, "We in Hamas emphasize that our battlefield is the land of Palestine and our battle with the enemy is in Palestine," and not on foreign soil.

March 9, 2010

As Biden Visits, Israel Unveils Plan for New Settlements

Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel's security here on Tuesday, Israel's Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as "precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now."

April 6, 2010

Debate in Israel on Gag Order in Security Leak Case

Mordechai Kremnitzer, a law professor at Hebrew University and a senior fellow of the Israel Democracy Institute, said that Israel's treatment of suspected criminal offenses in the security realm was "draconian." By isolating the suspect and preventing any public debate, he said, the authorities could more easily press the suspect to arrive at a plea bargain.

Mr. Kremnitzer also criticized the ease with which courts in Israel hand out gag orders.

May 31, 2010

Deadly Israeli Raid Draws Condemnation

Israel faced intense international condemnation and growing domestic questions on Monday after a raid by naval commandos that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.

Turkey, Israel's most important friend in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador and canceled planned military exercises with Israel as the countries' already tense relations soured even further. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session over the attack, which occurred in international waters north of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was flying home after canceling a Tuesday meeting with President Obama.

Der Spiegel (via Daily Alert Blog and memeorandum) is reporting that German experts believe that a number of PKK terrorists were killed last year by chemical weapons deployed by Turkey.

It would be difficult to exceed the horror shown in the photos, which feature burned, maimed and scorched body parts. The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009.

In March, the activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation comprised of Turkey experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, as SPIEGEL reported at the end of July. Now Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died "due to the use of chemical substances."

Israel Matzav

I trust also that Tom Friedman will write a column in the next week accusing Turkey of operating under the Hama rules that Bashar Assad's daddy Hafez used when he gassed all those people to death in 1982.

JoshuaPundit

Now, if Israel were the accused party in something like this...well, now that would be a different matter, wouldn't it? And no evidence would even be necessary, just the wild allegations of a country like, well, Turkey.

and Gateway Pundit

Now imagine the din and uproar that the EU would raise if it was thought that Israel or the United States had used chemical weapons on anyone. Do you think they'd wait a year to five months to gin up their Euro-like outrage?

all wonder what I do. If the terrorists killed had been Israel's enemies, would the MSM have waited so long to air the suggestion that Israel had violated international law? As I show above, of course not.

This isn't about holding Israel to a higher standard. Turkey is being held to no standard whatsoever. Der Spiegel rreported that Turkey had long been suspected of using chemical weapons against the PKK, so this isn't exactly something new. And surely once Der Spiegel saw fit to report it the rest of the MSM would at least cite Der Spiegel, wouldn't they?

Turkey's not Israel, so it isn't automatically the heavy. That would seem to be a mistake.

MondoWeiss revives the poison balloon story

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 10:32 AM PDT

I missed it at the time, but on August 4th the MondoWeiss blog revived the poison balloon story, the same day Weiss himself posted admitting he was wrong about the now-famous border-incident tree's location. From a post entitled "The Lebanese Army finally acts to protect Lebanon's sovereignty":

Israel has violated the ceasefire with Lebanon over 7,000 times since the end of the 2006 war on Lebanon . . . Dropping poisonous balloons over Southern Lebanon causing 8 people to be rushed to the hospital after inhaling toxic fumes.
The MondoWeiss post links to the original Naharnet story. By the time of this Naharnet story it was clear that they were just helium balloons from a promotional event of the Ha'ir newspaper. Just for fun, let's revisit the Fars News story "Israel Massacres Lebanese by Poisonous Balloons" (the image from the Fars story graces the top of this post):
Genocide by poisonous balloons is the new method employed by the Israeli army for killing people in southern Lebanon.

FNA dispatches from Beirut said that the Israeli planes have so far dropped thousands of these balloons all across the woods and coastal areas in southern Lebanon.

The balloons which come in bright and child attractive colors have been observed specially in Nabatieh, Sour and the surrounding villages and, of course, in Beirut.

The balloons read such phrases as 'Happy Birthday' or 'Happy Night' in English and Hebrew . . .

The Israeli army has a long record of massacring civilians with bombs placed inside dolls, mobile sets and similar objects . . .

I searched for the word "balloon"in the 134-post comment thread of the MondoWeiss post. Did the whole MondoWeiss crowd really not notice? Yaacov Lozowick noted the post on August 6.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

If ... you must 081310

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 03:57 AM PDT

If you haven't read Roger Waters OKs Iranian anthem, blows it on Gaza at Fausta's Blog ; you must.
He's also supporting Cinema Jenin. Maybe he's anti-Mullah, but he's not exactly pro-Israel.

If you haven't read Save Mohamed Abu Muailek at Simply Jews; you must.
Oh, you mean Israel isn't the main menace to the people of Gaza?

If you haven't read Ramadan in Tel Aviv at In Context; you must.
Along these lines, read about Gad Marahsha, of blessed memory.

If you haven't read Kutcher if you can at Israelly Cool; you must.
Aussie Dave's obervation about celebrities - But I am pleased to see more and more celebrities visiting Israel, especially sites holy to Jews. - is spot on.

If you haven't read Peaceful Coexistence Alert 2: Banned for posting 'historical truth' on Arabic site at Solomonia; you must.
It seems that ethnic sensitivity works only one way sometimes. Do you think that the owners of the website will be called "reflexively anti-Jewish."

If you haven't read Nate Oman on the Auto Bailouts at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
How a financial problem became a political one.

If you haven't read Watermelons force Palestinians to institute checkpoints for Palestinians at Daled Amos; you must.
Showing that no Israeli good deed goes unpunished.

If you haven't read IRIB Radio (Iran) on Kagan appointment: Obama doing "utmost to appease the influential Zionist lobbies" at JudeoPundit; you must.
The influence is everywhere. Oh the horrors.

It's not a matter of freedom, but of sensitivity

Posted: 13 Aug 2010 12:49 AM PDT

According to the Washington Post:

Two Republican members of Congress, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter T. King of New York, called government sponsorship of Rauf's trip "unacceptable" in a joint statement. They said he had suggested in at least one interview that the United States was to blame for the 2001 attacks.

I love the qualifications: "They said" and "he had suggested." Why not just write Imam Rauf made the charge? It's right here:

Bradley: Are you in any way suggesting that we in the United States deserved what happened?

Faisal: I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but united states policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

As I noted earlier, the Post also is ignorant of the meaning of "Cordoba."

With a major newspaper failing to exercise any sort of oversight over the intentions of the leaders of the Ground Zero mosque effort, it's funny to read in the New York Times that For Mosque Sponsors, Early Missteps Fueled Storm. In a nutshell:

The organizers built support among some Jewish and Christian groups, and even among some families of 9/11 victims, but did little to engage with likely opponents.

With a media that has been incurious about its organizer's motives or the sources of its funding, the effort to build the Islamic center in lower Manhattan, has faced only grass roots opposition. The building has been cast in simple terms of freedom of religion with opponents being characterized as intolerant and bigoted. But the real issue is sensitivity. True, there may be no legal grounds to prevent Imam Rauf and his organization from building. However, in Sacrilege at Ground Zero, Charles Krauthammer makes a strong case for fighting the mosque on sensitivity grounds.

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi -- yet despite contemporary Germany's innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, "I'm not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."

(It is through Krauthammer, that I found the interview of Imam Rauf by Ed Bradley.)

Krauthmmer concludes:

The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere. A mosque really seeking to build bridges, Rauf's ostensible hope for the structure, would accept the offer.

The city may not have the legal means to block the building, however it is up to Imam Rauf to show that he understands what an affront it would be for him to build in lower Manhattan, so close to the scene of the Islamist attack on America.

Crossposted on Yourish.
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:30 PM

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