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And there is hope for your future, says the Lord, and the children shall return to their own border.

decal available - in Hebrew, English or Arabic - from CJHSLA.org

Sorry sorry and Happy Anniversary

Sorry sorry, I haven't been around. I've been editing ArtSpeak for The Husband all day (he has a retrospective coming up soon at The Huntington Museum of Art). So went spent our 25th anniversary (yes, us and Israel too) collaborating on the words to go with. Exhausting, but somehow appropriate.

You don't see how writing a few blurbs took took 12 hours and wiped me out? Okay, you try writing something (that makes sense) about the whys and wherefores of this image. And keep in mind that it's for a possibly-only-once-in-a-lifetime venue.

Copyright: Thorney Lieberman and Bunky Echo-Hawk

I didn't get him a present, so I had to at least plug his show :)

He's the best, my beshert.

Caroline Glick on the Left

No, you silly infidel, I don't mean that she's on the Left, I mean that she posts on the Left. You know, comments? at her blog? As follows.

Specifically, the Left has two arguments. First, regardless of what the non-leftist says, the Left’s rejoinder is that the person is “a far rightist” and therefore unworthy of note. That is, nothing any non-leftist says matters because the very fact that the person is not a leftist renders his or her view irrelevant....

Second, the Left has only one answer to every single argument. If you say that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza was a disaster which empowered jihadists, the Left’s response is to blame the settlements. If you say that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon was a disaster which empowered jihadists, the Left’s response is to blame the settlements. If you say that Israel is not facing a demographic threat to its democracy and that the view that it is facing such a threat is based on PLO propaganda, the Left’s response is to say that the settlements are responsible and therefore there must be a demographic threat.

In short, the settlements, the settlers and everyone who doesn’t hate them or even – heaven forbid – supports them, is the cause of absolutely everything that happens in the Middle East. As long as they are around, they are responsible. And if, as in the case of Gaza, they are gone, the settlers qua refugees are still responsible because people who are not leftists and therefore are irrelevant insist on pointing out that it was a strategic error of the first order to throw them out of their strategically situated communities and to transfer their lands to the Hamas and Fatah terror groups.

See also Jewish Current Issues, where Rick has taken pains to transcribe Caroline's chapter-by-chapter description of her new book, Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad, including

* The War Against Israel * The War Against the Free World * Israel Alone * Threat of Destruction * Israel’s Suicide Attempt * Battle of Hearts and Minds * Contemporary Thought Police * The European Betrayal * [Chapter Nine: embedded with the U.S. Third Infantry Division on the front lines of the U.S. invasion in Iraq] and * The Light Unto the Nations. *

P.S. Apparently, the Judaica Web Store isn't processing my gift order for Condoleezza Rice, so perhaps I need to apologize to you for suggesting that you "follow my lead." It seems I have set before you an impossible task. (Who woulda thunk it?)

NY Times: Never mind WV, they're a bunch of hollerbilly racists

Today's front page, New York Times: Clinton Beats Obama Handily in West Virginia

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won a lopsided victory on Tuesday over Senator Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, where racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor.

Now tell me, what NYT-reader in good standing is going to read beyond that first line? This was to be expected, but it so reeks of leftist hypocrisy that I can't let it pass without comment. You see, the Times has no problem with the stalwart if senile Democrat and senior senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, who was in the KKK for real, but they must try to libel the whole state because the Dems here didn't fall for Obama.

According to the West Virginia surveys, 95 percent of the Democratic primary voters were white, 70 percent did not graduate from college, and 54 percent had household incomes less than $50,000.

Granted, there are nooks and crannies of racism here, and West Virginians do cling to their guns and religion, but the overwhelming election results [e.g. in Mingo County, Clinton won 88 percent of the vote] reflect something else indeed. Freedom of speech notwithstanding, West Virginians won't tolerate disrespect, they don't like it when people say "G-d damn America," and most saliently, they can peg a phoney or a snob from a mile away.

And Obama is both.

Buy Two: One for you and one for Condi

I don't know what's up with Amazon and Barnes and Noble - they both say they don't have any copies available, when in fact they do. Odd glitch, that.

Nevertheless, you can get a copy from Gefen, the publisher, HERE. I do insist, however, that you follow my lead and buy one for yourself and one for Condoleezza Rice.

Ship to:

Secretary Rice
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

You want to know why you should do such a thing. Well, that's why I like you; you're a curious lot or you wouldn't be here.

Consider the international implications of what David Samuels mentioned briefly in the Atlantic Monthly - "Grand Illusions" - June 2007:

When I asked Rice to name a book that influenced her thinking about the Middle East, she hesitated.... She finally mentioned the UN Human Development Report, which she said had opened her eyes to the dearth of patents issued in Muslim countries.

Have pity on the poor woman, she was an expert in one country and it ceased to exist (the former Soviet Union) and now she's so busy with Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad that she has no time to shop.

Please help her out. It would be a mitzvah. And if she ends up with extra copies, well, she can give one to her boss and hand out the rest at the State Department or to the reporters who follow her around. None of them knows the first thing about Israel, and I guarantee you that Caroline Glick will set them straight.

Did I tell you I talked to her today?

She's a knockout, absolutely brilliant. Amazingly, she speaks every bit as well as she writes, and her clarity is simply astonishing. You can listen to the audio of today's wide-ranging conference call at One Jerusalem, and then tomorrow I'll tell you more. Right now, though, I want to go watch the WV primary returns... I have a dog in the race, so to speak.

Buy the book. And I'm serious: Two copies. It's a mitzvah (and you'll get BtB points).

PS - I had trouble at the Gefen site (?) but managed to make my purchases at the Judaica Web Store. They required, in addition to the shipping address, a phone number and email for the recipient. I used the State Dept. main switchboard number (202-647-2000) and Condoleezza.Rice@state.gov - because that's all I could find on the innernut. It may not be correct, but my order wouldn't go through without something, and that seemed at least feasible.

Happy Israel's Birthday to the Secretary of State.

Life Is Good in America

How's this for a Tuesday afternoon? I just got off the phone with Caroline Glick (keep an eye out for the audio at One Jerusalem), and now I'm going to go vote against Barak Obama.

Here's something I bet you never thought about

This ad came in my daily email of NY Times headlines.

Pretty scarey thought, a post-American world. How 'bout a Palestinian state in a post-American world? That's kinda like a World Without Zionism, dontcha think?

"If you need anything" (like maybe a terror state of your own)

Can you read it? I hope so, because I'd rather not type it out unless I have to :)

Hey, Fayyad ... STFU!

Alert Net - "Alerting humanitarians to emergencies"
(courtesy of the al Reuters Foundation):

Israelis have no cause to celebrate -Palestinian PM

RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 13 (Reuters) - Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Tuesday Israelis had no cause to celebrate their country's 60th anniversary while Palestinians continued to suffer under occupation.

"I say to the Israeli people in particular, how can you celebrate while the people of Palestine are groaning under your settlements, the crimes of your settlers, the siege of your state and the occupation practices of your army," Fayyad said in a speech.

Fayyad made the remarks to legislators and foreign diplomats in an address marking the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" [of the founding of the modern state of Israel] ...

According to Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) May 9, Fayyad was spreading this same vitriol days earlier at a "tent camp set up to mark the Palestinian 'nakba.'" Or it could be the same speech, and someone has the dates screwed up?

What are these tent camps, you might ask. Well, if you were reading DEBKA in April, you would know about Abu Mazen's "master plan for wrecking Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations".

The Palestinian leader has circulated guidelines for three million Palestinians to leave their homes on the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon on May 14 and march on Israel’s borders, including the Green Line. The march is to take place a week after Israel’s Independence Day on May 8, 2008. If Israel obstructs their passage, they will strike camp and live in tents until Israel surrenders and lets them through.

This stunt will be accompanied by pressure from the Palestinian Authority on international organizations to force Israel to implement UN Resolution 194, passed by the General Assembly on Dec. 11, 1948.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that Abbas commissioned the “2008 Return” project from a special Fatah forum headed by Ziyad Abu Ain from Ramallah, deputy minister for Palestinian prisoners in the Salam Fayyad government and close associate of Marwan Barghouti, who is serving life for five terrorist murders.

Operation “2008 Return” is described in its introduction as a decision by the Palestinian people “to implement UN resolution (194), declare themselves holders of the UN blue banner, and return to their homeland, from which they were forcefully expelled [Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramla, Lod, Ashkelon etc]… "

The introduction goes on to state: “Neither the Jews nor the international community can stand against the desire of the Palestinian people to exercise their right of return to their homeland and to their homes, land, holy places [Jerusalem] and heritage.”

[DEBKAfile: Mahmoud Abbas incidentally lays claim to Christian as well as Muslim holy sites – therefore also Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee sites.]

The introduction is followed by a set of instructions to Palestinian communities, of which seven are the most relevant:

1. All returnees must attach the UN resolution and refugee card on their chests.

2. All returnees must bring their tents and other goods with them. If obstructed by Israeli forces from reaching their land, they must set up their tents on the border and stay there until Israel surrenders and allows them to cross.

[The plan is to deploy hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in tent cities indefinitely on all of Israel’s borders.]

3. Jewish friends are called upon to assist in resolving the Palestinian refugee problem.

4. Arab governments and friends all over the world are called on to support the logistics of the operation.

5. Palestinian holders of foreign citizenships, especially US and European, are to charter planes for flights to Israel or neighboring countries on May 14, 2008, as well reserving passage on tens of ships to dock at Israeli ports on this date.

6. Personal invitations will be extended to all world leaders for their support.

7. Kings and leaders of Islamic countries will be invited, as well as members of the Israeli government and Knesset. Special invitations will be sent to the US president and members of the Senate.

The document ends with an appeal to the Arab nation, especially the Saudi King Abdullah, to support the operation politically, diplomatically and materially.

DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources report that Mahmoud Abbas intends to submit his ambitious master plan to the summit of Arab rulers meeting in Damascus March 29.

There is no knowing how much support he will win from Arab governments or whether the different Palestinian communities will rise to his call. The whole plan may simply fold for lack of response – or not. Abbas’ main objectives appear to be to upstage the warlike Hamas and throw a wet blanket over Israel’s anniversary celebrations.

These are Israel's partners in peace negotiations. Yeah, right.

Her name was Shuli Katz

(This doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, in light of my last post, just up minutes ago. How can both be true? )

70-year-old Shuli Katz HY"D, visiting relatives in the small village of Yesha, located about 15 kms (9 miles) from the Gaza Strip, was killed ... Monday, 12 May 2008, when a rocket smashed into the family’s home.

This attack came only four days after another attack killed [Jimmy Kedoshim HY"D] a father of three in kibbutz Kfar Aza.

YNet News notes that Mrs. Katz was a widow, and is survived by four children, five grandchildren, and her 90-year-old mother who lives in a retirement home. The funeral will take place today:

(IsraelNN.com) The funeral of Shuli Katz, who was killed by a Grad-type Katyusha missile at Kibbutz Yesha, will take place at 6 PM Tuesday. The funeral will begin at the clubhouse in Kibbutz Gvaram, where she lived and continue to the collective's cemetery.

The public is invited to attend.

Am Yisrael Chai

Spengler @ Asia Times: Why Israel is the world's happiest country

Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation. If history is made not by rational design but by the demands of the human heart, as I argued last week , the light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity worthy of a closer look.

Can it be a coincidence that this most ancient of nations [1], and the only nation persuaded that it was summoned into history for God's service, consists of individuals who appear to love life more than any other people? As a simple index of life-preference, I plot the fertility rate versus the suicide rate of 35 industrial countries, that is, the proportion of people who choose to create new life against the proportion who choose to destroy their own. Israel stands alone, positioned in the upper-left-hand-quadrant, or life-loving, portion of the chart [2].

Those who believe in Israel's divine election might see a special grace reflected in its love of life.

In a world given over to morbidity, the state of Israel still teaches the world love of life, not in the trivial sense of joie de vivre, but rather as a solemn celebration of life. In another location, I argued, "It's easy for the Jews to talk about delighting in life. They are quite sure that they are eternal, while other peoples tremble at the prospect impending extinction. It is not their individual lives that the Jews find so pleasant, but rather the notion of a covenantal life that proceeds uninterrupted through the generations." Still, it is remarkable to observe by what wide a margin the Israelis win the global happiness sweepstakes.

[....]

Two old Jewish jokes illustrate the Israeli frame of mind.

Two elderly Jewish ladies are sitting on a park bench in St Petersburg, Florida. "Mrs Levy," asks the first, "what do you hear from your son Isaac in Detroit?" "It's just awful," Mrs Levy replies. "His wife died a year ago and left him with two little girls. Now he's lost his job as an accountant with an auto-parts company, and his health insurance will lapse in a few weeks. With the real estate market the way it is, he can't even sell his house. And the baby has come down with leukemia and needs expensive treatment. He's beside himself, and doesn't know what to do. But does he write a beautiful Hebrew letter - it's a pleasure to read."

There are layers to this joke, but the relevant one here is that bad news is softened if written in the language of the Bible, which to Jews always conveys hope.

The second joke involves the American businessman who emigrated to Israel shortly after its founding. On his arrival, he orders a telephone, and waits for weeks without a response. At length he applies in person to the telephone company, and is shown into the office of an official who explains that there is a two-year waiting list, and no way to jump the queue. "Do you mean there is no hope?," the American asks. "It is forbidden for a Jew to say there is no hope!," thunders the official. "No chance, maybe."

Hope transcends probability....

Leftists Channel Planetary Emotion

I didn't follow the link to the "Quick Read," so I don't know who is to blame. Maybe Bush, maybe Israel. It's got to be one of the two.

Or Cheney. Or Rush Limbaugh.

West Virginia: Too Little, Too Late (and Too White)

Obama didn't even give West Virginia the benefit of the doubt. And why would he? We are a state where 94.9 % of us are typical white people, like his grandmother on his mother's side (and we all know what happened to her).

New York Sun:

WASHINGTON — In West Virginia today, Senator Clinton is poised for one of her most lopsided victories, but it comes at a time when the voice of Democratic primary voters arguably matters the least to her chances of overtaking Senator Obama.

A poll released yesterday showed the New York senator 36 points ahead of Mr. Obama in the Mountain State, an edge that would represent her widest margin of victory in any state but Arkansas, where she served as first lady for more than a decade.

The expected rout is likely too late for Mrs. Clinton, however, as party leaders flock to Mr. Obama and declare the race for the Democratic nomination all but finished.

Seeking to divert attention from the results in West Virginia, Mr. Obama has largely written off the state and is turning his focus to a general election matchup with Senator McCain.

The Illinois senator made a single, token appearance in the state yesterday, delivering a speech on veterans’ issues and mentioning today’s primary as little more than an afterthought.

“There is an election here tomorrow,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m honored that some of you will support me, and I understand that many more here in West Virginia will probably support Senator Clinton.”

He played down expectations even further at a news conference later, noting that President Clinton had raised the possibility that his wife would win by an 80%–20% margin.

Campaigning in Charleston, Mrs. Clinton made the case that she had made successfully in Ohio and Pennsylvania — that a win in West Virginia was key to a Democrat’s hopes for victory in the general election. “It’s a fact that Democrats don’t get elected unless West Virginia votes for you,” she said, noting that no Democrat had won the White House without the state since 1916.

In the West Virginia poll released yesterday by Suffolk University, Mrs. Clinton led, 60% to 24%. A survey last week by the American Research Group showed an even wider margin, with Mrs. Clinton up by 43%.

Analysts say the demographics of the state play to the former first lady’s strengths, with a high population of working-class white voters and one of the nation’s lowest percentages of African-Americans.

Obama: Why, some of my best friends are Jewish!

Obama addresses Jewish community leaders in Philadelphia, April 16, 2008. (New York Sun)

Ed Morrissey:

[We pick it up at this quote from Obama in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg]

".... The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious."

Let’s put this in perspective. Obama wants American voters to feel comfortable with his approach to Israel, and so he explains that he has Jewish friends. In fact, without getting explicit about exactly who those friends are, he charges that he took political risks in having these friends and associates, and therefore we should take him seriously when he says he’s a friend to Jews and to Israel. In fact, based on those associations, he finds suspicion of his motives on Israel “curious”.

Fine. Taking this at face value, Obama says that his political and personal associations must be taken into account when determining how Obama would put policy in place. After all, Obama says that we can trust his approach to Israel because some of his best friends are Jewish. Given that, what about some of his other friends and associates?

Morrissey goes on, of course, to list the obvious: Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers and Robert Malley. Then he continues:

Since Obama says that his association with a couple of unnamed Jewish organizers should make us comfortable with his approach to Israel and foreign policy, we can also take into account these associates with whom Obama has had much longer relationships.

What do these associations tell us? It reveals Obama as someone comfortable in the culture of anti-American rhetoric, where people blame the US and Israel first on all occasions, and among people who at least give a pass to violence for the sake of political change. And all of those conclusions are at least as legitimate as Obama’s insistence that his Jewish friends make him a friend to Israel.

Glad he cleared that up.

Another day, another dead Jew: 70-year-old woman killed at Moshav Yesha

Jews everywhere should hang our heads in shame, that we let this go on. Israel was supposed to be the one place in the world where we would be safe, where our safety could be assumed. What kind of government neglects its foremost obligation to protect the people? It is despicable. A rocket "lands" next to a school bus? A man is killed for being a Jew standing in his garden? A boy's leg is "lost"? Gunmen walk into a Jerusalem yeshiva and mow down our boys when they have hardly begun their lives?

And now a 70-year-old woman has been killed on a moshav. Shame on us all.

(IsraelNN.com) A 70-year-old woman was killed early Monday evening when Palestinian Authority terrorists fired a rocket into the western Negev community she was visiting. Her name has yet to be released.

The enemy rocket slammed into the residential area of Moshav Yesha, in the Negev's Eshkol region, around 6:00 pm.

[Wikipedia: Yesha is an agricultural moshav in Hevel Shalom, Southern District of Israel (in the Negev), Israel. It was established in 1957 by Jews who were expelled from Egypt in the wake of the 1956 Sinai Campaign, though this population eventually left, and was replaced by new settlers. The population is about 170 people, who work 2,000 dunams (2 km²). Moshav Yesha has been subject to several Kassam rocket attacks launched from the Gaza Strip.]

It landed in close proximity to the victim, killing her almost instantly. She was in the community with her son, visiting a friend. When the Red Alert siren went off, the visitors took refuge in a nearby home, but for a reason that is still not clear, the woman who was killed was standing outside the building when the rocket landed.

A paramedic who was on the scene said that they got ready to move the minute the Red Alert was sounded. Unfortunately, he said, there was nothing for medics to do but find the woman's son in the house and give him the tragic news.

Sounding furious and frustrated shortly after the Kassam rocket attack, Eshkol Regional Council Mayor Chaim Yellin told reporters, "Why are you interested in what's going on here only now? We are at war, period! We have been at war for years. And the government does nothing!"

"Yesterday there also could have been tragic results when the rocket landed next to a school bus," Yellin said, referring to a near-miss when Arabs in Gaza attacked Negev communities on Sunday afternoon.

Gaza terrorists have continued to fire rockets at Jewish communities in the Negev throughout the day Monday, despite their request for a ceasefire. Gaza terrorists fired two rockets at Israeli communities in the western Negev on Monday afternoon. The rockets appeared to have beeen aimed at the Erez Crossing. Over the Sabbath and Sunday, terrorists fired dozens of rockets, as well, taking the life of a resident of Kfar Aza. At least two other people were injured in the barrages.

Do you know what the future of Israel looks like? People with their heads [in the wrong place] will tell you it looks like this:

But that's a dream, a PR campaign, a cartoon. In reality, our children aren't prancing about above ground, they're in bomb shelters in Sderot. Our children from Gush Katif are not stupid; they know they were betrayed and expelled by their own people; they are distraught. And our children in Judea and Samaria are starting to fear their own expulsion. We have real children, not cartoon children. We have real children and we continue to allow them to live at risk of life and limb. It is a shondeh.

On the right - 14-year-old Asael Shabbo ... who lost his mother and three siblings in a barbaric terrorist attack on his home some seven years ago. He also lost his right leg in the attack. He is encouraging Rami and Osher Tuito from Sderot, and raising their spirits. The two Tuito brothers were severely injured in a recent Kassam attack on Sderot - Osher ( the little boy in the middle) also lost a leg.

I got the photo from a post by Mal Ohana at ConceptWizard. She writes that

"all the military might in the world can't give these kids their legs back. For the sake of all the children in the region, isn't it about time we started making peace?"

I am a big fan of ConceptWizard and greatly appreciate the work of Mal and Udi Ohana. But I respectfully disagree with that perspective. I think the way we have been "making peace" is exactly what has allowed for these boys to be maimed, and others killed. All the military might that Israel has could be used to protect and defend, so that this doesn't happen again, to any other Israeli.

I think the State of Israel has every right, and thousands of reasons (only three are shown in the photo), to turn the Jew-free Gaza strip into a parking lot. Maybe then the Arabs would think twice before blowing themselves up among us or launching rockets at our yards and school buses, our nurseries and streets, our bedrooms and sidewalks. And maybe, if Gaza would be a parking lot, maybe then the Arabs too would want peace, the same as we do.

I am sick to death of blogging one terrorist attack after another, of listing names and ages and the numbers of children and grandchildren left behind. I am sick to death of lighting memorial candles. I am sick to death of all this death. Sixty years we've been fighting, and even long before that. I say we should go ahead and defeat the enemy. I don't understand what we're waiting for.

People seem to think that you can achieve "peace" with words and then the attacks will somehow magically come to a stop. But it seems to me that it works the other way around: When they stop killing us, when they are afraid to even try to kill us, that will BE PEACE.

And the sooner, the better.

Israeli Aid Teams Hard at work in Burma

IsraeliGirl

killed and at least 1.5 million people left homeless after south Burma was devastated by cyclone Nargis. Aid agencies in Burma say it is only a matter of time before there are large-scale outbreaks of cholera and other water-born diseases in areas affected by Cyclone Nargis, leading to thousands more dead.

Even in this urgent situation, Burma's military authorities are refusing to accept international help. Most aid workers manage to get into the Myanmar area. However, most of the damage is in South Burma, in the Delta region. The Junta is not allowing aid workers into that region to help the people in need.

Despite the obstacles set by the authorities, Israeli aid workers were among the few able to enter deep inside the Delta region and assist the people in their time of need. To learn more about the situation we've spoken with a representative (note: name witheld to protect relief workers) of Israeli Flying Aid, one of the Israeli organizations working in the region now.

Read the interview here.

There's a reason we call it the ENEMEDIA

If this is a correction, I'd hate to see the first draft.

CORRECTION: 60 years on, refugees visit lost Jerusalem homes
By Wafa Amr
Mon May 12, 5:02 AM ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Eighty-year-old Beatrice Habesch sobbed when she caught sight of her father's house in Jerusalem on Sunday and remembered how it was taken over by Jews in 1948. "This is our house! This is my house!" she shouted as fellow Palestinians held her back from running towards the building.

Some 300 Palestinians marked 60 years since Israel's founding in May 1948 with a protest walk through affluent Jewish parts of west Jerusalem that were once home to many Arabs. They wore black T-shirts with "This is my House" printed on the back.

The Palestinians said their families had owned houses in Talbiyeh, German Colony and other districts until Israelis drove them away or they fled in the Arab-Jewish fighting that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel.

Habesch said her father, a merchant, had owned property in Talbiyeh and that he had had friendly relations with his Jewish neighbors, letting part of his property to them.

One of their neighbors, she said, was Golda Meir, who as Israel's prime minister in the 1970s refused to acknowledge the existence of Palestinians.

"I was 19 during the war in 1948. I remember two men and a woman came to our house and told us to leave. They said our house would be bombed if we did not leave," Habesch said.

Like many of the 700,000 or so Palestinians who fled their homes in 1948, the Habesch family thought they would return after the war between Israel and the Arab states was over.

But they never did.

The demonstrators pointed at houses, many decorated with Israeli flags marking the 60th anniversary of independence, and recalled their former Palestinian owners: "This is the Dajani house. That is the Nammari house. This is the Halaby house."

ISRAELIS LOOK ON

Israelis watched from porches, mostly in silence, though one man who trailed the marchers yelled: "Arabs out!"

"Most Israelis react defensively or aggressively," said Tomer Belity, an Israeli teacher at a school in Talbiyeh.

"They are afraid and full of hate because they think the Palestinians want to get us out of here."

Nahla Assaly, 70, was 10 when she and her family left their house in the German Colony, now a haven for well-heeled bohemians. "We left our house because we panicked," she said. "People panic during wars."

Assaly said her family heard of the killings of dozens of Arabs by Jewish guerrillas at Deir Yassin, a village near Jerusalem, in April 1948. Fear set in. When the shooting came closer to home, it was time to leave.

"Bullets came through our doors and windows, so my father took us to Damascus for what he thought would be a couple of weeks," Assaly recalled. "But we never came back."

Live-blogging: My Front Porch, West-byGD-Virginia

An ObamaNation campaigner just came to our door. After asking her if she is a "typical white person," The Husband told her that he thinks Obama is the most dangerous presidential candidate to appear in the last half a century."

He would have told her more, but she left.

Hezbos & friends "redrawing Mideast map"

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hezbollah's dramatic gains in Lebanon last week are just part of a regional process that began last year in the Gaza Strip and will continue in Jordan and Egypt, a Hamas official in the West Bank told The Washington Times.

Sheik Yazeeb Khader, a Ramallah-based Hamas political activist and editor, said militant groups across the Middle East are gaining power at the expense of U.S.-backed regimes, just as Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"What happened in Gaza in 2007 is an achievement; now it is happening in 2008 in Lebanon. It's going to happen in 2009 in Jordan and it's going to happen in 2010 in Egypt," Sheik Khader said in an interview.

"We are seeing a redrawing of the map of the Middle East where the forces of resistance and steadfastness are the ones moving the things on the ground."

His remarks highlight how a growing alliance linking Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah straddles the Shi'ite-Sunni rift.

The notion of new countries falling under Islamist influence reflects a goal of Hamas' parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, of replacing secular Arab regimes with Islamist governments.

I think this much touted "Shi'ite-Sunni rift" exists more in the minds of Dhimmedia than in reality. There is a fair amount of consensus in the Islamic world that the goal is to establish an Islamic caliphate - if not global, then certainly as geographically far-reaching as possible. The supposed "rift" only comes into play in the competition between the two over who would assume leadership. If we were to come under Muslim domination, Gd forbid, it wouldn't matter a whole lot to me which of the two was on top.

Faith & Tradition

I'm having a hard time digesting some of the "news" this morning.

Protesters from Topeka, Kansas, hold signs as a bus with guests drives to the wedding of U.S. President George W. Bush's daughter, Jenna Bush and her fiance, Henry Hager, in Crawford, Texas, May 10, 2008.... REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)

Young Saudis, Vexed and Entranced by Love’s Rules

.... In the West, youth is typically a time to challenge authority. But what stood out in dozens of interviews with young men and women here was how completely they have accepted the religious and cultural demands of the Muslim world’s most conservative society.

.... That suggests that Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam, largely uncontested at home by the next generation and spread abroad by Saudi money in a time of religious revival, will increasingly shape how Muslims around the world will live their faith. Young men like Nader and Enad are taught that they are the guardians of the family’s reputation, expected to shield their female relatives from shame and avoid dishonoring their families by their own behavior. It is a classic example of how the Saudis have melded their faith with their desert tribal traditions.

Who would travel from Topeka Kansas to Crawford Texas, in order to hold up a sign that says "G-d damn - I mean, G-d hates - America," so that maybe someone going to the wedding of the daughter of the President of the United States might see that?
I don't get it.

And then the New York Times vouches for Islamic honor killings on the Front Page?

Oy, it's a tough week already and it's only just begun. Make a note of it - 8 AM Monday and I'm already terribly offended.

More coffee. It may not help in terms of "what is," but it might keep me from going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head.

BtB sez: Sign the Petition

That link probably doesn't work since it's only a picture of a link. So here's the real deal:

Give Israel a REAL 60th birthday gift PETITION

26 signatures and counting. Well, that's probably more than the number of decals we were able to GIVE away for FREE.