Boker tov, Boulder!

A lot can happen in a whole year

I forgot that I posted this at the end of last year. It's worth repeating.

A Polish Duke decides to expel all Jews from his lands. The Rabbi and a delegation of Jews go to plead for mercy, but to no avail.

As they turn to leave the Duke's castle, the rabbi points to the nobleman's beautiful hunting dog.

"A really impressive animal," says the rabbi. "Can he speak?"

"Of course not" says the Polish Nobleman, "Dogs can't speak."

"In one year," says the rabbi "using my secret Jewish magic, I can teach your dog to speak perfect Polish. In return, all that I ask is peace for the Jews of our little village" .

"Done," says the nobleman. "If the dog talks in a year, you Jews can stay. But if you fail I will have you killed and your people driven from their homes."

On the way back home, the frightened Jews shout at the rabbi, "What have you done?! You promised to teach the dog to talk!!? Are you CRAZY?! One year from now the Duke will kill you and drive us from our homes!! "

"Look" explained the Rabbi "He gave me a whole year, A lot can happen in a whole year. The dog could die. The Duke could die. I could die... and who knows?!! Maybe the dog will learn to speak."

To all my readers, mazal tov on Yashka's bris, and or Happy New Year... or a Happy Sylvester. Whatever shoe fits, wear it in good health.

A lot can happen. And just remember, if you have to, you can.

IDF Options and Tracks

Mahal

The Mahal track is geared towards young Jews ranging from 18 to 23 years of age from all over the world who seek to volunteer for combat service in the IDF. It is designed to accommodate those without Israeli citizenship and whose parents were never Israeli citizens. These volunteers receive temporary resident status from the Ministry of the Interior.

This track includes a 14.5-month service in the Nahal or Nahal Haredi infantry units and is divided into three groups:

Foreign-based counselors – Young Jews come to Israel via their youth group. Following army service, they are sent back to their countries of origin on behalf of their movement in order to serve as counselors in Jewish communities.

Mahal Hesder – This track combines hesder yeshiva studies with military service. Volunteers spend nine months in yeshiva and 12 months in the military.

Foreign volunteers – Perform military service only.

Garin Olim

This track is specifically for young Jews between the ages of 18 and 23 who wish to immigrate to Israel and volunteer for combat service in the IDF as part of Nahal. As opposed to the Mahal track, which caters to those who do not have Israeli citizenship, Garin Olim is aimed at young Jews from around the world who are also Israeli citizens.

Volunteers can carry out their military service in the Garin, which is unique in that it enables young Jews to serve as a group. Males serving in combat as part of the Nahal infantry corps and males and females not in combat would serve in a variety of capacities either in Nahal or in the Education and Youth Corps. The length of service for those in Garin Olim is determined by the age of the volunteer wishing to enlist. For males, the time could range from 18 to 36 months while for females, 18 to 24 months.

Garin "Tzabar"

Many Israelis try their luck outside of the country. During difficult times, those who stand out in particular are the young Jews who choose to return to the country and enlist in the IDF without their parents nearby. It is for those youths that Garin "Tzabar" is intended.

Garin "Tzabar" is a unique project which was launched in 1991. It offers an organizational and educational framework for young Israelis who have been living with their families in the United States and Canada for many years and who choose to enlist in the IDF following completion of high school. These youth arrive at their decision after much soul-searching and heavy contemplation.

Upon arrival, members of the Garin are absorbed into a kibbutz which adopts them and serves as a supportive, providing home throughout their military service. During their first three months in Israel, members are put through the registration and enlistment process for the IDF, learn in an ulpan (those who need to improve their level of Hebrew), travel across the country, and learn about Israel as much as possible in order to close the gap between them and those who have completed the Israeli education system. During their military service, members meet new friends, experience events which aid in the maturation process, and fully develop a feeling of belonging in the country.

It is worth noting that the Garin "Tzabar" track is open to soldiers wishing to enlist in all units in the IDF, yet volunteers may also choose to enlist as a group within the framework of the Nahal-Garinim track.

A significant number of Garin members remain in the country following their military service. It goes without saying that the bond between the members remains strong and significant, similar to that of a new family which they created by themselves.

Sugar bags at the New York Times

Attack on 2 Israeli Settlers Rattles Peace Negotiations
- by Isabel Kershner at The New York Times

.... In addition to Friday’s episode, Israeli military officials announced late Saturday that they had intercepted a truck several weeks ago carrying about 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate. The truck, which was stopped at a crossing point in the West Bank, was apparently headed for Gaza.

The chemical is used to manufacture explosives for Qassam rockets, the officials said in a statement. The officials added that the consignment was hidden in sugar bags marked as “part of the humanitarian aid provided by the European Union” to Palestinians in Gaza. Militants have frequently fired such rockets from Gaza into Israel.

The army refused to provide further details.

I don't know what the IDF could possibly be doing, that they don't have time to give a New York Times reporter the "details" she wants.

31 December 2007 : IDF forces arrested three wanted Palestinians
31 December 2007 : During the night Palestinians hurled an improvies grenade at IDF forces
31 December 2007 : During the night, Palestinians launched two Qassam rockets into Israel

30 December 2007 : A Palestinian youth hurled rocks at an IDF post in Hebron
30 December 2007 : A Palestinian hurled rocks at Israeli vehicles
30 December 2007 : An IDF patrol identified two Palestinian gunmen planting an explosive device
30 December 2007 : IDF forces arrested two wanted Palestinians
30 December 2007 : Palestinians fired 15 mortar shells
30 December 2007 : An explosive device was activated against IDF forces patrolling the security fence

27 December 2007 : Muhammad Abed-El Rahman Atzaida, a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist operative was arrested
27 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks at an Israeli vehicle
27 December 2007 : Palestinians fired two mortar shells
27 December 2007 : During the night, IDF forces arrested 19 wanted Palestinians

26 December 2007 : A knife was found on a Palestinian's person
26 December 2007 : An Israeli citizen was lightly wounded
26 December 2007 : 13 wanted Palestinians were arrested in the Judea and Samaria region
26 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire at an IDF force in Qabatiya, south of Jenin
26 December 2007 : Two explosive devices were thrown at IDF forces

25 December 2007 : The IDF carried out an aerial attack in the northern Gaza strip against a qassam rocket
25 December 2007 : Palestinians launched a Qassam rocket from the Gaza Strip

24 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks at an Israeli bus traveling near the Israeli community of Itamar
24 December 2007 : During the night IDF force arrested four wanted Palestinians in the Judea and Samaria region, who were later transferred for questioning by security force

23 December 2007 : A Qassam rockets hit the city of Sderot a short while ago
23 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks a short while ago at an Israeli bus traveling near the community of Mevo Dotan
23 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire at an industrial works adjacent to the security fence
23 December 2007 : A 15 cm Knife was uncovered on a Palestinian man
23 December 2007 : Palestinians fired at an IDF post

20 December 2007 : palestinians detonated an explosive device
20 December 2007 : Four armed gunmen were killed in operations
20 December 2007 : Several children suffered shock from a Palestinian launched Qassam rocket

19 December 2007 : An Israeli civilian was lightly wounded
19 December 2007 : Palestinians fired at an IDF force

18 December 2007 : IDF forces cought a sack containing material suspected of being heroin
18 December 2007 : During the night, in joint IDF and IAF activity, two aerial strikes were carried out against Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza City
18 December 2007 : An aerial attack was carried out against an Islamic Jihad cell

17 December 2007 : Arieal attack carried out in Gaza city againsy a vehicle carrying Majed Harazin, one of the heads of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza strip

16 December 2007 : Palestinians launched a Qassam rocket that struck close to a house in kibbutz Zikim
16 December 2007 : IDF forces arrested 24 wanted Palestinians
16 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled an explosive device

13 December 2007 : The IDF, with the assistance of the ISA, targeted a terror cell
13 December 2007 : During the day, IDF forces arrested nine Palestinians
13 December 2007 : An Israeli woman was lightly to moderately wounded when a Qassam rocket fell near a synagogue
13 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire at engineering works
13 December 2007 : Palestinians fired a Qassam rocket
13 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire in 4 different incidents

12 December 2007 : IDF forces identified a Palestinian trying to infiltrate into Israeli territory through the security fence in central Gaza
12 December 2007 : Palestinians launched four Qassam rockets into Israel
12 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled a pipe bomb at an IDF force operating in the village of Anabta

11 December 2007 : The IDF carried out an aerial attack
11 December 2007 : A Palestinian woman attempted to stab an IDF soldier near the Israeli community of Efrat
11 December 2007 : IDF soldiers were lightly inured by an anti-tank missile
11 December 2007 : An IDF foce shot and identified hitting a squad of armed gunmen
11 December 2007 : A group of armed gunmen approached an IDF force in southern Gaza
11 December 2007 : In an IDF operation against Palestinian terror organizations in northern Gaza, IDF forces identified an armed gunman approaching the soldiers

10 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli vehicle traveling near the Israeli city of Ariel
10 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled six Molotov cocktails at an Israeli vehicle traveling the Israeli community of Bet Horon

09 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks at an Israeli vehicle traveling
09 December 2007 : Palestinians launched a qassam rocket in the city of Sderot
09 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks at an Israeli vehicle traveling near the Israeli city of Ariel
09 December 2007 : A female Israeli citizen was lightly wounded when Palestinians hurled Molotov cocktails at Israeli vehicles
09 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire at an IDF force patrolling near the security fence in the western Negev
09 December 2007 : During the night an IDF force arrested two wanted Palestinians in Na'alin, north of Ramallah

08 December 2007 : Six molotov cocktails were hurled at an Israeli vehicle a short while ago traveling near the community of Maccabim
08 December 2007 : One pipe bomb, a small number of M16 assult rifle bullets and two knives were discovered on a Palastinian youth at the Hawara checkpoint this afternoon after having roused the suspicion of IDF soldiers
08 December 2007 : Palestinians fired three mortar shells that fell close to the security fence in the Gaza Strip region

07 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled 2 molotov cocktails and rocks at an Israeli vehicle traeling near Ariel

06 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled a molotov cocktail a short time ago at an israeli vehicle traveling near nahal Gebaot.
06 December 2007 : An 18 CM long knife was uncovered on the person of a palestinian who arrived at a checkpoint in Hevron
06 December 2007 : Two Palestinians were identified crawling and acting suspiciously near the security fence in northern Gaza
06 December 2007 : Palestinians launched two mortar shells into Israel
06 December 2007 : During the night IDF Forces arrested 11 wanted Palestinians

05 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled explosives at an IDF force
05 December 2007 : Palestinians launched four mortar shells into Israel
05 December 2007 : The IDF targeted a mortar shell launching cell
05 December 2007 : Palestinians launched a Qassam rocket
05 December 2007 : During the night: IDF forces arrested 7 wanted Palestinians

04 December 2007 : An IDF soldier was lightly wounded when a mortar shell fell near the security fence
04 December 2007 : An IDF officer was lightly wounded during a Palestinian riot
04 December 2007 : An M-16 assault rifle bullets and and 18 cm long knife were uncovered in the possession of a Palestinian
04 December 2007 : Palestinians fired three mortar shells
04 December 2007 : Palestinians fired a machine gun from central Gaza
04 December 2007 : A Palestinian opened fire at IDF forces

03 December 2007 : Palestinians fired an anti-tank missile at an IDF patrol near the Security Fence in Gaza
03 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks at Israeli vehicle
03 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire at engineering works
03 December 2007 : Palestinians opened fire at an IDF force
03 December 2007 : During the night, IDF forces arrested 42 wanted Palestinians
03 December 2007 : Overnight, Palestinians opened fire at an IDF force

02 December 2007 : Palestinians fired eight mortar shells
02 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled two molotov cocktails at an Israeli bus
02 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled rocks at an Israeli bus
02 December 2007 : During the night, Palestinians opened fire at an IDF force operating in Nablus

01 December 2007 : Palestinians hurled a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli vehicle travling near the Israeli community of Dolev
01 December 2007 : Plaestinians launched a qassam rocket into Israel which fell north of the Gaza strip
Palestinians hurled rocks at an israeli bus traveling near Hebron

If the Times wants to know about the potassium nitrate, maybe they should read Israel Matzav.

Yishmael, Esav ... and us

David Wilder writes from Hevron/Hebron:

.... Not too long ago I wrote that America is our enemy. This riled up and even offended a few people. Perhaps I should have been more specific. Not all the American people are our enemy. But this American administration? What can you do? I cannot retract the truth.

There are three forces working against Israel today, two from the outside and one from the inside. From the outside there is Yishmael, today represented by the Arab world, represented by the Fuhrer of Iran, the demon of Al-Qaeda, and our peace partners across the road, which are the most sophisticated of the groups. The first two don't hide behind niceties. They say straight out: We are going to erase the Jews from the map. The third group prefers the Trojan horse method, as admitted by 'international statesman' Feisal el Husseini, just prior to this death, and backed up by one of his successors, Sari Nussebah, who recently declared that Jews have no place in Jerusalem, Hebron or even Jaffa.

The second group, is Asav, (Esau), which is today represented by 'the Western World,' namely, Europe, the UN and on top of it all, the United States. When the Secretary of State of the greatest power in the world compares the 'plight' of the palestinians to the discrimination against blacks in the United States, when the American ambassador to Israel meets with the president of the Israeli supreme court to 'talk about the occupied territories,' when the President of the United States is adamant about creating a new terror state in the world prior to exiting the White House at whatever price, the agenda is clear.

Bush isn't coming to Israel in a couple of weeks to vacation in the Eilat sun. He's coming over to exert as much pressure as he possibly can to receive more and more Israeli concessions, in an attempt to force the 'piece-process' down our collective throats. Israel will have a hard time saying no; Bush is putting too much prestige on the line for Israeli leaders to be able to ignore or refuse his demands. Bush is, today, leading the frontal attack against Israel, using not nuclear bombs, rather statesmanship as his primary weapon. This is, perhaps, even more dangerous than a nuclear bomb; with such a bomb you know what you're up against; with statesmanship you can only guess at the significance and implications of the intended results. If this isn't an enemy, I don't know what is.

However, there is a third force pushing Israel into a corner. That force is, of course, ourselves. No, not all of us. But those people who are supposed to be 'leading' the people, are in fact leading, but in the wrong direction. Rather than portraying strength, courage and wisdom, they are rendering versions of the exact opposite. Israeli leadership has, for a number of years, been leading our people and our country down a dead end lane, a suicide path, which brought us to Oslo, Hebron, Wye and now Annapolis, the supreme betrayal of all that the authentic Israel stands for.

Achikam Amichai and David Rubin were warriors. Both served in elite units, one naval and the other air force. They were trained to protect their country, to defend their people, to do whatever necessary to defeat the enemy. They faced a surprise attack, but did not despair. At least two of the terrorists attacking them were killed; perhaps also a third one also. During the battle they fell, but they saved the life of a young woman who was with them. Had they not fought back, had they died without a fight, she too, almost certainly, would have been killed. They knew the odds were against them, but you do not give up without a fight.

Their love for their land, for their people, for their beliefs, their courage, their very lives, is the quintessential Jew in Israel: this is true leadership; this is the way a Jew should live today.

We may have lost two of the best, but we have, staring us in the eyes, the Jewish Israeli of the future. Not Olmert, Peres, Livni, not Mazuz, Beinish, or Barak, rather people like Achikam and David, they are our future.

Achikam means, my brother has risen; David, the eternal King of Israel. Achikam is a brother to all of us, he rose above the everyday drudgery of life, to give his life for his people, for his land, for his G-d. David exemplified the bravery of his namesake. May their lives and their memories be a blessing upon us all; may we learn from their lives and continue on the path that they laid out before us.

With blessings from Hebron.

You need go no further than this recent screed by one Lenni Brenner to see the damage wrought by just the mere words of Condi Rice and Ehud Olmert. It's too bad Yid with Lid has closed the nominations for self-hating Jews of 2007; this guy Brenner shoulda woulda coulda been a contender.

Police desecrate the Shabbat and there's a funeral

(IsraelNN.com) Relatives of Danny Rubin z"l and Achikam Amichai z"l, two young soldiers who were murdered by terrorists on Friday, said earlier in the week that police had entered the room in which the two young men’s bodies were being held on Shabbat. The police examined the bodies, took fingerprints, and photographed the bodies, the relatives said, in order to check Palestinian Authority claims that the young men died during a business dispute and not in a terrorist killing.

Police explained on Sunday night that they had not performed the examination due to the PA’s accusations, but rather as a standard procedure performed after every murder in order to gather evidence to be used against the killers. Police said they had attempted to perform the examination before Shabbat, but had been unable to do so. The examination had to be performed as quickly as possible, they said, and therefore could not have waited until Saturday night.

I don't remember if I blogged it yet or not, but on Saturday - after the two young Israeli hikers were murdered - the top "Palestinian security official" announced that his "government" was dismantling "militant groups." He said,

"There is no Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades any more."

Liars.

And the two young soldiers on leave, hiking in the Hebron hills before Shabbos, "died during a business dispute"?

Liars, cheaters, murderers, terrorist scum.

Note: I repeated a media mistake that the two young men were from Kiryat Gat, when in fact they were from a settlement suburb of Hevron called Kiryat Arba. Kiryat Arba was founded in 1968, 1970 or 1971, depending on who you ask. In April 2004, Ariel Sharon promised that

"Places like a strong Maale Adumim, a strong Ariel, a strong Givat Ze'ev, a strong Gush Etzion. I would add a strong Jewish community of Hebron and a strong Kiryat Arba. These places will remain in Israeli control and will continue to be strengthened and developed," Sharon said. "Only support for the disengagement plan will allow us to continue to manage a relentless battle against terror," Sharon said. "Disengagement allows us a free hand to act against terror."

But Sharon is gone. And now, so are Ahikam and David.

Read this ... and this.

Cpl. Ahikam Amihai, 20, and Sgt. David Rubin, 21 (MFA)

These young men were sons of rabbis, full of life and courage and deep love for the Land of Israel. They were elite soldiers... and fearless trekkers.

.... The hike Ohion, Amihai and Rubin had planned Friday was to have ended at the springs in Wadi Iskha, where there is a cave hundreds of meters long with numerous levels and crawl spaces, inhabited by fruit bats. According to one theory, the cave served as a hideout for the second-century CE rebel against Rome, Bar Kokhba. Amihai, who served for a year with Hebrew University's Cave Research Unit, knew the cave and wanted to show his friends.

.... Ohion told her friends that, at the beginning of the hike, an elderly Arab passed them, and they began to recall the story from the 1948 war of an elderly Arab who passed 35 Jewish fighters attempting to reach the besieged communities of the Etzion Bloc. The fighters were later attacked and killed. According to one version of the story, it was the elderly Arab who informed others of their presence.

Ohion told her friends they were making black-humor jokes about the historical incident. "We could never imagine that our hike would end up like theirs," her friends said she told them.

About an hour later, she said, a gray Land Rover appeared and drove toward the three hikers, with a rifle barrel sticking out of the window. A Palestinian sitting in the back seat sprayed the three with bullets. Amihai and Rubin were hit, and Ohion ran to hid behind bushes above the trail. When she heard the shooting die down and the terrorists' vehicle drive away, she came out of her hiding place.

Ohion saw her friends' bodies riddled with bullets. After her attempts to resuscitate them failed, she climbed out of the wadi to a high point where she could use her cell phone, and waited there until help came.

Rabbi Dov Lior [the rabbi of Kiryat Arba] in his eulogy said that both Rubin and Amihai fulfilled the commandment to travel the length and breadth of Israel in their lives, and in their deaths.

"They fell in the war for the right to
live and move freely in our holy land."

And so we mourn our children. Again.

May their souls be bound up in the bond of eternal life, and may we be inspired to acts of charity and kindness to honor their memories.

And may He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ... bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Forces, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God, from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.

May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighters from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.

May He lead our enemies under our soldiers' sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is the Lord your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.

V'imru - and we say - Amen.

UPDATE. How is that my dear friend Shirl knew to send me this Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe? Go figure.

To one whose self is his body, death of the body is death of the self. But for one whose self is his love, awe and faith, there is no death, only a passing. From a state of confinement to the body he makes the passage to liberation. He continues to work within this world, and even more so than before.

The Talmud says that Jacob, our father, never died. Moses, also, never died. Neither did Rabbi Judah the Prince. They were very high souls who were one with Truth in an ultimate bond —-and since Truth can never die, neither could they.

Yes, in our eyes we see death. A body is buried in the ground and we must mourn the loss. But this is only part of the falseness of our world. In the World of Truth they are still here as before.

And the proof: We are still here. For if these high souls would not be with us in our world, all that we know would cease to exist.

Hot Spit! Bill Kristol to write for the NY Times

I'll be damned. Look what I found hidden in yesterday's Business Section: The Times Adds an Op-Ed Columnist

William Kristol, one of the nation’s leading conservative writers and a vigorous supporter of the Iraq war, will become an Op-Ed page columnist for The New York Times, the newspaper announced Saturday.

Mr. Kristol will write a weekly column for The Times beginning Jan. 7, the newspaper said. He is editor and co-founder of The Weekly Standard, an influential conservative political magazine, and appears regularly on Fox News Sunday and the Fox News Channel. He was a columnist for Time magazine until that relationship was severed this month.

Mr. Kristol, 55, has been a fierce critic of The Times. In 2006, he said that the government should consider prosecuting The Times for disclosing a secret government program to track international banking transactions.

In a 2003 column on the turmoil within The Times that led to the downfall of the top two editors, he wrote that it was not “a first-rate newspaper of record,” adding, “The Times is irredeemable.”

In the mid-1990s, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, an influential policy study group. Before that, he was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle.

A native of New York City, he holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate from Harvard.

His father is Irving Kristol, one of the founding intellectual forces behind modern conservatism.

I found this out at the Puffington Host, where comments are... well, as you would expect.

UNICEF Americans, Wake Up!

It's Time for the UN to PackUp, Go Home

.... The U.S. has tried for some time to rein in the runaway United Nations and its various extremist political factions and bureaucracies, but to no avail. Now, the U.S. has become an outcast in the very organization it founded and has funded for 60 years.

Last Saturday, the U.N. announced its "marathon talks" had resulted in a $4.17 billion basic budget — even though the U.S. dissented. By the way, our dissent is meaningless, since we're still obliged to pay just under a quarter of that budget, or roughly $922 million.

But we in fact pay much more than that each year.

In 2005, the most recent year for which data are available, we spent more than $5 billion on the U.N. and related activities, ranging from food programs to peacekeeping. That's a rise of 67% during George Bush's first term alone....

Too bad we're not getting our money's worth. In fact, the U.N. has become such a massive, unwieldy, corrupt organization that, at this point, it seems beyond repair.

To list the U.N.'s multitudinous sins here would require something the size of a phone book. Suffice to say, in recent years the U.N. has been involved in a variety of policy debacles and outright crimes.

These include the oil-for-food scandal, the largest financial scandal ever; charges that U.N. peacekeepers abused and prostituted young girls in Africa and the Balkans; did nothing about the genocide of millions of people in Darfur and Rwanda; turned its back on democratic Taiwan in favor of communist China; allows Iran to expand its illicit nuclear enrichment program; and so on.

Why such a bad record? Part of the problem is the U.N., which was started after World War II with the best of humanitarian intentions, has been hijacked by a variety of left-wing and anti-Semitic agendas, pushed by an aggressive pack of anti-U.S. and anti-democratic nations that tend to vote as a bloc in the U.N.

According to Heritage Foundation fellow Brett Schaefer, these U.N. voting blocs include the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the so-called Non-Aligned Movement, and the Group of 77 developing nations (which has 130 members — not 77.) All these groups are, in fact, anti-American, anti-West and anti-free market.

"So, where the U.N. actually could have a role in advancing economic policies that enhanced freedom, that enhanced opportunity, that enhanced economic development," former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton recently explained, "the mind-set of the U.N. itself as played out in its conference rooms and corridors is actually exactly to the contrary."

The U.N., in short, has become a major way for nondemocratic, noncapitalist countries to siphon wealth from the wealthy countries — without doing anything that remotely looks like democratic, pro-market reform in their own countries.

The U.S. goes along mainly because there are many people out there — call them UNICEF-Americans — who actually believe the U.N.'s propaganda about saving "the children."

.... in 2009, [the U.N. is] planning to hold its "Durban II" conference. [Yael notes: Iran is on the planning committee, which not incidentally is headed by Libya.] The last conference of the type, held in the summer of 2001, was a monthlong hate-fest against both Israel and the U.S. Perhaps not coincidentally, just days after it ended, the 9/11 attacks occurred.

We've had enough, thank you. The U.N. wastes billions each year, while corruption flourishes. It's time for the U.S. to pull out.

Let the tyrants and bureaucrats go home....

See also Melanie Phillips:

Last week, I happened to meet America’s former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. He was utterly dismayed about Annapolis. President Bush, he said, had torn up everything he believed in. Bolton thought the main reason this had happened was that Bush was simply so determined to get Iraq right that he had left absolutely everything else to Condoleezza Rice and the depredations of the State Department.

The result was that at Annapolis, terror had been rewarded, its Israeli victims offered up as sacrificial lambs and the Bush doctrine fed to the flames.

If Bush did allow his attention to wander so dangerously, another spectacular car crash has been Bolton’s successor as UN Ambassador, the much-lionised Zalmay Khalilzad, in the immediate aftermath of Annapolis. In a startling departure from diplomatic protocol, last Thursday Khalilzad tried to present to the Security Council, on the penultimate day of its chairmanship by Indonesia, a US resolution endorsing the Annapolis joint statement — without even showing Israel the text first. No wonder: Israel would have undoubtedly gone ballistic, since such an endorsement would have given teeth to the Annapolis suicide note and involved Israel's mortal enemies in overseeing the ‘peace process’. When this piece of treachery was discovered, the US hastily withdrew its resolution.

It turns out that Khalilzad may have one or two agendas of his own. Last Tuesday, American eyebrows hit the roof when Fox News discovered US Ambassador Khalilzad having lunch with George Soros, the billionaire anti-Bush activist and funder of Moveon.org. As Fox observed, on the surface the two of them would appear to have had little to talk about.

Strange how Soros keeps popping up in this kind of context — he is of course a close associate of Britain’s controversial minister for the UN Lord Malloch Brown, whose peculiar appointment to the British government no-one has yet been able to explain....

Election Question

Time to Vote

So many contenders, so little time. Yid with Lid has posted 37 Nominees for four awards:

24 nominees for Self Hating Jew of 2007,
8 nominees for Not Self Hating - JUST STUPID,
2 for Self Hating Ex-Jews
and 3 for Self Hating Media.

BtB contributed three four nominations in the primary category: columnist Richard Cohen, pro-Palestinian "activist" Abe Greenhouse and historian Tony Judt.

Oh, and the old (yet ever popular) rabbi list.

Go. Read. Vote. Weep.

"Lack of military rape" of Palestinian women

I can't imagine things getting any uglier than this, but then I grew up on "Leave it to Beaver."

The following article comes via Naomi Ragen's email list, which I highly recommend. (To subscribe, send a blank message to NaomiRagen-on@mail-list.com)

Hebrew University Awards Prize

for "Research"

Claiming that

Jewish Soldiers Do Not Rape Arab Women

because

Israelis are Racists

by Stephen Plaut

I wish I were making this up as some sort of a pre-Purim joke. But it seems that the latest anti-Israel outrage coming out of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is its awarding a prize to a graduate student for an essay in which the student claims that Israel is abusing and oppressing Palestinians by not raping their women. Really.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124674

Had it not been awarded a prize by a panel of the Hebrew University's distinguished professors, the whole matter could be dismissed as just another idiotic essay by a moonbat grad student, not something worthy of any attention being paid to it. But according to news reports, the essay in question has now been published by the Hebrew University's "Shaine Center," at the enthusiastic recommendation of a Hebrew University professors' committee headed by Dr. Zali Gurevitch. The latter is a radical-leftist anthropologist who taught for several years at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Don't worry, I never heard of it either.

His web page is here:

http://sociology.huji.ac.il/2006/staff/gurevich/

Gurevich runs the Shaine Center, which awarded the prize. His fellow perps in this atrocity are listed here:

http://www.huji.ac.il/dataj/controller/ihoker/MOP-DEPARTMENT_DESCRIPTION_LINK?department_no=01080

I wonder if the Shaine family know what is being done with their contributions to the university!

The essay indicting Israeli soldiers for not raping Palestinian women was the product of the crayon of a MA student named Tal Nitzan. Tal is a she. Her main theme is that the "lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose." The "political purpose" is that Israel fears the Palestinians demographically and so IDF soldiers do not rape the women to avoid creating new Palestinians and little intifaders.

Here is Nitzan at her finest:

"In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of
military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."

Israeli racism has resulted in suppressed Jewish-male sexual desire for Palestinian women, just another manifestation of Zionist racism. Since the absence of rape of Arab women by Israeli soldiers has no parallel in any other human army in wartime anytime in history, the only conclusion must be that Jewish soldiers are far more racist and intolerant than the others.

Now Nitzan and her guru Gurevitch rule out automatically all other alternative explanations for why Israeli troops do not rape Arab women. The possibility that Israeli troops are simply civilized humans is ruled out as an imponderable. Ditto for the possibility that Jewish ethics serve to deter such abuse of Arab women.

Instead, Nitzan claims that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are "de-humanized" in the soldiers' eyes. I guess that means they are not rape worthy. You know, unlike Shulamit Aloni, Yael Dayan, and Tamar Gozansky [these 3 links added by BtB].

How did Nitzan reach these cosmic conclusions? By conducting "interviews" with 25 soldiers. That is what the Hebrew University has sunk to, regarding 25 interviews as research comprising a MA thesis.

I am willing to bet a year's salary that not a single one of those soldiers said that he was foregoing raping Arab women because he was afraid it would spawn little Palestinian intifada terrorists. So essentially Nitzan is saying that the proof that Israeli soldiers are brutal oppressive stormtroopers is in the fact that they do NOT mistreat and sexually abuse Palestinian women, not even the Palestinian terrorist women apprehended after trying to murder Jews.

And as if this were not enough, let us note that not a single one of the many radical feminist mini-organizations that plague Israel had a single moo to utter about this obviously anti-woman "research" paper inflicted upon the world by the Hebrew University.

According to her own thesis logic, if little Tal herself were to be raped by Hamas terrorists, I guess this would pretty much prove that they are egalitarian and progressive seekers of peace and justice.

Makor Rishon, a rightwing Hebrew weekly (www.makorrishon.co.il) broke the story of this Hebrew University "research" proving that Rape Refusal by Israeli soldiers serves to prove how racist they are.

The Shaine Center for Research in the Social Sciences was established in 1987 following a donation from the Shaine family, USA. Its aim is to advance research in the social sciences.

The Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology is responsible for the Center, working alongside an Academic Committee.

The Center's main purpose is to support research into a range of phenomena in Israeli society. To that end the Center offers financial support for research carried out in the Faculty for Social Sciences. About two-thirds of the distributed funds go to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology