Boker tov, Boulder!

Yashka's Bris

I've got challah rising and gefilte fish in the oven. Hopefully this time I started the fish early enough so it'll have time to chill. Who wants warm gefilte fish? Yuck.

I'm going to stop blogging early today, it just makes me too depressed. Sometimes(?!) it's better to cook and clean than to inundate oneself and others with multi-level suffering.

To all my readers, mazal tov on Yashka's bris, Happy Sylvester, a Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year, and or Good Shabbos :-)

Warning - extremely graphic

Photo Tsunami Aftermath

Contributions of the Jewish state

Israeli soldiers load supplies onto an Israeli army airplane early morning at an army base near Tel Aviv, December 28, 2004 ...

● Israel's Foreign Ministry set aside $100,000 in aid for each of the countries hit by the tsunami.

● The IDF contributed 80 tons of aid material, including 10,000 blankets, tents, nylon sheeting and water containers.

● Israel's civilian rescue service, working with the Red Cross, dispatched a planeload of blood products. An additional 40 tons of supplies collected by private donors flew out Friday.

● The Israeli organization Latet ('To Give') filled a jumbo jet with 18 tons of supplies.

● A ZAKA rescue-and-recovery team arrived in the disaster areas Monday night, armed with its specialized equipment for identifying bodies.

● A Health Ministry contingent left for Thailand on Monday night to aid in rescue efforts. The group includes doctors, nurses and four members of the IDF.

● Israel has also offered its assistance to India ― a search-and-rescue team from the Home Front Command, as well as consignments of food and medicine.

The San Jose Mercury News (subscription req'd) is the only paper so far to mention the "cool response" to Israel from Sri Lanka.

And this AP list of foreigners killed in the tsunamis neglects to mention ... [guess]. Infuriating.

UPDATE

WorldNetDaily: Vatican slams Israel with false allegations - Claims Jewish state declined Sri Lanka aid in spite of enormous help to area - by Aaron Klein

Calling for "a radical and dramatic change of perspective" among Israelis "too often preoccupied with making war," Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano blasted Israel for "declining" a Sri Lankan request for emergency medical help.

Chicago Sun-Times: Israel's offer of medics rejected

Washington Times: Sri Lanka shuns Israeli army aid by Joshua Mitnick

Another Donation Suggestion

ZAKA VOLUNTEERS FLY TO THAILAND

A ZAKA Rescue and Recovery team of 20 volunteers left for the disaster areas in Thailand, Monday night armed with search and rescue equipment including materials and tools for identifying bodies, as well as body bags.

ZAKA Rescue & Recovery have also dispatched a rescue team of experts in Major Disasters led by Executive Director Yehudah Meshi Zahav to Thailand in search for the missing Israelis.

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, head of Israel's Zaka rescue unit, views corpses of tsunami victims that were brought from Phi Phi island to a temple in the coastal city of Krabi on December 30, 2004. The death toll in the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster soared above 120,000 on Thursday as millions scrambled for food and fresh water and thousands more fled in panic to high ground on rumors of new waves. Photo by Stringer/Thailand/Reuters

DONATE TO ZAKA ONLINE

I'm getting dizzy

There is so much of this lately.

UNITED NATIONS - Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, yesterday urged that Secretary-General Annan fire his top adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi, for his anti-Israel tirades.

.... Speaking on Belgian radio and to the Belgian senate last week, Mr. Brahimi compared Mr. Sharon to an assassin, urged Europeans to increase their pressure on Israel, and said that the world is too accepting of “cynical and ridiculous” Israeli positions on peace with the Palestinian Arabs, according to a report by Agence France-Presse that was translated from the French.

New York Sun via LGF, where Charles notes that "Brahimi’s daughter Rym is also rather famous; she’s a CNN reporter married to the brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah."

UBL sighting

GALLE, SRI LANKA: Rescuers carry a dead body in the Galle district in the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, 27 December 2004... Photo: JIMIN LAI/AFP/Getty Images

With all due respect for the enormity of this disaster and the suffering of so many, I must say I find it very creepy to see someone in a UBL t-shirt.

Todah to Katy for bringing this to our attention.

Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, USA

via LGF:

Shahid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University, says that Mohammed Atta and the other September 11 mass murderers were just like the American colonists fighting against the British in the Revolutionary War: America and Islam - Seeking Parallels

On April 19, 1775, 700 British troops reached Concord, Massachusetts, to disarm the American colonists who were preparing to start an insurrection. When the British ordered them to disperse, the colonists fired back at the British soldiers. This “shot heard ‘round the world” heralded the start of an insurrection against Britain, the greatest Western power of its time.

.... On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die - and to kill - for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity.

This sick puppy published an article in The Nation last year:
The Israelization of America -

Most Americans have been taught by their captive media to interpret what happens today in the Middle East in terms of what happened yesterday. The clock of history in this region always starts with the most recent "suicide" attack mounted by Palestinians against "peaceful," "innocent" Israeli "civilians." If, somehow, these Americans could be persuaded to take the long view, they might begin to understand that the war against Iraq is perhaps the culmination of a process that had been long in the making: the Israelization of United States.

Ten days of silence

Israel is so cool, so democratic that they even allow Arabs to be elected to the Knesset. I have heard that Israel is so accommodative as to provide a mosque in the Knesset building for their use.

One such Arab Member of the Knesset (MK) is Issam Makhoul, the General-Secretary of Israel's Communist Party.

Speaking in Cuba, Makhoul "pointed out that the major challenge facing the two countries is to bring all victims of free-market neo-liberalism and war together against imperialist hegemony led by the US government, which he called the biggest terrorist."

In an interview with Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA, he said that the Jewish civilians of YESHA are legitimate targets for Palestinian terrorism.

He has said the Israeli government (in which he serves) is "just like the Taliban."

Makhoul has, during a session of the Knesset plenum, called MK. Prof. Aryeh Eldad a "Nazi fascist," saying further to him, "It would be preferable if you spoke German. That you are a physician does not make you a human being. Mengele was also a physician."

He has called Education Minister Limor Livnat a fascist, and has said to her: "You are a member of a pig-like government, a government of blood."

He has called Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Ezra "skinheads with chains" and "war criminals," and has referred to the Prime Minister as an "arch-murderer."

Makhoul has alleged that Israel poisoned the Dead Terrorist.

If ratified by the full Knesset, Makhoul will now be subject to a Knesset Ethics Committee decree of ten days of silence, during which he will not be permitted to speak in the Knesset plenum or in committees.

What a blessing.

"Credible allegations" that Israel is no friend to America

Letter to the editor in today's paper.

ISRAEL: This doesn't look like friendship

In her denunciation (Open Forum, Dec. 17) of Irving Greenbaum's letter dealing with the Palestinians, Michelle Miller resorted to the adage, "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Here's another variant of that ancient maxim: With a friend like Israel, who needs enemies?

Outrageous? Consider the following:

1954: Israeli agents provocateurs firebomb U.S. Information Agency libraries in Egypt (the Lavon Affair).

1956: Israel invades the Sinai against the explicit wishes of the Eisenhower administration.

1960: Israel illegally obtains enriched uranium from an American source (the NUMEC Affair).

1967: Israel premeditatedly attacks the USS Liberty, a U.S. intelligence-gathering vessel operating in international waters, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171 others.

1968-1970: Israel uses American-supplied warplanes to severely damage the East Gohr Canal in Jordan, an irrigation project funded by tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

1982: Israel initiates a massive invasion of Lebanon, illegally using American-supplied weaponry in the process. Some 260 U.S. Marines are killed in Lebanon during Israel's occupation.

1985: Jonathan Jay Pollard supplies about 800,000 pages of classified American documents to Israel.

Ongoing activities: Support of Israel continues to extract enormous sums from the American taxpayer. In year 2004 dollars, direct foreign aid to Israel alone exceeds $250 billion — indirect costs have been estimated in the trillion-dollar range; Israel repeatedly ignores American end-user agreements and technology transfer contracts regarding weapons technology supplied to her; Israel cynically ignores United Nations' resolutions condemning her occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan, and East Jerusalem, areas to which she has no legal claim whatsoever. Then there are the credible allegations that Israeli security services were aware of the 9/11 plot but conveniently failed to alert American authorities.

Obviously, the notion that Israel is an American "friend" is wide open to discussion.

DAVE MORTON
Longmont

Even if it were true that Israel knew about 9/11 beforehand, it doesn't change the fact that it wasn't Israel who attacked us. It was Arab Muslim terrorists. Hullo?

This is the wall that Yasser built

A Palestinian elderly man attempts to climb over the controversial security barrier wall dividing the West Bank city of Abu Dis to Jerusalem, December 29, 2004. REUTERS/Mahfouz Abu Turk