Saturday's Death Toll Hits 24

24 IDF Soldiers were killed Saturday, bringing the total soldier death toll for the war to over 100.

Dan Halutz says he does not fear a post-war investigation of the conduct of the war. There will be an investigation. So many Israelis, for so long, were saying that a bigger ground invasion was necessary. That it was done just before the cease-fire (which is worse for Israel the more I learn about it) will be a part of any investigation.

My question regarding the investigation: will it be limited to the military or will the executive's decision-making process be questioned, specifically will the Prime Minister and Defense Minister be called upon to explain their conduct of the war? In my opinion, any investigation lacking the executive (including the entire security cabinet) will not be sufficient.

11 IDF Troops KIA, Chopper Shot Down - Cease Fire Deal Reached

I obviously have much to say regarding the deal reached at the UN and expected to be approved by the security cabinet here in Israel.

For now, I will simply say that it is not, and Nasrallah has admitted this, an end to the war between Hezbollah and Israel. I am understandably skeptical about any deal where the UN is supposed to face off with Hezbollah.

It's late and I'm tired. I'll try to write about this more tomorrow.

Mobius the Non-Pluralist Intolerant

I wrote this a few days ago and, after posting it, quickly saved it as a draft in order to allow Mobius and his lackies time to process comments. I allowed. Time passed. Comments - specifically alternative views - were submitted but were apparently not deemed worthy. I do not fit in with most of what goes up on JewSchool. Here are a few examples of how I don't fit in:

1. I am not a conformist.
2. I don't hate people.
3. I don't toe the Soros/Sheehan line.
4. I think.
5. I know that certain values are not Jewish - and I'm comfortable with that.
6. I'm proud of Israel.
7. I do not take into consideration the politics of a comment that is posted on my site.
8. I enjoy and encourage free speech.
9. I enjoy and encourage the exchange of alternative views.
10. I'm not a hypocrite.

That being said, I've given Mobius a new name - Mobius the Non-Pluralist Intolerant - you know, like Alexander the Great, etc. I gave him this name becasue I've tried to leave about six or seven comments on JewSchool, but to no avail. My comments have all been intellectual in nature and, yes, DO attack positions taken by Mobius and his friend John Brown.

I've put up all of Mobius's comments on my site. Perhaps that's because I enjoy and encourage exchanges of ideas and coming to conclusions of truth.

It's easy to hide the truth when you don't allow others to comment, isn't it, Mobius?

UN Policy Closer to Resulting in New Islamist Terror State

The UN policy regarding Somalia is failing. Correction: The UN policy regarding Somalia will create a new Islamist state in the Horn of Africa. That is a failure, a loss, for the powers of freedom fighting this new world war. The UN will be happy so long as a cease-fire can be reached.

While the world watches (and tries to stop) Israel fighting terrorists, Somalia is being forgotten. Somalia will become a new HUB for terror. The US was in Somalia once. After a few Blackhawks went down and soldiers bodies were dragged through the streets and mutilated (an apparent custom in Muslim countries) they left. They'll be back, because no one else has the will to fight. From UPI

The simmering stand-off between the weak Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts that control the capital, Mogadishu, could lapse into renewed fighting, paving the way for jihadist forces that may include al-Qaida, an International Crisis Group report released Thursday warns.

The TFG, based in Baidoa, some 150 miles away from the restive capital, must broaden its base by reaching out to moderate elements of the Islamic Courts and other influential leaders to get the lawless East African country back on track, Crisis Group said. Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991.

Cindy Sheehan Attacks Israel Again

Cindy Sheehan is dangerous. She's dangerous because her rhetoric has been brought into the mainstream by those who are taking over the Democratic Party from practical and realistic thinkers and setting new agendas. We can see this in Senator Joe Liberman's defeat at the polls last night.

I am addressing Sheehan's attack on Israel, whose military operates with some of the highest codes of conduct of any army - ever. Sheehan asserts that Israel is massacring Lebanese and Palestinians. Semantics are important here. Is a massacre just that because of the number killed or because of intent or both? The word is thrown around with such ease that it has nearly lost any and all meaning. She wrote on Michael Moore's website (big surprise here) that

What Israel is doing in Lebanon by killing hundreds of innocent civilians in a relatively short period of time is like the US defending itself from the tens of thousands of innocent babies, women and children in Iraq. It is morally reprehensible and just an extension of BushCo's campaign to enrich the voracious war profiteers.

This is where I should have stopped reading. If Sheehan really believes that Israel is simply an extension of "BushCo's" campaign, that Israel has no will of its own, that Israel does not act in the interest of Jews surrounded by a sea of hostile Muslims who wish to kill them, then the real problem lay in how many people support her.

Sheehan has referred to our efforts to stop terrorists as

barbaric Israeli attacks. Tyre is one city and we viewed the mass grave days ago. Tyre and the rest of the country are being relentlessly bombed for the sins of a few which is a crime against humanity.

Apparently Sheehan is a judge and jury as well. It's amazing how many people, who have not studied law, are experts in the area of war crimes.

Sheehan says

I mourn for the murders of the Israeli people, which are just as tragic (but not more tragic) and done just as barbarically (but not more barbarically) as the murders that Israel is committing in this needless violence...

Really Cindy? Do you mourn? How? By sitting shiva for seven days for each Israeli killed? You don't mourn us, Cindy. You do not have that right. We don't need you to mourn us.

Oh, and Cindy, you may want to get your facts straight.

What our media and some world leaders seem to expediently forget is that Israel massacred an entire family on a beach in Lebanon with a rocket and kidnapped two Palestinian citizens before Hezbollah and Hamas kidnapped some Israeli soldiers.

The incident you're describing with a rocket and a beach in Lebanon - never happened. You're thinking of a Palestinian family who was killed by either old, unexploded ordanance or by terrorist explosives either hidden in the beach. Please refresh my memory - which two Palestinian citizens are being referred to?

Annan Watch

So I haven't heard from Kofi in a few days. I don't know if he shut up after alleging that Israel had deliberately killed UN soldiers or if the media simply stopped taking the man seriously. He does head the UN, after all. How serious can we take him. Still, he sets agendas. And here's why he's back in the Cave.

Kofi's going on now about international law. Where was Kofi's sense of international law during Rwanda? During Bosnia? During Sudan - today! Where was Kofi's outrage when a couple of Arabs blew up themselves and everyone around them on the pedestrian mall, at Sbaros, on the buses, at Moment, at Felafel HaTemeni, on the 19, 14, 6, at the hitchiking post on French Hill, at Hebrew U, at the Dolphinarium, on Jaffa St. when they opened fire? I could keep going. It's all from memory, and you don't forget those things. From Haaretz:

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annanhas said Israel's shelling of the Lebanese village of Qana appears to fit a pattern of violations of international law marking warfare between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas, said on Monday.

In a report to the UN Security Council, Annan said a comprehensive investigation was needed to gather evidence of possible violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws affecting both Lebanese and Israeli civilians during the conflict.

"The attack should be seen in the broader context of what could be, based on preliminary information available to the United Nations, including eyewitness accounts, a pattern of violations of international law ... committed during the course of the current hostilities," he said.

By the way, I heard a great idea last night on one of the networks. I believe it was Fox. Move the UN to Haiti. Make them in charge of it. See how that goes.

Every day the UN proves its impotence more and more. Doing more damage than good,
the UN's time has come. It needs to be reshaped with sharper teeth and more power to discipline rogue states and actors. When the head of the UN meets Arafat, Nasrallah and Saddam, something's wrong.

Photo source:http://www.israel-wat.com/kofi.jpg

Somali Cabinet Dissolved

Reuters reported that the cabinet of the interim (U.N.-backed) Somali government has been dissolved. Somalia is facing Islamist threat, with an Islamist takeover meaning the possible creation of another Taliban-like haven for terrorists.

BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - Somalia's interim cabinet has been dissolved and a new one will be appointed within a week, President Abdullahi Yusuf said on Monday.

"The bloated cabinet of (Prime Minister) Ali Mohamed Gedi's government did not do anything during its tenure," Yusuf told parliament. "From today onwards, the government has been dissolved, only the prime minister will remain."

If Diplomacy Stalls (and hopefully it will) Israel Will Step Up Attacks

The Jerusalem Post online reports that

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Monday he has ordered the army to step up the offensive against Hizbullah rocket launching sites in Lebanon if the diplomatic process remains inconclusive.

Speaking to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Peretz said in the absence of a diplomatic agreement, he has instructed the army to "take control" of launching sites "wherever they are to minimize the fire of Katyasha rockets and take the Israeli people out of the shelters."

Israel should have been stepping up attacks and advancing into Lebanon some time ago. Restraint in this war is costing lives of Israeli soldiers and civilians. An enemy who does not value life and hides amongst civilians with the hope that children will be killed during retalitory strikes must be destroyed. If he is allowed to fester at all he will strike back later and harder.

Jew School, Lending Aid to the Enemy

I was at some friends for Shabbat and we were discussing different streams of Judaism (I don't like referring to streams as such - Judaism is Judaism) and somehow a site called JewSchool came up. I checked it out and was surprised to find support for the enemy and lack of rational thought.

The first post I noticed was a simple reprint, either by or taken from John Brown, of an article from the UK Guardian (known to be not friendly to Israel, to say the least). I went to John Brown's site, News from Babylon, and realized I would have been very pleased were I a hater of Jews or the United States. Back to the article. Its republication without any commentary lends one to calculate one of two options: 1) JewSchool endoreses or encourages the article's assessment or 2) JewSchool does not endorse with it. It's impossible to know, of course. My concern lay in Jews, or others, coming to JewSchool for information and believing that the article that appears in the Guardian is accurate and symbolic of a larger problem in the Israeli military.

The next article to catch my eye was "Could Olmert be Leading Irael Down the Road of Self-Destruction". This is another John Brown post. Here, JewSchool posts a qualification of terror, when Hezbollah is referred to, in quotes, as a "terrorist organization". I agree that there are legitimate concerns as to whether we will attain our objectives in this war, but the tone taken in this article clearly encourages the perspective that things will be worse because of Israel's actions as-to-date (which have been very restrained). Beginning with a qualification of Hezbollah only discredits the author.

Finally, a post by Mobius, whose site defines himself as an anarchist, displays demagogic behavior with his accusation of hate-mongoring by commenters. Mobius's notion of derech eretz is relative to his own belief of how the world should be. Hating one's enemy, hating those who wish to destroy all Jews alive, is not in conflict with derech eretz. It seems to me that Mobius's notion that all hatred is wrong prohibits him from seeing the attempts to destroy the Jewish State (and Jews) as such. I would also suggest that Mobius's intolerance for those espousing views contrary to his, in a manner counter to his approval, may be in conflict with his own "hate-free zone", though that point is debatable.

JewSchool is Jewish, at least regarding its politics regarding our right to fight for our survival, in name only. It's unfortunate that people may be turning to this site as a source of information. It's even worse that our enemies may gain comfort in its posts.

15 Dead, over 100 Injured

12 reserve soldiers were killed by a direct hit from a katushya rocket today.

Long-range missiles fired from the Lebanese city of Tyre hit Haifa and killed 3, injuring over 100.

Hezbollah is escalating the conflict on the day that the UN is working on a draft ceasefire resolution.

Syrian foreign minister hopes to fight in the resistance. The Jerusalem Post online reported that

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem crossed into Lebanon Sunday for the first visit by a top Syrian official in more than a year, Lebanon's state news agency said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, Fawzi Salloukh, Moallem said "Syria is ready for the possibility of a regional war if the Israeli aggression continues."

He added that a US-French draft resolution to end the war "adopted Israel's point of view only." Underlining his support for Hizbullah, Moallem said, "as Syria's foreign minister I hope to be a soldier in the resistance.

To All Those Condemning Israel:

Watch and You'll Understand Why Civilian Houses are Hit - It's the Terrorists, Stupid

Reuters Doctors Photo

The Jerusalem Post reported that Reuters had doctored a photograph of the aftermath of a strike in Beirut. Read the article:

Reuters news agency admitted on Sunday that it had digitally altered a photograph of an Israeli attack on Lebanon on Saturday, showing more smoke than was actually present.

The photograph, as initially published, showed an aerial view of Beirut after an IAF attack, with two large pillars of smoke rising over the city. The caption read: Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs.

I found the following at StikNstein:

ALTERING OF THEIR IMAGES”
Saturday Reuters posted this image (taken by their photographer Adnan Hajj) of the destruction of the Beruit suburbs. It has clearly been PHOTO SHOPPED to make it more dramatic. The image and story is here at Little Green Footballs.

photoshop technique called cloning.

Death Threats to Blםgger Sent from Reuters Network

Check out this story on Ynet:

A Reuters employee has been suspended after sending a death threat to an American blogger.

The message, sent from a Reuters internet account, read: "I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut."