Abroad there seems to be hudna-euphoria. Apparently in the IDF also, but I don't think there's a palpable sense of hudna on the Israeli street. One factor that's keeping the terrorists in check is the imminent prisoner releases (which they don't want to endanger).

Meanwhile, in addition to yesterday's shooting of a family by Fatah, two Israeli teenagers are missing, and a third claims he was almost kidnapped.

Why does the media refer to the hudna as a "unilateral ceasefire" (eg. here). It's a bilateral truce agreement between the PA and the bloodthirsty jihadis; and it includes a tacit agreement from Israel to refrain from operations against the leaders of Jihad/Hamas/Al-Aqsa Brigades.

This is quite remarkable: Gil Shterzer has determined that the much-hyped joint Israeli-Palestinian "grassroots" peace initiative promoted by Sari Nusseibeh and Ami Ayalon is apparently being described differently to Palestinians than it is to Israelis. Specifically: points that make it acceptable to Israelis (Israel is a Jewish state, no mass influx from refugee camps into pre-1967 Israel) are omitted from the Palestinian version.

Moreover, the Palestinian version of the Statement of Principles removes the clause that declares an end to the conflict.

Good article on the conflicting establishment opinions that Israelis are hearing regarding whether the current "lull" in violence (and thus the roadmap) is likely to continue. A Hebrew article Hamas' recruiting and the new Kassam missile they're trying to build.

The Council of Europe has passed a resolution calling for the residents of Palestinian refugee camps to be settled in their current locations and in Europe (rather than in their grandparents' villages in Israel)

Also, the French Doctors Without Frontiers has stated that suicide bombings are planned and oganized and are not sporadic acts of despair, and criticizes the PA for creating "a climate of immunity". (report)

In a Jpost op-ed, two spokesmen from the International Solidarity Movement write:

Opponents of ISM claim that the movement's goal is to impede the army's job in stopping terrorism and even act as an accomplice to terrorist activities. Does anyone honestly believe that thousands

thousands ?!?

of volunteers from Tel Aviv to New York City, many Jewish,

"from Seattle to San Francisco" would be more accurate

would spend their vacations

ie. leave their insular campuses

to come and spread terrorism?

Well, yes .....

More precisely: to spread terrorism while all dressed up in the garb of naive self-righteousness and being economical with the truth...

More: Good article from a while back by an initially somewhat sympathetic Israeli who tagged along with them.

A Fatah cell has been apprehended while planning a suicide bombing in Netanya (report). With the IDF withdrawing and the border becoming more porous - it's going to be easier for these people to get in. And of course the PA refuses to take action against them.

People here seem to be more interested in the Hamas/Jihad prisoner release business than in Abu Mazen's visit to Washington. A fellow on a call-in radio show expressed what is probably the most common sentiment: After the IDF has spent the past 15 months successfully dismantling the terrorist infrastructure, why are we releasing all these people who will no doubt build it up again?

A Jpost reader quotes from a BBC brochure promoting a classical music program:

The orchestra was founded "... when President Clinton was bringing Israel, under Prime Minister Barak, and Palestine, under President Arafat, to near-agreement and there seemed to be the possibility of an end-of-millennium settlement. But when Ariel Sharon came to power and the intifada re-erupted, all optimism fell away."

The BBC's description of the end of Oslo is preposterous, which is why it's always just asserted and never argued for.

Apparently someone at the Beeb could not abide the prospect of describing an ensemble that includes both Arabs and Israelis without making some kind of sneer gesture.

Afif Barghouti was severely beaten by the PA and then claimed he had been detained and beaten at an IDF checkpoint. Interesting report on the incident and the ensuing IDF investigation here.

Evelyn Gordon provides the bigger picture on the survey of Palestinian refugee camp residents here.

Another good article by Mark Lilla on the EU and Israel here.

It's nice to see people around the world asking intelligent questions about the situation here. Too bad that Arnon Regular gives mostly non-descript answers.

Over my 10 day visit in the US I was asked several times if I thought that the "roadmap" would finally lead somewhere. Actually people usually asked if it would finally lead to peace, or other phrasings much less cynical than mine. I confess being surprised that it has "held" as long as it has. I do think that no matter what Israel does - ie. withdraw from Bethlehem/Gaza, free murderers, endanger citizens by removing roadblocks, freeze the security fence etc. - noone will be particularly appreciative and the Palestinians will continue to demand more and receive international backing.

T. and I happened to share a gondola in the Rocky Mountains with a woman who had been a nurse in a Gaza hospital from 1968-1970. She said that she thought that "something" had to be done for the people in the refugee camps there before there could be peace, since they were (and apparently are) so without hope. But that results, of course, from what they have been taught to hope for - ie. settling in pre-1967 Israel - and their refusal to be resettled.

Here's a good summary of the situation regarding the intractability of the "refugee" issue (via William Sjostrom).

I don't put much stock in the survey that claims that most residents of refugee camps in outside the West Bank/Gaza aren't interested in settling in Israel.

Norwegian blogger Bjorn Staerk has some good posts on PM Sharon's visit there (here and here).

Seeing the pictures of Sharon's meetings next to Tony Blair reminded me of how unphotogenic our PM is.

Talisker is good scotch. But " the sharp tang of seaweed but also an explosive blast of salt and pepper" ?!?

Fit and working again Back from vacation in the US. More blogging soon.

Abu Mazen and the PA have said unambiguiously that they will not take any action against Fatah's al-Aqsa brigade, Hamas etc. This article describes the PA's earnest attempts to get the US to finance their alternative approach: bribing the terrorist groups and enlisting their members in the PA security organizations.

In an interview for with the Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar, PA official Abu Ala criticized Bush's description of Israel as a "Jewish state" at Aqaba and casually stated that the Camp David talks failed because of the refugee issue (report). The linked article also summarizes an account by the Saudi ambassador to the US according to which the Saudis pressured Arafat to accept the Clinton peace plan in 2001 ("you won't get anything better").

This article interviews family members of Israeli Arabs who have died in Palestinian suicide bombings.

Fatah is one of the groups that supposedly announced a 3 month ceasefire of sorts (report). Fatah also claimed responsibility for today's fatal shooting of a Bezeq technician who entered the Israeli Arab town of Baka Al-Gharbiya to repair a phone line (report)

The Israeli media pretty consistently describes the topic of the current Hamas-PA discussions using the same Arabic word as Hamas itself: hudna. Using the term hudna maintains the allusion to Muhammed's tactical truce with the Quraish tribe that he eventually violated.

On Army Radio this AM a PA "coordination committee" official named Soufiyan Abuzaida was asked whether the PA would take actions against terrorist activity by Hamas etc. Abuzaida's response (paraphrased) was "once there's a ceasefire [he didn't say hudna], why would there be any need for action against Hamas". And what exactly does the PA want in the context of an IDF withdrawal from Gaza? Not just withdrawal from the Arab areas: "If the IDF is maintain its checkpoints around the settlements what kind of withdrawal is that?"

Given a podium to appeal to an Israeli audience, the PA responds to what Israelis see as the basic questions with derision and sarcasm.

Moledet or Gush Shalom? Received a wacko postcard in the mailbox today. Ostensibly from an organization called "Lions of Jerusalem" that seeks to maintain Jerusalem's Jewish majority, it calls on people to report on Arab residences available for sale, Arabs living in Jewish neighborhoods, and for other ideas to get Jews in and Arabs out. A PO. Box is provided.

The card is made out to look like it's from a far-right wing group like Herut or Moledet, but it praises the Likud gov't (which the far right would never do) and uses leftist rhetoric about zoning and "home demolitions". So it's more likely from some left-wing group (like Gush Shalom) who want to collect some extremist remarks for a smear campaign.

This article makes the long overdue evaluation of the IDF's conduct of urban warfare in Jenin with reference to similar circumstances faced by NATO and UN troops in Kosovo and Somalia.

The Egyptian paper Al-Ahram was tremendously offended when Bush referred to Israel as a "Jewish State".

"Oslo Lives": A fisking Unlike some similar writings from others, this Jpost op-ed by German parliamentarian Friedbert Pflueger actually precedes each of his EU platitudes with a mild attempt to address the concerns and beliefs that most Israelis have regarding the current conflict:

Was it a mistake for Joschka Fischer to visit him in April 2003, thus bolstering his position in the midst of an internal Palestinian power struggle? This may well be the case. But there is also an argument in favor of Fischer's meeting with Arafat namely, that Arafat's engagement, as pater patriae, remains an essential part of the peace process.

Assuming that Pflueger maintains some awareness of the situation here, he can't really believe that Arafat "remains an essential part of the peace process". More likely that Fischer was seeking either to placate German Muslims and Arab nations; or to demonstrate that Europe doesn't simply follow Washington's diplomatic steps.

In any case, there must be greater transparency within the Palestinian executive branch. In the first months of 2002 the Israeli army discovered documents in Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah indicating that EU funds had been misappropriated to sponsor terrorist-related activities. Two journalists from the German weekly Die Zeit traced the flow of EU funds to the radical movements in a remarkable dossier ("Arafat bombs, Europe pays," June 6, 2002).

At that point the European Union should have suspended direct payments to the PA.

Although it is still important that we provide assistance, particularly humanitarian aid, to Palestine, transparancy is critical and examples of the detrimental impact of this type of support are many.

One particularly problematic example is Palestinian schoolbooks. These educational materials, partially funded by the EU, continue to preach hatred. In these texts the state of Israel does not even exist, nor do Israeli towns appear on their maps.

Rectifying the EU approach to Palestinian rejectionism and extremism requires a real policy shift, not a call for "greater transparency". Pflueger speaks like a true bureaucrat. Can Europeans really wonder why Israel abhors the idea of "international monitors" who would respond to Palestinian shootings and Kassam rocket firings with (at best) appeals for more bureaucracy?

In truth, Pflueger probably intends these paragraphs as a prelude to what he thinks the real problem is:

Israel's settlement policy is one of the biggest barriers to developing mutual trust and creating an atmosphere in which negotiations can take place. The destruction of Palestinian homes to make room for additional settler housing must be halted. The Israeli government must take action on, and be willing to consider difficult solutions to, the settlement question. Furthermore, Jerusalem should grant the Palestinians their own state. Palestinians must also regain the right to earn their living in Israel.

So there you go: the settlements are the issue - not Palestinian (and Arab) rejectionism.

And notwithstanding Pflueger's sympathetic warmup, Israel must withdraw from the West Bank/Gaza (without conditions it seems) to create a Palestinian state and maintain open borders. Why not make an attempt to convince skeptical Israelis how this could possibly work as long as the Palestinian Authority "combats" terrorist groups by offering to share power with them?

What is Pflueger's remark about the "destruction of Palestinian homes to make room for additional settler housing" referring to? Is he talking about the IDF's punitive destruction of the homes of suicide bombers? Is he talking about the separation of Palestinian farmers from their land by the security fence? Conceivably he could mean this (to my knowledge unparalleled) IDF action in Hebron, but more likely he gets too much of his information from pro-Palestinian prevaricators.

Mainstream Fatah (not Hamas) has claimed responsibility for shooting 2 Israeli women a short while ago (report).

Word on the street is that one of the victims of Wednesday's bombing is the wife of a neighborhood shopkeeper.

It seems that Sharon has thrown off the gloves against Hamas in the wake of the bombing and the PA's promise not to act against them. Some people on Channel 2 news were talking along these lines, and said that this approach has tacit support from the US - in the sense that Sharon would not be continuing the Gaza operations otherwise. But the weekend papers say differently.

This Hebrew-only page describes a conference being held at Tel Aviv U. entitled "The Camp David Summit, 2000: What went wrong? - Lessons for the Future".

Co-sponsored by Sari Nusseibeh's al-Quds University and a TAU institute affiliated with the Peres Center for Peace, the conference (as detailed in Jpost) appears to almost exclusively feature people who were and still are Oslo supporters (eg. Yossi Beilin, Robert Malley, Martin Indyk, Ron Pundak and others). As one would expect from these types, the seminar topics focus on "the process" and "methodological aspects", though there's one session titled "Substantive Issues".

Also included on the roster are PA Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan and uber-spokesliar Saeb Erekat. The Oslo skeptics on the roster include Likud MK Yuval Steinitz and former PM Ehud Barak (if he can be called a skeptic now). Also on the agenda is a message from one "President Clinton".

Latest is 15 killed on the bus.

Latest word is 10 dead in the bus bombing. Haaretz news flashes says a IAF helicopter missile hit a car of Hamas guys in Gaza.

How did anyone think it was possible to proceed with the "roadmap" when Abu Mazen's approach to these people is to offer them jobs in the PA security apparatus?

30 casualties, including some dead, in a bus bombing downtown around 20 minutes ago (Jpost, Haaretz)

The bombing was on the #14, which runs down Emek Refaim (the central throughfare in my neighborhood). I hope that none of my friends were on the bus.

I'm certain that the international blah-blahs will say this is a consequence of Israel's attempted hit on Hamas leader Rantisi yesterday. But that's nonsense since an attack like this can't be planned overnight. Earlier today I heard that 10 suicide attacks had been foiled since Abu Mazen's Aqaba declaration. The international blah-blahs don't notice them at all, just like they don't notice Kassam rockets fired on Sderot and barely noticed the 2 Fatah/Hamas attacks on the IDF that immediately followed the supposed ceasefire declaration.

I had spent the afternoon (working) in a quiet cafe downtown near the Eastern end of Yafo Rd (the bombing was at the Western end of Yafo). I got into a taxi in front of the Mashbir dept. store around 17:30. My spouse T. called a few minutes after I got home and told me about the attack. T. didn't sound concerned as she knows that I generally don't ride the buses.

The bombing happened at the bus stop in front of the "Clal building" - which is an unattractive mall + office tower that's adjacent to the Mahane Yehuda market. It houses the gov't unemployment office and Macabi health services.

So far no sign that the Palestinian "roadmap" commitments are anything other than a sham .... "Five Israelis and five Palestinians were killed Sunday in two Palestinian-initiated attacks on Israeli targets" (report). A friend of Harry's was moderately injured in one of the attacks.

Tonite at the Israel Festival, Daniel Zamir played an outstanding concert with his NYC group Satlah and a 5-piece saxophone section. Zamir, a fresh-faced 24 yr. old, has swapped the Bat-Ayin look that he had on his latest CD for Habad hasidic garb.

John Zorn cancelled his appearance at the last minute, and his composition Cobra was perfomed last night without him. It's not obvious to me that it would have made much difference had Zorn himself done the prompting. His replacement was a skinny guy in black jeans and black tshirt who jumped around very energetically. The music didn't do much for me, but the crowd (who looked like they all came from Tel Aviv) were mostly appreciative.

Masters of the Obvious Barry Rubin explains why the "roadmap" seems to be a non-starter.

Abu Mazen is said to be resisting pressure to acknowledge Israel as a "Jewish state" (report).

This Hamas "ceasefire" business is a bunch of nonsense. I would write more about this if I were less busy or if I thought most of my readers didn't see it as obvious.

The strange weather (heatwave + duststorm + unseasonal rainfall) and traffic jams made me and T. sit out the Jerusalem Day stuff tonight. The anniversary (acc. to the Hebrew calendar) of the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 is celebrated particularly by teenagers - eg. the large group that paraded down Emek Refaim this afternoon with Israeli flags. Lots of people go to visit the old city and the Western Wall (where prayers have been conducted for centuries or maybe millenia except for the period of 48-67).

This article describes a talk on European anti-semitism by the always insightful Prof. Mark Lilla, who says that Europeans currently have severe difficulty now with the notions of particularism and the nation-state - and with the Jews who stick adhere to these supposedly antiquated ideas.

Mr. Lilla said: "Even sympathy for Palestinians has an oddly apolitical quality in Europe." Proposed solutions are little more sophisticated than imagining, as Mr. Lilla put it, "Hans Blix zipping around Palestine in his little truck."

This article describes some misreporting by the NYTimes regarding the contents of the "roadmap".

For auction: Menahem Begin's Knesset identification badge.

This AM I was in a coffee shop where a TV displayed UK Sky News with the sound turned down. An image from yesterday's bombing in Afula appeared with a red banner at the bottom of the screen that said "Road to Peace".

This would be more amusing if it weren't so on the mark (via Gil who explains it all)

Islamikaze killed 6 people about an hr ago on a bus in French Hilll (report). A second one killed only himself

Plate Irani is blogging from Iran in English.

This is supposedly the text of an internal memo calling for a post-Jayson-Blair "open forum" meeting at the NY Times.

Evelyn Gordon fisks Reporters sans Frontieres here.

Security services are discussing the outlawing the northern branch of the Islamic movement following indications that they have provided funds and tactical hitchhikes to Hamas (article).

Reading this transcript makes it apparent that the Channel 2 interview with Colin Powell would have been painful to watch. Powell sticks to diplomacy-speak and avoids addressing what Israelis really want to know: eg. why does the US think (rather than just hope) that the PA's conduct will be meaningfully different with Abu Mazen at the helm?

Mitzna has quit as Labor party leader (Jpost, Haaretz). The party will probably continue to flounder aimlessly.

There's a few reasons for the light blogging of late: one is my endeavours to find employment. The woman who I check in with once a week to get my unemployment benefits has been acting quite grumpy ever since the gov't worker strikes have begun - possibly because she fears losing her job. Bituah Leumi keeps finding excuses to reduce my benefits.

Another reason is that the local papers seem to be have been running fewer notable articles since the beginning of the Iraq war. Haaretz is increasingly useless: the feature article on Abu Mazen was a sympathetic suck-up that whitewashed his Holocaust denial; their recent pieces on the post-Corrie ISM incidents and IDF Gaza operations just repeat the ISM or Palestinian "eyewitnesses" and don't attempt to get to the bottom of anything.

A third reason is that, unlike Charles Johnson, I'm not interested in reiterating points that I've made before. By this I mean that by now I think most sane people should be skeptical of any claims made by "human shield" organizations, and I'm not inclined to debunk them each time they come up.

Finallly, despite the economic mess, life in this country is actually more sane than it was when I started this blog 13 months ago. Where would we be if Barak or Peres had been in power?

Yediot Ahronot had a couple of interesting articles this weekend: an interview with Condoleeza Rice, and some background on the Bush's upcoming June 24 Mideast speech. I'll try to get to these later.

This article says that members of the "human shield" group ISM are refusing to talk about the two British Musliims who apparently spent some time with them in Gaza before bombing a pub in Tel Aviv.

The "Mike's Place" website has a memorial to the victims of the bombing.

Suicide bombing in Tel Aviv -at Mike's Place a live music pub that has a Jerusalem branch in the Russian Compound area (report). Currently they're saying 3 dead.

Israel will probably do the "restraint" thing this time. But how will Abu Mazen respond?

Someone got here by searching for "Israeli girls in Jerusalem for dates".

Today's Yediot Ahronot reports that the Shin-Bet Internal security service believes that Iran is behind the Kfar Sava train station bombing earlier this week. According to the article, the gov't of Iran has ties with the Nablus branch of the Tanzim militia group and initiated the attack as a move to preempt any "moderate" moves by Abu Mazen.

Two good articles from Barry Rubin: this one argues that the Shiites now pose the first "real" crisis for the US in Iraq: following "the worst Middle Eastern tradition", the Iran-tilting Shiite leadership sees no reason to make compromises and is not hewing to previous understandings with the US. This one surveys the career of arrested Palestinian terrorist leader Mahmoud Abbas.

A somewhat sympathetic Israeli tagged along with a group from the International Solidarity Movement to act as a "human shield". He was eventually instructed to leave for his own safety when rumors began to float around Nablus that an Israeli was present. His description of the experience includes some interesting details about the ISM mentality (basically they sound like shrill Bay Area types who have adopted the Palestinian "martyrdom" jargon) and how they train their volunteers to lie to Israeli border guards, stay on message with the media, and avoid getting hurt. The account confirms reports that the ISM sheltered a Hamas fugitive, but says that the IDF now agrees that he was not armed.

Jpost publisher Bret Stephens apparently reads blogs - this piece on responses to the Iraq victory in the liberal media quotes mostly from articles that have already been discussed around the blogosphere.

Happy Passover!

Apparently there are lots of Persian language weblogs (like this one - by Rasa who likes Celine Dion and opines that "Jewish = people who are against God"). It's a shame that the language barrier seems to prevent the rest of the internet from a first-hand view of what's happening in Iran. And it prevents curious Iranian bloggers from getting a wider view of the world than they probably get from their official media.

Instapundit discusses pro-war pop songs.

About 6 wks ago I was on an airplane in the US where they screened a rock video by some Pearl Jam-like group performing for the troops on a US Navy ship. It struck me that Islamists around the world would be much less likely to mess with the US if they perceived a unified, strong, and youthful American will (in addition to American military and economic strength). Though obviously diversity of will goes together with the diversity of opinion and pursuit of individual interest that characterizes a democracy.

Welcome to visitors coming in from Iran. Please leave a message to let me know if you find my blog interesting.

Also, what do people in Iran think about the war against Iraq?

Here are some messages that I received from Iran one year ago.

The Christian Science Monitor has run a begrudging correction about the caption on its Rachel Corrie photo - which incorrectly indicated that the photo was taken moments before she was run over. But the CSM didn't bother correcting the caption on the web version of the article. (another good summary on Corrie here).

Tommy Lapid of the very secular Shinui party refused to meet with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer because the latter wouldn't agree to meet at the Lapid's ministry in eastern Jerusalem (report).

From a glance at the phone book it appears that the building at issue is the Justice Ministry facility on Salah el Din street - which is a bit north of the the walled city's Damascus gate. I don't make it much to that part of town, but it's two intersections away from "Road one" that leads from downtown towards Jerusalem's northern neighborhoods and the University.

This map (from an anonymous site which offers the standard Jerusalem street atlas with Israeli buildings removed and some streets renamed to Arabic conventions) shows the adjacent Mutran stadium, but omits the Justice building.

Now that the Iraq war is pretty much over, two things will probably happen:

- the gov't will finally tell us that we can dismantle our sealed rooms.
- the Quartet "roadmap" will rise to the top of the global agenda as Britain tries to show "evenhandedness"; and we'll get to see what the new Palestinian leader Abu Mazen is really about

Welcome to visitors from Spanish CNN and Stuttgarter Zeitung.

A year ago yesteday my blog was #5 on Blogdex. Daily life in Israel have changed a lot since then (thanks to the IDF), though the general situation is depressingly similar.

Barry Rubin notes the obvious parallels between the criticisms aimed at the American forces in Iraq and those levelled at the IDF. He thinks that this means the difficulty in getting Israeli viewpoints across are endemic to the situation and shouldn't be blamed Raanan Gissin et al.

Some perversely amusing things at the site of the University of Birmingham Palestinian Society...

They list Robert Fisk as one of "four pillars of wisdom" and chose a photo of him in his post-Afghan-mob-beating bandages. They have photos of a meeting they held with British Hasidim from the theologically anti-Israel Neturei Karta movement (more on Neturei Karta here). They apparently refused to play a soccer match with a student team identifying itself with Israel (and defend the decision with a link to this bizarre article from the Jordanian Star about how the brutal "revenge of Israel" extends even to Palestinian athletes - eg. cyclist Mohamed Abu Jamous who was killed after infiltrating a military base where he killed 4 soldiers).

They make the unlikely claim that the Union of Jewish Students has provided them with "profound moral support", and they say that the University Executive "hacked their site" - meaning that they were forced to remove some material.

This article describes the antics at the meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights now taking place in Geneva . And of course the Palestinian spokesman used the occasion to call for the elimination of Israel (report).

Starbucks is closing its Israeli operations (article). It didn't seem to catch on even in yuppified Herzliya Pituah. There's plenty of overpriced coffee in this country, so maybe the problem is that our jumpy pace of life doesn't lend itself to the lolling-around atmosphere that Starbucks has in the US (which I happen to like a lot in airports).

Of the 40 wounded in today's Islamikaze attack in Netanya, 2 are in critical condition - including the soldier who prevented the Islamic Jihad bomber from entering the cafe (report).

Zeev Schiff offers an evaluation of the situation on the ground near Baghdad. There's lots of that floating around, but Schiff sounds knowledgable and circumspect.

A jilbab is not a burka.

Welcome to people who have come here looking for the Command Post blog. You can find it here.

Somehow I've become the top result for the Google search on that phrase.

John Zorn was supposed to be appearing at the Israel Festival this summer, but the word now is that there will only be local performers (report).

This Fatah suicide bomber was planning on blowing up a boarding school for children from abusive homes.

The Onion was lame this week.

Haaretz news flashes says that the Israeli defence establishment believes that Iraq has mobile scud launchers concealed under bridges where they can't be seen from above.

Ynet is saying that the Shiite Basra rebellion has been put down by Iraqi forces.

Via the Command Post, an article on Iraq's use of their own people as human shields. Funny how there's rarely a similar complaint about the Palestinians - given that they've have been doing the exact same thing for 2 years.

It would be interesting to hear a military perspective on how Israeli and American forces respectively deal with this tactic.

Barry Rubin describes his experience discussing the Iraq campaign as part of a television panel on an Arab network - and what he calls the "wall of lies" (here).

I really hope Salam is for real, but this could be the CIA:

today my father and brother went out to see what happening in the city, they say that it does look that the hits were very precise but when the missiles and bombs explode they wreck havoc in the neighborhood where they fall. Houses near al-salam palace(where the minister Sahaf took journalist) have had all their windows broke, doors blown in and in one case a roof has caved in. I guess that is what is called “collateral damage” and that makes it OK?

Or is it only Israelis who would think that describing minimal collateral damage constitutes propaganda?

From following the events of the Iraq war (and the house-to-house fighting in Nasiriya) at the Command Post blog, it appears that the coalition forces are putting their own troops at risk in order to minimize Iraqi civilian casualties. And it's clear that Iraq is not concerned about following the Geneva conventions with any POWs it obtains.

If this is a new paradigm for warfare, it was probably first seen with the Israeli assault on the "militants" in Jenin last year.

Some Israeli commentators think that the Ansar al-Islam organization - an Islamic group operating in northern Iraq and consisting of non-Iraqis - will cause problems for the US forces. (article).

Prof. Amatzia Baram says that if Iraq attacks Israel it will be within the next couple of days (article).

An ISM-er who was among "dozens" of stone-throwing youths was wounded by rubber bullets in Nablus (report).

In Jpost print edition Barry Rubin notes that the fact that the US is targeting a foreign leader now provokes nary a peep from anyone. Jpost print also has a photo of a 5-year-old showing his gleeful siblings how to drink through a straw while wearing a gas mask.

Visit RibbityFrog for lots of info on what the Arabic media is saying about the Iraq situation..

"Israel warns Web sites on war coverage" This is one of those stories that's only interesting to the foreign media: the IDF censor is said to have contacted two Israeli BBS sites and warned them not to publish classified information about the war. The writer then insinuates this is sinister and invokes a Reporters Without Frontiers report.

The IDF censor should obviously be paying more attention to us blogs than those sites mentioned in the article, which are about as informative as the average Usenet group.

Those blogspot banner ads are now Google-esquely selecting ads to match blog content.

Anyone know a good place for (blog) image storage?

This afternoon on Emek Refaim (which is in some respects the "new downtown" ), only about 1 in 10 non-schoolkids was carrying a gasmask.

Rachel Corrie's ISM group has confirmed what I argued earlier: that the photo of Corrie near the bulldozer (captioned by Reuters, Christian Science Monitor, and others as being "before" or "moments before" she was run over) - was in fact taken hours before. So there's no photo of what happened before the accident - only the eyewitness account of ISM member Joe Smith who says she jumped in front of the bulldozer which then plowed her over with dirt.

Jurgen Hogrefe of Der Spiegel magazine recently appeared on a German radio program called "Meet the Press" and claimed that the Mossad asked German intelligence to ensure Germany doesn't protest if Israel starts expelling Palestinians from the territories when the war in Iraq begins (report).

That's more evidence that a lot of "important" Europeans (and journalists) have zero understanding of what's going on here and get all their information from Palestinian propagandists.

Zeev Schiff assesses what's likely to happen to Israel during the war with Iraq (report) He's essentially calm about the prospect of being attacked, and he mentions that Israel's own spy satellite is of great assistance now.

Schiff also presents the recollections of a source who was present in the US cabinet at the end of the first Gulf War. Reportedly, Norman Schwarzkopf favored a continued assault on the Iraqi Republican Guard and the ousting of Saddam, but Colin Powell's contrary view prevailed (article)

I'm still busy taping everything (hope this stuff is actually polyproplylene and 30 microns thick). T. tried on her gas mask but wasn't sure whether to attach the filter: too bad we didn't just check Gil's and Ribbity's blogs.

The Israeli version of Google exhibits Tel Aviv-o-centrism by removing the "Happy Purim" banner while it's still Purim in Jerusalem (BTW Google renders the "I'm feeling lucky" button into Hebrew as "More luck than wits").

Gil notes that Israblog, the Israeli blogging site, is dressed up for the holiday as Blogger.

This article quotes Joe Smith of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity movement who describes how Rachel Corrie and her fellow "activists" would confront IDF bulldozers:

Smith, originally of Kansas City, Missouri, .... said the fact that the IDF had previously taken pains not to hurt the group made him feel safe. It is precisely because the group has so much experience playing a game of chicken with the bulldozers that it understands this was not an accident.

Many members have stood in front of a bulldozer as Corrie did and then climbed up the mound of dirt, precisely so that the driver could see them. "You look into their eyes and they stop," Smith said.

So the ISM itself admits that Corrie deliberately jumped in front of the bulldozer, confident that it would stop because IDF bulldozers have always stopped in the past.

But in fact it's obvious that the driver must be considered guiltless until there's serious evidence to the contrary - just as any driver would if someone jumped in front of his vehicle.

People who arrived at this site from the Christian Science Monitor might want to take a look here (scroll down) or (a bit too thoroughly) here for some info that the CSM left out about Rachel Corrie and the blindly pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.

Someone needs to write a concise summary of the quality part of the blogger writing on this. One thing that's clear is that the bulldozer did not run over her directly as some articles have said. Haaretz quotes a doctor in Gaza hospital to the effect that bulldozer covered her with dirt first, which would explain how she lived long enough to make it to the hospital. That would mean that the photo which the CSM says is "moments before" could not in fact have been moments before.

Haaretz (and some other accounts) said she stepped in front of the 'dozer expecting it to stop - though one ISM account says she fell.

RibbityFrog alludes to an interesting irony: in '91 Saddam surrendered on the Jewish holiday of Purim in what was seen as an appropriate parallel to the story of the Book of Esther. And 12 years later the war is beginning on Purim.

Homefront defense and anti-aircraft reservists are being called up (report).

The gas mask distribution center at Malha mall is predictably swamped. A friend who was there says that a large percentage of the people now updating their gas mask kits were Arab.

Bush's speech is at 3 AM Israel time. We'll do the sealed room (mostly) before then even though the official instructions won't come down until after the speech.

According to this article, the IDF's assessment is still that there are "probably" no scud laaunchers in western Iraq, but that the population should be prepared anyway.

Ynet, quoting "security sources", puts it a little differently: there is very little chance that Israel will be attacked in the first days of the war. This is because Saddam does not/did not want to reveal his long-range missile capability, which could have been used as justification for attacking him.

The British gov't is advising its subjects to leave "Israel and Jerusalem" (report). Do they just mean "Israel, including Jerusalem"?

Sgt Stryker describes a "peace activist" infiltrating an American airforce base.

It's unfortunate that there aren't AFAIK any Israeli bloggers who have serious combat unit experience. I asked my friend S., who was just moved from tanks into a Bio/Chem defense unit to write something about his recent reserve duty, but he said he wouldn't be allowed to (his new job involves decontaminating victims of a bio/chem attack, and for preparation they wear their protective suits for long periods and play basketball in them etc.).

Much of the work in the reserves is guard duty - sometimes in dangerous places. Someone was recently telling me about guard duty at an army base in the West Bank that was always being approached by "shepherds" or other figures that he was certain were looking for weak spots in the base's security.

An American woman was killed after she ran in front of an IDF bulldozer to try to stop it from destroying the house of a terrorist in Gaza (report). It won't be long till the International Solidarity Movement starts claiming that the IDF ran over her deliberately.

More: LGF has a photo from the site of the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace which seems to be Corrie burning a flag with some Palestinian kids.

More on the ISM from Jpost:

In December 2001, 70 activists used their bodies to protect Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters from IDF tanks. During last year's stand-off at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, ISM members broke into the church to act as human shields for some 200 Palestinian terrorists hiding inside.

Ynet says that senior doctors have been quietly requested not to leave the country in case they are needed when war with Iraq begins.

Haaretz can't seem to regard Purim as a nice innocent holiday. This photo looks like Marilyn Manson, though at least the caption reads "A young girl in fancy dress, ahead of the Purim holiday, which starts Monday night". I'm also grateful that they replaced the photo they had this morning of some grown men wearing diapers.

In the latest violence in Jenin, all 11 of the Palestinian victims were "militants", though you have to read the news carefully to figure that out. And there was a "nationalistic" shooting here in W. Jerusalem that injured 2 (report).

Mustafa Barghouti is another Palestinian spokesman who lies baldfacedly to the Western media and is never challenged. In this article on a Palestinian ambulance driver who tried to smuggle a suicide bomber's belt, Barghouti claims IDF fire has killed 21 doctors and nurses in ambulances. I'm certain this is BS (more later).

I saw Barghouti on the BBC after the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Aug 2001. Then-PM Barak responded to the bombing by destroying some empty PA buildings (no casualties), and Barghouti went on and on about it was an unprecedented attack on a civilian area and it was only by a miracle that weren't large numbers of civilian casualties.

This is nice. DSP Group of Herzliya pays bonuses to employees on extended reserve duty (report)

Idiots Gush Shalom and Uri Avnery again demonstrate their insanity by taking out ads in weekend newspapers "warning" soldiers and civilians (like tent suppliers etc.) not to participate in mass transfers of Palestinians during the Iraq war. I think these people spend so much time in the imaginary world of Palestinian propaganda that they lose all sense of what's happening down their street.

Meanwhile Saddam is said to have moved scuds into Western Iraq. That probably means I should seal up my sealed room again.

Nick Denton has an image of a memo from the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information that threatens prosecution to journalists who "feed" the Israeli media (here).

Always the "fly-on-the-wall", Shimon Shiffer writes in today's Yediot Ahronot that the US has determined that it will not give Israel advance notice of the attack on Iraq. This is because Israeli officials keep leaking hints about when the war will begin eg. the head of military intelligence Aron Zeevi Farkash said it will be March 18.

Correction: Reading the actual article rather than the sensational headline, it seems that the US was merely "considering" reducing the advance notice that would be supplied to Israel so as to prepare Patriots etc. The Foreign Ministry has instructed all its officials (aside from the Prime, Foreign, and Defence Ministers and the National Spokesman) to refrain from commenting on the Iraq situation.

1924.org is a British Islamic site. Interesting thing is that it's more anti-Western than it is anti-Israel. The writers (apparently many of them Pakistani) blame everything on capitalism and colonialism rather than Zionism.

The death toll from today's bus bombing in Haifa is currently 15 (report). Note that 40 attacks were foiled in February. The bombing was in Imshin's old neighborhood. Photos here.

Saeb Erekat condemned "any attack that is targeting civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli." and the international media apparently didn't ask him when Israelis have ever targeted civilians. And the PA sandwiches its condemnation with incitement: "The leadership announces its condemnation to this operation in which civilians, who are not part of the war of annihilation waged by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people, were killed"

At Tel Aviv's Dizengoff square, the bombing that killed 13 people was commemorated yesterday (on the 7th anniversary). I remember the outrage everyone felt back then - "this was supposed to be peace". Nowadays people barely talk about the attacks.

Jpost's Bret Stephens describes a symposium of foreign correspondents that happened here two weeks back.

I was there myself and took a lot of notes that I should try to write up later. Eric Silver of the Independent was a subdued and reasonable moderator, though the questions that he tossed to Nabil Khatib of Saudi MBC television were softballs, and Silver kept making annoying transitions that seemed to equate Israeli settlers with the Hamas, Yigal Amir with Osama Bin Laden etc. Stephens and Khatib were mostly cautious and defensive, so it was France 2's Charles Enderlin and Amira Hass of Haaretz who did most of the talking.

I was quite fascinated by what Hass had to say: she is very sincere and sees her role as giving a voice to the oppressed rather than the pursuit of an ideal of objectivity. Enderlin, in contrast, was pompous and is certain that "the real story" these days is the Palestinian humanitarian crisis, and that if the Israeli media's evaluation is different it's "censorship". Enderlin let it slip that he considers Palestinian threats to murder Israeli journalists a mere tactical error. Enderlin also mentioned that he advised Italian photographer Raffaele Ciriello that it was dangerous to enter the square in Ramallah where he was shot by the IDF a short time later.

If Israel had it's own 24-hr news channel, the population would go raving bonkers. That's probably why we don't have one.

I set up my home 802.11b network with equipment that I picked up in the US. 802.11 gear is not available in shops here. Does using WEP impact performance?

Out-of-work Israelis are modifying their CVs to appear less experienced (report). That this makes sense is confirmed by my own experience: a headhunter that I worked with changed the summary section at the top of my CV and removed the company names. This got me a bunch of interviews.

Here's a blog maintained by a Jihadi-type Muslim college student in the UK.