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.