Thoughts of an American Oleh in Israel
The CEIRPP casts a shadow on the UN role in the Middle East conflict and is first and foremost harmful to the UN. Its work only reinforces a long held Israeli suspicion vis-a-vis the UN and contributes nothing to the cause of peace. A recent example is a plan of action calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Will today's conference, in the halls of the European Parliament, issue similar directives? Though of little practical consequence, this conference, especially under the banner and auspices of the European Parliament, will harm the cause of peace and also damage European credibility as an honest broker.
This is a Yemenite Israeli doing "Abir," (Knight, & acronym for religious verses) an ancient Yemenite martial art. He is speaking heavily inflected Hebrew.
He uses Chi-Gong and Tai Chi-like movements, which he says have been handed down for centuries, and copy the shapes of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Lessons begin on a mystical, spiritual note with Jewish prayers. The turban and side curls are traditional Yemenite. This ain't your usual bagels and lox Judaism ...
Almost 70 percent of Palestinians under occupation, according to the poll, adhere to the right of "return of all refugees to their original land." Another 12 percent envisage the return of only some refugees to their original lands. Just seven percent of those polled agreed with the position that no refugees should return home at all.I will not go into the details of these particular issues here at this moment, but I will offer that Israeli opinion on the refugee issue, settlements, and the Temple Mount stand mostly in opposition to the Palestinian positions presented above.
Eighty-two percent opposed allowing Israel to retain control of "major settlement blocs inside the West Bank in exchange for equal Israeli land," and 94 percent rejected "keeping Israel's authority in the area of Al-Aqsa mosque" in Jerusalem.
Peace process industry propagandists routinely claim that a two-state solution is overwhelmingly supported by the vast majority of Palestinians. This has never been true (millions of Palestinian refugees and exiles outside the country have never been included in elections, and are not regularly polled). This poll indicates that among Palestinians under occupation, support for a two-state solution is at just 51 percent (49 percent in the West Bank and 54 percent in Gaza). At the same time support for "a binational state in all of Palestine where Palestinians and Israeli [sic] enjoy equal representation and rights" is now supported by 30 percent (roughly similar in both territories).
Also for those who are interested, I found these statistics on the IMF home page (don't bother asking what the hell I was doing there). This chart shows Israel's GDP per capita in U.S. dollars — based on Purchasing Power Parity and the actual exchange rate — compared to that of the other advanced world economies. It's really very enlightening.
Israel’s GDP rose by an annualized 6.6% in the first half of the year, after rising by 3.4% in the second half of 2006 and 6% in the first half, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. The growth is above the 5% predictions of both the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Israel.
And finally the last feature in this "Showcase Showdown" of a blog post is a little slide show I put together. I've sort of developed a hobby of photographing buildings here in Tel Aviv. I decided to put them all together for everyone to enjoy ... or ignore, whatever you prefer. Please note that several of the towers in these photos are still under construction and at the end I've included photos of two building that are "really" under construction.By daybreak, Fatah's threat to divorce itself from the Hamas-led coalition government of Haniyeh raised the tension in the Palestinian territories one more notch, bringing the Palestinians ever so much closer to the brink of civil war. Following an emergency meeting of its executive committee, Fatah announced it was suspending participation in the government as long as the fighting continued. (emphasis mine)Something about "closer to the brink," caught my eye. This is not a well written phrase. It would be easier just to write "closer to civil war," or "on the brink of civil war." I don't think the author is a bad writer. This is an example, rather, of the way the author thinks about the conflict. Please don't take my word for it, later in the piece he quotes someone who explains it much better than I can.
But one European observer denies that Gaza is headed towards a civil war. "They are not 'heading' towards a civil war. They are in the middle of one," says Claude Moniquet, president of the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center. Moniquet says the Palestinians have been in the midst of a civil war "for several weeks, if not months."
The Belgian counter-terrorism specialist says that European "political correctness, whereby one would like to present the Palestinians as eternal victims and never, in any case, as the actors (and the persons with primary responsibility) for their own failures," is what has prevented the violence tearing apart the Palestinian territories from being labeled a civil war.
Anyway, here are a bunch of photos from the Megillah reading and afterward.
Spider silk is a fibre secreted by spiders. Spider silk is a remarkably strong material; the strongest naturally-occurring fiber known[citation needed]. Its tensile strength is comparable to that of high-grade steel — according to Nature (see reference below), spider silk has a tensile strength of roughly 1.3 GPa, while one source [1] lists a tensile strength for one form of steel at 1.65 GPa. However, spider silk is much less dense than steel; its ratio of tensile strength to density is perhaps 5 times better than steel — as strong as Aramid filaments, such as Twaron or Kevlar. In fact, a strand of spider silk long enough to circle the earth would weigh less than 16 ounces[citation needed] (less than 460 grams).
Afterwards Tafat and I just kind of wandered around the city burning off the fondue we had just consumed. I took a bunch of pictures that I'm going to use in a post later on. We ended up chilling out near the Suzanne Dallal Center, which is dance center and theater. It's really beautiful there and lots of people were relaxing enjoying the nice weather.
Olmert approved the plan Monday, which, among other gestures, includes the removal of 27 roadblocks across the West Bank.
Following a meeting between the prime minister, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and several other senior defense officials, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said the prime minister accepted all of Peretz's proposals for easing restrictions.
"The prime minister directed that restrictions be eased immediately for the Palestinian population in order to strengthen moderate elements and implement the agreements and understandings that were achieved [at his meeting with Abbas]," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
Now he has an appreciation for a part of the world many find confusing, complex and incomprehensible.
"A lot of my close friends and family have been over to visit and they had one mindset going in but certainly they were completely the opposite leaving," he said.
"It's a shame that that part of the world is portrayed in the news the way it is. You see it as a war zone instead of the beautiful part of the world it is.
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said a band member was pressured into shaving his head in a hazing incident and other members danced seminude during the band's trip to the Sept. 23 University of Michigan football game.
"It has become increasingly clear that certain types of sexualized and hazing behavior are an ingrained part of the band's culture," Wiley said Thursday. "We will not provide an ongoing venue for this inappropriate and demeaning behavior."
Regardless, the accumulated evidence from various sources exposes as a deception Hezbollah’s claims to have lost 68 or 74 fighters .
Israel’s claim to have killed 500-600 Hezbollah fighters, meanwhile, is buttressed by the government’s partial list of names of Hezbollah fighters who died through Aug. 6, and is corroborated in some media reports.
These different assessments suggest that Hezbollah losses may have been comparable in number to the civilian losses in Lebanon. Allegations by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International–organizations often criticized for their disproportionate and deceptive focus on Israel–that Israel used indiscriminate force and even targeted civilians should be viewed warily in light of this evidence. And when casualty figures and breakdowns cited by news organizations are based on figures supplied by Hezbollah, Lebanese officials, or Israeli officials, those claims should be meticulously investigated for inconsistencies, and should not be reported as accepted fact.
What struck me about the bombing, in both countries, was that you could see the destruction and completely misread what it meant. In Beirut, the destruction in reality is efficient and impressive. The destruction in Israel, on the other hand, is random and scattered. When Hezbollah rockets were fired on Israel, landing meant success.
So here is the truth: Israel did not do anything close to what it was capable of doing. Hezbollah did all it could.
Hezbollah could have tens of thousands of rockets still left in its arsenal, the group's deputy leader Naim Qassam said in an interview published Sunday in a London-based Arabic-language newspaper.
Qassam said that the reconstruction of Hezbollah's military wing was not a top priority as the group still had a plentiful supply of weapons.
"We had the option to confront Israel for many months," he said. "The 8,000 missiles that we fired at Israel could be a quarter or even just 10 percent of the rockets we have."
