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Thursday, August 31, 2006


By On August 31, 2006
"Why does terrorism prosper because none dare call it Terrorism"












"Why does terrorism prosper because none dare call it Terrorism"

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Barry Chaimish Theatre presents: Prognostications of Armageddon or I Told You I Was Right

By On August 30, 2006
(Due to personal reasons Sultan Knish was not able to post today so we instead bring you a guest post from famed author, journalist and conspiracy theorist, Barry Chaimish.)

Prognostications of Armageddon or I Told You I Was Right

by Barry Chaimish

I'm in sunny South Minneapolis now having lunch with Joel Siegel, Naomi Klein and the descendant of the Archduke Ferdinand whose assasination brought on the beginning of the Crimean War as documented by Oswald H. Reilly in his excellent book, 'A Secret History of the Illuminati's Wars.' The Archduke is picking up the check.

The Archduke better known today as Johnny Kiplinger found inner peace in Buddhism but with some prodding unfolds a tale for us so fantastic that I will make it the center of my next book, 'We're All Doomed' by Barry Chaimish to be jointly distributed by Satanspawn Press, Christmageddon Ministries and any radio station in Idaho that will put me on the air for 15 minutes.

Suffice it to say that the Sabbatean\Freemasonic\Maine Gas and Power conspiracy I've been trying to wake up the apathetic Israeli public to goes on as before. Under the bidding of the Vatican, the EU and Stanley Morgan their conspiracies are unleashed and yet no one will listen or buy copies of my books for a reasonably priced $12.95, that's $618.99 in Canadian Rupees. Does no one care at all? While the 'so-called' Gush Katif refugees live high on the hog, I can't even take a single drink from the minibar. The world hangs in the balance and I've had to cut my tips to the hotel staff down to %12 because nobody in the supposed right-wing camp cares enough to subsidize the hotel bill for my world tour exposing the hidden conspiracies behind everything.

I stumbled on this conspiracy by accident myself some years back when Beelzebub himself, AKA Daniel Pipes said some mean things about me. Immediately I grasped that this was not an accident or an act of ignorance but that his criticism of me could only mean one thing, HE WAS HELMING A VAST CONSPIRACY WHICH I HAD UNKNOWINGLY UNMASKED.

Along with a certain professor from Haifa whom I won't name except to anyone who emails me and gives me the secret password (aardvark) Daniel Pipes, a member of CFR, NRA and the ATF, is conspiring to enrage the otherwise peaceful and friendly Arabs with insulting cartoons of Mohammed and faking the 'kidnapping' of an Israeli soldier which like all the so-called Hamas terrorist attacks, were really the work of the Israeli government. Shimon Peres who assasinated Ofra Haza, JFK Jr and Ralph Lauren is all part of this somehow too.

While the right wing camp engages in frivlous behavior such as aiding refugees and protesting against the government, I have come to Minneapolis for the only people still willing to listen to me, the Baptist Pastors of Messianic Synagogues such as Rabbi Yauchonanu Zwiebel who has invited me to speak on 'The Destruction of Israel and Converting the Heathen Jew' and of course my good friend Thomas Knoebel, a Holocaust skeptic, from the Fourth Reich Historical Revisionism Society. These are the last honest people around and we had better listen to them and me, before it's too late.

I will be on WZBZ radio station, 1056 AM, at 3 AM on Jim Oakley's show, 'Anti-Christ Unmasked - Exposing the Satanic New World Order' conspiracy. Jim has actual video of reptilians boarding the planes which 'supposedly crashed' on 9/11 and new revelations about Stinktrails in the atmosphere, The LUUTE project and the Report from Poundcake Mountain from the Retrolateral Commission of William F. Buckley Junior High School.

As part of my investigations I will also be getting courtside tickets for a Lakers game. As everyone knows the Refaim, the mythological giants of the Bible will be returning shortly on UFO's, and very possibly in the disguises of the LA Lakers. I plan to be on hand to observe and document them. Afterwards I will be escaping pursuit from the fiends the international sabbetean conspiracy will be sending after me to prevent me from speaking to you. If you can please buy my books. If you can't, please buy two. And remember criticising or mocking me in any way proves that you're a dupe or more likely a pawn or knight of the New World Order and other stuff that far-right extremists thought up in the 80's and I ripped off from them after watching some episodes of the X-Files.

The truth is out there. And by out there I mean in here. I mean me. Buy my books.


(The preceding was an op-ed piece from Barry Chaimish, not to be confused with Barry Chamish. For further information on Barry Chamish but not Chaimish see this site here and here)
To clarify the differences, Barry Chamish believes Peres was behind the deaths of JFK Jr and Ofra Haza but NOT Ralph Lauren. Barry Chamish believes that the giants are returning on UFO's and kidnapping women but not that they are the LA Lakers. Barry Chamish believes that the War in Lebanon and the cartoon violence were both a plot by Daniel Pipes who has said mean things about him. Barry Chamish also tours around Messianic Churches and pals around with Neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. So umm Barry Chamish is nothing like Barry Chaimish. At all.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

The Left's Endgame for the Democratic Party

By On August 29, 2006

With the defeat of Senator Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary the Dean wing of the Democratic Party is showing its true agenda for 2008. That should be no surprise to anyone who knows how left wing parties operate. Their true enemies are never on the right, but the moderates of their own party. They will gain influence within the liberal camp by mobilizing against the right and then begin purging the liberal camp, the same way the Communists did when they took power. The real target of the Deanites is not the Republican but Conservative Democrats.

Many reading this no doubt think this is no great concern and that the Democratic part's continued slide into left wing lunacy will only reap a bonanza for the Republican party. Matters though are not that simple. Even if the Republicans continue to control Congress and the Presidency, the Democratic party represents one of the country's two major parties with enormous resources and influence. The further they slide into the sewer of left-wing extremism, the more moderate Democrats will sink down with them. What we wind up with is an entire party and a hundred million people supporting terrorists, spewing anti-semitism disguised as criticism of Israel's policies and seeking an overthrow of the American Republic. It essentially means that the next political party remade in Venezuelan dictator Chavez's image will be the Democratic Party of the United States.

Lieberman, as the most outspoken of the conservative Democrats, was the first step in the purge. Through their assault on Lieberman, the Deanites purged a top member of the Democratic Leadership Council which once dominated the Presidency and the Senate, and sent a message to other conservative Democrats that if they engage in bipartisanship or contradict the left wing party doctrine, they will also be targeted and removed with the covert aid of their own party leadership using the same Moveon.org style groups that sprang up after campaign finance reform as political auxilaries.

Like all political purges, this is done to intimdate Democrats and to make them toe the line of the party agenda. After all if this was done to a former Vice Presidential candidate and a widely beloved figure on both sides of the aisle, the message is that it can be done to anyone. All this is done to ensure that the next Congress and Senate will see far fewer Democrats prepeared to work with Republicans or do anything but repeat the politicial positions of the party's left wing.

Pundits who criticise Howard Dean for failing at measuring up to the barometers of traditional DNC chairmen. What they fail to understand is that Dean's agenda widely diverges from that of traditional DNC chairmen. He has no interest in raising money for the party. He would much rather see political donations go to 'grass-roots' organizations like Moveon.org and DailyKos that will reliably support left-wing candidates than into the party coffers where they would be distributed to Democrats as a whole.

Nor does he have any interest in winning the Presidency in 2008 because the candidate would almost certainly be a Conservative Democrat. The left vastly prefers a Republican President than a Conservative Democrat who will deprive them of the deranged fantasies of a totalitarian fascist regime suppressing free speech and carrying out atrocities around the world with which they radicalize liberals.

Dean may well support Hillary mainly because he knows she will lose. If not he will support another losing candidate he will undermine all through the election (as Hillary herself did to Al Gore in 2000) and use that defeat to argue that the Republicans again stole the election thus further radicalizing the Democratic party. The real battle will be fought to push through left-wing candidates into congressional spots and win just enough seats over and above 2004 to let Dean claim victory accompanied by the cheers of an equally radicalized liberal media willing to tell any lie for the cause.

The transformation of half of America's two party system into a socialist monstrosity has been an ongoing problem since the days of FDR. But the latest transformation takes the Democratic party beyond socialism and into left-wing radicalism. Liberal Christian denominations have already pushed boycotts of Israel and the Presbyterian Church is giving its official stamp to 9/11 conspiracy theories, once the province of the looniest extremists. More and more Democratic congressmen are sounding like Al-Jazeera and the party itself is being dismantled and remade in the image of its most radical voices.

Those who dominate the Democratic party will also dominate the legislative positions and the positions of half the nation. If the Dean revolution succeeds, that position will be one which derives its ideas of morality from Noam Chomsky and its political tactics from the Venezulean rooftops. It will be a party turned against Israel, against America and providing active support to all its enemies. It may implode before that happens and go the way of earlier American parties long vanished from all but the historical record, but if it does not then the country will suffer the consenquences.

Monday, August 28, 2006

The Circus Slides Towards the Abyss

By On August 28, 2006

As protests mount against Olmert and his government, the government and its media allies continue to desperately throw out every trick and distraction they can to divert the public from its mounting fury at the military disaster, the surrender to Hezbollah, the deficits of supplies that left IDF reservists without food, helmets, bandages and in some cases even uniforms.

So now we have two sex scandals, one involving the President and the other involving the Justice Minister, both key figures in any call for new elections. The media is of course full of tabloid gossip and screaming headlines about THE LATEST ALLEGATIONS but it's all futile. Israelis who have been forced to live in shelters, who have gone to war in a mishandled campaign, who have lost sons are not about to forget what this government did because the media trots out giant headlines about the supposed sexual misconduct allegations involving two politicians. And the Israeli public has seen phony investigations all too often get used as a weapon to settle political scores before.

The utter failure and bankruptcy of this government cannot be cloaked by tossing out President Katsav or Justice Minister Haim Ramon to the wolves, hoping that the chaos and scandals will distract the public, and make any call for new elections more difficult. It won't be obstructed by transparent attempts to shift the blame to Netanyahu or the leaks about General Halutz's investments originating from within the government itself.

While Olmert frantically butchers scapegoats as if he was a witch doctor at a voodoo altar, even his media allies understand that the government is over and that its failure can't be described as victory or the protests silenced. Nor will random operations into Gaza or Lebanon successfully fake an appearance of determination and military strength. All these are distractions thrown out by a desperate regime clinging by its fingernails over the abyss.

For the last few years an alliance between key political figures, the media and powerful businessmen dismantled a portion of Israel, destroyed its two major political parties, subverted the rule of law and turned the country into its own private fiefdom. Sharon's right hand man who tried to run it all failed miserably. The likely outcome now is that the Kadima laborites will return to take over their old party from Stalin wannabe and failed Defense Minister Peretz splitting down Kadima. An invigorated Likud can then finish the job leaving Kadima another failed party as defunct as Mordechai's Third Way.

The media and the businessmen are likely calculating already for that eventuality. They still have Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, now a thoroughly corrupt party beholden to Martin Schalff who owned a stake in Arafat's casino. Lieberman makes pathetic attempts to posture as a right-winger but his actual legislative record is left of center. A man who proposed giving away most of the 67 territories and dividing Yerushalayim is as credible a Zionist as a duck is a fish. There's the Pensioner's Party which is likely to have zero traction in the post-war period. Look then for the emergence and creation of new political parties along the same lines. The current IDF protesters may well be being hijacked by figures like Carmi Gillon and transformed into a platform for another phony party or politician.

Either way the focus now will be on Kadima burning and the circvs maximus Olmert and Co. will put on to save themselves from political extinction, but when all that has passed we will likely be facing an electoral landscape not too different from the last election after all.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization

By On August 27, 2006

It is hard for most people to grasp and understand that they are living through the period of the decline and eventually destruction of their countries and their entire way of life, yet that is what we are seeing now.

The European continent, the core of Western civilization is collapsing. European birth rates have fallen below replacement rates, populations are dwindling and slowly being displaced by large foreign Muslim populations. Wedded to socialism Europe faces a generation in which the elderly and their social services will vastly outnumber a far smaller population of youth leading to economic collapse.

In a century Europe as it has been will be no more. Oh most of the cities will go on standing, some may even keep their former names but the majority of their Churches will become mosques, their streets full of Arabic and Turkic speech and their nations part of the Muslim world. For anyone who finds it hard to imagine Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels' fate, need only look at Constantinople, now Istanbul, once the center of a Christian Empire.

Anyone who wishes to envision how the Vatican will look in a century, need only glance at the Hagia Sophia, now a mosque. Take a look around Istanbul or Alexandria, your favorite European capitals will look just like them too. The Vatican will no doubt survive but the Pope will no longer be at Castle Gandolfo but in Costa Rica or Argentina with as much loot and art as the Papacy will be able to pry out of Rome before the hammer comes down.

Yet this will be less a Muslim conquest than Europe's suicide by defeatism, apathy and selfishness, a process that began after WW2. After all it wasn't the Muslims who forced Europe to abandon its colonies and then export millions of Algerians, Pakistanis and Turks as the cheap labor propping up the charade of socialism. It wasn't the Muslims who convinced Europeans that their own personal happiness took priority over everything else, that badgered them into having fewer children and waiting till they were in their late 30's to do it. It certainly wasn't the Muslims who made the average European provincially xenophobic and yet hopelessly defeatist at home and abroad.

The Muslims are indeed reaping the fruits of a conquest but it isn't their conquest but the conquest of Europeans over themselves. Europe whose armies conquered most of the known world, finally conquered itself. Two world wars and the brutal conflicts of two centuries hammered home to even the dimmest European the futility of nationalistic wars. Communism, liberalism and socialism only provided the intellectual justification for the obvious.

Discarding nationalism as anything more than a resentment of their neighbors and funneling the remnants of it into frenzied and furious displays of Soccer patriotism, Europe settled comfortably into its socialist twilight transitioning comfortably from its various industrial oligarchicies to post-industrial bureaucracies.
If Americans should wonder why Europeans can't seem to hold a soccer match without riots and fatalities, it's because soccer is the last vestige of a continent's militarism that once cost the lives of tens of millions. Living cushioned and imprisoned by a nanny state, soccer is the last vestige of manhood left to a continent of emasculated peoples. The people who once made revolutions, overturned monarchs and fought passionately for a thousand causes now live hollow regimented lives that occasionally erupt when they begin bashing each other's skulls in with stadium seats.

The picture in Eastern Europe is no better. The birth rates in some Eastern European countries like Lativa are already on the verge of extinction. Russia's birth rate problem which was a national secret under the Communists is secret no more and the Russian government is desperately trying to pay women to have children. Like Western Europe, the cities of the former Warsaw Pact nations are filled with foreigners. In a recent marketplace bombing in Moscow, the majority of the casualties were Chinese and other foreign nationals. While Russia engages in one last frenzy of Anti-Americanism becoming once again the arms dealer to the third world, the Slavs are dying out as surely as the Western Europeans. The only difference is the Western Europeans got the chance at a good life that Eastern Europe only received a small slice of.

The healthiest Western nations are the newest such as America and Australia but they too are marking time. The American birth rate is better than the European one but not by nearly as much as people think. The decline hasn't hit us as badly as Europe but all that means is give it more time and it will.

The spigot of immigration at the Mexican border is being turned up all the way by a Republican administration, not only in a quest for votes but because America has adopted much of the European socialist infrastructure that requires a constant incoming immigrant population to serve as the newest recruits in the MLM scheme of programs like social security. Corporations caring for nothing but profits outsource all the jobs they can and import Mexican immigrants to do the cheap and dirty labor they can't outsource.

America's industry is a passing dream and if the streets of American cities aren't populated by large hostile Muslim populations, that's only because Europeans have Arab speaking populations next door while we have spanish speaking ones. If Latino gangs proliferate in small towns and millions of illegals march around waving Mexican flags while demanding citizenship, like the Muslims in Europe they're simply playing the part of the Barbarians at the Gate while we do the work of burning Rome.

From America's birth, the country came with a vision of manifest destiny. When that vision was achieved and America dominated the world, a sheepish and small-minded leadership took a look around and began following Europe's path of national suicide. Devoid of a national destiny or a national goal, a nation becomes nothing more than a provider of services, a government the administrator of those services and its population perennially on the dole waiting for a handout. Once upon a time America had a vision of a glorious future, today no one can articulate a glorious vision for America.

Liberals prescribe more government programs and less national sovereignty in favor of international cooperation. Conservatives offer up doses of bible thumping and religion in public life. Neither address the simple fact that they have no national vision to offer. Neither the right nor the left is actually offering a vision of a future for America, all they're doing is wrangling over the terms of its dismantling.

Consumerism has instead stepped into the breach of vision promoting the pursuit of happiness living the shopping dream. Credit cards, ecommerce indebt people while a daily parade of gadgets, clothes, snacks and cars come packaged in audio, video, text and image promising that happiness is for sale. Without any overriding national goal or vision, all that remains is satisfying manufactured appetites for the output of the same companies that outsource the labor and push immigration in order to create those products at a profit in the first place.

While corporations tempt and dazzle the public with its products, the government leeches away ever income with new programs creating a bigger and bigger runaway bureaucracy. Governments no longer address problems so much as they bury them in paperwork, budgets and new departments. Even America's military capabilities become subservient to muddled political correctness. Is it any wonder that national pastimes like football and basketball have grown more and more thuggish parraleling Europe's impotent soccer riots.

What will America look like then in a century? It will like be a latin-american country in fact if not in name, little distinguishable from Brazil. As politics become more acrimonious and a large spanish speaking immigrant population pours in without a melting pot to melt into, North America will look like South America. And don't count the Muslims out either. Islamic and Arab influence in Latin America is rising. El Salvador has a Palestinian President. Argentina had a Lebanese one, when in collaboration with the authorities Iran carried out a large scale bombing there. A lot of the Spanish stars this side of the border like Selma Hayek or Shakira are actually the children of Lebanese immigrants.

What is the meaning of all beyond the obvious? Civilizations throughout history decline and eventually collapse. We're seeing that now all the more personally so, because it's happening before our eyes. Western civilization of the last six hundred years was an economic civilization living and dying by expanding trade, locating resources for production and exchanging them for manufactured goods. Everything from the colonization of America to WW1 was driven by it.

Byproducts of that economic development gave us democratic societies, new countries and broad vistas. Uncontrolled they also brought on destructive wars, destroyed countries gutting them from the inside eventually leaving nothing but nations of consumers buying products they no longer manufactured, of resources they no longer owned and even whose services and technical support had been outsourced.

Commerce is a river and in the hands of corporations whose CEO's care nothing except for cutting costs to edge out a profit margin this quarter before they're fired and move on to ruin another company, it's a river that flows to where it's cheapest. The very byproducts that created the wealthy and secure Western countries are the ones that insure the river flows away from them. The very technology they research creates greater opportunities for companies to outsource their employment. The Catch 22 is that it's the very things that have made the West successful that are killing it.

By the mid-20th century when the world was explored and conquered and superpowers gazed at each other across an atom bomb, greater ideals died. Nationalism, a thirst for exploration that had turned the world upside down for a century died out. In its place came a selfish existence in which people lived for new cars, mortgages and DVD players; while foolishly believing they were really living for themselves. Ideals were replaced by senseless radicalism. The first world grew fat and grey, never troubling their idyll in their consumeristic paradise to actually have children and plan for the future.

One can look at the coming extinction of Europe and call it the wrath of G-d, which it may well be. But inexplicable as it seems, it is really a civilization cutting its own throat through its small-minded selfishness.

The end, that much prophesied end, will indeed come with a whimper not a bang, unless we make a few bangs of our own. Great new beginnings are explosive ones. We still have the might to tackle great projects, a vast array of enemies gather around us and the stars above call to us. We can embrace that future with a bang and refuse to go out into the darkness or we will indeed fall with the whimper of warehoused old men lying in cots while outside armed gangs loot and burn and the new caliphate flies its green and yellow flags above our cities.

Civilization is in our hands and the hour is nigh.

Friday, August 25, 2006

We don't want food, we don't want water, we want accountability

By On August 25, 2006

Parents of dead soldiers and IDF reservists protesting for Olmert's resignation at Golda Meir's grave. The sign reads 'We don't want food, we don't want water, we want accountability." (Hebrew language petition)

Thursday, August 24, 2006

General in charge of Disengagement calls it "A Crime Against the Jewish People"

By On August 24, 2006
Brigadier General Gershon Hacohen who had commanded the Disengagement and expulsion of Gush Katif now describes it as "a crime against the Jewish people and a crime I participated in" and said that the war in Lebanon was a punishment for that crime.

General Hacohen is a fairly odd character coming out of the religious Zionist Gush Emunim, who in interviews came off coldly focused on following orders above all else and emotionally detached from the situation. Obviously such a statement could very well be an early attempt at campaign for a political posting but considering how little influence the settlers have these days that would seem to be wasted breath. It would be nice to believe that he's sincere and that some high ranking officials are waking up to what they have done at last and doing Tesuvah.

The Secret Israeli Plot to Defeat Iran #3489 (Classified)

By On August 24, 2006



January - Iran receives its first payment of 3 billion dollars in foreign aid...as credit for purchases of American military equipment. Iran awaits shipments of new weapons only to discover that nothing can get done unless the Senators who are holding up the foreign bill approve it. Iranian Mullahs fly to Washington DC and to several defense contractors











"No," comes the answer.

All Your Fakes Are Belong To Us

By On August 24, 2006

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Upcoming Protests Demanding Olmert's Resignation in Israel

By On August 23, 2006
Thursday 24th- Rabin Square in Tel Aviv 7 in the evening - Forum for Individual Responsibility, contact Ariella Miller @ 0523-360949

Yom Rishon 27th - 10 AM, Protest march from Rabin Square to the Knesset in Yerushalaim. Buses will accompany the march for those who cannot walk. Protest tents will be placed before the Prime Minister's office for long term protesters camping out.

Yom Sheini 28th - Protest in Tsfat, contact Orit 0524-627118, Shabtai 0523-246827.

Further Hebrew langauge information available *here*

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

A Breach in the Media Wall

By On August 22, 2006

As daily revelations are coming in of staged photos, faked atrocities and media lies from Lebanon, what we are seeing is as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the first time ever the culture of lies, the boundless wellspring of biased reporting has been met, challenged and turned back.

Rathergate represented the breaking of 60 Minutes, a lionized media institution supposed to represent everything great about muckraking journalism. Instead it turned out to just be muck. Lebanon though was the first true field test for a battle between old line media and the new citizen advocacy represented in a worldwide conglomeration of blogs, forums and websites.

When the war began it was entirely predictable that the media would jump into its usual mode of blaming Israel, of reporting Lebanese casualties over Israeli ones, distorting the truth and swallowing Arab propaganda whole. But arguments in text are hard to fight. There's always a counter-argument for every argument and always a way to twist the truth, distort the context and go on telling the same lies. As with Rathergate though, the telling blow came in the proof.

Every lie in the end needs some germ of proof to back it up. Something tangible to point to and say, See there it is! In Rathergate it was the forged memos. Liberal reporters could have gone on smearing Bush for months without ever suffering any consequences but when they tried to pass off badly forged documents as proof, their lies were exposed. That same media was well in its usual smear-Israel mode and its proof was in the photos. The photos that were supposed to be worth more than a thousand words. And they were. But once you present tangible proof, real world evidence of your statements, it can be challenged in an objective way not subject to the usual distortions of debate. And the proof they presented were fake.

The exposure of one lie opened the door to exploring and exposing dozens more. The real work is just beginning but there's now footage of the Qana casualties being shown off and paraded for reporters by the supposed rescue worker in a green helmet. More photos with misleading captions, including a 3 year old girl misidentified as killed by Israelis, have been exposed too. For the first time major media journalists like Anderson Cooper are speaking out about Hizbullah's manipulation of the story. These are the first cracks in the media wall.

There's a reason they're possible. The reason is the maturing of the internet community and technology to the point where it can challenge the massive monolith of old line media. The media exists as a totalitarian force that imposes its own version of truth through its many organs of radio, newspapers, television and created a false consensus that this is public opinion. When public opinion is at variance with media reporting, the media could just ignore it as government propogandists in any totalitarian nation ignored opposing points of view.

The only outlet anyone had would be in the small carefully selected letters column of that own paper. (And now for a rebuttal in one paragraph no spaces from Mr. John Smith whom no one will read anyway to a front page article in 12 columns.) The media couldn't be challenged by anyone except the occasional politician or movie star, because the media controlled public discourse. The internet has dramatically changed all that. The media news sites may still get the lion's share of the traffic but it's been a long while since they were the only source of news. When the Washington Post or the Times adds Technocrati tags and submits its articles to Google News, it's really admitting that it has to fight for readers with everyone else out there on the internet.

Scattered sites though couldn't do very much damage. They added to the discourse. They repeated talking points the media ignored. They worked around the media mostly. They bled big media for traffic but they didn't genuinely hurt it until now. Despite the blogsphere revolution, the media had the advantage of large scale institution, cash and employees. But while Israel fought Hizbullah in Lebanese towns, the media discovered another war on their hands. A war against a loose confederation of sites that could work independently and together almost as fast as they could, that had technical talent, resources and rhetoric that could match their own organization.

There had been inklings of that during the War in Iraq and the Swift Boat controversy and a major signal of it during Rathergate which had led the way. All of those in the end came down to proof. Archimedes said, Give me a lever and I shall move the world. The lever used to move big media was digital photographic proof for a digital age and like the man chipping at the Berlin Wall, once an opening was created a hundred more could jump in to begin working on expanding it.

Big media's nose has been bloodied and while overpaid reporters write snide diatribes on bloggers and blogging, it's the elephant clumsily maneuvering to try and fight an enemy it doesn't understand. An enemy that can't be bought out, merged in, co-opted or crushed by their own organization. The problem for big media is that their opponent seems small but in reality is too big, they are individuals and a mess beyond any single individual but encompass anyone willing to speak out for the truth.

Confronting such an enemy the media is baffled much as Britain was baffled by the colonists, as the butchers of Moscow were baffled by the rising tide of citizens in the street, as totalitarian regimes are always baffled when the people they had once considered compliant sheep rise up against them. They had spent too long holding them in contempt, preparing to fight campaigns against their rivals to have any understanding of how to fight the people they should naturally be dominating. There is a wind of change in the air, regime change. While summer burns outside, think of it as a very belated spring.

A proper regime change passes power from the old totalitarian centralized institutions to democratic republicans made up of individuals. The blogsphere, the internet, for all its flaws is that and the breach in the media wall will only grow.

Chip away.

Monday, August 21, 2006

The Disgrace Continues

By On August 21, 2006
While Israeli hostages continue to be held by Hezbollah, UN officals report that Israel released 5 Hezbollah terrorists seized in a raid that cost the lives of Israeli soldiers. Even while Israeli soldiers are in enemy hands, Israel is freeing enemy terrorists without getting anything in return. Olmert's Kadima led government has disastrously mismanaged the situation. Hundreds of reservists are already protesting over shortages of food and supplies for soldiers , of weak and incoherent leadership and a lack of proper training and still Olmert's government continues its reign of disaster.

Time for Olmert and Kadima to go.

How America and Israel Failed Against Shiite Terrorism

By On August 21, 2006

In 2003 after the US liberated Iraq, a formerly little known Shiite cleric Muqata Al-Sadr took control of a portion of Baghdad commonly called Sadr City now and created a shadow government declaring that he had more legitimacy than the American occupation. His newspaper began trumping up lies claiming that America was behind the terrorist attacks and calling for a war against America.

In the spring of 2004 an attempt was made to shut down his newspaper and serve a warrant against him for murder. General Sanchez even issued a "capture or kill" order against him. The resulting fighting left dozens of US soldiers dead and many of Sadr's followers as well. Instead of finishing Sadr off though at a time when the US solidly controlled Iraq, the US agreed to a 'truce' with him. Sadr's Mahdi army were to leave their positions and turn them over to the Iraqi security forces and Sadr would become a purely political force forming his own party.

If any of this sounds familiar it's pretty much the US terms for the end of fighting in Lebanon with Hizbullah or the attempted rehabiliation of Hamas. Backed by Iran Al-Sadr only became more aggressive. In the summer fighting again broke out between Sadr's militas and gangs and the US Marines. Again US forces suffered casualties destroying Sadr's forces and had him on the run when again they were forced to stop operations for another 'truce.' In the fall fighting broke out yet again and no matter how badly he lost, each time Iraqi and American politicians protected Al-Sadr from being destroying caling for meaningless and hollow truces as each time Sadr only gained popularity.

Today Al-Sadr is the third most popular figure in Iraq having gained the reputation of fighting the US to a standstill. He is modeling his forces on Hizbullah and is responsible for much of the Sunni-Shiite violence tearing apart Iraq and still he remains untouchable. When US forces tried to end the current round of violence in Baghdad, the now Shiite controlled Iraqi government prevented the US from disarming his Shiite militas in Baghdad insuring that the violence will continue. Despite the dozens of US troops he's murdered, despite the fact that his continued existance undermines any possibilty of a secure and stable Iraq, he has been allowed to continue his activities.

Al-Sadr and Nasrallah are but fingers on the hand of Iran which is prepearing to close its fist around the Middle East. Whether it's the Mahdi Army of Al-Sadr or Nasrallah's Hizbullah, the essential tactics are the same. A militia is formed of various thugs and rabble, armed by Iran and challenging the US or Israel. After a brief bout of fighting it manages to inflict enough casualties on Israel and America to impress fellow Muslims with its boasts and on the verge of defeat, the besieging Western troops are pulled back on truce terms allowing the terrorists to survive to claim victory. All this is done by Western powers on the deluded premise that these Iranian militias will then disarm and pursue democratic stategies for being elected.

They are of course happy to do it too since terrorists have no scruples over how they come to power. Democratic elections are an easier way for them to do it as Hamas has shown, but at no point will they actually disarm or stop the violence because it is precisely from the violence that their popularity stems and they know it too.

Confronting Iranian pawns like Sadr and Nasrallah, America and Israel blinked looking for accomodation instead of anhiliation. Had America and Israel taken the War on Terror seriously, Sadr and Nasrallah would be dead, the Mahdi Army and Hizbullah would be on the run and Iraq and Lebanon would be in much better shape. Instead Israel and America absorbed their casualties and let their killers stay free and boast. It is unsurprising that from there, things can only get worse.

America's clashes with Al-Sadr set the template for Israel's fighting with Hizbullah. The failure on both sides began at the political level which refused to commit military forces to an all out campaign and were constantly on the lookout for a political way out. But seeking a political solution to terrorism is akin to bribing a wolf with a ham sandwich. It's not a solution but an appetizer.

The general failure in America post 9/11 has been to understand that the War on Terror is not a campaign to uplift and elevate Muslim and Arab civilizations but to destroy them if the free wrld is to survive. The general failure in Israel has been to fall into the same trap of believing there's no military solution, only a poltical one and to disdain the military as brute force that "can only make the muslims angrier."

The more America tried to navigate the labyrinthine currents of Arab societies, the Shiites and Sunnis and the tribal factions, the more America was demonstrating our willingness to accomodate ourselves to the Arab world, rather than as we should have done post 9/11, accomodate the Arab world to us. The more Israel tries to accomodate the US, the more Israel winds up being sucked into the same trap of accomodating the Arabs via the US. Without a recognition that human civilization as we have known it over the past few centuries stands on the brink of anhiliation by growing forces intent on wiping it out, Europe will shortly look like Turkey which once too was a Christian nation, Israel will once again be no more and America will be facing the detonation of nuclear weapons on our soil and a final ultimatum.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Nazism and Islam: Brothers in Evil

By On August 18, 2006

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Dance! Dance, Nasrallah, Dance!

By On August 17, 2006

וְכַאֲשֶׁר יְעַנּוּ אֹתוֹ, כֵּן יִרְבֶּ

By On August 17, 2006
"The number of Israelis living in the West Bank increased by three percent in the first six months of the year...The population increase came despite the political uncertainty during this time over the future of the West Bank settlements as part of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's unilateral withdrawal plan. At the end of June, the number of Jewish settlers living in the West Bank had reached 260,932, up from 253,748 at the end of last year.

The total growth of nearly 7,200 people in the settlements in the first half of the year can be attributed both to natural growth, as well as people moving to the settlements...In contrast, the far-left settlement watchdog group Peace Now called the increased settlement growth "severe
" - Jpost

יב וְכַאֲשֶׁר יְעַנּוּ אֹתוֹ, כֵּן יִרְבֶּה וְכֵן יִפְרֹץ; וַיָּקֻצוּ, מִפְּנֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל


Tuesday, August 15, 2006

One Old Soldier's Protest

By On August 15, 2006

What can one man do?

A Colonel in the reserves David Tatarsky, who served in the Yom Kippur War and the Lebanon War in a tank, otherwise apolitical, is holding a one man protest in front of Prime Minister Olmert's office.

David recalls the time that Motti Ashkenazi went out and stood alone after the Yom Kippur War demanding the resignation of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. In time out of that one man came a mass movement. Though apolitical Colonel Tatarsky is demanding the resignation of Olmert and Halutz. He stood there all day and spent the night at the home of one of his students. He is considering putting up a tent and asking others to join him. People come, he says, but leave soon after.

He does not want merely the 'orange' protesters but people from all walks of life to unite everyone together and bring a new government in the name of elementary decency. He who has failed must resign, especially when on his actions hinge lives, this the blood of the dead demands by the fault of the criminal and incompetent leaders, Colonel Tatarsky says.

There he stands in Yerushalayim by the office of the Prime Minister at the gate of the rose garden waiting for others to join him, to stand besides him, to bring banners, a hat, a chair, a tent if you intend to stay the night.

"A lost war, a hundred and fifty senseless deaths are creating a revolutionary situation. The government that is squandering lives without achieving the crucial goals cannot long remain in power. By the fault of those in power, we may lose the country," David warns, "and then there will not remain any domestic or family concerns."

Colonel Tatarsky asks anyone who can to write about him even if it's on a blog or a livejournal. Press or organizational inquiries in hebrew are welcome to contact him at 05-05-7833-53 or for english inquiries at his lawyer's, Itzik Bam 054-7546-790.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Diplomacy's Unfaithful Dance

By On August 14, 2006














Sunday, August 13, 2006

Olmert Must Go!

By On August 13, 2006

In 1996 another weak Prime Minister who had succeeded a renowed war hero began a military campaign against Hezbollah. While Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel wrecking northern towns and causing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians, Israel launched a bombing campaign in which a UN post was hit, the shelling of Qana resulted in a worldwide cry against Israeli atrocities and Hezbollah was damaged but remained intact. Even the news stories sound indescribably familiar.

"JERUSALEM -- As Operation Grapes of Wrath continued for a second week, a palpable sense of disaster began creeping through government circles in Israel. From every point of view, the mini-war in Lebanon that had looked like a cakewalk when it was launched April 11 seemed to be turning into an embarrassing failure.

Militarily, the situation seemed to be one sustained slap in the face for one of the world's strongest and proudest armies -- the Israel Defense Force. Israel has hurled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tons of high explosives at Hezbollah targets and at other important facilities in Lebanon since the operation was launched to put an end to the militant Islamic group's Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel. But the fanatical Shi'ite Hezbollah fighters were nonetheless still shooting Katyushas at Kiryat Shmona and at a string of smaller Galilee communities all the way to Nahariya on the sea."

That was ten years ago. This time there are hundreds dead and thousands wounded and hundreds of thousands evacuated. The weapons of the enemy are more sophisticated, their range longer. The damage is no longer in the millions but the billions. Operations Grapes of Wrath ended in another useless agreement and Prime Minister Peres declared victory and lost the next election. Now we have another weak Prime Minister declaring victory coming away with another useless UN resolution. Nothing has been learned since and like Peres, Olmert must go.

Olmert committed tens of thousands of IDF soldiers to a war. Many have died, many more have been wounded, some crippled for life. He committed the nation to war and hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes and take shelter. Children spent weeks under bombings. Farmers lost their stock, fields are burned, cattle dead. Out of all this we have come away with nothing except another useless agreement and worst of all we have done what we never have before... we left our soldiers behind.

While his sons sat in Paris and LA, Olmert sent the nation's sons to war. Two of those who went to war, while his sons signed petitions stating their "moral opposition" to serving, have been abandoned under this ceasefire agreement. If they do not return to their families, there is no possible way Olmert can justify staying in office.

Kadima under Olmert\Sharon crippled the military replacing capable generals with political generals who told them what they wanted to hear. Those generals fought a disastrous war. A war demonstrating that little had been learned in a decade. But still Israel did not lose the war. Its leaders handed out the surrender to Hezbollah through the offices of the UN. No leader who surrenders while the army is in the field can remain in office.

The difference between 1996 and 2006 is that the enemy has killed hundreds and can now bombard major Israeli cities. Does anyone want to wait around to see their capabilities in 2016 or for that matter 2010 as the flow of arms from Russia to Iran to Hezbollah continues, as Hezbollah takes control of Lebanon after the victory Olmert has handed them?

Disengagement was a bloody failure. Kadima is a disaster. It's time for Olmert, Livni, Peres and Peretz to go. It's time for every member of this cabinet who voted for the ceasefire to leave. I am under no illusion that they will go willingly. I am under no illusion that their answer will be any different than Golda Meir's and Moshe Dayan's after 1973 when soldiers threw their medals at them. But regardless go they must, no matter what it takes.

Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons. When the day comes that Iran is prepeared to deploy those weapons and make good on its threats to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, Israel must have strong leaders at the helm who can do what needs to be done. Olmert must go. The survival of the nation and the lives of millions depends on it.

Olmert must go.

The Enemy is Already Here

By On August 13, 2006

The enemy is already here... see full gallery here

Friday, August 11, 2006

All That Needs to be Said

By On August 11, 2006



Avi Shavit, Haaretz

Must Read Reporting from Israel

By On August 11, 2006
(I don't usually repost mainstream media content but I don't think many people have seen this and it deserves wider distribution. Ralph Peters, a former US Army Colonel, is reporting from Israel in collumns for the New York Post that bring to mind the legendary reporting of men like Ben Hecht. Some sections of the excerpted article.)

"DRIVING north to the war from Tel Aviv, the traffic thins gradually - until you realize abruptly that your car is the only one left on the road... But as you climb the hills of Galilee, you meet ever fewer vehicles on the roads. A short convoy of Humvees heads toward the fighting, followed by a pair of old Willys jeeps painted olive drab - the Israeli Defense Forces don't all have state-of-the-art gear, but make do with many leftovers from past wars. A military flatbed loaded with 155mm artillery shells labors up a curling mountain road. In a sheltered pass, a last, defiant gas station remains open.

There is no looting. The empty houses of the refugees are safe. Israel pulls together, and no police patrols are needed to protect these businesses and homes. Remaining behind in the north, emergency personnel do what must be done. Hospital staffs work underground in bunkers and bomb shelters, treating military casualties and victims of the terror rockets. Utilities function. The water runs.

But hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been driven away from their homes. You don't hear much about that. Journalists love to think of themselves as bold individualists - but the truth is that they're herd animals...And the herd has decided that the big story of this war is the suffering of Lebanese civilians - misery exaggerated skillfully by Hezbollah's propagandists. Dead or displaced Jews? Who cares? That's yesterday's news. Today's hot fashion statement is to champion Israel's genocidal enemies. And every ambitious journalist wants to be in style.

And then there are the chickens. Not cowards. Real chickens. Thousands and thousands of them, cackling away. Still in their coops. Untended, they'd die quickly. So farmers stay on the front, putting out feed between Katyusha barrages. Vineyards need tending, but grow unkempt. Summer crops rot. Terror rockets burn the fields and set fire to painstakingly reforested hillsides. (Where's Greenpeace when you need them?) It's as if Israel's enemies are jealous even of this reborn earth.

Driving south to file this series of columns, I gave a lift to a naval officer-candidate - even in the most-desolate spots, you see military hitchhikers. The IDF moves largely by private vehicles, buses and the thumb. The young man in the carefully pressed uniform told me that he'd been permitted a quick trip home because 35 Katyushas had slammed into his little village. The media didn't report that, either. They were posing on hotel terraces in Haifa, wearing flak jackets for the camera, 50 miles from the war.

NO innocents should die on either side. But they do. That's war. Yet the one-sided coverage of this conflict is disgraceful. The truth is that all of the dead or wounded, on both sides of the border, are Hezbollah's victims. Israel longs to live in peace with its neighbors. Can anyone honestly claim that for Israel's enemies?

Where is humanity's fellow-feeling for Israel? Where is the sense of justice?
The sorry answer is that a bigoted world couldn't care less. Nobody gives a damn. Except you, my fellow Americans. Except you."

The full article here

And a previous article here , another article here

And a postscript from another Ralph Peters article

"But I see what I do because the Israeli Defense Forces have made no effort to hide this war away. Although I'm bunking in a building full of soldiers, I have no minder telling me what message I'm supposed to carry away, what I'm "really" seeing. Despite the lies in all too much of the media, the Israelis are struggling to fight a moral war - against enemies who know no morality, fanatics who trot out the same dead baby repeatedly for sensation-hungry cameras.

So I'm alone with the war for a little while, counting the time to impact of outgoing rounds and ranging detonations by ticking off the seconds between the flash and the follow-on bang.

What's striking is that every Israeli round is aimed at a military target. Even though the intensity of the firing increased today, as the IDF intensify the offensive, there's no wanton destruction - just the ugly necessity of war.

But Hezbollah's rockets aren't aimed. They're merely pointed. In the general direction of Israeli cities and towns. Simply put, the Katyushas are terror weapons. That difference sums up this war for any decent human being."

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Live from Beirut: It's the HEZBOLLYWOOD AWARDS

By On August 09, 2006

Live from the gorgeous Beirut Hills, location of that famed magic factory of dreams known as Hezbollywood, it's that one night everyone in the Muslim world has been waiting for. It's THE MOHAMMEDS. Those prestigious awards handed out for the best performances and production of faked infidel atrocities against the realm of Islam and its courageous terrorist defenders, wherever they may hide.

First up for best acting performance in a staged attack we had one clear stand-out contender known only by his non-de-plume as "Man in a Green Helmet."

Let's see a clip. The very talented Man in a Green Helmet is renowed for his acting professionalism arriving at the scene of filming even before the attacks happens and remaining for hours and even using authentic dead bodies for proper method acting.

Now for BEST ACTRESS we have Khalida Shahooda.

Khalida may not have a lot of acting range but she has nailed her part of 'Woman in Giant Hijab Mourning the Destruction of Her Home' performing the same part week after week and making it every bit as believeable as the first time. Though in reality Khalida lives in a nice villa outside Beirut, she brings a depth to her characterization that biased Western photographers looking for staged shots can't help but admire.

Next is a very crucial category. Stunt Koran.

The right stunt Koran can incite mobs to trash Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in Karachi and Mumbai and inspire Newsweek reporters to weep that America has become a Fascist (TM) state. It's difficult to get just the right Koran shot for the maximum amount of fury.

Should it be a Koran on fire? A Koran in the toilet? A Koran in high heels selling itself to passerby on Willshire Boulevard? And the winner is....


Okay now that we have that out of the way, it's time to award the prize for BEST PHOTOSHOPPED ATROCITY.

While staging atrocities can be extremely effective it is also expensive and time consuming. Photoshopping atrocities of the Israeli warmongering enemy saves money and reduces the need for extensive shooting with live models and actor's salaries and smuggled whiskey for infidel Western reporters. Now with the magic of Islam's ancient secret weapon, Adobe Photoshop CS2, we present the winner!

CHARLIE SHEEN'S GIANT HEAD OVER BEIRUT as directed by Adnan Haji. Truly a sight to terrify and enrage the tender hearts of the devoted to the sword of Allah.

Now let's have a few words from the man of the hour nominated for the SADDAM MEMORIAL AWARD, Hassan Abu Ahmed 'Donkeyears' Narsallah shown here prematurely surrendering to Israeli forces. Nasrallah is to Hezbollywood as Spielberg is to Hollywood or Ivan Ivanovich is to St. Peterwood. Let's talk to him now.

ACCESS HEZBOLLYWOOD: You've said in the past that you've been inspired by the work of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese among others.

NASRALLAH: Goodfellas! Like Goodfellas! I do trunk scene myself in Beirut. Many times.

ACCESS HEZBOLLYWOOD: So who's your favorite director?

NASRALLAH: Ayatollah Khameni. He direct millions. Kill most. Many dead. I look up to him.

ACCESS HEZBOLLYWOOD: Do you have any plans for your next big release?

NASRALLAH: Many, many projects. Many fake bombings too. Also prestige projects.

Big Pile of Corpses: A Love Story coming in 2006.

Americans Put Underwear On Heads of Martyrs: Vengance (2007)

Gay Dogs of Infidel Zionism Make Shiite Babies Cry (Spring 2007)

Islam is Religion of Radioactive Peace (Winter 2008)

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

History and the Battle Plan

By On August 08, 2006

Napoleon had said that the first casualty of war is your plan of battle. This is all the more true when that plan is itself based on false beliefs maintained and promoted by the establishment as a test of political loyalty in opposition to all available evidence.

For nearly a decade Israel's political and culture establishment invested all its efforts in promoting the Oslo peace plan as the solution to Israel's problems. Under their vision of the future, a Palestinian state would be created side by side with Israel, the neighboring Arab countries would reconcile with Israel, lift their boycotts, end their hatred and a new Middle East would bloom.

As dangerous and destructive as this pied piper's vision was, it penetrated the universities, the Knesset and even the man on the street; but it mostly left the military alone. The IDF after all had no real role in this bright and shiny future. The IDF was therefore able to continue functioning as one of the best militaries in the world and developing the battle plans needed to defend a country whose leaders continued to embark on self-destructive courses of action.

It was the last few years of Sharon's leadership that damaged the IDF. Unlike the Rabin-Peres utopia, Sharon subscribed to a strategic plan that closely involved the IDF. Sharon's belief was that Israel's security could be assured by pulling back from 1967 territories and erecting a wall. The reality is that Sharon's plan was little more than France's Maginot line transplanted to Israel and Israel had disastrously tried to implement static defenses once with the Bar-Lev Line during the Yom Kippur War.

But this did not stop Sharon from shoving that plan down Israel's throat and from dismantling the military in order to ensure its compliance. Sharon removed top commanders, spied on generals, replacing them with political appointees who supported his vision. This transformed the IDF command into something more like an Arab or Russian army whose generals are there because they're loyal to the man at the top, not because of their strategic and military skills. This did not worry Sharon because ultimately in any war he believed that he would be the one running it.

Now Sharon is brain dead and his political successors have no clue how to fight a war. There's an Air Force commander running the IDF in a ground war, which he first tried to fight as an air war with dubious results. The Defense Minister is a former union hack rather than a former general unlike Mofaz. Soldiers are going out underequipped to the front lines while the border guard is over equipped because Sharon's strategic vision focused on defending static borders, whose uselessness the last month of fighting has pretty thoroughly demonstrated.

Incoming soldiers received training on how to expel their fellow citizens from their homes without feeling sorry for them. They were trained to fight terrorists but while the Israeli Army had been regularly warning of a regional war and Hezbollah had been building up its power base, the military had neglected the very real possibility that Israel would be drawn into a regional war.

By retreating to the 67 borders, Israel was also going back in time strategically. By retreating from Gaza, Israel has retreated to before '67 when Jordanian snipers routinely shot away at people walking the streets of Yerushalayim and the days when surrounding Arab countries maintained terrorist camps in their own borders and sent them across into Israel to carry out their attacks. Iran is simply the modern day Egypt and Lebanon the modern day Jordan. Hizbullah is nothing more than another variation of the Fedayeen. Long before the PLO had its own state, courtesy of Peres and Clinton, they were terrorists operating out of Gaza under Egyptian rule and sneaking into pre-67 Israel to carry out their attacks. Sharon made his reputation fighting those terrorists but had forgotten that borders never kept them out, only deterence did.

But how much deterrence did Israel have left after pulling out of Lebanon and Gaza. With Sharon brain dead, there wasn't even an Israeli leader to be afraid of. When the Cedar Revolution happened, it may have harmed Syria but it opened up an opportunity for Iran to turn fight a war with Israel using a country with a weak government that could claim deniability for all of Hizbollah's actions, giving them an open playing field. And so began the game in which Iranian forces operating as Hizbollah bomb Israel and when Israel fights back, wails that the IAF is killing Lebanese children.

Israel has focused on winning the propaganda war but that is a war Israel can never win because most of the world and the media view it as an enemy to their beliefs and ideals; and the war on the ground has suffered. Hizbollah's victory comes not from any actual seizure of territory or winning ground battles but from simply inflicting casualties on Israel, further weakening Israel's image in the middle-east and its deterrence. Arab cartoons now display Israeli soldiers as weak. If not for the unintentional chaos created by the US with the invasion of Iraq and the resulting fragmentation of the Arab world, Israel would be in much bigger trouble than it is now.

As it is if Israel cannot decisively break Hizbollah and remove it from its border, the next stage will be a regional war with several Arab countries, the same war the IDF had been warning Israel will face by 2010. Time is as always running out. The Iranian crisis is melting down and the rest of the Arab world will choose sides. Few Arab countries will have any interest in joining a war against America and Israel, but many of them will rush in to fight a perceptibly weakened Israel as Jordan did in '67 to collect the spoils. Egypt's Mubarak would love to compensate for his American alliance and the pressure on the right from the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria's Assad needs to show he's the man his father was. Iraq's new government needs an outside enemy and a way to lift domestic pressure. These are just some of the countries Israel might well find itself fighting.

Yet meanwhile rather than learning the lessons of its own recent history, Israel's political establishment forgot what happened in 1948 when the Haganah chose to fight Etzel for dominance and destroyed the Altalena, a ship full of crucially needed arms. Similarly Sharon who had been involved in breaking the arms and legs of the Etzel people, whose party he would later join, diverted extensive resources to fighting the settlers and the bogeyman of "right-wing extremists' as a threat. All the intelligence and manpower resources dedicated to this would have been better focused on Israel's own border, than fighting their own brothers.

The suicidal tactic of maintaining static borders and defend rather than attack that led to the Yom Kippur War, also failed to register. Israel is surrounded by enemies who creatively adapt to the situation. They cannot be kept out by static means anymore than you can keep out any intruder who is determined to get in. If you lock the doors and put bars on the windows, he'll come through the roof or the basement or he'll just wait till you step outside or hurl bombs at you from the street. A static defense surrenders the tactical advantage and the battlefield to the enemy. We're seeing the cost of that daily in the streets of Haifa.

An enemy is kept at bay only by deterrence. The very real fear of what will happen to him should he attack. If Israel doesn't recover that deterrence, there will be no Israel left.

Monday, August 07, 2006

The Reuters Photoshop Diaries

By On August 07, 2006
From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: photo sale

Hello Reuters, Adnan here from Lebanon informing you that the latest Zionist depredation has been to release the giant head of Charlie Sheen over Beirut. Will you take pictures at the usual rate?

Adnan Hajj

From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Reuters, Charlie Sheen's giant head has now been joined by Mel Gibson's giant head who has undoubtedly been intimated by Zionist blackmail into joining their unholy war against the Lebanese people. There is no telling what tragic consequences will result from the heads of two Hollywood celebrities flying around the Beirut skyline.

P.S. Note this is an exclusive. Not even CNN has this.

Adnan Hajj

From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Alert Reuters, the Zionist entity's American allies have unleashed their ultimate weapon, a gigantic enraged Al Gore breathing fire across our poor city. Entire buildings have been consumed by the fire-breathing former Vice President. Entire families have had to take shelter in soup cans and discarded luggage. If he attempts to do the Macarena, surely we will all perish.

P.S. Are there any other famous Americans you would like to see over Beirut?

Adnan Hajj

From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Reuters, a previously unknown pro-Zionist entity known only as the United Federation of Planets has dispatched a giant spaceship to bombard Beirut, manned by two known Zionists William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Fire and smoke rises over Beirut in any direction you request. Also we are infested with many tribbles which may be a sign of the end of days and the return of the hidden Imam. The news of this terrible atrocity must reach the world! Please print these pictures and pay me the usual rate.

Adnan Hajj

From: adnanhaji@msn.com
To: photoeditor@reuters.co.uk
Subject: URGENT photo sale

Horrors! Oh Allah! By the prophet's beard the greatest horror is upon us! The Zionists, Celtic branch, have unleashed their worst abomination upon us. Riverdance! Oh Reuters, they dance upon our poor city! Oh sure now and begorrah, tis a sad sad state of affairs it is. Think of it dozens of giant shiny black boots pounding upon Beirut in Celtic rhythm to the strains of a harp and fiddle! They will crush us all!!!

P.S. Please deposit payment in my usual account.

Adnan Hajj

Sunday, August 06, 2006

My Tisha Bav

By On August 06, 2006

It is night, Erev Tisha Bav, and I am headed downtown. I heard Eicha at the Lincoln Square Synagogue, a modern space with curves and diagonals but now I am returning to a place I haven't visited for years. A place as far from modern as you can get. The Lower East Side.

The Lower East Side is where many of America's first Jewish immigrants came. The streets are still imprinted with the sound of Yiddish, with the footsteps of Jews hurrying to shul, with the rolling wheels of their pushcarts and the legacy of their souls. It is also a dying neighborhood whose children have left it for a thousand suburbs and towns. Like the Jerusalem that once was it sits abandoned waiting for its children who will never return.

There are rockets falling on Israel now and new ruins coming into being there but I cannot be in Israel now and so I return to our oldest home in America, to another ruin. The Williamsburg Bridge, ugliest and grimiest of Manhattan's downtown bridges is a shadowy bulk in the night. Stadium lights shine over the FDR Drive's baseball fields, though there is no one there and no game expected. The bleachers are empty and the untrodden green turf gleams eerily under the glare.

The Lower East Side was once home to millions of Jews but those Jews have long gone. It is still a unique community nonetheless, one where elderly men wear gray and plaid hats and the non-religious are as welcome in the Orthodox synagogues as the most devout. The current categories of the frum world, haredi, modern orthodox, chassidic melt here. Any shul you enter will have people from all these boxes and more. They are simply Lower East Side Jews and in the era of communities segregated by minchag, hashkafah and all that pettiness, they are a valuable treasure vanishing away.

Walled in one side by the river, the city in its infinite wisdom walled in on two more sides by huge tracts of housing projects, one that is alone over 16 blocks long. In those projects any local cop could find his way blindfolded, so familiar were they were its interiors from domestic abuse, drug, suicide and shooting calls. They cut off the Lower East Side from the rest of Manhattan strangling it in a headlock of poverty and crime. Chinatown pressed in on the third side with sweatshops, tenements crowded with a dozen illegal immigrants to a room and restaurants with slaughtered pigs in the windows. The Jewish community receded to the co-ops which the Dinkins administration did their best to plant homeless people in.

Still the" infinite wisdom" of our authorities wasn't done with the Jews of the Lower East Side yet. The congressional district for the Lower East Side was gerrymandered, sliced up, sectioned off along with pieces of Brooklyn and Queens into the city's only tri-borough congressional district. The congressman who had represented the Lower East Side was gone replaced with Nydia Velasquez heading a mostly Hispanic district in which she couldn't possibly lose. Her website mentions her district as including Latinos, Chinese and Poles. As far as she is concerned the Jews of the Lower East Side are non-persons who do not exist.

Giuliani time brought with it a new wave of development, yuppies colonized the village and flowed upward bringing with them trendy stores, bars and boutiques. Chinatown wailed. The Latinos threatened action forming GOLES, Good Old Lower East Side (a vision of the neighborhood dating back to the 70's in which the Jews had no place.) The Jews as always remained silent. Their politicians as always served others leaving no one to speak for them. For the ordinary Jews and the ordinary people.

The wealth flowed in and real estate prices went up. There are now bars coating Clinton Street like ticks. There are a dozen healthfood stores, a thousand trendy fusion restaurants opening and closing by the month, their neon signs like fireflies winking in and out of the summer night. The prices went up. The real estate value went up and the bosses on the Lower East Side, the machers and the insiders heard, Sell, Sell, Sell. The co-ops privatized. Elderly men and religious families who had cheap apartments were suddenly being offered six figure sums for them. What could they do. They sold. They sold and the yuppies moved in. The co-ops have many Jews in them still but fewer and fewer of them are religious at all. The racks are full of bikes for the aging "Peter Pans" in shorts who pull down their own six figure salaries in the dot coms of Silicon Alley and the magazines of Fifth Avenue.

And the Jewish Lower East Side is vanishing.

Ratner's where Jazz musicians, punk rockers, men from the garment district with last names like Shmulewitz and Horrowitz and towards the end frum boys out of Mir and Chaim Berlin with starched white shirts and dates named Fraidy or Mindy, had dined in the quiet dignified opulence of red velvet served by elderly waiters who had seen a generation come and go, is now a Sleepy's mattress store. The lights out front which shone so many evenings on courting couples, on famous and infamous names, on saxophonists and gangsters, on Rabbis and cutters shine on displays of foam mattresses. Oi me haya lanu.

Mestiva Tiferet Yerushalayim where Rabbi Moshe Feinstein once walked between the marble plaques lining its interior is an oasis among the 99 cent stores and tenements of Chinatown where his son, Rav David Feinstein still delivers shiurim. Traditionally Jewish Essex and Orchard Streets are a strange fusion half-chinese, half-village. The Jewish bookstores are all but gone. A handful of Jewish garment stores remain. The 2nd Avenue Deli is gone as well, Katz's exists but is non-Kosher. The Jewish community that now remains is in its synagogues. Many already gone.

The noble Pike Street synagogue like a temple of ancient days, its dignified gray masonry is befouled now with the leavings of the discount Chinese store downstairs and the idols of the Buddhist temple above. The Eldridge Street synagogue like something lifted from the streets of Seville, magically born on ships to be rescued from the mad priests of the Spanish Inquisition is half-museum now, but still it stands in all its rococo grandeur.

Mysterious, the Greek synagogue endures. Chasam Sopher has a wealthy benefactor who comes to services in a limousine. It is renovated from top to bottom with a garden on the side but lacks congregants. The Stanton Street synagogue experiments with liberalism obtaining its amateur Rabbis by the bushel from Rabbi Weiss' YCT. Magen Avraham is gone. Its roof caved in one Friday night more than a decade and a half ago. Like foxes on the temple ruins, condominiums stand there now. The Bialystoker gaudily painted on the inside still dominates the remaining Lower East Side with its red and gold like a calliope. By contrast Mestiva Tiferet Yerushalayim is all brown and dust and spiders make their home above, but Torah resounds there still over the worn cracked tile. And the Home of the Sages keeps its vigil, narrow and skinny, its peers out at Williamsburg Bridge where old men in black study the words of G-d on cushioned seats and the eternal flame burns in memory of all that was lost.

My way, circular and bewildered, takes me past all these and more. Takes me like a wandering drunk through the remnants of the Lower East Side. Takes me until unknowingly my feet lead the way to what once was the First Romanian-American congregation, Shaarei Shamayim, the gates of heaven. It must have seemed very much like the gates of heaven once upon a time. A time when Moishe Oysher, Yossele Rosenblatt, Moishe Koussevitsky, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker sang there, their operatic voices soaring high to the vast ceiling, its interior a palace impossible to describe. It persevered through the lean years, gathering its minyanim from the workers in Orchard Street's clothing trade.

Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel, a man who had he not been an Orthodox Jew and in good shape, could have passed for Santa Claus, kept it all going. Tall, always with a ready chuckle, the street was renamed after him. He died and his son took over and the roof once again, the roof always falls in. The insurance company wouldn't pay to fix it and the Synagogue fell in. Of that vast palace of the King, the Creator of earth and heaven, of the synagogue named The Gates of Heaven, all that remains standing now is a single gate. Oi me haya lanu.

Rivington Street is now lined with trendy bars and the lampposts with trendy stickers advertising bands, clubs and causes. ! 'heart' Beirut stickers are glued on everywhere. The sort of trendy propaganda trendy people tend to deploy. The night congeals blue over the eastern horizon. Light, noise, laughter leaks out of the clubs and bars. It's the 20's all over again except the alcohol is legal, just not remotely cheap. It's the 20's without the Jews, the Jews are gone.

A wooden clumsy fence of boards is set around the remains of the demolished Roumanian American Congregation. There isn't even the rubble left inside. If there was a remaining Mikdash on the Lower East Side this was it. Now it is nothing but dust on the earth. No foxes roam there but perhaps mice. Around it the village continues to grow. The space will be bought up for condominiums. The money paid will filter into the community chest as it tries to put on air of confidence and keep the Jewish community going. More shuls will surely fall. A national landmark dating back to 1858, Jewish soldiers prayed there once, Beit Medrash Hagadol is endangered. Developers want to build condos there too. It recently suffered a fire and teeters as always on the edge of time's knife.

Community Board 3 those wise authorities in cooperation with the city now have a new mandate to drastically limit development on the Lower East Side. Those good people are upset over all the bars and condominiums across the neighborhood. I am no great fan of these but I recognize that the alternative is housing projects, crack vials, muggings, murders, empty liquor bottles on every corner and homeless encampments. The bars serve yuppies. The bodegas served the sort of people who when they can't afford their malt liquor will cut your throat for it instead. The bodegas though are considered a part of the community, the bars are not. CB3 wants the Lower East Side to be a ghetto, not a Jewish ghetto of course but a ghetto ghetto. A place where people hopelessly collect and cash their welfare checks and walk among the rubble and trash to the soundtrack of screams, crying children and police sirens.

Ethnic groups who have barely been on the Lower East Side for three decades claim it as their exclusive territory. Latinos insist that the bars and village eateries are crowding out their hair salons and bodegas. Jews of course said nothing when the hair salons and bodegas crowded out our restaurants and book stores. That would have been racist. A Chinese civil rights organization shouts that Orchard Street is Chinese and that any non-Chinese development is an occupation of their territory. Oddly photos of Orchard Street from 70 years back show yarmulkes by the pushcarts. Clearly an illusion of time.

Jews though make no claim on the Lower East Side but the emotional, threaten no one but only hold on to what little there is, as it dwindles away. There is no belligerence to be found. People make their plans while the real estate mavens profit from them, profit from the destruction of a neighborhood and put out cheery bulletins branding the Lower East Side as Loho and celebrating what they have wrought. The insiders who grabbed two apartments for themselves, smashed down the walls and called it a 'Break-Through' are profiting by selling those apartments for a million or more. The parasites rejoice while new funeral notices appear daily on the walls.

I tear down an 'I 'heart' Beirut' sticker and wadding it up toss it up into the night over the wooden fence where the Romanian-American Congregation once was. It falls back down to the sidewalk into the dirt and I go uptown returning home. Oi me haya lanu.



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