Bookworm Room

Day before yesterday, I wrote:
Reader Lulu send me an email pointing out something interesting, which is that Hezbollah is doing nothing right now.  You’d think that this would be a perfect time for Hezbollah to force a two-front war on Israel.  That it’s not doing so might be a good indication that, all propaganda to [...]

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It’s been an incoherent day, one that never gave me the opportunity for contemplation and writing.  Instead, I’ve been bopping here and there, and dealing with one thing and another.  Nevertheless, I have been tracking the news, so I thought I’d just write up a mish-mash of thoughts about current issues and events.
Gaza
The top issue/event, [...]

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I ask, because I hope that’s what Israel does when it receives this request.

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In my post yesterday about the corpse/prisoner swap in which Israel exchanged, I noted that an inviolate body is a very important part of Jewish religious law, going back to the ancient Jewish revulsion against pagan sacrifice and the subsequent desecration of corpses. (I also noted that I didn’t think that was a sufficient reason [...]

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Not that they were ever really on, but when it comes to Obama, my gloves are off. I’ve concluded that the man is not just a liar and an ideologue, he’s stupid. With regard to the situation in Lebanon (where Hezbollah is using terror to topple the power of the democratically elected government), [...]

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I respect Condi Rice for the most part, but have thought her naive for believing (or, at least, appearing to believe) that the Palestinians want peace with Israel, as opposed to Israel in pieces.  David Brooks, however, thinks that there is a method to her madness, and that Iran’s follies may result in a back [...]

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Let’s see if I’ve got my chronology right here:
On January 29, Hamas and Fatah announced a ceasefire prompted, I think by a reminder from their compatriots that their real job is to kill Jews.
On February 1, Hamas gunman ambushed Fatah trucks, killing 6 people, injuring 70, and kidnapping 15 people. A Fatah spokesman seemed [...]

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I’ve long thought the UN irredeemably corrupt, with the miserable Kofi Annan merely a symptom, not a cause of the problem there. I’m wondering, though, if I might have to revise that thinking just a little bit, in light of something new at UNIFIL. Thanks to Laer, at Cheat-Seeking Missiles, I’ve learned that [...]

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Israel has usually, although not always, been adept in the battlefield. She’s been a total failure in the media. However, for the first time, I’m seeing signs that she’s fighting back:
Israel’s military, which has been accused of abuses in its war against Hezbollah this summer, has declassified photographs, video images and prisoner interrogations [...]

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From American Thinker:
The French will flex military their “military muscle” to shoot down Israeli observation jets. After years of ignoring Hezbollah preparations to terrorize Israel, after hiding a video that could have helped Israel find out what happened to soldiers murdered by Hezbollah in 2001 (the kidnappers used trucks with UNIFIL identification, trucks that UNIFIL [...]

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As you read this about Hezbollah’s victory party, remember this: “[A]t the end of the day, even if you put a calico dress on it and call it Florence, a pig is still a pig.” Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corporation, Inc., 147 F.Supp.2d 668, (S.D. Tex. 2001). In this case, you can call [...]

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Writing at National Review Online, Emanuele Ottolenghi makes a good case that, while Israel might not have won decisively in this last go round, Hezbollah did not achieve any of its objectives at all, and suffered some serious losses all around, both in terms of soldiers and materiels. Ottolenghi also shows that the myth [...]

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As part of a superb article about Hezbollah, the war with Israel, and the larger ramifications of that war and its outcome, Dan Gordon properly identifies Hezbollah and its goals:
Hezb’allah is not your father’s terrorist organization. This is not a group of loosely affiliated cells of would-be hijackers or suicide bombers. Hezb’allah is a terrorist [...]

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The meme has been that Israel lost.  Hezbollah still exists, Israel had to cede control of her fight to the UN (blech), and so on and so on.  However, winning or losing is often described in terms of what the parties to the engagement sought to achieve.  Hezbollah sought to destroy Israel.  Israel sought to [...]

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At the UN today, the “Arab Group” made its ad hoc contribution to the Draft International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. To the existing preamble paragraph, they proposed including this language to describe what they perceive as an existing problem:
“Concerned that situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation and the [...]

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In the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, stories are popping up all over that Hezbollah, Iran and the New York Times have loudly been trumpeting a Hezbollah victory.  Others say the opposite is true.  And even I, while I don’t think Hezbollah won, don’t think Israel won other, something that may be [...]

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This is the start of a Stratfor analysis I received today:
An extraordinary thing happened in the Middle East this month. An Israeli army faced an Arab army and did not defeat it — did not render it incapable of continued resistance. That was the outcome in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. [...]

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Before the Nazis killed the Jews, they executed those they deemed unfit because of physical or mental handicaps. My goyish uncle, who was institutionalized because he was “crazy” (we now think he might have been homosexual), was one of the first the Nazis executed in their drive to purify the Aryan nation.
In yet another [...]

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Again, fairly overwhelming work and family commitments will keep my blogging nonexistent, but there’s interesting stuff in the Middle East as I discovered when I took a break to read up-to-the-minute news and analysis at the Captain’s Quarters.  The Lebanese government is falling, Hezbollah is fighting harder, and Israel may actually have ended up in [...]

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Say it ain’t so, Joe.  The latest report is that Olmert accepted the UN brokered peace deal.  Without even knowing the details, I’m absolutely certain that any “peace” deal that goes through the is a loss for Israel:
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accepted an emerging Mideast cease-fire deal and informed the United States of [...]

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I can’t remember where I read it, but someone pointed out that, while in Iraq the terrorists like to show themselves, Hezbollah prefers an off camera presence, with the emphasis on the real and imagined bomb damage to Lebanese people and structures. It is interesting, therefore, to see at least one Hezbollah face. [...]

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The foiled bomb plot in England is again bringing into stark relief how the BBC manipulates the news to hide the Islamist component behind all the terror attacks worldwide and to focus blame on Israel. The most recent indictment is a Wall Street Journal commentary from William Shawcross, a British writer. As far [...]

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I just got to my computer now, which has me many hours behind early risers, let alone those early risers on the East Cost. I’m therefore only just assimilating the news about the foiled plot to blow up multiple US-bound British planes in the air. My first thought on hearing the news was [...]

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Just because I was curious, I checked out the Kuwait Times online to see how an Arab nation that’s pretty much on the sidelines is reporting on the Israel-Hezbollah War. I didn’t have to look very far. One of the headlined articles is “Israel on baby-killing spree.” Bizarrely, the article not only [...]

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My past few photograph posts have been following stories about Hajj’s decision to manipulate the photographs he took.  Of course, that’s not the only thing that’s happening in Lebanon.  Another huge problem is the fact that Hezbollah is faking entire scenes for photographers’ benefit.  EU Referendum follows one such staged event which is especially disturbing [...]

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