Bookworm Room

Tweet Reality, stripped of politically-correct pap — or, Hamas is even worse than the Nazis:

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Tweet It’s been another family-maintenance day, which precludes not only blogging but, quite often, even thinking.  Having a house full of children is revitalizing and exhausting all at once. I also took my Mom clothes shopping, which makes her extraordinarily happy, but leaves me limp and floppy.  I am every cheapskate’s dream, because I just [...]

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Tweet Yesterday, I wrote about those rare individuals who can rise above fear in a terrorist state to become part of the solution, rather than a mere victim of the problem.  With perfect timing, a friend sent me an article from the Times of Israel, about Mosab Hasson Yousef, a young man of unusual moral [...]

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Tweet With a few stellar exceptions, the best way to tell a story is in chronological order.  This is because, in the real world, cause and effect matter.  I suspect that the AP knows this is true, which is why they had their latest report from the Middle East start with the effect (Israeli airstrikes) [...]

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Tweet Five years after Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, a period during which he has been completely invisible and denied any access to humanitarian agencies, a small handful of American Muslims has finally decided to say something: The Aug. 26 letter’s 11 signatories include the two Muslim members of Congress — Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and [...]

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Tweet Are you aware that Iran was caught smuggling weapons into Gaza? Do you think Israelis have any legitimate reason to be concerned that Hamas may try to receive weapons via boat? Did you know that Hamas activists have shot about 4000 rockets into southern Israel since Israel withdrew form Gaza? Does that trouble you? [...]

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Tweet Yesterday, White House officials were telling Jake Tapper that Obama would support Israel.  Any minute moments of hope I cherished that the administration actually meant what it said were swiftly dashed.  This is Obama’s version of support: The Obama administration considers Israel’s blockade of Gaza to be untenable and plans to press for another [...]

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Tweet Israel stopped a contingent of Hamas supporters who tried to run a blockade bringing money and supplies into Gaza.  Cynthia McKinney figures prominently in their number: The Israeli navy intercepted a ship carrying foreign peace activists – including a San Rafael woman – trying to break a blockade of Gaza on Tuesday and forced [...]

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Tweet Using your own people as weapons is not a new tactic.  During WWII, the Soviet Union was effective against the Germans, not because it had good weapons, but because it had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder.  When the Germans advanced on Russia, the Soviets threw unarmed men in front of the Germans, [...]

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Tweet These men aren’t dead yet, but they will be if they’re ever released back to Hamas’ TLC.  The men of whom I speak are Gazans whom Israel captured during the recent Gaza incursion, and who have spilled the beans about Hamas’ myriad war crimes and financial defalcations — all of which consistently starve, murder, [...]

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Tweet Here’s a sickening AP story blaming Israel for the “trauma” inflicted on Gazan children.  The story’s only acknowledgment that Hamas itself placed the children in the line of fire is the following paragraph, one that is carefully crafted to make it seem as if it was Israel’s fault that the poor Hamas fighters had [...]

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Tweet I’ve had some family management issues taking up my time today (all is good, but, boy, was the management time-consuming), but my faithful friends send me wonderful, thought-provoking things that I can pass along to you.  Here’s a good video trying to help Americans understand what Israelis have suffered for the last ten years [...]

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Tweet Peters has said everything I’d like to say.

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Tweet I can guarantee you that Mr. Jim Bramell, a Mill Valley resident spouting this kind of belly-gazing crap, was not on the streets protesting at any time during the last several years as Hamas fired thousands of missiles into Israel, destroying myriad little castles (for footage of some of those destroyed little Israeli castles, [...]

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Tweet I’m sorry, but when a law professor writes this kind of prima facie garbage, you have to wonder about an administration that keeps him on board.  Without even delving into actual facts, let me just fisk the relevant parts of Bisharat’s article regarding Israel and war crimes to reveal logical inconsistencies and outright gibberish: [...]

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Tweet Hamas has been making much of its dead children.  It had a field day with photos of those children who died when the IDF shot shells into a “UN school.”  Most of the world (including, of course, a credulous and/or complicit media) managed to ignore the fact that it’s bizarre that, in the midst [...]

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Tweet Not a conversation in which I was involved (nor was it politic or appropriate to become involved), but I heard someone this morning praising Carter’s execrable editorial (and I’m not going to dignify that with a link) castigating Israel for defending itself. The liberal praising the article, when asked about the rocket attacks, said [...]

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Tweet Hamas’ tried and true tactic worked again — it put children in the line of fire and Israel, rather than moving forward to protect her own children, is caving: Israel has shown the first signs of bowing to the international outcry over its 11-day onslaught of Gaza after some 40 Palestinians sheltering in a [...]

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Tweet 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 [...]

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Tweet Vacation is over and I’m back to my work schedule, which means no more morning blogging (not that I was very inspired in the morning during vacation).  Still, I had to share this gem with you. I spoke with a liberal friend yesterday, who is lukewarm about Israel, and he told me that Israel [...]

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Tweet Alan Dershowitz gives us some insights into the evil that is Hamas (and I use the word evil deliberately and without any artistic hyperbole), and then explains how, under international law, the concept of “proportionality” properly works in the face of that kind of evil.  Incidentally, it’s not far from my post from a [...]

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Tweet I have an embarrassing confession to make:  When I was young, one of my favorite shows was Hogan’s Heroes.  I found it a weekly marvel to see the dashing, clever Colonel Hogan run rings around the Germans.  Nor was I at all perturbed by the asymmetry of it all, with the Germans portrayed as [...]

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Tweet Israel finally said “enough is enough” and counterattacked Gaza.  I think John Podhoretz nails everything that needs to be said on the subject in the short-term, and I’m impressed enough with his depth and brevity to reproduce his entire paragraph right here: Israel launched a massive air campaign against the infrastructure of Hamas terror [...]

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Tweet I’ve been reading two things that seem to twine together.  The first is the ongoing news out of Gaza, about Hamas continuously firing missiles into Israel (as well as into their own population).  Noah Pollak wrote a very good commentary in response to a question about why Hamas, through its outpost in Gaza, keeps [...]

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Tweet Sometimes, the bizarre nature of the Middle East defies description (all emphasis mine): Nine Palestinians were killed and dozens hurt in battles in Gaza City between forces of the rival Hamas and Fatah movements on Saturday, prompting Israel to open its border to fleeing Fatah members. The fighting, which lasted most of the day, [...]

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