IRIS Blog

The IRA and Us, a must-read editorial

Jewish Woman Living with Arab Stabbed to Death

Pataki Ousts Freedom Center From Ground Zero

5 Years of Intifada: 1,061 Israelis Killed in 26,159 Attacks

If you thought I was being too cynical by my explanation of why Israel has been retaliating against empty buildings, see this report today from IMRA:

Israel Radio military correspondent Carmella Menashe reported this morning that the shooting of artillery at an empty field constitutes what military sources term the "strong harsh response" that is to serve as a warning to the Palestinians that they must cease shooting Qassams into Israel.

This is not a parody - she said it without a hint of humor/irony.

It should be noted that prior to the retreat both politicians and military officials warned of the devastating Israeli response the Palestinians would face if attacks were launched against Israel after the retreat. Retreat supporting politicians, academics and others spoke with confidence that Israel would enjoy a free hand to respond after the retreat and that the fierce response would have a strong deterring effect.

From Little Green Footballs:

Beheading Video Man Sent to Jail

A man who used his mobile phone to replay footage of a beheading in Iraq to a hotel shop worker has been jailed for 60 days.

Subhaan Younis, 23, played the images to shocked Charlotte McClay last September at a hotel in Glasgow.

Sentencing him at the city?s district court, the stipendiary magistrate said he could not understand why Younis had the images on his phone. Euan Edment said jail was a fitting penalty for the breach of the peace.

The magistrate told Younis: ?I struggle to understand why you had images on your phone entailing the death and degradation of another human being, regardless of their religion or race.?

Quite a conundrum, indeed! Why would anyone want to collect videos of horrific murders? Out of the blue, the magistrate mentions religion. Hmm. Could that be a clue?

Here is a report of an honor killing in Denmark that was so brazenly open that a photographer was able to record it. It offers some confirmation to my theory that honor killing stems primarily from jealousy on the part of brothers, who are often the losers of a high-stakes sexual lottery when their sisters choose to marry outside the family. Notable in this incident was the additional shooting of the husband.


Calmly and methodically, big brother stoops over his little sister while shooting one projectile after the other into her. Her spouse, affected by several shots to the abdomen, can only look on helplessly, while his wife is executed by her own family.

by IDF Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, summarized by the Presidents Conference Daily Alert:

In the unsettled aftermath of the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank, only one camp seems clearly to know where it is heading - the militant Palestinian -Islamist groups, led by Hamas. These groups now profess their intention to continue their violent campaign in and from the West Bank.

-The relative calm accompanying Israeli disengagement did not arise from PA enforcement, but rather from Hamas's self-restraint. Hamas sought not to bear the blame for any interruption of the Israeli pullout and was also sensitive to the preference of most Palestinians, manifested in opinion polls, for a relative calm.

-In the meantime, the militant groups are strenuously developing their armed capabilities. There are ongoing efforts to extend the range and improve the performance of rockets, as well as extensive attempts to smuggle arms and introduce rockets into the West Bank. Militant groups believe that rocket attacks could play an even greater role from the West Bank since the biggest Israeli population centers and most vital infrastructure are highly vulnerable to trajectory fire from the West Bank.

-A new terror offensive from the West Bank is likely to meet an intolerant Israeli reaction. Israel is better positioned to cope with a terror threat emanating from the West Bank; in recent years it dismantled most terror infrastructure there and now has the ability to enter and exit West Bank cities at relative ease according to security needs.

A must-read by Fouad Ajami:

The remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq is the silence with which it is greeted in other Arab lands. Grant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his due: He has been skilled at exposing the pitilessness on the loose in that fabled Arab street and the moral emptiness of so much of official Arab life. The extremist is never just a man of the fringe: He always works at the outer edges of mainstream life, playing out the hidden yearnings and defects of the dominant culture. Zarqawi is a bigot and a killer, but he did not descend from the sky. He emerged out of the Arab world's sins of omission and commission; in the way he rails against the Shiites (and the Kurds) he expresses that fatal Arab inability to take in "the other." A terrible condition afflicts the Arabs, and Zarqawi puts it on lethal display: an addiction to failure, and a desire to see this American project in Iraq come to a bloody end.

Transcript of Extraordinary Dan Rather Interview Defending "Fake but Accurate" Documents

Despite Support for Hamas, Bush Provides Aid to Saudi Arabia for "Combating International Terror"

IDF Intel Chief: Al Qaeda Has Arrived in Gaza Due to Open Sinai Border

[More News from the Netanyahu Economic Revolution] Economy to Grow by 5.1% this Year, Highest Rate Since 2000

'Third Intifada Almost Here'

Violence Rising Despite Hamas Leader's Commitment to 'Lull' in Violence

Australia to Impose "Draconian" Anti-Terror Laws

Foreign Fighters Now Seen as Main Threat in Iraq

Assad Tells Hamas, Islamic Jihad to Increase Attacks to Divert Attention from Him

British Arms Deal with Saudi Arabia Linked to Halting Corruption Investigation

Hamas Liaison with Saudi Arabia Nabbed

IDF Uncovers Weapons Factory Near Jenin

Top PM Aide: If No Progress with PA, Gov't May Annex in W. Bank

PA Report: Blast During Hamas Parade Caused by Hamas Rockets, Not Israel

'We Dreamed of Growing Old Together': Shocked Family Mourns the Murder of Sasson Nuriel at the Hands of Hamas Terrorists; Attempts Made to Prevent Hamas video of Interrogation of Sasson Reaching Children and Wife

Earlier I described this phenomenon:

Here's how the charade works: Israelis want to be defended from attacks but politicians are frightened of international reaction so they pretend to retaliate without actually attacking anything the enemy cares about....The international press, which is complicit in Palestinian propaganda, is all too eager to present the Israeli and Palestinian misinformation as "savage revenge attacks"

Here is a typical example from today:
Israel Unleashes Barrage in Gaza City

Israel pressed ahead with its offensive against Palestinian militants, unleashing a barrage of missiles against targets throughout Gaza City early Wednesday, knocking out power and plunging the city into darkness. No injuries were immediately reported.

Missiles from Israeli aircraft landed in at least three locations, including the impoverished Tufah neighborhood and the Bureij refugee camp, just south of the city. One airstrike hit a two-story building used by the ruling Fatah party. The offices provide tutoring lessons to school children, and cash and food assistance to families in Tufah.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the army would attack militants relentlessly to force them to stop firing rockets at Israeli towns.

Of course there is no mention in the article that the IDF contends that the "tutoring lessons" building was used for terror by the Popular Front.

I have been warning since August 15 that Gaza would turn into the center of world terror similar to the Taliban's Afghanistan. This means:

1. Gaza is becoming a global hub of terror know-how, operatives and material
2. al-Qaeda is becoming esconced in Gaza
3. "Local" Gaza terror organizations are becoming highly aligned with al-Qaeda and other international elements of the global Jihad

I have been documenting this process. Today brings word that Hamas has now adopted Iraqi al-Qaeda tactics:

Hamas Releases Iraq-Style Video of Murdered Israeli

Update: Al-Qaeda is in Gaza

Here is another report on the massive amount of New Orleans misinformation distributed by the mainstream news media.

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy

Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong

Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.

His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

A must-read by Moshe Arens, who never expressed this much moral clarity as a frequent guest on my radio show:

Israelis do not give up easily. If we cannot reach an agreement with the Palestinians, we are just going to solve the problem ourselves - unilaterally. We are going to put some space between us and the Palestinians or, in other words, disengage - even if creating that space means pulling Israeli citizens out of their homes by force. It is almost incomprehensible that this ludicrous idea - that in this tiny country, in which Jews and Arabs live cheek by jowl, we can separate the peoples so as to avoid all contact - has been promoted by another experienced military man and politician, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and has seized the imagination of many Israelis.

The fortuitous demise of Arafat, the arrival of Mahmoud Abbas as elected leader of the Palestinians, has given another boost to this idea, now embellishing it with the anticipation that disengagement will not only get Jews and Palestinians out of each others' hair, but will actually lead to peace between Israel and a Palestinian state.

As happened after the Oslo adventure, and again at the time of Barak's egregious offers to Arafat at Camp David, Sharon's disengagement plan is being praised as a bold and courageous move in much of the world, and the Nobel peace price committee is probably already preparing next year's award. But if, as seems likely at the moment, the Palestinian mini-state in Gaza turns out to be a nest of terrorist activity against Israel, the Noble prize will have to be mothballed and Israel, sobered up for the nth time, will have to go back to meeting the challenge of handing the Palestinian terrorists a decisive defeat, in the realization that this is the necessary condition for progress toward peace in the area.

A must-read by Hillel Halkin:

It has long been obvious to all but the incurably or willfully blind that the 1993 agreement signed in Oslo between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization was a horrendous blunder on Israel?s part. Rarely in history has a country so foolishly opened its gates to a Trojan horse as Israel did when it welcomed Yasir Arafat and his PLO brigades, handed over to them most of the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank, and gave them the arms to impose their rule on the local inhabitants. How could such a mistake have been made by experienced political and military leaders, statesmen and generals whose careers had spanned a half-century of managing Israel?s bitter conflict with the Arabs?

A year afterward, when the Oslo agreement was already headed toward its eventual collapse, I found myself musing about this question with a good friend of mine, the Harvard professor of Yiddish literature and fellow Commentary contributor Ruth Wisse. Whereas she had been strongly against the Oslo agreement from the start, I had initially been less certain about it. It had deeply troubled and scared me; but although I did not take part in the delirium of applause that greeted the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn, neither did I immediately join the critics. Surely, I thought, Israel?s leaders must have some idea of what they were doing. I would wait and see?and hope for the best.

Now I said to Ruth:

?Tell me something. You and I have had our share of political disagreements in the past. You?ve always said that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians would result in a disastrous cave-in, and I?ve always said that concessions had to be made. Now they have been made?and you were right and I was wrong. How did you, who live in America, understand what I, who live in Israel, failed to see??

?It?s because I know my Yiddish literature,? Ruth replied.

At first I thought she was joking. Then I realized she had said something profound?profound enough, in any case, to merit 600 pages of exegesis in Kenneth Levin?s well-researched and strenuously argued new work of psychohistory, The Oslo Syndrome.

From Globes:

Foreign investment in Israel totaled $7.31 billion in January-August 2005, more than the $7.22 billion invested in 2004 as a whole....Foreign direct investment was $4.2 billion in January-August, 2.5 times the $1.66 billion invested in 2004 as a whole.

These numbers are part of the success story of the Netanyahu reforms. They illustrate that even minor improvements in economic freedom can lead to extraordinary improvements.

Direct foreign investment is up at an annualized rate of 380% this year. I believe this is the key indicator for future economic performance given Israel's size and isolation. It is investment in tangible assets such as factories and machines, as opposed to financial instruments such as stocks which demonstrate much less commitment and which do not directly lead to productivity gains. Productivity is the economic magic bullet because it drives real income increases for individuals and economic power for nations.

It is difficult to comprehend the enormity of the concept of exponential growth, but perhaps this example will help. If this rate of increase were to continue, it would take less than nine years for all of the current direct foreign investment in the world to be invested in Israel. At eleven years, it would consume all of the economic output of every nation on the planet.

From Ha'aretz

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won Monday's Likud Central Committee vote on whether to hold an early Likud Party primary by a slim 104-vote margin.

Sharon's victory by a majority of 1,433 to 1,329 over his rival MK Benjamin Netanyahu, who pushed for the proposal to hold the primary in 60 days, puts a freeze on the struggle within the Likud until April, when the primaries are scheduled under the party constitution.

Turnout was high as 91 percent, or 2,762 central committee members out of the listed 3,050 heeded Sharon's call by coming to cast their ballot.

The victory places Sharon in an even greater dilemma, according to some commentators, than if he had lost. In fact, Sharon is getting extra time to decide on his political future competing in the Likud or setting up a new political body to fight in the next elections.

No sitting Prime Minister has ever been rejected by an Israeli party before. Ariel Sharon has just come the closest.

See also:
Netanyahu: PM's Job Offers Tilted Likud Vote

Rather: Bush Guard Memo Story "Accurate," Never Proven Not So

First Temple-Era Seal Discovered

Dramatic Torture of North Korean Refugee

Bomb Injures Anti-Syria Journalist in Lebanon

[Stop the Presses] UN Criticizes Israel

Gunmen Kill Palestinian 'Collaborator' in West Bank

Islamic Jihad Man Pays the Price for Arrogance

Headstones and Torah desecrated in Eilat