IRIS Blog

Because of incessant Palestinian genocidal propaganda, there is an entire population ready to seize any opportunity to murder. Unfortunately the victim of this terror incident did not recognize this, and only learned the dhimmi lesson that he was in the wrong for getting lost: "The bottom line is that Jews should not end up in Ramallah":

And you thought your GPS system was trouble? For 28-year-old Bat Yam resident Amir Ochana flawed GPS navigation nearly proved fatal. Instead of a planned return trip to Jerusalem, Ochana’s GPS system directed him towards the West Bank City of Ramallah.

Ochana had just finished work in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of Jerusalem, and wanted to give his secretary a ride home to the Adam settlement northeast of Jerusalem. He plugged in the coordinates for a return trip to Jerusalem into his GPS system and set of on his merry way.

The Bat Yam resident recounts the horror that followed. “I ended up at an army checkpoint and they let me through even though I was wearing a kippah and had Israeli license plates...I ended up in the center of Ramallah, stuck in traffic and surrounded by Arabs,” he says. “I still didn’t realize where I was because I relied on my GPS.”

Soon, however, Ochana was spotted by the local Arab residents. “One Arab merchant came up to my car and started rapping on my window.He asked me if I was Jewish and I answered ‘yes.' I immediately knew that something was wrong.”

The Arab merchant then entered Ochana’s vehicle through the window, punched him in the testicles and stole his cellular phone. “He began to yell ‘a Jew, a Jew’ and other Arabs soon approached me. They stole my GPS and my other cellular phone,“ said Ochana.

This mugging was soon the least of Ochana’s problems, as a lynching almost ensued afterwards. “An entire mob approached me and began to throw rocks at my car...they broke both the front and back windows

Just as Ochana began to fear the worst, however, help came from an unexpected source. “Two Arabs came out of nowhere...One of them pulled me out of the car and asked me if I was insane. They ran with me to the Qalandiya checkpoint while we were chased by rock-pelting Arabs the entire way, and handed me over to Israeli soldiers,” he recounted.

Our first story today comes from Bethlehem, where news outlets worldwide are reporting without skepticism (see, for example: Bethlehem Basks in Calm and Cheer) the staged 'celebrations' of people who fear to speak the truth:

Muslims driving Christians out of Bethlehem, but media outlets choose to blame Israel

Ah, Christmas in Bethlehem. Manger Square is ablaze with colorful lights. The weather is usually a bit chilly. Aggressive merchants bombard passersby with “special sales” on all kinds of cedar wood statues and religious carvings.

And like clockwork, the mainstream media descend upon this city every year to ignore rampant Muslim intimidation of Christians and instead blast Israel - often with completely inaccurate information - for ruining Christmas and for the drastic decline of Christianity in one of the holiest cities for that religion.

Take a widely circulated piece by McClatchy Newspapers writers Dion Nissenbaum and Cliff Churgin.

The piece, published last week, cites Bethlehem's dwindling Christian population and paints a picture that squarely blames Israel.

"For generations, the Holy Land Arts Museum (in Bethlehem) has been selling olivewood manger scenes to thousands of pilgrims wanting souvenirs from the biblical birthplace of Jesus," starts the piece.

"Gone is the olivewood stable shielding the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. In its place, looming over the angelic family, are an Israeli watchtower and three towering sections of an adjoining wall."

Outright lying, the McClatchy Newspapers piece stated Bethlehem "remains largely isolated from the outside world by Israel’s 25-foot-tall concrete walls, part of Israel’s separation barrier."

The piece implied the wall caused the crash of Bethlehem's economy and prompted Christians to flee. Similar articles were churned out by Reuters, the BBC online and scores of local newspapers.

ABC News, for example, chimes in: "The (Israeli) wall has cast a shadow over this famous West Bank town."

Now let's get our facts straight. Bethlehem is not surrounded by any wall....

Here's another story, which puts Bethlehem in context of Christians under siege worldwide:

A Creche Without Christians

Lands that once were the cradle of Christianity have turned distinctively inhospitable to the faith.

Fiercely intolerant variants of Islam are taking hold in the region, many of them fueled with ideology and funds from Saudi and Iranian extremists.

From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, we are seeing the rapid erosion of Christian populations, thought to now number no more than 15 million.

The new survey, Freedom in the World, produced by the Center for Religious Freedom, shows that while some Muslim governments do respect religious freedom, none are to be found in the Middle East.

Israel is the only "free" country, and its Christian numbers are increasing.

See also: The End of the Christian Community in Gaza

(Hat tip to Lauren Grodnicki for catching a bad link)

More evidence of what I have been documenting, that The Veil is a Weapon:

Woman Caught with Bomb Under Burqa

Afghan intelligence agents said Monday they had detained a woman hiding a bomb-filled waistcoat of the type used in Taliban suicide attacks under her all-covering burqa.

The 55-year-old woman was followed from the eastern province of Kunar after a tip-off and arrested in the town of Jalalabad, an official in Kunar’s intelligence department told AFP.

“She was carrying the suicide waistcoat for the Taliban. We had intelligence reports that she was working for the Taliban,” said the official, who asked not to be identified by name.

The woman was being questioned “to find out more about her network,” he said.

Most Afghan women still wear the burqa, which was mandatory under the 1996-2001 Taliban government, and cannot be searched by men at security checkposts.

Jeff Jacoby has penned a must-read, cataloging a jaw-dropping theme. Unfortunately he closes his piece with a standard deception--that 'extremists' are behind this phenomenon, and that 'moderate Muslims' reject the practice. For one recent example see this women's report of death threats by her family even though 'my father could not be described as an extremist':

THE "QATIF GIRL" won a reprieve last week. On Dec. 17, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah pardoned the young woman, who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after she pressed charges against seven men who had raped her and a male acquaintance in 2006. Two weeks earlier, Sudan's president extended a similar reprieve to Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher convicted of insulting Islam because her 7-year-old students named a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons had been sentenced to prison, but government-organized street demonstrators were loudly demanding her execution.

In January, Nazanin Fatehi was released from an Iranian jail after a death sentence against her was revoked. She had originally been convicted of murder for fatally stabbing a man when he and two others attempted to rape her and her niece in a park. (Had she yielded to the rapists, she could have been flogged or stoned for engaging in nonmarital sex.)

The sparing of these women was very welcome news, of course, and it was not coincidental that each case had triggered an international furor. But for every "Qatif girl" or Nazanin who is saved, there are far too many other Muslim girls and women for whom deliverance never comes.

No international furor saved Aqsa Parvez, a Toronto teenager, whose father was charged on Dec. 11 with strangling her to death because she refused to wear a hijab. "She just wanted to look like everyone else," one of Aqsa's friends told the National Post, "and I guess her dad had a problem with that."

No reprieve came for Banaz Mahmod, either. She was 20, a Kurdish immigrant to Britain, whose father and uncle had her killed last year after she left an abusive arranged marriage and fell in love with a man not from the family's village in Kurdistan. Banaz was choked to death with a bootlace, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in a garden 70 miles away.

More than 25 such "honor killings" have been confirmed in Britain's Muslim community in recent years. Many more are suspected.

There has been no storm of outrage about the intimidation and murder in Basra, Iraq, of women who wear Western-style clothing. Iraqi police say that more than 40 women have been killed so far this year by Islamists; the bodies are often left in garbage dumps with notes accusing the victims of "un-Islamic behavior."

By Western standards, the subjugation of women by Muslim fanatics, and the sometimes pathological Islamist obsession with female sexuality, are unthinkable. Time and again they lead to shocking acts of violence and depravity:

In Pakistan, a tribal council ordered a woman to be gang-raped as punishment for her brother's supposed liaison with a woman from another tribe.

In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after she uncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor at a friend's wedding.

In Tehran, a father beheaded his 7-year-old daughter because he suspected that she had been raped; he said he acted "to defend my honor, fame, and dignity."

In Saudi Arabia, the Islamic police prevented schoolgirls from leaving a burning building because they were not wearing headscarves and abayas; 15 of the girls died in the inferno.

Read the whole thing...

Leftists frequently lament the targeting of 'low-level' terrorists, when the 'big fish' are unmolested. In this case, however, Kadima ministers are proposing to change the 'rigid standards' of murder to exclude those who mastermind terrorist operations:

Ministers met Monday morning to broaden the range of terrorists Israel may release in an effort to include arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti. To do so they are considering narrowing the definition of the term "blood on their hands," to no longer include the one who gave the order.

Barghouti has headed every prisoner release list demanded by the Palestinian Authority in negotiations with Israel. The Tanzim terrorist leader is serving five life sentences in Israeli prison for master-minding attacks that killed five Israelis and wounded many more. Tanzim is affiliated with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction....

Left-wing Meretz Knesset Member Avshalom Vilan was in favor of the idea. "Israel should stop dealing with definitions and rigid standards," he said. "In Israel too there are fighters who killed terrorists and can be considered as those with 'blood on their hands.' We call them terrorists but they [PA Arabs] call them freedom fighters."

Not that this should come as a surprise, but a longtime Arafat aide admitted that Black September was actually founded by Yassir Arafat. The financier of Black September's Munich massacre, of course, was none other than Mahmoud Abbas.

One of the few pieces of good news in the overall trend of minorities fleeing Muslim majorities everywhere around the world:

IRAQI Christians who fled a district of Baghdad that declared itself an al-Qaeda caliphate have returned home to celebrate their first Christmas in two years.

Known as the "Vatican of Iraq", the small but long-established Christian enclave in the mainly Sunni district of Doura suffered constant terror at the hands of

al-Qaeda gunmen who tried to impose a Taliban-style rule.

Churches were car-bombed, women were threatened for not wearing Islamic headscarves, and families had to pay off local mosques to keep them safe from kidnap gangs.

But now al-Qaeda has been rooted out of Doura and the hundreds of Christian families who left the area are returning.

On Christmas Day they will congregate in the battle-scarred St Mary's Church, where part of the crucifix on its tower is still missing after being shot at.

"We closed the church two years ago because of all the trouble," said the priest, Father Younadim Shamoon, 45, who has decorated its bullet-cratered walls with modest fairy lights.

"But many people are coming back after word got around that the local Muslim people were welcoming us again. We thank God and hope that we can live together again as brothers."

Caroline Glick brings another brilliant insight into what's really driving Israeli society:

This week the IDF distributed ribbons to its soldiers and officers for their service in the war with Hizbullah in 2006. The ribbons were a source of embarrassment. Soldiers and officers, who like the general public view the war as Israel's greatest military defeat, are loath to pin them on their uniforms.

While the soldiers and general public view the war as a failure, one sector of Israeli society sees the war as a great triumph. For Israel's legal establishment, the war was a great victory. It was a war in which its members asserted their dominance over Israel's political and military leadership.

The legal establishment's ardor for the Second Lebanon War was exposed on Tuesday with the publication of the testimonies of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz and Military Advocate-General Avichai Mandelblit before the Winograd Committee which the Olmert government established to research the war's failures. In their testimonies both men shared their perception of the war as a great victory of lawyers in their campaign to "lawyerize" - or assert their control - over Israeli society.

In his opening statement, Mazuz extolled the war as "the most 'lawyerly' in the history of the State of Israel, and perhaps ever." He explained, "The process didn't begin in Lebanon 2006. It… is a gradual process of 'lawyerizing' life in Israel."

Read the whole thing...

Now that Abbas has collected pledges for over eight billion dollars for his 'moderate' government, Fatah has resumed blatant recruitment of jihad terrorists:

A Palestinian Authority TV mainstay is back on the screen, with the Virgins of Paradise reminding would-be suicide bomber terrorist shahids (martyrs) of the reward that awaits them when they die fighting the Jews.

Palestinian Media Watch alerted the public this week to the return of the program, which has been broadcast regularly over the past month after a hiatus of more than a year. The constant reruns may signal the need to increase motivation among PA Arab men to join the terrorist ranks and donate their lives to fighting Israelis.

The music video depicts a lovely Arab woman being shot in the chest, as she runs forward to greet a PA terrorist being released by IDF soldiers on the other side of a barbed wire fence.

The young woman is next seen dressed in a white robe dancing with other similar maidens in a shining pool of water, while her grief-stricken lover hunches over her tomb in the night, grim determination in his eyes.

The terrorist is then seen getting up and being shot in the back by Israeli soldiers as he is running from the gravesite. The scene flashes to the dancing maidens, including his love welcoming him, presumably to Paradise in reward for his Shahada (Death for Allah).

This scenario is based on Islamic traditions described in the Muslim holy book, the Koran (Suras 42, 44, 52, 56 and others) which states that a man who dies as a martyr is rewarded with eternal Paradise and 70 virgins upon his arrival.

To view the video, click here

Muslim dominance of Europe is not a prediction for the future. It is primarily a matter of waiting for current children to grow older. And the bad news is that young Muslims are experiencing assimilation in reverse--surveys show that they are generally much more radical than their parents:

The name Mohammed is expected to become the most popular name in England and Wales by 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.

The name, according to the report, was second only to Jack in 2007, which has been top for the last 13 years. 6,772 boys were called Jack and 6,387 were called Mohammed or a variant.

"High birth rate among Muslim families" is the reason cited by the report for how Mohammed will be the most popular boy's name by next year.

For those of you who reflexively believe that big government is the solution to every public problem, consider how you would feel if a violent felon was sentenced to house arrest, in your house. The good news, in this case, is that the criminal is not a total stranger. He apparently is an acquaintance of the family's 16-year-old daughter:

Couple Forced to Take in Criminal Lodger after He Tells Court their House is His Home Address

A convicted criminal has moved in with a married couple against their wishes after giving their address in court as his home.

Shane Sims, 19, has spent the last few days living with Brenda and Robert Cole after he was sentenced to a week’s curfew for breaching a supervision order.

But the couple claim the first they knew about it was when Sims, a friend of their daughter, moved in on Thursday - followed by security contractors who put a box in a bedroom to monitor his movements with an ankle tag. Sims’ tag keeps him indoors between 7pm and 7am much to the horror of the Coles, who both have learning difficulties.

Mrs Cole, 47, said: “It’s turned our lives upside down. He’s taken over the whole place. He sprawls across the sofa and he’s always in the bathroom when you need it. It’s an absolute disgrace. They’ve let a criminal come into our home and there is nothing we can do about it.”

"How can he get away with giving false details? Can crooks pick anywhere they like and just move in? Who needs to break into a house when the courts will do it all for you?....

Sims appeared before magistrates last Thursday where he admitted breaching a two-year supervision order imposed for assault. He gave the Coles’ Bristol address as his bail address but the Probation Service did not verify it. Sims claims he was told he could stay by the Coles’ 16-year-old daughter Tanya after he fell out with his father.

He allegedly told Mrs Cole: “I’m staying here until the tag’s off. There’s f**k all you can do about it. The courts have told me to”....

Sims said: "I said 'I'll be gone before Christmas' and I will be. I can't see what the problem is. They keep changing their minds. I don't even want to be here."

The good news is that a catastrophe was averted this time because the missile barely missed:

Ten children, and eight others, are suffering from trauma in the Negev city of Sderot after a Kassam rocket slammed down just 40 meters from an elementary school. The attack occured around 11 AM.

One pupil reported that when the Color Red early warning system was sounded, his teacher told the class to remain in their seats because the class was reinforced. However, when they heard the crash and realized how close it had hit, some students and teachers began crying. The school's psychological and counseling staff is currently being bolstered with staff from other schools and nearby cities.

The fear that a Kassam could hit a crowded school had been on everyone's minds, and the realization that a major catastrophe had been so narrowly avoided was on everyone's mind. Some parents arrived to pick up their children early.

A top leader of the Religion of Peace is perplexed. How could it be that women in Iran without hijabs (veils) have not yet been killed? Here is his innovative solution--kill them, along with their husbands and fathers:

A top Muslim cleric in Iran, Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hassani said on Wednesday that women in Iran who do not wear the hijab or Muslim headscarf, should die.

“Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands deserve to die,” said Hassani, who leads Friday prayers in the city of Urumieh, in Iranian Azerbaijan.

“I do not understand how these women who do not respect the hijab, 28 years after the birth of the Islamic Republic, are still alive,” he said.

“These women and their husbands and their fathers must die,” said Hassani, who is the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in eastern Azerbaijan.

One month ago, on the day Israel approved the delivery of a Jordanian weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority (including two million bullets), I wrote:

How many Jews (and Arabs) has Olmert just consigned to be murdered?

Today there is documentation of the first murder from that weapons cache:

The terrorists who killed Ido Zoldan near Kedumim in the West Bank last month used weapons the PA received from Jordan with Israel's approval, a government official said Monday.

The three members of the terrorist cell were members of the PA security forces.

This prophetic Dry Bones cartoon was used to illustrate that entry:

Israel's leadership is resorting to a national policy of kvetching (loosely: complaining). For example, the Egyptian border was unilaterally handed over, with full knowledge that it would become immediately permeable to terror resources. Egypt, after all, is a country in which 90% of women are subject to female genital mutilation on Islamic grounds (strangely, this aspect of Muslim culture was omitted from British TV's jaw-dropping encouragement to convert to Islam).

So Israel's leaders respond with video footage of Egypt actively aiding Hamas, pretending for domestic political purposes that they are trying to stop the collaboration:

Israel is sending video footage - which shows Egyptian security forces assisting Hamas terrorists cross illegally into Gaza - to the U.S. Congress to pressure Egypt to clamp down on Hamas smuggling activities.

The House and Senate agreed Sunday to hold back $100 million in military aid for Egypt unless Secretary of State Rice certifies that concerns about smuggling weapons into Gaza and human rights abuses have been addressed.

Last week, Israel filed an official complaint with Cairo after Egypt unilaterally opened the Rafah Crossing and allowed Palestinians who claimed to be traveling to Mecca for the hajj pilgrimage to leave Gaza.

Israel has received intelligence indicating that among the 1,700 pilgrims are a significant number of Palestinian terrorists who traveled to Iran and Lebanon for military training.

Note to right-wing politicians: the heart of your campaign needs to be simply "quality of life." Repeatedly emphasize how negligence on all fronts is killing the quality of life of the average citizen. Stop telling Israelis to sacrifice. Tell them the parasitic politicans need to sacrifice.