IRIS Blog

In Rhode Island, the home of a Jewish Agency envoy was firebombed:

A Molotov cocktail was thrown Saturday into the home of a Jewish Agency envoy residing in Rhode Island in the north-eastern United States. The envoy, who was home at the time, was immediately evacuated to a nearby hotel following the incident.

The incident took place at 2 am (local US time) when a Molotov cocktail was throw through the living room window of the envoy’s apartment. He was in a different room at the time, and was therefore not injured. The Molotov cocktail set a nearby yard on fire, but firefighters dispatched to the scene easily extinguished the flames.

The FBI as well as local Rhode Island police personnel are investigating the incident. This is the first time that a Jewish Agency envoy is attacked in this fashion.

Meanwhile, those who spoke out against a notorious Islamist imam in Canada are under fire:

Several Muslims say their lives are at risk because they dared speak out in what has become an ongoing dispute in their community. Yesterday, one of the people claiming to be victims of ongoing violent attacks, Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed, watched in horror as a car pulled up outside his Panatella Blvd. N.W. home and a man armed with a jerrycan and booze bottle got out, scaled the fence and set his home ablaze as seven children and three other adults slept.

Hours earlier, Ahmed had called 911 after two threatening men came to the door.

"I was so upset," said Ahmed, adding that's why he was still awake at about 4 a.m. when he saw the stranger set his home on fire.

"Within two minutes, we had a big fire," he said.

"We have a fear of death."

Arson Det. Scott Sampson said the family was definitely targeted and the fire could easily have been deadly.

The suspects hurled two Molotov cocktails at the home, one which ignited grass and another which bounced off a window, setting the exterior of the house on fire, said Sampson.

"If he wasn't up, the house would have gone up," Sampson said....

The conventional wisdom is that aborting unwanted babies is better for the woman than raising them. This is another in a series of studies which apparently refutes that belief:

Women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions, a medical royal college has warned....

This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion....

More than 90% of the 200,000 terminations in Britain every year are believed to be carried out because doctors believe that continuing with the pregnancy would cause greater mental strain....

Several studies, including research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006, concluded that abortion in young women might be associated with risks of mental health problems.

In the same area of Paris where the horrific Ilan Halimi torture/murder by dozens of Muslims occurred, another Jew was kidnapped and abused by six men. Although "dirty Jew" was written on the victim's face, police are not treating it as an anti-Semitic hate crime:

A Jewish teenager was held captive and abused by six men in a Paris suburb where another French Jew was kidnapped and fatally tortured two years ago, police said on Wednesday. However, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office in the suburb of Bagneux said the latest incident, which came to light this week, did not appear to be racially motivated.

"The motive was theft," said Martine Marchand-Prochasson, chief of staff of Mayor Marie-Helene Amiable.

Alaa Abu Dhein, a resident of East Jerusalem (the area where Ehud Olmert is planning to give to the Palestinians), murdered eight students (seven of whom were teenagers) of Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem yesterday. The following line sums up most of what is needed to understand the situation:

...Abu Dhein was arrested by defense forces four months ago and then released two months later.

Here is the whole article:

The terrorist who killed eight students in a terror attack on Merkaz Harav Yeshiva Thursday night used to work as a driver at the institution, according to his family.

A Zaka man in the Merkaz Harav library works next to an automatic rifle and spent ammunition that was used by the Palestinian terrorist in Thursday night's terror attack.

Defense officials said the attacker came from east Jerusalem, home to Palestinians who hold Israeli ID cards that allow them freedom of movement.

Police would not provide more details Friday, but several residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber gave the terrorist's name as Alaa Abu Dhein, 20, and said he had worked as a driver at the yeshiva.

Police later denied that the terrorist had been an employee of the yeshiva.

His family set up a mourning tent Friday and hung green Hamas flags outside their home.

They claimed that Abu Dhein was arrested by defense forces four months ago and then released two months later.

World media reports about Israel's 'disproportionate response' will not mention that Israel suffered months of weekends like this prior to taking action:

At least 20 missiles were fired by Gaza terrorists at the coastal city of Ashkelon between midnight and 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning with more fired later in the day. By evening, six civilians were wounded and a number of others suffered emotional shock in the attacks. One rocket slammed into a house in the port city, sending the occupants into severe shock. A car exploded in flames after being hit by another missile in the city.

Early Sabbath morning, a woman and two children were lightly wounded and a number of others suffered shock in one of the rocket attacks. Later in the day, one civilian was moderately wounded and two others were lightly injured in a rocket attack on the Ashkelon Marine Coastal Center. Several other people were treated for shock.

All of the injured were taken to the city's Barzilai Hospital with shrapnel wounds.

Fatah has been watching the war crimes of missiles raining down on Israeli civilians from Hamas-controlled Gaza for many months. Now that Israel is striking back at the Hamas they claim to be at war with, moderate Mahmoud Abbas is quick to opine on the belated Israeli incursion:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas labeled Israel's actions to counter the constant firing of rockets into the Gaza Strip "worse than the Holocaust."

Abbas said that Israel's response to the continuous bombardment of western Negev towns by Palestinian terrorists was too severe, saying that its operations which have left at least 80 Palestinians dead on Saturday were unacceptable retaliation to the firing of rockets.

The Fatah head was not the only Palestinian leader to be associating the military maneuvers with the Holocaust - exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal described the operations as "the real Holocaust" on Saturday afternoon.

"Israeli actions in Gaza since Wednesday is the real Holocaust," Mashaal told reporters in Damascus, where he lives in exile.

No mention of the fact that Abbas himself wrote his doctoral thesis and another book denying the Holocaust. Here is PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia echoing Abbas' talking points, calling the Israeli action a "genocide":

Palestinians threatened Saturday to call off peace talks with Israel after 35 Gazans, at least half of them civilians, were killed in pitched battles between Israeli troops and rocket squads that escalated sharply.

Israeli troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, went after militants who bombarded southern Israeli communities near Gaza with rockets and mortars. The 35 deaths pushed the Palestinian death toll to 65 since fighting flared Wednesday. More than half of those killed were civilians.

The spike in violence came as Israel was threatening to launch a broad invasion of Gaza, and just days before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to arrive in the region on her latest peacekeeping mission.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Palestinian leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, recommended suspending peace talks at a meeting Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

“I think it will be suspended,” Qureia said. “What is happening in Gaza is a massacre of civilians, women and children, a collective killing, genocide,” Qureia added. “We can’t bear what the Israelis are doing, and what the Israelis are doing doesn’t led the peace process any credibility.”

Yet another confirmation of the kinds of surveys IRIS has been reporting on. Unfortunately the survey is reported by Reuters, part of the mainstream media. So the spin is that it's just the format the news is delivered (traditional vs. Internet), not anything having to do with the bias of the reporting itself:

Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey.

While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll showed.

Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.