IRIS Blog

Here's an interesting mystery:

A mysterious explosion in a suburb of Teheran that killed 15 people last Saturday was likely an attack on a Iranian military convoy carrying arms to Hizbullah, the Telegraph reported Friday.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards imposed a news black-out immediately after the blast, but the UK newspaper reported that it looked like sabotage was responsible for destroying the convoy as it traveled through Khavarshahar.

The newspaper noted that the company responsible for moving the military equipment, LTK, was owned by the Revolutionary Guards and was allegedly involved in shipping arms to Hizbullah.

Last Saturday's incident was the latest in a series of mysterious explosions in the Islamic republic.

In May, Iran blamed British and US agents for an explosion at a mosque in Shiraz that had just been the site of a military exhibition.

In 2007, more than a dozen Iranian engineers lost their lives while trying to fit a chemical warhead to a missile in Syria.

A few months earlier, a train apparently carrying military supplies to Syria was derailed by an explosion in northern Turkey.

Here's why the media refuse to do the most basic fact-checking of Obama's jaw-dropping whoppers. Here's why the media turn Republican sinners such as Larry Craig, Dan Quayle, and Newt Gingrich into laughingstocks while embargoing news of vice presidential contender John Edward's apparent love child:

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money...

It's the same story as academia, Hollywood, or any other competitive position where a person would have the power to influence public opinion: leftists refuse to hire someone who is not one of their own. The right, on the other hand, is in favor of ideological diversity. One Israeli example is the Shalem Center, founded and funded by the Right, which hired pro-disengagement scholars Michael Oren and Daniel Gordis.

In answering one question in Sderot, Barack Obama both denied the obvious (that he reversed his position on a united Jerusalem), and then called the Senate Banking Committee "my committee" when he is not a member.

QUESTION: Senator Obama, you said in AIPAC convention that the (INAUDIBLE) Jerusalem could continue to be the capital city. Then you changed it and clarified later on in the -- (INAUDIBLE) wonder.

How could you be sure if your other statesmen, that you are going to be committed to the security and safety of Israel and you're not going to change it even when you're the President of the United States?

OBAMA: First of all, I didn't change my statement.

I continued to say that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel. And I have said that before and I will say it again. And I also have said that it is important that we don't simply slice the city in half. But I've also said that that's a final status issue. That's an issue that has to be dealt with with the parties involved, the Palestinians and the Israelis. And it's not the job of the United States to dictate the form in which that will take, but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues that have a long history. Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don't have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon.

Barack Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which is responsible for the legislation. Prediction: the mainstream media will ignore this breathtaking gaffe, even though a similar Republican error would have earned Dan Quayle-level derision.

The chutzpa is that he has been an absentee Senator throughout the campaign, so taking credit for anything there would have been laughable.

On the topic of Jerusalem, Obama's rhetoric at the AIPAC convention was: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

For years, there has been relentless pressure by American administrations to lift the 'humiliating' checkpoints and other security checks on Arabs entering Israel. The only problem is that they continuously uncover things like this:

Palestinian Car Bomb Discovered in Jenin

During a Border Police operation in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday, a large explosive device was discovered in a car that was likely on its way to explode in an Israeli city. The 12-kg. device was connected to several gas balloons and pipe bombs.

There is a simple equation: less security = more terror. There is no question that Barack Obama will cost Israeli lives, depite his vows of friendship. John McCain will likely do so as well, just less.

Tzipi Livni, the leading contender for head of Kadima, has kept silent as news reports presented her as 'a Paris agent for the Mossad' who 'traveled throughout Europe in pursuit of Arab terrorists.'

Here's the truth:

According to the report, Livni served in Mossad between 1980 and 1984, between the ages of 22 and 26.

Livni, according to Hasson, was hired to live in a Paris apartment simply so that the property would not remain empty. Intelligence agencies customarily hire low level agents to man apartments abroad so as not to raise municipalities' suspicions in case the properties remain abandoned and unused. Such agents need only to generate monthly utility bills to create the appearance that there is an active resident in the property.

After her sojourn in Paris, Livni returned to Israel to participate in a course which would qualify her as a field operative. While she was successful in the course, she did not conclude it, leaving the training - and the agency - in order to marry.

Unusually, Mossad issued a response corroborating Hasson's findings.

Of course, the "Mossad terrorist hunter" label appears in her Wikipedia entry, a page with which she herself is no doubt very familiar.

Remember as you read this that al-Jazeera is treated as a mainstream Arab news source throughout the West:

Following are excerpts from a birthday party organized by Al-Jazeera TV for released Lebanese terrorist Samir Al-Quntar. Al-Jazeera TV aired this segment on July 19, 2008

Interviewer: Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you. You deserve even more than this. I think that 11,000 prisoners – if they can see this program now – are celebrating your birthday with you. Happy birthday, brother Samir.

Samir Al-Quntar: Thank you.

Interviewer: Go ahead... There is a picture here... If the camera can show this... Let’s cut it... Does the camera show this clearly or not? We have a picture here... This is the sword of the Arabs, Samir. Don’t cut the picture, cut on the side.

Samir Al-Quntar: Here’s Abu Qassam [Marwan Barghouti].

Interviewer: Marwan is here.

Samir Al-Quntar: Abu Qassam is here with Ahmad Sa’dat. That’s our prison warden...

Interviewer: This one?

Samir Al-Quntar: Yes.

Interviewer: What is the warden’s name?

Samir Al-Quntar: His name is... Never mind.

Interviewer: This is when you were released. Here you are with Wafiq Safa.

Samir Al-Quntar: Yes, this is Wafiq Safa. This is the most beautiful picture – with Hassan Nasrallah. This is the most beautiful picture. There cannot be anything more beautiful. Me and the secretary-general – the most beautiful picture of me ever taken.

Here is a video of the birthday party...

Here is the taqiya (religiously encouraged mendacity) that the Palestinian News Network is spinning regarding yesterday's bulldozer attack in which 19 Israelis were wounded before the driver was killed:

As Israeli forces continue to bulldoze Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, this is the second Palestinian bulldozer incident ever. They both took place in West Jerusalem this month.

Ghassan Mustafa Abu Tair, just 23 years old, died Tuesday afternoon after being shot by an armed Israeli civilian and then shortly after by Israeli forces when he hit a bus and five cars near the King David Hotel. One of his co-workers stated, "Ghassan worked for seven years on the bulldozer and this seems to have been a traffic accident and no more." Members of the Israeli government are threatening to demolish the family home and revoke their Jerusalem identification.

The number of Israeli injuries are said to be at 19, but only one in serious condition, according to Israeli medical reports. Shortly after the operation, Israeli forces broke into his family home and arrested his father.

Abu Tair is the relative of imprisoned Palestinian Legislative Council member Mohammand Abu Tair. Israeli forces have held him in their prisons for approximately two years.

Ghassan Abu Tair is from the East Jerusalem village of Umm Tuba, one of many suffering under the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population.

This 'ethnic cleansing' policy is evidently based on reverse psychology, because Jerusalem's Arab growth rate is twice the Jewish one.

Shortly after he was identified, Israeli forces went to his family home and tore through its contents, investigated the family, and arrested his father, 47 year old Abu Ghassan Abu Tair. Israelis also attacked several Palestinian workers in West Jersualem with knifes shortly after the incident. Among the injured are the young man Abdullah Musa Ali Mustafa, his uncle Fadi Ali Musa Mustafa, and his cousin Ali Ahmed Mustafa. All are hospitalized.

The injured Israelis have been sent to hospitals while Ghassan is dead and the Palestinian official from his family remains in Israeli prison. Members of the Israeli government are threatening to demolish the family home and revoke their Jerusalem identification.

One of his co-workers stated, "Ghassan worked for seven years on the bulldozer and this seems to have been a traffic accident and no more, because Ghassan does not belong to any political faction." The area where the indicent occurred is heavy with traffic and several are saying that Abu Tair hit the bus on accident, and then lost control of the bulldozer causing him to hit the cars.

Here's what actually happened:

Terrorist Motioned to Woman to Cross and Then Tried to Run Her Over

The first person to encounter the bulldozer terrorist was an English-speaking woman named Sarah who was about to cross the street. The man in the bulldozer indicated with his hand that she could cross and then pressed on the gas pedal to run her over. Fortunately, she was only lightly bruised by the tire.

Here's another relevant story:

Eyewitnesses Describe the Bulldozer Attack

Witnesses described how the driver of the bulldozer had targeted pedestrians and vehicles before he was shot dead by a civilian and a Border Policeman Tuesday. "[The driver] tried to bring the blade of the bulldozer on the head of a pedestrian, but missed her by an inch," said one eyewitness. "Then he kept going in a zigzag down the slope of King David Street....One car flipped over and others were crushed."

The driver of the bus hit by the bulldozer said he was chased as the driver wielded the vehicle's shovel. "I was driving on the main road when the [bulldozer] hit me in the rear," the driver of the bus told Channel 10 TV. "After I passed him he turned round, made a U-turn and rammed the windows twice with the shovel. The third time he aimed for my head, he came up to my window and I swerved to the right, otherwise I would have gone to meet my maker."

Witness Moshe Shimshi said the bulldozer driver slammed into the side of the bus, then sped away and went for a car. "He just kept ramming into cars....The driver then headed for cars waiting at a red light and rammed into them with all his might."

Who would have thought that Yassir Arafat would renege on multiple agreements pledging non-violence and demilitarization?

PLO Official Abbas Zaki: When the Palestinian Authority returned to Gaza [in 1994], Hamas did not have even 20 guns, weapons, and Fatah did not have even 100 guns. Abu Ammar, Allah's mercy upon him, flooded everybody with weapons, and sent our experts to produce missiles and weapons for whoever who wanted to fight. One of our people, General Abd Al-Mu'ti Al-Sab'awi, was martyred when he was making a rocket for them and it went off. He was developing missiles for them. Unfortunately, they [Hamas] have turned their backs on us now.

Note the admission that Arafat "flooded everybody with weapons," belying the taqiyya that the various terror groups were at odds.

At the time, advocates of the Oslo Peace Process were using the argument "given how bad things are now, how could it get any worse?" Imagine a Gaza with less than 100 pistols in terrorist hands...

Here are some jaw-dropping statistics from the most populous country in the Middle East:

-98 percent of foreign women said they had experienced harassment in Egypt

-83 percent of Egyptian women reported having been sexually harassed. Nearly half of women said the abuse occurred daily.

-62 percent of Egyptian men reported perpetrating harassment

-Only 2.4 percent of Egyptian women reported it to the police, with most saying they did not believe anyone would help. Most Egyptian women believed the victim should "remain silent."

These figures were culled from this Reuters story:

Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and a majority say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey showed on Thursday.

The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. "Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis," said the report by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights.

Egyptian women and female visitors frequently complain of persistent sexual harassment on Egyptian streets, despite the socially conservative nature of this traditional Muslim society.

Why is this?

While Egypt does not have sharia law officially enacted, government officials maintain that 95% of laws are consistent with or derived from sharia. Therefore, women and non-Muslims cannot testify in Egyptian courts with the same weight as a Muslim man. So in a "he-said, she-said" case, "she" always loses. Open season on women ensues (and foreigners in particular). See here for an Egyptian blogger's gruesome report of Rape on the Streets.

Inflicting humiliation is a key part of the jihad, something Israel and the West seem to have overlooked:

Former IDF Medical Corps and Chief Military Rabbinate officials have noted the tragic expertise Israel has gathered in years of conflict, but remained shocked by what they saw yesterday at the Rosh HaNikra border crossing.

Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present during the transfer of the fallen soldiers yesterday, said that "the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I'll leave it at that."

Former IDF Chief Medical Officer Brig. Gen. (reserve) Dr. Hezi Levi noted this morning that only extensive procedures could verify the exact series of events following the soldier's capture, including whether or not a gunshot wound Regev received to the head was caused by terrorists' "confirming the kill" of the fallen IDF soldier.

Shimon Peres claimed that Israel was the winner of the caskets-for-terrorists deal (which the Leftist Israeli media insists on terming a "prisoner exchange" in a Kafka-esque twist):

"There are victory celebrations in Lebanon. They are stepping out with drums and dances to greet Kuntar the murderer who crushed the skull of four-year-old Einat with his gun and shot her father cold-bloodedly."

No mention that his "moderate peace partner," Mahmoud Abbas, shared in the celebration.

"Where is the supreme moral victory and where is the human defeat is? In greeting a cowardly murderer unlike any other, or in the remembrance candles commemorating our loved ones?

"The answer is clear. Lebanon will be ashamed, the kind of shame it needs to properly exist."

That last sentence was a bit cryptic, like the moral compass of Israel's Left. In any case, "shame" seems to be a bit slow in coming, because Hisballah's leader Nasrallah is now the most admired leader throughout the Arab World.

Peres does not understand that there is no shame to Muslims in jihad, and that is what their war against Israel and the West is.

Morality in the struggle against the Nazis was defined as victory.
Morality in the struggle against the jihad is defined as victory.

Morality by a nation's leadership is defined as protecting the interests of the people, starting with their security. Unfortunately Olmert himself announced in 2005: "We are tired of defeating our enemies."

If Israel's government had any sense, these terror camps would be demolished immediately by air:

When Israel pulled out of Gaza in September 2005, [sic] the government decided to leave public buildings, kindergartens, libraries, schools and other structures whole for the benefit of the Palestinian population. Terrorist organizations, most notably Hamas, have been using these buildings for training purposes. Several videos produced by various terror organizations present gunmen training at the sites of public buildings once used in Gush Katif. One of the structures identifiable is the Atzmona synagogue, in which terrorists train using live ammunition. The buildings also serve as the backdrop for kidnapping scenarios....

The mere existence of the buildings and their accessibility greatly contribute to the terrorist organizations. The structures are abandoned and isolated and far from the Palestinian civilian population.

If not for these buildings, the terrorists would have to construct buildings and special training areas for these purposes, just like the IDF does in order to conduct counter-terrorism drills.

They would have to evacuate an entire neighborhood from its Palestinians inhabitants in order to establish a similar area.

In order to understand the great benefits Hamas attained by using the deserted structures left by Israel, it is necessary to simply watch the documentation of the drill one of the terrorist groups conducted in their new, ready-made urban warfare camp whose walls were built solely with sandbags.

Two days before Shimon Peres assumed office, I predicted that Israel's government would be freed from much of the charade of appearing to deliberate over releasing Arab terrorists with 'blood on their hands' because Peres would simply pardon them:

Prediction: Releasing terrorist murderers will be easier in the future now that Shimon Peres has been made President by Olmert and company. Leftists don't need to tone down their true desires when they no longer face reelection.

Today, as predicted, Shimon Peres pardoned a horrific child-murdering terrorist, Samir Kuntar. The release is in preparation for Ehud Olmert's trading of Kuntar for two kidnapped soldiers who are presumed dead. Kuntar has written a letter vowing to continue in jihad. In response, there is now unanimous ululation within the Arab and Muslim Worlds. (Consider that for a moment, those who believe that extremists are a minority.) If there is a single dissenting voice, please email me and I will update this post for accuracy).

Why are accurate predictions important in political analysis? For the same reason they are relevant in science--a hypothesis is only valid if it can explain future data. Leftists are reliably wrong in their predictions, which is why their ideology is reliably destructive.

There is nothing that Fatah could do that would cause the mainstream media to stop describing it as 'moderate:'

The Palestinian Authority has asked Israel to hand over the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the March 11, 1978 coastal road attack in which 36 people were murdered and 71 wounded.

Israel is planning to deliver Mughrabi's remains, together with those of scores of Palestinians and Lebanese, to Hizbullah in the context of the new prisoner exchange between the two sides.

The PA said in its request that it wanted to "honor" Mughrabi by holding a big funeral for her in Ramallah.

Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi, whose family originally came from Jaffa, as a "the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel." He claimed that in her will, Mughrabi, who belonged to Fatah, had asked her family to see to it that she was buried in "Palestine."

"We want to turn Dalal's funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration," the Fatah official said. "The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women's struggle."

Even if Israel refuses to deliver her remains to the PA in Ramallah, Fatah officials said they were planning to hold big celebrations throughout the West Bank to coincide with her funeral in Lebanon.

Ahmed also praised Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar for carrying out another terror attack in Israel one year after the 1978 carnage. He described Kuntar as a "stubborn and firm fighter in the ranks of the Lebanese resistance who led a very courageous operation."

Since its inception, the PA has honored Mughrabi by naming many schools and various institutions after her.

An article published in Thursday's edition of the PA-funded Al-Hayat Al-Jadedda newspaper hailed Mughrabi as a "living legend and a wonderful example for all women."

The article criticized Hizbullah for agreeing to bury Mughrabi in Lebanon and not in the Palestinian territories. It said that someone like her deserved to be buried next to Yasser Arafat's grave in Ramallah.

Think this is atypical? Click here for overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Blogging about Israel has gotten easier because of Firefox's 'Autofill' feature. I started typing 'Another' and the helpful program suggested I save time by recycling one previously used: 'Another Police Investigation Against Olmert.'

An astute observer might detect a pattern here, but the AP/Jerusalem Post calls the new allegations 'stunning':

The Justice Ministry and the police unveiled stunning new allegations against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday, accusing him of getting multiple sources to pay for identical trips abroad so he could pocket the difference.

The new suspicions - made public shortly after police questioned Olmert for a third time in a burgeoning corruption scandal - could make it even tougher for the embattled leader to hang on to his job and pursue peacemaking with the Palestinians.

The AP's analysis is wrong--if Shimon Peres and other Leftist members of the Israeli elite hold the keys to his future, that will make Olmert's 'peacemaking' an even higher priority. (In fact, while we're on the topic of copy-and-paste blogging, this post, written after the penultimate revelations, is worth re-runnning):

Olmert's Fate May Rest on Peres

Things are looking very grim for Ehud Olmert in the latest investigation of his corruption. If Olmert is convicted, I predict that he will be pardoned by Shimon Peres as a quid pro quo for Olmert's championing of Peres' pet project--the ceding of Israeli territory to its jihadist enemies.