Those horrible Zionist oppressors are at it again… this time they’re trying to ease conditions for Palestinians:
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved a set of proposals calling for a new code of conduct for Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks who come into daily conduct with the Palestinian population, Israel Radio reported today.
The proposals, prepared by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Baruch Spiegel, will soon be implemented at seven major roadblocks and afterwards will be introduced at smaller army roadblocks as well, the radio report said. Spiegel said that technological measures would be introduced to ease conditions for the Palestinians, and soldiers stationed at the roadblocks would undergo special training.
[ . . . ]
Some of the improvements at IDF roadblocks will be financed by money confiscated from terror group bank accounts in Ramallah last week, media sources reported.
Sounds like poetic justice to me.
But wait, there’s more:
Infrastructure at the roadblocks will be improved. Roads will be repaved, adequate restroom facilities will be added, and proper lighting will be installed. The proposal calls for the “inspection points” to be manned and open 24 hours a day, in order to relieve the crowded conditions and long lines that have been common at roadblocks until now.
[ . . . ]
Ofir Hacham, spokesman for the IDF’s Coordinator for Operations in the Territories, explained the rationale behind Spiegel’s team and the proposals. “This was a strategic team that was established to check how we can improve conditions for the Palestinian population at roadblocks and gates. This is another step to allowing stable civilian life, for those Palestinians who are not involved in terror,” he said.
Yep, those damned Zionist oppressors are at it again, all right. Shame on them for having compassion!
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Quebec Conservatives:
All ridings being created equal in the Conservative leadership race, fewer than 10,000 members in Quebec’s 75 ridings count for almost three times as many points as nearly 100,000 members in 28 Alberta ridings.
[ . . . ]
Harper was desperate enough to do the merger, and confident enough he could win the leadership regardless of the rules, that he went along with a system which, in Quebec, is greatly to his disadvantage.
So he can hardly complain now that Belinda Stronach, who barely speaks French, is racking up big gains with small numbers in Quebec.
Of the 9,000 Conservative members in Quebec, about 5,000 were members of the former PC party – Tory activists of good standing. Some 4,000 new memberships have been sold, and of those Stronach has sold about 3,500.
Of the 7,500 points available in Quebec, Stronach looks like winning around 5,000, or about one-third of the 15,401 votes needed to win the leadership.
Sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction.
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Hey, if the rhetoric works for the Palestinians…
Ousted Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed from exile in Africa Monday for peaceful resistance to what he called the “occupation” of Haiti and repeated a claim he was kidnapped by U.S. forces.
Not that I’m supporting the rebels, mind you. Haiti’s a mess. But Aristide wasn’t much more of a “legitimate” leader than the rebels who outsted him, and his willingness to immediately tap into world hatred of Americans to get sympathy of the despots isn’t scoring him any brownie points in my book.
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The Israeli security fence around Gaza, and the one under construction in the West Bank, must be doing a good job at preventing new terror attacks, because Hamas seems to be so frustrated that it’s resorting to claiming responsibility for year-old attacks:
Hamas claimed today (Monday), for the first time, responsibility for the terror attack at Tel Aviv’s “Mike’s Place” pub on April 30, 2003. Yanai Weiss, 46, Ran Baron, 24, and Caroline Dominique Hess, 29, died in the bombing.
A leaflet issued by the group’s military wing, the Iz-a-Din al-Kassam Brigades, noted that the attack was carried out by two British citizens of Pakistani origin in retaliation for the targeted killing of a senior Hamas figure, Dr. Ibrahim Makadmeh.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on the first anniversary of Makadme’s “targeted killing” in the Gaza Strip. The leaflet also noted: “This is a clear message to the Zionists: The al-Kassam Brigades will continue to fight Israel as long as the massacre of the Palestinian people continues”.
In other words, it was a slow news day and Hamas was getting antsy about having no new attacks to broadcast. Think maybe they had planned on having other news to report?
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Once again, us Canadians, relishing our role as peacekeepers of the world, are stepping up – this time by sending a stabilization force to Haiti.
“Stabilization force”. Hmmmm. So what does that amount to now, two guys to hold the net steady while the third shoots the puck?
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Martha’s guilty. “And that’s a good thing”.
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And check out Allison’s very fitting – and poignant – reflections on what it means to be a mother in Israel.
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It often comes as a surprise to people outside Israel how much support Ariel Sharon’s government – widely perceived as extremist or far-right – has from Israelis. But then, those of us in the Diaspora don’t have to live under the constant threat of terror that Israelis do.
By the same token, it may surprise some casual observers of Mideast politics that the Israeli op-eds are filled these days with calls for Sharon to resign… over the Elhanan Tannenbaum scandal, which has been receiving front-page coverage in Israel and barely any mention abroad.
Sharon is looking more and more corrupt by the day. Some Israelis are starting to get fed up. What will transpire will remain to be seen. But it’s just a reminder of how different the issues and the political landscape look to Israelis than they do to those of us following the news from abroad.
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Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks that the reaction of major Jewish organizations to The Passion of Christ has only served to give the film more publicity than it deserves:
Just as we are busy denying that the Jews control the world, it turns out that we do. Look what a wonderful job we have done publicizing Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. Only we could take a film of unrelenting torture – by all accounts not a pleasant experience – entirely in Aramaic and Latin, and turn it into one of the best-selling movies of all time.
Haven’t seen it. Have no plans to see it. And somehow I think the publicity was generated more by the Christian religious groups than the Jewish ones. But why add fuel to the fire?
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