Open Threads

Gabriel Ash needs serious help:

Not every day you’ll catch me declaring my profound agreement with the interloper in the White House. So take note. In his State of the Union, George Bush urged Americans to volunteer, to help build an America that “serves goals greater than the self.” He said “America needs citizens to extend the compassion of our country to every part of the world.”
I couldn’t agree more.

It is therefore absolutely essential to publicize the work of American men and women who are doing just that.

This is the third day of Sharon’s new military campaign against Palestinian civilians. With 20,000 reservists called, it promises to be a long and bloody one.

Tanks wreak destruction in Ramallah, Hebron, and other Palestinian towns. Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers vandalize homes, wantonly destroying furniture and precious food.

Journalists and TV offices are top targets. The IDF shoots at ambulances, arrests medical personnel, and storm hospitals.

Yesterday they destroyed offices and equipment belonging to two human rights organizations, LAW and Al-Haq.

Five Palestinian policemen in IDF custody were apparently executed in cold blood.

There are reports of more mass executions in Ramallah today. Sharon calls it a war against “the infrastructure of terror.” But the only infrastructure that matters is the determination of Palestinians to shake off the occupation or take Israel to Hell with them. Sharon’s war is a war against the Palestinian population, and against humanity.

Gabriel Ash is available for comment at: [email protected]

Please refrain from making crude comments about the email address.

Gabriel Ash needs serious help:Post + Comments

Matt Welch has a warning for the blog community:

Any human ecosystem that is suddenly subject to the glare of media attention — praise, derision, whatever — is inevitably changed and distorted by the process. It’s hard to see clearly with the lights shining on your face, no matter if you are a trained cynic, journalist, anti-fluffitarian or lead singer. The easiest trap is to confuse attention with actual self-importance — if they’re all looking at me, I must be special, right? Call it the David Talbot Syndrome. Can’t tell you how many times I made a somber, pretentious ass of myself back in Prague, when the next round of A-list teevee journalists (Lesley Stahl, Judd Rose) would come to town to do the Young Americans in Prague story. Remember: if you lose your sense of humor, if your skin becomes thin, if you develop an exalted and undeserved sense of personal status … then you have let the gatekeepers win. By becoming one of them.

Matt Welch has a warningPost + Comments

Joshua Green points out something that appears to have eluded only Bob Woodward: Norm Mineta is a worthless layabout.

Joshua Green points out somethingPost + Comments

Some perspective from Victor Davis Hanson:

The proposed solution to the crisis in the Middle East is predicated on one notion: the return of the West Bank and all the other lands occupied by Israel after June 10, 1967. As the current conventional wisdom goes, our diplomatic efforts should be directed toward that single goal. Israel must give back conquered land. In return its Arab neighbors will promise to recognize its existence, make peace, and normalize relations.

One way of determining whether such an agreement would lead to peace would be to imagine what really might happen should Israel give up all of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. Fortunately, we need not be utopian about the future, but rather simply revisit the past before June 5, 1967. Then Israel possessed none of those territories. Yet there was no peace – but simply a series of pauses between wars not unlike the present predicament. A quick perusal of a number of general histories about the pre-1967 era – especially Michael Oren’s forthcoming magisterial work Six Days of War – reveals a chilling similarity with the present calamity.

Did the Arab states accept Israel’s right to exist between 1947 and 1967, when it remained within its U.N.-mandated (Resolution 181) borders? Hardly. Three wars were fought to destroy Israel itself, not to restore the West Bank for the Palestinians. We must remember that for all the talk of Palestinian grievances over the present occupation, Muslims are now allowed free access to their mosques in a manner Jews and Christians were not accorded for their own places of worship under Jordanian control. Desecration of religious shrines and cemeteries was a pre-1967, not a present, phenomenon.

Seriously- All they want are the pre-1967 borders. I’m chuckling at the transparency of this ‘peace’ plan.

Some perspective from Victor DavisPost + Comments

In recent developments in the Middle East, Palestinian terrorists have stopped blowing up Jews and Christians long enough to force them at gunpoint to give them sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity.

The armed men, some of them Palestinian policemen, forced their way into the church after running battles with Israeli troops firing from helicopter gunships and from tank-mounted machine guns.

At nightfall, the bodies of four dead gunmen lay sprawled just off Manger Square, where the church is located.

It marked the first time fighting had spilled over into the Church of the Nativity, one of Christianity’s holiest shrines.

Israeli forces have entered Bethlehem several times during the past 18 months, but they are under orders not to harm holy places, and have kept their distance from the church. That, however, makes it an attractive sanctuary for Palestinian gunmen.

Just in case you were keeping track, that makes them terrorists, hypocrites, liars, and now, cowards.

In recent developments in thePost + Comments

If you have not been paying attention to his website lately, in between his all too frequent vacations, Damian Penny is simply on fire lately on the Israel/Palestine issue.

If you have not beenPost + Comments

If you own a blog, it is your duty to go read this, and then to go back to your website and make fun of the jackass Alex Beam.

If you own a blog,Post + Comments