Walking the dogs

Start the week with a laugh!

At least a dozen US politicians understand the situation. A drop of water – it helps, not much, but some.

A group of US state legislators toured Israel with a program sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislatures, meeting with our local movers and shakers. What was at the top of their agenda? The infamous Goldstone Report.

I have no doubt at all you are as sick of hearing about the Goldstone Report as I am. As a completely corrupt, false and damaging account to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, it’s without parallel -- and when you’re talking about UN activities, that’s saying something. But to accuse Israel of war crimes in last December’s Operation Cast Lead – and never to mention the eight long years of provocation by Arab terrorists, the bombs, mortars that moment by moment threatened a million people in Israel’s south -- is simply unconscionable.

The fact that the world at large seems to be taking it seriously is even worse.

I have a feeling the Goldstone Report is going to equal that other nefarious document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first compiled in the 1890’s, but still rears its ugly head wherever Israel or Jew haters congregate.

Nevertheless, the visiting politicians were interested in Goldstone – and at least a few saw the light.

According to one of them, Georgia State Sen. Don Balfour, the Goldstone document is misunderstood in the United States. "Yesterday we had a meeting about the Goldstone Report. The average American says, 'Hey, war crimes? [with a shocked look on his face],' but then you read it and you see almost everything we [US] do is a war crime.

"Sometimes there are civilian casualties, which are horrible. But is that a war crime? If so, that changes the way we define war," he said.

If indeed the IDF is accused of war crimes, "Every soldier is going to be a war criminal. If you bomb an al-Qaida terrorist and one of their family dies, that would be a war crime," Balfour said.

AHA! That’s what we’ve been saying for a long time – Israel comes first, as an appetizer. Then the freedom haters, the terrorists, move on to tackle the main course, the US.

Former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton made much the same point. "Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the US, particularly concerning the use of military force preemptively or in self-defense," Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal on October 19. "UN decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the US. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head - or, in the future, to America's."

Whoever arranged the itinerary for this tour did a good job – the visiting legislators were even inspired to delve into the myth of Jenin, another battle in which Israel was unjustly accused of war crimes. If fact, the IDF in that battle risked their own lives to protect Arab civilians – and what happened? The IDF was accused of a “massacre” -- which never happened at all. Nor, of course, was there any mention of the fact that Jenin had served as a terrorist base for years.

If you really want to know what happened in Jenin, find a copy of Brett Goldberg’s 2003 book, “Psalm in Jenin”, which is finally, after many years, available from Amazon. Why it took so long to get published in the US is a mystery – or else it isn’t. Take your choice.

In any event, Senator Balfour – good name, huh? -- got the point: In Jenin the IDF went door-to-door looking for terrorists rather than immediately bombing a suspected house. Get that? They risked their own lives in order to save Arab bystanders. “This was the kind of information that slipped through many media reports,” Balfour said.

He added that during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, "People will read an article and say, 'Israel bombed Lebanon?!' What they do not know, however, is Lebanon sent 10,000 bombs [to Israel]," he said, referring to mortar shells and Katyusha rockets.

The tour group even addressed such issues as defining a war crime. Balfour suggested a definition that arose from Operation Cast Lead itself.

"When they set up terror missiles next to a school, on top of a hospital, in front of a kindergarten, that ought to be a war crime," he said. "When they set up missiles on schools and hospitals, you eventually have to take those missiles out."

In US presidential elections, there used to be a saying, “As goes New Hampshire, so goes the nation”. New Hampshire traditionally held the first primary, so the US’s smallest state served as a bellwether to predict how the rest of the country would vote.

Today, what’s absolutely true is “As goes Israel, so goes the world.” Interesting that this group of touring state legislators got the point.

Kudos to whoever set their tour itinerary – please arrange more just like that. Maybe you should invite the Community Organizer and Mrs. Bubba. If a drop of water can eventually wear a hole in a rock, maybe even those two could begin to understand.

Sounds funny to say it, but from the sound itself, I can’t tell the difference between a sonic boom and the explosion of a terrorist rocket.

Yesterday, late in the day, there were a number of “BOOM”s – explosion sounds – that revealed themselves to be sonic booms. Several major military establishments are perched in the Negev around Beersheba, and apparently the pilots feel the need to break the sound barrier over the city with considerable frequency.

That said, the only way I can tell what the boom was is by what happens afterwards. If there are no screeching sirens, then it was a sonic boom. If, on the other hand, emergency vehicles are sounding their alarms, then… well, then it was a rocket or mortar. Usually.

Not so, last night. There was this BOOM, and then within a couple of minutes, the sirens started up. I could hear they were heading in the direction of Soroka, which is the Negev’s major medical facility. As the sirens increased – clearly several emergency vehicles were operating – I went inside to see if any of the news media were reporting what happened. And where.

There was nothing on the news. But since there weren’t any more BOOMS, either, I eventually forgot about it.

This morning, we know. Last night, three cars collided with a bus headed to Eilat. A 29 year old woman was killed and seventeen people were injured. The emergency vehicles were ambulances bringing the victims to Soroka.

Well. It wasn’t a terrorist attack. But it was a disaster – at least for those involved.

Was it reasonable to think it might have been another rocket attack? Certainly.

The Arabs in Aza have been stepping up their attacks again – in fact, they average a rocket a day fired out of Aza, as our Arab “peace partners” try to kill Israeli civilians. There’s fewer, certainly, since last December’s Operation Cast Lead. But in Sderot and other communities near Aza, the rocket-incoming sirens are still wailing.

Then too, on Tuesday, Hezbollah terrorists in the north, from Lebanon, fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel – these are big babies, and designed to do more damage than the kassams the Aza terrorists generally (but not always) use. No one was injured – but with every incoming rocket, the nerves fray, just a little. Waiting for the real thing to start all over again.




The thing is, we all know it’s going to start up again soon. This period of relative quiet – both in the north and south – is just the time the terrorists are using to restock and rearm. It has nothing to do with “peace”, or any desire therefor. They don’t want “peace”. They want Israel gone, and they’ll keep up the attacks until they achieve their goal – or until Israel acts with sufficient strength to convince them there’s no hope. No hope in their plan to get rid of Israel.

So on Tuesday, one Katyusha hit – it was the ninth Katyusha fired into Israel since the (alleged) end of the 2006 war. Last February 21, one of them landed near a house and injured three people.

More than just the one rocket fired Tuesday, however, military officials discovered four more, ready, armed and in position to fire. The Katyushas are being supplied by Iran, which also trains the Lebanese terrorists in their deadly trade.

And how did the world react? The governments of the various peace-loving countries in the world responded by saying, generally, that the firing of deadly rockets into civilian communities in Israel is a violation of UN Resolution 1701.

Isn’t that amazing? That anyone -- anyone with any kind of a brain at all – could expect a band of terrorists to obey international law?

Thank goodness for those of you who’ve asked about Amnesty International’s criticism – published in the Sacramento Bee – about Israel’s alleged violation of “Palestinian” water rights.

It’s so refreshing to hear people say, “Is that really true?” as compared to just accepting whatever the State Controlled pro-Arab media puts out.

Below is the pretty short and easy to read official statement from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but here’s a quick answer: an agreement about water exists. Israel has more than satisfied it, giving the “Palestinians” more water than they are entitled to; the “Palestinians” blatantly cheated, taking twice as much water as they were entitled; now the “Palestinians” accuse Israel of nefariously depriving them of water.

Same old, same old.

But one thing I’m getting a kick out of: I once had a Central Valley client who came up with a great plan to get more irrigation water than he was entitled to under the federal Reclamation Reform Act. His idea was to simply drill wells all along the aqueduct, helping himself to underground sources of water that wouldn’t have been calculated as a part of his entitlement.

That’s a no-no, of course, and I have no doubt the Bureau, in all its glory, would have put an end to that, in something less than a heartbeat. Had he tried it, my client would probably have ended up as a guest of the government at Club Fed in Lompoc. But anyway, here are these clever “Palestinians” who did exactly that – and have been getting away with it for years.

There’s nothing new under the sun – I think someone else said that once, too.
Anyway, here’s the official statement.

Spread the truth around, will you?




(October 27, 2009) Israel has fulfilled all its obligations under the water agreement regarding the supply of additional quantities of water to the Palestinians, and has even extensively surpassed the obligatory quantity.

The Israel-Palestinian water policy is based on an interim agreement between the two parties, particularly on Article 40 of Annex III to the agreement, which relates to the question of water and sewage. According to the agreement, 23.6 million cubic meters of water will be allocated to the Palestinians annually. In actual effect, they have access to twice as much water.

Israel has fulfilled all its obligations under the water agreement regarding the supply of additional quantities of water to the Palestinians, and has even extensively surpassed the obligatory quantity. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have significantly violated their commitments under the water agreement, specifically regarding important issues such as illegal drilling (they have drilled over 250 wells without the authorization of the Joint Water Commission) and handling of sewage. (The Palestinians are not constructing sewage treatment plants, despite their obligation to do so and the important foreign funding earmarked for this purpose).

Data regarding consumption of fresh natural water clearly shows Israel's fair treatment of Palestinian requirements:

In 1967, Israel's per capita consumption of fresh natural water was 508 (m3/person/year). In 2008, it dramatically dropped to 149. The Palestinian figures for the same consumption went from 86 (in 1967) to 105 (in 2008).

Israel has offered to supply Palestinians with desalinated water, but this possibility is systematically rejected due to political motivations.

While Israel has significantly reduced its use of fresh natural water since 1967, consistently closing the gap between Israeli and Palestinian consumption, it remains unclear how Amnesty's claims of "discriminatory policies" towards Palestinians can sustain the trial of reality. The authors of the report chose to ignore Israeli data, papers and reports, although they contain verifiable facts presented with total transparency. This questionable approach, which consists in systematically disregarding Israeli material while relying exclusively on Palestinian allegations, raises doubts as to the real intentions of the report's authors and of the organization itself.

A thorough report on the issue of water between Israel and the Palestinians can be consulted on the website of the Israel Water Authority.

www.water.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/A111EFEF-3857-41F0-B598-F48119AE9170/0/WaterIssuesBetweenIsraelandthePalestinians.pdf
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il

You could write a whole book about books in Israel – the problems in the acquisition and retention thereof.

One of the biggest adjustments I had to make in living here was learning how to live with fewer books – English language books here are not in plentiful supply, and when you do find them, they’re very expensive. A new trade paperback from a bookstore costs about $16-17, and even used (usually extremely “ used”) books are in the $10 range – the same books you’d be able to buy at a garage sale or thrift shop in the US for less than a dollar, if you had just a little luck.

So for someone like me – who reads somewhere between three and five books a week -- satisfying my book addiction became a very expensive proposition.

Other book-buying options didn’t help much. Yes, bookstores here do function almost like lending libraries. They offer to buy back the books they sell you for anywhere from 30-40% of the price you paid. That helps -- but because I bought almost all of my used books in Jerusalem, that meant I not only had to keep track of which book I bought in which store, but I also had to haul them back to Jerusalem on the bus. That wasn’t fun at all, so I only did that once. In other words, once I bought the book, I kept it.

Another solution was borrowing books from friends, but at the rate I read, it didn’t take long to exhaust their libraries. Nor was the local AACI English language library much help. I still find a few books there, but for the most part, I’ve read everything I want to read from that source.

For a while, at the beginning, my kids and a couple of very good friends in the US bailed me out. They’d send ‘care’ packages of books, which was a wonderful thing indeed. Then the US postal rates went nuts, and shipping books to me in Israel became way too expensive, so that source dried up.

For the last year or so, I’ve been buying books from BetterWorldBook.com, a massive used-book operation in the US. BetterWorld sells mostly library discards, lots of them for their rock bottom price of about $3.98, plus another $3.97 per book to ship it to Israel.

That’s worked out pretty well, and because they have an inventory of millions of books, I can always find books in the lower price range I want to read. Still, paying almost $8 per used book had its limits. Most of the time I just shut my eyes and refused to allow myself to think about what it was costing. For me, having books to read is as essential as food or water. I can’t live without books, so I paid.

Obviously I’m not the only one in this situation. We are the people of the book, after all, so there were – are – lots of us English language book readers over here, all facing the same problem.

A few years ago, someone in the Tel Aviv area set out to solve the problem. They created an internet book swap site called “Anglobooks”. The premise was interesting: People would list the books they were willing to either trade permanently or “loan”, and if you saw something you liked, you’d email the person and offer to trade – you’d mail them (or deliver in person, if you happened to be in the same area) one of your books, and get one of theirs in trade.

Sounds good, but there’s an obvious flaw. What if you saw a book on someone’s list you wanted, but that person wasn’t interested in any of the books you were offering? Because all trades were one-on-one, it took a considerable amount of emails to find a book each participant wanted from the other’s library. Then, too, lots of the Anglobook members only wanted to LOAN their book – not trade it away permanently. You’d have to return it to them, and get your own back as well.

Which meant, in its most essential form, you’d stand in line at the post office FOUR times for each book. Sending your book, then picking up theirs: then returning your book, and getting your own back again. Post offices in Israel are exact clones of those in the US. The opportunity to spend that kind of time standing in line was most definitely not appealing.

Then my friend Sally in Minnesota discovered an American book-trade organization that left me howling with envy. She discovered “paperback swap” – www.paperbackswap.com What a great idea that is!

Paperback swap was the first to treat books as fungible commodities. A book is a book – equal to every other book. So their system was, you’d list books you’d be willing to give away, and when someone saw one of your books he wanted, he’d email you and you’d send it to him – free. No money changes hands, the only cost is postage. But in return, you’d now have a “point” – and with that point, you could choose a book – any book – from anyone else’s list, free.

This was a marvelous concept – and completely eliminated the problems with the Anglobook site here. With paperback swap, you could pick any book from the millions listed by everyone, not just from the person who happened to want one of yours. Sally – who’s also a big reader -- traded books by the dozen, and I was envious, wishing we had something similar here.

And now, finally, a book-swap organization has found its way to Israel – not just Israel, but all over the world. It’s called “Book Mooch” – www.bookmooch.com -- and it operates just like the US’s paperback swap. You list books you’re willing to give away, and when someone wants one, you send it out and then you get a “point”. With your ‘points’ you can pick a book from anyone else on the list, any book they’re listed and said they’re willing to give away. Again, no money changes hands. A book is a book is a book.

So this is fun. Last night I listed 141 books that I was willing to give away – these were books that I either didn’t like, were duplicates (back the salad days when people were sending me books, there were some duplicates), or books that, for whatever reason, I knew I’d never read, or read again. I was willing to trade them away for books that I did want.

By the time I got done listing – all you do is enter the ISBN, and the rest is automatic – there were five people who’d emailed me, wanting one or more of my books. By the time I went to bed, I’d taken orders for 12 books – from people all over the world. Tomorrow, I’ll take all these to the post office and be shipping them off to France, New Zealand, London, Glasgow, the Philippines, and of course, many to other readers right here in Israel.

Accordingly, this morning, I went “shopping” myself. With my accumulated “points” I “bought” ten books -- so far. I’ve already got lots of points. I picked books from people living in London, Denver, CO, New York, Switzerland, France and of course, several that other Israeli readers were offering.

Such a deal! In the first place, it’s really good to find books I want and to be able to trade them, one on one, for books I don’t. Yes, I have to pay postage – but that’s still just a fraction of what it costs to buy and ship a regular book.

But secondly – the ‘one worlders’ will love this – it’s really a lot of fun to be talking (so to speak) to book lovers all over the world. To recommend books to each other, to add a few lines to an email about this book or that.

Indeed, in some respects, Disney was right: it’s a small world after all.

Dick Armey hit it right on the nose.

Remember? See my blog of August 16. Last summer, former US Representative Dick Armey – now chair of FreedomWorks – predicted:

“In September or October there will be a hyped up outbreak of the swine flu which they’ll say is as bad as the bubonic plague to scare the bed-wetters to vote for healthcare reform. That’s the only way they can push something (i.e., ObamaCare) on to the American people that the American people don’t want.”

And here it is, October 25th. And what are the headlines today?

“Obama declares swine flu a national emergency”

"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Obama wrote in Saturday's declaration.

He said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources."

So there you have it: H1N1 has now become a national emergency. How can the great nation of America expect to survive this crisis without the Community Organizer’s plan to care for us all? Surely now, Americans will back away from their opposition to socialized medicine and its $1 trillion cost. Surely now everyone will welcome The One as he seeks to tend us in our sufferings.

But let’s put this in perspective.

So far, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 800 people have died of “swine flu”.

Not to minimize in any way at all the tragedy of any of these deaths, consider this:

In 2008 (latest year for which statistics are available):

631,636 died of heart disease
559,888 died of cancer
121, 599 died of accidents of all kinds
72,449 died of diabetes
72,432 died of Alzheimer’s
56,326 died of influenza and pneumonia – even before H1N1
45,344 died of Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis (kidney diseases)
34,234 died of septicemia (blood poisoning)

And how about this? Every DAY 36 people die and another 700 are injured in auto crashes involving a drunk driver.

In all, every year over 16,000 people die from alcohol-related auto accidents.

For that matter, suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death in the U.S. Every year 33,300 unfortunate souls top themselves.

Better yet? According to the National Academy of Sciences, each year somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 people died from medical malpractice – doctor and hospital “mistakes”.

Once ObamaCare is in place, with fewer doctors and hospitals attempting to care for millions of additional patients – which you’ll be paying for, with higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, lower deductibles, and finally with your life when they decide you’re no longer worth keeping alive – once ObamaCare is in place, how many more patients will die of sloppy medical and hospital care?

Don’t even think of letting the Community Organizer’s attempt to scare you into supporting his insane plan succeed.

Keep up the pressure, America.

NO to ObamaCare, now – and then for heaven’s sake, clean out the House and a third of the US Senate in 2010.

Back in the Old Country, there’ve been tricks aplenty – and it’s not even Halloween yet.

With the mass media coverage of the “balloon boy” and the subsequent revelation that it was a hoax, there’s no need for long explanations.

The Heenes, a classically publicity-hungry family, the ultimate in the ‘look at me’ generation, engineered a hoax wherein they told officials their aptly-named son “Falcon” might be aboard a home-made hot air balloon that soared for several hours over parts of Colorado.

No one has yet tallied the dollar cost to the federal, state and local governments who participated in the search and rescue effort for the six year old, but the Colorado Army National Guard was involved, using their UH060 Black Hawk and OH 58 Kiowa helicopters. That doesn't come cheap. The local sheriff’s department joined the boy-hunt, and rescue workers of all kinds were pulled off other work, in preparation, as the balloon soared and the boy remained missing. Also involved were the Federal Aviation Administration as well as local law enforcement from several counties, all to the detriment of other people who were in real danger, of course.

Then little Falcon Heene emerged from the attic, where he’d been hiding all the time.

“It was a hoax”, said Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden. Criminal charges against the family are expected, and the family’s ability to care for their three children is being evaluated. All in all, it was a significant brouhaha, not to mention an expensive one, with the taxpayers picking up the tab.

All that said, another hoax just earned not only a “get out of jail free” card from a Minnesota judge but better yet, cash dollars legally required to be transferred to the hoaxers.

This hoax involves the “Flying Imams” a group of six Muslim men who set out in November of 2006, to test the airline security systems put in place after 9/11.

These six Muslims dressed and deliberately acted in a suspicious way, trying to duplicate what the 9/11 terrorists had done, hoping to get themselves arrested and/or kicked off the airplane.

They succeeded. They were removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis bound for Phoenix after acting in such a way that “serious security and safety concerns amongst fellow travelers” were aroused.

It was a hoax! They tried to act suspicious. They were trying to get arrested – which arrests would be false, of course, because they were kidding – they had no plan to terrorize or kill anyone.

So in March 2007, along with CAIR – terrorist sympathizers in the US – the “Flying Imams” filed a law suit against US Airways, the Minneapolis Airport, and "John Doe" passengers who reported the highly suspicious behavior. CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, proclaimed, "At its core, this case has always been about the ability of all Americans to practice their faith without fear of intimidation or harassment".

Well, that’s one view. Some of us might think it was about the rest of the passengers, on every airline all over the world, who’d like to fly with some reasonable degree of confidence that some Muslim nutcase with a box cutter wasn’t about to commandeer the airplane and fly it into a skyscraper, all for the glory of Allah. There is that.

Anyway, today a wisdom-impaired Minnesota Federal Judge – Ann Montgomery, a Bubba appointee – insisted on a settlement of the lawsuit, which included cash dollars to be paid to the Muslims. They are being paid off for their hoax – for their “inconvenience” in being falsely arrested.

One of the imams, Marwan Sadeddin, confirmed that the financial settlement did not include any kind of an apology from the perpetrators of the hoax. But, he said, they acknowledged that “a mistake was made”.

So? Two tricks, two hoaxes, one in Colorado, one in Minnesota. In both cases, taxpayers paid the bills.

Do you think the idiotic Heene family will be compensated for all the trouble they were put through in perpetrating their hoax?

Or could it be that you need to be Muslim to get the courts to approve of your dangerous tricks, and pay you off, anyway?

I think it’s time to take the Statue of Liberty down. Thanks anyway, France. Nice idea, but it didn’t work. The ‘wretched refuse’ that washed up on America’s shores has taken over the country, pure and simple.

Justice? Forget it. Try insanity.