Blog about politics (mideast and pro-Israel, Canadian and local Montreal), world events, and random thoughts.

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The World I Know is updated on a semi-regular basis by segacs.

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4:39 PM
Death penalty debate re-ignited in Illinois, where Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 150 death row inmates to life in prison:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Saying the death penalty system was broken, the governor of Illinois granted clemency to more than 150 death row inmates on Saturday, a move unprecedented since capital punishment was reinstated and likely to inflame a national death penalty debate.

[ . . . ]

"How many more cases of wrongful convictions have to occur before we can all agree that this system in Illinois is broken?" Ryan told a cheering audience at Northwestern University Law School that included several wrongfully convicted former death row inmates.

The blanket commutation follows an examination of the state's capital punishment system ordered nearly three years ago after investigations found that 13 prisoners on death row were innocent.

As an opponent of the death penalty under most circumstances, I'd have to say that overall, this is a good move.

But since I seem to have sparked a lot of reader anger with my posts on gun control, I guess I'd better defend this position before I get jumped on, too.

My opposition to the death penalty is based on 4 key reasons:

1) It doesn't deter violent crime:
General deterrence only works if a sanction is applied rapidly and consistenty, neither of which is the case with the death penalty. If life imprisonment isn't a harsh enough penalty to deter people from committing violent crimes, than death isn't likely to change that. Furthermore, only calculated, premeditated crimes can be theoretically deterred by the threat of any kind of sanctions, since the psychos and the unstable people rarely do a cost-benefit analysis before committing their crimes.
Research has consistently supported this position, that the death penalty doesn't deter crime. Surveys of police indicated that they do not see it as important in fighting crime. In Canada, a 1985 Solicitor General's report found that there had been no change in the muderder rate since the abolition of the death penalty, although surveys showed that 2/3 of the population wrongly thought that it had increased.

2) The possibility of error is irreversable.
If you wrongly convict an innocent person, you can't give him his life back but at least you can release him from prison. If he's dead you can't do that. Advances in technology, such as the ability to do DNA testing, have vindicated a number of falsely-convicted prisoners over the years (the David Milgaard case comes to mind), and chances are, further advances will continue to do the same. To date, 65 people have been released from death sentences because it was later discovered they were innocent.

3) Money.
The economic argument for the death penalty doesn't hold water; it costs more to execute a death row prisoner than to keep him in prison for life. The ratio between life imprisonment and the death penalty is $2 million to $5 million, respectively.

4) Revenge is not justice.
While it may satisfy our primal thirst for revenge to execute a prisoner, it doesn't advance society in any way, and sends the message that life isn't as precious as we say it is. Ultimately, it doesn't come down to who they - meaning the prisoners, who have generally committed heinous acts such as cold-blooded murder - are. It comes down to who we want to be as a society, and what we stand for. Do we want to be a barbaric society, or a humane one?

I'd like to address the "mosquito argument" for the death penalty: namely, that swatting a mosquito may not stop other mosquitoes from biting you, but it will at least ensure that that particular mosquito won't bite you again. People making this point argue that general deterrence may not work, but specific deterrence is a valid enough argument to support the death penalty, to ensure that the prisoner never escapes or gets paroled and goes out and kills someone else. To them I say that people aren't mosquitos, and that many innocent life forms can get caught up in a mosquito net.

Finally, I'd like to quote the Talmud (yes, me, the non-religious skeptic!) in saying that it is preferable to let 10 guilty people go free than to convict one innocent person.

Wow, I have a sneaking suspicion I'm about to really get it from the right . . . bring it on!

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3:19 PM
Yasser Arafat has long claimed to condemn attacks against Israeli civilians, and that he can't control the groups launching the attacks. Israel has long claimed the opposite: that Arafat plans, funds, and approves of terrorism, and that he can switch it on and off like a light switch.

Here's more evidence that Israel is right about Arafat:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The Palestinian leadership has called for an end to attacks against Israeli civilians in the two weeks before Israeli elections, but an Israeli official Saturday rejected the gesture as inadequate.

[ . . . ]

The Palestinian Authority statement, released late Friday, was a rare reference to Israel's Jan. 28 elections. It called on Palestinians "to show their restraint and not to allow themselves to be dragged along by the Israeli elections and (Israeli) provocation." It added, "The attacks on civilians cause great harm to our cause, in public opinion, for Israeli peace supporters, and at the international level."

As in the past, the statement did not define "civilians." Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and others have often condemned suicide bomb attacks inside Israel, but they rarely speak out against attacks against Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians consider them trespassers on land they claim for a state.

No control over the attacks, huh Arafat? So what makes you think you can call a two-week ceasefire?

What's clear is that the extremist groups are just doing Arafat's dirty work for him. Arafat has never been and will never be a legitimate partner for peace.

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1:54 AM
Trevalyan has a message to people who don't believe Israel is in a war for the survival for its people:

Let's contrast how you, and your enemy, deal with the problem. You feel ever so sad when you hear one of your soldier killed a civilian. They throw goddamn parties when one of their bombers strikes. Mass death for them is VICTORY. Your news always tries to soothe your emotions: even the Jerusalem Post, who you know could get a lot nastier, a lot quicker when they take pictures, because your imagination can see the destruction is even worse than what the TV shows. They show accidental deaths of children, footage as gory as it gets- they want to hate you, and God knows no one's got a gun to their head to watch the hatred.

[ . . . ]

Your enemy names STREETS after child killers, celebrate them as "the general of the martyrs" whatever the FUCKISTAN that verbal diarrhea means. Their child- killers are glorified, their politicians fall over themselves to claim credit for slaughtering toddlers after murdering their screaming mother.

[ . . . ]

I don't particularly want you to hate them, son. I want you to know what IS. What people deal with every day. Because Israel at least makes the attempt to spare lives. Arafat and his clones have to TAKE them, otherwise they become less popular: this is obvious to anyone with brains, and not all the UN commissions in the world can get by that, my friend!

Looks like I'm not the only one who's pissed off.

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4:12 PM
I've long maintained that Israel is a "testing ground" for terrorism, just as Spain was Hitler's testing ground for weapons during the Spanish Civil War. Don't fight terrorism in Israel and it will spread.

September 11th was proof. So was Bali, Kenya, Yemen, and more examples too numerous to list. Now Hamas is urging Iraq to use suicide bombers against American and British troops.

The militant group Hamas, which has carried out scores of suicide bombings in Israel, urged Iraq on Friday to copy its tactics and send thousands of attackers with explosives strapped to their bodies into a battle against American and British troops in Iraq.

"We call on the Arabs and Muslims to burn the land under the feet of the American invaders, especially our brothers in Saudi Arabia because this war is not against Iraq, it's against the Islamic nation," Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi told a rally in this impoverished shanty encampment.

I hate it when my predictions appear to come true, even when they're obvious ones to call.

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11:52 AM
Something happened to me the other day while debating with a Palestinian supporter on the Link's website who justifies suicide bombings: I got angry.

I usually try to stay rational, and make my arguments coolly without letting them get clouded with emotion. But when I stopped to think about it, why shouldn't I be angry? No, let me go one step further: I should be angry and if I weren't, I should be ashamed of myself as a human being!

I'm angry that people are justifying and supporting terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis. I'm angry when they make statements like this:

What is wrong with suicide bombings if that is the only way of retaliation against the Israeli Forces? They could be stopped though...how?...if the palestinians were also supplied with Black Hawks and bombs and tanks by the US! Then it would be fair game to play and hey we wouldn't need to worry about suicide bombings. That will be the end of them.

I'm absolutely livid when these same people turn around and play the morality card, blaming Hillel for postering and villifying Israel for committing such horrible "crimes" as closing borders or imposing curfews.

I'm through being "rational" and "reasonable". This is all about emotion. I'm absolutely, unapologetically furious.

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9:55 AM
Jaggi Singh now claims that his arrest in Israel wasn't a publicity stunt.

"This was not a publicity stunt," he said yesterday. "I did not come here to get arrested - I came here to write stories. In late 1999 to 2000 I spent three months in India doing exactly the same thing. But nobody heard of it because they didn't decide to deport me."

Yeah, right.

Singh is drawn to publicity like a moth to a flame. Now he's levelling accusations that he was beaten while in lockup in Israel awaiting deportation.

Liar.

Think about it: the Israelis clearly have no motive whatsoever to beat him up or harm him in any way. But Singh has plenty of motive to portray Israeli police as "brutal". Actually, I think the word "brutal" is pretty much synonymous with any police anywhere - and with any Israeli anywhere - in Singh's mind, so he must have seen the opportunity to make up charges against Israeli police as too good to pass up.

Whatever the case may be, Singh was seeking this arrest from the day he stepped off that plane in Tel Aviv. Press releases abounded - most probably written in advance - to chronicle Singh's detention at the airport, the Israeli court's subsequent decision to allow him into Israel conditionally, Singh's blatant violation of those conditions and his "come and get me" attitude, and finally, his inevitable arrest.

Singh has demonstrated that he has no problem bending or completely manufacturing the truth. This goes directly to his credibility and says that we should take whatever he says with not only a grain of salt, but a whole shaker full.

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11:21 PM
Left, Right, or the kitchen sink?

In the time since I started this blog, I haven't exactly shied away from controversy in my postings. But with all the issues being debated - mideast politics, Concordia politics, the US and potential war on Iraq, terrorism - I seem to be getting the most critical e-mails about my post below on Jim Turnbull and the Canadian gun lobby.

Now, the gun registry's got problems and it might not be the most popular viewpoint out there to oppose those opposing it, but come on, this is far from the most controversial topic that's come up here! So I wondered why it's getting so much attention. Then it came to me: because I'm pro-Israel, people assume I must be right-wing in my politics and that I'm therefore a supporter of what our neighbours to the south call the "right to bear arms".

Simply put, I attracted a right-wing readership with my main topic of discussion, and then alienated them by doing a 180 on an issue that I happen to disagree with them about. Don't get me wrong, I agree to disagree - some of the smartest bloggers I know want to toss the gun registry out the window (check out the links on the lefthand side of this page) and it's not like I don't understand where they're coming from. But I have to ask sometimes: what does wanting more restrictions on gun ownership and licensing have to do with supporting Israel?

Anyone notice anything strange about those combinations? They don't logically follow. And I categorically reject the idea that we need to pick a side and go along with all the pet issues that have come to represent one side or another.

In my FAQ, I specifically state that I don't identify with either the Left or the Right. My views are simply my views, and I think that the real hypocritical thing is to change them simply because the political stage has shifted in one direction or another. If I said I was a Liberal, and tomorrow all Liberals decided that their new pet issue was opposing all people with orange socks, and I disagreed with that, then it would be silly to go along with it simply because of a label, wouldn't it?

I take issue with the Left for its overspending of our tax dollars, its hatred of anything with a profit motive, and its absolutely disastrous foreign policy - especially when it comes to the mideast, but in general as well.

I take issue with the Right for butting into our private lives in issues of abortion, gay rights, and religion, and its insistance that the right to own a gun is more important than the right for the next guy not to get shot, and its refusal to associate rights and freedoms with responsibilities.

Most of all, I take issue with people who assume that it's a spectrum of "either-or" and that everyone has to pick one side or the other.

So I'm just going to keep on saying what I think, without worrying about whether it's fashionable on the Left or on the Right, and trust that people out there reading can recognize the difference between labels and views. I also happen to hold an inkling - maybe naively idealistic - that if we can just get past these labels, and pick and choose the good from both sides, maybe we can get somewhere closer to where we want to be as a society.

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7:36 PM
You are what you drink?

A pro-Palestinian activist from - where else? - France has started a new brand of cola, called Mecca Cola, aimed at the European market (via Jon).

The new brand, which bears a striking resemblance to Coca-Cola, is specifically intended to make a political statement.

Its producers promise that 10 percent of profits will go to Palestinian causes.

"No more drinking stupid," its label reads in French. "Drink with commitment."

I wonder, what qualifies as a Palestinian "cause"? Donate money to help them make bombs to blow up innocent Israeli children?

Update: An anonymous reader came up with a great advertising slogan for Mecca-Cola: "Now with 15% more Jihad!"

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5:49 PM
Canada considers pulling head out of sand.

Reports say that Canada is now considering joining a US-led attack on Iraq even without UN authorization. In a statement by Defence Minister John McCallum, he said that Canada's cooperation with such an attack would be reluctant, but he hasn't ruled it out.

"Many, many countries are in a position where they are offering contingency co-operation," McCallum said after meeting U.S. counterpart Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. "Some may say, 'We're doing it only with a UN mandate.' We're saying we much prefer that, but we may do it otherwise."

Could this be the beginning of Canadian foreign policy that reflects reality instead of idiocy? I'm cautiously optimistic.

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10:45 AM
Jaggi Singh has finally been arrested by Israeli police, and is expected to be deported to Canada sometime today.

After agreeing to an Israeli court's terms to be let into Israel (stay only a week, no visits to the Disputed Territories), Singh flagrantly violated these terms and flaunted his lawbreaking to the international media. Israel let the party go on long enough, it's time to toss his ass out.

What I find to be the most interesting twist is the discrepancy between what Singh's buddies are reporting happened, and what actually happened. The SPHR gives an exaggerated, colourful picture of Singh's arrest:

Jaggi Singh was "kidnapped" as he visited a friend's home in Jerusalem, said representatives of the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. Chadi Marouf, a spokesman for the group, said Singh was transported to jail and held on unknown charges.

"This is a Canadian citizen in Israel who is being treated unfairly, picked up like a hooligan in the middle of the night," Marouf said in an interview.

The real story, according to an article in this morning's Gazette (that unfortunatly doesn't appear in the online edition) is apparently that Singh was visiting a friend in Jerusalem when he was arrested by plainclothes Israeli police, and detained in the Russian Compound lockup pending deportation through channels. No dramatic kidnappings, no fanfare, just a simple arrest for breaking the law.

Of course, Singh and his cohorts tend to assume that the law doesn't apply to them. And we're talking about a group prone to blatant exaggeration and invention of facts. There's really no reason why we should believe any of their posturing.

Israel has every right to decide who to allow into the country and who should be refused entry. It was above and beyond to allow Singh, who threatened the security of Benjamin Netanyahu by orchestrating riots at Concordia in September, into Israel in the first place. And since Singh didn't see fit to obey the law, he deserves to be deported. If only Canada didn't have to take him back.

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10:22 AM
Idiocy on the Left. NDP leadership candidate Bill Blaikie said Tuesday night in a debate that he thinks that US President Bush "is planning every minute of his life to kill as many Iraqi children as he can in the name of oil or whatever it is that's really on the agenda."

You gotta wonder how much of the marijuana he's so eager to legalize he's been smoking. At least with someone like Blaikie at the helm, the NDP isn't likely to win too much new support.

Just in case you think I'm leaving anyone out . . .

Idiocy on the Right. This guy:



That's pro-gun activist Jim Turnbull, the guy who's cowboy hat is only slightly more ludicrous than his habit of borrowing slogans from the American NRA. The guy who urged Canadians to bring guns to a public meeting. Responsible gun ownership indeed! The guy who said: "And to all of you men who registered your firearms, when you go to bed tonight, put your hand in your pyjamas... and see if you can find some balls!" The above photo shows him being arrested for taking out an unlicensed gun in front of scores of police and waving it around. Has he been smoking some of Bill Blaikie's supply?

The thing is, I sympathize when people complain about federal government overspending on the gun registry. It was supposed to cost $2 million, it's costing over $1 billion. I get it, ok?

But what I don't get are people who use that as an argument to scrap gun laws altogether. You don't have the right to bear arms, okay? Individual rights end where the next guy's rights begin, and he's got a right to live without being shot.

Guns kill people. Period. And no legal-technical bullcrap is going to convince me that the gun nuts have got it right. Sorry, but I don't get why we should protect someone like Jim Turnbull's right to own a gun over the right of people everywhere to safety. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people?" Maybe, but guns are an incredibly efficient way to kill people.

Any otherwise law-abiding citizen who wants to own a hunting rifle to kill deer, well, fine, but quit whining about filling out a few forms. Maybe not all criminals will comply, but with a federal database containing most guns in the country, it will be a helluvalot easier for police to do their jobs. And if the issue is government overspending, fine, address it, but scrapping the entire idea of registring guns is just a lot of claptrap.

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5:11 PM
London got hit by a giant snowstorm, the largest snowfall there in 12 years. The storm practically shut the whole city down. (Hat tip: Tom. Yes, you got another mention in my blog, don't you feel special now?)



How much snow would cause this kind of shutdown? 2 feet? A foot? No, 2 inches! That's right, two inches were recorded in Central London, and 3-4 inches in surrounding areas.

Before we laugh at the poor Brits too much, though, let's just remember that we in Montreal get the highest urban snowfall in North America on average, and we know what to do with it. We have snow removal services, salt trucks, snow tires, and snowplows. Most people in London don't even have so much as a snow brush handy in their cars. I bet most of them don't even know what one is!

Update: Damian e-mailed me to inform me that I was wrong in stating that Montreal has the higest urban snowfall in North America. Accoridng to Statistics Canada, Montreal gets an annual average snowfall of 214.2cm. That puts us in seventh place in Canada, behind Ottawa, Halifax, Fredricton, St. John's, Charlottetown, and Quebec City. Whoops. I guess the statistics I was reading were off . . . or maybe they were referring to urban centres of above a certain population (Montreal is by far the largest of all the cities listed above).

London, however, gets such a small amount of snow on an annual basis that I couldn't even find a published average.

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4:29 PM
Is this a day for plane crashes or something? 72 people have been killed on a Turkish Airlines flight that crashed in southern Turkey.

The cause is not yet known, but initial reports say terrorism does not seem to be a factor.

Update: The media is now reporting that it looks like heavy fog was a factor in the crash.

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12:27 PM
The Sens' bankruptcy woes continue, and it's starting to take a toll on the players.

The team's in real trouble. While, sure, I want the Habs to beat the Senators, I'd like them to still be able to do it in Ottawa. I'd hate to see another Canadian hockey team disappear to the States for financial reasons. Hockey seems less and less like "Canada's game" these days, and it would be a real shame to lose the Senators.

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10:47 AM
Those morons at the EU have issued their typical criticism of Israel in the wake of the double-suicide bombing that killed 23 people in Tel Aviv on Sunday, by calling upon Israel to lift the travel ban on Palestinians:

In a statement issued by Greece, the bloc's president until the end of June, the EU called on Israel to lift the travel ban because the decision "perpetuates hatred and extremism."

"The Presidency of the EU calls upon the Israeli government to reconsider this decision and to immediately lift the ban," the statement said.

Perpetuates hatred and extremism? Israel's mere existence "perpetuates" this hatred, according to groups like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad who routinely carry out these terrorist attacks. The Palestinians kill 23 innocent people, and Israel issues travel restrictions, and it's Israel who's perpetuating the violence? That's so absurd it could almost be a joke, if it weren't the regular position of the hypocritical European Union.

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10:39 AM
My condolences to the families of the victims of flight 5481 in Charlotte, NC. The media is reporting that it appears that all 19 commuter passangers and 2 crew members who were on board died in the crash, after the plane crashed into a maintenance hanger.

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10:35 AM
Judith from Kesher Talk alerted me to this piece of disturbing news:

AN Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) executive member was physically attacked as last week's annual National Union of Students (NUS) conference descended into violence.

[. . .]

Conference observer Sibella Stern said that a brawl broke out during the debate on anti-terror legislation when about three students were hit.

"That was very scary for me. It was a moment of panic. We didn't know what was coming next, what it would turn in to," Stern said.

The following day, during a debate on Iraq, a knife was found on the conference floor prompting calls for police intervention.

I'm detecting a pattern. Student unions are becoming bastions of antisemitism, intimidation and violence against Jewish students, and prejudice against Israel. University campuses are emitting some of the most virulent hate. Concordia is certainly not alone, as this latest Australian episode proves.

But why is that? Why, when centuries of chronicling racism and hate have shown that it is usually more prevalant among the uneducated or narrow-minded, are universities leading the way for the new antisemitism? Universities! The exact places where people are supposed to learn to think critically, to broaden their horizons, and to make their place in society!

I'd be tempted to say it's merely the association of the Left with the "Palestinian cause" that has led to student unions turning into cesspools of anti-Israel hatred, but I don't think that's it. Why specifically students, as opposed to other unionized people or left-wingers?

Of course, students have long been associated with movements for change, ever since the radical movements of the 60's and 70's. Idealism is found more among the young, who believe they have the power to change the world. That in itself is usually a good thing. So where does it go wrong?

As they say, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Buoyed by the false nostalgia for their parents' generation's activist politics - which they regret missing out on - many students are choosing to take a limited number of facts and interpret false conclusions from them. This continues when they then teach those conclusions to other students, and so on, and so forth, until we have entire international movements of people who buy in. And they've shown repeatedly that they'll do whatever it takes to shut down their political opponents - including resorting to violence.

The question is, where does it end?

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10:11 PM
The Grammy nominations are out, and are serving as just another reminder of why I make a point of NEVER watching them. With nominees like Eminem and Nelly, they should just rename the show the "Worst music to ever grate your eardrums" Awards.

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9:55 PM
Honest Reporting points to some pretty disturbing hate speech on the Raelians' website. This is what Damian Penny has to say about it:

I used to think the Raelians were just a bunch of cranks with some wacky ideas, but basically harmless. Than I found the Rael-operated "Subversions.com", a "politically incorrect" "news" website which features one of the most shocking blood libels I've ever read: that the Israelis murdered 1,000 Palestinians, "most of whom were women and children" in Jenin. Not even the Palestinians themselves, nor the most hysterically "anti-Zionist" segments of the British media, wrote anything this vile.

Mind you, the Raelians don't just pick on the Jews. They say say the U.S. Secret Service killed John Lennon and the followers of "Reverend" Jim Jones, and they even accuse the French of murdering members of the "Solar Temple" cult in 1994-95 and planning their own "concentration camps" for minorities. Still, the front page, which rants about "Americano-Israelian terrorism" and purports to show a Palestinian baby murdered by the IDF, makes it clear who their main target is.

Fuck you, Rael. Fuck, fuck, fuck you. Fuck you and the spaceship you rode in on.

Damian, I couldn't agree more.

It's scary as hell. Sure, the announcements of this week's cloned babies are almost certainly hoaxes, but even the idea of them being true is frightening. Is this really who we want owning the technology to clone people? Imagine what kind of people these bigoted freaks would create. A world full of Raelian clones is not the planet Earth I want to live on, that's for sure!

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11:20 AM
Some mornings it's just not worth getting out of bed.

In London, police made six arrests in what looks like an attempted terrorist plot using poisons. The Link is at it again, thinly disguising slander against Concordia Hillel as news. And for some reason, I can't seem to find an important file on my computer.

I think I'll go back to sleep.

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4:43 PM
So I've decided, now that I've been back at work for one day, that I need another vacation.

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3:18 PM
The real meaning of "occupation"

A user comment on the Link directed me to this article at ArabicNews.com:

Two Palestinians yesterday carried out two operations near a coach station in the downtown of Tel Aviv that resulted in killing 23 Israeli settlers and wounding other 80, seven of them in a critical health condition.

Note the use of the word "settlers" to describe the Israelis killed in Tel Aviv. Yet more evidence of what the Palestinians truly mean by "end the occupation" - they don't mean Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip; they mean all of "Historic Palestine" (read: they want to destroy Israel). To them, any Jews living in the mideast are "settlers" or "occupiers".

When will the world catch on?

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3:10 PM
Lynn B. deconstructs an article by Ari Shavit from Friday's Ha'aretz. I suggest checking out her extensive commentary, but one thing in particular about the article struck me:

We visited Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement (he received us with eyes beaming and talked about the abandoned mosques in the ruined villages throughout the country and about the danger looming to the Al-Aqsa mosque, and about how the Jews had no right to Al-Aqsa. You know, he said, even according to the Israeli historians, even according to Ha'aretz Magazine, the Jews have no right to Al-Aqsa: The whole story of the Temple Mount never happened).

Upon reading this, I thought to myself, there it is! Right there, in black and white. The Palestinians believe their religious claims are valid and those of the Jews aren't - why? Because there are more secular Israelis than secular Palestinians!

It seems so obvious. While there are many Christian Palestinians, and Muslim Palestinians are among the most secular Muslims in the mideast, they're still overwhelmingly more religious and inclined to believe their holy texts than are Israelis. Israel is sharply divided between religious and secular, with religious communities battling for more control but with a huge secular population ready to throw out all claims attached to Jewish history or biblical ties.

As a secular Jew myself, I guess this affected me even more than it might affect someone religious. Do I believe in the bible as literal truth? No. Do I respect the right of others to believe in it? Absolutely! This is, after all, what freedom of religion is all about.

I support the right of religious Jews to believe in the Torah, of religious Christians to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, of religious Muslims to believe in the Koran and in the words of Mohammed, and of the Raelians to believe we all came from aliens if that's what they friggin' want!

But what the Shavit article exposes is what we've always known: that religious intolerance is behind much of what is being falsely portrayed as a secular movement for Palestinian rights. Salah's rantings come from the perception that Islam is right and Judaism is wrong, and, as with most matters of faith, to him this is an unshakeable belief - as unshakeable as my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow.

It's much easier to delegitimatize your enemies if you believe yours is the only true religion. And it's easy to claim rights over land if you believe your holy text is right and theirs is wrong. To us, it seems like a double-standard but to them there's no contradiction at work here; it's simple truth.

That, right there, is what Israel is fighting. Not reason. Not a willingness to compromise. Not openness to logic or even centuries of hatred. Israel is fighting an enemy engaged in what it perceives to be a holy war. And people who beleive they are backed by the heavens aren't going to compromise or see the other side anytime soon. It's a zero-sum game to them.

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12:32 PM
When the blogs become the news . . .

Noah Shachtman in Wired.com writes about how bloggers are often breaking stories and bringing them to national attention, when otherwise they would be ignored by the mainstream press. He specifically discusses Concordia as an example:

Congruent events occurred at Montreal's Concordia University. In September, Palestinian supporters clashed with riot police before a planned speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then, in December, the Concordia Hillel had its funding cut by the Concordia Student Union -- allegedly for displaying a pamphlet for the Mahal 2000 program, which helps diaspora Jews volunteer for the Israeli army.

Bloggers were the only ones to pay attention to these events in the United States. Despite hundreds of articles on anti-Semitic incidents in France, the confrontations at Concordia received scant press coverage.

Bloggers like [Glenn] Reynolds and California Web designer Charles Johnson focused the attention of readers on the issue.

Now, Noah Joseph, a Concordia Hillel student leader, feels he's got an international network of support.

"Were getting an absolute influx of e-mail -- 400 to my personal account, thousands more to a general mailbox," Joseph said. "It's uplifting to know you're not alone in all of this."

I guess I could feel slighted that nobody mentioned me as the person who sent the story to Instapundit and LGF in the first place . . . but that would just be narcissistic. The point is, the Concordia story got more coverage thanks to them, and that's all that matters.

Speaking of Noah Shachtman, he's got a new blog, Defense Tech about technology and defense and the relationship between the two.

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11:19 AM
Jackie Mason and Raul Fender explain the fallacy of rewarding Palestinian terror in a JWR column entitled "Kill Jews, get your own country":

It is no accident that the Arabs are not concerned with public opinion while killing our people, but we are terrified of public opinion before we dismiss them from our country. Somehow, we have become intimidated into believing that we are obligated to give them a place to live, and we have no right to throw them out just because they are killing our people.

It is about time we realize that public opinion is nothing but publicly expressed anti-Semitism and appeasing public opinion makes as much sense as Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler. Jews dying in Israel disturbs them as much as watching your neighbor killing a cockroach, even if it doesn't fill you with pleasure you certainly don't feel remorse about it. That is why when suicide bombers kill hundreds of Jews not a word of protest is ever heard, but when we try to defend ourselves by retaliating against our killers the U.N. immediately is called in an emergency session to protect our assassins.

We are brain-dead if we accept the idea that we have to guess which Arab is our next killer. We are not obligated to victimize ourselves by letting the Arabs play Russian roulette with Jewish lives. Israelis are constantly asked the same obnoxious question " How can you throw the Arabs out, where would they go?" The answer is if they don't care whom they kill, why are we obligated to care where they go?

If a gang of killers lived across the street, would you allow them to keep throwing bombs through your window until you can find them another apartment? Are we morally obligated to become a real estate agent for every Arab suicide bomber? We are not obligated to accept a new, slower Holocaust as the inevitable fate of our people. Jordan did not take a poll of world opinion and neither did Kuwait before they routed the Palestinians out of their countries.

America did not wait for public opinion to take whatever action was necessary to protect their country, and there is no reason why we should be afraid to do what is necessary to protect the state of Israel.

Agree or disagree, it's worth a read.

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11:16 AM
As part of its response to yesterday's terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv, the Israeli government has ordered the shutdown of three Palestinian universities, including Bir Zeit University near Ramallah, on charges that the campuses are breeding grounds for terrorism. Based on what we know about Palestinian education, I'd say this charge isn't so far out in left field.

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10:37 AM
The tensions in North Korea continue to heat up, with the war of words becoming reminiscent of the Cold War era.

But reclusive North Korea remained defiant, denouncing Washington's missile defense system and threatening the United States with destruction if it launched a nuclear attack over its suspected atomic weapons program.

North Korea said it had "increased its self-defensive military capability" to cope with the "U.S. intensified policy to invade and stifle it with nukes."

"If the U.S. unleashes a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, it will not escape its destruction," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

That's of course of little comfort to South Korea, which is hoping to avert a crisis through diplomacy. While appeasement of hostile nuclear threats is of course extremely dangerous, it makes sense that South Korea is scared, given the fact that it's the most likely to suffer if North Korea launches an attack.

With the escalation in North Korea, inevitable comparisons to Iraq are being made on a daily basis. Jonah Goldberg in the Washington Times explains why the two must be treated differently.

Um, yeah. That's because North Korea has the fifth-largest standing army in the world, huge supplies of weapons of mass-destruction, probably including nukes, and the ability to inflict staggering casualties on South Korea, Japan and our own troops.

[. . .]

Of course, Iraq wants to be treated like North Korea. That's why Iraq is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And that's why the Bush administration wants to keep that from happening. The whole rationale for stopping Saddam now is that the price might be too high to stop him later, like it already is with North Korea.

A heavy dose of reality is needed here. Some oppose all war on principle, not recognizing that you can't stand in the middle of a battlefield holding up a white ribbon when you're being shot at, and that the our enemies' bombs can't distinguish between activists and pacifists when they fall. Others say that we can't right one wrong if we're not going to right all the others at the same time. To them, I say that we're doing the best we can, one situation at a time, and that if they really wanted to change the world, they should start backing those efforts.

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10:22 AM
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw adds another comment to a long list of European apologies for Palestinian terror, by expressing his "regret" that Israel won't allow PA leadership to travel to London for a conference.

Straw deplored Sunday's double suicide bombing which left 22 dead in Tel Aviv, but he appeared to suggest that such violence was understandable, even justifiable, in the absence of movement toward a political settlement.

"The 6 million people who live in Israel and the 3.5 million people who live in Palestine, in the occupied territories, can only live in peace if they are going to have a future," he told the BBC on Monday.

Straw seemed particularly displeased that he had not been told in advance of Israel s decision to prevent the Palestinians from traveling to London, noting that he had only learnt of the decision on a BBC news program.

Just more of the same moral blindness. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.

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10:17 AM
In the "stupidest reasoning to oppose the gun registry" category, this letter by Gerry Gamble in yesterday's Gazette tops the list:

In addition, the vast majority of car accidents and deaths are caused by registered vehicles driven by licensed drivers. Obviously, licensing and registration has been unable to stop motor-vehicle mishaps. So will how registration have an impact on the use of dangerous firearms? The fact is, it won't.

What Mr. Gamble obviously ignores is the reason behind registering motor vehicles. We don't register them to prevent accidents; we register them to better be able to deal with accidents when they happen. Like guns, cars can be lethal weapons in the wrong hands. The idea is to keep track of whose hands they are, so that a vehicle involved in a crash - like a gun involved in a shooting - can be traced to its owner, and the owner punished.

I'm in favour of gun control laws, but I understand many of the arguments opposing the registry. Unfortunately, this one is just absurd.

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10:13 AM
The world is still reacting to the latest bombing in Israel, but I know all too well that within a few days it will be all but forgotten, relegated to just the latest in a long string of similar attacks. People keep dying, accusations keep flying, and not very much changes.

The EU has condemned the attacks, but as usual, the condemnation focused more on the fact that terrorism was counter-productive strategically than on the fact that it's just plain wrong to kill innocent human beings. And, of course, the EU has felt the need to call on "both sides" to end the violence:

"The legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people cannot be promoted through acts of terrorism," the EU presidency said.

Patten urged Israel and the Palestinians to recommit themselves to the peace initiative of the so-called Quartet of the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the 15-nation EU.

It's getting harder and harder to read this stuff.

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11:44 PM
Hillel is holding a vigil for the victims of today's terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. Tomorrow (Monday) at 2:30pm at the Roddick Gates, corner Sherbrooke and McGill College.

I'll be at work, but for those Montrealers out there who can make it, please spread the word. As the political fallout becomes the main story and the names of the victims relegated to mere statistics, it's important to do whatever is in our power to make sure that these innocent lives are not forgotten.

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7:27 PM
A surge in violent crime in England has been raising eyebrows. Mark Steyn, in an attempt to dismiss gun control as ineffective that, incidentally, I disagree with, claims that within 2 years, the murder rate in London will exceed that in New York (via Damian Penny). And Tom's comment was "Britain is falling apart. You might like to mention it in your blog."

Well, Tom's right, it does bear mentioning. In this past week alone there's been a siege where police squared off with a hostage taker for over 11 days, negotiating and feeding the gunman Kentucky Fried Chicken. The hostage has been freed but the gunman is still refusing to surrender. Two women have been murdered, and their body parts found in plastic bags. Two men were stabbed to death in Bristol. A cab driver was murdered in Manchester. And the shooting deaths of two girls and injury of two others on New Year's Eve who walked out of a club and into bullets apparently intended for gang rivals is leading to renewed calls for gun law reform.

Is there a full moon over there or something?

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5:46 PM
Update on the Tel Aviv bombings: The Jerusalem Post is now reporting 22 dead and over 120 injured. CNN reports that many of the wounded are immigrant workers, who may be afraid to seek medical attention because they don't have the proper papers to remain in Israel.

Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau said anyone injured, regardless of their legal status, should seek medical care.

"We have made it clear that we will take good care of anyone who will be taken to the hospital," Landau said. "We're going to see afterwards that they will be fully taken care of."

There have been conflicting claims of responsibility, but the Israeli news sources appear to be saying that the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade is behind the attacks. What I find most baffling and sickening is how three different groups all tried to claim responsibility, as though they all wish it were them behind the attacks. Who in their right mind would be proud of having murdered 22 innocent people in cold blood? The whole concept of "claiming responsibility" for suicide attacks is utterly and completely twisted.

Israel's response has been swift. The IDF has fired missiles at Gaza City. Details are still emerging about the specific targets.

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2:44 PM
There's been another bombing in Israel.

Two homicide bombers blew themselves up near the central bus station in Tel Aviv, a crowded area where many foreign workers live. The Jerusalem Post reports that so far 20 people have been killed and over 100 injured.

For starters I'd like to add my condolences to the victims and their families. I'm not sure what makes me angrier: the way the international press is more concerned about Israel's potential responses than about the attack itself, or the way the focus of the media is more on the political ramifications of the bombings, with respect to Israel's upcoming election, than on the fact that twenty innocent people died horribly and uselessly.

The whole thing makes me sick.

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