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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11:38 PM
People who know me know that I'm not exactly the militant feminist type. I don't go around looking for patriarchial conspiracies, or getting all worked up over someone calling women "chicks".

But even I was offended by George Jonas's latest column in the Gazette last week (no link - I guess even the Gazette was embarrassed), in which he claimed that women should be flattered, not offended, to be groped by Arnold Schwarzenegger, because he's a good-looking movie star.

Several letter-writers to the Gazette shared my sentiment:

There's a difference between the kind of sexual advances Schwarzenegger has been accused of and a mere sexual invitation. Hollywood good looks are not a licence to behave inappropriately - and possibly criminally - without repercussions.

I couldn't agree more. And I can't believe that Jonas can still get away with publishing such crap. It's 2003, not 1903, and he - and the paper's editors - really ought to know better.

I'm not saying Arnold's guilty. There was an icky feel to the smear campaign that conveniently materialized just days before the recall vote. And didn't work, I might add. If there's actual evidence against Arnold, then charge him. If not, he's innocent unless proven guilty.

But to suggest that a movie star can't be guilty of sexual harrassment because women would be flattered to be groped by him? That kind of dark ages mentality should have no place in print.

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10:46 PM
Saw the movie Intolerable Cruelty today. Wasn't expecting much but I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was pretty funny. Worth seeing.

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11:58 PM
There was another suicide bombing in Israel earlier today. Two soldiers and one bystander were wounded:

The Aksa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the bombing at the army-run office near the Misila roadblock that issues travel permits to Palestinians for humanitarian reasons.

Of course, in the "if it bleeds, it leads" cynicism of the media, no deaths means no headlines.

And when suicide bombers are caught and stopped by Israeli forces before getting a chance to blow up innocent people, we hear about it even less. Then there's all this nonsense about the roadblocks and security fences being useless at preventing terrorist attacks.

That's just plain ridiculous. The terrorists who strap on bombs and go out seeking victims plainly have the same intent, no matter their level of success. I'm thankful that they're stopped and prevented from doing more harm. And I hope that the soldier who was seriously wounded in today's attack pulls through.

But no more free passes for attempted murder.

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11:50 PM
And my Habs kick things off with a . . . typically dismal showing.

At this rate, it's gonna be a long season.

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11:45 PM
For those of you who thought North American reality TV had hit rock bottom, Allison's got the scoop on the latest and greatest in Israeli viewing entertainment:

My latest guilty pleasure is watching "Project Y," the local reality show, which is a hybrid of "Big Brother" and "American Idol." With a little bit of "Fame" mixed in.

The 20-somethings are all trapped in a house, and the viewers vote them off one by one, but they've all got show biz ambitions and spend their daytime hours in the house taking acting, voice and dance lessons -- with the usual gossiping, partying and casual sex in the evenings.

The winner -- the sole survivor -- gets a contract for their own TV show.

So, I'm unloading the dishwasher and I've got it on in the background, and suddenly I hear screaming, "You Arab dog, you Palestinian terrorist! Go ahead blow yourself up, you suicide bomber! I dare you!" and a response, "I'll kill you, you shiksa Russian whore sleazebag!"

Thinking that things are heating up in the house, I head over to the TV screen.

There were two of the show's participants, Camilla, a Russian immigrant, and Fares, an Israeli Arab, engaged in a massive tickling and wrestling match on a bed and laughing their heads off. They were completely joking with each other.

Interviewed afterwards, they said that getting all this stuff out in the open and joking about it defused the tension. Hey, whatever works.

But I'd love to put THAT clip on Peter Jennings newscast and let him sort it out.

Does Israel have equivalents to raspberry awards?

Still, it'd be worth it to air a few episodes here, just to see the heads of the ultra-politically-correct wackos explode.

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11:50 AM
Arafat, frail health and all, seems to be going through Prime Ministers like water. The latest is that Ahmed Qurie is threatening to quit over a cabinet dispute with Arafat.

Not that it would be any big loss.

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1:12 AM
Ego roll:

I don't have any fancy RSS feeds or trackbacks on my site. (I don't think Geocities supports them, and I'm not technically savvy enough to figure out how they work anyway). So I don't always notice when other people talk about what I post. But I was surfing before and I happened to notice that some of my past posts on gay marriage sparked a bit of a debate on the nature of rights.

David Janes disagreed with me, claiming that rights are not inalieable because we'd get into a slippery slope situation where everything was considered a right. Mark responded with a shooting down of David's argument, and the two of them had it out over a few subsequent comments.

Later, on my post on the extension of hate crime laws to gays, David agrees with me that they should either be included, or else the whole laws scrapped. But he disagrees with me in that he thinks they should be scrapped. Michael Demmons disagreed, and posted his defense of hate crime laws. And Alan agrees.

(Oh, and in case that wasn't enough ego for one night, I noticed that David also found my review of the Live concert.)

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12:45 AM
I gotta agree with Alex Strachan: the West Wing has pretty much lost its edge.

After watching tonight's episode, I have to concede that, while the show started off as exceptional television, it's since laped into merely ordinary.

What a shame.

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12:43 AM
Digging through archives sometimes bears fruit. I was browsing the web and found a link that Allison Kaplan Sommer posted to an article she wrote back in 2002 on why the UN hates Israel.

In it, Allison does a very good job of exposing how the very structure of the UN puts Israel in a nearly impossible position:

The UN's anti-Israel bias is rooted in the organization's very structure. In the General Assembly, 130 of the 190 member nations will, almost automatically, vote against Israel.

[ . . . ]

Given the UN's overwhelmingly third-world majority, the official says, the case against Israel is easy for the Arab states to make. Zionism is depicted simply as an extension of the history of European colonization of Asia, Africa, and South America--and just as these powers withdrew from their former colonies and granted them independence, they argue, so should the Jewish residents give up "occupied Palestinian territory."

Allison quotes Montreal-based MP and human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler extensively. She discusses Israel's exclusion prior to 2002 from any regional groups, and the effect it has had on the country's ability to develop parity. She has plenty to say about the UN's so-called "human rights commission", at which 30% of resolutions are directed against Israel, and where accusations ranging the gamut from blood libel to Nazi equivalencies have been passed as resolutions. And she explains in layman's terms why Israel remians a pariah state in the UN, while countries with much worse human rights records have been given a free pass:

"While theoretically this wide group does not need to vote together, their common history of fighting Western imperialism still binds them together," says Becker. "Add to this the simple fact that, for the vast majority of these countries, it is simply not worth it from a practical point of view to anger the wealthy and oil-rich Arab world by opposing anti-Israel resolutions. They have a great deal to lose and not much to gain. It just pays for them to side with the Arabs." "There is an institutionalized set of double standards," adds Professor Cotler. Powerful countries with wide spheres of influence, or groups of countries, such as Russia, China and the Arab world, agree tacitly to ignore one another's human rights violations. Israel has no such leverage.

The anti-Israel crowd loves to quote UN resolutions when it suits their purposes, failing of course to realize how biased they are. Other organizations have done plenty to expose the bias as well. AIPAC has a fact sheet, for example, and the Jewish Virtual Library keeps a record of all anti-Israel resolutions passed by the General Assembly by year.

The thing is, the UN's anti-Israel bias isn't exactly news. But sometimes it's worth recalling some of these facts, because with all the shouting from the anti-Zionist crowd about resolutions that Israel is supposedly violating, it tends to get forgotten.

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7:30 PM
The news of Arafat's heart attack last week has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. Charles is waiting for him to kick the bucket. Damian thinks he should suffer. Meryl's even got a song about it. Unconfirmed reports of his death have caused some of the bloggers to cross their fingers and start "death watch" reports.

I wonder how bad someone's gotta be for it to be okay to wish he'd just die already. How many innocent people would he need to have killed? As a general rule, I'm uncomfortable with the notion that anyone should wish for someone to die.

But I have to concede that there are exceptions. People like Hitler, Stalin, Milosovic . . . people who contributed nothing but harm and suffering to the world. And though Arafat has merely killed thousands, he is also responsible for the continued suffering of millions of his own people, by having elected to pursue a terrorism strategy rather than taking the necessary steps towards achieving peace and statehood.

So while I am not going to jump around gleefully praying for Arafat's death, I have to say I won't exactly be mourning him once he's gone. He devoted his life to killing innocent Jews. If I believed in hell, that'd be definately a good reason to go there. (If Arafat's expecting 72 virgins, he'll be pretty disappointed).

But then, of course, Arafat's already handpicked his successors - all people loyal to him and with no intention of fighting terrorism. Will any of them really be any better than Arafat?

Mind you, how could they be much worse?

Update: Like any good personality-cult dictator, Arafat is having his advisors deny that he had a heart attack and claim he's in perfect health. How long will they lie about his condition is the only question? How long will they keep propping up an inflatable Arafat doll after he croaks?

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7:19 PM
Meanwhile, while everyone in the rest of the world is focused on terrorism, Arafat, and Israel's diplomatic skirmish with Syria, the real news in Israel is the latest chapter in the religious versus secular divide:

The cabinet voted to dismantle the Religious Affairs Ministry Wednesday and transfer authority over the rabbinical courts to the Justice Ministry headed by Shinui leader Yosef Lapid, a move that infuriated the National Religious Party and triggered a coalition crisis.

[ . . . ]

Eitam warned after his meeting with the chief Rabbis Wednesday that if the Cabinet's decision to transfer control of the country's rabbinical courts to the Justice Ministry were to pass in the Knesset, the National Religious Party would quit the coalition government. "We will not cooperate with Shinui's secular humanism. This is not a question of jobs; this is a critical debate on the Jewish character of Israel. A government without the NRP may be legal, but it won't be legitimate," Eitam said Wednesday evening.

Any step that Israel takes to transfer more power to secular administration is a positive one, in my opinion. But Lapid is such a hated symbol among the large Orthodox population in Israel, that this likely came as a slap in the face to them at a time when unity is more important than division.

The problem is that the Orthodox rabbinate has altogether too much power in Israel - they decide everything from weddings and divorces to what sort of meat Israeli restaurants can buy (even non-kosher ones). And the most upset people are often the Conservative and Reform Jews, who feel slighted.

This division between Orthodox and secular is no small issue in Israel. In many ways, it's almost a more difficult division than the one between Jews and Arabs, because the religious feel they have a "claim" on the secular Jews and should be encouraging them to live more religiously. This leads to a lot of resentment and conflict, not to mention tug-of-war political grappling. The fallout from today's decision promises to be significant.

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7:09 PM
As usual, Mark Steyn hits the nail right on the head when he discusses the cultural roots of Palesitnian terror:

The Palestinian death cult negates all the assumptions of western sentimental pacifism: If only the vengeful old generals got out of the way, there'd be no war. But such common humanity as one can find on the West Bank resides, if only in their cynicism, in the leadership: old Arafat may shower glory and honor on his youthful martyrs but he's human enough to keep his own kid in Paris, well away from the suicide-bomber belts. It's hard to picture Saeb Erekat or Hanan Ashrawi or any of the other aging terror apologists who hog the airwaves at CNN and the BBC celebrating the death of their own loved ones the way Miss Jaradat's brother did. "We are receiving congratulations from people," said Thaher Jaradat. "Why should we cry? It is like her wedding day, the happiest day for her."

[ . . . ]

On the West Bank, almost all the humdrum transactions of daily life take place in a culture that glorifies depravity: you walk down a street named after a suicide bomber to drop your child in a school that celebrates suicide-bombing and then pick up some groceries in a corner store whose walls are plastered with portraits of suicide bombers.

Steyn goes on to claim that by giving Arafat's leadership legitimacy, the world has ensured that a future Palestinian state would be nothing but a terorrist entity. And this sort of terrorist leadership should not be rewarded.

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7:03 PM
I wonder why anything the French government does surprises me anymore. This sure doesn't:

Syria's drive for a U.N. resolution condemning an Israeli air raid on its territory stalled in the Security Council for another day on Wednesday as Damascus looked for possible compromise with a divided Europe.

All four of the council's European Union states -- France, Britain, Spain and Germany -- have signaled Syria that its draft resolution had to be more balanced to win their support.

But while Britain was insisting, along with Washington, that the resolution must condemn Saturday's deadly suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel, to win its vote, France was making no such demand, diplomats said.

After all, it was only a bunch of Jews who were murdered. Why should France concern itself?

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12:35 AM
He'll be back . . .



Exit polls in California were predicting a victory for Arnold Schwarzenegger and a massive defeat for Governor Gray Davis in today's recall election.

But it ain't over till the fat lady sings. And in this case, she ain't gonna be singing for some time. There will probably be a long string of challenges to the vote before any result is confirmed.

It does seem fitting that California should have a movie star as a governor. After all, the skills needed to be an actor are quite similar to those needed for politics; namely, the ability to memorize lines that someone else is feeding you, and to make people believe that you're being sincere. Heck, I figure they might as well elect all movie stars to office - at least it's one place they're sure to be able to make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

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5:01 PM
Israel Asper has passed away.

Asper, 71, was the owner of CanWestGlobal, the Canadian media conglomerate that owned, among other things, Global Television and the Montreal Gazette.

"The company feels a sense of profound loss on the passing of our founder, who distinguished himself as a visionary business leader, a caring leader in his encouragement and financial support of worthy causes, and as a champion of Israel,'' a news release sent to staff said.

Unfortunately, Asper became a symbol to the anti-Israel crowd of every rotton Jewish stereotype in the book: a wealthy capitalist, owner of a company fuelling media convergence, and an outspoken supporter of Israel. It is my hope that, with his passing, they will maintain a modicum of respect for the man.

I highly doubt it, though. They haven't demonstrated their ability to be respectful.

Asper was a controversial figure to some, but all he really did was become successful and then use his success to attempt to advance causes he believed in. He will be sorely missed.

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11:05 PM
Another year, another Yom Kippur . . .

It seems to me that people ought to be used to the routine by now. Closing services have been the same in all the years I can remember. Yes, the service will go long. Yes, the Rabbi and the synagogue president will make long thank-you speeches to rival those at the Academy Awards. Yes, we'll have to take the time to do arvit and havdalah before they blow the shofar and let us go home and eat. This isn't news, people! It's been like this every year! But people react to it like they do to the first snowfall of each winter - with disappointment, as if they were hoping that maybe it wouldn't happen this year.

Oh well. 364 days till next Yom Kippur.

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5:20 PM
Have an easy fast, everyone.

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12:09 PM
Israel has bombed a terrorist camp inside Syria in retaliation for yesterday's Haifa bombing:

Palestinian sources in Beirut said Israeli warplanes raided a facility belonging to Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), injuring one man. In addition to PFLP members, terrorists from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and al Qaeda also utilized the camp for training. Among the buildings hit in the raid was a weapons workshop used by Islamic Jihad.

Military sources said that the base was selected as a target because of the central role that Islamic Jihad played in the Haifa bombing. The decision to carry out the raid was made in response to the bombing 12 hours earlier in Haifa.

"The Islamic Jihad, like other terror organisations ... enjoys the support and backing of countries in the region - foremost Iran and Syria," the army statement said.

Syria is screaming of course, and issued a statement denying that the target was a terrorist camp, calling it a "civilian target" - which is a bit hard to swallow, considering the video footage released by the IDF showing a tour of the camp . . . and the fact that the Palestinians also claim it's a training camp. Considering terror-sponsoring Syria is on the UN Security Council, we can probably expect another resolution in short order, condemning Israel without making any mention of the terrorist attack that killed 20 innocent Israelis.

30 years ago today was the start of the Yom Kippur war. But it seems unlikely that Syria will attack militarily. 2003 is not 1973 and even the Syrians aren't that dumb.

This may have been a risky move for Israel . . . but it's probably a necessary one, to expose to the world that the so-called "underdog" is really backed and sponsored by some of the world's strongest countries.

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