The informal truce between Israel and Hamas that was brokered this summer through Egyptian assistance started to unravel on November 4th when IDF soldiers darted 250 meters into the Gaza Strip and blew up a tunnel. Four Hamas terrorists were killed in the attack and an additional dozen have been killed in subsequent strikes. Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations once again started firing rockets, including Iranian made Grad missiles, at civilian targets in Israel. A total of at least 140 rockets have been fired since the resumption of hostilities, the latest one striking Ashkelon on Friday morning.

Israel has suspended the transfer of humanitarian goods to the Strip following the renewed attacks on its civilians, which has resulted in pressure from various foreign governments. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, demanding the free flow of aid through the Israeli border crossings, even as the rocket attacks continue. Livni's response was to say that ”[w]hoever thinks that a situation of them firing at us, while everything continues as usual, can exist – is mistaken. The Israeli government will take action in the event that the attacks against Israeli civilians continue.”

Most Israelis, however, think that this situation can – and does – exist. The repetitive responses of the Israeli leadership to the rocket attacks is starting to sound more and more like the hot-headed responses of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations whenever the IDF successfully takes out one of their operatives: ”The revenge will be harsh, we will strike at the heart of the Zionist enemy, their blood will color the streets of Tel Aviv.” This never happens these days, since the IDF mows the lawn in the West Bank virtually every night, and Gaza is sealed off, yet the terrorists continue with their theatrical vows of revenge as if their words actually meant something. This pathetic disease has now fully infected the Israeli leadership as well.

The fact that 250,000 Israeli civilians live within range of the rockets from Gaza has been slammed as ”unacceptable,” ”outrageous,” ”intolerable,” and every other conceivable superlative for well over three years by to the failed leaders of Israel. Yet absolutely nothing is done to change this equation. This inaction has altered the attitude of the international community toward this area of the conflict. Not only is every military response immediately branded as disproportionate, but even a non-military response such as the closing of border crossings is condemned off hand. It has come to the point where Israel can't even scratch its nose in response to these rocket attacks, much less pick it.

It has been said that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out, but if you place it in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it will swim around until it boils to death. This is a tragically apt analogy for Israel today.

So is there a logic to the inaction of Israeli decision makers? Yes, and it is a disgusting one. They are waiting for one of the rockets to score a direct hit on a kindergarten. It's as simple as that. Then all hell will break loose.

Just hours before I arrived on the Israeli side of the Sufa border crossing to Gaza on Monday, the IDF killed three terrorists affiliated with the Islamic Jihad as they were planting a roadside bomb a few hundred meters away. Business was temporarily disrupted while the scene was being secured, but by 10 am things were back to normal. Every day 70-80 trucks carrying freight are transferred from Israel to Gaza through Sufa. As Shlomo Tzaban, the manager of the crossing, briefed the group of journalists that I was with, a steady stream of 18-wheelers making their way to the crossing whirled up clouds of dust. The returning trucks were empty, since the border crossings only serve Palestinian needs: the only things that are exported from Gaza to Israel are rockets and mortars, which you don't need trucks for.

These border crossings are a part of the unnatural umbilical chord that attaches Gaza to Israel. "When people in Gaza turn on a switch, it's our grid; when they turn on a faucet, it's our water," explains IDF Major Mike Vromen. Eighty percent of the population is completely dependent on the humanitarian aid that flows through Israel into Gaza. This is how it works: trucks with goods, funded primarily by USAID, arrive on the Israeli side of the crossing. They are checked by the IDF and then unloaded onto a 200 meter long conveyor belt, which transfers the goods across the border, where they are then reloaded onto Palestinian trucks and distributed to various parts of the Gaza Strip by a confusing array of actors on the ground: WFP, UNRWA, CHF, to name just a few. It is a multi-million dollar industry.

During a Q&A with IDF Colonel Nir Peretz later in the day, I ask what purpose the conveyor belt has. Why not just drive the trucks across the border? The colonel looks at me like I am a total idiot but sticks the knife in gently: "Gaza is run by Hamas, a terrorist organization. Do you know what they would do with our trucks if we just opened the gate and drove right through?" Well, yes, I have a pretty good idea: they would shoot at them and try to blow them up in the same way that they almost daily attack the border crossings. Case in point: the Erez crossing was blown to smithereens on May 22 when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated 4 tons of explosives packed into his truck. So the conveyor belt does make sense, but that is also an instance of what is so disturbing, namely that an Israeli at some point came up with a practical solution of how to continue to transfer goods into Gaza even when the border crossings are constantly being attacked. The image that comes to mind is that scene from Jurassic Park where a T-Rex is being fed a live cow. What would it take for a basic sense of self-preservation to kick in here?

(Above: Scene from the Sufa border crossing; photography by Paul Widen)

Adam Hootnick: director of 'Unsettled'Unsettled, an award-winning independent documentary about the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, opened this month at theaters in NYC and LA. I saw the film in January, at Limmud NY, and called it "amazing." The movie follows six young Israelis in the weeks leading up to the disengagement: Three who live in settlements inside Gaza and don't want to leave, two soldiers who will have to remove the settlers, and a peace activist who's pro-disengagement. It's fascinating, poignant and surprisingly fun. Last week I asked director Adam Hootnick about his experiences making the film, watching people's reactions, and making all-important decisions about the soundtrack (he used to work for MTV.) Here's what he had to say.

I first heard about this film from a woman who went to my yoga studio in Nashville. I was wearing a shirt with Hebrew on it and she said, “Are you Jewish? Did you see Unsettled at the Nashville Film Festival?” She wasn’t Jewish, but had been really affected by it, and really wanted to talk about it. What have you found to be the most surprising and interesting reactions you’ve gotten to your film?

That’s a great story – those are the responses that I find most exciting, if not surprising. I guess it’s not surprising because I always believed that this was not just a Jewish story, not just an Israeli story, and not even just a Middle East story (even though it would be hard to convince theatrical distributors and broadcasters of that….) It’s a story about conflict resolution, and about the fact that human situations are rarely black and white. This is a story about a group of people who are all supposed to be on the same side, but it’s not that simple. It’s a story about people finding ways to not kill each other. So I have not been surprised to find that people from a lot of backgrounds – a former Pakistani ambassador, rabbis, professional negotiators, the Egyptian guy who approached me after a screening to give me a hug – believe this is a story that can have an impact.

How did you come to this project? How long did you spend preparing and how long were you shooting?

I had lived in Israel for a year after college, teaching at the American school there and then working at NBC News in Tel Aviv. Most of my friends were Israeli guys around the same age as I was. They were just out of the army (pretty much everyone has to serve in the IDF) but otherwise they were just like my American friends (almost none of whom went to the military) – they listened to the same music, did the same stuff in their free time. As it became clear that the withdrawal was going to happen, I started thinking about what it would be like for my friends to be sent on this mission against other Israelis. I wondered about the American parallel as well: what it would be like if the US Army was sent to clear out a county of Texas to turn the land over to Mexico? Even without all the religious and geopolitical overtones present in the Middle East, what would it be like to be a soldier sent on a mission to take people from your own country out of their homes?

Having worked for several years as a producer at MTV, telling stories about young people in conflict, I realized this was probably going to be a very compelling story. And, of course, there was also a deeper level, a universal question about how to reconcile religion and democracy when the two seem incompatible. Obviously that’s not just a question in Israel. In terms of preparation, it all happened pretty fast. I didn’t make the decision to leave until May, and I flew to Israel in July. I was over there shooting for two months.

Don't break the chain: A scene from the movieDid you have any expectations for how things were going to go during the pullout? Were you particularly surprised by any of the things you saw?

I had no idea what to expect. In retrospect everything looks like it went smoothly, but in June of 2005 the protests across the country were getting intense – people throwing oil and tire spikes onto highways, riot police, water cannons, etc. There were rumors about settlers stockpiling weapons to resist the evacuation. So nobody knew what was going to happen.

Almost everything I saw and experienced surprised me. A few things were negative, including the rare episodes of serious physical violence I saw during the pullout, and seeing some Israelis resort to Holocaust symbolism and calling other Israelis Nazis. But the vast majority of the surprises were incredibly uplifting. I was amazed at the willingness of people on all “sides” of this issue to open up their lives to me, sacrificing their privacy at some of the hardest moments they had ever faced, because they believed it was so important to try to tell the outside world who they were and what they were going through. I was inspired by witnessing, again and again and again, the spectacle of people who responded to this conflict, even in its most intense moments, by saying, essentially, “I hate what you are doing, but I don’t hate you.”

There is a scene that didn’t make the film (because of time constraints) where one of the soldiers goes into a house and meets three guys who are about to be evicted, and they ask to exchange phone numbers with all of the soldiers because they want to try to stay in touch afterward to try to make sure they don’t end up on opposite sides of a battle within Israeli society. These moments of trust and dialogue really bolstered my faith in humanity – I feel very lucky to have witnessed them.

What was the hardest part to shoot?

Two days were hardest. The first was the day the army first went to try to deliver eviction notices, when I saw some of the most violent scuffles take place. Until I saw people start clawing at each other, I had never processed how scared I was that people might start hurting each other. Suddenly I was overcome, more than anything, by sadness, and I just had to put the camera down for a few minutes. I called my co-producer and co-cinematographer, Mickey Elkeles, who is this big, soft-spoken former soldier who had been injured in combat a number of times, figuring he’d tell me to toughen up. He was a little choked up, too. The second was the day I watched one of my characters – who by this time I knew quite well – being removed from her home. Regardless of how you feel about the political issues, it’s a complicated moment, and I wrestled with a lot of questions about my own presence there, putting my camera in people’s faces while this was happening.

How did you choose the six people who you focus on in this film?

I approached it the same way I approached casting any story I did at MTV. I wanted to find regular kids who represented a cross-section of the backgrounds and perspectives that existed, to show what it was like to be one of the young people at the front lines of this conflict where, at least in theory, there was no enemy.

There are some unexpectedly funny moments in this film. When I saw it at Limmud NY everyone was in hysterics as we watched an American reporter try to give the same rehearsed speech over and over as he was pushed forward in a sea of settlers. Were there any other moments when you found yourself laughing unexpectedly?

I was laughing pretty much anytime I was with Lior, the long-haired Gaza surfer-lifeguard. Lior: in a rare clothed appearanceI think in the two months I was shooting the film I only saw him wearing a shirt three times. And usually he was wearing a speedo, which is always funny. Maybe it’s especially funny in Gaza.

In many ways I found Ye’ela to be the most interesting character in the film. Her sister was killed in a terrorist bombing, but she was working to return Gaza to the Palestinians. Her situation was so extraordinary, but somehow her message of reconciliation was less articulate and intense than the settlers protesting the situation. And Tamar and Yuval, the other two pro-disengagement characters, both also seemed to be very ambivalent about their positions.

Did you see that as a pattern across the board? The people who were anti-disengagement were vehement and passionate, and the people who were pro disengagement had more ambivalence?

I think there was definitely more ambivalence on the part of people who were pro-disengagement. While most of them believed it was wrong to have an ongoing settlement and military presence in Gaza, they were not positive that this decision would lead to peace, in the short term or the long term. They were more likely to frame their position in pragmatic terms, rather than emotional ones. They also were not being removed from their homes, and not forced to confront religious convictions that they considered sacred and inviolable, as was the case with many disengagement opponents.

However, I strongly disagree with the characterization that Ye’ela was less articulate, particularly given that she was speaking in a second language. (If her communication in English is unclear, that is my fault as a filmmaker for asking her to communicate in my first language rather than her own.) But I think that when she talks about why she favors compromise with Palestinians, even after Palestinian terrorists killed her sister, and why she believes settlements in Gaza unreasonably put soldiers at risk, how she doesn’t understand how a settler could face the mother of a soldier killed defending settlements, she is quite lucid and intense. No less so than is Meir, the lifeguard and religious student, when he explains that while he believes in peace with Arabs, the Torah is the only true religious text, and negotiation on the borders of Israel can never be permitted.

I know you worked as a producer for MTV, and there’s a lot of really interesting music in ‘Unsettled.’ How did you choose the songs you wanted for this film?

The music is like a seventh character, in a way. I wanted to use a lot of Israeli pop, rock, funk, and hip hop, because in a way it might communicate to young American viewers how much we overlap with other cultures. The hip hop and rock anthems are approachable to viewers who might never have heard a Middle Eastern sound, but can dig something that’s a little bit foreign. And as soon as I heard the lyrics to Matisyahu’s “Youth” – I knew that song had to be in this film. Fortunately, he agreed.

Is there a message you want people to walk away with when they leave ‘Unsettled’?

Not really. Except that I hope people will see something they hadn’t seen before, and have some stereotypes dented a little bit. I hope they will see that people sometimes can resolve painful, passionate disagreements without killing each other. I hope they will think about how they would respond if they were in the shoes of someone else. All the typical indie-filmmaker stuff.

Where are the next few places you’ll be screening the film?

NYC, at the Pioneer Theater, starting Friday May 9th, and LA, at the Laemmle Music Hall 3, starting Friday May 16th. People who aren’t in one of those cities can get it on DVD now, too.

Birthright Palestine: the trip of a lifetimeBirthright Israel has a doppelgänger called Birthright Palestine. The Palestinian program aims to "gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation."

Birthright Palestine participants are offered opportunities to volunteer in Bethlehem, take daily Arabic language classes, engage in cultural events, and party hearty. Although the program mimics the structure of its Jewish, Zionist counterpart almost exactly, there are some fundamental differences between the two. Shocking, I know.

One major difference is that Birthright Palestine doesn't support a two-state solution. Another is that they describe some of their destinations as the "1948 territories, which some people refer to as 'Israel.'" (Emphasis mine.)

Other differences: The Birthright Israel trip is a 10-day gift that covers roundtrip airfare, hotel, transportation, most meals and other associated land costs, while Birthright Palestine requires participants to cover their own airfare and pay approximately $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the length of their stay.

Though the site describes Birthright Palestine as a "concept created by the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS)–a new non-profit, non-governmental Palestinian organization," the Birthright Palestine domain name is actually registered to Palestinian-American Nader Muaddi at an address in good ol' Pennsylvania, and Muaddi is an alum of the Palestine Summer Encounter–a strikingly similar program.

The first annual Birthright Palestine Program is launching this summer, and in case you're not convinced, more details about the experience can be found here.

When Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip, we were flooded with images of crying Israeli soldiers, upset that they had to kick their fellow Jews out of their homes. I don't know if the Palestinians they were leaving behind were crying too, but it looks like they should have been.

While the EU proclaims an Israeli-Palestinian deal "doable" in six months, Gaza is disintegrating.

Roughly 75 percent of the 1.5 million Gazans now live in poverty, up more than 10 points from the summer, according to Palestinian government officials in the West Bank.

To paraphrase, only a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza live above the poverty line. It's only getting worse, too:

Economic decline has been rapid since Hamas seized Gaza by force in June and Israel closed the territory's borders in an unprecedented lockdown. Most factories have closed, tens of thousands lost their jobs and exports and most imports are frozen.

...

Gazans say they are down to their last reserves.

Supermarket owner Mohammed Abu Sultan, 30, has only two boxes of candles left, so his customers in the Shati refugee camp will soon have to sit in the dark during frequent power outages. He's also low on cleaning products, diapers and sugar substitutes for diabetics.

"By the end of the month, we will have sold everything," he said.

And then there's the violence. Seven Fatah supporters were killed this week when Hamas opened fire on them. Hamas isn't finished with Fatah either, they mean to crush them but good:

Hamas on Tuesday moved swiftly against its Fatah rivals in Gaza following a massive rally that ended in bloodshed, arresting 400 people in an overnight crackdown and promising "additional steps" against its bitter enemy.

The threat deepened tensions between the Palestinian rivals ahead of a U.S.-sponsored peace conference later this month and appeared to set the stage for Hamas to take even tougher action against Fatah.

Despite being a conservative, I am not a monster. I want what is best for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. I no longer believe that an independent Palestinian state, run by this terrorist group or that one, is the best solution. I held out hope that the Palestinians would step up and rule themselves. They have profoundly failed. I don't know what the solution is at this point to the situation in Gaza. But I do know that pulling out the West Bank will only be an invitation to chaos. It's a feel-good solution for Europeans and Americans. Big bad Israel will let the Palestinians be free, finally. Seeing what has happened with Gaza, though, we should know that that is simply not what will happen. The West Bank will crumble under the violence, mismanagement and general corruption that seems to be the hallmark of Palestinian leadership. It's been over two years since Israel left Gaza. To paraphrase a very American phrase: are they better off than they were two years ago?

It's the last Friday of Ramadan and you know what that means: It's Quds Day. Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem.

From Khomeini's original declaration of the holiday in 1979:

Quds Day is the day of Islam; it is the day when Islam should be revived, so let us revive it and implement Islamic laws in the Islamic countries. Quds Day is the day when we must warn all the superpowers that they can no longer keep Islam under their control by means of their evil agents. Quds Day is the day to give life to Islam. The Muslims must awaken, they must come to realise the power they have, the material power and the spiritual. What are the Muslims, who form a population of one billion, enjoy divine support and have Islam and their faith behind them, afraid of? . . . The governments in the world should know that Islam will not be defeated, Islam and the teachings of the Qur’an should prevail in all countries. Religion should be the religion of God and Islam is the religion of God so it should advance on all regions of the world. Quds Day is the day to announce such a matter, the day to announce ‘Muslims, advance!’ Advance on all the regions of the world. Quds Day is not confined to (matters pertaining to) Palestine alone, it is the day of Islam, the day of Islamic government, the day when the flag of an Islamic Republic should be raised in all (Islamic) countries, the day when the superpowers should be made to realise that they can no longer advance on the Islamic countries.

Breitbart reports on festivities in Iran:

Tens of thousands of Iranians marched through Tehran on Friday proclaiming solidarity with Palestinians and chanting "Death to Israel" in the Islamic republic's annual protest against the Jewish state.

Iranians of all ages began the march through the centre of the capital to Tehran University to mark Quds Day, calling for Jerusalem and Israel to be handed to the Palestinians.

Coloured bibs were haIrnded out to protestors with the legend "Death to Israel, Death to United States" while "Palestine will only be free with fighting and faith" was the slogan on one banner.

Despite the heavily politicised nature of the demonstration, there was a festive mood with the numerous children present having their faces painted as cats and rabbits in entertainment laid on by the municipality.

Thousands marched in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Friday, torching the flags of Israel, the United States and Britain in an annual day of protest called by Iran in solidarity with Palestinians.

Demonstrators marched from the town of Beit Lahiya to Jabaliya in the north of the territory where the Islamist Hamas seized power in mid-June.

Urging on the crowd as it burned the flags, Khader Habib, an official with the radical Islamic Jihad group that organised the march, promised to continue resistance against Israeli occupation.

"Israel is a cancerous tumour that has sprouted in the region, but we will continue the jihad and the resistance until Jerusalem is liberated," he said.

Hasan Zaidi, Divisional President, Imamia Students Organisation, told The Post that Al-Quds rallies would disseminate the message of love, peace and unity among the oppressing nations and pay the way for the freedom of Baitul Muqaddas, which was the first Qibla and the most sacred place for the Muslims all over the world.

A barrage of headlines came just a moment ago, all letting us know that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has followed up the deaths of 8 people in Gaza by threatening more comprehensive military action:

"We are getting closer to carrying out a widespread operation in Gaza which, for many reasons, has not taken place in the past weeks," Barak told Israel's Army Radio.

But a group of Israeli authors has a different idea--talk to Hamas about a ceasefire:

[A.B.]Yehoshua, one of Israel's most revered novelists, underpinned the call yesterday by pointing out that Israel had "many times" negotiated in the past with its sworn enemies...He said that he believed Hamas should be offered ceasefire talks before implementation of "extreme measures" against the population of Gaza.

"I do not know how Hamas will respond." But he said the offer of talks – which would be unconditional on both sides – "would throw the dice into the hands of Hamas and say stop the stupid rockets you are launching into Israel".

At this point, most of us are overfamiliar with the arguments as to whether negotiating with Hamas would be desirable or effective. The inspiring aspect of the writers' gesture, however, is that the notion that their declaration might enter the consciousness of Palestinians in Gaza "so that they would bring parallel pressures on Hamas for a ceasefire."

For whatever one thinks of the plausibility of encouraging Palestinian civil society pressure to influence Hamas, the general principle at work here is beyond reproach.

It’s the end of summer, a big part of the country is going through major heat waves and droughts, and really the only thing to do other than sit in front of air conditioner with a glass of iced tea is jump in the ocean and surf. Or so I hear. I’ve never surfed, but there are some cool and spiritual surfing news stories and I present them to you with the hopes that the end of your summer will be totally gnarly.

Jewish surfing guru from Hawaii brings hope - and boards - to Gaza surfers
An 86-year-old Jewish surfing legend from Hawaii is bringing good vibrations to the Gaza Strip.

Surfing Philanthropist: Dorian Paskowitz
Dorian Paskowitz, a retired doctor with 75 years of surfing experience, brought surfboards to Gaza's small surfing community on Tuesday, a gesture he hoped would get Israelis and Palestinians catching the same peace wave.

"God will surf with the devil, if the waves are good," Paskowitz said. "When a surfer sees another surfer with a board, he can't help but say something that brings them together."

Tanned, grinning and shirtless, Paskowitz emerged at the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza after handing over 15 boards to a few Palestinian surfers waiting on the other side. He said he was spurred into action after reading a newspaper article about two Gazans who couldn't enjoy the waves because they had only one board between them.

"I said to myself - my God, these guys really love surfing, but it says they have no boards. So I said to my son, come, we'll go to Israel and get them some boards," Paskowitz told AP Television News.

He described his mission as a "mitzvah," Hebrew for a "good deed."

Arthur Rashkovan, a 28-year-old surfer from Tel Aviv, said Paskowitz's project was part of a larger effort called "Surfing for Peace," aimed at bringing Middle East surfers closer together. He said eight-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater, who is of Syrian descent, is expected to arrive in Israel in October to take part in the drive.

"We want Palestinians to enjoy the surfing experience. We believe it brings people together," Rashkovan said. "The idea is for people to forget about the violence and follow the journey to peace on the waves."

Full story

For those who are concerned with modesty in light of yesterday’s post, there’s now modest swim and surfwear for women. Check out Wholesomewear Styles. Muslim women can enjoy the surf while donning a Burqini. The Burqini’s creator has this to say about her radical product:

My name is Aheda Zanetti, the woman behind the Ahiida label, migrated to Australia from Lebanon at age of 2. Now 38, married with 4 children. I remember growing up in Australia , posted a lot of challenges for a young Muslim / Arab girl. As an active person who liked to participate in community activities and sport, I found myself restricted due to cultural and religious beliefs. As years went by, I noticed there are younger girls and women that are embracing Islam and obeying their Islamic belief in dressing modestly, in turn, having to miss out on opportunities, and taking part in any sporting activities that Australia has to offer. By facing this on a daily basis and seeing girls struggle with what is around presently, we at Ahiida have found a need to make specialized sportswear to suit the Muslim female.

“Ahiida” represent the following qualities;

Freedom – The freedom to choose to participate in any sporting activity. By providing suitable specialized sports wear, for the active Muslim female, that will give her the freedom to choose in either starting or to continue in any sporting activities and keeping active.

Easy – even though EASY is such a small word but plays a big part in woman's wear. It has to be easy to put on and take off the garment without the complications of pins or ties etc or we will not be encouraged to wear it. Easy to wash and dry to suit the today's lifestyle.

Comfort – Comfort in design and most importantly in fabrics used to make this sportswear comfortable. Every aspect of Ahiida's new, unique designs has been thought threw so that the person wearing it will not think of it, meaning it should be light in weight, no restrictions in movement and very modest with the correct coverage.

The Surfing Rabbi: doesn't ride on Shabbos
There’s a Chabad rabbi in Pittsburgh who bills himself as the Surfing Rabbi. He’s got a blog, a book, and a bumper sticker for sale that says “Forgive me Rabbi, for I have surfed.” He also runs a kosher surfing camp for a week in Costa Rica. For more info on the camp click here.

There another kosher surf camp in Southern California, Joe V Surf Camp. You missed it for this summer, but check out their website for registration for next year, plus info on how they combine Torah study with surfing. Totally.

• L.A. mayor pleads to citizens to use less water. [The Los Angeles Times]
• America needs another 9/11? [Philadelphia Daily News]
• The Olsen twins and Brad Pitt in Gawker's gossip roundup. [Gawker]
• Two years after they left former Israeli settlements in Gaza, still looking for a permanent home. [The Jerusalem Post]
• Rev. Billy Graham has good things to say about Hillary Clinton: "There is a warm side to her - and a spiritual one." [New York Daily News]

This past Sunday, Michael Ignatieff wrote an essay in the Times Magazine entitled “Getting Iraq Wrong,” ostensibly a come-clean admission of his misguided support for the war. David Rees of the Huffington Post expected Ignatieff to acknowledge fault and was sure disappointed in the result: [The New York Times] [The Huffington Post]

The first nine-tenths of Ignatieff's essay, far from being an honest self-examination, is a collection of vague aphorisms and bong-poster koans. It hums with the comforting murmur of lobotomy.

Rees is particularly unimpressed with Ignatieff’s new professional status—from Harvard academic to Canadian politician—being used to justify his initial support for the Iraq invasion:

Right off the bat, he's saying: "It was right for me to support the Iraq war when I was an academic, because academics live in outer space on Planet Zinfandel, and play with ideas all day. But now, as a politician in a country that opposed the war, I'll admit I screwed up, because politicians must deign to harness the wild mares of whimsy to the ox-cart of cold, calculated reality."

Also in Mideast news:

From the JTA: A poll found that most Israelis favor expelling illegal Sudanese refugees. Egypt, Israel and the Sudanese Israel should think twice about sending Sudanese refugees back to Egypt, where they are treated barbarically, argues a Jerusalem Post editorial. [The Jerusalem Post]

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pulled out from a council of hundreds of Pakistani and Afghan tribal leaders aimed at reining in militant violence. [The Washington Post]

In her first novel, Dalia Sofer tells of a Jewish family in Tehran during Iran’s Islamic revolution. [The New York Times Book Review]

Prime Ministers from Iraq and Turkey both station troops in Iraqi Kurdistan to control the Kurdish rebel group PKK. [Iraq Slogger]

The PKK may be facing tough times ahead, and not only from the Turkish military. In a dramatic turn of events, Kurdistan's Prime Minister Negervan al-Barazani on Tuesday confirmed the presence of a limited number of Turkish troops inside the governate, explaining they are in northern Iraq with the permission of the Kurdish regional authorities.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signed a memorandum of understanding with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreeing to join with Anakara in combating the Kurdish rebel group that has long enjoyed sanctuary in Kurdistan.

Dohuk, Iraq: A PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) patrols during an early morning training session at the Amedia area in Northern Iraq, 10 km near the Turkish border.

Mahmoud Abbas’ close adviser, Jibril Rajoub, is holding secret talks with the Gazan Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad. [Debka]

19-year-old Saudi, Ahmed Abdullah al-Shayea, was recruited as a jihadist and volunteered to go to Iraq as a fighter. Once in the Iraqi capital, he refused to be a suicide bomber and instead was coerced by Al Qaeda into driving a fuel truck through central Baghdad. Militants blew up a nearby truck behind in order to ignite Shayea's. Shayea lived to tell the tell from a Saudi rehabilitation center. [MSNBC/Newsweek]

"I realized that all along, I was wrong," Shayea said in an interview with the Associated Press recently at a hotel in Riyadh, where he was taken for a media encounter before being returned to interior ministry custody. "There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death."

Now 22, Shayea may yet have a life. The Saudi program holds out the promise of release, with jobs and help in finding a wife, for jihadis who are judged truly repentant. If Shayea qualifies, as he is on course to do, he will probably be the first suicide (or is it "homicide") bomber to survive his own detonation and win his freedom.

• From the JTA main page, rules of the Sabbath: thou shalt not drive, have sex, or read Harry Potter. Oh, they also headline news from the Frenchies: Hamas definitely possibly could-be-a-chance that they are linked to Al-Qaeda. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

• Abbas calling for early Palestinian Authority elections. [The Jerusalem Post] The truth is, he's hooked on the CBS show "How I Met Your Mother" and doesn't want to miss next season's opening episode. His favorite is band camp girl.

• Some disturbing news from the Israeli State Controller:

The 600-page report submitted to the Knesset Speaker Wednesday, July 18, finds PM Ehud Olmert, ex-defense minister Amir Peretz, former chief of staff Dan Halutz and homeland security chief Yitzhak Gershon guilty of abandoning to their fate the population of northern Israel. He notes especially that the handicapped, sick, poor and those unable to flee the bombed towns and villages were left without food or medicines in the 34 days of the Hizballah rocket blitz against northern Israel. [DebkaFile]

• Worsening economic woes in Gaza. [International Herald Tribune]

• Pakistani troops and militants clash again along the Afghan border. [BBC]

The IDF soldier whose capture precipitated the Israel-Hezbollah war last summer is likely still alive and being held by Hamas militants. These charmers have used the occasion of a Quartet summit to discuss the appointment of Tony Blair as chief peace negotiator to release an audio tape of Shalit's voice:

Hamas released an audiotape on Monday that it said was the voice of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured a year ago in a cross-border raid and believed to be held by the Hamas military wing and two other militant factions. The tape, released on the anniversary of the raid, was the first sign of life from Corporal Shalit since he was taken to Gaza.

This is like a punished dog trying to get your attention by showing you the other furniture he's ripped up. Further evidence that Hamas's famed political "pragmatism" is non-existent. It's now a neutered force in control of an immiserated islet on the Mediterranean.

• Gaza's split leaves "archipelago of Iranian proxies." [Chicago Tribune]
• Supreme Court shoots down "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner. [Breitbart.com]
• War's psychological impact on children in Iraq. [The Washington Post]
• David Denby not so keen on "Sicko." [The New Yorker]
  
• Senior leader of Hamas pens op-ed in the Times and Washington Post. [The Jerusalem Post]
• Those some fine lookin' asses hanging over Times Square. [Advertising Age]
  
• "2 Hard 2 Guard" drops 50 in NYC summer hoops kickoff. [The New York Post]
• McCain dropping out of presidential race? You smokin' somethin'?

Shmuel Rosner worries that Abu Mazen is too old to change his stripes:

He didn't make a decision; he was pushed into it. And this decision cannot endure for very long. "While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared an end to the national unity government, I have little doubt that he will be talking to Hamas in the relatively near future," wrote Dennis Ross, former special U.S. envoy for the peace process who knows Abbas as well as anyone in the West. "We should not be fooled by Abbas' rhetoric. Sooner or later he will be forced to pursue new power-sharing arrangements between Hamas and Fatah and restore unity among Palestinians," wrote Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, two other former members of the Clinton team, who rarely agree with Ross.

Yet that same Dennis Ross sounds a more hopeful note in USA Today:

[T]o prevent the West Bank from becoming dominated by Hamas as well, it is time for Fatah to carry out reform and remake itself. In talks I recently held in Ramallah, Abu Dis and East Jerusalem, I saw a readiness for the first time to organize Fatah at the grassroots level and respond to the social and economic needs of the Palestinian public. In effect, the younger generation of Fatah appears committed to showing it can embody social justice and fight the corruption that has plagued the movement. With Salaam Fayyad as the new prime minister, the donor community — including specifically the Saudis — needs to focus on a strategy for working with Fayyad to bolster those who will provide services and programs and who will enhance the credibility of Fatah. If the Saudis don't want Iran to be able to exploit the Palestinian conflict, they need to ensure that Hamas does not come to dominate the cause in a way that guarantees enduring struggle.

The "poodle" who manages to bark loud enough about Palestinian statehood to get the U.S. president listening is now being called in to administer the dispensation of aid to the Abbas government.  Will the pro-Hamas left color Tony Blair another hapless ditto of shameful Israeli interests?  Of course it will:

Blair's role would be an expanded version of the position held by former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn, who resigned in May 2006 out of frustration at the deadlock over aid to the Palestinians following the January election of Hamas, U.S. officials said.

To follow up on Michael's post below: Ari Berman's new go-to bookmark, Conflicts Forum pays tribute to Donald Rumsfeld's theory of Islamist blowback. Rumsfeld told Bush not to fund Fatah because doing so would only inflame regional politics in Gaza.

When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld learned about it he was enraged, and scheduled a meeting with President Bush in an attempt to convince him the program would backfire. Rumsfeld was concerned that the anti-Hamas program would radicalise Muslim groups among American allies and eventually endanger U.S. troops fighting Sunni extremists in Iraq.

Now that's sweet coming from the man whom every Nation reader identifies as Reagan's favored gland-hander of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. How did that fiasco inflame regional politics in Mesopotamia?

Concerns about nullifying a democratically elected government are negligible in the face of civil war when almost half of a legislature is ranged against the other half and basic public services have been halted. The lessons of Algeria are instructive, and now that millions of dollars of denied funds are finally being sent to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Fatah looks to be the political winner after a week of blood and misery. Abbas can also now claim credit for reviving his government's legitimacy.

“We are going to support President Abbas and what he wants to do,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday in announcing the change in policy. She said the United States would work to “restructure” and unfreeze $86 million in aid that was originally set out to help Mr. Abbas build up his security forces. It was frozen because Hamas would not renounce violence, was considered a terrorist group and did not believe Israel had a right to exist.

This of course yields the sound of one hand clapping from Ari Berman at The Nation's blog:

The US operation received surprisingly little scrutiny in this country. Few pundits noted the irony of the Bush Administration attempting to undermine the democratically-elected (though hardly moderate) Hamas government while preaching the virtues of democracy in Iraq.

Given that The Nation doesn't support democracy in Iraq, why it should be so perturbed by electorally iffy developments in Palestine is, I guess, part of its inimitable editorial charisma. The "operation" Berman refers to is the U.S.'s arming of Fatah to counter Iran and Syria's arming of Hamas. (Under the Palestinian constititution, the president of the PA is in charge of domestic security, which fact of course never stopped Haniyah's gang from maintaining their own private militia outfitted by men in ski masks.)

More interesting in Berman's post, however, is where his link attached to that wily neocon Elliot Abrams takes you -- to a site called "Conflicts Forum," which features the following subhead: "listening to political Islam, recognizing resistance." [Italics mine.]

Founded in the mid-80s by two Brits -- Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry -- Conflict Forum has this to say on its About page:

Our encounters with political Islam - with both non-violent and armed resistance groups - leads us to conclude that Islamism is above all political. The overwhelming majority of Islamists are striving to create just societies and bring about political reform in a region entrenched with inequity, that has long suffered the overbearing influence of foreign powers.

The sweet justice of sharia law, which I'm sure Crooke and Perry look on with as much equanimity as the Nation gang does when the philosopher-kings are Shia sectarians in Baghdad. And Hamas is plenty influenced by foreign powers -- above all autocratic and theocratic.

Michael Hirsh's only point in this Newsweek editorial on last week's Hamas seizure of Gaza hinges on what has become the conventional wisdom about Palestine: It's not ready for democracy. Isn't the Bush administration to blame for angling for legislative elections when everyone in the know and on the ground  said it would lead to the ascendancy of the Islamists?  Further, how does that stunning catastrophe make relevant again the old question of what to do when the democcratic process yields un-democratic results? Sometimes known as the "bullet or the ballot" dilemma, it came up previously in Algeria in the mid-90's, and one can still keep score of a person's politics by his take on how the Islamic Salvation Front should have been dealt with. 

Anyway, Hirsh sheds no new light on the subject:

Why does the disaster in Gaza matter? In part because the defeat of the secular—and more moderate—Fatah forces could, along with the insurgents' success in Iraq, inspire Islamist radicals in the region and around the world. Hamas is not the Taliban, and it knows that an uptick in rocket attacks against Israel will be met with a harsh response. But, as Bush said in his second Inaugural, the whole point of promoting freedom is to blunt the hopelessness and anger that breed radicalism. Gaza faces 50 percent unemployment in the best of times. Qaeda-like splinter groups that have carried out kidnappings of foreigners have already begun to appear. Further isolating the territory is not likely to fill its residents with faith in the future.

Well, Hamas is already a Qaeda-like splinter group, likewise descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood and with an ideology formulated by middle-class university students, so that nightmare's already real. But now that the group retains total responsibility for the governance of Gaza, it may yet have fashioned a rod for its own back.

One of the longstanding concerns of Hamas's so-called "inner wing" was that it would one day be in charge of the region and have no one else to blame for the problems there. Fatah was an easy foil as an opponent, and it remained so all throughout Hamas's win in 2006  since Arafat's party still controlled security and other key services of state.

All that's changed, however, accountability for the continuing squalor and misery of Gazans shall belong to Haniyah and company and to them alone. Call it the blessings of unilateralism.

Humanitarian aid -- in the form of food, water, electric generators -- should of course be provided to the people of this clerically ruled islet on the Mediterranean, but it should be made clear to them, and to Hamas, that such aid is dependent on the largesse of external actors and NGOs.

Hamas's victory may prove to be Pyrrhic in the short term and, what is more encouraging, a complete failure in the long term.

I think Martin Indyk has got it exactly right:

Over the past year when Hamas would stage attacks in Gaza, Fatah forces would retaliate in the West Bank, where they were stronger. When fighting began this time, Fatah did little in the West Bank to counter Hamas's onslaught. Abbas's passivity further confirms that the fix was in. Abbas and Fatah have in effect conceded Gaza to Hamas while they hold on to the West Bank. Hamastan and Fatahstine: a "two-state solution" -- just not the one that George W. Bush had in mind.

"Give Hamas enough rope and it'll hang itself" may not be an especially attractive option when human lives are stake and the short-term yield is an Islamist statelet that enslaves women and secularists, but what options are left to Fatah?  The Quartet has failed at every turn to take Hamas seriously enough to let its democratic mandate expire of natural causes. The irony of this may be the satisfaction of the Quartet's signal demand: one Palestinian leader is taking responsibility for its own people by forcing them to confront their own demons. (Gaza relies for electricity and water on Egypt and Israel, two countries that are not likely to provide either to Hamas.)

If sane Palestinians can the isolate theocratic fascists in their own back yard, then all the better.

So now Hamas is virtually in control of the Gaza Strip, having seized key PA security outposts there. According to one spokesman for the Islamist group, Fatah intelligence and operations documents have been seized proving that Israel and Fatah are in cahoots to destabilize Hamas's electoral hold on the region, which of course hasn't stopped Fatah spokesmen from claiming that Israel is up to no good all by itself.

"If we release these documents, the entire world will be shocked, not just the Palestinians. The dozens of armored vehicles, RPG launchers and rockets, the hundreds of thousands of bullets we have – they are all nothing compared to the documents and data discs we uncovered.

So let them release the documents already.

We hear from an international chorus every day of how the chaos in Iraq means the struggle for establishing a civil society there is lost, yet there has not been any analogous foreboding about Palestine's internal agonies. Shall we call it, too, a failed state unworthy of our continued attention?

Evidently not, as the conventional wisdom is now that the so-called "Quartet" -- comprised of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- has, through benign neglect of the Hamas government, subverted every chance at a peace deal. Correct-thinking liberals are appalled that the Quartet would deny funds to the region and refuse to engage diplomatically with the Haniyah leadership until it has met certain "benchmarks," most notably the recognition of Israel. But are these not similar to the prerequisites correct-thinking liberals now demand be fulfilled by the Maliki government in Baghdad? Why is it wrong to hold one democratically elected regime hostage to its own intelligence and competence, but not another?

Israeli right wing politician Avigdor Lieberman unveiled a new plan today to cut off the Gaza Strip and declare it a "hostile enemy." I certainly understand why Israeli politicians would be at wit's end, with daily rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and fiery rhetoric from mosques and political leaders rivaling only that of the Third Reich [and much of the rest of the Muslim world today], but I find it strange that it is Lieberman who is taking the most militant stance, considering he did not move to Israel until he was 21 years old.

The Russian born Lieberman has a long record of anti-Arab rhetoric once stating that the Palestinians should be given an ultimatum, "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centers...at noon we'll bomb their gas stations...at two we'll bomb their banks..." he wrote in 2002 during the height of the Al-Aqsa intifada.

The Palestinians are no angels, though many hope to take the express train to heaven by blowing themselves up in a public place, but I wonder whether a Moldavian born gangster like Lieberman has the moral authority to make any claims on land in the Middle East.

Lieberman could realistically lead his country one day, unlike his namesake former Democratic presidential nominee, and current war hawk Joe Lieberman. With Olmert all but finished as PM, it looks like the situation with Israel's Palestinian cousins could get a lot worse before too long.

Who knew that nearly 2 years after Israel pulled up stakes in that troublesome stretch of land, leaving Palestinians to their own misery, that any Jews continue to live in the Gaza Strip? It turns out that there is one last Jewess named "Nina," who does advocacy work for human rights NGOs in the Gaza Strip. Good intentions aside, it seems like a fool's errand to me.

She lives in a "bourgeois section" of Gaza City which probably means that the sound of RPG's and mortar fire is drowned out by the half an hour a day of television the sporadic jolts of electricity allow. With kidnappings of Westerners rapidly becoming the most popular sport in the Gaza Strip, outstripping suicide bombing and honor killings as de rigueur for those hoping to earn their radical stripes, let's hope that she keeps her head and does not reveal the secret that she comes from a Zionist family.

Daniel Pearl's noble reporting in Pakistan could never erase the fact that his great-grandfather Chaim Pearl was a founder of the town of Bnei Brak in Israel.

Haven't we had enough martyrs over the last 5,000 years?

NYT: 

Hamas responded by saying it would keep up the rocket attacks, which have killed one Israeli civilian and damaged property in recent weeks. “Our strikes against the enemy will continue — we have freed the hand of all our cells to strike the enemy everywhere in Palestine,” the Hamas armed wing said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah at a press conference today, discussing Israeli air strikes on Gaza City. Haniyah claims Fatah are collaborating with Israel in joint sorties against Hamas.

I had meant to post this last week. A grim reminder that freedom of the press is under assault not just at home:

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston disappeared on his way home from his Gaza City office on 12 March. He is feared kidnapped in the lawless territory, where he is thought to have been the only international correspondent still working. Intensive efforts have been made to secure his release.

Sign the petition calling for Johnston's release here.

Brought to you by a Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Shalom, after witnessing Carter's speech at George Washington University.

"I believe Jimmy Carter is an anti-Semite and his intention is to hurt Jewish people."

Arabic satellite network, Al Arabiya, was ordered to shut down operation in Gaza after coming under a potentially lethal attack from Hamas for a blasphemous quote they ran on their network:

The threats from Hamas against the network highlight the delicate balancing act faced by international Arab networks, which often come under fire from Western governments that accuse their coverage of inflaming tensions in places like Iraq and the Palestinian territories. The networks have come under attack from Arab governments as well; the Iraqi government has repeatedly suspended Al Jazeera after the network aired stories unfavorable to the Shi'ite-dominated government.

Hamas officials told Al Arabiya not to air the quote, which reportedly came from a Palestinian Cabinet meeting. The Dubai-based network instead aired the quote along with a denial by a Hamas spokesman.

In response, the Palestinian government threatened to sue Arabiya. "It is a clear and deliberate defamation," government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said.

In a statement, the Fatah faction excoriated the Hamas government for attacking the network."Hamas has lost its balance by making such crazy threats against Al Arabiya and its employees in Gaza," the statement said, describing the threats as "reflecting the spirit of darkness against local, Arab, and international media organizations."

Now if only Al Jazeera would piss off Hamas to no end...

A rocket hit the town of Sderot late Tuesday and injured two teens, one is listed in critical condition. The rocket was the seventh to be fired from Islamic Jihad since Tuesday morning. In accordance, Defense Minister Amir Peretz is putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to respond to these attacks with a clear message:

"We cannot continue to restrain ourselves," Peretz told the prime minister. "We cannot let Islamic Jihad do whatever they want, and we need to take action to stop the Kassams."

Residents in Sderot, rightfully frustrated, had this to say:

"Our children are getting hurt over here and nobody's doing anything about this," one resident shouted.

"We can't go out anywhere, not to the shopping mall, or anywhere," another resident said.

Others vented their anger at the press members who were covering the incident. "You guys are going to interview us and maybe show a minute or two, but you don't really feel our pain," one resident accused.

Alexander Cockburn: Don't sweat DarfurCan you believe The Nation actually makes you pay for this stuff? Alexander Cockburn on why Darfur is a fashionable media crisis,