OK, riddle me this...

How does the Prime Minister of Lebanon, his eyes brimming with tears,
announce that 40 "martyrs" were killed as the result of an Israeli
attack on a village called Houla. The conveniently-timed news flash,
which grabbed headlines, came in the middle of a "let's support Lebanon
conference held in Beirut of Arab foreign ministers.

And a short time later, he backtracks and says, "Oops, only one person
was killed."

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora choked back tears as he told a
meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Beirut that 40 people were
killed by an Israeli air strike on the southern border village of
Houla. He later said announced that only one person had actually been
killed.
What happened, was Green Helmet guy late with the refrigerator truck?

This South African report claims that there were 50 people under the
rubble, who at first were presumed dead and miraculously survived. Now
that's kind of weird. You would think that within the time it would
take to estimate that there had been 40 people in the building, they
would have started digging out, or at least hearing, a lot of people
alive. That would have to be the mother of all premature reports. That
announcement was just too conveniently timed for me -- right in the
midst of the summit, guaranteeing, as if there were any doubt, that,
yeah, all the Arab foreign ministers support Lebanon. (What a shock)

This report from the ever-reliable Islamic Republic News agency
reprints a handy Qana dead-child photo -- with the clear implication
that the photo came from Houla.

This news agency from Bahrain upped the number to 65, including 35
children.

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It Takes a Lot To Make Me Laugh Out Loud These Days



This did it. Thank you so much, Jon Stewart.

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Fathers in Arms

I just got back from my daughter's karate class. I brought my toddler
along this time, and hung out in the lobby waiting for the class to
finish. Next to me was a guy dressed in a T-shirt and chinos who looked
like he was in his early 30's -- he had a son in the same class, who
must have been six or seven. He had a toddler girl in tow, too. He also
had an M-16.

He was a reservist who had gotten back from his base last night at 2 in
the morning. He was going back this evening. When you sign out your
weapon, you have to keep it with you at all times, so there he was,
trying to be cuddly with his daughter holding this giant gun, trying to
let her climb all over him without getting stabbed by the rifle.

The wife of the owner of the karate school, who is very protective of
their shiny wood floors, joked with him, "You may be carrying an
automatic weapon, but I'm still going to order you to take off your
shoes."

So it was very touching, him trying to engage his daughter in small
talk -- asking her if she had pizza or pasta or rice for lunch at
nursery school, who made it, whether they ate inside or outside, doing
his best to connect with her in the short time they had together. He
said to her, "So you know after this, we're all going to go to the park
and meet the family and have a party, and then after that Daddy is
going back to the army. But you can talk to Daddy on the phone. Just
tell Mom you want to speak with me and she'll call you."

It's such a different military culture, serving so close to home that
you can go home for a day and then straight back on the battlefield. I
couldn't help thinking of yesterday's victims of the attack on Kfar
Giladi, how many fathers were among them, how many little children who
are going to grow up without a Dad who will care what they had for
lunch.

(Crossposted on Israelity)

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Our Job Now Is To Survive

He's very eloquent. I hope he isn't right.

Israel is losing World War III By Bradley Burston
There has never before been a war like this.

That is why we are losing it.

We don't know how to fight it. Not yet, at least.

From the start, the whole world has been watching this war, and for

good reason:

This is the next great battle of World War III. And, as in Iraq, the
war is not going well for the West.

There are parallels to the last world war, of course, beyond the
newspaper cartoonists' and worldwide Israel-haters' first reflex of
calling the Jews Nazis.

There is the danger that we are seeing a tipping point, in Iraq as well
as in Lebanon, which will embolden radical Islam, and Iran in
particular, to extend the battlefield of jihad indefinitely.

At its outset, the Second World War went staggeringly well for the
Axis. German and Japanese tacticians were legions ahead of their Allied
adversaries. Smarter, more creative, more innovative, more motivated,
much more deadly.

The blitzkrieg caught all of Europe unawares and, within weeks,
reeling. Pearl Harbor, the Twin Towers of its era, struck at an
isolationist United States that was profoundly unprepared for war.

Allied military defeats followed in series for years, until endurance,
faith, and appropriate fighting methods turned the tide.

Certainly there are those in Israel and the Jewish world who are
perversely pleased by the way things have gone wrong for us. There is
the Told You So brigade on the far right, which misses no chance to
declare that withdrawal is the cause of this war, and is a mortal error
that must never be repeated, no matter what, ever.

There is the supremely self-satisfied Not In My Name battalion on the
far left, which suggests in its knee-jerk protests and pride at being
called traitors, that Israel may have a right to defend itself, but
should never really exercise it.

Why are we losing? It is because, in our haste to confront Hezbollah
before Iran went nuclear, we went to war before we had the ways and
means to win.

Give us the tools, the British said at the outset of WW II, and we'll
finish the job. We now know that we went to this war without the tools.

After years of Military Intelligence warnings of Hezbollah's missile
arsenal and vaguely comforting news items about the mystery-shrouded
Nautilus Katyusha-killer, we now know that we knew next to nothing.

We are losing it because our prime minister, defense minister, and army
chief, who are new at their jobs and have proven it at every
opportunity, made outlandish, grandiose, and boastful claims at the
outset of the campaign, speaking of disarming Hezbollah, creating a new
order in Lebanon, creating a reality in which the Lebanese people
themselves would turn on the terrorists and diminish their influence.

Even before we ran aground in the north, the words had a perversely
familiar ring. They are the sound track of debacle. They are as dated
and as current as a 16 mm version of Apocalypse Now screened in IDF
forts in Lebanon in the '80s.

We've gone after infrastructure, and in so doing, caused immeasurable
suffering to as many as a million Lebanese, a thousand of them dead,
thousands of them maimed, hundreds of thousands of them displaced.

And there are still those, and they are many, who argue for More of the
Same. Much more. For a start, "Erasing villages where Hezbollah
operates."

But more of them same is likely to yield only more of the same failure.

With thousands of thousands of soldiers already in Lebanon, seven
brigades and counting, after 4,600 IAF bombing runs , 150 of them
Sunday night alone, 80 to 90 percent of Hezbolah's 2,500 fighters are
alive and shooting. They are still capable of firing 200 rockets a day
into Israel.

We are losing the war, in part, because our actions have only gained
sympathy for Hezbollah.

Polls are now showing that nearly 90 percent of Lebanese - including
many who had serious doubts about Hezbollah in the past, now support
the organization's war with Israel.

The war has so elevated Hezbollah in the eyes of the world, that
terrorism authority Prof. Robert A. Pape, writing in The New York
Times, could without flinching compare the group to "the
multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960s."

Oddly, one of the lessons of the war is that the government, fearing a
backlash over the deaths of soldiers, has directed an offensive which
has relied on remote control warfare, effectively causing the needless
deaths of hundreds of civilians in Lebanon, and, in the process,
putting a million Israelis in range of Katyushas and Fajrs.

It's true, this is World War III. And we are losing.

Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet for much of the
Intifada, suggested Monday that the government is heading for a change
in direction in Lebanon, and not a moment too soon.

"Curtailing to the point of halting the rockets is the quintessential
mission of the IDF. The IDF will need to find the formula to carry out
this mission, whether from the air or by other means.

"The fact that this hasn't happened as yet, doesn't mean that this will
not happen."

We have to fight smarter. We have to use diplomacy with more skill. But
we don't have the option of rolling over and playing righteous. In a
world war, you have to choose a side.

Our job now is to survive.

If the Second World War taught the Jews anything, it is this: History
is not, fundamentally, written by its victors. History is written, and
made, by its survivors. Hezbollah knows this. All they have to do to
declare victory, is to survive.

The survival of the Jews is our victory as well. But we're going to
have be a whole lot smarter than we have been, to come out of this.

OK, riddle me this...

How does the Prime Minister of Lebanon, his eyes brimming with tears,
announce that 40 "martyrs" were killed as the result of an Israeli
attack on a village called Houla. The conveniently-timed news flash,
which grabbed headlines, came in the middle of a "let's support Lebanon
conference held in Beirut of Arab foreign ministers.

And a short time later, he backtracks and says, "Oops, only one person
was killed."

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora choked back tears as he told a
meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Beirut that 40 people were
killed by an Israeli air strike on the southern border village of
Houla. He later said announced that only one person had actually been
killed.
What happened, was Green Helmet guy late with the refrigerator truck?

This South African report claims that there were 50 people under the
rubble, who at first were presumed dead and miraculously survived. Now
that's kind of weird. You would think that within the time it would
take to estimate that there had been 40 people in the building, they
would have started digging out, or at least hearing, a lot of people
alive. That would have to be the mother of all premature reports. That
announcement was just too conveniently timed for me -- right in the
midst of the summit, guaranteeing, as if there were any doubt, that,
yeah, all the Arab foreign ministers support Lebanon. (What a shock)

This report from the ever-reliable Islamic Republic News agency
reprints a handy Qana dead-child photo -- with the clear implication
that the photo came from Houla.

This news agency from Bahrain upped the number to 65, including 35
children.

Filed Under | LINK | COMMENTS 0 | TRACKBACK 1
It Takes a Lot To Make Me Laugh Out Loud These Days



This did it. Thank you so much, Jon Stewart.

Filed Under | LINK | COMMENTS 1 | TRACKBACK 0
Fathers in Arms

I just got back from my daughter's karate class. I brought my toddler
along this time, and hung out in the lobby waiting for the class to
finish. Next to me was a guy dressed in a T-shirt and chinos who looked
like he was in his early 30's -- he had a son in the same class, who
must have been six or seven. He had a toddler girl in tow, too. He also
had an M-16.

He was a reservist who had gotten back from his base last night at 2 in
the morning. He was going back this evening. When you sign out your
weapon, you have to keep it with you at all times, so there he was,
trying to be cuddly with his daughter holding this giant gun, trying to
let her climb all over him without getting stabbed by the rifle.

The wife of the owner of the karate school, who is very protective of
their shiny wood floors, joked with him, "You may be carrying an
automatic weapon, but I'm still going to order you to take off your
shoes."

So it was very touching, him trying to engage his daughter in small
talk -- asking her if she had pizza or pasta or rice for lunch at
nursery school, who made it, whether they ate inside or outside, doing
his best to connect with her in the short time they had together. He
said to her, "So you know after this, we're all going to go to the park
and meet the family and have a party, and then after that Daddy is
going back to the army. But you can talk to Daddy on the phone. Just
tell Mom you want to speak with me and she'll call you."

It's such a different military culture, serving so close to home that
you can go home for a day and then straight back on the battlefield. I
couldn't help thinking of yesterday's victims of the attack on Kfar
Giladi, how many fathers were among them, how many little children who
are going to grow up without a Dad who will care what they had for
lunch.

(Crossposted on Israelity)

Filed Under | LINK | COMMENTS 1 | TRACKBACK 1
Our Job Now Is To Survive

He's very eloquent. I hope he isn't right.

Israel is losing World War III By Bradley Burston
There has never before been a war like this.

That is why we are losing it.

We don't know how to fight it. Not yet, at least.

From the start, the whole world has been watching this war, and for

good reason:

This is the next great battle of World War III. And, as in Iraq, the
war is not going well for the West.

There are parallels to the last world war, of course, beyond the
newspaper cartoonists' and worldwide Israel-haters' first reflex of
calling the Jews Nazis.

There is the danger that we are seeing a tipping point, in Iraq as well
as in Lebanon, which will embolden radical Islam, and Iran in
particular, to extend the battlefield of jihad indefinitely.

At its outset, the Second World War went staggeringly well for the
Axis. German and Japanese tacticians were legions ahead of their Allied
adversaries. Smarter, more creative, more innovative, more motivated,
much more deadly.

The blitzkrieg caught all of Europe unawares and, within weeks,
reeling. Pearl Harbor, the Twin Towers of its era, struck at an
isolationist United States that was profoundly unprepared for war.

Allied military defeats followed in series for years, until endurance,
faith, and appropriate fighting methods turned the tide.

Certainly there are those in Israel and the Jewish world who are
perversely pleased by the way things have gone wrong for us. There is
the Told You So brigade on the far right, which misses no chance to
declare that withdrawal is the cause of this war, and is a mortal error
that must never be repeated, no matter what, ever.

There is the supremely self-satisfied Not In My Name battalion on the
far left, which suggests in its knee-jerk protests and pride at being
called traitors, that Israel may have a right to defend itself, but
should never really exercise it.

Why are we losing? It is because, in our haste to confront Hezbollah
before Iran went nuclear, we went to war before we had the ways and
means to win.

Give us the tools, the British said at the outset of WW II, and we'll
finish the job. We now know that we went to this war without the tools.

After years of Military Intelligence warnings of Hezbollah's missile
arsenal and vaguely comforting news items about the mystery-shrouded
Nautilus Katyusha-killer, we now know that we knew next to nothing.

We are losing it because our prime minister, defense minister, and army
chief, who are new at their jobs and have proven it at every
opportunity, made outlandish, grandiose, and boastful claims at the
outset of the campaign, speaking of disarming Hezbollah, creating a new
order in Lebanon, creating a reality in which the Lebanese people
themselves would turn on the terrorists and diminish their influence.

Even before we ran aground in the north, the words had a perversely
familiar ring. They are the sound track of debacle. They are as dated
and as current as a 16 mm version of Apocalypse Now screened in IDF
forts in Lebanon in the '80s.

We've gone after infrastructure, and in so doing, caused immeasurable
suffering to as many as a million Lebanese, a thousand of them dead,
thousands of them maimed, hundreds of thousands of them displaced.

And there are still those, and they are many, who argue for More of the
Same. Much more. For a start, "Erasing villages where Hezbollah
operates."

But more of them same is likely to yield only more of the same failure.

With thousands of thousands of soldiers already in Lebanon, seven
brigades and counting, after 4,600 IAF bombing runs , 150 of them
Sunday night alone, 80 to 90 percent of Hezbolah's 2,500 fighters are
alive and shooting. They are still capable of firing 200 rockets a day
into Israel.

We are losing the war, in part, because our actions have only gained
sympathy for Hezbollah.

Polls are now showing that nearly 90 percent of Lebanese - including
many who had serious doubts about Hezbollah in the past, now support
the organization's war with Israel.

The war has so elevated Hezbollah in the eyes of the world, that
terrorism authority Prof. Robert A. Pape, writing in The New York
Times, could without flinching compare the group to "the
multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960s."

Oddly, one of the lessons of the war is that the government, fearing a
backlash over the deaths of soldiers, has directed an offensive which
has relied on remote control warfare, effectively causing the needless
deaths of hundreds of civilians in Lebanon, and, in the process,
putting a million Israelis in range of Katyushas and Fajrs.

It's true, this is World War III. And we are losing.

Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet for much of the
Intifada, suggested Monday that the government is heading for a change
in direction in Lebanon, and not a moment too soon.

"Curtailing to the point of halting the rockets is the quintessential
mission of the IDF. The IDF will need to find the formula to carry out
this mission, whether from the air or by other means.

"The fact that this hasn't happened as yet, doesn't mean that this will
not happen."

We have to fight smarter. We have to use diplomacy with more skill. But
we don't have the option of rolling over and playing righteous. In a
world war, you have to choose a side.

Our job now is to survive.

If the Second World War taught the Jews anything, it is this: History
is not, fundamentally, written by its victors. History is written, and
made, by its survivors. Hezbollah knows this. All they have to do to
declare victory, is to survive.

The survival of the Jews is our victory as well. But we're going to
have be a whole lot smarter than we have been, to come out of this.