Friday, November 30, 2012

The Daily Angry

AbuKhalil wants Jihad:


This is what the Muslim Brotherhood means by Jihad
From Ahmet of Tunisia:  "Asad, here is it: " Egyptian media reports said Gaza was the intended destination for the weapons, which included 185 crates filled with 5,000 rounds of bullets, anti-tank and anti-aircraft munitions, rocket-propelled grenades, landmines and explosives. The value of the shipment was estimated at $3.3 million. It was the second weapons shipment from Libya that Egyptian authorities intercepted in less than a week. Last week, a convoy of pickups was stopped near the Egyptian town of Marsa Matrouh, not far from the Libyan border. The trucks were carrying, according to Egyptian reports, 108 Grad rocket warheads."

 Morsi is a great disappointment for the anarchist, socialist, peace-loving  prof who teaches his values to young and impressionable American students. . What can he be thinking of? The chance to kill a few Israeli toddlers in Sderot far outweighs any Egypt's need to feed their hungry millions.

Lies of Israel about Paper Dome

" Some American technical experts also say they want hard evidence before judging whether Iron Dome knocked out as many rockets as Israel has claimed. Iron Dome’s most salient feature, according to American experts now examining after-action reports from Gaza, may well be its software.
But some antimissile experts have expressed doubt about Israeli claims for Iron Dome, which is built by Israeli defense firms but has received about $275 million in financial support from the United States. Bright flashes can create a visual impression of overwhelming interceptor success, when in fact they may represent nothing more than the interceptor warhead blowing up, these skeptics warn.

“I’ve met the guys in Israel, and they’re smart,” said Richard M. Lloyd, an antimissile expert with more than a dozen patents and two major textbooks on warhead design to his credit. “But I’m not seeing the things I want to see” to prove that Iron Dome actually succeeded to the extent described by Israel.
Mr. Lloyd, who works for Tesla Laboratories Inc., a defense contractor in Arlington, Va., said he had studied dozens of publicly available photographs of spent rockets that landed on Israel. Few of them, he said, showed signs of damage from Iron Dome’s exploding warhead and the specific mechanism by which the interceptor is designed to make its kill — a dense spray of speeding metal fragments.". But notice that the headline of this piece only implies success."
Poor idiot. In his agogness to discredit Israel's successful technology, he misses some important clues* and incidentally reveals his utter ignorance when it comes to these matters.

_________

* How does it work?

Iron Dome has three components: the detection and radar installation, battle management and weapons control (BMC), and the missile firing unit itself.

The radar system detects opposing missiles or artillery shells when they are launched.
The BMC is the brain of the system. It calculates the trajectory of the rocket and where it is expected to hit. The BMC is capable of tracking and firing at multiple targets simultaneously.
If an incoming rocket is headed to a low-risk area, like an empty field, Iron Dome will leave it alone. But if a rocket is on a path to a sensitive target, like a populated area, Iron Dome launches a Tamir missile that can intercept and destroy it.


Sunday, November 25, 2012

History lesson: Nabatieh, Lebanon

Prof. AbuKhalil, a staunch revealer of truth and intellectual interpreter of events posted this yesterday:


In 1974-1975, the labor government of Shimon Peres and Itzhak Rabin ordered massive bombing raids against the camp and the bombing raids were so incinerating that it was bombed out of existence, literally.  In December 1975, Israeli fighter jets bombed the camp and there was nothing left whatsoever.  This is the other history of Israel that most Americans are ignorant about.  


As usual, AbuKhalil's tells a story without a beginning, without a cause, and without a context, and allows himself the liberality of a fiction-writer's poetic licence,  leaving the impression
that one fine morning in 1974,  Shimon Peres and Itzhak Rabin woke up and decided to instruct the IAF to fly over Nabatieh refugee camp and bomb it to kingdom come, just like that, out of some irresistibly sadistic and irrational motivation.

Here is the real record of events, for those interested in truth:

 Israeli planes have bombed seven Palestinian refugee camps and villages in southern Lebanon killing at least 27 people and leaving 138 injured.

The attack was in retaliation for yesterday's hostage crisis at a school in Ma'alot near the Lebanon border in which 18 teenagers were killed and 70 were wounded.
Worst hit by the Israeli fighter-bombers were the crowded refugee camps of Ein El Helweh near the city of Sidon and Nabatieh.

An official announcement from the Israeli Defence Force said the planes had been aiming at offices and training bases used by the Popular Democratic Front, led by Nayef Hawatmeh, and the Popular Front under Ahmed Jibril.

The PDF was behind the killing of the schoolchildren at Ma'alot - and the Popular Front planned the shooting of 16 civilians in Kiryat Shemona on 10 April.

Two nights ago, three Palestinian Arabs dressed as Israeli soldiers took over the school at Ma'alot.

There were more than 100 children aged between 14 and 16 sleeping there on the floor after a day's hiking in the region. Some managed to escape through an open door.
The Israeli Government agreed to the hostage-takers' demands to release 26 political prisoners, including a Japanese national involved in the Lod airport massacre.
But negotiations fell apart when the hostage-takers did not receive a coded message they were waiting for from Damascus.

On 15 May at 1745 local time - 15 minutes before they had said they would kill all the children if their demands were not met - Israeli soldiers raided the school building.
Eighteen children and the three Palestinians were killed in a bloody gun battle.

Click on the links I provided to understand the background, the context, the causes and the rationale that led to Shimon Peres and Itzhak Rabin's orders to bomb the camps that were used for training grounds and headquarters for the Palestinian terrorists later sent to committed those crimes.

Such is the kind of information, thinking and truth readers can expect from the website of this bona fide professor who teaches at an American university of good standing. This is the kind of teacher entrusted with the enlightenment and education of innocent minds.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

 The truth shall make you free

Prof. AbuKhalil provides an invaluable resource of information. In this post from today, 22 November 2012, he quotes a correspondent (someone he corresponds with by email, I presume) as saying, in an aggrieved tone:

BBC coverage

Khodor sent me this:  "Just to let you know, I dont have the video but I personally saw the 10:00 pm BBC news yesterday and the guy said something along the lines of " People in Gaza have a culture of martyrdom and there is no sadness or grief". He also mentioned the IDF throwing flyers and said people listened to the advice and left along routes the IDF promised not to bomb. I wish I can find the video to send. Does not differ much from what other journalists you mentioned in your blog were saying."
The implication of the grievance could be one of two possibilities: One, that the information is a lie thus implying the BBC  is an instrument of ZOG, or two, that while the veracity of the information is not being disputed, the complainant is outraged by its being presented on the BBC. Why? Perhaps because it casts a more benign light upon the IDF, which should be shown as only brutal? Perhaps because it interferes with AbuKhalil's most cherished narrative, that Israeli soldiers deliberately, pre-meditatedly and malevolently target innocent civilians?
In my humble opinion, the second possibility makes more sense. The first possibility, the truth of the information, is easily verifiable, from a 20 seconds google search that produced the following report:
" In preparation for a possible impending ground incursion, and in an attempt to minimize civilian casualties, even at the cost of losing the element of surprise, the IDF has dropped another round of warning leaflets over some of the neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip. The flyers call on civilians to leave their homes for their safety, and the IDF details the routes they should take. A translation of the leaflets’ content is below:
The first leaflet:
To the residents of Sheikh Ajlin, Tel Al-Hwa, Rimal South, Zeitoun, Sjaiya, Turkeman and Sajiya Jadida: For your safety, you are required to evacuate your residences immediately and move towards the central Gaza city, via Al-Khara, Jma’at Al Dul Al Arabia, Al Aqsa Al Qudsiya, Um Alaimoun, Salah A-din, Al-Maqsurra, Hal’s Mjdad. In the central Gaza city, you are required to stay between the areas of Salah A-din from the west, Amar Al-Muchtar from the north, Al-Nasser from the east and Al-Quds St. from the south.
- Israel Defense Forces.
The second leaflet:
To the residents of of the outskirts of Shati, Al-Atatra, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun: for your safety, you are required to evacuate your residences immediately and move towards central Gaza city via Al-Falujah, Al-Udda and Salah A-din. In the central Gaza city, you are required to stay between the roads of Salah A-din from the west, Amar Al-Muchtar from the north, Al-Nasser from the east and Al-Quds St. from the south.
- Israel Defense Forces."

I assume Prof. AbuKhalil, a bona fide professor  at an American university with a good standing, entrusted with the teaching of young students the arts of reading critically, would have checked to see whether the information was true or not. Assuming he is just as capable as finding information on the Internet as I am, I have little doubt that he knows, for a fact, that this information is correct.

So that leaves us with the second possibility for the aggrieved tone: That the BBC presented news that could cast a favourable light upon IDF's rules of engagement in fighting a war targeting terrorists embedded within a civilian population. The complaint suggests that the BBC should not have made this information available to the average British taxpayer. In other words, the BBC should have concealed this information from its viewers, which is tantamount to a dissemination of a lie. If these IDF's actions are not known, then that leaves the Palestinian version of civilian being deliberately targeted by Israel intact and unchallenged. In other words, AbuKhalil expects the BBC to collude with his perspective in which the Israel side is just a black block of evil and malfeasance.

Interesting, from a Prof. at a university duty bound by academic ethics to teach students the truth, and how to find out as much of the truth as possible.

__________

Addendum:  Another example of the professor's courageous standing up for truth in reporting:

Zionism is always racism

"The Tel Aviv municipality has placed security guards at entrances to public bomb shelters that opened Saturday night in the southern part of the city after homeless people, mostly migrants from Africa, tried to sleep there." 
 
I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that Prof. AbuKhalil, who is intelligent and some would even go as far to say highly intelligent,  knows exactly what this information means: that, following the long ranch missiles lobbed at Tel Aviv by Hamas, the city opened up its public air raid shelters, to serve the people who find themselves in public places when the air raid sirens sound. These shelters are there to provide protection from air raids, not for homeless people, whatever their race, to sleep in. The same way that the Metro stations in Montreal  are there to serve the public and not s a place for homeless people to sleep in. Even on the coldest nights in Montreal, homeless people are not allowed to sleep in Metro stations.  So there is nothing particularly racist or heartless about homeless people in Israel being turned away from shelters meant to protect the public against attacks from the air. 

Yet you wouldn't know these very simple facts from AbuKhalil's way of presenting the information. What do you call such an intellectual, who tells his readers not the truth but a slanderous perversion of facts and contexts?

Saturday, November 17, 2012

It's war in Israel, again


Where discussions rage:

@TNR: War, and Israel’s Quixotic Search For Normalcy
   page 2 (Murti bing pills,  reading tea leaves, and other absurdities)


Sunday, November 11, 2012

How to Teach American Students about the Arab-Israel Conflict, Angry-Arab Style

According to Prof. AbuKhalil, he teaches a class on the Arab-Israel conflict:

Friday, November 02, 2012

Balfour Declaration
When I was an undergraduate student at the American University of Beirut, I took a most memorable course on the West and the Middle East with Walid Khalidi (by far one of the most effective teachers). He once spent a class analyzing and dissecting the text of the Balfaour Declaration and his analysis never left me. I still do the same on my classes on the Arab-Israeli conflict.



If you wish to have an idea what kind of classes this professor teaches to young impressionable American students you can get it from a mere cursory look at the textual product of his mental processes as displayed in his blog: Angry Arab News Service.

Here is one typical example:

"Israeli terrorism continues unabated" declares Prof. AbuKhalil, who, let me remind you again, teaches a class on the Arab-Israel conflict. His post then goes on to explain: "The mother of Ahmed Abu Dagah, who was killed by gunfire from Israeli forces, mourns during his funeral in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip."

When you click on the link he provides, you see a series of "pietas", of the sad sight of a mother hugging her dead child's body. How can such a sight fail to move any body's heart? What can be sadder than a mother mourning her dead child, killed by violence?

If you continue to scroll down, finally you arrive at some text, that provides some context to the photo:

" Gunfire from Israeli forces killed the Palestinian boy, Abu Dagah, in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, local medics said, during border clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants. Israeli military officials said soldiers who were engaged in "routine activity" adjacent to the security fence came under attack from Palestinian militants and responded "by firing at suspicious locations
".

You will notice how the text is carefully laconic and lacking in detail. So here are the details:

"The fire followed a border attack that saw terrorists launch an anti-tank missile at an IDF patrol near Karni crossing. Two soldiers were seriously wounded and two others were moderately injured."

" The IDF confirmed the incident's details: "An anti-tank missile was fired at an IDF force on routine patrol near the security fence in northern Gaza Strip. Four soldiers were wounded as a result. IDF forces returned fire.


"The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers and will continue to fight any element which employs terror against the State of Israel.


"The Hamas terror group is responsible for any such acts," the statement said."


So the story is not quite as simple as Prof. AbuKhalil would have you believe, if you take his word as the source of your information. With this as a model, what do you imagine his class on the Arab-Israel conflict consists in*?

*  A tiny hint: AA's positions can be fairly accurately guessed at from the cute little titles he gives his posts.

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Approved by Angry Arab:

"Arabs from around the world have been heaping insults and even calling for trial and even executions of Abu Mazen for his remark about Safad."








Some context, here:

"In an interview with Israeli television last Thursday, Abu Mazen did something that would have been really gutsy but for the fact that he has immediately walked it back. Abu Mazen told an Israeli interviewer that he did not want to return to Tzfat, opening the possibility that other 'refugees' (most of whom never lived in Israel) would not 'return' either from their 'refugee camp' prisons.

Abu Mazen's comments provoked outrage - part of which is his own fault because during the time that he has been the 'Palestinian leader' he has never prepared his 'people' for a settlement that would not include vitiating the Jewish states. And so, whether he meant it or not, he is now telling everyone that he didn't mean it.

He is being accused of “giving up the right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees and some of his political rivals have gone as far as calling for his execution for “high treason.”
What surprised Abbas was the fact that the strong condemnations were not only from Hamas and radical Palestinian groups, but also from ordinary Palestinians, including some of his political allies in the PLO.
If he was surprised, he should not have been. That's always been the 'Palestinians' position, and that's one reason why they never reached an agreement with Barak at Camp David or Taba, or with Olmert at Annapolis. It's always been a zero sum game with them."

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Comments Trail:

@ Engage: BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state.

@ TNR: About the presidential elections (just look how down and dirty it gets)