Greetings from the French Hill: Those Humans Do The Darndest Things

There are a lot great articles to pass along today.

-Most of the intelligent blogging world has now been made aware of Zombie Time's excellent and thorough analysis of the Red Cross Ambulance incident in which the entire gambit of the international media reported that the IAF had intentionally targeted and bombed a Lebanon Red Cross ambulance that had people in it. It was an unsubstantiated report, with only a "local" amateur camera man to coroborate the story. Zombie's analysis that shows that this most likely another hoax pereptrated by Hezbollah and wholly chewed up by the media has been largely ignored by the MSM. No corrections or reports of further investigation have been made. Fox News' Brit Hume was the first major media outlet to report the hoax. Now, Australia's Herald Sun has also jumped on board to make this hoax public.

IT'S bad enough that friends of Hezbollah terrorists could trick so many journalists with just a tall story and a rusty Lebanese ambulance.

Worse is that some of those journalists seemed so eager to believe this ambulance was indeed wickedly blown up by an Israeli missile fired straight through the big red cross on its roof -- leaving not even a scorch mark.

But worst is that even now that this hoax has been exposed, none of the countless writers and commentators who fell for it have admitted to passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists.

It is this refusal to admit that suggests there was an agenda, after all, to so much of the hysterical reporting of the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.
[....] Read all of Not The Hole Truth...

-During a press conference yesterday, Lebanese PM Seniora said it would be possible for Lebanon to make peace with Israel, but that Lebanon would be the last country to make peace with Israel. READ THE REST...

-Was yesterday's hit and run, in which a man drove his SUV into 15 people and killed 1 pedestrian, a terrorist act? If this is the case, it is very reminiscent of last year's hit and run on Duke University's campus. Townhall.com has 2 great articles that forces the issue on the media.

San Fran Hit-and-Runs: Jihad or No? (Update: Suspect Called Himself a Terrorist?
[...]One is dead, three in critical condition, and five others in serious condition. There was one child hit, who received "massive head injuries."

Michelle notes that Ameed Aziz Popal's rampage ended at the Jewish Community Center. She and her readers are working to determine if he was in a largely Jewish area. Was it jihad and the authorities and police just aren't talking about it? Could be. They have a history of downplaying that aspect unless the perp runs in shouting, oh I don't know, "I'm a Muslim-American. I'm angry at Israel," and it becomes harder to ignore.
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Terrorist Attack in SF?

-In April 2004, Haim Harari, known more as a renowned theoretical physicist, gave a speech at a conference on his past. It was a speech that blew his audience away and has resonated until today.

[...]Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.

The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine would have existed for 100 years.
[....] Read all of Haim Harari's Speech...

-Denis MacEoin asks the question, Why Do Muslims Execute Innocent People?

While often ignored in the Western media, human rights abuses in the Islamic world are a daily occurrence. Both Muslim states and ad hoc religious courts order mutilation and execution, not only of criminals but also of individuals—mainly women—who have not committed anything which would be considered a crime in other societies. In some cases, Shari‘a (Islamic law) tribunals issue death sentences for those acquitted in regular courts.[1] In other cases, religious leaders invoke religion to sanction non-Islamic practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation.
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-Andrew G. Bostom, of Front Page Mag.com, gives a concise and historical analysis of Fox News' Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig's forced conversion to Islam while they held in captivity, in Gaza.

[...] During the brief press conference held almost immediately after their release, both men preferred to focus on the plight of the kind and benevolent denizens of Gaza. Momentarily acknowledging the coercive nature of their “conversion”, Centanni admitted off camera, “We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint”. But he felt compelled to add this bizarre disclaimer, “Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it”, before concluding candidly “…it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on.” Centanni expressed his primary concern to the reporters gathered at the Gaza City Beach Hotel press conference as follows: “I hope that this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover the story because the Palestinian people are very beautiful and kind-hearted...The world needs to know more about them. Don't be discouraged.” Wiig reiterated these sentiments: “My biggest concern really is that as a result of what happened to us foreign journalists will be discouraged from coming to tell the story and that would be a great tragedy for the people of Palestine…You guys need us on the streets, and you need people to be aware of the story.” And Wiig’s wife thanked unnamed “Palestinian women” from Gaza for their “solidarity”.

Within moments of making these effusively conciliatory statements—despite having been held captive and forcibly converted to Islam—the freed kidnapping victims were whisked off to Israel. Notwithstanding their pious ecumenical pronouncements, Centanni and the Wiigs failed to linger and socialize with the “very beautiful and kind hearted” local Muslim residents of Gaza, even those Gazan women who had shown them such “solidarity.”

Forced conversions in Islamic history are not exceptional—they have been the norm, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—for over 13 centuries. Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi’ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India.
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-David Bedein reports how the Palestinian Authority's new school text books continue to anti-Israel, anti-semitic, and deadly Jihadist teachings. This comes even as the international media is heralding PA President Abbas for wanting to restart peace negotiations with Israel.

As this is being written, in late August 2006, news wires around the world are running a story that Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, has launched a new peace initiative with Israel.
However, the new school books that the same Mahmoud Abbas has now introduced in the Palestinian Authority school system - run independently of Hamas - represent a curriculum that prepares a new generation of Palestinians to destroy Israel.
Following fervent support given to Hezbollah's total war on Israel by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority this summer, this raises the question as to whether the new school year in the Palestinian Authority, opening next week, will simply add fuel to the fire of the Palestinian Authority's war against Israel, instead of a new peace initiative with the Jewish State.
Because these PA school books have also been incorporated in the Arab schools in Jerusalem, which raises cause for further concern, a movement is afoot in the Israeli Arab schools in the rest of Israel to adopt the PA curriculum in their schools.
Indeed, the latest study of PA textbooks, www.intelligence.org.il/eng/default.htm, commissioned by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Herzelia (www.intelligence.org.il, an agency that had been consistently supportive of the Oslo Peace Process), speaks for itself.
Here are some pearls of wisdom that Palestinian children will learn from the new school books of the Palestinian Authority this year:

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1. Israel does not appear on any maps of the world in the new PA textbooks, while maps of Israel replace the name Israel with Palestine in all of the new Palestinian Authority school books.

2. The new Palestinian School Books "annex" sites in Israel to Palestine.
"Haifa is a Palestinian seaport," (p. 7) (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful Language) Vol. 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 86).
"Galilee, Nazareth and Beit She'an are regions in Palestine," (p. 7) (Al-Iqtisad al-Manzili (Home Economy), 10th grade textbook, pp. 36-37).

3. The new Palestinian school books mention Israel only as an enemy, in reference to "occupation of lands" in 1948 and 1967:
"There is no doubt that the Israeli occupation has a negative impact on [Palestinian] agriculture and its export," (p. 8) (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful Language) Vol. 1, 10th grade textbook, p. 102).
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