Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

Who woulda thunk it?

Posted: February 5, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Promoted from today’s Morning Joe. One of the starting headlines is that one of the most wanted Nazi War Criminals still left alive from WWII apparently died in Egypt where he hid under a false name for decades.

One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim or ‘Doctor Death’, lived for years as a quiet, pious Muslim in a small hotel on the edge of Islamic Cairo, where he was known as Doctor Tarek.

Concealed in the labyrinthine streets of the largest city in Africa and the Middle East, the man wanted for killing hundreds of concentration camp victims with horrific medical experiments found refuge until his death in 1992.

The next paragraph is almost stereotypical of killers in hiding:

“He was like a giant, not very chatty but he never missed a prayer at the mosque,” remembers Gamal Abu Ahmed, who today lives in Dr Death’s former room on the sixth floor of the Qasr el-Medina hotel.

He was a very quiet man…Never missed a prayer at the mosque. No!

A genocidal war criminal involved in the death of Jews hiding in an Arab country as a Muslim. I can’t handle the shock. How did he ever manage to blend in?

Update: Israellycool covered this yesterday, see what happens when you miss a day of your favorite blogs.

Time is almost out for Israel…

Posted: February 3, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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…If Iran is successfully launching satellites:

The Iranian regime announced it launched its first homemade satellite into orbit today.
FOX News reported:

Iran has successfully sent its first domestically made satellite into orbit, state radio reported Tuesday, another development in the country’s ambitious space program that has worried many international observers.

Once Iran can put a nuclear warhead on one of these babies the war will come. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an Israeli first strike and I don’t know if I would blame them.

If there is a more horrible prospect on the horizon then I don’t know what it is.

Back in December on the war in Gaza I said this:

My take on it. This is a strategic move by Iran and a smart one. I personally think this is Iran’s war by proxy. Their best next move is an attack by Hezbollah as soon as possible. This would serve two purposes. It will divide the Israeli response and if it suckers Israel into Lebanon it could not only bog them down but might change the direction of the propaganda war.

Unfortunately no matter what happens even a total Israeli victory the winner here is Iran. As long as the world is talking about Gaza and rocket attacks and responses they are not touching the ongoing building of Nukes by Iran. I think this is all a sucker punch to keep the heat elsewhere. If Israel is hitting Gaza and or Lebanon they are not hitting Iranian nuke sites. They are buying time with Arab rather than Persian lives.

This news might be the confirmation. Maybe that’s why the rockets are flying from Gaza again. Disrupt and distract any kind of planned Israeli move against Iran wasn’t as odd as it sounded.

Not stopping Iran will be the biggest failure of the Bush administration. The question is soon going to become if it will cost thousands of lives to do so or millions of lives not to.

Lets all pray I’m dead wrong on this.

Update: Hotair points out that this makes the president dropping starwars unlikely:

Time magazine warned the left two weeks after the election not to get their hopes up about Obama revisiting Star Wars, citing quotes from during the campaign like, “I actually believe that we need missile defense because of Iran and North Korea and the potential for them to obtain or to launch nuclear weapons.” I’d say their prediction is safe.

Will it be enough?

Israel 100 Hamas 0 Hamas wins!

Posted: February 2, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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Charles Johnson almost goes Kryten reading the AP and Martin Kramer on the Gaza war:

This is one of those ludicrous media memes that refuses to die: fighting against evil only makes evil stronger. You’ll see it in articles about every conflict; it’s a kind of nihilistic philosophical tic that is nearly universal, a counterintuitive observation that’s supposed to impress you with its depth.

Here’s the dirty little secret: it’s not deep, it’s stupid. The emperor really is naked.

The question they never ask: if fighting terrorists only makes more terrorists, and only makes hard-liners stronger in every case, what’s the alternative? Giving up?

Did these guys report St. Louis as the winner of the Superbowl? Hamas has won in the same way Dallas Acadamy did; only in the minds of the press and now they want the same after result,.

About as well put as you can get

Posted: February 1, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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Michael Yon is a man who has spent most of the last few years in the middle east in general and in Iraq in particular. No other single reporter has seen what is going on closer. He called in when the strategy in Iraq was failing and he called it when the strategy was working. His reporting has proved to be the most accurate out there and it isn’t even close.

Today he tackles Israel and Iran and wonders why people don’t see what is there:

It is amazing to me, as an American who travels the world on a near-constant basis, that there is so much confusion over who the terrorists are. Hamas is a terrorist organization that condones and facilitates suicide bombings and will kill every Jew on the planet if they have the chance. Meanwhile, Israel is an energetic democracy with a vibrant press. I could sit right here in Jerusalem and write bad things about Israel and Jews, and nothing would happen. Maybe I wouldn’t get invited somewhere or would be called an anti-Semite, but that would be it. Neither the Jews nor the Israelis would harm me, though they likely would write bad things about me. I came to Israel with no press accreditation and at the airport they knew that I was a writer. Yet they let me in and have allowed me to freely roam the country. Today I was in very close proximity to Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu talked about how, in this very hotel, Rehavam Ze’evi had been murdered just a few floors above our heads. The security seemed incredibly lax by American standards. Bernard Lewis and other extremely smart people were there.

Israel is a free country that abides by the rule of law. By contrast, if a writer were to go to Gaza or Iran, for instance, and start writing bad words, he might wind up on the news, dead. Israel allows Christians and Arab Muslims to worship freely, while Hamas wants to see us all at the bottom of the sea. Hamas, supported by Iran, is clear about their goals: they want to wipe out Israel completely, utterly, with finality. But it’s not just Israel that Hamas wants to kill; they want to kill all Jews everywhere. Complete genocide.

Read the whole thing. Via Glenn who answers the title of the piece with “because they don’t care what happens to Israel.” Given what I’ve seen over the last several weeks I am forced to agree.

Updates continue at Israellycool.

UPDATE: The Captain comments:

Yes, Europe has come a long way since the Holocaust, but unfortunately, it’s in a circle

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