Multicultural Outreach from the Swedish Police

Reader LN has translated an article for Gates of Vienna from yesterday’s Metro International in Sweden:

AINA Will Attract Suburban “Kids”

Aina is Turkish-Swedish slang, and is an abbreviation of the Turkish slang expression aynasiz that means “without mirror”. The word hints at the police with the meaning that a police officer has no sense of shame and decency and consequently would not dare to look in a mirror. (Source: Z. Adami, Gringo)

A police car with the slang word for police “AINA” is supposed to tempt suburban “kids” to join the police corps. “The police believe they can reclaim the word and undramatize or defuse it. By using the same word as the kids in the immigrant suburbs you are creating a feeling of nearness,” says Zanyar Adami, editor in chief of the paper Gringo.

Different Ethnic Backgrounds

During the youth festival “Young 08 “ next week the police will unveil the renamed police car. The objective is to tempt youngsters with different ethnic backgrounds to join the corps for police education.

It is also part of the fight against juvenile delinquency, by investing in tempting new groups to join the police force. “Too many young people are drawn into gang criminality and we must all engage in trying to stop this. On way could be to get more police officers with experience from the suburbs,” says Chief Commissioner Carin Götblad to the Swedish News Agency TT.

Zanyar Adami believes that the car will draw the attention of the “kids” and create a dialogue between them and the police.

“Is it enough to only show up a car with the word ‘AINA’ to reach suburb youngsters? — No, one PR campaign is not enough, but it shows that the police are receptive. I believe that it can tempt some to enlist,” says Zanyar Adami.


Photo caption: Chief Commissioner Carin Götblad demonstrates the new police car that will tempt suburban “kids” to qualify as future police. Photo: Land Earthy/Scanpix

This is a Joke. Almost.

Go over to The People’s Cube for the rest of the information.


Hat tip: Reader BH, and Carl in Jerusalem.

The Strange Story of the Egyptian Students Arrested in Dundalk

The story of the Egyptian exchange students is getting very strange. Concerning the pair arrested in Dundalk, Maryland, local Baltimore TV station WJZ has this to say:

Two of the missing students were found and arrested in Dundalk, but the family that housed the students said they weren’t aware the students were missing.

The students were found staying with Jennifer Evans and her husband, who had introduced the pair to her as family friends from his village in Egypt. Thinking nothing of it, the couple welcomed the students into their home where they resided for a week before INS officials arrived to take custody of the students.

El Sayed Ahmed Elsayed Ibrahim, 20, and Alaa Abd El Fattah Ali El Bahnasawi, 20, were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

It was then that Evans realized the students should have been staying in Bozeman, Mont. attending a month-long academic program at Montana State University.

The husband (last name “Evans”??) didn’t know they were missing? Really; he had no clue? How did he happen to bring them home? Did he meet them at the airport in New York, or just find them on the street? What did he think they were doing there?

The employment explanation comes up again:

Evans’ housguests [sic] will now face some major immigration violations and may be deported. Authorities believe they were looking for jobs in a place of opportunity.

Mr. Evans, who is from Egypt, thought they were looking for work. Did he not know about the student visas they carried, which specifically prohibited their holding employment in the United States? Or did he turn a blind eye to it, knowing that such visas are routinely abused by “students” who obtain employment?

Notice that the husband’s first name is never mentioned. Do you suppose it might begin with “M”? And is his last name Evans, or did his wife simply retain her maiden name? The WJZ account coyly avoids the whole issue.

This story raises more questions than it answers.

But there’s one thing we can always count on:

Immigration officials say the two students who stayed with Evans are not a terror risk.

The Mandatory No-Terror Disclaimer_TM.


Update: Thanks to CP and commenter Johnnie for digging up the name of the husband. He is Attia Gouda, and a pizza shop owner, according to the Baltimore Sun.

A woman called Jennifer Evans writes regularly for the Egyptian publication, Weekly Al-Ahram (which also has an entire section of its website devoted to Yasser Arafat, as a matter of interest). I have no idea whether it’s the same person.

Also: three more of the students have been arrested, leaving only two at large. I’ll be posting on the topic later.

Another Jamaat in Georgia

The Politics of CP has an exclusive report on a previously unknown Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound in Georgia. Through diligent investigative work, CP has uncovered another village of Sheikh Gilani’s disciples, this one called “Aliville”. Here’s how he tracked the place down:

Last fall, following Hurricane Katrina, a pair of news stories appeared about a “charity” linked to the Muslims of the Americas called Hand to Hands Social Service Agency describing the contributions of several of its members from around the country to the relief efforts. [Hand-to-Hands is headquartered in Binghamton, NY; their website is handtohands.org]

One of the stories, from Spero News, mentions the names of a couple of women hailing from a place called “Aliville (Odem, GA)”. After googling “Odem”, I realized the town is actually spelled “Odum”. It is not clear if the name of the town was misspelled intentionally. Nonetheless, after working through a number of search string combinations, I finally found what I believe to be Aliville. It lies 14 miles northeast of Odum just off Hwy 169 aka Lanes Bridge Rd in northern Wayne County.

He’s got aerial photos, maps, and much more information about the connections of the place to other JF operations. Look at his map and you’ll see how disturbingly close Aliville is to several sensitive military installations.

The existence of this Jamaat does not seem to have been made public prior to now, and it’s not clear if the authorities were aware of it.

Kudos to CP for his dedicated effort! Go over and read the rest.

Three More Egyptian Students in Custody

Two more Egyptian exchange students were arrested in Maryland, and one was arrested in Chicago at O’Hare airport. The last one is more interesting than the others, since he did not enter custody gently, and raised a stink at the airport:

Police arrested Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abou El Ela, 22, at O’Hare International Airport after he tried to check in for a Chicago-to-Montana flight using an invalid ticket marked for a New York departure, Chicago police said.

El Ela raised his voice and became unruly after an employee at a Delta ticket counter refused to let him exchange the ticket for a valid one, said Timothy J. Bolger, the Chicago police officer at the scene.

“He was loud and causing people to be alarmed,” Bolger said. The officer said El Ela calmed down when police arrived.

After federal officials confirmed El Ela was one of the students they were seeking, police turned him over to immigration agents, Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline said.

And the mandatory disclaimer, which we can all repeat verbatim in our sleep by now:

None of the students is considered a terrorism risk, and FBI officials stressed there are no ties between the Egyptians and the alleged terror plot broken up by British authorities.

Why is that so certain? How do they know that? What did they do, take the word of the CIA?

Here’s one possible explanation for the Egyptian youths’ truancy:

Relatives in Egypt explained the students’ failure to show up at Montana State by saying they probably wanted to find work in the United States.

“It must have been in his mind to stay where there are plenty of job opportunities,” said Ibrahim el-Dessouki, the father of a student arrested Wednesday in Minnesota. “You know how much a dollar is worth here in Egypt.”

We certainly do. We send - what is it? - two billion of them every year.

Are We Ready for Confrontation?

Vigorous and open debate seems to be the norm in the Danish press nowadays. Zonka has translated an opinion piece from a Danish newspaper (a version of the same translation is posted on his own blog).

First, his remarks from his cover note to us:

Below is an article from Jyllands-Posten on Aug. 7, 2006. I believe that it is important on several issues, foremost because I think it is a correct assessment of the situation… uh duh :-) But also because it shows that the Danish media climate is (with a few regrettable exceptions, Thøger Seidenfaden’s Politiken comes naturally to mind) such that these issues can be stated openly and without being censored by the media PC police. The big question though is how many are listening and taking the warnings seriously. In my opinion a growing number of people… but as the author of the article states: Are they willing to do what is necessary?

And now the article itself:

Are We Ready for Confrontation?

By Ole Hasselbalch, professor, Doctor of Laws — Jyllands-Posten, August 7, 2006

There is no more breathing room for being slow on the uptake or fickle. He who neither understands the foundations for the benefits he enjoys nor is willing to act accordingly is bound to lose them.

It isn’t written anywhere that the West and our model of society will win. Thus there is no basis for dialogue with Islam, as long as that faith’s practitioners only consider such as a tool for deception, says the author of today’s article.

The waters have been parted after the Mohammed Affair. Those who do not now understand what the situation is will probably never understand.

It wasn’t a case of a spontaneous and popular indignation over some not very sensational cartoons: The affair started months after the publication, the Egypt government acted as midwife, and the authentic cartoons were supplemented with a set of fakes and lies. And one doesn’t burn embassies and flags in that part of the world without governmental approval.

Within the Arabic cultural sphere a feigned anger over an alleged offense is a well-known trait. Last winter there were many reasons to invent such an outrage: Egypt was facing a parliamentary election, and the regime needed a cause to boost their image. Iran needed a diversion from the Western attention to the nuclear ambitions of the country. Syria needed to have the pressure lifted after the involvement in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister. The negotiations about Kosovo’s future were imminent. The new Palestinian government needed legitimacy. Finally there was a need for tougher blasphemy laws to cap the increasing tendency in the Western European media to occupy themselves with the unacceptable parts of Islam — the British parliament was about to discuss “The Religious Hatred Bill”.

In short, the Mohammed Affair wasn’t set off by an offense. It was created in the expanding Muslim world in use for the conflict with the West.

This conflict is fundamentally about whether a political ideology clothed in a religious mantle will be allowed to force its dogma upon others, and even dictate that this must replace empirical knowledge. If this succeeds, we’re back to the times when Copernicus and Galileo were facing the Inquisition. On such a foundation no decent society can be built.

As the Mohammed Affair shows, the means that are employed against us are unusual.

The core element is the demographic trend. As Per Stig Møller noted in JP Jul. 7:

“In the middle of this century half a billion Europeans — included herein a large number of Muslim immigrants — will be facing a Middle-East and Northern Africa with four times as many people.”

He could have added that demographers at Copenhagen University have predicted a Muslim majority in Denmark within this century. (Berlingske Tidende August 8, 2005).

This situation is being exploited by the frontrunners of Islam. In Norway the resident fundamentalist, Mullah Krekar, says it this way: “Look at the development in Europe’s population, where the number of Muslims is growing like mosquitoes. Each western woman in the EU produces on average 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children. In 2050, 30% of the population in Europe will be Muslims” (Dagbladet March 13, 2006). Libya’s Gadaffi states it this way: “We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. They are a sign that Allah will give Islam victory over Europe — without swords, without cannons, without conquest. The 50 million Muslims in Europe will turn Europe Muslim within a few decades. Allah is mobilizing Muslim Turkey to adds that to the European Union. That is an addition of 50 million more Muslims. Then there will be 100 million Muslims in Europe. Albania, which is a Muslim country is already in the EU. Bosnia which is a Muslim country is already in the EU. 50% of the population in those countries are Muslim.” (Memri-TV)

It is further known which currents that dominate the Muslim immigration groups. Based on the Mohammed Affair one can mention the survey LO published in Ugebrevet A4 on March 13, 2006: Under half would distance themselves from the anti-Danish riots in the Middle-East — 11% even fully endorsed flag-burnings, the destruction of embassies, and boycotting Danish goods.

The so-called moderate Muslims are insignificant. Only 1,000 signed up for “Democratic Muslims” in four weeks — the same number as the fundamentalists at any time can muster in Nørrebrohallen (Meeting place of Hizb-ut-tahrir — translator). The moderates will thus very likely be silenced in the long run, simply because there will be insufficient police resources to protect them.

Now it is certainly not a law of nature that the most populous cultures always are victorious. The Spaniard Cortez toppled the mighty Inca empire with a few hundred soldiers. The people behind the Mohammed Affair know that they can neither defeat the West militarily or economically. This is why they operate on the psychological level by inventing fictitious offenses and demand “respect” for their “religion”. They need our passivity, until the population increase makes it impossible to stop them.

Therefore criticism of Islam is characterized as smear campaigns and hatred, natural defenses are called “discriminatory”, and those who for 25 years have warned about what is going on, are being labelled and stigmatized with the aid of Danish collaborators as “rightwing extremists”.

If we for that reason allow ourselves to be sucked into debates about the “tone of the debate”, we lose precious time — and at the same time overlook how the respect for other religions are being practiced the deeply intolerant Middle-East, where in the last 100 years they have virtually succeeded in wiping out the Christian and Jewish societies.

The status today is that Europe is about to be lost because of European leaders who lack the ability to identify the character of the threat, or at least are looking the other way, who are fickle, reluctant to say things clearly, and dislike taking the unpleasant steps now that will prevent something even worse later on.

As a consequence of this a society after Middle-Eastern fashion with corruption, nepotism and religious madness is waiting at the door. Along the way the rights of freedom will be suppressed — first because he who risks being suicide bombed would usually rather give in on the ideals than lose his life. Taxation will break down as the conditions in the kiosks and small shops (mostly owned by Muslim immigrants, and known for cheating on taxes — translator) will spread to other branches of commerce. The Police will not be able to enter increasingly larger geographical areas. The social structure will collapse as a result of the Muslims’ family structure, their views on women’s place in society, and a lack of understanding among too many of them about the connection between giving and receiving benefits. The consequence will be worse that the medieval Black Death, since our successors will be a suppressed minority who will not have the ability to rebuild what has been lost.

Humans often have difficulties imagining calamities that haven’t happened yet, and the many influential Seidengfadens and Skov Christensens (multi-cultural Islamic apologists — translator) will, with their fantasy tales, pull the wrong way.

There is however, no more breathing room for being slow on the uptake or fickle. He who neither understands the foundations for the benefits he enjoys nor is willing to act accordingly is bound to lose them. It isn’t written anywhere that the West and our model of society will win.

It is thus damaging to continue to support the establishment of a culture here, whose supporters considered as a group haven’t — and after all human experience never will understand — the preconditions for the peace and prosperity that they enjoy. Such an “integration” is the same as a retreat of the Western order on our own soil. We have both a right — and to our descendants a duty — to protect ourselves from this.

Therefore the awarding of citizenship to persons who cannot be expected to respect our values must stop — and those who have received citizenship anyway must be motivated to strike camp. Likewise, the current influence of Middle-Eastern culture in the daily life of Danes must be opposed and not supported. When Jewish high-school students are being harassed and threatened in school, their parents should not be advised to transfer their children to other schools, but rather the school needs to be cleared of Muslims who can’t behave. And if Muslim ladies can’t bathe together with others in swimming pools, they are to be referred to the Red Sea instead.

It is furthermore important to gain insight into how much influence has been purchased by petrodollars on the press, the bureaucracy and politicians who are pushing in the direction of where we are heading, and how much manipulation of Middle-Eastern origin the public is exposed to. It is known that the oil-sheiks have bought not only American ambassadors, but even a former president. How is the situation in this country? NATO can resist a frontal tank battle, but the Western leaders have been completely unprepared for the scams and tricks behind the Mohammed Affair. Are they better prepared today?

Last but not least, respect for Islam’s wickedness isn’t promoting any Islamic soul searching. Islam as of today contains some serious systemic problems: It interferes aggressively, and without paying attention to the means, in other peoples lives in the same way as totalitarian ideologies. Other world religions had to be re-interpreted before they — in the past — could be used in the same way.

There is thus no basis for a dialogue with Islam, as long as this belief’s practitioners just consider such dialogue as a tool for deception.

Note that Dr. Hasselbalch asserts that a violent and extremist minority in Islam is capable of cowing and eventually destroying the “moderate Muslims”. There’s no way to tell what percentage is necessary — 10%? 15% 20%? — but it will take far less than a majority of Islamists within Islam to marginalize the moderates and make Jihad the norm.

Bolshevik means “member of the majority”, and Lenin’s cadres acquired that cognomen because they represented the majority when the revolutionary Marxist Social-Democrat Party in Russian split along ideological lines at the Party Congress in 1903.

But the Bolsheviks were never more than a tiny minority within Russian society. Even so, their total devotion to ideology, fanatical zeal, and absolute ruthlessness allowed them to take control of Russia, destroy its political culture, and terrorize and massacre their countrymen for seventy-four years.

Seventy-four years of Islam would leave Europe in a far worse condition than the Bolsheviks left Russia. Denmark — and Europe — would be wise to heed Dr. Hasselbalch’s advice.

Two More Egyptian Students Arrested

MSNBC and the Morris County (NJ) Daily Record are reporting that two more of the missing Egyptian exchange students have been arrested in Manville, NJ. According to the Daily Record:

Two of 11 Egyptian exchange students who failed to report for their college program in Montana after entering the United States surrendered to police in New Jersey on Wednesday, the FBI said.

“In response to hearing in the media that they should turn themselves in to the nearest police station, they did just that,” said Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the FBI’s Newark office.

The students are not suspected of any link to terrorism, he said. They turned themselves in at the Manville police headquarters.

And then, from MSNBC, the government-mandated mantra:

The missing students pose no terrorism threat, Kolko said.

Also:

Minneapolis FBI spokesman Paul McCabe said the FBI remains “extremely interested” in interviewing the other Egyptian students.

I’ll bet it is.


Update: Commenter heroyalwhyness points out that the Northeast Intelligence Network has photos of all eleven students. They seem to be passport photos.


Hat tip: Exile.

Never More Fake. Never More Accurate.

Get Rid of Unsightly Facts!

Missing Egyptian Student Found and Arrested

One of the missing “students” has been arrested in Minneapolis:

Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed El-Dessouki, 21, was arrested “without incident” by FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said.

El-Dessouki is being held on an administrative immigration violation because he did not turn up for his monthlong exchange program at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont., Kolko said.

The other 10 students remain at large. They arrived in New York on July 29 as part of a group of 17 students. Six students reported to Bozeman on time.

And you know what’s coming next, don’t you?

The missing students pose no terrorism threat, Kolko said.

Methinks they do protest too much…


Hat tip: Commenter Allison.

Scandislamia

Yesterday we posted a letter from Patrik Ingelmo, a recent Swedish immigrant to the United States, who gave a first-hand account of the effects of unfettered Muslim immigration on Swedish culture. The day before that we featured translations of Norwegian articles about the expanding “no-go zones” — enclaves of immigrant lawlessness — in Oslo.

Here is a young, intelligent, articulate Swede who has come to America to get away from the stranglehold that multiculturalism has on Sweden. America is the better for it; Sweden is the worse.

Sweden is farther down the road towards Eurabia, but Norway is moving along fast enough in the same direction. The HonestThinking post expressed the fear that parts of Oslo would soon become like the Swedish city Malmö, which is notorious for its violent immigrant strongholds.

I presume that many Norwegians are as anxious to escape from Norway as Swedish emigrants have been to leave Sweden. Record numbers of educated middle-class people are leaving the Netherlands for places like Canada and New Zealand. As the Islamicization of Europe heats up, look for this process to accelerate.

It’s too bad that American immigration policy makes it so difficult for these folks to get into the United States; we would welcome them. You’d think that Swedish engineers, Norwegian biologists, and Dutch entrepreneurs would offer a net gain to American society.

Instead, for some reason, we prefer illiterate fruit-pickers from Oaxaca who speak no English over Scandinavian college graduates who are already fluent in our language. It’s very strange.

But, in any case, these good people are escaping to the Anglosphere, and more power to them.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
As Scandinavia hemorrhages its native population, scattering its best and brightest to greener pastures abroad, it imports more poor Third World immigrants, mainly Muslims, to take up the slack. Since the most intelligent and enterprising are the ones who are leaving, native Scandinavians left behind are likely to be more timid, complacent, and compliant. These are the raw material upon which the existing multicultural regime depends. They’re the sheep who won’t look up.

With the departure of its vibrant middle class, society becomes a hollowed-out shell. The élite members of the nomenklatura remain to run the existing system, jury-rigging an increasingly creaky welfare state and living off its perks. At the other end of the scale are the poor — the Muslim immigrants in their ever-enlarging no-go zones, and the remnants of the native working class, declining demographically and living in fear of the newcomers.

It is a disheartening spectacle to watch, this self-immolation of the once-great civilizations of the North. Denmark offers an alternative, but its neighbors will have to start imitating it soon if the process is to be reversed.

The downward slide towards Scandislamia can only accelerate if nothing is done to interrupt this vicious circle. The system steadily becomes more brittle; one day it will snap.

At that point all the Commissions Against Racism and the Inclusiveness Workshops will be of no avail. The Islamists have no interest in such nonsense. They will brush Multiculturalism aside like an annoying fly.

How “multi” will the culture of Scandislamia be?

We Have the Names of those Egyptian “Students” but No Photos

Here's the latest intelligence (using the term loosely) on those missing boys from Egypt:

An FBI advisory says there are, at present, no known connections to any terrorist group but that the students are to be “approached with caution” and taken into custody. They “are here illegally and wanted for questioning,” the advisory says.

The advisory comes just over a month before the five-year anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

“This is of very serious concern and is being closely tracked,” said Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the Keystone Kops House Homeland Security Committee.

The FBI says the Egyptians arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on July 29 and disappeared. The advisory says the alert is nationwide but that there is specific concern the Egyptians may be on the Eastern Seaboard.

According to the advisory the 11 missing Egyptians are:

1.		Ibrahim, El Sayed Ahmed Elsayed		DOB OF 4/29/1986.
2.		El Dessouki, Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed		DOB OF 02/21/1985.
3.		El Bahnasawi, Alaa Abd El Fattah Ali		DOB OF 04/02/1986.
4.		Abd Alla, Mohamed Ragab Mohamed		DOB OF 02/15/1984.
5.		El Laket, Ahmed Refaat Saad El Moghazi		DOB OF 09/01/1986.
6.		El Ela, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abou		DOB OF 02/02/1985.
7.		El Moghazy, Mohamed Ibrahim Elsayed		DOB OF 08/08/1986.
8.		Abdou, Ebrahim Mabrouk Moustafa		DOB OF 02/25/1984.
9.		El Gafary, Moustafa Wagdy Moustafa		DOB OF 07/01/1988.
10.		Maray, Mohamed Saleh Ahmed		DOB OF 09/12/1985.
11.		El Shenawy, Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad		DOB OF 08/12/1988.

FBI advisory

So. If you see eleven suspicious looking Egyptians, by all means take them into custody, because you can be sure that the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is “tracking this closely.” Using a bloodhound, no doubt.

Now, don’t you feel better already?

Personally, I want the shills — the guys who showed up and stayed around — grilled thoroughly, remanded into custody until their plane taxis up to their own personal paddy wagon, and then have them put aboard and sent back home. Pronto.

Proof of guilt or innocence is irrelevant at this point. Security trumps alien “rights.” They can get their rights and liberties at home. Which is where they belong.

This is farce with a deadly edge.

Have You Ever Seen a Dead Man Sweat?

Gateway Pundit has a wonderfully revealing post on the fauxtography coming out of Lebanon. The dying scene, which occurs in two of his photos, is worthy of Shakespeare.


A set-up scene is worth a thousand earnest essays on poor Lebanon. In fact, this here particular picture is priceless, especially if you go over to Gateway Pundit and look at the whole series. For a dead guy, he sure is a busy little bee.

Note the hat squashed between his arm and body. He obviously had to stick it there quickly for the post-mortem pose, but you’ll see him wearing it in other photos as he scrambles here and there.

Cause of death? A terminal case of taqiyya.


Hat tip: Tom Pechinski.

Update on the Missing Egyptian Exchange Students

The latest from Montana State University’s website:

“At this point, we have no information about what has happened to these students and cannot speculate. We are doing everything we can to work with the federal authorities,” said MSU spokeswoman Cathy Conover.

The 11 students from Mansoura University in Cairo are part of a group of 17 students who were expected to travel to Montana from a connection at JFK airport on July 29. Only one student arrived in Montana July 29, another student arrived July 30, and four students arrived July 31.

Norm Peterson, MSU’s vice provost for international education, said it’s not uncommon for foreign students to arrive in Bozeman later than expected, owing to the sometimes lengthy process of getting through Immigration Services. However, this is the first time foreign students have failed to arrive within a few days of their scheduled date of arrival.

MSU reported the 11 remaining students as “no shows” Aug. 3 to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. Known as SEVIS, the system is the official database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.

The FBI issued a nationwide alert for the students Aug. 5, according to MSU police chief Robert Putzke.

The 17 students, all male, are between the ages of 18 and 22.

My emphasis.

Young males. Islamic. Arabic-speaking.

Ring any bells?

Oh, wait a minute… That’s racial profiling. Sorry; I take it back.

Those Sneaky Zionists

In The Weekly Standard Lee Smith has a different take than the MSM on morale in Israel:

...Given the war in Lebanon and the rhetoric of Hezbollah’s Iranian patron, it is an appealing journalistic conceit to suggest that thoughts of yet another Jewish disaster can’t be too far from the minds of most Israelis right now, but that is not really how it is here.

The night before last I was at a small bar when one of the departing patrons wished the bartender, a barrel-chested guy in his mid-20s, a good night and added, “Hey man, I hope you get called up.” “Thanks,” said the bartender cheerfully, “I appreciate it.” Did he mean that he hopes you get called for reserve duty, I asked. “Yes,” the bartender explained. “Everyone really wants to do their part in what’s going on right now.”

It has been curious these last three weeks to follow the ongoing press narratives: On one hand, there is the “Israel” constructed by the media, a country divided, fearful and unsure of itself and its capacity to fight; and then there is the press version of “Lebanon,” where “disproportionate” Israeli bombing has driven all the Lebanese into the warm embrace of the Islamic resistance.

[…]

The young [Lebanese Forces] people idolize their za’im, Samir Geagea, even though, among other bloody acts, Geagea is believed responsible for the 1978 assassination of Tony Franjieh, his wife, and daughter. In contrast, My bartender, who served in Gaza last year where the Palestinian factions repeatedly used human shields, did everything possible to avoid hurting civilians, especially children. “You want to protect yourself,” he says, “but you can’t fire if you see a kid. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I hit a kid.”

Clearly Hezbollah, like the Palestinian groups, uses human shields. We do not know precisely what happened at Qana and may never know for sure, but it is likely that we have reached a stage where the IDF believes itself damned regardless of how it regards civilian life, which makes things worse for Lebanese civilians, easier for Israeli troops, and will likely have no effect at all on the international media campaign that Israel has already lost.

And yet Israel seems to be gaining in another of the war’s psychological battles. There’s been some mention lately of Israel’s psy-ops campaign against Hezbollah: hacking into the telephone system and interrupting Al-Manar broadcasts with messages warning of Nasrallah’s impending death. But the most significant Israeli victory to date has largely been overlooked. Hassan Nasrallah, the man whom large sections of the Western press claim without any evidence is more popular now than ever, has been sent underground and will not ever publicly ascend to the real world again in safety. Nasrallah will never again be able to lead a rally of thousands without knowingly endangering the lives of everyone shouting along with him. It is sadly indicative of the state of regional politics that the most charismatic Arab leader since Nasser has been, as Martin Kramer puts it, bin Ladenized… [italics added]

In the noise and smoke emanating from the doctored photos of Lebanon, we are losing sight of the real war and its very real aims. Israel is not losing. Israel is a desert fox. It has not lasted this long by being predictable or soft, and in the end, I believe it will prevail.

Want to see how it turns out? Read this prediction by M. Simon. Here’s a snip:

Any encirclment north of the Litani will be a feint. The real action will be the move towards the Bekaa. When the right flank of the encirclement movement makes its left turn a blocking force will be sent up on the road to the Bekaa. The blocking force will really be the hammer. Light forces will be inserted North of Ballbeck to act as the anvil. They need only have anti-tank and light artillery. The heavy artillery will be air cover. Think Market Garden (WW2 Holland — a Bridge Too Far) without the failure. The light forces will be on the defensive. The strongest tactical position. Thus the force need not be over a regiment or two in size.

Syria will be forced to attack (see Syria Has a Problem) they will mostly be defeated on the road. This will draw Iran in.

At the end of all this the Palestinians will be told by their Arab brothers to take what they can get and shut up. The new rule in the Middle East will be business not war.

Game, set, match.

From Simon’s pen to God’s eyes. Yes, indeedy, it does sound like a plan.

Those sneaky Zionists…