The Upside of Unemployment

I'm "laid off." Actually, my entire office of approximately 30 attorneys was laid off. I am not alone.

We all worked for a U.S.-based outsourcing firm, and outsourcing is very dependent on the client's desires. Our client desired to dispense with our services after two and a half years. It was a good, and financially rewarding, period.

I learned a lot. I learned I could manage a team of attorneys, and I gather from their feedback I did all right in their book and in upper management's book as well. I learned to balance work and family, which at first had seemed almost impossible. I learned that if you sit all day in front of a computer and never get to the gym, you get fat. (My personal "duh!" moment.)

It gave us a stepping stone into the Israeli job market, and now the time has come to move on.

The upside of unemployment is that I have more time. Not more time simply to blog, which I came back to with alacrity, but simply MORE time. I've taken the dogs on long walks with my husband; I've looked into retraining and found a program I like; I've applied to Misrad HaKlitah for a scholarship for that program; I've re-upped into my old ulpan. I have time to work on editing my husband's novel, and finally have time to answer some email letters that are long overdue.

It's all good, but the shock of the project closure took a few days to wear off.

First, there is a sense of relief -- I do NOT have to meet my production quota today!!! I could feel my blood pressure and stress level drop.

Then there is panic-busy -- email everyone and ask "Now what?!" Lots of signing up for LinkdIn and NBN and other job-networking sites.

This is followed by rumor-mongering -- why this happened, what will happen, what will become of us, how does one apply for unemployment, when is pitzuim (severance) paid, and all the horror stories that everyone has heard from "someone" who heard the horror story from someone else.

Then there is the constructive period -- one gets a firm grip on the panic and rumor, sets them aside, and maps out a Plan and starts to execute it.

I think this is what all those Life Coaches and therapists and empowerment types call "taking charge of your life."

Not that I'm really "taking charge" of my life--my life, like everyone's, is in G-d's hands, and I just do the best I can to stay organized while living it. Hopefully, He approves.

Take A Pen For Freedom and Free Speech

I don't know Mohammed Radwan. I DO know Mohamed, The Traveler Within, and read him regularly.

I also know that whatever fears Israelis harbor over the unrest amongst our neighbors, a free press is vital to strengthening democratic institutions and watch-dogging any government.

So, my only hesitation in spreading the word of Mohammed Radwan's incarceration by the the Chinless One's despotic thugs is fear that a plug for his freedom by an Israeli blogger may be counter-productive.

Mr. Radwan, who traveled to Syria to cover the uprisings against that tyranny, was arrested for being an Israeli spy.

If it weren't so serious, I'd laugh. I doubt he speaks a word of Hebrew. He's an Egyptian, ferhevvinsake, a people who range from coolly hostile to Israel to downright warmongering, depending on where they sit on the political spectrum.

Of course, the Syrian regime has castigated its own citizens and social networkers for all being Israeli spies, and claims that all the tweets favoring the downfall of this benighted dictatorship originated in Israel.

I doubt any Israeli objection made to Syria would even be heard -- but on the other hand, we are in a unique position to protest his incarceration to the United States Congress and the British Parliament.

So--start your engines, Google your representatives, and WRITE!!!

This will lead you to your representative: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml, as will this: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.

Register your anger at the baseless incarceration of a journalist who was in Syria to cover the news. Do it quickly--as Mohamed pointed out, he is probably being tortured in the course of his questioning, so please raise some Hell on behalf of a man whose life is a testament to freedom of expression.

Obama Makes A Speech

Even Associated Press took the President of the United States to task for his platitudinous rhetoric.

Most laughable moment was, "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."

Reeeaaallly? [insert sarcasm here]. This is the man who ran on an anti-war platform and now takes the US to war in Libya (of all places) without Congressional advice or consent.

Mass violence against civilians has been epidemic in the world without recent U.S. intervention.

So why Libya?

Obama and his supporter's castigated Bush for his foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Clinton was criticized heavily for committing the U.S. to action in Yugoslavia, mass graves and genocide notwithstanding. [I personally agree with our intervention in Serbia's killing fields, but the point is that many of Clinton's own supporters are against any military action overseas.] Bush Senior was castigated for intervention in Somalia, which had U.N. approval, and involved a multi-nation task force bent on providing humanitarian aid (contrary to Democrats shrill accusations that it was just for "oil" which if it exists at all in Somalia, is totally undeveloped).

So why Libya? And why not take it to Congress for approval, as the Constitution requires?

Obama redux: "I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.""

So what are you doing about Syria, where the government is slaughtering civilians in the streets?

And where was your voice when the Bajlis militia gunned down protesters in Iran? Why did you not share the outrage of millions over the death of Neda, a woman deliberately targeted and shot to death while standing on the street and simply watching a demonstration demanding a recount of a fraudulent election.

And how do you excuse your silence over Darfur, where human rights organizations have amply documented the slaughters, rapes, kidnappings, maimings of Black Sudanese by their Arab overlord's well-armed gangs?

Do you have anything to say about intervening in North Korea, a repressive regime which starves its citizens and kills dissenters?

Or Myanmar (Burma), which is equally repressive?

Or how about the current and on-going attack-helicopter sorties against Kurdish villages in Turkey and across the border into Iraq by the Turkish military. Civilians are butchered by your NATO ally to oppress an indigenous people who aren't seeking independence or civil war, but who are asking for autonomy: the right for their children to learn the Kurdish language, keep Kurdish festivals, keep Kurdish names and not have to be "Turkicized" in order to be considered citizens of the country they live in. [A right, oddly enough, given Turkey's opprobrium towards Israel, granted to Arab Israelis, who are permitted to run their schools in Arabic.]

And what about the Ivory Coast, where the will of the electorate in the first free election in decades has been thwarted by the dictator who will not leave, Laurent Gbagbo. U.N. observers have reportedly documented his forces using heavy weapons against his own civilian population. Press reports claim there are confirmed reports of more than 460 killings of supporters of the legitimately elected leader, Alassane Ouattara.

Why is Ggabo more legitimate than Gadaffi? Why is Kim Il Jung more legitmate than Gaddafi? Or Erdogan, Turkey's Kurd-killing leader?

Tell the world what distinguishes this military intervention from all other places crying out for protection from brutal, murderous leaders who fire on their own populations, such as Iran. Why is Libya a legitimate target, and Iran, which is trying to build nuclear weapons with which to terrorize and control the Middle East, is not?

Tell me it isn't just oil. No one can be that stupid.

Main Stream Media Self-Censorship In Gaza

If Jews broke up a political demonstration, beat the reporters and stringers for major news agencies, stabbed them, tortured them, beat them, confiscated their equipment and notes, then took the injured to a hospital and falsified the victims' injuries as "traffic-accident related," the world media would go crazy and descend on Israel in angry droves.

Op-eds would scream from every media outlet about Israeli brutality, lack of freedom of expression, the sanctity of the Fourth Estate. BBC would run special segments interviewing the victims, especially since most of them are women, and talk about Israeli misogyny and the trauma suffered by these hard working, earnest seekers of truth.

However, this didn't happen in Israel. It happened in Gaza, also known as Hamastan to those who understand that its political and military muscle comes from Iran, which uses Gaza as a forward military base.

Khaled Abu Toameh, a fluent Arabic speaker and correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, picked up the following story which has been totally ignored by the western mainstream media whores.

Pro-unity rallies took place in different parts of the Gaza strip where tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered to protest the on-going split between Fatah and Hamas. The rallies were organized by various youth groups and political factions, and called upon the divided leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to put aside their differences and form a united government for the sake of Palestinian national aspirations.

Inspired by the aocial-media-assisted revolts in other countries, Palestinians demanded an end to the dispute between the two governmental entities of the West Bank and Gaza.

These demonstrations were covered by reporters, including some from Reuters and CNN. Following the rallies, women reporters revealed that they were beaten and tortured by Hamas security forces in the Gaza strip while they tried to cover the pro-unity rallies.

Some were beaten; one was stabbed by a Hamas security official; many had laptops and computers confiscated; some were forced to sign statements that they would not cover such events in the future. The female reporter who was stabbed was accompanied to the hospital by Hamas police officers who forced the medical team to admit her under a different name and to list her as a victim of a traffic accident.

Other female journalists were beaten with clubs, hit over the head with a chair, and one was knocked unconscious by the severity of the blows. Hamas forces also set fire to the tent being used by the journalists while covering the demonstrations.

Major news outlets CNN and Reuters were raided by Hamas security personnel who confiscated equipment and documents.

So.....what did CNN have to say about this outrage? What depth of coverage did Reuters devote to these incidents?

None. Both agencies are conspicuous by their cowardly silence.

I went to both websites today, which is certainly enough time to upload coverage of events which happened last week.

I searched by using the terms "Hamas" and "CNN" and "Reuters" -- and found nothing. I searched again under "demonstrations" and "journalists." Nothing about these vicious attacks at all.

When the forces of repression, aggression, misogyny, and hate get a free pass from a cowardly, quaking press corps, which has expediently surrendered journalistic ethics in order to buy Hamas protection, and which peddles Hamas propaganda as "fact," we have entered a new age of evil, aided and abetted by the very "free" press that is supposed to be a watchdog of civil liberties.

Targeting Our Children

I mentioned last week on Facebook and in emails to friends that the timing of this bus-stop bomb was not serendipitous: children are on their way home from school, as are working mothers with young children, around the time our blood-thirsty cousins detonated their shrapnel-filled mass murder device. Maximum death and carnage was the plan, and killing young mothers and children was even better.

The names and ages of some of the victims most in need of tehillim, courtesy of Jameel at the Muqata:

Who are the wounded from the Jerusalem Bomb Attack this past Wednesday?

Odelia Nechama bat Michal who is in 9th grade, and was severely injured in her head, on her way home from Ulpana. She suffered serious head injuries and is in intensive care. Her life is still in danger.

Leah Bracha bat Shoshana Batya, a 19-year old seminary student from the US. She suffered burns to her legs and arms as well as serious shock.

David ben Sara (David Amoyal), owner of the snack stand next to the bus stop. He told everyone to run away and then called the police, and was ont he p hone with them when the bomb exploded. He suffered injuries to his legs and feet and lower body. He is in moderate condition.

Ad Shapira, an 18-year old just about to complete high school. She suffered light orthopedic injuries and is in good condition in hospital.

Shaindel bat Raizel, another seminary (post high school) girl learning in Israel this year was operated on last night from the Jerusalem bombing yesterday.

Shilo ben Zehava Ofra, a 15-year old, who suffered burns and fractures to his legs and lower abdomen. He is sedated in intensive care.

Daniel Yehuda ben Rachel Nurit, a 13-year old, who suffered lacerations and shrapnel injuries to his lower extremities, and is likely to be released from the hospital before Shabbat.

Elchanan Ovadia ben Alona, a 14-year old, who suffered serious injuries to his feet. One ankle and three of his toes were crushed. He has had one operation and will require more surgery. He will likely be in the hospital at least 2-3 weeks.

Netanel ben Shlomit, an 18-year old who works as a security guard at the bus station. He was injured in teh abdomen and had surgery. He is now recuperating in the hospital.

Yisrael ben Dina, 8th grader from Netivot.

Natan Daniel ben Shulamit is 17 years old. He is the oldest of five children in his family and was on his way to yeshiva in Migdal HaEmek yesterday when he was seriously injured in the bombing in Jerusalem. He suffered massive internal injuries and has had a number of internal organs removed.

And I'm just waiting for Goldstone or the United Nations Human Rights Commission to declare this a war crime....but I'm not holding my breath. In a world that gives a pass to Palestinian incitement to mass murder of Jews and open warfare against Israel, there are no moral boundaries left.

O Say Can You See.......?

Most Yanks know the rest of the song that goes with this intro--it's the American national anthem, commemorating the sighting of the young American flag flying over Baltimore as the city is pounded by British invasion forces. The poem, later set to music, extolled the besieged for never lowering that flag in surrender.

Israel owes a debt of thanks to one of our Arab citizens for also refusing to lower the Israeli flag when threatened.

The story, found on YNet News, is that last Wednesday, the Iranian embassy in Prague organized an event at a well-known hotel in the Czech capital. Prior to the event, a senior embassy official was shocked to see an Israeli flag flying high at the head of a line of flags situated near the entrance to the hotel.

The diplomat spoke to the hotel manager and demanded that the Israeli flag be taken down, but the manager, an Arab-Israeli from Nazareth, rejected the request.

"The (Israeli) flag will remain at the front of the hotel always," the manager told the Iranian official. "If you don’t like it, you are welcome to hold the event at another hotel."

Ynet News reported that the angry Iranian diplomat had no choice but to accept the hotel's position, and the event was held as scheduled.

Kol ha k'vod, chaver! Shukran from the bottom of this citizen's heart!

[and I'd love to know which hotel you manage so I can stay there!]

The Jerusalem Marathon

Today was the Jerusalem Marathon.

What a mess!

I used to run in my salad days. Love those endorphins!! But because of that youthful connection, I have tremendous respect for marathon (and half-marathon, and 10K runners) who braved the hilly streets and vales of Jerusalem, in the teeth of absolutely icy weather this morning.

Jerusalem is hard to explain to people, geographically as well as politically. It is built around the Old City, founded as the Jewish capital by King David 3000 years ago, and inhabited overwhelmingly by Jews during the Ottoman period and up to the time of the Jordanian ethnic cleansing of 1948.

The Old City sits on several plateaus and hills, and traverses ancient wadis. At it's greatest extent in King Herod's time, the Old City walls stretched all the way to the Russian Compound to the northwest and down to the City of David south of the southern walls today.

There is a drop off to the Vale of Kidron to the east, where the land slopes steeply up towards another ridge. The Kidron brook is no more, and the once well-watered vale is now much disputed outside-the-walls housing.

From a geographer's point of view, the city is really a bowl, with higher ridges rising all around it. The southernmost ridges are the hills of Gilo, which tower over southern Jerusalem and used to be the site of Arab artillery forces who used those heights to pummel the Jewish neighborhoods below them. To the north, the rise is not so precipitous, but there is a gradual rise towards French Hill and Mount Scopus, north of the Old City. There is a dizzying drop into the valley between the modern city's edge at Romema and the unspoiled valley below it, which in turn rises to the Ramot neighborhoods north of the city proper. The stepping stones of Ramot lead up to the plain on which Kever Shmuel sits, the site of the prophet's grave which overlooks Jerusalem to the southeast. To the east, the modern city ends at the escarpment which drops down into Ein Kerem, probably the most picturesque place in Jerusalem.

The point of this description is to point out that this is not some flat-out surface over which runners can jog along without breaking a sweat. We have serious hills. Maybe only San Francisco and Vancouver B.C. could out-do us for hilliness.

So, kol hak'vod to all the runners who ran this morning!

And may our mayor, Nir Barkat, who I truly admire, have the common sense NOT to close every major road in Jerusalem on the Erev Shabbat again!

Run this race, yes! But run it on a weekday, or on a holiday, or make the day itself a city holiday, whatever!! But DO NOT close the roads. This is my day, many working folks' day, to shop for groceries. Major shopping during the week is often not practical, especially if you have chuggim for children, work late, or have other pressing time commitments which make shopping something done on the "weekend." Getting to Rami Levi, a grocery store usually 5 minutes from me, was a nightmare.

First, we went the wrong way, thinking that somewhere along Derech Hebron there must be some left turn allowed. Wrong!

We got all the way to Tzomet HaBankim and gave up, turning up Ein Gedi and then U-turning back down to Derech Hebron, only to move like molasses to the Gilo turn off in the hopes that we could enter Talpiot from Gilo.

Probably we could have--but we took a short cut. We turned down into Tantur, an Arab suburb of Beit Safafa, and followed a rural road that ran from Tantur to the center of Beit Safafa, where we wended our way carefully through the narrows of the old city by the mosque and then through Beit Safafa into Talpiot.

[Noto bene: this is why people who blithely recommend 'dividing Jerusalem' along the 1948 lines are idiots. There are no lines on the ground, and these neighborhoods by now all blend together like a melting jig-saw puzzle.]

So, we got to shop for the week and for Shabbat, ran to Canyon Malcha for challah and deserts, picked up some pre-made salads (because we have company for Shabbat and want to put out enough to please them and honor Shabbat), and then crawled home through traffic, "crawled" being the operative word.

Everywhere we drove, at a snail's pace, people rolled down their windows and called out. "Is there a left turn down farther?" [No] "Does the road open up ahead?" [No--what you see is what you get.] "How long have you been driving southbound?" [It took us 30 minutes to get from Tzomet haBankim to Gilo, ok?]. And so on...

But for an unruly rude people who hate standing in line, Jerusalemites for the most part took it in stride, with some complaining, but with a shrug of the shoulders, and "ma la'asot?"

Note to the mayor, with all due respect: How about, "Next Year NOT In Jerusalem?"

A Death in Jerusalem

Mary Jean Gardner died yesterday on an express bus in the heart of Jerusalem.

She was a victim of a terror attack.

I know nothing about her, sadly, other than she was close to my age; a student at Hebrew University, and was taking the 74 bus through Jerusalem to a destination I don't know.

I don't know who she was, what she loved, why she came here, what she thought of Jerusalem, what mark she wished to make on the world, what good she hoped to accomplish before leaving it.

I don't know what her family life is like: did she leave children, a husband, a lover? Who mourns her?

This came from Tel Aviv's Liberal Rag: "A Hebrew University spokesman told Haaretz that the woman was born and raised in Kenya and lived in Togo before she came to Israel, where she lived in Mevasseret Zion. She was a student at the Home for Bible Translators and Scholars and took courses in Biblical Hebrew and historical geography at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lived in the dormitories."

Sadly, the world lost a soul who appeared to be inquisitive, bright, diligent, curious, and committed to what interested her. Who knows what contributions she might have made had she not crossed paths with terrorists.

Her death has changed one thing however.....my household watches the British news channels. Like Egypt and Qatar, the British media tends to pretend Israel isn't on the map, except when condemning us [if you watch BBC, you'll see that even the weather report ignores Israel, giving weather for Amman, Beirut, Cairo, et al but never mentioning Tel Aviv].

Israel has been under bombardment for the last couple of weeks. The bombing of the bus station was just another variation of the drumbeat of hate and warmongering taking place in Palestinian echelons.

Today there were 12 or more rocket and mortar attacks on central and southern Israel from Gaza: Ashdod, Gedera, Yavne, Sderot and the Eshkol region.

Yesterday Grad missiles were launched against Beersheva, southern Israel's largest city, as well as rockets launched at Ashkelon.

This is what the last month has looked like (courtesy of QassamCount):

12 missile attacks on Israeli cities today, the latest at around 4:30 pm.

March 24 3:35pm: Gaza rocket fired at Eshkol Region; Grad missile found in Israeli city of Ashdod;

March 24 2:50pm: Rocket from Gaza fired towards Eshkol Region;

#March 24 12:18pm: Gaza fires a Qassam rocket which explodes in Negev region;

March 24 11:55am: Another Gaza rocket hits Negev region;

March 24 9:50am: Qassam rocket from Gaza hits south of Israeli port city of Ashkelon;

March 24 8:15am: Qassam rocket from Gaza hits Negev region overnight;

March 23 6:06pm: Mortar shell barrage from Gaza hits southern Israel;

March 23 10:45am: Missile from Gaza explodes in Beersheba;

March 23 10:13am: 7 Mortar shells hit Eshkol Region (a rural area of farms and small towns);

March 23 9:59am: Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Beersheba missile attack;

March 23 7:21am: Hamas launches a Grad missile which explodes in Beersheba, one injured;

March 23 3:27am: Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for a rocket attack on the Israeli city of Ashdod;

March 23 1:43am: 2 Grad missiles fired at Israel;

March 22 10:16pm: Qassam rocket from Gaza explodes south of Ashkelon; oops, missed again;

March 22 7:25pm: Mortar shell hits open space near southern kibbutz--but for Hamas's bad aim and our bomb shelters and warning systems, there would be many more dead Israelis.

March 22 6:49pm: Qassam rocket from Gaza explodes in the Israeli city of Ashkelon;

March 22 5:16pm: 4 Rockets fired from Gaza hit the Negev;

March 22 10:01am: Qassam dud found in Negev; nobody's perfect, but don't worry, Hamas haas entire mosques full of more rockets.

March 22 8:09am: Qassam rocket fired from Gaza hits western Negev;

March 21 8:39pm: 2 Qassam rockets fired from Gaza explode in the Israeli city of Ashkelon;

March 20 3:29pm: 2 mortar shells fired towards Israel from northern Gaza;

March 19 12:48pm: Hamas military wing claims responsibility for mortar fire into civilian neighborhoods which injured two, thus turning themselves into Prime Target Number One of the Israeli military;

March 19 5:24pm: 6 mortars fired at Israel from Gaza;

March 19 11:35am: Israel to file UN complaint over Gaza mortar attack which shelled civilian neighborhoods, injuring two. [Anticipated UN response: tsk, tsk!]

March 19 10:11am: 49 mortar shells fired from Gaza at western Negev landing in and among civilian homes; 2 injured;

March 18 2:56pm: 4 mortar shells explode in Negev;

March 12 5:04pm: Qassam hits Negev;

March 10 7:14am: Rocket hits Negev;

March 10 10:34pm: Qassam lands in Eshkol Region;

March 5 12:00pm: 2 Qassam rockets fired into Israel overnight;

Feb 27 7:36pm: Mortar shell fired from Gaza explodes in Palestinian territory [where the dead will be counted as "Israeli war crimes];

Feb 27 7:07am: Qassam rocket hits Eshkol Region near Gaza;

Well, you get the idea. I will spare you the recitation of February and January. Notably, the only word of this on the British news was in a news story about an IDF tank shell fired at rocket launchers which went awry and hit four Gaza civilians. No broader context was ever given by the media except the trite and tired "escalating tensions" as opposed to attribution to "constant rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians" which at least would have had the merit of being accurate.

That changed noticeably today. Following a British citizen's tragic and needless death, suddenly the British media discovered that Hamas is waging war on Israel. Today news anchors showed the range of the missiles, the Israeli cities within range of those missiles, strike sites and even video of civilians running for cover.

And judging from the talkbacks on those sites (ok, I skipped the Guardian, which is simply nauseous, and only publishes talkbacks which agree with their editorial board) the British public has caught on also. In one 9 page sheaf of talkbacks, the voices were about 90% in favor of Israel and condemning the chronic Palestinian addiction to death and war.

G-d bless you, Mary Jean, and may your loved ones be comforted amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Palestinians Pick A War

I've been laid off, due to our legal outsourcing project ending, just in time to come back to action-packed blogging.

Frankly, I'd rather write about the kalniot than our cousins, who have ratcheted up the war whoops and dead-and-maimed count recently.

Today starred a bomb planted at a major bus stop in front of the Jerusalem Convention Center, which exploded as the 74 bus pulled up. Latest news is 25 maimed and injured, and 2 dead, although we're getting conflicting reports. We also had rocket and mortar fire across the Negev region this morning, with a missile or two falling on Beersheva's residential neighborhoods.

This follows last week barrage of over 50 mortar shells aimed at civilian communities in southern Israel.

And what are the Palestinians saying?

Ma'an News: a trash can blew up in Jerusalem near a bus stop. Liars. Not just cowards, but liars.

The heart of Anglo-Saxon civilization and spokespaper for the progressive liberal side of things said: a bus has exploded.........Only in the sick world view of The Guardian do buses just explode by themselves, without attributing this to any human agency, much less their pet Palestinians.

Then there is the former Mideast Correspondent for France24, who when interviewed by today's anchor about this latest murder spree, opined that she felt so sorry for.........Barack Obama!!

Excuse me? I didn't know he lived here, much less commuted on the 74 bus to school or work every day.

I live on the 74 route. The 74 is the cross town express bus if you want to get downtown or if you want to go to the movie center or if you want to just get to the Central Bus Station to catch another bus. Many of my neighbors take this bus to work, especially since parking downtown is pretty much nonexistent. Many of the children in this neighborhood get to school on that same bus.

There is absolutely nothing that any news outlet or anchor can say that will justify the deliberate mass murder of civilians who have done nothing to deserve death other than live as Jews in a Jewish state.

Another writer pointed out that Jews live behind walls and fenced communities, but Arabs have no need to......Jewish stores and businesses all have security guards, but shops in Arab neighborhoods on either side of the Green Line do not....the Israeli bus companies used to (and now may again) have security guards profiling the passengers to intercept would be suicide bombers, but no Arab bus in Jerusalem or elsewhere has ever had such security or needed it.

So those facts alone tells you who the killers among us are.....

Et tu, Libya?

I would love to hear the West explain to me, in cogent terms, why it is "right, legal and necessary" to impose a No-Fly zone over a civil war in someone else's country in the name of humanitarian concerns, but it was "okay" to allow Darfur, Rwanda, Sri Lankan shelling of Tamil civilians cowering in a hospital, and the missile and mortar barrages against Israel?

And the Arab League is backing this, albeit not with the commitment of any forces.....if Saudi Arabia and Egypt aren't using all that wondrous American military hardware for the survival of brother Arab civilians in Benghazi, then maybe the US shouldn't sell them any more. Kind of a dress rehearsal for Iran, no? All those fighter jets but no will to use them.....