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YNET News reports that Oprah Winfrey (which probably should be spelled Wingfry) will be waddling into town. 

Oprah has a history of running Israel-bashing pro-Palestinian articles in a magazine she publishes: "O" Magazine.  She also has made insensitive and ignorant comments about the Holocaust.

Whenever the subject of terrorism is broached on her show, Oprah studiously avoids allowing anyone to link it to Palestinians or the Hizbollah. She interviewed mothers of suicide bombers who were distraught because their houses were bulldozed. There was no mention of Israeli babies and their mothers being blown up in buses, pizza parlours blown to smithereens, nor Jewish teens murdered while at the disco in Tel Aviv. Not even the Jews murdered when two guests of the International Solidarity Movement blew up Mike's Place in Tel Aviv. Debbie Schlussel has dubbed her the affable Joseph Goebbels of daytime talk TV. Columnist Naomi Ragen demolished Oprah for her politicized bias. The Anti-Defamation League has denounced her for bias, noting that 'Palestinian girls will be rescued when their leaders say "No" to the incitement, hate and violence that has permeated their political and cultural landscape for years now.'

O!!!

Maybe she can analyze the problems of self-esteem among suicide bombers and other terrorists.  Israel may need Doctor Phil to treat us after Oprah leaves town, to return to her bored overeating overspending housewives with the closet reorganization crises.
 

Let Them Unite

According to our own Gil Ronen, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told Israel Radio that responding to Palestinian Authority artillery attacks on Sderot and other Negev towns by cutting off fuel, water, electricity and communications in Gaza, "would cause the entire Palestinian population to unite around Hamas."

I have four brief comments on this latest insane statement by our venerated and mustachioed leader:

1) Maybe I missed something, but wasn't Hamas freely elected in a landslide election by the PA Arabs? Haven't all polls shown that the PA Arabs deeply desire continued murderous attacks against Israeli Jews? The PA Arabs are already united around Hamas....

2) ...except for those united around PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, which is, of course, much better. After all, Fatah members murder Jews while releasing communiques from the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades; whereas, Hamas members murder Jews while releasing communiques from the Izz A-Din Al-Kassam Brigades.

3) How long exactly would the PA Arabs be "united" around Hamas without water, electricity, fuel and communications? And what good does that "uniting" do for Hamas if the organization is crippled - without electricity for their rocket manufacturing, without fuel for their rocket-bearing vehicles, without water for their thirsty militiamen, and without phone
The PA can't continue to fire rockets at Israeli schoolchildren using their "unity."
service to order their minions around? Not to mention the justice of cutting off their continuing broadcasts of the Mickey Mouse Mullah.... In other words, the PA can't continue to fire rockets at Israeli schoolchildren using their "unity" - they need electricity, water, fuel and communications.

4) And why does Peretz think that Arab psychology works differently than in Israeli society? Has the ongoing siege of Sderot caused 'the entire Israeli population to unite around Olmert and Peretz,' or has the effect been exactly the opposite? Aderabeh, the Arabs unite around that force that proves (or boasts of being) effective in reaching their murderous goals. Deny them that victory.

I'd also like to point out what Peretz did not say in response to the suggestion that cutting off the Palestinian Authority's fuel and electricity would end the Kassam rocket barrages.

He never argued that it wouldn't work.

May 20-21 UPDATE:
In northern Lebanon, a faction operating in a "Palestinian refugee camp" clashed and attacked the Lebanese military. Guess what the Lebanese government and army did?

"The camp’s electricity, phone lines and water were cut off," reports the Beirut-based Daily Star. The army also started shelling the Nahar Al-Bard camp fairly indiscriminately, as far as I can tell.

What's the matter with those Lebanese? Don't they know that all that will "cause the entire Palestinian population to unite around [Fatah Al-Islam]"?

Maybe they do, but they don't care. The Lebanese people are out in the streets cheering.

Raise University Tuition!

Israeli university students pay only $2500 per year tuition. Not per course, but per year.

 


The pampered university students in Israel continue to strike because they do not want to pay tuition. Paying any tuition at all would mean, according to the student spokesmen, that "college education is only for the rich." Paying for any other good or service though does not make it "only for the rich."

Israeli university students pay only $2500 per year tuition. Not per course, but per year. A three year BA degree costs less than the cars owned by the students, cars in such great numbers that they choke the entrances into campuses.

Providing a year of college costs the system between 15 and 20 thousand dollars to provide. The students pay only 2.5 thousand. The students whine that tuition in Israel should be based only on what students pay in certain EU countries, where tuition is free. Since when is the price of something in Europe the proper basis for setting its price in Israel? It certainly is NOT when it comes to professors' salaries! But why shouldn't Israeli professors work for free so that students need not pay tuition?  What happened to the "C" word - costs?

The REAL issue is who should pick up the cost of those expenditures of at least 12.5 thousand dollars per year that college students are not paying now in tuition? The government wants the students to pony up an additional 1.5 thousand dollars per year as their share. The students want the low-income taxpayers, the welfare mothers, the impoverished old people, the Ethiopian immigrants, the workers in factory jobs and living in development towns, and similar people to cover the costs for them instead, as a sort of gratuity to the students. The students, who will almost all be joining the middle and upper classes upon graduation, want Israeli taxpayers, three quarters of whom never attend college and so make far less income than college graduates, to cover the costs of producing their nice degrees.

A far better proposal would be to make all college students pay for at least 60% of the actual costs of providing them with an education and degree. Speaking of comparisons with overseas countries, for those students short on funds, other than suggesting to them that they sell their nice cars, let's tell them that they can borrow the money in student loans and pay it back after graduation!  Like students do in lots of other countries!