"Apartheid" They Claim

As this site reports, a soldier was shot and severely wounded today near Ariel.

He was "tremping", that Israeli slang term for hitchhiking.

For the past few years, the far-out Left, the Jewish peace camp extremists, Haaretz and others have been trying to get the term "apartheid" into general lexicon usage.

But I ask you, besides all the other silly and ridiculous apsects of this false comparison, if the system Israel practices in YESHA is one of apartheid, how come Arab vehicles can drive along roads that enable them to shoot at Israelis?

Either there's "apartheid" or there isn't, right?

One Conspiracy Gone

Last night here in Israel, all the TV channels showed portions of the police video recording of Yigal Amir, the killer of Yitzhak Rabin, during his first interrogation.

Many conspiracy theories exist about that assassination.  One of them, a staple of the Left-wing, is that the cause of the murder, what sent Amir to pull the trigger, was a "campaign of incitement", foremost, that of "the Rabbis".

It doesn't perturb these kooks that the most active inciter, the person who appeared the most in the media, was, of all people, a GSS agent - Avishai Raviv.

But as I watched the video clip, I heard the police investigator ask: "When did the idea to kill the Prime Minister first enter your head?"

The answer was "Since the Oslo One agreement".

Dear readers, Oslo One was signed on September 13, 1993.

Even if we grant Amir a bit of lattitude and extend the time line of Oslo A for even a half year more into 1994, the so-called "campaign of incitement" didn't start until the second half of 1994 and the beginning of 1995.  The chanting of the kids, the Zion Square rally, the Succot pushing-affair, the Pulsa D'Nura ceremony and the faked swearing-in ceremony, all these are 1995.

So, what "incitment campaign" are we talking about that had a direct affect on Amir?

So, Partition Isn't the Solution?

The United States has a problem.

One of its allies has been attacked over the years by an underground which has employed not only traditional national liberation tactics but also terror against civilians.  This undergound is based just across the ally's border.  This underground movement has centuries-long claims on portions of the ally's territory.

However, the solution of partition is not on the agenda. The ally is not being asked to give up territory.

If you were thinking that perhaps this ally I have been describing is Israel - you're wrong.

I'm talking about Turkey and its Kurdish problem which of late has been an increasingly pressing issue.

Israel must be forced into the "territories for peace" paradigm.  But not Turkey.  Turkey is not being forced, gently or otherwise, to yield up portions of what it considers its territory to placate the pesh merga of the PKK, or the resistance fighters, operating out of the Qandil mountains on the border between Turkey and Iraq.  Indeed, the shoe is perhaps on the other foot in that Iraq is beginning to pressured to grant further autonomy to the already mostly autonomous Kurdish region which has been so since 1991.

The so-called Palestine Authority has been semi-autonomous since 1993 and it also has been promoting terror attacks against of American ally - Israel.  But Israel, unlike Turkey, is caught in the vise of "yield-surrender-withdraw".  Specious historical, legal and religious claims of the Arabs are taken at face value but the Kurds are portrayed in the most negative light.

I myself have to real knowledge as regards the justice of the Kurdish cause (although Israel was a special supporter of the Kurds in the early 1960s on onwards).  But, nevertheless, I think a lesson can be learned.  Turkey is an ally not because it is the most democratic country in the Middle East nor the richest.  But it is strategic.  America needs its bases and especially its airfields.  And it does not want Turkey to stage border-crossing raids into Iraq to root out the PKK.

And still, partition is not a threat to Turkey unlike how it hangs like a sword over Israel's vulnerable neck.

There's a lesson here.  But who will learn?

How Many "States"?

Over at my more veteran blog, I had posted a while back my thoughts on the fact that with the Hamas take-over of Gaza a fait accompli, Israel is now facing a three-state solution, not the traditional (and still dangerous and inimical) two-state solution.  Hamas in Gaza, Fatah in Judea & Samaria and Israel somewhere in-between.  Not very good, not very smart, not very Jewish or Zionist.

Lo and behold, I saw a reference to this situation in an interview Secretary of State Condi Rice gave to Israel's Channel One TV.  Ayala Hason had asked Ms. Rice is maybe what there is to talk about is "a three-state solution" and she replied:

"Oh, it will have to be a two-state solution."

And she intimated that if Hamas doesn't like it, it will be outside the consensus.  It will be rejectionist (but will it be rejected, too?).

Hason then asked if Hamas does not come in, well, there still is the possibility of two distinct territorial units, Gaza and Judea & Samaria (okay, she used the term "West Bank").

And Rice responded: "No, no, no...there ultimately has to be unity for the Palestinians".

Well, Ms. Rice, the Pals. have never really been united.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, there were the 'northerners' (Qaysis) and the 'southerners' (Yamanis) and in the 20th century, the Husseinis and the Nashashibis and today, Hamas and Fatah and a few other sectarian, social and ethnic divisions.

They only unite on their animosity to Jews, the hatred of Zionism and their desire to kill, maim and injure.

Sink S.I.N.K.

There's another article in the august New York Times today on what Israel did to a nuclear reactor-in-the-making in Syria.  This, following an earlier piece that set out to "set the cat among the pigeons" by quoting unnamed sources in Bush's administration that Condi Rice didn't like what Israel did because she wasn't convinced that the intelligence Israel showed America justified the strike.

Let me "cut to the swift": the civilized world, led by Israel, needs to "Sink S.I.N.K", with S.I.N.K meaning the Syria-Iran-North Korea Axis.