Monopoly: 21st Century Edition

Are You A Member Of The Taliban?

In response to Osama bin Laden’s latest message to the civilized world, we are offering a top 10 list of ways to identify the Taliban and their supporters.

10. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.

9. You own an $800 machine gun and a $5,000 rocket launcher, but you cannot afford new shoes for your children.

8. Some of you have more wives than teeth.

7. You think vests come in two styles- bullet proof and suicide.

6. You can’t think of anyone you haven’t declared jihad against.

5. You consider television dangerous yet you routinely carry ammunition and explosives under your robe.

4. You’ve never been asked, “Does this burqa make my ass look fat?”

3. You were amazed to learn that cell phones are used for reasons other than detonating explosive devices.

2. For you, proper etiquette demands that you always compliment your host/hostess by saying, “I love what you’ve done with this cave!“

Finally, the number one reason you might be identified as a member of the Taliban:

1. You wipe your ass with your hand but consider bacon ‘unclean.’

Today’s Assembly Of Idiots

The ever predicable and intellectually challenged editors at Egypt’s Al Ahram newspaper have published two pieces that are noteworthy for their heightened stupidity.

In Stop Israel! author Galal Nasser is outraged at the Israeli response to Palestinian rockets. He is not satisfied with the current Palestinian and Arab world institutionalized racism and bigotry. He believes that the Israeli response to rocket attacks and other terror justify a new and concerted Arab world genocide initiative.

Talking is not going to get us anywhere. We need to draw up a strategy for stopping Israel in its tracks. We need to reconsider our position on both war and peace. For over 40 years, some Arab leaders have sought an alternative to armed resistance. Following 1967, we sought a political solution. Then, after the 1973 War, we pursued relentlessly what some dubbed the “peace offensive”. The fact, however, is that the Arabs only tend to unite in times of battle. In contrast, peace attempts seem to have divided us…

Before the “peace offensive” started, Israel knew that we could fight back and therefore generally acted with some restraint. We fought Israel in 1956. We did it again in the Karama battle in Jordan in 1968. We did it yet again in the attrition war of 1967-1970. And we pushed the Israelis back in 1973. We won some and we lost some, which is what war is all about. But we drew a line in the sand and we did what we had to do.

It was only after the “peace offensive” started that Israel began to act without fear of the consequences. It bombed a nuclear reactor near Baghdad, shelled the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Tunis, and assassinated Khalil Al-Wazir. Then, in 1982, it occupied an Arab capital. From then on, Israel never looked back. It didn’t have to. It signed agreements with the Arabs — in Wadi Araba and Oslo — and used these very agreements as a licence to kill.

In Galal’s world, bombing a nuclear reactor led by the Butcher of Baghdad was a bad thing. In Galal’s strange world, Israel had no right to defend herself from Yasser Arafat’s PLO, then headquartered in Beirut. Galal forgets that was the same PLO that robbed that nation blind oversaw the wholesale persecution of Christians and in fact, killed more Lebanese than the Israelis.

Perhaps Galal forgives those excesses because Arafat also oversaw the blowing up of school buses with kindergarten students on board, or the hostage taking and murder of students at an Israeli school.

For decades, the conditions for peace have been clear and have been supported by America, Europe and the rest of the civilized world.  Those conditions are clear:

1. Diplomatic recognition
2. Cessation of violence
3. Secure and defensible borders.

Which of those things are too onerous a burden for the Arab world to bear? Which of those ideas are so intolerable to Arab world sensibilities? If those benchmarks were met, the gates of western wealth would be open to the Palestinians. Instead, the Arab world chooses violence.

Why on earth would they choose conflict over peace? Do tell, Mr Galal.

In a second piece, Bullseye Brings A Breather, Khaled Amayreh takes great delight in the attack on the religious seminary in Jerusalem that resulted in the deaths of rabbinical students.

Similarly, the attack on Merkaz Harav, which is viewed as the central nervous system of the Jewish settlement movement, shocked the Israeli government, especially the upper echelons of the political-military establishment. After all, Merkaz Harav represents the soul of Zionism, the symbol of Greater Israel and religious messianic Jewish nationalism.

The attack, carried out by a young Palestinian from East Jerusalem whose political affiliation remains a mystery, showed that Israel can’t declare open season on the Palestinians in Gaza and remain immune to deadly retaliation. It also showed that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can’t be decided by military means alone.

So it’s now acceptable to deliberately target religious institutions? Clearly, there are more than a few such institutions in Gaza and the West Bank that make no secret of their anti Israel or anti Jewish sentiments. There are many, many documented video and audio tapes with some of the most ugly, racist, bigoted and hate filled rhetoric found anywhere.

If Khaled Amayreh wants to play, he had better prepare to play.

The Israelis have been silent on their response to the attack on a religious institution- not because they have been stunned into a funk, but rather, because they are carefully determining their response. The Palestinians know that full well and they know they will be made to pay- and that is why Ismail Haniyeh remains hidden away.

Congratulations to Al Ahram for proving once more their irrelevance and for highlighting intellectual impotence.

Well done!

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