Tim Blair

``One of the gunmen complained that the 180-square-meter (1,900 square feet) apartment he had been given - much larger than the typical Israeli apartment - was too small for his wife and him.''

Just for the record, my house is about 900 square feet and my husband and I have raised five kids here without too much discomfort.

The sheer freakin' expletive-deleted ingratitude of these welfare lifers is beyond belief.

Being a refugee ain't what it used to be.

Once these folks have their own state and zoning laws are tabled at town meetings, watch out!

From the last article linked:

"'I hope to be a Martyr...I hope when I get 14 or 15 to explode myself.' His mother is proud of her son: 'God gave him to me to protect and defend our homeland.'"

Ahh, yes, who can forget the sight of young Palestinians guarding the border of their land, ready to stalwartly "defend" it by exploding themselves in the face of oncoming threats...

Wait, what's that you say about them moving into Israeli territory before pulling the trigger?

All sarcasm aside, this quote from the same "mother" (I hesitate to use the term without scare quotes) who wants to send her son into martyrdom is just plain depressing:

"Palestinian women must have more and more children till we liberate our land. This is a holy duty for all Palestinian people."

Un-fucking-believable.

Maybe Israel should just give them all the freaking territory and cut off the gas and water when they inevitably don't pay the bill, if they continue to not pay they can go in with debt collectors and break Arafat's legs, If that fails to get them a peacefull resolution then there will only be one option, eviction, and we all know the generosity the Arabs show to these "refugees".

On another note has anybody thought about trying this with housing commision property, gimme a bigger house or ill blow you up!

Heist that burka woman, we got to be making more splodeydopes for the cause.

The Safire column is chilling. From the article:

Annan wrote Chairman Henry Hyde on June 2 that Volcker "believes the policy of the Organization not to release non-public documents is entirely appropriate."

Add in the bureaucratic foot dragging by the UN (surprise!), and Kofigate is a spot on name for this fiasco.

How do you rescue a culture in which a mother encourages her own child to become a suicide killer?

I confess, I don't see much hope for them.

Rebecca: Ditto, sadly.

How pathetic - these places will look great next to the 70 sq. m. house that i'm trying to build for myself.

Palestinian society appears to be driven by pschopaths. The bullying, the lying, the deception, the denial of responsibility etc.... these are all signs of the disease. For a quick but very good and serious article on pyschos, see http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html/. I don't think I am just bandying about the term as an insult; the evidence just matches up so accurately.

Psychos are occasionally born, but can be made, too, esp if a child is raised wrong. I'd say a Mom who wants to see her child killed is raising him wrong (irony unavoidable), and it seems that this is now a norm there. Can't tell if it's the norm or not; I presume that Palestinians who disagree just keep their mouths shut for obvious reasons. But it appears to be abnormally prevalent.

Their society has clearly crumbled and could not survive on its own. It must be propped up from without. The disease is already out of control and still growing. Not much left to do but let evolution take its course.

Prediction: once they're fenced off, a Palestinian civil war will begin in earnest. Most normal Palestinians will try to emigrate to other lands, quick. The remainder - whatever proportion of the population that turns out to be - will kill each other off as assiduously as they now try to kill Jews. UN "aid" will disappear as soon as the first shots are fired in their direction.

The difference will be that, unlike the Israelis who are generally much more down-to-earth (as are most people whose parents didn't want them dead), the psychos cannot take reponsibility for their own mistakes, and so can never be very good at properly defending themselves. This means that the kill rate will be really, really high.

"Palestinian population explosion"

Is that the latest suicide bombing joke? Good one.

Two proud Palestinian men were sitting at a coffeehouse in Ramallah, showing each other photos of their families.

"Here's Mohammed. He became a glorious martyr just last month."

The other man smiled and said wistfully: "Kids. They blow up so fast, don't they?"

Kind of shows you what Palestinians think of living with each other if a 1,900 square foot apartment is supposed to be "too small" for a family with kids.

Why not cut off all NGO aid and leave it up to the Arab states to look after the Palis? I already know the answer - none of the arab nations would do jack shit to help, just as they do nothing meaningfully helpful now.

From the brass-for-lebensraum article:

"The UNRWA clerks, contractors and planners have halted all construction until their security can be guaranteed."

Might this be the intended objective of the shooters? 1900 SF for an apartment is huge. It's the equivalent to a 2-3 bedroom home. Unless the shooter was so stupid as to think 1900 SF is small (this is possible, I concede), this might be an attempt to put pressure on the UN, or maybe the Palestinian Authority (who is accused of corruption yet again).

And God knows when anyone can "guarantee" any sort of security in that place. This could be an indefinite hold on the construction project.

The objective? Maybe more bribe money from the UN, or destabilize the PA (more than it is now, I mean) for the inevitable showdown. Perhaps both.

But it could be just a bunch of macho idiots demonstrating their hard won ability to spray bullets at random.

In any case, this story is fair evidence that unrest within the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority is increasing.

ras: What's the downside?

Here's some interesting statistics.

They are interesting, Rex. Though possibly not for the reasons you imagine.

Yes, I especially liked the graph that showed what a patheticly biased organization the UN is. All those anti-Isreal resolutions and nothing against the terrorists who have ruined Palestine. Thanks, Rex.

Oh I don't know tim, try me. What are the reasons I imagine?

Yo, Rex!

As Sortelli noted, the UN resolutions are biased in favor of known terrorists -- the Palestinians. And their tactics have extended beyond Isreal, so don't go down that road.

And then there's the claim of $15,139,178 per day going to Israel. With 365 days in a year, that comes to $5.53 billion a year.

Oddly enough, that very same URL says "...Israel receives 12.2% more than $3 billion directly alloted to them in economic and military aid."

The $3 billion dollars US aid to Israel in 2003 (more or less) is confirmed here.

Hmmmmm....5.53 -(1.12*3) = $2.17 billion difference. Put another way, that's $9.21 million per day, less than the claimed amount by $5.93 million, not a small sum. And less still by 12% if you ignore the quoted report.

So even assuming that this is a valid comparison (which I question, see below), the numbers at this web site have definite, ummmmm, inconsistencies. I question their accuracy. Although the daily figure of $568744 to the Palestinians seems correct.

And then there is a report titled "Middle East: U.S. Foreign Assistance, FY2001, FY2002, and FY2003 Request, dated 28 March 2002".

This confirms that Israel has the biggest slice of foreign aid in the Middle East. But guess who is #2! Egypt. And other M.E. (i.s., Muslim) nations are getting slices of the pie as well. Are those good nations helping the Palestinians? Hmmmm?

And then we have this little tidbit in the above report:

"No U.S. assistance goes the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or to the Palestinian Authority (PA). All U.S. assistance to the Palestinians goes to private voluntary organizations (20%) or to contractors (80%), all of which are selected and monitored by the U.S. Agency for International Development. All U.S. aid to the Palestinians is economic support funds (ESF) and is not for military purposes."

These are set by Congress; read the report for details. This is for economic support, not military. Yet the Palestinians still manage to buy lots of weapons and munitions for expressing their displeasure when they aren't being given large enough free apartments. The dichotomy here is astounding.

And then from that same web site you linked us to:

"According to USAID, in 2003, the United States gave an additional $20 million dollars directly to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Although U.S. law prohibits providing aid directly to the PA, the law was waived this once, in recognition of recent reforms undertaken by the PA."

Emphasis is mine.

Even your web site acknowledges (in a back handed manner, to be sure) that US law restricts direct aid to the PA and PLO because of their terrorist activities and/or corruption.

So comparing the sums going to Israel and Palestine is not equitable, because Palestine has legal restrictions under US law based on their internal problems. Of which this post clearly points out one.

On the other hand, Israel is a recognized nation that has, on the whole, delivered on more promises than the PA ever did. And generally not in a grudging fashion.

So, there are very interesting figures at this web site. But not, as Tim pointed out, for the reasons you imagine.

There's definitely something wrong with those people. What is it? Is it hereditary or what? Maybe once they are completely walled in and Israel is finally safe, someone should do a study of them. Maybe its already been done on rats or something but we should study the Pali's in case they've got something contagious.

Rex my boy, if you go around strapping semtex to your body and blow yourself up you may, just possibly, die. This also may affect your friends and family's chances or getting work since no one likes this sort of thing happening anywhere near them.

The resolutions was a funny one, go and look to see how many are pro-Israel and get back to us.

All that money going to people who make a habit of not blowing up is a good thing. If the ex-Syrians, ok, lets pretend there was a nation of Palestine and call them Palestinians, stopped playing "lets make a Pro Hart painting" they may, just may get more aid and even jobs.

That whole killing innocent women and children is really not helping you know. Why, I sure as hell wouldn't give a job or even the time of day to a group known for mindless slaughter. Even their mothers promote such killing.

I hope Israel hurrys up and finishes that wall, let the scum suffer on the outside until they learn to act like members of the human race.

There's definitely something wrong with those people. What is it?

They are coddled and encouraged by intellectual gnats from far away countries who are unable to universally condemn the use of terrorism or the Palestinian "leaders" who steal from and murder their own people. Thanks to these moral giants and the terrorists who hijack any hope for peace as a cover for more slaughter, any grievances or sufferings of the Palestinians cannot be addressed.

Thanks, Carlos and Rex!

In Oz, the building/Real Estate games once used a term called a "square". It was based on a room/area of 10' x 10'= 100ft sq.

A house or unit (apartment) was described as being 15 sqares.

The 1900ft sq is a big unit. Say 3/4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, garage, kitchen, dining room. Bloody hell, its 40% bigger than my Aussie standard 3 b/room brick veneer cottage.

What do these ingrates want (mind you, the 5 sq jobbie is the size of a bedsit). The big apartment is big enough to raise a couple of head of sheep in it.

Peter Garrett was right ....just give it back!!!

Ooops! Sorry Pete - wrong people! (Snicker)

Had a closer look at the article (and the photo) linked at the end of this post by Tim.

Whilst we should be horrified at the spectacle of children surrounding the shooter, we (and the Isreali's) should be more worried by the number of recruits that are having LIVE FIRE training.

I think we should be motivated by optimism. We now know they're not getting their land back. Sure the "Evict the settlers - what are you Nuts?" party now have an OK to take more of it in the West Bank since they have agreed "in principle" to get out of Gaza. They have to be convinced that it's an opportunity for ....Freedom! Yes. They should make their life better through sports. Say, racqet ball all along the wall. The Olympics should create new events so they can enter .., 50 yard stone throwing dash while avoiding sniper fire..

Thanks, Carlos!

carlos, you are engaging in sarcasm. That really doesn't work unless you are sincere in your dislike of the Palestinians. With you, it falls flat.

Carlos, you are a true friend to all who hope to bring peace, liberty and democracy to the world.

......

Now that's sarcasm!