The IDF has released this video regarding the recent seizure of Iran-origin arms that was shipped to Egypt, with the intended destination being the Gazan terrorists, for use against Israeli civilians:

Here’s an interesting story: a mentally ill Palestinian youth was sent off by his family towards IDF soldiers in the hopes that he would be shot and killed and they’d finally have him off their hands while being able to demonize the IDF. Yet another Palestinian variation on the old saying, “kill two birds with one stone.”

A story like this begs the question: if this is how Palestinians treat their own family members, is it any wonder that they’re such brutal animals when it comes to killing Jews?  Is it any wonder that the prospect of peace is not even a glimmer on the horizon?

(Speaking of brutal animals, here’s a walk down memory lane: remember this picture of the Palestinian mob celebrating with the blood of lynched Israeli soldiers dripping from their hands?)

But, I digress…

The outrageous story, as reported by Hillel Fendel of Arutz 7 is:

A deranged Arab youth was dispatched by his family towards Beit El – hoping he would be shot as a suspected terrorist by the IDF.

The residents of Beit El were ordered to remain in their houses last night after an infiltration was detected. Two hours later, it turned out the ‘terrorist’ was sent purposely by his family who thus wished to be rid of him. The armed man who accompanied him was not found.

The incident began shortly after midnight when Beit El’s around-the-clock security office was alerted to an infiltration via the security fence in the northern neighborhoods. A beeper message went out to the town’s residents, informing them of what of the suspected presence of one or more terrorists and instructing them to lock their doors and remain inside.

Within a short time, the security forces found and arrested an Arab who appeared to be “confused.” He was not armed, but said that he was with another man who was – and the residents were advised to continue to remain in their homes until the second terrorist was found.

Following further investigation, it was ascertained that the arrested infiltrator was actually mentally unbalanced, and that the armed man who accompanied him was a representative of the family of the “infiltrator.”  The family thus sought to dispatch its unhealthy relative to Beit El in the hope that he would be shot by IDF soldiers….

If only this were a joke.

Hezbollah backer Samar al-Hajj has recruited a ship full of women to provoke another altercation with the IDF over the Gaza blockade, including a nun and a “heavily pregnant” mother.  One can only wonder what’s next in their arsenal?  A shipful of cute big-brown-eyed puppies? A floating hospital? A kindergarten class on a school trip?

And despite claims that they will not be traveling with so much as a kitchen knife, I would seriously wonder whether that nun aboard is even really Catholic and what she might be hiding under her habit. And, as for the pregnant mother, it’s obvious that these people have no scruples and no morality when it comes to life and their children (watch any Islamist propagandist TV show and you’ll see it clearly before long), so I wouldn’t put it past her to be on a suicide mission for herself or even her unborn child (after all, hearing how they speak of their pride in birthing and raising children for martyrdom, one can only imagine how proud she’d be of a child who was able to “achieve” such a great “accomplishment” before even being born!).

Israel has every right to blockade a territory from which terror is launched against them, and Gaza has been such a territory ever since Israel foolishly trusted the Palestinian two-faced, hypocritical, lowlife leaders and uprooted their citizens from there, leaving it Judenrein.

If other countries and activist organizations want to challenge that blockade, then they are clearly going into this with the simple and straightforward knowledge that they are challenging the security of a sovereign country, not to mention directly challenging the power and authority of an entire army, and they therefore are well aware of the consequences and consequently deserve everything that comes their way.

If these activists’ objective is really about providing “humanitarian aid” to Gazans, then there is clearly a channel for that, as described and provided by Israel, with Israel even guaranteeing the activists’ ability to monitor the distribution. The only proviso is that the “aid” must be inspected first. If, as the activists claim, the supplies are nothing but benign medical supplies and the like, then they should have no problem with that. If, on the other hand, they do have a problem with that, then we can clearly question either: (1) the activists’ true motives; or (2) the content of the “humanitarian” supplies.

As it turns out, though, based on the last flotilla, we can actually question both of the above. After all, the last flotilla clearly had motives other than benevolent humanitarian aid (in fact, the notorious Mavi Marmara didn’t even have any humanitarian supplies aboard; just terrorists armed with knives, clubs, metal rods, and apparently even firearms).

Additionally, the organizers of the last flotilla clearly were not overly concerned about the contents of the “humanitarian” supplies: amidst all the knives, clubs, rods, and other weapons, most of the actual supplies (contact lenses, medications, etc.) were found to be past their expiration dates and virtually unusable by any professional medical organization. (Not that it matters, because Hamas, the corrupt terrorist Gazan authority, ultimately confiscates everything anyway and the average Gazan doesn’t ever see any of it.)

I sincerely hope that Israel stands their ground and does not cave in to all those international talking-head ninnies sitting safely in their comfortable homes under no threat of constant attack (nay, annihilation!). Doing so would only end up setting a precedent of letting such holes make their way into their blockade under pressure and, once they do that, the whole purpose of a blockade is defeated and Israel might as well just start supplying weapons to the Palestinians themselves. (Oh, wait… don’t they already do that?!… my, what a tragic joke this whole situation has become, and all because of “international opinion”…)

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren wrote a great op-ed piece in the NY Times on Wednesday:

PEACE activists are people who demonstrate nonviolently for peaceful co-existence and human rights. The mob that assaulted Israeli special forces on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on Monday was not motivated by peace. On the contrary, the religious extremists embedded among those on board were paid and equipped to attack Israelis — both by their own hands as well as by aiding Hamas — and to destroy any hope of peace.

Millions have already seen the Al Jazeera broadcast showing these “activists” chanting “Khaibar! Khaibar!”— a reference to a Muslim massacre of Jews in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century. YouTube viewers saw Israeli troops, armed with crowd-dispersing paintball guns and side arms for emergency protection, being beaten and hurled over the railings of the ship by attackers wielding iron bars.

What the videos don’t show, however, are several curious aspects Israeli authorities are now investigating. First, about 100 of those detained from the boats were carrying immense sums in their pockets — nearly a million euros in total. Second, Israel discovered spent bullet cartridges on the Mavi Marmara that are of a caliber not used by the Israeli commandos, some of whom suffered gunshot wounds. Also found on the boat were propaganda clips showing passengers “injured” by Israeli forces; these videos, however, were filmed during daylight, hours before the nighttime operation occurred.

The investigations of all this evidence will be transparent, in accordance with Israel’s security needs.

There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas. Just as Hamas gunmen hide behind civilians in Gaza, so, too, do their sponsors cower behind shipments of seemingly innocent aid.

This is why the organizers of the flotilla repeatedly rejected Israeli offers to transfer its cargo to Gaza once it was inspected for military contraband. They also rebuffed an Israeli request to earmark some aid packages for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for four years.

In the recent past, Israeli forces have diverted nine such flotillas, all without incident, and peacefully boarded five of the ships in this week’s convoy. Their cargoes, after proper inspection, were delivered to non-Hamas institutions in Gaza. Only the Marmara, a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means such as fouling the propeller, violently resisted. It is no coincidence that the ship was dispatched by Insani Yardim Vakfi (also called the I.H.H.), a supposed charity that Israeli and other intelligence services have linked to Islamic extremists.

The real intent of breaking the embargo is to allow rockets to be transported to Gaza from Hamas’s suppliers in Syria and Iran. Israel has already intercepted several such ships laden with munitions. Since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortars at our civilian population. This week, two Hamas rockets exploded near Ashkelon, one of Israel’s largest cities.

Israel has a right and a duty to defend itself from Hamas and its backers. Our struggle is not with the people of Gaza but only with the radical regime that overthrew the legitimate Palestinian Authority and has pledged to seek Israel’s destruction. Each day, Israel facilitates the passage into Gaza of more than 100 truckloads of food and medicine — there is no shortage of either. We, too, want a free Gaza — a Gaza liberated from brutal Hamas rule — as well as an Israel freed from terrorist threats.

Israel will scrupulously review the events surrounding the Marmara’s interception. But Israel will also persist in denying advanced weaponry to Hamas. At the same time, the Israeli government will vigorously pursue peace with the Palestinian Authority, which shares our need for defense against armed extremists. The real peace activists are those who support our vision of a two-state solution, not those supporting the terrorists bent on destroying it.

The following is one of the best videos I’ve seen reporting on and analyzing the Mavi Marmara incident:

As if further proof of this is necessary, we can now confirm, thanks to security camera footage from the Mavi Marmara itself, that the terrorists on board prepared themselves for violence well before the soldiers even boarded the ship.

This video footage was released, showing the terrorists preparing for violence as they handed out metal rods, broken bottles, slingshots, and other metal objects. (In other evidence, gas masks were even found on the ship, also corroborating the accusation that these terrorists were planning and premeditating violence.)

Here’s an excellent video put out on YouTube by ffttestvideo showing:

• the initial peaceful communication by the Israeli navy warning them that the blockade is in effect;
• the self-described aspiring martyrs chanting anti-Semitic death chants and praising the “happy” possibility of martyrdom;
• testimony by a soldier who describes being attacked with “metal rods, knives, slingshots, glass bottles”;
• video footage corroborating the soldier’s testimony;
• stockpiles of slingshots, bags of rocks, metal rods, crude wooden rods and clubs, hammers, and knives recovered from the Mavi Marmara; and
• video footage of the humanitarian supplies being offloaded by Israel, as promised, to send to Gaza.

A tip of the ol’ porkpie to my favorite cousin for sending this to me.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that two more activist—i.e., terrorist—ships are now en route to Gaza.

Apparently, these terrorists want to capitalize on the world’s reflexive condemnation of Israel. They want to push Israel further into a no-win situation by forcing them to choose between either escalating this blockade battle under the glaring global spotlight that has now been switched on, or effectively giving the blockade up entirely and thereby reopening a channel for arms smuggling—either outcome being a tactical victory for the terrorists.

Regardless, though, of Israel’s lack of favorable options in this crisis, it needs to look out for the safety of its citizens first, and not try to salvage or regain favor in the eyes of the very few fickle, fair-weather “friends” that it has in the world if that means compromising that safety in any way. In other words, it needs to ensure at all costs that arms are kept out of Gaza, and if that means fortifying the blockade at the displeasure and condemnation of the rest of the world, then so be it. At stake, ultimately, is not just its security or its maritime sovereignty, but its very existence.

Thankfully, a top navy commander was quoted in that Jerusalem Post article (anonymously) as saying just that: “We boarded the ship and were attacked as if it was a war…. That will mean that we will have to come prepared in the future as if it was a war.” Hopefully, this tactical approach will be fully supported by Netanyahu—and expanded to every other front against Palestinian terrorists and their accomplices.

Unfortunately, there will always be critics of Israel who—even when faced with clear evidence that these savages are in no way out for “peace”—will defend those savages and continue to call them “peace activists” and will continue to condemn and lambaste Israel no matter what it does.

After all, Israel clearly and publicly offered to pass the “humanitarian supplies” directly to Gaza, as long as it was unloaded under their supervision in Ashdod. That offer was rebuffed, clearly demonstrating that this is not at all about helping the “poor” Gazans, but about provoking Israel, as well as forcing Israel to reopen a channel for smuggling arms. And did that illogical refusal by the flotilla participants (illogical in its inconsistency with their stated claims of having only humanitarian aid as an objective) awaken any of these critics to the real underlying objectives of the flotilla? Of course not; some people just love to hate, slander, and malign Israel.

In fact, if they didn’t have a convenient vehicle to express their hatred, as the blindly twisted flotilla story now provides, they would just make something up out whole cloth, like the recent Aftonbladet organ harvesting slander (the Swedish blood libel about which I previously posted). It’s that simple.

So, Israel must come to terms with that sad unfair truth, and must realize that they will never be able to “justify” their actions to people for whom “justice” is a very muddled and subjective concept.  Only once Israel realizes that, and starts worrying solely about itself, will it begin to establish a more realistic and rational foundation for dealing with the Palestinians and securing its own citizens.

Steven Plaut had this perfect response to the hypocritical reaction of the rest of the world yesterday:

Tragic?

The whole world is speaking about the flotilla affair as “tragic.”   The Israeli media and government are also calling it “tragic.”

It was not tragic.  It was a terrorist aggression against Israel by Islamofascists and leftwing fascists.  The tragedy is that the flotilla ships were not sunk by torpedos, as I proposed, rather than forcing IDF soldiers to risk injury.

The tragedy is that the idiotic Israeli politicians are agreeing to an “investigation” of the soldiers’ actions, so once again Israel proclaims itself guilty until proven innocent in order to appease the anti-Semites.  Once again the world is demanding a Goldstone-style investigation, one whose conclusions were written before the ships even left Turkey.

Want an investigation?  Let’s investigate why ONLY 9 terrorists on the ships were killed in the fighting.  That seems to be the final tally.  Investigate why the Sheikh SALAH was not tossed overboard in memory of Leon Klinghoffer.  How about investigating the Arab students at the University of Haifa who injured a policeman yesterday in their violent pro-Hamas rally?

And what should be the appropriate response to Turkish involvement in the terrorist flotilla and the attack on Israeli soldiers?

The time has come to stop the pretense and to start calling a spade a spade.  The Ankara regime is in control of Turkish-occupied Greek Anatolia.  Greek Pontos must be freed.  The lands of Homer must again fly the Greek flag.  We will not even BEGIN to talk about Turkish crimes in Northern Cyprus.

The correct name for Istanbul is Constantinople, so let’s start using that name.  Let’s start calling Turkey by its correct name – Occupied Greece.  When will the Obama people start speaking out about construction activity in occupied Constantinople?  It is time to end Turkish occupation, not only of Greece, but also of the homelands of the Kurds and the Armenians.  Until those areas are liberated, the EU should dismiss the attempts by the Asiatic aggressors to gain admission as members of Europe.  Let the EU tell them to go back to their Turkic homelands of origin.

And maybe the time has even come to demand that the legitimate Ottoman rulers of the Turkish people be restored.  Sure, the Ottomans had their faults, but they were far more civilized than the criminal Ankara regime.

Here is an earlier article about Turkey:

http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33939

For all the talk of these supposed “peace” activists that are trying to break the Gaza blockade, the video footage released today shows that the label “terrorist” is much more appropriate for these bloodthirsty savages.

Here they are attacking Israeli soldiers before they even touch down on the ship, mobbing them with knives, metal poles, rods, firebombs, etc.

I’d call these “people” animals, but that would be doing a disservice to animals.

Following the two videos of these monsters is a video of those same Gaza flotilla participants taken earlier by a Palestinian reporter, showing them chanting an Islamic battle cry invoking the killing of Jews.

Text from the third Youtube video:

The name Khaibar mentioned in battle cry was the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. The battle marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor for future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.

Arutz Sheva is reporting on some pretty damning videos that the IDF has put up on the web in response to the Goldstone Fabrication “Report”, which actually show Hamas using children as human shields.

Here is one of the videos from Operation Cast Lead making fools out of Goldstone and his cronies:

And here is another video also showing Hamas’s despicable tactic of grabbing children to use as human shields:

A woman from the United States who married a Palestinian man she met while he was here in the U.S. was held captive in his West Bank home for three years, where he lives with his other wife and four children. The Palestinian man used violence along with the threat that she’ll never see their two-and-a-half-year-old son again in order to keep her captive.

Her parents reached out to a former combat soldier from the Israeli army who put together a rescue operation with a team of 10 former IDF soldiers. Keeping the U.S. consulate abreast of the operation, they successfully rescued both her and her son and she finally went back to the U.S. yesterday with her son.

Of course, you probably won’t see this story in the NY Times (unless it’s captioned by something like “IDF Soldiers Kidnap Wife and Son From Palestinian Home”).

So, when are we going to make “Not Without My Daughter“ required reading for all women here in the United States (or at least make the movie required viewing)?

The Swedish Blood Libel story continues…

Now, Arutz 7 is reporting that an Israeli activist is suing the newspaper, Aftonbladet, for $7.5 million in a NY-based lawsuit. The activist, Guy Ophir, chose the venue because “the writer of the allegations published in Aftonbladet referred to rabbis who reside in New York and were charged with being involved in the alleged sale of organs. The Swedish paper also is distributed in New York.”

Arutz 7 also gives a little background on Ophir:

Attorney Guy Ophir, who previously has filed suits in Israel against violators of non-smoking laws, said that the tabloid’s allegations were anti-Semitic and in effect were a “racist blood libel” against Jews and Israeli soldiers…

Ophir previously has won a 2007 lawsuit that ended with a court ruling that owners of restaurants and other public stores must prevent workers and customers from smoking while frequenting their establishments.

The court ruled that a Tel Aviv restaurant pay Ophir NIS 3,000 shekels ($750) for damages plus legal costs after he was exposed to smoke in the restaurant.

There seem to be developments in the Swedish Blood Libel story almost every day. I originally posted about it a couple of weeks ago here (and updated that twice), then posted another new development yesterday here.

The latest news now is that the newspaper Aftonbladet has been officially reported to the Swedish Chancellor of Justice Goran Lambertz, who is the only prosecutor with the power to take legal action in cases concerning freedom of speech and the press. The written request asks the Chancellor to consider whether the article constitutes racial agitation, which in Sweden is defined as a crime involving the public dissemination of statements which threaten or express contempt for one or more identified ethnic groups.

Sweden’s The Local reports on this news and the Aftonbladet‘s response to it:

“Is that true? I am perplexed,” Åsa Linderborg, Aftonbladet’s culture editor, said after being informed by the The Local of the report on Tuesday.

“I think it is a shame that whenever solidarity is shown for the Palestinians and criticism is directed again Israel, someone cries anti-Semitism.”

“One has to have the right to ask questions”…

First of all, there is a world of a difference between “asking questions” and publishing a two-page spread accusing a country of systematic organ trafficking as a matter of government policy, covert or otherwise.

More importantly, the fact that the article in question took advantage of the recent story of an American rabbi indicted for selling a kidney as some sort of “proof” of the Palestinian claims belies her supposed innocent intentions. After all, if she is just directing this against “Israel” and not necessarily “Jews”, then what does an American rabbi have to do with the IDF?  That obviously would provide no proof or relevance at all… unless she is playing the Jewish card.

Her shameless lies are so transparent, and it’s really sickening that the state of anti-Semitism in the world today is actually so bad that she knows she can tell bald-faced lies like that and fully expect to be believed by most people because she knows that she’ll get that wink-and-a-smile from them.

To paraphrase a popular slogan: anti-Zionism is racism.

This is perfect proof of that: someone hiding behind the old “anti-Israel, not anti-Semite” line, while pulling in American rabbis, basing entire stories on the hearsay of notoriously untrustworthy Palestinians, etc.

Nils Funcke, one of Sweden’s leading experts on legislation pertaining to freedom of speech, said he expected the Chancellor of Justice to reject the case.

“The article can hardly be construed as racial agitation. There is no ethnic group targeted; the article focuses on the Israeli army, and Israel is not made up solely of Jews,” Funcke told The Local.

Even had the article concentrated on a single ethnic group, Funcke did not believe it would be considered “agitation” under the law.

“It was more a description of events and certainly did not agitate against a particular group.”

How can it be called a “description of events” when none of it was substantiated and it was all based on hearsay and conjecture on the part of the newspapers employees themselves?

That would be like me saying “every black (or non-Scandinavian) girl in Sweden is systematically raped by a covert agency of the Swedish government at least once before her 8th birthday“… and then calling it a “description of events” just because I thought it was a good, provocative story that would “raise questions”, even though all of the “events” are unfounded and made up. Same thing.

As popular Israeli journalist Ayala Hasson told Army Radio, reported by Arutz 7: “Freedom of the press means that one may comment as one sees fit – but it does not give license to report made-up ‘facts.’”

In another crazy development, the Jerusalem Post has interviewed the very family mentioned in the Aftonbladet article, and they themselves dubiously contradict the assertive statements attributed to them in the original article!

His mother, Sadeeka, said he was shot by an IDF sniper as he walked out of his home. “The bullets hit him directly in the heart,” she said.

Ghanem’s younger brother, Jalal, said he could not confirm the allegations made by the Swedish newspaper that his brother’s organs had been stolen.

“I don’t know if this is true,” he said. “We don’t have any evidence to support this.”

…The mother denied that she had told any foreign journalist that her son’s organs had been stolen…

Jalal said that he and other villagers recall that a Swedish photographer was in the village during the funeral and that he managed to take a number of pictures of the body before the funeral. “That was the only time we saw this photographer,” he recounted.

Ibrahim Ghanem, a relative of Bilal, said that the family never told the Swedish photographer that Israel had stolen organs from the dead man’s body.

“Maybe the journalist reached that conclusion on the basis of the stitches he saw on the body,” he said. “But as far as the family is concerned, we don’t know if organs were removed from the body because we never performed our own autopsy. All we know is that Bilal’s teeth were missing.”

Interestingly, The Local writes about the Aftonbladet’s response to this development as follows:

Åsa Linderborg told The Local on Tuesday that Donald Boström is responsible for his own sources but added that staff from Aftonbladet had met the family concerned over the weekend and, she claims, had gained confirmation of the allegations.

So, now, obviously someone is lying. Either the Swedish newspaper or the Palestinian family. Despite the abundant anti-Semitism in Sweden, it still gets trumped by the even-more robust Palestinian history of bald-faced lies. So, if I had to pick out the liar, I’d bet on the Palestinian family.

One last issue I want to address: I’ve seen many blogs and commentators reference the Mohammed cartoons in Sweden’s recent journalistic history as a comparison, as in: “the Swedish government bent over backwards to accommodate Muslims during the cartoon controversy, so why do they keep toeing the ‘we-don’t-get-involved-in-matters-of-the-press’ line now?”

For example, The Local describes the Swedish government response now as:

In response to pressure from the Israeli government to condemn the newspaper Sweden’s prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, and foreign minister Carl Bildt, have emphasized that it is not the government’s role to comment on the content of newspapers.

I’ll withhold judgment of the Swedish government’s response until after Lambertz’s inquiry. But, until then, I have to say that, granted, Reinfeldt did ultimately go a bit further in setting up meetings with Muslim leaders to calm them down, but even then he still stressed the same sentiments he is stressing now, as reported at the time by the AFP:

Sweden’s prime minister and envoys from 22 Muslim nations held talks Friday that both sides termed as constructive to defuse a row over a newspaper cartoon depicting Prophet Mohammed as a dog…

Reinfeldt said the talks were “a dialogue” between both sides, but warned it was too early to tell whether Muslim anger had been quelled.

“I told them Sweden is an open country and an open society. Muslims and Christians live side by side in mutual understanding for each other and we care very much for this model of living,” he said.

“I described the Swedish constitution, which does not permit politicians to interfere with how the media (works) and what it chooses to publish,” he said.

So, I wouldn’t be too quick to reference the Mohammed cartoon controversy as evidence of any major Swedish government departure from their normal policies.

However, there are other reasons for criticizing the Swedish government. Namely, the fact that the Swedish government actually funded these allegations! As Arutz 7 reports:

Antagonism between Israel and Sweden over Swedish media accusation that IDF soldiers sold Arab body parts is heating up, in light of evidence that Sweden’s government funded the “research” for the story. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to demand a Swedish government condemnation of the accusations.

News of the funding was broken Sunday morning by Maariv/NRG. Maariv’s correspondent in Sweden, Liran Lotker, reports that most of the material in last week’s controversial article is old, having appeared in a book written in 2001 by the author of the article. The book, entitled Inshallah, was funded by various bodies, including the Foreign Ministry of Sweden, Swedish labor unions, and some organizations based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas.

So, skip the cartoon comparisons and focus on the other apparent hypocrisy here, where the Swedish government claims “hands-off policy” with regard to this story, yet their own Foreign Ministry put up some of the money to plant the seeds for these rumors 8 years ago.

I recently posted regarding Sweden’s new twist on the old blood libel, where the top Swedish newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, has published a two-page spread, headlined “They Plunder The Organs Of Our Sons”, accusing Israeli soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians to harvest their organs, and then returning their dead bodies to the families with the organs missing. This understandably caused quite a ruckus in Israel and, after some prodding, elicited a sharp rebuke of the story by the Swedish government.

It looks, though, like this new libel is only just getting started. According to YNet, that same newspaper, Aftonbladet, has now published an entirely new story, this time by different authors, making the same accusations against Israel (based on the same hearsay fabrications by those pathological liars, the Palestinians).

After the first slap in the face, Israel was pretty diplomatic about it: firm, but apparently calm. This time, it looks like they’re finally getting visibly upset in their response—and rightly so. Here is part of the YNet report:

The Israeli government declared Sunday morning that it expects the Swedish government to officially condemn the first Aftonbladet report.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We do not want the Swedish government to apologize, we want it to issue a condemnation.”

On Thursday Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman slammed the Swedish Foreign Ministry for saying that Swedish Ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier’s condemnation of the report does not represent the Swedish government’s stance.

“It’s a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry fails to intervene in a case of blood libels against Jews. This is reminiscent of Sweden’s stand during World War II, when had failed to intervene as well,” Lieberman said.

The Rubin Report has a great write-up of this ongoing incident here, discussing the blurring boundaries between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism (which is increasingly often just a flimsy mask for anti-Semitism). Here’s an excerpt of some choice paragraphs:

What does this incident tell us? One thing is that there is no limit to the insanity of how Israel is treated nowadays in so many supposedly responsible, left-wing, and intellectual circles.

It also tells us that anyone of decency and good intentions should start re-examining right now their credulity in accepting anti-Israel slanders, nonsensical media or academic claims, or irresponsibly inaccurate “human rights” group reports…

The time has come to realize that antisemitism, anti-Zionism, absurd misrepresentation of Israel and the effort to wipe it off the map are all tightly intertwined.

We have seen the rise of a systematic industry in wild anti-Israel claims by Palestinians which are repeated without evidence by the Western news media and others…

The recipe is simple: Palestinians make up charges, tell them to sympathetic reporters or academics or “human rights’” officials who don’t demand evidence, and then are widely spread through other willing executioners of truth whose low degree of professionalism and high level of politicization make them conducive to becoming collaborators in the enterprise.

Before Israeli officials can investigate and present a detailed response–largely ignored by the media–they are all off to the next lurid accusation.

The fact that none of these accusations is ever ultimately proven correct seems to have no effect on the industry.

One additional point that Rubin Report raises that is very interesting is regarding the  defense of free speech that the Swedish ambassador originally choice to highlight in his partial apology. The Rubin Report points out that:

What is provoking outrage in Sweden is not the article itself but the statement of Sweden’s ambassador in Israel who expressed a partial apology, while defending free speech in Sweden. Where were all these people during the Danish cartoon controversy when Sweden’s government went far out of its way to grovel and even try to repress those who published the cartoons?