Will Geert Wilders Be Acquitted?

A couple of days ago it seemed all but impossible that Geert Wilders would be acquitted of the hate speech charges against him. But the presentation of the witness testimony seems to have caused a shift in the wind.
Our Flemish correspondent has translated the latest from Elsevier. He includes this note:

It seems the quite convincing witness reports by Hans Jansen, Simon Admiraal, and Wafa Sultan, as read out in court, have made the plaintiffs nervous. Now they are openly worried that Wilders may actually be acquitted.

via gatesofvienna.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

CNN ready to dump Spitzer, wants to hire Couric

Replacing one failure with another?

(NY Post) Friends of Katie Couric are saying the chances of her remaining at CBS are getting slimmer.
CNN appears especially eager to sign Couric now that the new show starring ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer is off to a stumbling start.
Jeff Bewkes, the CEO of CNN's parent company, Time Warner, yesterday said that CNN has the money "to pay for some of the biggest talent in TV news" -- just when CBS was saying that the era of the big-salary anchor is ending.
"The Katie Couric deal will be the last big deal of that kind ever done," Les Moonves, the head of CBS, said this week. "Those days are over."
More...

via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com

you know the news is hurting when the news is always about what is going on in the newsroom

noahdavidsimon's posterous

The myth of the 10,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners

Elder of Ziyon
How many Palestinian Arab prisoners are being held in Israel?
People who follow the news would automatically say, 10,000. They would have good reason to believe that;
the magic number of "10,000 prisoners" is used as received wisdom by Arabs, left-wingers and the news media as fact.

For example:
Daoud Kuttab, quoted in the NYT, November 2009: "Israel is holding more than 10,000 Palestinians, some without charge or trial. "
MJ Rosenberg in HuffPo, November 2009, headline: "Gilad Shalit's Counterparts: 10,000 Palestinian Prisoners In Israeli Jails"
BBC, November 2009: "Israel holds about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in jail on security grounds - a major bone of contention with the Palestinians."
ABC News Australia, April 2010: "Hamas spokesman Adnan Abu Amar says it is hoped the video will renew pressure on Israel to reach a deal with Hamas to free many of the 10,000 or more Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in return for the soldier's freedom."
Palestine News Network, September 2010: "There are at least 10,000 Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israeli army jails."

Only one problem: the number is wrong. Not only that, but it was never right!
B'Tselem has been keeping statistics of how many Palestinian Arab prisoners are being held in Israel, back to 2001. According to their statistics, the number of prisoners never surpassed 10,000. They reached a high of about 9600 in October, 2006, and have been steadily declining ever since.
Between June 2007 and August 2010, the number of prisoners has dropped from 9344 to 6011, a decrease of 36%.
Here it is graphically:
I'm sure that most of them were released because their sentences were finished; this was not meant as a good-will gesture.
Here we have another case where Arab activists and left wingers, by repeating bogus statistics over and over, manage to convince even the news media that the numbers are accurate. While the New York Times and the BBC might lean left, they do put on a pretense of objective reporting and fact checking - yet they let these numbers get reported as truth.
Last year I showed that Addameer's absurd statistics of between 650,000 and 800,000 Palestinian Arabs being arrested since 1967 were complete fiction, as anyone with the slightest grasp of numbers could easily confirm. Yet those numbers had been quoted uncritically by Goldstone, Time Magazine and Jimmy Carter, among others.
When will the media wake up to the fact that many Arabs and leftists are willing to lie to them without any compunction? By not doing basic fact checking, they are complicit in purveying falsehoods that influence millions of people.
Imagine if the New York Times would report that Israel has released over 3000 prisoners in recent years. It completely upends the Arab narrative of a vicious IDF randomly and capriciously arresting and holding thousands of people annually, indefinitely. It would make people think twice before accepting hateful, inciting claims against Israel by the Left. However, even well-meaning people do not have the means or ability to check what should have already been checked, so they understandably will accept what the media tells them, especially when it is stated as an aside, as a fact so well known that it is not even worth checking.
Israel is at fault as well. It is properly the job of the Israeli government to correct these lies, not bloggers. This posting may or not make it to the BBC, a year after their story, but Israel should have responded immediately.
Not only does the Government of Israel not correct the lies, but it doesn't capitalize on the PR value of the truth! 3000 prisoners released could be a huge story - but it is unknown.
The flip side of the coin is - should Israel have held on to all 9600 prisoners for an extra year or two, and then offer to swap 3000 of them for Shalit - prisoners that would have been released anyway, but in quantities that could have made a huge psychological impact and more pressure on Hamas as well as a propaganda victory?
(A separate question is whether B'Tselem makes any effort to correct the lies when they help further its own agenda.)
This is a big problem, all around.

Comment:

Now you have the facts. Hold your MSM accountable. Hold their feet to the fire:ask them what is their data source? Did you know the actual number is...? Why are you choosing to not tell the truth, not tell accurate facts, why? Wht's in it for you to lie?
Folks, stop playing nice-get tough with the reporters, do to them what they no longer do themselves-hold events, people, accountable!

via docstalk.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Slumdog movie star turns defiant Palestinian girl

I suppose you wonder why this is the image I used. 
The crappy version of Star Trek called "Voyager" is
where the actress from Slumdog Millionaire started.

The Indian actress who starred in "Slumdog Millionaire" has moved from the slums of Mumbai to the squalid refugee camps of the West Bank in a new film: the story of a defiant Palestinian girl who wants to fight against Israel in a coming of age story with a Mideast twists.

"Miral" is directed by award-winning artist Julian Schnabel and has cameos by Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave.

via ynetnews.com

Julian Schnabel has never made a decent film. His art is crap... it is why he gave it up. need I say anything about Vanessa Redgrave and her history? as for William Dafoe... I guess he didn't have a second rate villain to pay the rent this month. I warned a lot of friends that Hollywood was going to try to create a Palestine Schindler's List and sadly too many idiots were listening to Rick Sanchez and his B.S. about Jews controlling the media. We are in for a rude awakening. Islam will make it's media... because it sells.

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Why Do Radical Muslims Want to Kill Europeans?

How true is it that Al-Qaeda's terror attacks around the world are directly linked to the Israeli-Arab conflict?
Some Middle East and terror "experts" have long maintained that the West's support for Israel was one of the main motivations behind the attacks of Al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups.
These "experts" have naively and foolishly endorsed Al-Qaeda Chief Osama bin Laden's argument that the terror attacks against the US and Western targets are the result of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
In the past, bin Laden justified his organization's attacks on Americans by citing continued US support for Israel as the main reason.
But now that it has been revealed that Al-Qaeda is also planning a new wave of terror attacks in Europe, it would be interesting to hear what excuse bin Laden would have this time.
If the Americans deserve to be murdered because of Washington's "bias" in favor of Israel, why are countries such as France, Britain and Germany -- which have, generally speaking, been very supportive of the Palestinians -- now on the black list of radical Islamic groups?

via hudson-ny.org

noahdavidsimon's posterous

NIF vs The Jewish State

Posted by Jameel @ The Muqata
10/08/2010
The New Israel Fraud is at it again, and this time they are outraged at the oath of allegiance proposal that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State.
They now say it outright -- their vision for a "New Israel" -- is one without any connection to Judaism whatsoever. he new disingenuous NIF slogan is "equality and democracy for all Israelis" -- and "all Israelis" can be from Ghana or Sudan...
Their most recent call is that Israel may not have any religious character whatsoever, and must be a "state of all its citizens."
See the NIF "call to arms" below, in their sample letter of protest of PM Netanyanu, where they express "deep concern" as "staunch supporters of a [non-Jewish] Israel" -- that declaring Israel to be a Jewish and Democratic State is "infuriating."
When NIF's director states that "Israel cannot be anything less than a State of all its citizens," he is blatantly calling for the removal of Israel as a Jewish State.
Come to think of it, there's no difference between him and PA President Mahmoud Abbas who refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
Its about time for NIF to stop with the subterfuge and rename itself as the New Palestine Fund.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Europe, prepare for flood

Op-ed: Open letter to Europeans, who killed Jews and are now contending with radical Islam
Avi Rath
Israel Opinion
Good evening Europe!

Hello to you, dear continent. For a while now I've been meaning to write you a few words, as a close neighbor here in the Middle East who loves traveling through your beautiful landscape, and whose roots lie deep within the continent. ou were our home for thousands of years, and especially for the past 1,000 years. We've known good times of neighborly relations as well as economic, cultural and spiritual prosperity. Yet we had also known difficult days of hatred, expulsions, humiliation, and blood libels. Oh, did we ever know such days.

Somehow, we survived; both you and us. To our regret, and shamefully for you, we were not the ones who chose to end our affair with you, dear continent. We could have maintained neighborly relations and cooperation for many more years, yet for reasons of your own you chose to put an end to this partnership, literally.

The plan was formulated on your soil, the camps were built there and the trains traveled there; the graves were dug on your soil, and
the blood flowed to your rivers. Within a short period of time, you cut off a significant, 1,000-year Jewish presence. You murdered and expelled millions of loyal Jewish citizens. You eliminated not only them, but also all their contributions to the culture, economy, art, humanities, academics, literature, medicine, education, commerce, banking, and life in general.

I've been meaning to write you for a long time, yet it hasn't worked out. However, this week, after seeing two things, I decided that I must say a few words.

First, I saw reports drafted by all sorts of demography and sociology experts, who claim that within a few years, you, Europe, will be turning Muslim. In some European states, 50% of all births at this time already are Muslim. If we add this to the low birthrates of non-Muslim European - where you, the white, Christian Europe, shall turn into a Muslim continent.

You are indeed trying to engage in rearguard battles against this phenomenon – against mosques in Switzerland, against burqas in France, against immigration, and against all sorts of other things. Yet you too realize that this train cannot be stopped. Nobody will be able to forbid a Muslim woman from putting on a veil. Indeed, the liberal, enlightened, and scantily-clad European women realize that a day may come where radical Islam gains enough strength to end the party.

The second thing I saw was the travel advisories issued by many states to warn their citizens against heading to Europe for fear of terrorism. Someone already noted (and it wasn't necessarily a Jew) that while not all Muslims are terrorists, for some reason most terrorists are Muslim.

Slowly, our dear continent, you are starting to understand what you're dealing with here. You are starting to understand the kind of religion and culture brought along by radical Islam. Suddenly, you discover hatred and the culture of martyrs, as well as intolerance and isolation, alienation in the face of real democracy, and the shunning of human and women's rights.

Suddenly, radical Islam is stuck like a bone in Europe's throat. You cannot eject it – because that would immediately raise cries of racism, human rights, and the usual babble – but you cannot swallow it either, because the white, democratic, liberal and Christian European culture cannot contain such radical cultural and religious elements. It will end with a major explosion, in more than one way.

Dear continent, there is no vacuum in the world. You expelled and exterminated us, and got the Muslim world instead. At first it was nice, getting a little Mideastern atmosphere and breeze, yet with the passage of time the radical Islamic storm arrived and now threatens to sweep you away, our dear neighbor.

Now you are starting to sleep in the bed you made. Suddenly you are discovering women wearing veils, zealous eyes, and mosques at every corner. Suddenly you need to contend with high birthrates, a culture with radical characteristics which you cultivated, and terrorism and violence which you ignored. You cannot deny this for much longer. The confrontation is already here. Unfortunately we are already experts on the issue, even though here too there is no shortage of naïve, self-righteous individuals.

The first time the Creator decided to raze the world as result of our conduct, he agreed to grant humanity another chance. He asked Noah to go into the ark in order to create a new basis for the world and produce a more decent humanity. The ark was the world's chance; a momentary shelter.

So dear Europe, will you be wise enough to prepare ahead of time a physical and cultural Noah's Ark in order to survive and preserve yourself? Or will your aggressiveness, arrogance, and hypocrisy not allow you to admit to the disaster you brought upon yourself, turning into a continent living on borrowed time?

Regards,
Your Jewish neighbor from the Middle East

via docstalk.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Arab League to back Abu Mazen decision to leave talks?

Contrary to the optimism that's been reported all week long, the Jerusalem Post reports on Friday's front page that the Arab League meeting in Libya that opens on Friday is likely to back a decision by 'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen to bolt the 'direct talks' with Israel. Now comes the blame game.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Israel should probably take back Gaza. It is a matter of security. It is obvious that the conditions for Land for Piece are not being met.

noahdavidsimon's posterous