Thursday, January 01, 2009
The Height Of Irony - Nadia Matar's Trial Postponed
One of my regular e-mail correspondants is Israeli activist Nadia Matar,the head of the Group Women in Green which opposed the Gaza pull out and opposes turning over any more Israeli land in Judea and Samaria ( AKA the West Bank) to the Arabs.
She's an extraordinarily brave woman who's been at the forefront of protests at places like Amona. Needless to say, this has made her a target for the Olmert government.
She's currently being prosecuted by that government under an obscure 'incitement; statute for a letter she wrote in 2004 that supposedly insulted Disengagement Authority head Yonatan Bassi just before the 2005 eviction of Jews from Gaza and Samaria, calling on him to resign.
The relevent part of the letter in question reads:
"The truth is that you are a modern version of the Judenrat - actually, a much worse version, because then, during the Holocaust, this was forced upon those Jewish leaders by the Nazis, and it is extremely difficult for us, today, to judge them. Today, no one stands with a gun to your head and forces you to collaborate in the crime, without any conscience pangs."
In the rest of the letter, Ms. Matar accurately predicted exactly what would happen after the retreat from Gaza, warning of "the bloody price that we will have to pay for our retreat. If the criminal Oslo accords cost us more than 1,000 victims, Sharon's deportation plan will give such a push to the Nazi Arab terror (for the Arabs will see that Israel's folding is proof that terror pays) that I fear to think how many Jews will pay with their lives for Sharon's 'disengagement'."
In comments about the letter she further predicted that the Israeli retreat from Gaza would lead to "Katyushas and rockets fired from Gaza."
And here's the irony..Nadia Matar's trial for the offense of telling the truth and predicting exactly what happened was postponed today - because the lead government prosecuter was called up for emergency reserve duty with the IDF because of the situation in Gaza!
Matar's attorney, Yoram Sheftel was quick to point out the ridiculousness of the situation:
"Let it be written in the protocol that Attorney [Erez] Padan has been called up for the reserves as a direct result of the fact that his place of work, the Supreme Court, described the expulsion from Gush Katif, against which my client was protesting and for which she now stands trial, as something positive that will improve the security situation of Israel when today we know that it is that expulsion that brought upon us Katyushas in Be'er Sheva, Ashdod and Yavne. That is why Attorney Padan has been called up for reserves and my client is sitting on the bench of the accused."
The case was initially dismissed by Jerusalem Magistrates Court Judge David Mintz, who ruled that the law had been applied selectively after hearing examples of incendiary statements by Leftist activists and politicians who were not prosecuted.
However, the State appealed and succeeded in having the case returned to the lower court and the trial is supposed to resume on Thursday, February 19.
The worst thing for some people is to have to admit that they were wrong and someone else they derided was right. Especially politicians...because it might just point out what else they're wrong about.
The Latest Candidate For Bailouts...Left-Biased Newspapers!
The dinosaur media apparently has a new mantra: so what if people won't read our biased garbage and don't trust us anymore? Let's just all become the BBC and make the rubes pay whether they like it or not:
Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.
Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.
That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. "The media is a vitally important part of America," he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.
Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.
Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.
"You can't expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it," he said.
Note that the article picks a teensy weensy paper in Connecticutt to showcase as a beleagured Watchdog for the Public - and ignores what a precedent here could mean for Leftist icons like Pravda on the Hudson ( AKA the NY Times), The Baltimore Sun,Chicago Trib, Miami Herald and the LA Times.
You know, the same people who did such a sterling and unbiased job in the last election cycle.
In case you think I'm exagerating,check out James Patterico's annualreview of the Los Angeles Times more blantant examples of bias and shoddy journalism and prepare to be astounded at how bad this major metropolitan newspaper actually is. And the Times probably isn't even the worst of the lot.
Maybe the Alphabet networks can get in on some of the loot as well.
It makes political sense that the Obama Administration would toss some of your tax money at the people who were largely responsible for helping him get elected. And just imagine if they can kill off the blogswith internet regulation and gut talk radio with a revised 'fairness' doctrine or local content rules..it'll be just like the old days again, where the Left has a monopoly on what becomes news and how it's reported.
The proverbial fly in the soup is that having been exposed now to a free press, people are no longer going to settle for some subsidized government lapdogs. And when a society can't trust the press,they end up not trusting the regime and a lot of other institutions in society...and it becomes very easy to become disillusioned with this democracy stuff.
The next step along the path is that people start looking for a guy on a white horse with a lot of easy answers who will Fix Things Just Fine. After all, if political liberty is a joke, why bother with the semblance of it when you can have efficiency and order, hmmm?
Think about it.
', '
Hamas Cockroach Stomp Confirmed
The IDF can chalk up another successful bit of pest eradication, as Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, the 'religious leader' of the Hamas military wing Izzadin Kassam who was also one of their military commanders and frequently appeared in uniform.
How he died is instructive:
Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, 52, a senior Hamas leader and cleric, was killed along with several others on Thursday when an IAF aircraft dropped a bomb on the eight-story Jabalya apartment building he lived in, the IDF said.
Palestinian medics said that nine people were killed, including two of Rayyan's four wives and four of his 12 children, and around 30 were wounded in the air strike.
...
Rayyan's house was serving as an arms and ammunition warehouse and as a Hamas communications center, a statement released by the government press office said.
According to the statement, many secondary explosions were identified as a result of the attack, thus proving that the house was used for storing weaponry.
Got that? This murderous scumbag was using his own wives and kids as human shields for weapons, explosives and his worthless carcass. What a hero.
For the record, Rayyan was the director and the financier of an attack on Ashdod in 2004 that killed ten Israelis and woundd almost sixty others.
He was a piece of walking garbage.
Nice shootin', lokhameem. Keep it up.
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