The big talk in Israel (besides the incredible 7.8% growth of Israel’s GDP last quarter) are the Iranian warships coming down the Suez Canal and traveling to Syria to spend a year docked in their port.

They’re not really very impressive warships from what I hear (a supply ship and a converted frigate).

But attacking Israel with them is hardly the point.

They’re not even trying to demonstrate a quid pro quo after Israel sent a submarine (allegedly nuclear armed) through the Suez and towards Iranian waters last year.

Perhaps at best they have a secondary mission of getting some arms to the Palestinian (Hamas) terrorists in Gaza.

And I guess one could reasonably worry they’ve got a dirty bomb on board.

But, I think it’s about something else entirely.

A few days ago these same Iranian ships docked in Saudi Arabia. Now they are on their way to Syria (and Lebanon).

This isn’t an Iranian show of Power – how strong their fleet is.

This is an Iranian show of Influence.

This is about how long their tentacles are growing, how influential their country is becoming, and what countries the US might soon be losing.

This “flotilla” is a message to the US that Iran views itself as a waxing global superpower untouchable by waning US influence.

Iran will have nuclear weapons, satellites, ICBMs, naval fleets, and military industries. It doesn’t matter if they are all third rate now (and likely to blow up at any point). Their point is that they are on the rise and the US can’t do anything about that.

In terms of global perceptions, Saudi Arabia is more likely to align now with Iran in the long term – despite the comments on Wikileaks – because Iran’s sphere of influence is growing and replacing America’s wishy-washy, unreliable alliance.

There are other messages in these ships, not all to Israel or the US either. Because that’s what these ships are about, not an attack, just a warning shot over the bow.

The JPost is reporting that PA president Abbas (and his children) and Palestinian strongman Dahlan have taken out citizenship and passports from Jordan.

In fact, many PA leaders have taken on Jordanian citizenship and passports.

This is happening as Jordan has been busy trying to strip citizenship of many of it Palestinian citizens, who in fact make up some 80% of the Jordanian population.


Now, it could be that these PA leaders are expecting to be exiled at some point by their citizens for their corruption and are using their dual citizenship as a backup plan.

But the question really is, is it really dual citizenship?

With "Palestinians" making up the vast majority of the Jordanian population, Jordan is actually a de facto Palestinian state under occupation by a dictatorial colonially established minority government.

True, it's a government that made peace with Israel, but isn't democracy so much more important than a peace treaty?

So in reality, Abbas, Qurei and the rest are simply taking on citizenship in the real Palestinian state currently under occupation.

I personally don't see any contradiction

So why aren't they really protesting in "Palestine" (the 2 parts on this side of the Jordan, not the one on the East Bank).

It's not exactly a question with a simple answer. I was talking with Jameel and we came up with a number of explanations.

The first one is economics. Egypt is dirt poor, Tunis is dirt poor. But Jordan is only regular poor, while, as Palestinian Authority officials have stated, life isn't bad in Palestine. Whatever their flaws and corruption, the Arabs under PA/Fatah/Hamas rule aren't starving, they have jobs (some in the settlements), and they have a growing economy.

No democracy? Obviously that's not the end of the world.

The second explanation is where it gets more more complex.

In Gaza, they actually had their revolution. Hamas took over. The people got Sharia law. It seems they got in Gaza exactly what they wanted. They don't need a second revolution.

In Judea/Samaria the desire for Hamas/Islamic rule exists, perhaps just as strong, but the PA/Fatah is actively suppressing any organized attempts by Hamas to raise its head through use of its military, by controlling the content in the mosques, and presumably torture (see below).

Alternatively, the West Bankers may not want Hamas, so why rise up, if that will be what you get instead?

Another point to consider is that the Egyptian government is not the Palestinian government. And the Egyptian people's culture is not Palestinian culture.

Relatively speaking, while Egypt is a repressive third world government, it is still (relatively speaking to "Palestine") a civilized country/government.

Hamas and Fatah on the other hand are in reality brutal regimes (like Syria) that have no compunction against torturing or killing as many people as they need to maintain control. We saw what Hamas did to Fatah members in the Gaza revolution and during Cast Lead, and stories come out all the time of Fatah secret prisons where civilians are tortured.


It's one thing to blow yourself up or get yourself killed trying to kill the Jews. But it's another thing to risk dying for a vague concept like democracy that isn't even an ideology for you.


Last, is that the many "spontaneous" Palestinian protests we see against Israel are instigated by and involve the Israeli Left. For a variety of reasons, you're simply not likely to see Israeli leftists instigating Palestinian crowds and working them up to demand democracy.


I suspect it's going to take a lot more to get the "Palestinians" on this side of the Jordan to start rioting for change than a domino effect that may perhaps be petering off.

(I hope to remember to revisit this post in 3 months time and see if I'm right).

In the meantime, watch this video of a small protest in Ramallah against Abbas. You can see PA security people in the middle arresting protesters.




It does make you wonder if there perhaps are more small protests like this happening in "Palestine" and the news of them isn't getting out.

So perhaps there aren't many large protests yet, but could they be just around the corner?

So the Arabs have been claiming that Settlers (multiple) marched into their town and shot and killed an innocent Palestinian "boy" from the town of Arak Burin.

But after the fraud of Jawaher Abu Rahme of Bil'in was exposed, the press isn't going all vigilante and taking the Palestinians at their word and blowing up the story into something it wasn't.

And it's a good thing they didn't, because the police have uncovered so many interesting details that the Arabs didn't want anyone to know about their blood libel.

What the police have uncovered is as follows:

The 19 year old man who was killed by a civilian, wasn't innocent.

The man and his gang had surrounded and attacked a pedestrian walking near Yitzhar, stoning the victim with rocks.

Omer Maher Qadous (or alternatively Udai Maher Qadous) then approached the man with a stone in hand to apparently smash him with it at close range.

The civilian, who's identity is still unknown, then tried to push the Palestinian terrorist away.

Only when he failed to do this, did the man then shoot this Palestinian with one shot.



How do the police know what happened?

First of all, one of the Palestinian attackers talked.

The second is that there was a security camera in the area that got the whole thing on film.

Hooray for Pallywood.

There's probably nothing more unstable than an Arab government.

I know what you're saying. "You're wrong JoeSettler, Arab governments last for decades."

Yes, they typically do. But at what cost. All these Arab countries are completely 3rd world. That is the price.

In order for their dictatorial governments to continue to exist they have to, first and foremost, fight that instability. Hence, most of the government's resources end up in expenditures to maintain the regime as opposed to improving the country.

The Arab regimes are in a panic. Tunis, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority. Anti-government riots are happening and expanding. It doesn't matter if the rioters are Islamists or not, the riots are contagious.

In the end they may quell them, but at what price for that false stability?


I bet the Israeli left just don't understand why their fellow Israelis aren't rising up too.

Tu B'Shvat is a fun holiday. You get to plant trees. And it's always fun to eat the dried fruit, and figure out what how do you eat the carobs.

Arutz-7 is reporting that GreenPeace activists climbed the strings of the Jerusalem bridge to hang a sign that Bibi would see in his office.



What a bunch of idiots.


They don't even allow the train to go over the bridge with passengers on it, or even with people standing on the bridge, because they are afraid the bridge is going to collapse from the weight and vibrations.

And these people climbed the strings of this dangerous structure?

They could have pulled the whole bridge down!

The hypocrisy of it all.

Hillary Clinton and the US government are decrying the destruction of an old building in Jerusalem - because the property is owned by a Jew.

There is no question that the Jew is the legal owner, and has been so for decades. And there is no question that the Jew is within his legal rights to take these actions on his property.

But because it is a Jew that owns the land, the US government is complaining. They wouldn't be complaining if he was an Arab. They wouldn't be complaining if he was simply a non-Jew.

But he's a Jew, and so the truth comes out.

Hillary, where I come from, we call that Apartheid and plain old Antisemitism.

It's incredible how callous the Left is. Every time there is a death, the Left use it to create political capital for their attacks on Israel.

That the their claims repeatedly lack credibility, are contradictory, and only afterwords do they start to get everyone's story straight (remember the initial claims of phosphorus in the tear gas) is only the start of the manipulation.

Look at the PA not cooperating with any investigation to uncover the truth.

While the radical Left uses radically left and participating doctors for collaborative statements (presenting that as evidence too, or even as real medical facts!), while feeding nonsense to journalists who are too ignorant and lazy to do proper research, instead, relying on statements by involved pseudo-journalists with an axe to grind.

It's a shame, because the lack of actual concern for a a sick or dead person except as political capital for their cause (such as getting more reporters to the scene of their riots, or simply attacking Israel) is disgusting.

Look at Rachel Corrie. It was her friends that made up the pancake joke at her expense. Talk about the callous left.

Or look at Samir Bani Fadel the other week.

Samir claimed that Settlers burned down a field with his sheep.
B'tselem happily provided graphic photos of the Settler's post rampage damage for the media who ate up the story unquestionably.

Only that afterwords, during the police investigation, the police uncovered that Samir accidentally did it himself and he made up the story as he was too embarrassed to admit he burned and killed his own flock.

Or the story of Yitzhar settlers stoning Arabs last week.

A story fed to the media as fact by the Lefties.

Except what the Left didn't know is that the Settlers secretly filmed the entire event - exposing that the Leftists (and Leftist cameramen) were the one initiating and directing the stone-throwing (including throwing stones themselves).

And who can forget false claims of the "Jenin Massacre" with the claims of of 500 murders and mass graves.

Some (who knows, perhaps even many) of these leftwing groups and organizations are looking and even hoping for casualties, related or not to the event, as long as they can use them politically.

It doesn't matter to them if it was true or not. The reporters don't care about the Left's lack of historical credibility - they want to get the story out fast, and the Left are only to happy to paint them a fictional account to help.

The left repeatedly make up these stories, modify facts, present false information - and then get upset when tripped up by the facts.

But that's not the real point here.

I guarantee the Bil'in protesters have spent all week working to get as many reporters to the violent Bil'in riots as possible this Friday - after all, what better way to callously capitalize on the death of an apparently sick woman.

And callously capitalizing on any death they can manipulate is what the Left seem to do best.