Ahead of the conference, Americans generally support some sort of agreement on emissions, with a plurality hoping congress ratifies a binding treaty. Ahead of the health care debate, Americans broadly supported health care reform, too.

The wheels of disinformation are already spinning. Lou Dobbs went fucking nuts on his radio show today while talking with complete loon Jim Inhofe. The idea of the President attempting to win support for international emissions reductions by promising that the US will attempt to meet similar targets drove Dobbs over the edge.

DOBBS: Who the hell does this president think he is?

INHOFE: I don't know, because you can't do that. And I think it's certainly disingenuous to mislead countries into thinking that a president … You know, this is not a kingdom. He's not able to do that.

DOBBS: Not yet!

If there's one thing repressive, autocratic monarchs are known for, it's attempting to cede their nation's sovereignty to a world government, or something.

Inhofe, of course, believes that global warming is a great big hoax. And here he is commenting on Obama's trip:

"I suspect President Obama is making the trip to Copenhagen in order to ‘save' the climate conference," Sen. Inhofe said. "Yet no amount of lofty rhetoric or promises of future commitments can save it. This is due in large part to the fact cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate is dying on the vine, and, as important, recent revelations of leading climate scientists who appear to have manufactured the climate ‘consensus'-revelations that cast doubt over the entire global warming enterprise.

Right. Those emails. Those fucking emails. You can argue that the emails reveal improper behavior (if you suspect a casual reference to "throwing out the peer-review process" is actual proof of any sort of wrong-doing) but there's actually not anything in any of the emails that suggests that anyone manufactured any data, at all.

But it doesn't matter. The "story," in its easy-to-digest form, is that secret emails prove climate scientists made up global warming.

Naomi Klein's recent Harper's story on the 2001 UN conference on racism was, you know, typical Naomi Klein-in-Harper's stuff (long), but it did brilliantly illustrate how these lies endure: they start with a modicum of truth and then, through enough repetition and distortion, they become ingrained "knowledge" that is wholly wrong.

That conference, popularly referred to as Durban, was supposed to be about Africa. But ahead of the conference, a few Islamic countries asked to include anti-Israel language that also downplayed the Holocaust. That language never had a chance of making it into a final UN document, but it gave the Bush administration a convenient excuse to avoid a conference that they didn't want to participate in in the first place. Then the offending language was removed, a nice little document about how bad racism is was produced, and everyone was happy.

Moreover, Southwick was quite right: after he left, all of the offending language was excised in the final round of negotiations. Which is why, in a detail conveniently excluded by Durban's critics, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres praised the Durban Declaration at the time as "an accomplishment of the fi rst order for Israel" and "a painful comedown for the Arab League."

Then, in the post-9/11 recollection of Jewish politicians in America and the right-wing press in Israel, the conference suddenly became an Israel-bashing antisemitic festival of hatred. The genuine anti-semitism on display by some protesters and the legimitate criticisms of Israel's security and citizenship policies were conflated, and "Durban" became both a dirty word and a rousing reminder that threats to the Jewish people were real and pervasive. The story of what happened at Durban spun out of control, with right-wing academics and journalists publishing dozens of stories repeating and exaggerating the myths.

But the worst distortions were in Bayefsky's bellowing full-page ads, which appeared in the Washington Times, the New York Sun, and other papers, and were signed by a long list of notables including Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, orientalist Bernard Lewis, former New York mayor Ed Koch, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. In big bold letters the ads claimed that the final Durban Declaration stated "That ISRAEL, and ONLY ISRAEL, is guilty of racism." Never mind that nowhere in the document was Israel accused, let alone convicted, of racism.

Yes, right. It all got so ridiculous that a spokesman for Israel's foreign minister said the conference's final report called Israel "the most racist state on Earth. When a BBC interviewer read him the actual Durban Declaration, which, of course, did not say any such thing, he was baffled: "even though I don't have the text in front of me, I remember quite precisely some quotes that were completely contrary to those that you've just quoted. So we must be speaking about two different documents." Indeed!

Obama avoided Durban 2, because it was already too poisoned. Here's hoping he can bring a truthful version of what happens at Copenhagen home with him, but we're not holding our breath.

As for that first bit of news, we've uncovered an exclusive, an uncomfortable truth about Ahmadinejad yet to be revealed but here, for the first time, right now: he faked his way through his haftorah portion. Kidding! But no, really, he might be a Jew. Commence self-loathing, mother-hating, guilt-ridden jokes in three, two, and...

A close-up of the Ahmadinejad's ID reveals that the Iranian leader, who has described the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry as a "myth," was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The Telegraph said the short note scrawled on the card suggests that his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth. The Sabourjians, according to the report, traditionally hail from Aradan, Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia.

Fuckin' Jews, indeed! This isn't the first time this accusation has come up, either. The name "Sabourjian" is on a list of reserved names for Iranian Jews by Iran's government. And yes, "experts" are saying that his attacks on Jews—which include wanting to blow Israel into the next dimension, as well as vehement Holocaust denial—could be over-compensating. Two more important questions then arise: what kind of car does he drive, and how big is his dick? THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. So now that Ahmadinejad has his own birthers—ironically, The Jews—he's gotta come up with something to distract the public from figuring out why he's so goddamn good with money. Adonai-damnit, he's got nuclear capabilities. Go figure.

The New York Times reported today that senior staff members at the UN have, after vetting a report by the official (and official sounding) International Atomic Energy Agency, figured out that Iran is well on their way to making us all green...with radiation.

In recent interviews, a senior European official familiar with the contents of the full report described it to The New York Times. He confirmed that Mr. Albright's excerpts were authentic. The excerpts were drawn from a 67-page version of the report written earlier this year and since revised and lengthened, the official said; its main conclusions remain unchanged. "This is a running summary of where we are," the official said. "But there is some loose language," he added, and it was "not ready for publication as an official document." Most dramatically, the report says the agency "assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device" based on highly enriched uranium.

Also interesting: Iran picked up this information via the Black market (where else?) and then proceeded to pick away at the specific pieces of information that were pertinent to their cause. But who planted it on the Black market? Who else? The Russians. In Soviet Russia, market black you:

...Many intelligence agencies assume that Iran obtained a bomb design from A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani black marketer who sold it machines to enrich uranium. That information may have been supplemented by a Russian nuclear weapons scientist who visited Iran often, investigators say.

Do we have a ball game? We have a ball game. Also, is everyone in Russia a leaky weapons scientist? It's like everyone there down to the guy who keeps the pay phones working knows something about nuclear technology that can kill us all. It's apparently in their seventh grade curriculum, somewhere between The Outsiders and dividing fractions. The donkey show in Moscow—where donkey show you— is expensive and we're all gonna die, so the pay phone fixing nuclear scientist hooks up Iran and King Khan the Black Market Badass, and the self-loathing Jew pays to invest in wiping his guilt-shilling relatives out of existence. Also, gefilte fish. That, too. It always figured that the Jewish state's biggest menace would be a guilt-ridden one of their own (Bernie Madoff, here's looking at you). Really, though. Who needs a nuke when your country's revolting every six days? A guy with a small penis, that's who.

Marc Garlasco is a former Pentagon analyst who currently does the Lord's work at Human Rights Watch, traveling the world to monitor and expose the effects of war on civilians, holding governments accountable. He is also obsessed—to the point of writing a 400-page book and posting more than 7,000 messages to an online forum—with Nazi memorabilia, medals, and trinkets. After a pro-Israel blog revealed Garlasco's hobby last week, Human Rights Watch suspended him "pending an investigation," according to the New York Times.

Garlasco's unsettling side-gig is particularly thorny for Human Rights Watch, which—because it tells the truth about Israel's conduct of war among civilian populations in Gaza and the West Bank—has long been criticized by advocates of Israel as anti-Semitic. Now those critics have some hard evidence to back up the claim: Look! One of their top investigators loves Nazis!

But do they? In a defense on the Huffington Post, written last week before he was suspended, Garlasco acknowledged that his hobby might seem "disturbing" to some, but explained that his grandfather had been conscripted into the German army during WWII, and said his collecting of Nazi artifacts was an attempt to learn the lessons of the past:

I've never hidden my hobby, because there's nothing shameful in it, however weird it might seem to those who aren't fascinated by military history. Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things. Thousands of military history buffs collect war paraphernalia because we want to learn from the past. But I should have realized that images of the Second World War German military are hurtful to many.

Collecting Nazi memorabilia doesn't just seem weird: It is weird. We've known a few people who go for that sort of thing, and we can't get past the simple fact that it is quite literally a Nazi fetish—a reverence for and investment of meaning in trinkets that are associated with Nazism. Does it make its practitioners apologists for Nazism, or Nazis themselves? No. But there's more going on there than just fanboy enthusiasm for historical artifacts. It's a fascination with the remnants of an evil regime, and it seems to us that the fascination bears some relationship to the magnitude of the evil.

Whatever is going on, we sincerely doubt that Garlasco's blood runs cold at the prospect of owning a leather SS coat because of all the historical stuff he can learn from it—that's an expression of visceral awe. Not necessarily admiration or approval, but still. All manner of collectors lose sight of reason in their pursuits, and we completely understand the dynamic of getting drawn into a dusty little corner of history and wanting to own and catalog it all. But at some level Garlasco made a decision to surround himself with symbols of horror and dread, and "I'm a military geek" doesn't have a lot of explanatory power.

It's a shame, because Human Rights Watch does good and important things, and as one supporter of the organization told the Times, its critics "have been given this deus ex machina gift about the discovery of Garlasco and his out-of-hours hobby."

[Photo via Flickr by Foxgirl.]

• Reality show siren Heidi Montag thinks she's ready for children. Thankfully, her husband, the weaselly Spencer Pratt, has enough common sense to hold off on reproduction. [NYDN]
  
  
• Superman: Man of Steel producer Jon Peters has been ordered to stay 100 yards away from colleague Brian Quintana after Peters allegedly threatened to break his legs during a hearing for Quintana's ongoing sexual harassment suit against Peters. And you thought your office had drama. [Page Six]
  
  
• Bethenny Frankel does not approve of her Real Housewives of New York co-star Jill Zarin's new friends: Why would Jill be hanging with Jon Gosselin and Michael Lohan?.... It is utterly embarrassing." [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Did that 2008 plane crash play a role in DJ AM's untimely death? Addiction expert and reality star Dr. Drew Pinsky thinks the pain killers Mr. AM took after the crash led to his relapse and, ultimately, his overdose. [ET]
  
  
• Holy smokes! Victoria Beckham went to the gym without makeup! What is the world coming to? [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Libyan tyrant Moammar Khadafy will be coming to New York next month and, according to her, wanted to rent Joan Rivers' apartment for $200,000/week. Sadly, it didn't work out. [Page Six]
  
  
• Elizabeth Moss, arguably one of the best actresses around, doesn't have a "grand strategy" when picking her roles, which explains her turn in the Sarah Jessica Parker romantic comedy Did You Hear About The Morgans? [THR]
  
  
• Dancing With The Stars "star" Melissa Rycroft accidentally squirted Orlando Bloom girlfriend Miranda Kerr in the face with a perfume spritzer. We won't even go there.... [Page Six]
  
  
• Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher got into a huge tiff during a Friday concert and, apparently, the band's now broken up, because Noel thinks Liam's a "fucking moron." Fair enough. [The Sun]
  
  
• Fashion designer Tara Subkoff has bounced back after having a benign tumor removed from her brain. That's good news. [Page Six]
  
  
• Martha's Vineyard can't stop talking about Chelsea Clinton's wedding. Though the former first daughter's parents haven't said anything, everyone's convinced the nuptials could happen at any second. [Page Six]
  
  
• Madonna and boyfriend Jesus visited the Western Wall while in Israel. Hilarity ensued. (Well, not really.) [AP]

The shooting took place at a community center located in the center of the city. The shooter was dressed in black, walked in, opened fire, and fled the scene. Police have ordered every gay club in the city closed, and are dispatching all available resources to find the shooter.

A police spokesman characterized the crime as criminal, and not an act of nationalist terrorism: "most likely a criminal attack and not a terror attack" was the quote Reuters is running, along with this:

Coastal, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv has a bustling gay scene, but open homosexuality is less welcome in conservative areas of the Jewish state. Annual gay pride parades in Jerusalem meet with often violent protests from ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Almost every report is calling the scene of the crime a "bloodbath."

June's pride week in Tel Aviv culminated with a story widely reported in the Israeli press: five gay couples marrying in a joint ceremony on the beach. There were hard-right protesters on the scene "holding up banners reading: 'God hates debauchery.'" The legislative branch of Israel's government, the Knesset, has only one openly gay member, Nitzan Horowitz, who spent the day attending a protest of the deportation of foriegn workers' children.

Two dead in shooting at Tel Aviv gay club: report. [Reuters]

Two killed in shooting at Tel Aviv gay club [Haaretz]

In Brüno, Cohen arranged a sit-down with Ayman Abu Aita, whom he identified as the leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, an honest-to-goodness suicide-bombing Palestinian terrorist group that's responsible for dozens of murders. It was funny because he made fun of Osama bin Laden and pretended to be gay.

But Aita, who claims he's no longer affiliated with the Brigades and doesn't like the idea of being seen paling around with an Austrian gay man in a feature film, is threatening a lawsuit:

Mr Abu Aita's lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, said that he is preparing a legal action against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the Martyrs' Brigade reference could get his client in trouble with the Israelis and the homosexual association could get him killed by the Palestinians.

Of course, one way to avoid getting mixed up with gags like this is to not affiliate yourself with groups that launch suicide bombings in the first place, so—wait, that didn't work for Ron Paul, did it?

What's worse, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is making its own threats against Cohen—bafflingly enough, via the "Jerusalem bureau" of WorldNetDaily, the birther outfit that's rapidly overtaking Lyndon LaRouche's place in the taxonomy of American political paranoiacs. WND's Aaron Klein, whom we last saw engineering a fake Wikipedia scandal designed to promote his noxious and fanatical beliefs about Obama's birthplace, obtained a statement from the group:

We reserve the right to respond in the way we find suitable against this man. This movie was part of a conspiracy against the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Islamist nutjobs complaining to right-wing nutjobs about a Jewish comedian.

[Via Intelligencer.]

An Israeli woman known only by her first name, Anat, bought her mother a new mattress as a surprise and tossed the old one out, leaving it to be picked up by sanitation workers. What she didn't know was that her mother recently became panicked by the global banking crisis and had withdrawn all of her savings and stuffed the money into the mattress that Anat threw out. The woman, Anat, is now spending her days combing through Israeli landfills in the hopes of finding the cash-stuffed mattress.

Security guards have been placed on landfill sites in Tel Aviv to keep treasure hunters away, as word spread in Israel of what must be the worst exchange since Aladdin's battered old magic lantern was swapped for a shiny new one.

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot published a picture of the distraught daughter searching through a landfill site, having already tried the three other dumps where rubbish from her neighbourhood could have been taken.

The dump manager, Yitzhak Borba, said that his staff were helping her because she appeared "totally desperate", but the task was complicated by 2,500 tons of new rubbish arriving every day.

This should be a lesson to everyone—Package your cash inside of cold containers and stuff it in your freezer, just like ole Dollar Bill Jefferson. Or maybe not.

Daughter Throws Away Mattress Stuffed With Mother's $1M Life Savings [Guardian]

Supposedly furious that he was unable to secure a new TV deal, Topaz enlisted three henchmen to attack the CEO of the Keshet Broadcasting Network, an exec at Reshet Television, and a bigtime agent. Bones were broken, and eye sockets fractured. Topaz has been in trouble before, after being accused of sexually harassing an actress on his TV show.

So basically he's Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, and Bob Barker all rolled into one, with maybe a little Ari Emmanuel thrown in for good measure.

Bill Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who have nothing in common besides a lack of restraint, self-awareness, and connections to Barack Obama that they both wielded as weapons when he refused to endorse every aspect of their world-views and ideologies, pretended it was still 2008 and that anyone but Sarah Palin cared about them anymore and joined together to lead a march on behalf of the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.

While it would've been nice if maybe people with some vague connection to the peace process had led the march, these jokers did manage to get some headlines, so good work, Committee. Really helped your credibility, there.

Meanwhile Obama and Netanyahu will agree on precisely nothing, at all, because one is a pragmatist and the other wants us to nuke Iran.

According to the story thus far, the Israeli agent whose phone was being tapped by the NSA promised Harman that, if she could get the Department of Justice to abandon its prosecution of two former AIPAC staffers, Saban would use his influence with then-minority leader Nancy Pelosi to keep Harman in her leadership seat on the House intelligence committee.

The Los Angeles Times, in a brief profile today, describes Saban, who was worth $3.4 billion in 2008, in quasi-heroic terms as a generous and committed man of passion:

Even in a town of bigger-than-life personalities, media mogul Haim Saban stands out — lion-like in demeanor, furiously determined and unshakably loyal to those people and causes in which he fervently believes.

Those causes: Israel, the Democratic Party and medical philanthropy — in that order. And he has a history of putting his vast fortune behind all three.

Saban has a reputation as a brutal businessman. In person, he projects all the charm and terror of Ian McShane's Deadwood character Al Swearengen. Once, according to an excellent Portfolio profile from last year, while negotiating with Kiss' Gene Simmons over the rights to Kiss characters for use in a cartoon, Saban turned to his partner and said, in Hebrew, "Now we gut him." Saban didn't know that Simmons, who was present, was Israeli and spoke Hebrew.

Another way to put it is that Saban decided to buy himself a foreign policy. He has personally paid more money to politicians than any other American—$13 million since 1999, according to Portfolio—all with the avowed intent of ensuring that the U.S. will support Israel no matter what Israel does. Saban told Portfolio that his grudging support of Barack Obama in the 2008 election was premised on being reassured that Obama had a "visceral commitment, as opposed to a logical or strategic one," to the Jewish state.

Saban was born in Egypt, moved to Israel in 1956, and landed in America in 1983. He started his career as a musician and promoter, playing bass in an Israeli Beatles cover band called the Lions. He began making his fortune by buying the rights to background music in children's cartoons, and is credited as the "composer" for more than 3,700 theme songs and cues—meaning he gets paid every time they are aired—but the Hollywood Reporter reported in 1998 that he simply paid the actual composers a one-time fee for the rights and the credit. (That's not an uncommon arrangement in Hollywood, but a number of composers threatened to sue Saban, according to Portfolio, and he settled for $10,000 to each of them.)

Saban's interest in cartoon music led him to discover the Might Morphin' Power Rangers in Japan in the mid-1990s, which made him a fortune when he brought it to the United States. He parlayed that into a deal with Fox to purchase Pat Robertson's Family Channel, which they sold to Disney in 2001 for more than $5 billion. He is currently an owner and chairman of Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster.

He applies the same attitude to his political machinations. During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, when it looked like superdelegates were going to decide the race, Saban reportedly offered the Young Democrats of America—which controlled two superdelegate votes—$1 million if they would support Hillary Clinton. Saban denied it. Nor is his political largesse limited to the U.S.—he reportedly paid $120,000 to Shimon Peres' prime minister campaign in 2006 in exchange for help in purchasing the Israeli communications company Bezeq.

In 2002, Saban launched the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, an arm of the Brookings Institution, with a $13 million grant. It served as a sort of left-wing cover operation for proponents of the invasion of Iraq, employing liberal hawks like Kenneth Pollack, whose book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq was influential in bringing Democrats on board with the Bush Adminsitration's plans.

Personally, Saban is a boisterous showman. The gardens at his Beverly Hills estate are modeled after the ones at Versailles. When he learned in 2000 that a $250,000 donation to the Democratic National Committee had been bested by someone else who gave $500,000, he sent another check for $250,000 plus a $1 bill: "No. 2 doesn't fly for me," he told Portfolio. He's married to a shiksa wife, and the family buys a Christmas tree every year.

It's not surprising that Saban is wrapped up in the Harman story—he's been at the center of Israeli advocacy in the U.S. for decades. But it is odd that Israeli intelligence—if that's what the sources describing the wiretaps are referring to when they say "suspected Israeli operative"—would engage such a well-known and colorful figure in a highly sensitive operation.

Saban has been active in Hollywood and the media business for years. What can you tell us about him?

The National Security Agency eavesdropped on a telephone conversation Harman had with a "suspected Israeli agent" in October 2005, in which Harman agreed to try to quash an investigation into an Israeli lobby.

At the time, the Justice Department was pursuing an espionage case against two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful Israeli lobbying group. According to CQ's Jeff Stein, the NSA was listening in on an Israeli operative's calls when they picked up a conversation between the target and Harman in which the congresswoman promised to "waddle in" to the AIPAC case "if you think it'll make a difference."

In exchange, Stein reports, the Israeli operative promised to use his (or her) influence to help Harman land the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee. In October 2005, the Democrats were heavily favored to win the mid-term election; the wrangling for committee assignments had already begun, and Nancy Pelosi, who was expected to be named Speaker, was signaling that Harman was not a candidate for the Intelligence Committee.

This is the second report that the NSA was spying on members of Congress to come to light in recent weeks; last week the New York Times reported that the agency tried to tap the phone of an unidentified congressman in late 2005 or early 2006 (the tap never happened). The Harman wiretap, according to Stein, was approved by a court.

According to Stein, Harman ended the quid-pro-quo negotiation by saying, "This conversation doesn't exist."

Nothing came of the conversation, because a) Harman didn't get the intelligence committee, and b) the Department of Justice continued with it's case against the AIPAC staffers. (So much for the all-powerful Israeli lobby!)

Allegations that Harman was in unseemly cahoots with AIPAC are not new; the FBI launched an investigation into Harman's relationship with the lobby back in 2006. But the wiretap is the first report of solid evidence that the FBI was on to something.

According to Stein the FBI was on the verge of officially opening a case against Harman based on the wiretap, but the White House scuttled it:

But that's when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he "needed Jane" to help support the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, "I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."

[...]

And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

Harman is in deep trouble. Through a spokesperson, she told CQ that the allegations are an "outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact."

The most interesting question is: Who was the "suspected Israeli operative"? Harman was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, so it's not like she was palling around and making deals with just any old spy off the street. Whomever she was talking to was likely a powerful person in Washington. And a spy.

Zuckerman's "blog," as the Huffington Post insists on calling posts, is headlined "The Story You Aren't Hearing About Israel," and leads with this:

Did you hear about the two policemen who stopped to help a driver stuck with a flat—and were shot to death in the head at point-blank range?

Did you know about the 120-kilogram bomb planted in a parking lot adjacent to a shopping mall where thousands of people were milling about the stores, restaurants, and movie theaters?

No, of course, you didn't. These are just two everyday incidents of the ordeal confronted by people in Israel while the world and the political leaders look away. Outrages like these do not make it into the Western media, which exhibit the familiar phenomenon of monitoring only the conflicts that are the flavor of the month.... Ordinary Israelis despair of the cruel bias.

Alright, let's take the bait! Here's the New York Times covering the two police officers getting shot. And here's the Washington Post. And here's the Los Angeles Times. Other papers that ignored the story by writing about it include the Boston Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the London Daily Telegraph.

What about the New York Daily News? Did it devote newsprint to the murders? Of course not, because it is owned by a royal putz who knows not whereof he speaks.

Zuckerman also, in passing, blames the murders of the traffic cops on the fact that "Israel eased restrictions on movement in the Nablus area of the West Bank." This is false, according to Israeli police commanders:

Senior police officials say that the removal of checkpoints and the low intensity of Israel Defense Forces operations in the West Bank did not contribute to Sunday's shooting death of two traffic cops in the Jordan Valley.

But Zuckerman doesn't believe them, because he is a raving anti-Semite.

[Via Mondoweiss.]

Like maybe you're some dude with a diary at Talking Points Memo, and while you've visited Israel 70 times before, and your sister lives in Haifa, you have maybe blogged once or twice about your reservations about a new Israel government and the stalling of the peace process. You might be on a list!

Landing at Ben Gurion we were quickly moved to an interrogation room.

Two gentlemen (I assume they were Shin Bet but they never said) questioned us for 90 minutes about my blog postings on Israel, some of which I recognized from TPM. They had a significant volume of printouts and asked detailed questions about my criticisms of Israel.. Finally in exasperation I told them - "For G-d's sake, I am no Norm Finkelstein". Bad move - they immediately started questioning me on my relationship with Finkelstein and seemed unmoved by my denials of ever meeting the man. Finally, they said we could enter Israel but we "better watch our step". I was not terribly bothered by the interrogation but my wife was extremely upset by it.

But of course it was all misunderstanding and it turned out the 64-year-old blogger was not a threat to Israel's existence, probably. Until he moves there and undermines the probable Netanyahu government from the inside.

As predicted, wrapping up the war now will allow news of its aftermath and the inevitable tallying-up of the destruction wrought to be overshadowed by wall-to-wall coverage of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, the child Obamas, the inaugural balls, the crazy DC traffic, the Obama move into the White House, the residual bitching of Bush staffers, the scramble for post-presidential interviews of various Bush officials, Obama's accomplishments on his first day in office, the Obama plan for the first 100 days, and the initiation of Congressional squabbling over the Obama agenda.

Good timing, PR-wise. For Israel. [Breitbart]