Dude, you’re either going to get nothing or there will be “blood running through the streets” which may be his plan. From YNet News.

Friday afternoon, Abbas said  he is adamant about not recognizing Israel as the Jewish state.

“They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state,” Abbas said in a meeting with some 200 senior representatives of the Palestinian community in the US, shortly before taking the podium and delivering a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Then he marched off to the United Nations…

“We extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peacemaking.”

What am I missing here?

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes…

The move comes as a rebuke to Barack Obama, who tried to warn the Palestinians that attempting an end-around on direct negotiations would carry significant political consequences.  Abbas’ persistence appears to show that Obama has little influence on events in the conflict now, which may have its own repercussions in the US for his administration.  Congress will almost certainly respond by suspending aid to the Palestinians, and Obama will have to decide whether to defy a bipartisan effort to punish Abbas for his actions.

From Breitbart.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act with “restraint” and “wisdom” over the Palestinian bid for full state membership of the United Nations.

In the meantime, Palestinian leaders are saying stuff like this…

Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said Wednesday that the Palestinians’ statehood bid at the United Nations is the only alternative to violence, stressing that the UN move will give the Palestinians the chance to promote their rights.

How about the Palestinian youths?

[A]way from the [peaceful] gatherings, more than a hundred Palestinian youths threw rocks at Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint on the edge of Ramallah. The soldiers responded with teargas and used a “screamer” — a device that emits an ear-splitting high-pitched sound to disperse crowds. …

Reflecting anger with U.S. policy, a Palestinian, his face covered by a scarf, climbed the stage scaffolding and set ablaze an American flag. Earlier, some of the demonstrators had tried to stop the flag burning.

The Weekly Standard notes the current website for the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations includes the long-time logo for the Palestine Liberation Organization that includes a “map” of Palestine with no reference to Israel at all … seems to be wiped off the map.

Ben Shapiro over at Big Government notes:

This week, Sol Stern of Encounter Books released a broadside titled “A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred.”  In it, Sol details the history of Arab rejection of a Palestinian state.

Phineas at Sister Toldjah notes:

[T]he Arabs of Palestine have been offered their own state several times over the past century and, each time, they’ve slapped away the proffered hand of peace and responded with violence. Wallowing in the Jew-hatred that’s hard-wired into Islam, their leaders sought out allies from, among all people, the Nazis. Even after the Nazi defeat and repeated failures to destroy Israel since world War II, the Palestinians have rejected generous offers, one after the other.

No additional commentary from me, but I want to open up comments to all of you to get your opinion. Can you count how many times Arabs have rejected a plan for a Palestinian state since 1917? I’ll admit, I thought it was once … at Camp David in 2000 facilitated by President Bill Clinton.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ByJb7QQ9U

To be fair, I never expected anything less from Netanyahu. But the President seems caught off guard. It’s Netanyahu’s reasons for his firm stance on the 1967 borders that impressed me most. It also makes Obama’s position so much more difficult. Obama gambled in setting conditions he must have known would not be accepted.

Indeed, it is a classic speech from a seasoned head of state, brilliantly educated, and a seasoned military leader. Listen to it all, and with Palestine headed full steam ahead to a UN resolution seeking recognized statehood, Obama’s headstrong gamble I think, and I’m no expert, puts the US in a real bind. Danger ahead.

Watch every second. From America Live on FNC. More analysis there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-DL4ihfM8M

Scott Bates, with the Center for National Policy, told us today Obama’s decision to insist on Israel withdrawing to pre ’67 borders surprised him and worried him as well, and one that seriously hurts Israeli’s bargaining power. It is, he said, like telling folks at a poker game which player is holding a royal flush. And in the middle of the “Arab Spring” it also further complicates an already unsettled middle east.

This could end up blowing up in the US’s face. Let’s hope not. At the very least AP at HotAir says it’s payback for Obama’s blindside yesterday.

Bibi knew this would be his golden opportunity to pay Obama back for yesterday’s speech, and darned if he didn’t seize it. It’s riveting. O was probably completely blindsided by it too, but no doubt realized quickly that this little history lesson would soon go viral in the media and online. Hopefully no meaningful agreements were reached earlier in their private meeting, because if they were, you can forget about ‘em now.

As for political blowback … Democrats publicly say American Jews are still solidly behind Obama. From the WaPo, page 3,

Democratic officials believe Obama will have no trouble winning the Jewish vote in 2012, but even a small dip in his popularity in Florida — a notoriously hard-won state — could create problems for him.

Recent events have cut both ways for Obama’s relationship with American Jews: While there is immense support for his tough approach to terrorism, especially with the recent killing of Osama bin Laden, uprisings in the Middle East have caused nervousness in Israel about what regimes may follow.

It’s a good recap and worth reading.

Certainly, the media is being used – in my opinion – to support the narrative that Israel is the aggressor in the Middle East, but since we now have bloggers and independent dispatches from the region published online daily, will the main stream media wake up? Hat tip to Pamela Gellar at Atlas Shrugs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV6DVk04HkM

Last week, I wrote about a Danish report from inside Gaza concerning the living conditions Palestinians deal with every day. It certainly is not ideal, but it’s also not nearly as bad as some in the media portray it to be. Today, Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air reminded me about another report I read a couple of weeks ago and never got the chance to write about.

Tom Gross tells us about the fancy restaurants and an olympic-sized pool in Gaza. (Go to Gross’ site and read the full post please.)

While prominent Western media continue to lead their viewers and readers astray with accounts of a non-existent “mass humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, fancy restaurants (video below) and an Olympic-size swimming pool open there

• Most Israeli towns don’t have Olympic-size swimming pools
• Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live a middle class (and in some cases an upper class) lifestyle that Western journalists refuse to report on because it doesn’t fit with the simplistic story they were sent to write
• If you drop into the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu” (video, photos below)
• UN-run summer camp for Palestinian children burned to the ground for being “un-Islamic”; UN staff there threatened with murder; UN Security Council fails to react
• It is quite something when the president of a country (Shimon Peres) sees the need to criticize a foreign newspaper, such are the depths that The Guardian sunk to yesterday

Exit question for CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and Fox News. What’s the deal in Gaza?

Gaza is about 140 square miles – less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island – and has a population of around 1.5 million people. Gaza’s population is more dense than Rhode Island’s which has a total population under 1.1 million.

Can the main stream media do some reporting in Gaza? What are the living conditions for the middle and upper classes in Gaza? What percentage make up the lower, middle and upper classes? Are some children in the street starving with bloated stomachs? Can you provide current video or photos?

All of the above noted, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) vocally challenged President Obama on the floor of the House. Why hand out $400 million in cash to Hamas and completely cut off all military support for Israel? Why meet publicly with and offer White House Oval Office photo opportunities with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, and refuse to do the same with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c09RyJC0JqI

Update: Doug Powers over at Malkin’s blog is also writing on the subject.

Gaza has supposedly been handed upwards of $2 billion in aid each year, that’s more than $1,300 per year for every man, women and child in Gaza. Even if the suggested $2 billion figure is too low or too high, where does that money go? How is it used? Is it distributed to the government and upper classes only? Does it trickle down?

Here is the video for the Roots Club – which has a nice Flash website – where it seems the upper and middle classes can hold events and parties – including weddings – in a pleasant atmosphere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvvkXYD12U

By no means am I saying all or even most Palestinians in Gaza are living the good life. But where is the story from the main stream media about the Olympic-sized swimming pool and complex that opened in Gaza last month? So … a shortage of building materials and water you say? Regional football, volleyball and tennis matches?

Gaza – Ma’an – Gaza’s first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society.

Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project.

Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches.

As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.

Let’s be willing to take in all of the information provided, and yes, let’s be willing to take sides. But to take sides, people need to be provided with good information, and it certainly seems like we have not been provided the full story by the media, as they continue to be used by Hamas and other terrorist organizations as their main weapon against Israel and the west.

Remember Michelle Malkin’s tagline from years back on her blog? It was a quote from Longfellow. The pen became a clarion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQcQdWBqt14

Now the apology. Nicely worded, by a publicist?

In a written statement issued Friday, Thomas apologized, saying, “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

She said the comments “do not reflect” her “heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.”

So … satisfied? I am always happy when folks recognize silly stupid statements, and as a member of the WH Press Corps, she should apology. This is not a free speech issue, not for Helen. But I also am not satisfied. Read the apology again, and then watch the video. Ms Thomas claims that what she said is not her heart felt belief, but when you listen to video you can tell it is. Thus in my mind the apology is more a PR redo rather than a heartfelt apology.

If Helen Thomas believes that Israelis are occupiers, so be it. This is America, and those are her views. But as a journalist, she should keep it to herself, and spare us the carefully crafted apology. That’s my view, I hope over time she proves me wrong.

Do read the full Krauthammer piece in the Washington Post, but here’s a taste.

But, if none of these [defense approaches are] permissible, what’s left?

Ah, but that’s the point. It’s the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who’ve had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What’s left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.

It will be our featured video in the sidebar for a couple of days, but posted here for posterity. Atlas Shrugs, Blackfive, and Power Line posting so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg

Meanwhile, President Obama thinks the deaths were unnecessary, but wants to wait for the facts. As a reminder, United Nations General Assembly President Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki condemned the “inhuman and totally unacceptable aggression and use of force against humanitarian personnel” and then goes on to demand an investigation.

If you’ve already determined it was inhuman and totally unacceptable, why ask for an investigation you goof?

Lyrics for ya to sing along…

There comes a time
When we need to make a show
For the world, the Web and CNN
There’s no people dying,
so the best that we can do
Is create the greatest bluff of all

We must go on pretending day by day
That in Gaza, there’s crisis, hunger and plague
Coz the billion bucks in aid won’t buy their basic needs
Like some cheese and missiles for the kids

We’ll make the world
Abandon reason
We’ll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
With guns and our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Ooooh, we’ll stab them at heart
They are soldiers, no one cares
We are small, and we took some pictures with doves
As Allah showed us, for facts there’s no demand
So we will always gain the upper hand

We’ll make the world
Abandon reason
We’ll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
we’re waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
But you worry that it may not look so good
Well well well well don’t you realize
You just gotta call yourself
An activist for peace and human aid

We’ll make the world
Abandon reason
We’ll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
We’re waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
We con the people
We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We’re waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world (Bruce: we con the world…)
We con the people (Bruce: we con the people…)
We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We’re waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
The truth will never find its way to your TV

If you keep hitting someone over and over and over again, eventually they are going to punch back. Don’t be surprised if the punch hurts a bit more than you expect. From the Straights Times in Singapore.

ANKARA – THREE of the four Turks killed in an Israeli raid on aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip were devout Muslims who wanted to be ‘martyrs,’ relatives and friends were quoted as saying on Wednesday.

The names of the victims have not been officially released, but the media identified them on Wednesday as four men, all involved in Islamic movements or charities.

One of them, Ali Haydar Bengi was described as a 39-year-old father of four who studied at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, a prominent centre of Islamic learning, and ran a telephone repair shop in Diyarbakir, in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east. Bengi ‘was helping the poor and the oppressed. For years, he wanted to go to Palestine. And he constantly prayed to become a martyr,’ Bengi’s wife, Saniye, told the Vatan daily. ‘Before embarking on the journey, he said he desired to become a martyr. He wanted to be a martyr very much,’ Bengi’s friend, Sabir Ceylan, told the Milliyet newspaper.

Read the full article for more on three other Turks involved.

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear, the activists staged this event with the hope of someone getting killed when Israel was doing what they are legally obligated to do. All the activist needed to do was allow the cargo to be completely inspected, and none of this would have happened. But delivering supplies to Gaza was not and is not the current intent. More from a Washington Times opinion piece today…

Friends and relatives of three of the four Turks killed aboard the ship told Turkish media the men had been open about their intention to die in the course of waging war on behalf of Islam. In this case, that war happened to have taken the noble form of loading useless supplies onto a ship and, armed with the subterfuge of wanting to bring aid to an already-aid-saturated area, run a blockade instituted by a country that had the temerity to want to keep its citizens from being murdered. Really, were there ever three individuals more deserving of eternal Paradise and 72 dark-eyed virgins apiece than these guys?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSAxAj2KIdU

We had no video from the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Cambridge, yet Obama felt comfortable degrading law enforcement in public. Now we’ve seen video, after video, after video, after video of the attacks by Hamas (terrorist) supporters who were not trying to bring supplies to Gaza, rather create an international incident that would put Israel on the defense and get all the bobble-heads at the United Nations in a stir for the next few months.

And Obama stays silent.

Points of fact:

1. Israel suggested the flotilla bring the supplies to an Israeli port for inspection and they would be quickly delivered to Gaza. The supporters of terrorists refused.
2. Israel knew they were heading to Gaza and demanded to inspect the cargo. The supporters of terrorists refused.
3. Israeli defense forces tried to board the vessels to inspect and were repelled with flash bangs, chains, sling shots, wooden bats and steel pipes.
4. Once the IDF rappelled in from helicopters, they were immediately attacked. (They seem to have defended themselves with pistols, but some pistols were taken from them by the supporters of terrorists and used against them. I’m willing to bet some of the dead were shot by the supporters of terrorists themselves.)
5. The supplies were going to be delivered – at least some of them – but Hamas has refused the shipment.
6. Gaza seems to be doing pretty good when it comes to supplies already. Where is the desperate need?

Don’t like my sourced link in number 6 since most of the news you hear concerning conditions in Gaza are terrible? How about a report from a Danish journalist who traveled into Gaza this week [translation]?

When I yesterday morning drove through Gaza City, I was immediately surprised that there are almost as many traffic jams as there always has been. Is there not a shortage of fuel? Apparently not. Gasoline is not even rationed.

Many shops were closed yesterday, Hamas has declared a general strike in protest against Israel’s brutal and deadly attack on the Turkish flotilla with pro-Palestinian activists on board. So it was difficult to estimate how many products were on the shelves. Therefore I went over to the Shati refugee camp, also known as Beach Camp. Here is one of Gaza’s many vegetable markets that sell much more than just fruits and vegetables.

I will not say whether, in better times has been a larger product range than there was yesterday. But there was certainly no shortage of vegetables, fruits or any other ordinary, basic foods. Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, watermelons, potatoes – mountains of these items in the many stalls.

I must admit I was a little surprised. Because when I call down here to my Palestinian friends, they tell me about all the problems and deficiencies, so I expected that the crisis was a little more clear.

And the first woman we interviewed in the market confirms this strange, contradictory, negative mindset:

“We have nothing,” she said. We need everything! Food, drinks … everything! ”

It disturbed her not at least that she stood between the mountains of vegetables, fruit, eggs, poultry and fish, while she spun this doomsday scenario.

What is the truth concerning conditions in Gaza?

Terrorist are really good at getting their subjects to comply with orders. Hamas is no different, they control the people, economy and government in Gaza. It’s called propaganda … look it up.

FoxNews video courtesy Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpO80NQYnI8

At least Vice President Joe Biden had his head screwed on correctly this morning. From Ben Smith at Politico.

“[The Israelis have] said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people,’” Biden said.