Hat tip Judith Klinghoffer:

I’ve now seen the footage of the BBC, Al Jazeera, and CNN. It bears all the marks of Pallywood:
Palestinian contribution: no blood, bad child actors (it takes the girl two tries to throw herself on her father, no signs of damage or crater, hospital chaos with men in doctors’ coats accusing Israel, played over and over again on TV, use of rhetoric of genocide against Israel.
Western media contribution: cutting to make it more believable (take out the girl throwing herself on the sand beside her “father” before “finding him”), cut from action piece to action piece so the audience doesn’t have the time to develop suspicions, accept the Palestinian version (Israeli shells) as reliable (without even presenting it as the Palestinian claim), presenting it with a warning about graphic footage setting up people to believe what they are supposed to be seeing).

I have not seen or heard enough to be certain here. There’s still the possibility that this is real footage, although I’d be surprised. In the meantime, real or not, so much of this footage is questionable, that it illustrates just how unprofessional the media are (BBC are you listening?) that they would play this over and over again, giving their support to yet another Palestinian narrative that will bring misery to the Palestinians. As one Palestinian, interviewed by the BBC put it:

I’ve heard people in the last few hours calling for revenge. If an attack happens inside Israel it will make them a little bit happy. It might also make them reject the referendum planned by [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas.

In other words, once again, a scene that bears many marks of staging, will drive Palestinians to self-destructive choices, while the Western media, in the unprofessional credulity, lend credibility to the unlikely and poisonous footage. Let’s hope this time they’re smarter than they were in 2000.

Update 1: There are four family members badly wounded in an Israeli hospital. A bomb did go off, although it’s not clear where, when, and whose bomb. The Palestinians refuse to give the Israelis any information that might help them understand. The Israelis will not be as easily led to take responsibility this time, despite the international outcry.

A Ha-aretz reporter compares the outrage to Al Durah six years ago, and Jerusalem Post notes that Olmert goes to Europe under a cloud from this incident (just as Barak did to Paris on October 4, 2000, four days after everyone believed Al Durah). Sarah al Deeb, writing for AP, discusses the instant iconic status of the mourning girl.

More details from the blog Israel Matzav, including the claim that it happened in the evening. (Other reports imply late afternoon.)

Kofi Anan has called for an investigation. Note that the language of the UN news release already assumes the conclusion:

9 June 2006 – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged a probe of reports that civilians were killed by Israeli forces on a beach in Gaza today, and reminded all concerned to exercise restraint and avoid further bloodshed.

If it turns out it’s not Israel, will they cover that as well?

I start a series of posts here, most thanks to Antidhimmi’s notification. They represent a wide range of ways that people try and deal with the arrest of 17 Muslims who were planning an attack on Canadian soil. The first is from Irshad Manji, one of the clearest thinkers about Islam and it’s problems today.

Blaming the rest of the world
IRSHAD MANJI
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

Three years ago, as writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto, I was putting the final touches on my book, The Trouble with Islam Today.

One afternoon, I took a break to stretch my legs. Strolling past the debates room in the student centre, I saw mounds of shoes and realized it must be time for “jummah” prayers — the communal worship in which devout Muslims participate every Friday. The place was packed with men, mostly young, many wearing logos of local sports teams.

Although I wondered where the women were (usually they could be spotted behind the male students), my attention quickly turned to the front of the room. The twenty-something prayer leader, was speaking into a microphone. His topic: holy war, and not just in Iraq.

“The jihad does not start there, brothers,” he assured the faithful. “It starts here. But if you cannot contribute with yourselves and your sons, then contribute with your money.” The brothers neither applauded nor grimaced. They quietly listened. I reported what I’d heard. Three weeks later, campus officials told me they’d raised the matter with Muslim student leaders who assured them that messages of violent jihad don’t represent Islam.

This is where the apologetic definition of the “greater Jihad” as struggle against one’s own inner demons becomes noxious. The problematic nature of this “inner definition” of Jihad as a distraction from the problem of holy-war Jihad is only part of the problem. Purely on its own terms this inner definition raises problems. If indeed it is a struggle against pride, arrogance and selfishness, fine. But what if it is a struggle against cowardliness and unwillingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater glory of Islam? What if it is not the opposite of violent Jihad and imperialist Islam, but the antechamber to precisely that brand of Islam?

Would the preacher be investigated? No. But at least other Muslims didn’t take him too seriously.

If this was supposed to come as a relief, I missed that memo.

What I found most telling is that the imam incited his followers transparently in a public building at a busy time of day. No need for secret societies or code-talk. He and his sympathizers figured they could get away with shamelessness. Shamefully, they were right.

The purloined letter. Nice play on the shamelessness (from the perspective of civil society) of the Jihadis (for them this is yet another victory over the pathetic rules of civil society which they flaunt with impunity); and the shamefulness of our response (we back down). This exchange illustrates brilliantly the workings of the Moebius strip of cognitive egocentrism. They say “Jihad” and we hear “peaceful inner struggle to make oneself better” while they mean “war against the corrupt West.” (Just like the double meaning of “occupation” in Israel: we hear “Green line” they mean “river to sea.” Dialogue of the deaf — with civil society as the loser.

With the bust of a suspected terror plot in Toronto, amateur jihadists should expect more questions. For example, if they’re so outraged by images of Muslim corpses in the dusty streets of Baghdad, where’s their fury over black Muslims dying at the feet of Arab militias in Darfur? Or democracy activists being clubbed by Mubarak’s riot police in Cairo?

In the past 50 years, more Muslims have been raped, imprisoned, tortured and murdered by other Muslims than by any foreign imperial power. Does that matter to the would-be jihadists? If not, aren’t they doing exactly what they claim the West does — demeaning Muslim victims of oppression?

Precisely: these problems are the marks of demopaths — moral standards are for you to follow and us to demand of you, but they don’t apply to us. And the questions Manji wants asked are those very questions we need to ask in order not to be dupes.

The rest of us should expect questions, too. Ordinary Muslims have a duty to challenge any clerics and civic leaders who make excuses for Islamist terror. After last year’s bombings in London, the Muslim Council of Britain insisted that the real culprit was economic discrimination. Soon after, I travelled to Leeds and Bradford — home of the alleged bombers — to speak with average Muslims. They told me that their leadership was dodging the truth, including the fact that moderate Muslim parents had refused to learn English and had abdicated their authority as moral guides. Enter the Internet, where drifting sons got their guidance from radical — English-speaking — preachers.

Similar messages of self-criticism came from young Muslims whom I engaged at a conference in Egypt two weeks ago. From Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian territories, student delegates asked: How can we Muslims allow our leaders to continue blaming the world for what we’re doing to ourselves? In the coming weeks, Canada’s Muslims may need to follow the lead of these youth.

This is good news indeed. A sighting from a reliable source of the long-fabled “moderate Muslims” out there (supposedly in vast numbers). Will we encourage them? Or will we believe the demopaths and cut the ground out from underneath them?

Above all, non-Muslims in Canada should ask themselves a basic question: What makes so many of us afraid to ask about what’s happening in the Muslim community? The easy answer is multiculturalism, according to which all cultures and religions are equal and off-limits to scrutiny.

But multiculturalism, like any belief system, becomes a stale orthodoxy if taken literally. By definition, orthodoxies anesthetize our brains, deny our consciences, suppress our voices and compel us to abandon the critical spirit that keeps any open society open. This past weekend, Canadians received a wake-up call. Let us all re-discover our spines — and our minds.

Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University, is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call For Honesty and Change.

Thank you Ms. Manji. From your mouth to our liberals’ ears.

The New York Sun has a good editorial on what Canada did to deserve these planned bombings by Muslims.

New York Sun Staff Editorial
June 5, 2006

The arrest of 17 residents of Canada with three tons of ammonium nitrate in a plot to attack targets in Ontario is a reminder of the nature of the enemy that America faces in the war on Islamist terrorists. Contrary to the beliefs of some on the American extreme left and extreme right, the terrorists aren’t simply reacting against the American-led war in Iraq or against America’s support for Israel.

Canada sent no troops to liberate Iraq. Our neighbor to the North so opposed the Iraq War that at least one American deserter fled there for safe harbor, as draft-dodgers did during the Vietnam War. And while Canada is mildly pro-Israel, and more so under its new conservative government, its arms sales to the Jewish state are peanuts compared to America’s, and at the United Nations on key votes it’s likely to abstain rather than join the America, Micronesia, and Palau in voting with Israel.

What the Islamic extremists oppose in Canada is neither its support for Israel nor its behavior in Iraq but the mere fact that it is not a country governed by Islamic law. An Associated Press dispatch on the bomb plot noted that Canada, with the America, Britain, Spain, and Australia, was listed by Osama Bin Laden as a “Christian” nation that should be a target for terrorism. Nothing short of dropping Christianity and converting to Islam will satisfy the Islamist terrorists.

What follows is this truth: the options this leaves Canada and other free nations are, in other words, either defeating their enemy or surrendering to it. Concessions short of surrender won’t satisfy the enemy, as the example of Canada demonstrates. Nor will a crackdown on immigration entirely solve the security problem for the West – it appears that many of those arrested over the weekend were Canadian-born.

More details will emerge as the case against these plotters progresses. The accused are entitled to a presumption of innocence. But this war has been going on for long enough now – dating back not only to September 11, 2001, but to the attacks on the USS Cole in 2000, the Dhahran Barracks in 1996, the World Trade Center in 1993, the United States Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. And, some would argue, to the original Muslim invasion of Europe and the Christian Crusades that followed. Not all Muslims are enemies of Christendom any more than all Christians are enemies of Islam. But one can begin to discern patterns. Those who falsely see the source of Muslim rage solely in American policy can now consider the case of Canada.

People should go back and read some of the responses to 7-7. As J. R. Kerr-Ritchie, an anti-war historian wrote as recently as March 2006:

By far the most persuasive explanation for the London bombings links them to the war on Iraq. The British government has repeatedly denied this connection. The evidence to the contrary, however, is quite compelling. In response to 9/11, the United Kingdom has supported the global war on terror spearheaded by the United States. This has resulted in the death and maiming of thousands of Muslims, illegal detentions, prisoners of war abuses, desecration of Arab and Muslim life, and the persecution of innocent American and British citizens of the Islamic faith. According to Chatham House, an independent think-tank on foreign affairs, the events of 7/7 exemplify the problem that the United Kingdom is “riding as a pillion passenger with the United States in the war against terror” (Guardian, July 18, 2005, p. 1).

Note that Chatham House is hardly the kind of impartial source one might expect from the description “independent think-tank” and its report was not accidentally an attack on Blair. As for the laundry list of crimes, they obviously apply to a much greater extent to either Saddam or the Sunni terrorist insurgency. For latest revolting desacration of Shi’i Islam and crime against humanity, see here. For the reductio ad absurdum, a kind of Chomsky clown (no it’s not Michael Moore), see Ken Livingstone’s remarks.

The role of this notion in the anti-war movement is systematically expolited by Muslim demopaths: and the outrage an insistence by Muslim groups that English policy in Iraq be highlighted as a cause of the bombings. What we have here is a clear case of wishful thinking — if there is a logic to their violence, maybe we can avoid the violence by conceding — versus reality testing — any concession encourages further aggression, nothing short of capitulation will suffice. Canada clears up the ambiguities? Is anyone in the world of PCP listening?

Karridine at Brain-Surgery with Spoons has put a podcast of a section of my fisking of Baudrillard on his site. I recommend following it with my text in front of you since it switches often from Baudrillard to me and back, and it’s really hard to read Baudrillard because he is so obscure.

Lots of interesting thoughts and approaches over there.

By the way, the doctor who removed my tonsils used a spoon with a surgical edge.