Abbas is playing hardball and other Jewish sundries

Well this certainly looks good for finally bringing peace to Israel and Palestine. GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will meet Saturday with militant leaders to push them to honor a days-old cease-fire marred by mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli targets, according to an aide... Abbas' planned meetings with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad faction were the latest sign of his commitment to keeping intact the cease-fire he and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Tuesday to end 4 1/2 years of bloodletting. On Thursday, he fired top security commanders after Hamas bombarded Jewish settlements in Gaza with mortars and rockets. And the central committee of his Fatah movement announced a state of emergency in the Palestinian security forces in an effort to prevent new attacks. Wow. Them's fightin' words. Pretty soon the Israelis are going to want to throw that man a bar mitzvah or something... if it works. He's still got to get Hamas and Islamic Jihad to come to the table: The Islamic militant group Hamas said it would only stop attacks when it was satisfied Israel would release prisoners and stop pursuing militants. Yeah right. To quote the great philosopher Wayne... "and monkeys might fly out of my butt." I think Israel is the only country you can count on to follow up tough talk with action. They're not afraid to assassinate the occasional terrorist leader or make preemptive strikes to ensure their survival regardless of the UN's frowning, resolution making, and coordinating. In fact they're our wild card with Iran trying to obtain nuclear weapons. The Israelis destroyed Saddam's reactor in the 1980's, and I'm sure they'd do it again if it came right down to it (the sad thing is our government would probably chastise them for doing so). So if that whole diplomacy thing doesn't work, Israel can blast Iran back into the stone age if they need to. And, for those of you interested in advances in medical technologies, apparently an Israeli has come up with a new method for saving lives in the field: rocks. And our soldiers like using rocks too: IsFullofCrap (via Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler) - An innovative new bandage, invented by an American-born Israeli combat medic adapting an improvised IDF field practice of placing a rock onto a bandage to keep pressure on a wound, is already saving the lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq... Cracking the thorny U.S. military purchasing system, the Jerusalem-based First Care Products startup founded by Bar-Natan sold nearly 200,000 Emergency Bandages to the American military in 2003, and 800,000 last year. American GIs have come to call it "the Israeli bandage." See, now why couldn't I think of that? Then I'd be making millions of dollars, and it would be called the "wookie bandage," which sounds much better if I do say so myself. And finally, one more Jewish update. The fetching Mrs. Wookie attended a speaker presentation by our favorite talk show host, Dennis Prager, that was on the subject of Jews impressions of Christianity and why there's been a revival, so to speak, of Christian appreciation for Judaism, and Jew's general suspicion of Christians. It was apparently a very involved discussion which I, unfortunately, was unable to attend (my life is work, school, sleep. That's it. I barely have time to blog at all. Sometimes I have to choose, blog or eat. Man that's a tough one.) When the fetching Mrs. Wookie, returns from her business trip I'll get her notes and post something on Dennis's talk. Very rarely does anyone express such complicated philosophies in such a precise and powerful manner. But that's why we listen, and that's why the fetching Mrs. Wookie cried when he gave her a hug. UPDATE: Maybe monkey's will really fly out of my butt: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said Saturday they were adhering to a de facto truce with Israel, but stopped short of committing to the official cease-fire that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed on at their summit. Damn. And a doctor I worked for emailed me this comment: Make no mistakes about it. Israel won't take shit from anyone in the middle east. Six days was five days more than probably necessary historically to kick butt to all the followers of the "religion of peace." By the way, I recommend a book, if you haven't already read it. "The Case for Israel," by Alan Dershowitz. It's unfortunate, but probably predictable, that any purveyor of peace in the Palestinian world such as Abbas, will ultimately face his death by the "Religion of Peace," the Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. God forbid that anyone with a vision of peace could actually survive such a milieu. Thanks Doc. Hopefully this time we're wrong.