HASBARA: 31rst Anniversary of The Great Entebbe Rescue!

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The arrival home of the hostages was an intensely joyous moment.

Hi All,

Not only is today the 4th of July for Americans, but it also another incredibly important date in the history of the world. Back on July 4th, 1976, the Israelis struck an incredible victory against Islamofacist terrorism by rescuing a planeload of people taken hostage by evil people. Despite the world edging Israel to give into terrorist demands, Israel staged a daring rescue deep into Africa and successfully rescued not only its own but the citizens of several other nations as well, Jew and Gentile.

The Dry Bones comic strip is intensely insightful about the Middle East.

It was a momentous day because the world at the time had been seriously depressed by waves of the event we now call "skyjacking." Plane after plane had been "skyjacked" within the world and too many gave into the demands of the terrorists, encouraging them to attempt the same stunt time and time again. Operation Entebbe was the turning point, after which the world woke up and increased its security to the point where the word "skyjacking" has been nearly forgotten within the Western world. And thank goodness for that.

However, while Operation Entebbe was an amazing success, it wasn't pulled off flawlessly; three of the hostages were killed and one of the rescuing Israeli soldiers was also slain during the rescue attempt. May they rest in peace.

May Yoni Netanyahu, the slain Israeli rescuer, as well as the slain hostages rest in peace.

If you'd like to learn more about Operation Entebbe, please follow this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Entebbe

There have also been numerous films made and books written about the event.

Have a great Wednesday!

And Happy Fourth of July to my American readers!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

HASBARA: Five Seconds of Fame With Dry Bones!

. Hi Everyone,

Just the other day ago, I had yet another five seconds of fame with Yaakov Kirschen, the creator of Dry Bones, a legendary comic strip artist who writes (...and draws) one of the most insightful (...and entertaining) strips out there today on the Middle East. Dry Bones never fails to get a good chuckle out me or draw a little schmaltz from the source...

Dry Bones Cartoonist Yaakov (Bones) Kirschen
(Entry from the National Cartoonists Society directory)
Another Brooklyn boy. Born March 8, 1938. Graduated from Queens College 1961. Wrote and drew funny cards for Norcross. After dismissal for loudness and jocular attitude became a freelance gag cartoonist for the former "Mad Mag" guys who were then doing "Cracked." Moved on to doing cartoons for Playboy. Included in several "Best Of" Playboy anthologies. Fell in with the anti-Vietnam War folks and was actually elected delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where, in spite of all the riots, was unable to get arrested. In 1971 moved to Israel, changed first name from Jerry to Yaakov, and in 1973 began drawing a daily editorial strip called Dry Bones. In 2003 the toon celebrated its 30th year in The Jerusalem Post. It has been reprinted or quoted by the The NY Times, Time Magazine, The LA Times, CBS, AP, etc. Forbes Mag said about Kirschen: "In the tradition of Nast, Herblock, and Mauldin."

The actual story is a little less exciting... you see I found a typo in the strip and mentioned it to him, BUT five seconds of fame is still FIVE seconds of fame!

Yikes!
Maksim-Smelchak was right!!
There was a typo, now fixed.
Thanx,
Yaakov.

At any rate, check out Dry Bones when you get a chance... great comic!

http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/

Have a great Sunday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures: These are not all my images. I am using various images from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

HASBARA: Terminators Loose In Lebanon!

.Hi Everyone,

Like many of you out there, I've been following the events in the Israel-Hezbollah War. And it's not so much the fighting that I'm been following, but how the mainstream media has been reporting the conflict, which has been, as usual, pretty one-sided in favor of the terrorists.

If you simply resorted to watching television (...with the exception of FOX and a few others), you'd think that all of Lebanon was a flaming ruin and that "evil Jewish helicopters" were hunting down innocent Lebanese civilians like the Terminators from the famed sci-fi film of the same name.

And that's simply not what's happening. Israel has pulled off the kid gloves, but they're only going after areas where the un-uniformed Hezbollah terrorists are operating from, which unfortunately is behind every civilian they can find. Israel has been very specifically targetting terrorists. No ifs, ands or buts about it. If you want indiscriminate murder of civilians, you'll have to look to Hezbollah's rocket attacks.

Here are two links with satellite photos of Beirut showing that the damage is very localized (...as in localized to buildings and areas used by Hezbollah):

http://arabist.net/archives/2006/08/02/beiruts-southern-suburbs/

http://briefurl.com/Large_View_Beirut

Israel has even warned the local populations where they're going and to evacuate or, at the very least, avoid all Hezbollah members and facilities. What terrorist organization every warned the people it went after? Here's what the note looks like that has been dropped across Lebanese areas where the IDF is targetting Hezbollah:

And that leaves Israel with a choice between the lesser of two evils. Go after the terrorists and have them exploit any accidents in the media or don't go after them and put up with rockets raining down on your people. And I'm glad that Israel made the choice it did. And, as expected, Hezbollah has been doing its utmost to present its propaganda as fact...

In one case, the killings at Qana, it's starting to look like Hezbollah manufactured the supposed "Israeli attrocities" and not only killed those poor children and women, but also carted in other dead bodies in a refridgerated truck from other areas to inflate the body count. And this is on top of passing off dead Hezbollah fighters as civilians since they don't wear uniforms or otherwise identify themselves as combatants as the laws of warfare demand.

If there was one film that I could recommend you watch, it would be:

"Obsession: What The War on Terror Is Really About"

http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/

It was originally produced by HonestReporting.Com, but it has now been released to the public via Google video. I'm not the first to have noted it, but I'm certainly happy to pass it along to those of you who need to see that the War on Terrorism is very real and it affects all of us.

Abba Gav is one of the many folk who is recommending the film. His blog can be found here:

http://briefurl.com/Abba_Gav_Obsession

My friend, Yehuda, a fellow gamer, is also upset and has mentioned the most current round of terrorist propaganda that the mainstream media is gullibly and more likely deliberately trying to pass on to the public. You can find his blog here:

http://briefurl.com/Yehuda_Pallywood

And, Yael AKA Oleh Girl, a very kind soul, has also noticed the false Jihadist propaganda that CNN, BBC and other unethical mainstream media sources are trying to pass off to the public:

http://olehgirl.blogspot.com/

Yael has an amazing number of links to bloggers around the Middle East. In fact, she corresponds with many of them regularly. If anything, the Internet will probably be one of the greatest contributors to a future peace in the Middle East. It's opened up dialogue between real folks, not the ones who occupy political positions and try to pass off their opinions as those of everyone else's. It might just be the only way that the Arab peoples and others suffering under the yokes of dictatorships in the region might eventually be heard.

I highly recommend that you check out some of the many blogs written by Arabs, Lebanese and others in the region. You might be surprised what many "regular people" on the "Arab street" think...

Hint: It's not what Al Jazeera would have you beleive.

I'm linking to two notable bloggers from the region. One in Iraq:

http://briefurl.com/ITM_Arab_Media

And another in Egypt:

http://www.sandmonkey.org/

But above all else, watch the film, "Obsession." It goes a lot farther to explaining what groups like Hezbollah want and why they act as attrociously as they do than any one article in the mainstream media ever can.

As always, check out www.DryBonesBlog.com if you haven't already.

Wishing for peace in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
I've been receiving a huge number of telephone calls and E-mails from friends and supporters letting me know that they stand with Israel. Among the most heartening calls have come from the many WWII veterans I know. Their's was a generation that had moral clarity and never worried about the "proportionality" of their war against the Nazis (And make no mistake, the Nazis were allied to Jihadists that we are currently fighting). They rightly saw it as a war of right vs. wrong and did their duty for which we, the future generations, can still be thankful. I wish that more of that generation, the "Greatest Generation," was around today. God bless them.

HASBARA: Maksim's Take On the Israel-Hezbollah War...

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Hi Guys,

I've been getting an immense amount of correspondence about the current Israel-Hezbollah War and it's moved me to say my peace here at my blog. While I want to keep the focus of my blog on gaming, I will, on occasion, speak about politics, especially in regard to the Middle East, which I feel is crucial to the progress of civilization.

I added an array of links to Israeli/Jewish web sites for folks to peruse who are interested.

First of all, if I could recommend just one article to read about the current conflict, I would recommend this one from Treppenwitz:

http://briefurl.com/Thanks_I_Needed

A short caption from his article:

Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.

President Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire.

I highly recommend reading the whole article.

What Treppenwitz has done is capture the totality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which goes something like this:

1. Arabs incite and instigate through terrorism, sabre rattling and indiscriminate murder.
2. Israel uses "strong language," but fails to reply in force.
3. Arabs increase the level of violence until Israel gets really angry; angry enough to do something about it.
4. Wars breaks out between the Arabs and the Israelis.
5. The Arabs are defeated militarily on the battlefield by Israel.
6. The "world," through the auspices of the United Nations and other "international organizations" steps in, nullifies the Israeli victory, and turns every Arab military defeat into a political draw.
7. The cycle repeats.

Now, I don't beleive in the hogwash about a "cycle of violence," unless it's imposed from the outside as in this case. Normally, when a fight breaks out, whether on a school playground or between nations as in W.W.II, someone takes a beating and learns a lesson... even if only in the short term. And it takes the vigilance of a just victor to make sure that the bully learns his lesson. And...

That's what needs to happen in this conflict. Both Hezbollah and Hamas need to take a full beating... not a few punches and then have "international organizations" step in to stop the fight. Both Hezbollah, Hamas and their masters in Syria, Iran and elsewhere have lessons to learn and we do the Arab world no favors if we hold Israel's hand. The Arab people, and Muslims in general, deserve better than the tyrannies they now suffer under...

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I have a few more recommendations...

If you really want an easy way to get a toe hold on what's going on in the Middle East, I can do no better than to recommend that you become a fan of The Dry Bones comic strip. Yaakov Kirschen has been writing it for years and it has been revered by both Arabs and Israelis for at least as long. I love him, some of the most inciteful humor I've ever read:

http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/

I took another comic strip from Cox & Forkum, political cartoonists extraordinaire...

http://briefurl.com/Rock-em-Sock-em

I'm also a huge fan of Abba Gav, one of the most astute bloggers out of Israel... also one of the funniest.

http://briefurl.com/Pacifism-Isnt-Answer

And lastly, since the Treppenwitz article mentions a Marine in bad standing, I wanted to find a post that more accurately represents the United States Marine Corps as one of the finest instituions I have ever had the privilege to serve with (I was United States Air Force, but I served alongside Marines at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). I also just met a Marine this past Saturday at Great Escape Games... a talented miniatures painter named Vlad. Here's a link to a Marine that is aware of the situation that both Israel and the greater world is in:

http://briefurl.com/USMC-Letter

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I don't feel that all Arabs are bad, evil or anything of the sort. In fact, I feel that the Arab world has an imense potential that hasn't been met due to the tyrannies they live under. I don't ignore the US role in some of those tyrannic governments, but at the same time I can also acknowledge the role of the former USSR and even the Arab (...and Persian for that matter) countries' responsibilities for the horrible state that they're in.

Playing the blame game doesn't solve problems, it exasperates them. It's time to do something about them. Terrorism is a plague; I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

If I could wish one thing for the Arabs, it would for the average Arab Joe (...or I guess, Muhammed) to be able to live in peace, raise his or her children with liberty & freedom, and enjoy the many privileges that citizens in the West can under more progressive governments and the mantle of Western civilization. I would also wish justice upon the men that behead their fellow countrymen, coreligionists, foreign journalists, foreign aid workers, the Red Cross, and others.

And, make no mistake, the current conflict isn't just between Israel & Hezbollah or Israel & Hamas, it is a war of memes, that is to say of ideas and cultures. The true war is between tyranny and freedom as symbolized by Jihadi Islam and Western democracies. In the choice between those competing ideas, I know which one I would choose any day of the week.

I truly hope that this conflict will end soon, and with minimal damage to the beautiful country of Lebanon... but not without seeing justice done.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).