BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraqis aligned with Medhi militia started trickling into police stations in Baghdad on Monday to exchange their weapons for coupons they can later use to get cash from the Iraqi government.
[…]
Observers said the surrendering of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars and machine guns was a sign an agreement between radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi government was being implemented as announced.
[…]
“The city is very quiet and the people have been very cooperative with the Iraqi police,” he [Iraqi Police Col. Fawzi Mahmoud] said.
The last bit is more important than the turn over (which may simply be caliphascists turning over inoperative weaponry for money). What really matters is whether the Iraqi Provisional Government forces can operate freely in Sadr City.
Israelis are no angels but the extent of their mischief on the world scene is pretty small beer; in contrast, Arabs are at the heart of the public debate around the globe. One consequence is that Israelis who break the law get much more attention than their Arab counterparts.
As proof, consider two recent and parallel developments in New Zealand. In July 2004, the authorities there apprehended two Israelis, Uriel Zoshe Kelman and Eli Cara, and accused them of manufacturing a single false New Zealand passport. The brouhaha that followed included harsh statements by the prime minister, Helen Clark, and the recall of the Kiwi ambassador to Israel. The two served two months in jail of a six-month sentence, paid a fine, and were unceremoniously deported on Sept. 28. The two Israelis are accused of being connected to their government, though there is no proof of this; but if they were, it implies that they were engaged in some kind of counterterrorism activities — not exactly something most of us worry about that much. In any case, for the first time in memory, this tension led to antisemitic acts in New Zealand, specifically the two instances of the desecration of multiple Jewish graves in Wellington cemeteries.
Coincidentally, Sept. 28 was the very day the trial opened in Auckland of Fahad Jaber Ajeil and Riyad Hamied Sultan, a Kuwaiti and an Iraqi accused, in the words of the crown prosecutor, of forging passports and other travel documents on “a scale never before seen in this country.” Police found a passport-manufacturing process with false documents from seventeen countries and twelve fake passports in various states of readiness. Yet, this incident – which could well be connected to Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups – has aroused precious little ire from the Clark government, much less from the prime minister herself, who seems to find this business as usual. (September 29, 2004)
It’s rare that one gets such a clear view in to the appeasement on the caliphascists.
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Jerusalem Post reports that the UNRWA suspended employees who have been detained by Israel for security reasons. Palestinians fear that UNRWA employees will now have to sign a non-terror pledge.
Yet even an unenforced pledge on a scrap of paper to not commit terrorist acts while employed by the putatively moral exemplar of the planet is something for the Palestinians to “fear”. I guess the effort of non-compliance with the Oslo accords was too much work and the Palestinians will be avoiding that kind of strain in the future.
Backspin has a graphic image that demonstrates simultaneously
It shows masked gunmen firing while crowds of civilians, including children, crowd around them. In a real war they’d all be dead from an artillery barage. Only against Israel is the collateral death toll low enough that non-combatants would do this. And only against the Israel, the USA and their allies are what deaths do occur worthy of condemnation.