Hanukkah Firestorm in North Israel

The forest fires raging in northern Israel bear mentioning, especially during Hanukkah. (Hang in there, Haifa.) As for cause, probably an act of God — lightning or the usual careless cigarette, whipped up by the easterly "hamsin" (or more Biblically, sharav) winds common in Israel, perhaps aggravated by El Niño or global warming. The hamsin winds are a kind of Foehn wind like those off the Alps or the famous hot westerlies of Japan. In this country, they're chinook winds, or the Santa Ana winds of Los Angeles, or anything outen the moufs of hot air windbags like Palin, Beck or Limbaugh. Doesn't appear to be arson — whether by Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Qaeda or bored kibbutzim — but the predictable eyebrows have already been raised, triangulating analysts have downgraded "forest" to "brush" in recent PR, and the blaze has already been extinguished, no doubt negotiated to death.

We had two inches of snow this morning. Spice of life.

"Blood libel"

Apparently, Israel is furious with a Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet, because it ran a story (with inconvenient photos) that Israeli soldiers have been literally carving up Palestinian kids and selling their organs on the black market (with a tie-in to the FBI arrest of a kidney-trafficking rabbi from Brooklyn last month) since at least 1992. The Israelis consider this a "blood libel" and I have to admit, it does sound about as farfetched as 1930's radioland mystery theater.

On the other hand, carving up Palestine and selling West Bank real estate to Israeli settlement developers is just business as usual, so — "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"

What? You can't read Swedish? Shame on you! (Try Google's Language Tools.)

Briar Patch

I see Joe Biden has been telling the Israelis, sure, go ahead, it's your own country to defend, go ahead and bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities.

Just stop with the settlements already, or we might just sit back and watch the Iranians go ape. (It's our Policy.)

From the C.I.A. World Factbook:

• Iran, "slightly larger than Alaska" (1,600 thousand km², pop. 66,429,284, median age 27) NEAR NUCLEAR


• Israel, "slightly smaller than New Jersey" (20 thousand km², pop. 7,233,701, median age 29) NUCLEAR


• Denmark, "slightly less than twice the size of Massachusetts" (43 thousand km², pop. 5,500,510, median age 40) SANE


• Gaza Strip, "slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC" (360 km², pop. 1,551,859, median age 17) TEEN AGED MUTANT NINJA TURTLE

You may recall from your ancient history lessons that Iran is the bit more than Saddam Hussein could chew that forced him to resort to nerve gas to get off the battlefield alive, an experience that convinced the Ayatollahs they need the atomic bomb.

It had nothing to do with us. Thanks, Dick. Thanks a bunch.