Then there is this guy.  Pastor Tom is nothing but energy and personality!  I love being around him.  You are sure to have a good time and be cared about along the way.  I mean his twitter name is @kangsta!  Who wouldn’t love a guy with the name @Kangsta?

I could go on…

The only thing that would make these guys any better was if they wore a little more Averagé.  Because Averagé > Hipster.  And here’s the proof.

~Peter

(ht: Tyler Stanton’s blog  He’s hysterical!  Show him some love…)

So I’m sitting here, having watched the year go by, and having watched the goings-on between David “Aussie Dave” Lange, and Richard “DoucheBlogger™” Silverstein, from a relatively new and interesting vantage point – inside Israellycool Estates.

At first, I had planned to continue working on the posts I have sitting in the Drafts folder, letting Dave drive the bus on this one, since this episode is (unfortunately) about him and his family. But then Brian chimed in, and since, as a fellow anonymous Evil Zionist blogger with kids of my own, this has been pretty top of mind for the last few days, I figured it was my turn.

My question for Richard is a simple one: Who are you? No, I’m not talking about your name, as, unlike Dave, you voluntarily reveal your real name on a daily basis. I’m asking about who you are as a person; about your ethics and values. Who are you? What do you stand for?

The reason I ask is because I see you describing yourself in certain ways that are hard to reconcile with some of your actions. The talk just don’t match the walk. For example:

You call yourself a Zionist, yet you make excuses for reflexively trusting your gut when approached with anti-Israel drivel that you use to augment and amplify your self-important ‘journalistic stylings’, no matter how easily said drivel is verified as untrue. You make excuses for dehumanizing IDF soldiers and accusing them of cold-blooded murder, while making excuses for the cold-blooded murderers of Hamas.

You call yourself a Jew, yet you make excuses for the brutal torture and murder of Jewish emissaries Rabbi Gavriel & Rivkah Holzberg (HY”D) in Mumbai, grotesquely fashioning this barbaric manifestation of Jew-hatred into yet another log to throw on your anti-Israel fire.

You call your blog Tikun Olam, yet you make excuses for damaging far more than you repair, witness your binary bouts of sickening glee at outing an anonymous blogger over petty egotism. Yes, you were humiliated on the interwebs, which stings, and your bewildering reputation as a legitimate source for the lazy mainstream media took a well-deserved uppercut.

But you were also given a second chance to repair the situation – to do the right thing. And you didn’t take it. You were given a second chance to keep the personal private, and in so doing, practice some honest-to-goodness Tikun Olam, perhaps for the very first time. But once again, you let your ego get the best of you.

Did you even pause at all before you hit “publish”, to think about what you were about to do? At least Jillian “Oh good” York engaged in a little self-reflection, although she conveniently left out the part where she Tweeted that Dave was “an asshole”.

So, Richard, the reason I ask who you are is because this is who I and many others see, as a result of your actions over the last few days:

When you ‘outed’ David Loeb, you failed as a journalist.

When you outed David Lange, you failed as a human being.

When everything in society suddenly stops functioning rationally, that’s when the misfits crawl out of the woodwork.  And with them their resentments, their utopian visions, their neuroses and psychoses.  Mad dogs on the loose.  A merry-go-round of feeble minds, free at last of all social fetters.

—Jean Raspail, The Camp Of The Saints, Chapter Forty.

You’ve probably heard about this, but, in case you haven’t, here’s Stacy McCain’s initial report:

Like a scene straight from the pages of Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints, a group of activists calling themselves the “Freedom Flotilla” have attempted — and evidently, failed — to break the Israeli blockade of Hamas-held Gaza:

The Israeli Navy made its first contact with a flotilla carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists and thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza shortly before midnight on Sunday, surprising the boats in international waters, according to activists on one vessel.

Israel has vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where the Islamic militant group Hamas holds sway . . .

Named the Freedom Flotilla, and led by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, the convoy of six cargo and passenger boats is the most ambitious attempt yet to break Israel’s three-year blockade of Gaza.

Two television stations reported early Monday that Israeli warships had attacked the ships, killing at least two and wounding an unknown number of people on board, according to The Associated Press. . . .

Stacy has renamed it the Flotilla Of Fools [I like to call it the Fat Chance Armada].  He links the site Israelly Cool where Aussie Dave has an exhaustive and well-done report with many links and videos.  A highlight:

While this has the makings of a PR disaster for Israel (which I posit was the whole point of the flotilla in the first place), bear in mind that they were heading to Gaza with unknown contents on board, and are known to support Hamas. Furthermore, army radio reported that passengers tried to grab weapons away from soldiers boarding , starting the violence.

It has now been confirmed that the passengers did commit some rather heinous acts against the IDF.  I urge you to take the time to read AD’s full posting.

Stacy has a second posting up that includes information of the radical Muslim organization that organized the Fat Chance Armada.

Gator Doug cuts right to the bone with his summation of the motives of those in the Armada:

…This is about destroying Israel, this is about aiding terrorists.

As to the reaction in the Blogosphere, John Doe is spot-on:

…Events like this bring out the Israeli haters. Many of them are liberals….

Several have been leaving comments at Stacy’s site and one, a musician named Ken Nicol, has hit both Stace’s site and Gator Doug’s.

SPECIAL MESSAGE TO THE ANTI-SEMITIC TROLLS FROM BOB BELVEDERE:

To save you some embarrassment if you decide to spread your vile thoughts here: My father’s a Northerner [of full Italian descent] and my mother’s a Southerner [Scots-Irish, English, German, Cherokee].  I don’t have a drop of Jewish blood in me, but I wish I did.

Doug Ross has a very exhaustive report posted with tons of video.[tip of the fedora to Donald Douglas]  Great job, Doug.

In the posting cited above, Aussie Dave also excerpts these spot-on comments by Bernard-Henri Levy, Jewish/French philosopher and author:

…Bernard-Henri Levy said, “Much can and should be learned from Israel.”

Addressing the French-Israeli conference on democracy in Tel Aviv Sunday, Levy said, “I’ve covered many wars, and I’ve never seen an army that asks itself so many questions related to morals.”

As for Israel’s status in the international community, the French philosopher said, “There is a demonization campaign against Israel all over the world.

“In a region where dictatorships and truly fascist regimes rule, Israel represents an island of democracy. Zionism is the only movement that has not failed and turned into a caricature. It is the only movement that has preserved its spirit,” he told the conference.

“Israel is a miracle because since its inception it has been in a constant state of war, yet it never gave up on the democratic values at its core,” according to Levy.

Dead solid perfect.

Am Israel Chai!
[The People of Israel Live!]