So the 5:30 news on the radio this morning began with the story of the kid who didn't get to blow himself up yesterday. "They offered him about twenty dollars and seventy-two virgins!" went the opening announcement. (I love that extra "two". It's so much better than just plain "seventy," like the Sanhedrin, l'havdil.) Maybe it's just me, but I wonder if a mentally challenged fourteen year old really appreciates an offer of women. What does he think he's going to do with them? Of course, that whole society is sick. The following is an email I got from my friend Stephen M. Tolany this morning, entitled "literally mind-blowing photographs":

!WARNING! ***The images posted at the link below are extremely graphic and not for the weak of heart (or for anyone who has just eaten lunch).*** But I very highly encourage everyone to look at these pictures and forward them to anyone curious to understand more about the bloodthirsty and bloody culture of the haters of Israel.

Curious to see how Palestinians and their sympathizers want to remember their revered spiritual leader?

Curious to see the brains behind Hamas?

Go to the following link and scroll all the way down:

http://www.alburaq.net/forum/thread.cfm?CFB=1&TID=36516

(No wonder al-Jazeera aired the images of the dead American servicemen. They'd do the same for a beloved religious teacher! THIS is what these people like to watch on TV over their dinners. This is what they like to show their young children in order to get them to to want to blow themselves up to kill Jews and Americans.)

(Back to NL.) No words truer spoken. I do recommend the third comment on this posting at Protocols, though- it's quite funny, but I'll let you read it there.

The Times has a whole sequence of photographs of this incident on their front page- it's really something to see. They don't explain the very good reason why the kid had to strip to his undies (to see if he had more bombs on him), but that's intuitive, and I think it's a good thing they showed the pictures. Funniest part, though- an "only in Israel" scene. The last photo shows them detonating the bomb from a distance. On one of concrete barriers is clearly written, in graffitti (you can only see a few words and letters, but if you speak Hebrew you'd know it automatically), "Mitzvah gedolah l'hiyot b'simcha"- it is a great commandment to always be joyful. I love it.

A link on The Village Idiots takes us to a very disturbing site, pictures of the Neturei Karta burning the Israeli flag around the world as part of their standard Purim celebrations. OK, (well, actually, not OK, but whatever) they disapprove of Israel. But to hate it? And make hating it so formalized? Me, I'll be volunteering at the Salute to Israel parade again this year, sorely tempted to flip these evil people the bird as I pass them. I hope to resist the temptation- the Parade is beautiful (y'all should come), and I think the huge crowd that gathers specifically across from the spot where the Arabs etc. are to yell at them are missing the point of, and, to a certain extent, ruining, the parade. Ignore them and cheer on the marchers, OK?

I do find it ironic that the Neturei Karta people use as their site's symbol a depiction of the Luchos (Tablets) joined, and with round tops- a very non-Jewish way of depicting them. Losers. A funny story- we were learning the sugya in Bava Basra that discusses the dimensions of the Luchos with Rav Wohlgelernter, who's also the rabbi of the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue, long may it last (see the page and you'll know why I say that). The gemara, of course, talks of them as square, at which point the good rabbi looked up. "I know what you're wondering," he said. "'But rebbe, the luchos were round on top!' Well, yes, that's what they look like in many pictures. That's how Michelangelo made them. That's what they looked like above the Aron in my shul- until I got up on a ladder and took them down myself." Heh. I love that man. I'll take one Rabbi Wohlgelernter against a thousand Neturei Karta "rabbis" any day.

I'm going to the Yeshiva University High Schools dinner tonight- they're honoring Mrs. Levitt, the world's best English teacher. I hope to check back here before then, though.