Monday, April 30, 2007

Eurological Problem

Dry Bones cartoon: Europe warns the Turkish army not to intefere with the establishment of an Islamic state.
Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the modern secular state of Turkey was born in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War II.
The leading legal reforms instituted by Mustafa Kemal included the complete separation of government and religious affairs and the adoption of a strong interpretation of the principle of laïcité in the constitution. This was coupled with the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law (1924 - 1937) with a secular civil code modeled after Switzerland and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code (1924 - 1937). The reforms also instituted legal equality between the sexes and the granting of full political rights to women on December 5, 1934, well before several other European nations. -more

The Turkish Army is the "Guardian" of the secular state and functions as a block against the establishment of Islamic rule. Unfortunately, today's Europe is unhappy with that fact.

EU Enlargement Commissioner, Olli Rehn, speaking at an international conference in Brussels, noted that the recent controversy in Turkey was a litmus test for the military to respect democracy, BBC reported.

EU officials believe that the recent reaction by the Turkish military to the country's democratic process indicates the likelihood of them interfering in the election procedures.

At the first round of parliamentary votes on Friday, the present foreign minister and AK party candidate, Abdullah Gul, narrowly failed to win. The Turkish army then issued a statement saying it would defend the country's established secular principles.
-more

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Congressional Vote

Dry Bones cartoon: the U.S. Congress votes aginst its enemy: the Bush White House.
Okay, the U.S. Congress has shown what power its vote has. Now's your turn to flex your muscles by casting a vote. The difference is that in our Jewish & Israeli Blog awards there's no enemy.

* * *
As you know, we're doing really well in the first round of voting for the 2007 JIB awards (Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards). Dry Bones has been nominated in five categories.

If you haven't voted yet, please take the time to click on each of the five links below and cast your vote for Dry Bones.

Each link will open a separate window for that category. Vote for Dry Bones in that category/window, then close it and return to this window to click on the next link for the next category.


Best Overall blog

Best News & Current Events blog

Best Pro-Israel Advocacy blog

Best Humor blog

Best Jewish Culture blog

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Thursday, April 26, 2007

antiSemitism (2002)

2002 Dry Bones cartoon: AntiSemitism is returning to what it was befor the Nazis gave it a bad name.

Today's cartoon is from five years ago, today. April 26, 2002. Not very old, and I never set rules for defining how old an "Oldie" has to be in order to be posted as a "Golden Oldie"... but it's interesting to see that only five years ago we were debating what has turned into a tsunami of world-wide hate.

* * *
As you know, we're doing really well in the first round of voting for the 2007 JIB awards (Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards). Dry Bones has been nominated in five categories.

If you haven't voted yet, please take the time to click on each of the five links below and cast your vote for Dry Bones.

Each link will open a separate window for that category. Vote for Dry Bones in that category/window, then close it and return to this window to click on the next link for the next category.


Best Overall blog

Best News & Current Events blog

Best Pro-Israel Advocacy blog

Best Humor blog

Best Jewish Culture blog

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Hamas Hostage Taking

Dry Bones cartoon: Palestinian's plan a campaign of kidnapping.
Hamas is being totally open about their plans for a campaign of kidnappings. Read about it in this Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin.

Click to see a subtitled video [Al Aqsa TV, Hamas, April 18, 2007] of the Palestinian call for more kidnappings (courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch).

Below is a transcript of what you'll actually see and hear:


Member of the Legislative Council Um-Nasser Farachat:“With no connection to my being a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and my involvement in the leadership, as a Palestinian citizen, by God, I don’t believe in any solution other than one: kidnapping Zionist soldiers.”

The newscaster:
"The kidnapping of more Zionist soldiers [is required]… 10 Zionist soldiers – maybe less – will guarantee the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners."

Sa’id Siam, Former interior minister:“There were suggestions to repeat the operations of kidnapping other Israeli soldiers, because we know that the occupation understands no other language. Second, the capture of the [single] soldier will not be enough cause for the release of [the] over 10,000 prisoners… There are many suggestions, but what’s important is what will actually be done.”

Member of the Legislative Council Um-Nasser Farachat:“We hope that with the help of Allah, praise and extol him, the kidnappers will stick with their demands and will not lower their demands in any way… until they [the Israelis] will surrender to our conditions.”

The newscaster's summation:
“A number of suggestions were brought up during the meeting of the Legislative Council, and the most prominent was the call for further kidnappings of Zionist soldiers as a solution to end the prisoners’ suffering.”

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Yom HaZikaron (1982)

1982 Dry Bones cartoon - The bittersweet transition from Yom HaZikaron to Yom Ha'Atzmaut.
This Golden Oldie will appear on Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. But I'm writing these words(and I picked the cartoon) at the end of Yom HaZikaron. As usual it has been a heavy, sad day... this year made even sadder by the remembrance of our recent war dead from the Second Lebanon War.

All day today, our TV stations broadcast photos of the fallen and reminiscences by those who loved them. Today we were one quiet, grieving family holding one another and looking at our photos, into the eyes of those young people who were taken from us.

Tonight we'll party, and tomorrow, April 24, when this posting goes up on the blog, we will be grilling and picnicking and being pushy and boisterous. If you want to see a cartoon about that... look at yesterday's cartoon.

* * *

It looks like we're doing really well in the first round of voting in the Jewish & Israeli Blog awards (we've been nominated in five different categories). If you haven't voted yet, just click on the links below.

Each link will open a window for that category. Vote (hopefully for Dry Bones) then close the category window, come back to this page, and go on to the next link/category.


Best Overall blog

Best News & Current Events blog

Best Pro-Israel Advocacy blog

Best Humor blog

Best Jewish Culture blog

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Yom Ha'Atzmaut

Dry Bones cartoon: Israeli Independence Day Yom Ha'Atzmaut.

Today, April 23, is Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial day. I finally managed to get the giant flag I bought tied to the railing of the roof for all to see.

Tonight the mood will change from sadness and remembrance to the joy and celebration of Israel's Independence Day: Yom Ha'Atzmaut.

* * *
This week is also, appropriately enought, the first round of voting for the 2007 JIB awards (Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards). Dry Bones has been nominated in five categories.

Please take the time to click on each of the five links below and cast your vote for Dry Bones.


Best Overall blog

Best News & Current Events blog

Best Pro-Israel Advocacy blog

Best Humor blog

Best Jewish Culture blog

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Vote for Dry Bones... Please?

Okay gang, voting for the 2007 Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards has begun. The first round of voting is now in progress and will be open 'til Sunday April 28. Dry Bones has been nominated in five different categories.

In order to make it into the finals we need you to vote for Dry Bones now !

To do so just click on the links below. When you click on a link, a new window will open for voting in that category. After you vote just close the voting window and click on the link for the next category. Overly complicated? Of course it is. We're Jewish, aren't we?


Best Overall blog

Best News & Current Events blog

Best Pro-Israel Advocacy blog

Best Humor blog

Best Jewish Culture blog

Friday, April 20, 2007

Cho's Home Video

Dry Bones cartoon: The Virginia Tech Killer's Home Video.
The Virginia Tech murderer's image is plastered on the front pages of newspapers around the world. His video is being shown on TV screens everywhere.

I believe that the screening on TV News of home videos made by psychopathic killers before they set out to kill and maim should stop. Telecasting these videos, like the showing of hostage videos and beheading snuff videos only serve the needs of the fiends and crazies who made them.

What do you think?

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Yom Ha'Atzmaut (1998)

1998 Dry Bones cartoon: We were getting ready to celebrate our first fifty years.

Back in 1998, on April 19, Mr. Shuldig was getting ready to celebrate Israel's fiftieth birthday. This year will be our 59th Yom Ha'Atzmaut.

Today I bought a new, big and beautiful, blue and white flag. I'll be hanging it from a window... or perhaps from the roof. I'll do it tomorrow. Thursday. Or maybe on Friday.

Independence Eve this year is Monday evening, April 23.
Independence Day will be Tuesday April 24.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Virginia Tech

Dry Bones cartoon: Preventing crazies from getting guns is like preventing whackos from getting nukes.
The slaughter of innocent victims at Virginia Tech has prompted a national debate in the United States. It seems to me that the challenge is to prevent the bad guys from getting guns (or nukes).

A simple truth

But political correctness does not allow for making the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys.. . and therein lies the problem for an America trapped by its PC blinders.

* * *
Here in Israel, where where nobody can walk onto a college campus without being frisked and checked by security ...and where lots of people are licensed to carry legal firearms, and do, a lone shooter isn't shooting fish in a barrel.

* * *
So now what does the West do about the whacko Iranian President, his rambling and violent threats, his receiving messages from Allah, and his vow to wipe Israel off the map, and his drive to get his hands on nukes?

Nu?

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Talks With The Palestinians (1994)

1994 Dry Bones cartoon: We talked with local Palestinians, and they turned into the PLO! So we talked with the PLO and they turned into Hamas! So if we talk with Hamas....
In this cartoon, done thirteen years ago today, on April 17, 1994, I used the image of a Russian "nested egg" doll. This kind of doll within a doll within a doll is sometimes called a Babushka doll but it is more correctly called a matryoshka.

The "Russian" matryoshka doll came to Russia from Japan at the end of the nineteenth century. Little more than 100 years ago, Russia was experiencing an economic boom and a rising sense of culture and national identity. New artistic trends were developing, and a "Russian style" was growing and focusing on the revival of traditions that were in danger of being lost. In St. Petersburg, Russia, in December 1896, an exhibition of Japanese art opened. Among the exhibits was a doll depicting a Buddhist wise man named Fukuruma. The sage was shown as a bald-headed old man with a wooden body that could be split at the waistline into two halves; nested inside were the images of the man when he was younger and bearded and still with hair on his head. The doll came from the island of Honshu; the Japanese claim that they are the inventors of nested dolls or matryoshka, but they also generously admit that the first nested dolls made on Honshu were carved and painted by a Russian monk. That first set of dolls showing Fukuruma is in the Artistic Pedagogical Museum of Toys (APMT) in Sergiyev Posad, a city in Russia that is a cultural center for the making of matryoshka dolls. -more
Matryoshka Doll
Traditional Matryoshka

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Monday, April 16, 2007

Secret AIPAC Trial?!

Dry Bones cartoon: Now the Feds are looking to hold a closed secret trial of the two AIPAC guys.
The shameful silence of American Jewish Organizations on this anti-Semitic witch hunt has finally been broken:

A Jewish organization has for the first time formally joined in a motion friendly to the defense of two former AIPAC staffers facing classified information leak charges.

AMCHA, headed by activist Rabbi Avi Weiss, filed a motion Wednesday to join a friend of the court brief by a number of large media groups seeking to keep the prosecution from concealing from the public evidence presented to the jury. Much of the evidence in the case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, has been gathered through eavesdropping; the two-year delay in the trial, set now to begin June 4, is due in large part to sorting through which evidence may be declassified as evidence.

Judge T.S. Ellis III's tendency to favor the defense in some instances has led the prosecution to ask for evidence to be obscured from the public, if not the jury. A number of major media outlets, including ABC, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, and First Amendment defense groups have joined the defense in challenging the prosecution's request.

"The American Jewish community has a special and compelling interest in ensuring that all of the evidence presented in the trial against Messrs. Rosen and Weissman be available to the public for review and scrutiny," says the AMCHA filing.
-more

So maybe it's time for the rest of organized American Jewry to stand up and speak out?!

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Friday, April 13, 2007

The New UN Guy

Dry Bones cartoon: Will the new UN guy, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon take on the Islamofascists?
Ynet reports:
Former US President Bill Clinton gave UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a vote of confidence after a 45-minute discussion of global hotspots. ''I think he's got a great handle on this job,'' Clinton said after the meeting Thursday. ''I think he's going to do fine.''

''We just wanted to have a visit,'' Clinton said. ''We have talked a little bit about the work I did for the UN before and we talked about all the issues.''

* * *

So will the UN ever face the threat of Islamofascism? Or will the Islamists take over the UN? Or have they already taken control? Will left/liberals in the West ever cast off their blinders of Political Correctness and see what's happening before it's too late?

So what's YOUR opinion?

Nu?

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Releasing Terrorists (1994)

(1994)Dry Bones cartoon: Releasing Palestinian Terrorists From Israeli Jails.

Exactly thirteen years to the day have passed since this Dry Bones cartoon was published.

We're still releasing terrorists from Israeli jails. We still don't know what's happened to Ron Arad. Of course we DO know what's happened to Jonathan Pollard. He's been forgotten by Israel's government, ignored by American Jewry, and betrayed by the U.S. Judicial system.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Counting the Days

Dry Bones cartoon: We're counting the days between Passover and Shavuot... It's called counting the Omer.

This Dry Bones cartoon has a double meaning that is obvious to religious Jews.

The Torah commands us to count the days between Passover and the Shavuot holiday. We count each night for 49 nights. The next day is Shavuot. The commandment could have been to celebrate Shavuot on the 50th day after Passover, but no... we are commanded to actually count the days.

This means that there must be something important in the very act of counting.

For more info about this, take a peek at previous postings on Shavuot.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Iranian Student Radicals (1980)

1980 Dry Bones cartoon - The Iranian students Are Really Something ... Wait 'til they get their degrees!
Today's Golden Oldie was published in 1980.

The Iranian Students had progressed from taking the U.S. Embassy to flexing their muscles in other venues, and against other Western targets. Back then, the cartoon mused about what would happen "after they got their degrees".

Well, twenty seven years have now gone by. Ahmadinejad and his fellow Iranian student radicals are now all grown up and trying to build atomic bombs.

The world didn't stop them back then, and it doesn't look like it'll stop them now.

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Monday, April 09, 2007

The anti-Israeli Israeli

Dry Bones cartoon: The anti-Israeli Israeli Professor to Teach History in the UK.
Ynet updates the story as follows:
Jewish Students Attacked by Israeli Academic
An Israeli academic has lashed out at British Jewish students ahead of his arrival in the UK.
Dr. Ilan Pappe, of Haifa University, has been instrumental in organizing previous, failed attempts to boycott Israeli institutions in Britain, and is now set to leave Israel and take up a chair of history at the University of Exeter in south west England, where he hopes to set up a "center for Palestinian studies."
-more

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Friday, April 06, 2007

Olmert's Outreach

Dry Bones cartoon: Olmert is looking for friends and allies in Beirut Riad and Damascus.
Did Olmert use back channels to send a message to Assad in Syria? How did the Brits spring their fifteen sailors from Iran? Why are American officials visiting the Syrians? What's behind recent "peace" moves by the Saudis?

So what's going on? Are we in the middle of a Sunni Arab reassessment of the Shi'ite/Iranian threat... or are we witnessing a collapse of Western resolve to resist IslamoFacism?

What do YOU think?
Nu?

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

The British Go To War! (1982)

1982 Dry Bones cartoon - The British sail off to war with Argentina.
Today's Golden Oldie was published Twenty Five years ago, today. April 5, 1982..

On April 2 Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands. Britain then sent a naval task force, and I did this cartoon. Eventually the British ships arrived and 645 Argentine and 255 British troops died in the war that followed. On June 14Th 1982, Argentina surrendered.

Here's a timeline of the war.

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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

The Passover Deal

Dry Bones cartoon: The Passover Deal is that we get to be the Chosen People and to Become a Light Unto the Nations. Will they 'love' us? Hey! Two out of three is not bad!.
For a bunch of Dry Bones cartoons about Passover just click here.


And have yourself a Happy Passover.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The Spirit of Passover (1983)

1983 Dry Bones cartoon - Passover with Mr. Shuldig.
Here in Israel we had our Seder last night. Jews outside of the land of Israel celebrate two Seder nights.

This cartoon from 1983 shows Mr. Shuldig getting overly Zionist at an Israeli Passover Seder ...some twenty four years ago. Mr. Shuldig is talking about the Jews who aren't living here at home with us in Israel... those who can't, those who won't ...oh well, you got it.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

The British Sailors

Dry Bones cartoon: By humiliating the British, the Iranians are letting the Arabs know who's gonna' be the next empire to rule over them.
By humiliating the British, the Iranians are letting the Arabs know who's gonna' be the next empire to rule over them. And so it goes. Empires rise like young lions, eager for blood, while the old lions try to avoid their demise.

* * *
Tonight is the first night of Passover. Once again we will gather to celebrate the journey we've been on since that night in Egypt so long ago. And once again we will be keeping a watchful eye on events in the world outside.

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