In 1915, the Jewish Battalions of the British Royal Fusiliers was formed, consisting of Jewish volunteers from America, England, and Israel. Their goal was to join the efforts of the British Army in World War I to liberate Israel from Turkish rule. The idea was first proposed by Zev Jabotinsky, and by 1919, some 5,000 Jewish volunteers were participating in the battalions.

Excerpted from Today In Jewish History

I had a database problem last nite with this site so I had to restore from a backup.  Fortunately I back up every 24 hours.  So, if you’re looking for a post ya coulda swore ya saw yesterday, that’s the reason why you don’t see it now.  LOL!  I’ll try to re-write some of the stuff if I can.

Update: Brian, of the excellent site SnappedShot offered to send me a cache of my missing posts that he had from subscribing to my site’s RSS feed.  A Big thank you, Brian!  Everyone, visit Brian’s excellent site at http://snappedshot.com/

We did the math in 2003 and we’ll do it again now in 2008. We are constantly told by the spin doctors that there are 2 billion Muslims in the world, and that there are only 10% who are Islamic fundamentalists.

We wanted to see those numbers on paper, so we did the math.

10% of 2 billion is 200 million.

So we thought, wait, that’s a little high. So we figured we must be wrong and that only 1% of 2 billion Muslims are Islamic fundamentalists.

So, we did the math again and discovered that 1% of 2 billion is 20 million.

Phew.

We feel so much better now that there are only 20 million people who want to kill Jews and Americans and not 200 million.

Via JPost:

Two Israeli Arabs were arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) earlier this month for allegedly setting up an Islamic Jihad cell near Ramallah and planning to assassinate air force pilots and scientists, it was released for publication on Thursday.

The men – both from the Western Galilee town of Shfaram – were identified as Anis Zfori, a 20-year-old student at Bir Zeit University north of Ramallah, and Husam Halili, a 19-year-old who studies in Jordan.

The pair confessed to contacting Islamic Jihad’s headquarters in Syria and to raising funds to buy weapons.

The cell members underwent training and planned a shooting attack on an IDF checkpoint near Ramallah as well as attacks against Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. They had also begun planning the assassination of key Israeli figures such as IAF pilots, scientists and university lecturers.

Zfori told investigators that after moving to Ramallah in 2006, he became friendly with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as well as with reporters from Hizbullah’s Al-Manar satellite news station.

He allegedly set up the cell together with Islamic Jihad members from Ramallah, and had recruited Halili as someone who could potentially transfer money from Jordan to Israel. Halili told interrogators he had been aware of Anis’s plans to commit acts of terrorism.

The two suspects will be indicted next week.

The first time I saw it, I had just walked into my unlit bathroom. I blindly felt on the wall for the lightswitch, and as I turned it on, the two-inch brown, hideous shiny, winged disgusting waterbug flew past my head towards the toilet seat.  I screamed, ran out and called for my husband.

My husband came running, yelled towards me to get the Raid as he grabbed a newspaper, and there we both stood, guarding our territory, knees bent, alert, and poised ready to slaughter the unevolved ugly bastard.

But we couldn’t find it.

And I’m telling you, we looked for it. We looked under the sink, we looked behind the scale, in the tub, behind the door, but we couldn’t find it.

It was then that I realized the similarity between waterbugs and Muslim terrorists.

Both are unevolved, they go for your head, they hide where you would never think to look, they’re hard to kill, they are everywhere, and they haven’t changed in a millenium.

While we looked for the disgusting vermin, Michael Phelps was about to win his 8th Olympic medal.  We took refuge from our station and returned to the TV to watch the great American athlete win his 8th medal.  “Phuck all of you”, I screamed as Michael won for the 8th time for the United States, the epithet intended for everyone around the world that likes to piss on America.  “Phuck you!”

After the race was officially declared with the American team as the winner, my husband and I returned to the bathroom, where I re-enacted what steps I had taken when I first saw the insect soar past my head.

As I again reached for the wall switch, the neanderthal insect appeared as if on cue, this time high above the wall behind the door, and flew towards the showerhead.

But this time, we were ready.

My husband splashed that disgusting vermin with the Raid, it dropped into the tub, started twitching and you better believe it, we got it. We both watched it suffer, struggle and die and as we did, we shook in our footsteps, creeped out by the sight of the disgusting insect so capable of nauseating even the strongest amongst us.

It took a few minutes, but it finally died.

And it was then that I was struck by the similarity that Muslim terrorists are not bullet-proof. They may act like supremacists, but they bleed. They break down and then they die.

And just like waterbugs, we can crush them. If we wanted to, we can really crush them. We can crush them, until they exist no more.

What is Spore? Spore is a new computer game under development by Maxis, being published by Electronic Arts, and designed by the famous game designer, Will Wright, who created and conceived the brilliant Sims and all of its spin-offs. Spore will let a player create the creature, then control its evolution from an organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a member of a spacefaring culture. Spore has drawn worldwide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.

Maxis released a free Creature Creator Trial Edition a few months ago, which of course I rushed to download, where you are able to create your own Creature. I know its hard to picture what I’m talking about, but here are just some of the creations that came with the Creature Creator free download.

I’ve been having a blast creating my own creature. The possibilities are endless. Once you create your creature, they talk, laugh, cry, flirt, woo, dance, boogie-down, hunt, eat, attack, defend, give birth, and who knows what else the developers have in store.  So far, more than 2.7 million people have uploaded their own creature creations to the Spore servers – and the game hasn’t even been released yet.

The full version of the game is scheduled to be released on September 5, 2008 in Europe and on September 7, 2008 in North America.

For those of you who can’t wait to purchase Spore, here is a countdown widget to add to your website.

I dislike Technorati since they changed their algorithm some months ago. Their new algorithm ignores all links to your site that are older than 6 months old. To Technorati, anything old is bad and anything younger than 6 months is good. That’s like saying that Gone With The Wind is bad because its older than 6 months, but, The Love Guru is good because its just two months old.

Regardless of what the Technorati fools concoct in their labs, I have to post the following in order to claim my new website:

“Click here to review my Technorati Profile”

Yikes, that was so ridiculous to have to add that code, but I had to do it.

Welcome to the new Smooth Stone!  Please stay tuned for updates.