July 2nd, 2004
Happy 4th
Things that give me a greater appreciation for the 4th: China is planning to begin censoring and monitoring over 220 billion SMS messages sent each year by cell users. It already censors email traffic and web sites.
In an all-to-common incident in Israel, “four gunmen from an armed group in the Fatah movement loyal to Palestinian Athority President Yasser Arafat” gunned down a ‘collaborator’ in a Palestinian town “who was accused of betraying the whereabouts of wanted militants to Israeli forces and of sexually molesting his two daughters. The man, Muhammad Rafiq Daraghmeh, 45, was riddled with automatic weapons fire after he answered “yes” to both accusations and a hrong of onlookers chanted, “Kill him, kill him!” Relatives said his family had disowned him.”
Typically, the MSNBC article containing the story was titled “Israel kills three in Gaza Strip” I suspect that the elderly and frail-looking man was only guilty of one of the “crimes,” but that was more than enough for the Palestinian lynch mob, which has a habit of tearing apart martyrs and victims and taking home body parts as mementos.