Joe The Plumber Takes on the Israeli Press

Joe the Plumber confronted Israeli reporters today for not being pro-Israeli enough. The US press is covering bits and pieces of his escapades, but Israeli television is starting to follow him around. They probably see some diversion value in covering him.

Here's a transcript of his pep talk to a camera-reporter team from Reuters:

JOE: The story here is people are being killed and the media’s slanting it and trying to make it Hamas is, uh, as far as, that Israel’s being bad. Do you believe Israel is bad?

REPORTER: Do I believe it?

JOE: Yeah, do you?!

REPORTER: I’m Israeli, so…

JOE: So answer the question!

REPORTER: No, I don’t think Israel is bad.

JOE: Do you think Israel has every right to protect itself?

REPORTER: Yeah.

[pause]

JOE: You do?!

REPORTER: Yeah.

JOE: Have you said that on air?

REPORTER: I’m just a reporter.

To get Joe's best stuff you either have to subscribe to PJTV (Pajamas Television) or understand Hebrew. I'll post a couple of interesting Joe the Plumber YouTubes at the end of this post.

Two developments out of Israel today. Yahoo, taking information from Israeli sources on how this weekend's UN Seccurity Council 14-0-1 vote happened, reports the following from outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

And today, the Israeli Central Elections Committee moved to suspend the country's Arab political parties from running in the upcoming national elections:

The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month’s parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country’s Supreme Court.

The ruling, made by the body that oversees the elections, reflected the heightened tensions between Israel’s Jewish majority and Arab minority caused by Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Arabs have held a series of demonstrations against the offensive.

The move doesn't keep Israeli Arabs from voting. If this happened in the United States, it would be sort of like telling African Americans, Latinos and Jews that they could vote in 2008, they just couldn't vote for a Democrat. So, you can see, it might not change the outcome of their election very much.

I'm sure there will be no lack of talking heads on FOX and other networks to explain what a great example this is of the "Greatest Democracy in the Middle East and America's Closest Ally" helping us with our image abroad.

Meanwhile, here's Joe, the greatest American media sensation since, uh, since, uh...... Jeff Gannon:

From a Team Sarah email group:


Israeli TV:



And Olbermann: