Thursday, January 15, 2009

Israel Seeks Three Hour Ceasefire for Screen Actors Guild Awards Show

Although Israel is planning many more days of bombing and killing in Gaza, it reportedly wants a three hour ceasefire to allow its troops to watch the 15th annual Screen Actors Guild awards, live from Hollywood on January 25. "It's the only awards show where only actors vote for actors", said a government spokesman.

Israel will not seek a ceasefire for the Academy Awards on February 22 even though "Waltz with Bashir", an Israeli film about the futility of war will probably be nominated. "We have no interest in watching a film that thinks war is futile", said the Israeli government spokesman. "We think war is moral, ethical, effective and a great political tool to keep indicted Prime Ministers in office."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was recently indicted for the second time on corruption charges. Olmert said he is not interested in making a deal with Hamas. "The only deal I'm interested in", Olmert said, "is a plea deal to keep me from going to prison." With the war in Gaza popular with most Israelis, Olmert hopes that his war crimes will make voters forget about his crimes of bribery and corruption.

While Olmert supports the SAG Awards ceasefire, he is against a week-long "humanitarian" ceasefire proposed by his rivals Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak.
If SAG awarded a "Chutzpah" award, Livni and Barak would win it for asking for a "humanitarian ceasefire" to deal with a humanitarian crisis they helped create.

Today an Israeli artillery attack set the UN compound in Gaza on fire, destroyed tons of food and humanitarian supplies and forced hundreds of refugees sheltering inside to flee. And Israel wonders why it's not too popular with the United Nations.

Barak denied reports that he called the attack on the UN headquarters "a grave mistake". "It's a grave", Barak said, "but it's not a mistake".