The right-wing need for victimization and Israel

The excellent Glenn Greenwald has this little ditty:

(updated below - Update II)

As rabid and unhinged as the American Right generally has become of late, the right-wing blogosphere is, as usual, several degrees more twisted. Here is Powerline's Paul Mirengoff, a lawyer, protesting Obama's treatment this week of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and comparing it to how a small African country would -- and should -- be treated:

One Israeli newspaper summarized the encounter this way:

"There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage. Bibi received in the White House the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea."

But Obama would never treat the president of Equatorial Guinea that way.

In other words: Obama subjected Netanyahu to the kind of treatment that should be reserved only for Africans, said the unnamed Israeli newspaper. But, Mirengoff hastened to add, Obama would never treat Africans that way -- only Jews. Citing Mirengoff's post, Glenn Reynolds, a law professor, got the point loud and clear and, in the midst of offering several bizarre conspiracy theories, made it even more explicit:

WHY HAS BARACK OBAMA TREATED NETANYAHU SO RUDELY? "Obama would never treat the president of Equatorial Guinea that way."

Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible -- certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really.

As usual, nothing is more severe and desperate than the right-wing need to turn oneself into a victim of extreme persecution. Do you think that Equatorial Guinea, if given the option, would choose to be treated by the U.S. Government the same way Israel is: with billions of dollars of American taxpayer money transferred to them each year, automatic diplomatic protection at the U.N. for anything they choose to do, American-backed loan guarantees, weapons transfers on demand, one-fourth of their bulging military budget provided by the U.S., an American law requiring the Obama administration to maintain their military superiority, a White House Chief of Staff who twice served as a civilian volunteer in their army, and a Speaker of the House who proclaims -- in the midst of her own's government conflict with that foreign country -- that the entire U.S. Congress "speaks with one voice" in support of them rather than their own government? I doubt Equatorial Guinea -- or any other country on the planet -- would complain much or consider themselves victims if they received similar treatment from the U.S.; quite the contrary.

As Daniel Larison recently pointed out: the Israel-as-victim polemicists "cannot point to any decrease in Obama’s actual support for Israel, because there has been no decrease of any kind." Kevin Sullivan added: "President Obama has done nothing to change America's strategic relationship with Israel." Given the endless largesse that country continues to receive, the fact that American devotees of Israel nonetheless try to depict Israel as some sort of grave victim of the Obama administration -- and now even try to claim that Obama harbors hatred for Israel and Jews -- reveals how endless is their sense of entitlement for that foreign country, how vast is their craving for self-victimization, how shameless is their cheap exploitation of anti-semitism accusations, and how complete is their break from reality.

UPDATE: For the rest of history, human beings will have a pure, Platonic expression of "rank, oozing hypocrisy" (h/t Blue Texan).

UPDATE II: Obama officials are so incensed with Middle East advisor Dennis Ross' devotion to Israel's interets that, according to Politico's Laura Rozen, they are claiming (anonymously) that Ross "seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests" and that "by [Ross'] logic, our objectives and interests were less important than pre-emptive capitulation to what he described as Bibi's coalition's red lines." As Rozen puts it, those accusations from anonymous Obama officials against Ross amount to nothing less than "the suggestion of dual loyalties." It's a sign for how intense is the internal debate over Israel, and how much the public debate has opened up, that some Obama officials are willing to go to Politico with such incendiary accusations about Ross.

Israeli email Disasters...

Ha'aretz:

Teachers at a large Holon high school said yesterday they were appalled by what they described as the racist insinuations of a video clip they received by e-mail from the school principal that showed an Arab toddler being thrown into a swimming pool and nearly drowning.

"A principal is supposed to be an educator," said a teacher at Kiryat Sharet High School who received the e-mail a few days ago from principal Irit Aharonson. "It's inconceivable she should be spreading such racist, inciting material without any monitoring."

Aharonson said she sent the video "in a distracted state" and called the decision a "regrettable mistake," saying: "The context of the clip wasn't anti-Arab. This doesn't match my moderate opinions."

The Education Ministry said it considered the distribution of the clip "a grave error of judgment."

The ministry characterized Aharonson's decision to share the clip as a "grave error of judgment," saying, "We expect educators to promote tolerance, not send out harmful and disdainful materials."

"It's a disgrace that a principal should be forwarding such videos," a ministry official said. "We just learned recently how widespread anti-Arab racism is among young people [my link]. How can we complain about students when a principal is promoting the same?"

In a survey released two weeks ago, 50 percent of Jewish teenagers said they believed Arab citizens shouldn't have rights equal to those of Jewish ones, and 56 percent believed Arabs should be allowed in the Knesset.

The clip, called "How Arab Kids Learn to Swim," shows a man wearing a galabiya and speaking in Arabic pushing a boy of about 2 years old into a pool. Another adult grabs the terrified toddler's hand, takes him out of the pool and then throws him back in. The child kicks uselessly and nearly drowns, and is taken out of the pool about a minute later.

Teachers said Aharonson had previously sent out a video clip called "What the Media Doesn't Show about Islam," which contains graphic images of atrocities attributed to Muslims.

Aharonson said she did not recall sending out that clip.

A non-racist ethno-state? I just saw a flock of flying pigs too...

Netanyahu, the Jewish State and Racism...

Excellent piece here by Saree Makdisi, in HuffPo. What follows is mainly the last part:

For [the Palestinians] to recognize Israel as a Jewish state would be not only to renounce (which no leader and indeed no individual Palestinian has the authority to do) the right of return of those Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948. It would also be to abandon to their fate the remaining million or so Palestinians (including their descendants) who survived the nakba and have been living as second class citizens of Israel, and perhaps even to give Israel license to expel them all and complete the "job" (as Benny Morris puts it) of 1948.

Israel today is no more Jewish than America is white or Christian. The big difference, though, is that, whereas America (for the most part) embraces its own multiculturalism, Israel still desperately wants to be Jewish. Its absurd demand to be recognized as such (no other state goes around impetuously demanding that others accept its own sense of its national character) is an expression of its own profound insecurity: not its military insecurity--the only serious military threat Israel faces on its own territory is imaginary--but rather its anxious awareness of its status as a botched, and hence forever incomplete, settler-colonial enterprise. Unlike Australia, there were too many aboriginals left standing when the smoke cleared over the ruins of Palestine in 1948. And to this day the Palestinians have refused to simply give up, go away or somehow annul themselves.

That fact--and its attendant anxiety among Zionists--poses a real problem for the million Palestinians inside Israel, whose fate is far from settled.

Western liberals consider Avigdor Lieberman to be right wing because he says openly that he wants the indigenous Palestinians removed from what he considers to be the Jewish land of Israel (to which he came as a Russian-speaking immigrant). What they fail to acknowledge is that Tzipi Livni, who ran in the recent Israeli elections as the voice of peace and moderation--the darling of Western liberals--hinted at exactly the same dark fate ("Once a Palestinian state is established, I can come to the Palestinian citizens, whom we call Israeli Arabs, and say to them "you are citizens with equal rights, but the national solution for you is elsewhere,'" she said during the electoral campaign--i.e., you are equal, but not really, and ultimately you must look elsewhere for a sense of home). And Netanyahu has long espoused a similar position.

How could he not? This is not rocket science or linear algebra: it is what it means for a state to insist on having a single cultural identity irrespective of who happens to actually be living on the territory it considers its own. It is all too rarely thought of in the same terms, but the violent insistence on monoculture is just as ugly in Israel as it is in Iran, Saudi Arabia, among the cadres of the British National Party, the followers of Jean-Marie le Pen, the hoodlums of Aryan Nation or the hooded posses of the KKK. The drive to obliterate or expunge cultural difference from a homeland conceived of as an exclusive space will always be inherently ugly.

And the fact of the matter is that the expulsion or "transfer" of Palestinians has been a core feature of Zionism as it has been practiced since 1948. It is inherent in Zionism as a political program--from right to left--because, if the idea behind Zionism is to establish an exclusively Jewish state (which it is), the only way for a would-be Jewish state to have been established on land that began the twentieth century with a population that was overwhelmingly (93 percent) non-Jewish was through the removal of the land's non-Jewish population. The sense that there is an inherently Jewish land inconveniently cluttered up with a non-Jewish population that needs to be dealt with somehow or other drove Zionist planning all through the 1930s (the "transfer" of the Palestinians was planned more than a decade before the 1948 war). And, as grotesque as ever, it was on full view in Netanyahu's speech.

The key moment in the speech came when he said that "the truth is that in the area of our homeland, in the heart of our Jewish Homeland, now lives a large population of Palestinians." This attitude comes straight out of the primitive racialism and imaginary civilizational hierarchies of the nineteenth century. The Jews are a people with a homeland and hence they have a right to a state; the Palestinians are not a people at all, or certainly not one of the same order. They are merely a collection of vagabonds and trespassers intruding on the Jewish Homeland. They have no rights, let alone a centuries-old competing narrative of home attached to the same land, a narrative worthy of recognition by Israel.

On the contrary: the Palestinians must accept that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, and they must do so on the understanding that they are not entitled to the same rights. "We" are a people, Netanyahu was saying; "they" are merely a "population." "We" have a right to a state--a real state. "They" do not. "They" have to recognize "our" rights; "we" owe "them" nothing in return, except, possibly, a curt nod of dismissal from "our" view into the walled-off ghettoes and cantons which we might (perhaps, if "they" behave well) be persuaded to build for "them" on "our" land--and "they" had better be grateful even for that.

This racialized sense of inherent entitlement and unique superiority--fueled (in just the way that a child is spoiled by over-indulgent parents) by over $100 billion of our tax dollars, the endless deference of our elected representatives, the open-ended diplomatic cover provided on demand by all our presidents after Eisenhower--is what allows Israelis like Netanyahu (and Lieberman, and Livni, and Olmert, and Sharon, and Rabin, etc.) to threaten, bellow at and admonish the Palestinians. It is also what allows Israel to occupy Palestinian land, demolish Palestinian homes, starve Palestinian children, imprison and shoot Palestinian youths, tear up Palestinian olive trees, crush Palestinian aspirations, while believing--really sincerely believing--that Israel is the real victim of everything that has happened. And, unbelievable as it is, that idea too (that Israel is the real victim of Palestinian aggression) was repeatedly expressed in Netanyahu's speech. Make no mistake that he really believes it; it's astonishing to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history, but most Israelis, and most of their supporters in this country, really do believe in this totally inverted--and perverted--view of history.

Such attitudes, such views, are the inevitable products of endless indulgence.

No matter what the best way forward is--two states or one--it is absolutely vital for the American people to call their leaders to account and to demand that this indulgence must end, for the sake of everyone involved. And until our politicians learn (or are persuaded) to do the right thing, it falls on each of us to do what we can to end the indulgence and to bring pressure to bear on Israel. Heeding the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions is the obvious place to begin.

Clinton at AIPAC 2010

Excerpts and full text of Hillary Clinton's speech at AIPAC 2010 here.

Phil Weiss commented:

Most significant, it seemed to me, was her statement that in the ’90s she traveled the world and no one talked about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Now everywhere she goes it’s all that other countries want to talk about, first or second or third on the list of issues. "We cannot escape the impact of mass communications." The internet. You and me…

But I can't seem to find reference to it... Phil's wishful thinking or my speed-reading?

And now that Obama seems to be back on track domestically (having finally obtained House majority for a watered down health care reform bill), might we see The One putting a bit more of his weight behind a resolution of the I/P conflict?

The Lobby on Petraeus...

From AntiWar.com.

Predictably it took less time for me to say Zionism! than for the Lobby to pick up on Gen David Petraeus' softly worded but self-evident assertions regarding the fomenting of anti-American sentiment in the ME as a result of the US's blatant favouritism of Israel.

The ADL's rebuke:

The assumptions Gen. Petraeus presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee wrongly attribute “insufficient progress” in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and “a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel” as significantly impeding the U.S. military mission in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and in dealing with the Iranian influences in the region. It is that much more of a concern to hear this coming from such a great American patriot and hero.

The General’s assertions lead to the illusory conclusion that if only there was a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. could successfully complete its mission in the region.

Of course he didn't really say anything of the sort, the man's instincts for self-preservation being no doubt as strong as the next soldier's.

But things can be expected to get a lot hairier with 'AIPAC week' coming up and Obama apparently choosing not to attend, visiting instead one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. Obama, having attended Madrassas in his youth when undoubtedly he was exposed to veiled 'nuke Israel!' Quranic verses until his ears were burning, choosing not to attend a meeting between Zionism's Finest and their Protectors from God's Own Country! This man's not only rumoured to be willing 'to throw Israel under the bus', his Quranic mindset has also access to the US's Nuclear Launch Codes and may well present a far greater clear and present danger to Israel than Ah-Mad's Iran!

And Mad Mel concurred with me... before I'd written it...

'Who do you think you are kiddin', Mr ObaHitler?'

Eric Cantor: 'Obama, Stop Bullying Israel!'

Bintel Blog:

After the Biden flap and the inevitable theatrics of an Administration claiming to have been offended by the timing of announcing another 1,600 homes in E.J'sem, as sure as night follows day, pro-Zionist forces in Holy Land II are already warning Obama and co. to take it easy. The US's perennial and delicate damsel in distress lives in a 'dangerous neighborhood' and shouldn't be pressured too much! And the bond between both Holy Lands is after all 'unshakable' and 'unbreakable'...

Now if you're a real US pro-Zionist scoundrel what better tactic than to invoke the magic words 'US National Security', that one-size-fits-all figleaf?

And so we have House Minority Whip Eric Cantor phoning White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on March 15 — asking him to convey to his bosses the message that it is time to ease pressure on Israel.

“The administration needs to reduce the level of its rhetoric,” Cantor said in an interview with the Forward, “I don’t think that the notion of us telling Israel what is best for its security is a good one.”

Cantor and several other Republican lawmakers have criticized the administration’s tough stance on Israel in light of the dispute over the Jewish state’s approval of another 1,600 homes in contested East Jerusalem. Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, and Senator John [please can we bomb Iran now?] McCain, Republican of Arizona, have also said that the Obama administration was wrong in pressuring Israel.

Cantor said in the interview that he believed that behind the administration’s approach stood an attempt to “curry some favor in the Arab world by bullying our ally.” He added that the administration should ask itself how this policy advances America’s national security interests.

I think David Petraeus might have been a bit closer to the mark when, for what it's worth, he wrote:

These factors can serve as root causes of instability or as obstacles to security.

Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Responsibility of Cntcom] Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

Cantor is capable of risking WW III if it serves the purpose of an undivided Jewish Jerusalem.

Antony Loewenstein has more, specifically Iran related.

Israel: the bit that's not so Liberal...

Judy Mandelbaum:

The controversy over the mehadrin or “strictly kosher” bus lines through Haredi areas began a decade ago when the government-subsidized Egged bus company decided to compete with the private companies that were already servicing these parts of town. Not only are female passengers required to sit in the back third of the vehicle, they face withering looks and vocal insults men if they board the buses wearing “immodest” clothing, particularly trousers.

Moving women to the back supposedly ensures the “purity” of the men in front, and women who ignore this masculine imperative do so at their own risk. In 2006, a woman claimed to have been “slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women.” In 2007, a group of five Haredi men beat an Ultra-Orthodox woman and a uniformed IDF soldier for sitting next to each other. When police cars arrived on the scene, a crowd of Haredi men punctured their tires, allowing the attackers to escape. In another typical story,

A pregnant woman got on the 318 midnight bus from B’nai Brak to Rehovot. She sat in the front because of motion sickness, explaining this to the other passengers. One Hareidi man stopped the bus by standing with one foot outside and one on the step up so the driver couldn’t close the door. The woman finally fled into the street in the middle of the night. The other passengers went looking for her and found her under a tree, humiliated, hurt, and refusing to re-board.

Israel currently has as many as sixty-three segregated bus lines making 2,500 trips a day.

Trailer for the coming Israeli documentary 'Black Bus':

Cowboys, stuffed suitcases, wire transfers and Iraq...

This is not a new story, of course. When the Coalition Provisional Authority (read: the US) plundered Iraq's reserves, dragged it all to Holy Land II and converted it to greenbacks, it then started handing out the reconstruction money as if it were hot cross buns, without almost the slightest consideration for oversight or accounting. Massive surprise (not) that an estimated USD 10 billion went 'missing in action'.

It appears there's now a semblance of follow-up:

Federal investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 cases during the past six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions made by some of the Americans involved in the $150 billion rebuilding program.

Some of the cases involve people suspected of mailing tens of thousands of dollars to themselves from Iraq. Others stuffed money into duffel bags and suitcases when leaving the country, the investigators said.

In other cases, millions of dollars were moved through wire transfers. Suspects then used cash to buy BMWs, Humvees, jewelry, or to pay off enormous casino debts.

Some suspects also tried to conceal foreign bank accounts, the investigators said. In other cases, they said cash was found stacked in home safes.

There already have been dozens of indictments and convictions for corruption since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the new cases seem to confirm what investigators have long speculated: that the chaos, weak oversight and wide use of cash payments in the reconstruction program in Iraq allowed many more Americans who took bribes or stole money to get off scot-free.

Rejecting the Jewish right of 'return'...

Green Left online, via Anthony Loewenstein:

We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return”. While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.

Today there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land — a right recognised and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.

We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.

List of signatories here...

Three Cheers for Jody Mcintyre!

Last night Press TV's 'Remember Palestine' featured a wheel chair bound, young pro-Palestinian activist called Jody Mcintyre. This is one hell of a courageous young man, overcoming a serious disability for the cause of justice. Briefly elaborating on his motives he quoted Martin Luther King: 'an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'.

Jody Mcintyre blogs at 'Life on Wheels'...

The segment also featured this video by YouTube user NIDALPALESTINE, (from about 2 years ago) on settler behaviour:

Friday I/P tidbits...

1. Poll: 46% of Jewish Israeli high-schoolers don't want equality for Arabs (Ynet News). Small poll, shocking figures.

2. 'Mad Mel' Flips nails her colours to the mast:

Why? What have they [the Palestinians] done to deserve it [a state]? In what other conflict in the history of the planet have people who have waged a war of annihilation for eight decades and continue to do so been considered to ‘deserve’ anything, let alone an ‘independent’ existence the sole purpose of which is a military beach-head to finish the job and which would slice its victim in half?

To put it another way, why does Joe Biden think that Israel ‘deserves’ to surrender?

And why, once again, is a final solution being imposed by America upon democratic and beseiged Israel, while the administration of which Biden is such an ornament refuses to take any effective measures against the genocidal Iranian regime which is already responsible for countless American deaths and of which Israel is the present and potentially future victim, and which threatens the safety of the western world against which it has long declared war?

3. Conservative estimate: US aid to Israel (1949 - present date) about USD 108 billion: so much for making deserts bloom... (H/T Angry Arab)

4. Nutter 'Hawkeye', founding father of CiF Watch, tries to connect some antisemitic New York protesters to Comment is Free.

5. Marty 'Macho, Macho Man' Peretz on J'sem:

"I believe that the great rabbi in the skies has not instructed Israel to force history to stand still. So let me be direct: The Palestinians have only themselves to blame on Jerusalem, as on other disputed matters."

and on Obama's alleged neglect of the USA's Aryan friends:

"He is, as I have said a few times, a third worlder. We will see how America will do with our true friends sidelined. …it is increasingly clear that the president feels more connection to the Palestinians specifically and the Arabs generally than he does to the Israelis (and just possibly more connection to Muslims than to Jews, to Islam than to Judaism and Jewishness.)"

Forget BDS, here's CFH!

An Israeli emailer (who shall remain strictly anonymous - no, don't even bother asking) suggested that critiques [here in the context of Zionism and Israel] are more powerful when they come from a place of sympathy. He's not entirely wrong of course (although I can see difficulty applying the principle to critique of the Nazis - for instance).

Still, radically new approaches are called for, for the I/P conflict and I'm all for trying something new.

So forget nasty BDS and try a tender CFH campaign: Chocolates, Flowers and Hugs. Send those to the Israelis: ordinary ones, celebrities, handsome ones and ogres alike, tall and short, brunette, blond or carrot and tell them about your sympathy for the deeply and authentically felt Jewish attachment to the land between the river and the sea. Tell them that you share their increasing sense of isolation and 'nobody likes us'. Tell'em that the rockets from Gaza could have been directed at your own kids too...

Then ask them politely if they would mind terribly to get the f*ck out of the West Bank?

Biden's Israeli Dinner Party Ruined!

The Guardian

Just when you think Zionism has plummeted to the absolute depths of depravity, the Israeli War Cabinet manages effortlessly to up the ante. Netanyahu, having largely out maneuvered the fledgling Obama on the settlement issue, feels emboldened and nothing's going to stop them in the bunker now:

Israel apologised to Joe Biden today for announcing a plan to build 1,600 homes on occupied Palestinian land during his visit, after the US vice-president launched a strongly worded attack on the planned construction in an East Jerusalem settlement.

An Israeli cabinet minister apologised for the timing of the announcement but not for its substance. "This should not have happened during a visit by the US vice-president," the welfare minister, Isaac Herzog, told Army Radio. "This is a real embarrassment and now we have to express our apologies for this serious blunder."

Herzog, stuffed Zioshirt first class, apologised for the... TIMING!

The Israeli interior ministry's approval of the plan cast a cloud over a visit to the country by Biden just hours after he pledged strong support for the Israeli government.

In a statement issued after he arrived 90 minutes late for a dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units."

90 minutes late! The embarrassment when bezzy mates can't even have their tea on time! Someone, somewhere got something wrong, didn't get the memo and the choreography turned out to be all screwed up! Heads will now surely roll?

Oh Biden, can't you take a hint, mister?

Hating the Jews . . . racist, or merely human?! (Spoof)

Walking the streets of Paris these days, it is impossible to go very far without one’s hearing being assailed by a sickening nasal sound. And I am not referring to the delightful manner in which Parisians clear their sinuses (before projecting the dislodged contents onto the pavement without a thought for adjacent pedestrians).

No, I am talking Jews.

Like Germans entering France in May 1940, the Jews have arrived in Paris in their hordes. And they have only been a little more welcome, male and female Jews alike bearing tasteless testament to the deleterious consequences of gaudiness and too many hours spent under the sunbed (though North Africa is probably as much to blame as Jews for these roasted peacocks, jangling and clunking under the weight of excessive gold).

Parisians, hardly paragons of best manners, loathe the behaviour of the Jews – though perhaps they resent the competition – even scapegoating them for Paris’ increasingly unaffordable property prices (thankfully, the Jews have tended to settle the streets in the immediate vicinity of the Mediterranean, a safe-ish distance from Rothschild).

Whoever invented the Jewish language must have had a single guiding principle: “How do I come up with a sound that will drive other nations to sheer distraction?” And my instantaneous, though subconscious, reaction every time that I hear it is for my cheek muscles to contort my mouth into a De Niro grimace, that psychotic inverted smile which “Bobby” pulls in the movies whenever he is about to “whack” someone.

When spoken by the male of the species especially, the language turns me into a Tourette’s case, giving me the irrepressible urge to utter “the ‘c’ word” (not that, as regular readers of melchett mike will attest, I normally need too much encouragement). And the Jew, like the c*** in your high school class, has absolutely no self-awareness of that quality.

Following the arrogant, pretentious excesses of [insert leading Jewish footballer] (who could only be Jewish), [name] restored the dignity of the Jews in English football. But the dastardly Hand of Zion ‘goal’ (left) that broke Irish hearts 12 days ago – cheating them out of a place at next summer’s World Cup in South Africa – showed that [name] had us duped. And, instead of admitting his offence, and going down in history as both a great footballer and a gentleman, [name] will now be remembered as a cheat in the mould of that repellent Argentine degenerate, Maradona.

Sigh. You've guessed (I hope!) that this is a spoof. Created simply by substituting the word 'French' or 'Frenchman' by 'Jew', Jews' or 'Jewish' and 'Tel Aviv' by 'Paris', in this source text by Little Ingelander, Zionist Israeli and Gallicphobic bigot, Mike Melchett.

It then goes on and on and on (now unadulterated by my previous substitutions):

To the Englishman, memories of white flags being raised over France in 1940 are as repugnant as thoughts of the Hand of God doing so in Mexico City in 1986. It took the French all of six weeks to surrender to the Germans – it is no coincidence that the central strip of the French tricolore is white – a noble feat which they then surpassed by establishing the collaborationist Vichy regime.

But are our neighbours across the Channel any more worthy of our contempt than, for example, the Belgians or the Dutch, who surrendered in two and a half weeks and four days, respectively? And, cowardice aside, what is it about the French that so gets under our skin?

Far from displaying a modicum of gratitude to the British for fighting for his nation’s freedom, De Gaulle subsequently made every effort to exclude the United Kingdom from the European Community (now Union). And his successors, too, have stabbed the British in the back at every given opportunity.

For some peculiar reason, known only to themselves, the French are persuaded that they are superior to everyone else. In art. In style. In food. And, most inaccurately of all, in bed. According to a global sex survey, the French only spend an average 19.2 minutes on foreplay, while we Brits spend 22.5 minutes (I have been known to spend even longer . . . especially when I have company).

In spite of its close proximity to London, I have visited Paris just once, and then only for a cousin’s engagement party (yes, he did). But it was enough to discover an absence of hospitality – shopkeepers feigning not to comprehend a single word of English as I groped for morsels of O-level French – that gives me no urge to return.

Since S, the French girl who paid me midnight visits at Jerusalem’s Ulpan Etzion (the aptly named “absorption centre” where we lived for five months following Aliyah), I have not even come close to dating a French woman. Moreover, my extensive Facebook and mobile phone lists contain a mere single French entry. And, having known Yael for ten years now, the thing that still strikes me every time that I meet her is how nice she is for a French woman. The exception to the rule.

So, Thierry Henry – arguably, until a week and a half ago, the greatest living Frenchman – reverted to type, proving that it is no coincidence that the national emblem of France is the cock.

Here comes the punch line:

Call me a “racist”, but . . . when it comes to the French, xenophobia takes on a rationality that makes it, if not a virtue, then common sense.

Racism as a virtue, or at least common sense... That's exactly what a Nazi would have thought about antisemitism: virtuous, commonsensical ("we exterminate vermin, right?") Cushty!

The comment section is also worth a gander. Here's Mikey at his most subtle:

The feeling is “rather” mutual, our Michelle! But what are you going to tell me next . . . that you married a Moroccan?!

Mikey, you're a despicable imbecile and a racist twat... I almost find myself wishing more British Jews of your particular racist inclination would make Aliyah but that would only be moving the problem.

Miliband: Cloud Cuckoo Land

Press TV

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has claimed that UK's involvement in the Iraq war has earned it respect in the Middle East.

Yep, and appointing Tony Blair as Envoy to the Middle East was pure genius too...

Giving evidence to the public inquiry into Britain's role in the war on Monday, Miliband insisted that many Arab countries now respected Britain more for following through on threats of military force in Iraq.

Is this Zanu Labour double-speak? Does he mean deterrence has been re-established by means of the 'Coalition's' Mad Dog adventurism?

"Even those who disagree with it (the war) would say to me, 'you've sent a message that when you say something you actually mean it. And if you say something's a last chance it really is a last chance'."

Miliband also claimed that the UK is now in a "stronger position," believing that UK decisions on Iraq have not "undermined our relationships or our ability to do business" in the region.

Not sure what kind of 'business' is intended here. Oil business? The safeguarding of the West's Queen of the ME, USrael?

When Harry met Geert...

This will be the third part of my inadvertent mini-series on Geert Wilders and related subjects. Here I pointed to the reciprocal love affair between Geert Wilders and Israel, here to unsurprising support of Wilders by the EDL and Pamela Geller.

What's perhaps even less of a surprise, at least with hindsight, is that at least one contributor ('Sophia') at Harry's Place is in 'two minds' about Geert Wilders:

There are examples aplenty of politicians seeking election who, at worst, like Galloway, exploit Muslim communities and themselves have adopted the Hamas platform; at best one sees Labour politicians eager for votes apparently signaling their acceptance of certain aspects of anti-liberal culture. Media, even the formerly liberal/left Guardian, seem to have become platforms for the most radical interpretations of anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Semitic writers.

Apart from the ridiculous swipe at Galloway, who doesn't support Hamas, only the Palestinian people's right to elect who they see fit, this paragraph seems to imply that British politicians should shun support from Muslim constituents, on the basis that they're... Muslim. Hard to think of anything more racist, of course.

Then she quips:

So, I hate to admit it but my feelings about Geert Wilders are becoming more mixed than I would wish.

I've followed Harry's Place for a couple of years now and up to about 18 months or so I didn't usually disagree with their posts on Radical Islam and self-professed Muslim Jihadists. But HP's contributorship and Kommentariat have undergone profound changes since then: there's an increasing number of quite conservative American contributors and commenters alike hanging out there, many suffering from a 9/11-induced lobotomy (where that sense of justice used to be) and whose beef isn't with radical manifestations of Islam but, like Wilders, with Islam itself and with Muslims.

At the time of my writing, the post had received 161 comments and perhaps naively I expected some serious counter-fire from such a crowd. I was right but for the wrong reasons. Counting the numbers of comments that were clearly and unequivocally in favour of Wilders' lunacy, discounting 'Sophia's' own comments, discounting double and unclear comments, I counted 107 comments that came out in favour of Wilders (about two thirds or 66 % - in election terms a 'landslide victory'). 'Sophia' essentially got blasted for her unforgivable undecision on the subject of 'Dear Geert'...

Most of HP's support for Wilders is along the lines of the alleged incompatibility between 'Western Values' and 'Islam'. This is of course a complete red herring. Of the legal citizens/residents of any country can be expected one thing and one thing only: that they abide by the Law of the Land. This is precisely what the overwhelming majority of British (or Dutch or whatever) Muslims (or whatever) do. When they don't they're subject to legal due process like anyone else. To believe otherwise is indeed to be deeply racist.

It shows also once again that despite all the clamour about a tidal wave of antisemitism engulfing Ole' Blighty, Weimar-style, the really socially acceptable form of racism here is in fact Islamophobia.

Geert Wilders and Israel: a Love Affair

That Wilders wants to ban Muslim immigration (and the Qu'ran) to Holland (and the rest of Europe) should come as no real surprise. I happen to speak Dutch and have often quoted this (and very similar) sources:

It says among other related things:

‘Sharon en Thatcher zijn mijn voorbeelden.’ ('Sharon and Thatcher are my examples')

'Ik ben verliefd of Israel' ('I'm in love with Israel')

And Geert's love for Israel is far from unrequited; a bit further down:

'Geen deur in Israël blijft voor hem gesloten, stelt de PVV-leider. ‘Op het Israëlische ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken kwam ik in het strengst beveiligde deel – achter dikke deuren – en daar zat dan de Iran-desk, allemaal wetenschappers die kranten in het Farsi spelden’, beweert hij in De Pers.'

'No door remains closed to him [in Israel], posits the leader of the PVV. 'At the Israeli Minister of the Interior I ended up in the most secure area - behind thick doors - and there was the Iran desk, all scientists that spell newspapers in Farsi', he claimed in De Pers [The Press].'

The uber-Islamophobe of Europe is a most welcome, feted even, guest in the racist state of Israel. Quelle surprise!

Here he is at a press conference at the House of Lords in the UK on 5 March, after the screening of his film Fitna:

Pamela Geller supports the EDL!

In my ever growing category of 'shit you couldn't make up', enters once again bat shit crazy Pamela Geller (Oshry), superwoman of American Patriotism and Islamophobia with knobs on, the only woman on Earth that wants to have John Bolton's babies and now it would appear, also supporter of the BNP fringe group EDL (English Defense League). Pamela makes Bat Ye'or, Fiamma Nirenstein and 'Mad Mel' Phillips look like the Three Sage Women of Radical Zionism.

Her latest exploits include posting a photo of a Nazi in uniform with the name 'Ben White' emblazoned on it. The caption to the photo reads:

Ben White is crossing the pond to spew his vile hate and incitement to kill Jews at Israel Apartheid Week Islamic Hate Week at Columbia

Hey Benny boy, this ain't Londonistan. Your Jew hate rhetoric will not fly here, you will be exposed for the Nazi you really are. Stay in the UK, which deserves you, and watch your concentration camp news reels into the wee hours, you miserable wretch.

And now she wants to stand shoulder to shoulder with the EDL:

Geert Wilders was victorious in his bid to strike his banning in Britain by the jihadist infiltrators. The EDL is holding a rally in Defense of Free Speech, in London at the House of Lords.

How I wish I could be there to stand with the English Defense League.

Pam, so do we, think of what a great photo op it would be for us: you, the EDL, Geert Wilders (and maybe Mad Mel?) all in 'Londonistan'! United they stand!

With such an association the EDL could kiss goodbye any claims that their concerns are only with Radical Muslims and Jihadists: Pamela and Geert have problem with Islam, tout court.

For added fun, visit my collection of Pamelisms.