Ahead of the Curve…

Mona Eltahawy:

Arabophobic Comment of the Week…

Mind you, it’s still early days. 'Roger' at Richard Millett’s blog (‘If Carlsberg did sinking ships’):

I have not seen this vile tripe and it sounds like a nightmare to watch, unmitigated soul torture. The makers of The Promise clearly share with the Arabs the same love of mendacity and moral inversion. From what you describe, there is no doubt in my mind that these people are Jew haters through and through…..another characteristic they share with the Arabs.

A bit further down he invokes Debbie ‘Atheists should shut up because they’re a minority’ Schlussel, the dumbest US Zionista that I can possibly think of…

Islamic Awakening?

Every single item on Press TV concerning the fledgling Arab renaissance (and there are many, with regular programming thoroughly disrupted since Egypt) is preceded by a screen declaring ‘Islamic Awakening’. We get a lot of Press TV commentators (increasingly regime sock puppets) trying frantically to put an Islamic spin on the proceedings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Jordan and Bahrain, while it’s plain to see for all that an Islamic or Islamist factor is almost completely absent in these uprisings/demonstrations.

The Mullahs too are trembling: change is in the air also in the non-Arab part of the Muslim world. But the theocratic regime will defend itself for dear life: it has a stronger grip on Iranian society than we might think, in part because it seems to enjoy genuine popularity among considerable parts of the population. Expect hard-won ‘reforms’ to come about relatively soon nonetheless…

Yoel Marcus: Twit from Ha’aretz

Here:

While the enlightened world, that is European states, are slowly being conquered by Muslim immigrants […]

Enlightened? No. Being conquered by Muslim immigrants? According to Geert Wilders, hordes of Muslim baiters… and Yoel Marcus.

Phoney Merkel tells Phoneyahu off…

Angela ‘multiculti is dead’ Merkel got a little pissed off with the Dark Lord (of the Rings) of Mordor, apparently…

Ha’aretz, thanks Phil:

A senior German source said Netanyahu had called Merkel on Monday, following the American veto in the UN Security Council last Friday and Germany's vote in favor of the Palestinian proposal to condemn construction in West Bank settlements.

The conversation between the two leaders was extremely tense and included mutual accusations and harsh statements, the official said.

Netanyahu told Merkel he was disappointed by Germany's vote and by Merkel's refusal to accept Israel's requests before the vote, the source added. Merkel was furious.
"How dare you," she said, according to the official. "You are the one who disappointed us. You haven't made a single step to advance peace."

The prime minister assured Merkel that he intended to launch a new peace plan that would be a continuation of his Bar-Ilan University speech, given in June 2009, in which he agreed to establishing a Palestinian state, the official revealed.
"I intend to make a new speech about the peace process in two to three weeks," Netanyahu told Merkel.

The German chancellor and her advisers, who have been repeatedly disappointed by Netanyahu's inaccurate statements and failure to keep promises, did not believe a word of what the prime minister told her, the source said.

…”the prime minister and his advisers are desperately looking for a way to jumpstart the peace process”: first he was trembling, now he’s shaking. Let’s hope it develops into a bad case of the bends…

Antisemitic trees go unpunished?

Lybia’s burning but the numpties of the British pro-Zionist Eustonite ‘Left’ have found a new flap to rally around: an attempt to take a Zionist wrecking ball to the British Greens on account of these not having a ‘policy on antisemitism’. The project is an undertaking by the usual coterie of ‘centre Leftish’ bloggers that gravitate around Engage online and the Brown Sauce (Harry’s place), battle stations manned by wankers like Modernity Blog, BobfromBrockley, Joseph W and quite a few others. Being a fairly closed circle they’ve clearly swarmed in on their prey like a bunch Internaut MLMers on the latest Tinkerwebs quasi legal ponzi-scheme.

Firstly one needs to ask oneself why the Greens need or want a policy on antisemitism (or even anti-racism) in the first place. Is it not so that as an organisation the Greens are simply bound to uphold British Law, including the multiple pieces of fine legislation combating racism, including antisemitism, in this country? My wife works as a manager in a ‘people-oriented’ organisation (I won’t specify – with somewhat dangerous nutters like Modernity Blog (Modders) around that would be foolish) that voluntarily provides Government supplied work place courses like ‘Equality and Diversity’ to its employees, yet it has no explicit policy on antisemitism. Wrong you say? On what grounds?

And this is where it turns out that this whole non-issue regarding the Greens isn’t that new but rather dates back a little. The Greens you see, like any other self-respecting party or person would, had been making ‘funny noises about Israel’, to sligthly paraphrase the words from the sperm cell of the outfit, the self-proclaimed philosemite nutter from ‘Oy va Goy!’ And ‘funny noises about Israel’, we can’t have that now can we? In Modders’ book he famously wrote: ‘in anti-Zionism, Zionism is code for Jews’ (one has to admire, if nothing more, his candour).

This is where the mini saga begins: with an attempt to make the Greens more ‘Israel friendly’ by means of the sledgehammer of the antisemitism charge. Explains briefly Deborah Fink in the comment section of JsF:

Given what is happening in the Green Party, Richard's piece is very timely. Greens Engage (yes, the Green off-shoot of Engage), had for some time, been making constant allegations of anti-semitism to Green Party members, including Caroline Lucas, attacking them publicly and leaking internal documents, no doubt to restrict criticism of and action against, Israel. Then I came along......

Meanwhile, after putting a lot of pressure on the party, a body within the party, drafted a statement on anti-Semitism which was not yet ready, but leaked by Greens Engage.. Unfortunately, it was written by 2 people who are not up on the issues, and they had incorporated the EUMC definition into it. Those of us who are up on the issues, including several Jewish members, were up in arms. I then proposed a motion at our London meeting, that our representatives on this committee would vote against this statement and it was passed and then at their meeting, it was voted against. This is why Greens Engage is so angry and why Toby Green has resigned. Good riddance, I say!

(For ‘Richard’ and the ‘EUMC definition’, please consult this link (scroll to above the fold) which also contains the above comment)

For now the small armada of Brit Zionet bloggers and fellow travellers can claim victory: a certain Toby Green (who?) has resigned from the party with a long and rambling and in parts quite disgusting goodbye piece. The Greens, politically quite inept on account of never having seen any serious political limelight, have basically been conned and had. But sadly for Hirsh, Bob f.B., Modders et al, this is a tree that falls in a forest only inhabited by them and them only. Unfortunately their pseudo-intellectual masturbatory practices will continue to stain the sheets of the Tinkerwebs…

Mark Steel: Rulers who still need our sympathy

H/T JsF, source.

The most worrying side to world events is if Gaddafi and Berlusconi both depart, there'll be hardly any world leaders left to offer Tony and Cherie Blair a free holiday. It only needs Murdoch to be overthrown and the Blairs will have to go to Pontins at Camber Sands.

Luckily, they seem to have instructed the current Government in how to deal with dictators, so the chairman of the parliamentary group that deals with Bahrain, Conor Burns, went on the radio to say that His Royal Highness the King and his son the Crown Prince of Bahrain are committed to democracy. Of course they are. The King believes in one man, one vote – him. They even use the AV system, with the King voting for himself as King, with his son second choice.

Once Mr Burns has had more experience, he might spot that there are clues in the name of Bahrain's rulers as to their preference for a system that isn't all that democratic. Words such as "His Excellency" and "Crown Prince" and "King" suggest they favour a method of rule that doesn't entirely rely on the popular vote, but it takes time to read between the lines like that.

Another clue is that the deputy commander of the armed forces is the Crown Prince, or maybe that is just coincidence and the King's son really was the best man for the job, selected after an exhaustive series of interviews and role-play exercises. And some of the other candidates went home and said: "I think it went quite well, it's down to me and the Crown Prince, so fingers crossed."

Even so, Mr Burns insisted, the King is "trying to reform", and there is a long tradition of undemocratic leaders who have tried the same. Supporters of apartheid, such as Margaret Thatcher, always insisted South Africa was "trying to reform". So was the Shah of Iran, and the Soviet Union and Mubarak, but it is always really hard luck that they never quite get round to it and then they are overthrown before they get the chance. Another phrase Mr Burns used in defence of the King was "this is not Egypt". This is becoming a catchphrase for Western officials backing a regime against protesters, as if they knew all along that Egypt was corrupt, and cleverly disguised their distaste by arming and financing the place, but this regime is lovely and the demonstrators must have made a mistake. If Mubarak had been smarter he would have responded to the protests in Cairo by saying: "What are you doing? This is not Egypt."

Mr Burns insisted that there are elections in Bahrain, which is true, but the royals still make the major decisions, such as whether to shoot people. This presented a problem for the Conservative fan of the King, as his radio interview followed an account from a witness, speaking live from Bahrain, agonisingly describing the killing. So the MP said this account was thoroughly "unreliable". Because the trouble with these reports from protesters and journalists and doctors is that they are actually there, so they don't get a true picture, which is much easier to put together if you're at home in Bournemouth. Mr Burns probably did an extensive search on Google Earth and couldn't see any corpses, so it is obvious that this whole thing was a huge misunderstanding.

Mr Burns saved his best for last. The folly of the protesters, he said, was that the Saudi government might watch and think: "Well if that's the gratitude you get for trying to reform, we won't bother." That's right, you know who's to blame for the dictators in Saudi – the people protesting in Bahrain, the selfish bastards. The sensitive Saudi royals are considering moving towards trying to reform but they're easily startled, so the last thing we need is people complaining about being shot, especially when they're probably making it up.

Next week we'll hear from the Cross-Parliamentary Anglo-al-Qa'ida Friendship Society, who will declare that "Mr Bin Laden is committed to reform but these things take time".

Close but no Arad…

Inspiration: Tikun Olam.

Why am I always last to get the memo? It appears that bruiser Ron ‘pressure’ Prosor, Zionist ambassador to Albion, was scheduled to be succeeded by no one less than Netanyahu’s own answer to Dr Strangelove, Uzi Arad.

And according to Ha’aretz: ohmyg-d, now I have to thank Lieberman… Close shave, Britain! Uzi ‘Dr Strangelove’ Arad is also the guy who once proclaimed:

I don’t think that one has to go that far because at the end of the day, I don’t think the majority of Israelis want to see themselves responsible for the Palestinians. We do not want to control the Palestinian population. It’s unnecessary. What we do want is to care for our borders, for the Jewish settlements and for areas which are unpopulated and to have our security interests served well. But also to take under our responsibility these populations which, believe me, are not the most productive on earth, would become a burden. We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of the Palestinian populations - not territories. It is territory we want to preserve, but populations we want to rid ourselves of.

Here, at about 8:30… Right little charmer, inne?

“EU Working Definition of anti-Semitism”: Dead in the Water

Well, well, well. It looks like the most stupid (and most dishonest) attempt at defining antisemitism since Moses, the so-called “European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia Working Definition of Antisemitism” is basically a goner.

Total kudos to Mark at JsF for unearthing this gem on the JNews site). So hop over there for the full story. NOW!

Oh, and Modernity Blog: eat your (empty) heart out! Toodeloo!

Millett’s Crossing...

It seems Richard ‘I’m not a Zionist’ Millett, ‘independent’ ‘journalist’ (he gets pieces published in ‘The Jewish News’ - The what? Never mind - apparently) and Press TV’s ‘Mr Hamas’ has finally arrived. Well, almost...

He gets a mention (but sadly no direct link yet– such honour is bestowed only upon greater Ziomadness – like the truly execrable Elder ‘Palarabs’ of Zyon) in the Wicked Witch of British off-the-scale Zionism, Mad Mel Phlipps's latest histrionic screechings. Mad Mel, MMR freak, peddler of Creationism, exposer of ‘the gay agenda’, please do Millett full honours, will you? A man who, among other lunacy, found fit to defend the antisemitic remarks ('you killed Jesus... yeah!') of an Ahava shop assistant, surely must deserve full credentials in your worldview (as in the title of your latest bookywook: ‘The World Upside Down’)? Go on, we know you want to!

A death blow to al Qaeda/Islamism?

Here’s a Jeera columnist who’s articulated for the first time (that I know of) what I’ve been pondering for a few days now: that the ME’s tumultuous rebirth must surely spell an end to al Qaeda (at least in the ME) and its various affiliations, including some radicalised Muslim youths in our midst? Possibly reduced to a few diehard individuals, ETA-style, who’ll continue their struggle against the will of the people they claim to represent (a claim often supported by self-serving rightwing Western pundits)?

[…] as evidenced by the fact that America's two primary antagonists in the Middle East, al-Qaeda and the Iranian government, have seen their standing sink in proportion to the rise of the pro-democracy movements.

In any war, cold or hot, propaganda is crucial, and here it is impossible to lose sight of the fact that al-Qaeda has had little if anything to say about the Egyptian revolution precisely because it was a massive non-violent jihad that succeeded miraculously where a decade of al-Qaeda blood and vitriol have miserably failed.

As for Iran, the government's rhetorical support for the Egyptian revolution while it continues to suppress its own democracy movement is clearly emptying the Iranian regime of any remaining credibility as an alternative to the US-dominated order.

From this op-ed by Mark Levine titled Here we go again: Egypt to Bahrain ,warmly recommended in its entirety.

Al Jazeera’s surge in US/Canada

Vancouver Sun, via Al Jazeera.

"It's no longer anecdotal," Burman [Tom Burman, formerly CBC – now Al Jazeera English's head of strategy for the Americas] told Postmedia News. "There is, empirically, a real amazing demand indicated by Americans and Canadians in how AJE is covering the story."

And:

The surging demand for Al Jazeera English's service, he said, is still seen mainly in the click counts on stories at AJE's website and in activity at its online portal for streaming of the network's televised news coverage.

"The web traffic to Al Jazeera English -- particularly to its live-streaming -- jumped 2,500 per cent in the 48-hour period at the beginning of the Egyptian crisis, and that's mainly from North America," said Burman. "There have just been millions and millions of page views."

At the same time, said Burman, U.S. cable and satellite providers are being deluged with about 4,000 requests a day from subscribers seeking access to Al Jazeera English's broadcast coverage of the unfolding drama in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere overseas.

"The great difference with Canadians is that it's actually already available in their homes," said Burman.

"What we're trying to do with Canadians is just kind of telling them that -- and that it really requires them to tell their cable or satellite company that they want it."

Are US citizens finally ditching their pappy corporate news media for something a lot more in depth?

Religious Loonies from Israel: Why are They ignored?

… rightly asks As’ad AbuKhalil.

From Ha’aretz:

The events currently shaking the Arab world "were ordained from above" by a guiding hand, Israel Defense Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Naveh said on Sunday. Naveh added that the Israeli army needed faith in God now more than its supply of planes and tanks. [Careful what you wish for, Yair!]

So why indeed is much of the Western press, including a good dollop of the pro-Zionist blogosphere (see for instance the Brown Sauce - Harry’s Place, who leave no stone unturned in order to expose the Islamist ‘networks’), so obsessively preoccupied with every crackpot Islamist street corner preacher man, while the religious loony tunes that are increasingly part of Israel’s Judaic equivalent to the Taleban (New! Now with access to the levers of power!) get off scot free?

If an American General made a comparable utterance, you’d have American Liberals up in arms about it. Not so here. Why?

Answers on a postcard below. Please?

God thugs v. Bad thugs…

According the WSJ: our thugs are better than their thugs…

The regime in Tehran—aptly described by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday as “a military dictatorship with a kind of theocratic overlay”—feels zero compunction or shame about repressing political opponents. Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s military, dependent on U.S. aid and support, were susceptible to outside pressure to shun violence. Tehran scorns the West.

To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples. The comparison is akin to what happened in the 1980s when U.S. allies led by authoritarians fell peacefully in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, even as Communist regimes proved tougher.

File under: ‘shit you couldn’t make up if they paid you for it’, or ‘the damage wearing a lapel badge does to the brain’…

Thanks Antony…

The Phoney Peace: Business as Usual

The months following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany at the beginning of WW II was a period of deceptive quiet, known as the ‘phoney war’. And although the Arab 21st century renaissance has only just begun it’s clear the possible scriptwriters of any more meaningful steps towards comprehensive peace in the Middle East in both Washington and Tel Aviv are still operating along the parameters of previous (and now largely obsolete) calculations.

For instance yesterday we had the US come out with the usual doublespeak:

The United States on Friday vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory after the Palestinians refused to withdraw the Arab-drafted text.

The other 14 council members voted in favor of the draft resolution. But the United States, as one of the five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, voted against it and struck it down.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told council members that the veto "should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity." She added that the U.S. view is that Israeli settlements lack legitimacy.

But she said the draft "risks hardening the position of both sides" and reiterated the U.S. position that settlements and other contentious issues should be resolved in direct peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "They are illegal under international law," he said.

Rice, later interviewed on Jeera, added cryptically that (paraphrasing slightly) 'passing the resolution could possibly lead to more settlements being built and where would we be then?' Answer: up shit creek without a paddle where we’ve been for at least 20 years now, thanks largely to the US’s approach to Israel/Palestine. In another context (still on Jeera) an American observer stated (with regards to Haiti) that ‘American Foreign Policy makers live on the moon’. Really? That nearby?

And a few days ago, Ehud Barak, Zion’s Defense minister, told the AOF’s newly appointed Chief Benny Gantz that:

"Hezbollah remembers the heavy beating they suffered from us in 2006, but it is not forever, and you may be called to enter again," Barak told the IDF soldiers, adding that "we must be prepared for every test."

Zion's Mad Dog deterrency must be maintained at all cost, you see? And still they wonder why their country is considered a splinter through the Arab world...

Our Children isn’t Learning…

In the face of great danger and the urgent need to… erm… ‘recalibrate’ its attitude to the Arab world and the ‘peace process’, the smallish super tanker that is Israel hasn’t even started turning the ship’s wheel for the necessary (unavoidable even) u-turn. For now it seems intent on steaming ahead, possibly slightly rudderless…

Levy in Ha’aretz:

More than half of Jewish school children in Israel have visited Auschwitz; each year more than 10,000 go on a trip to Poland or on the March of the Living, a pilgrimage to the death camps. They come back shocked and nationalist. These tours mislead the weeping students for a moment as they wrap themselves in the national flag, before and after downing a Vodka Red Bull in their rooms.

These programs bring back thousands of teens who have learned nothing about the danger of fascism, who have heard nothing about morality, humanity and the slippery slope on which a dangerous regime might pull down a complacent society. Just more and more blind faith in strength, xenophobia, fear of the other and inflamed passions. So in their current format, these tours are missed opportunities whose damage is greater than their use.

Now Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar wants to add a tour to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Thousands of teens will be taken in armored buses to the danger zone, accompanied by soldiers and armed bodyguards. A safari in Hebron. During the visit, a curfew will be imposed on the last Palestinians left in the neighborhood. The students will be hurried into the ancient site that is believed to be the Cave of Machpelah - the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs who are probably not buried there. No one will show them what is around them. No one will tell them what happened to the thousands of people who lived near the tomb.

Their guides, the most violent and atrocious of the settlers in the territories, will not tell them what they have done. They will discuss the history of the place with Zionist selectivity. They will tell them about the 1929 Hebron massacre, but not about the 1994 Baruch Goldstein massacre. The students will see a ghost neighborhood around them and will not ask why it is abandoned, and whom the inhabitants were afraid of when they fled.

Here, too, as at Auschwitz, they will only scare them more and more. At Auschwitz they will make them frightened of the Poles and in Hebron of the Arabs. Everyone always wants to annihilate us. They will return from Hebron excited at having touched the ancient stones and even more blinded from not having touched the people who lived alongside those stones. They will see nothing and learn nothing. As at Auschwitz, they will come home even more nationalist: Hebron forever, and the force of arms.

This is Zionism: lovely, innit?

From Max Blumenthal (for useful links read via source/link):



Above is a shocking video depicting the 17th(!) pogrom against the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib by the criminal syndicate known as the Jewish National Fund and the End Timers at GOD TV. Apparently Israeli riot police fired bean bag rounds and tear gas to disperse the villagers, wounding children while violently arresting their parents.

I encourage everyone reading this to repost this and Richard Silverstein’s latest at the Facebook pages of the Jewish National Fund and GOD TV. In the coming weeks and months, I will be promoting new efforts to hold the pogromists at the JNF accountable for what they are doing in the Negev.

Welcome to Palestine…now let’s reset the relationship

One of the first serious pieces that dares articulate what so many of us have been thinking from the earliest days of Tahrir Square: Zionism in the era of the Arab Renaissance...

Issa Khalaf (Ph.D. Oxford University) @ Mondoweiss:

Welcome to Palestine, even if it’s a century later. Now let’s reset the relationship. You came from faraway lands claiming an already inhabited one. Oppressed, massacred, and socially separated in Christendom/Europe, you felt as outsiders subject to anti-Semitic threats. Eventually, with the colonial age, a group of you, Eastern Europeans called Zionists argued your right to Palestine, from which ancient Jews were virtually absent from the 1st century and of whom you claimed tenuous descent. You claimed that Jews had a three thousand year cultural and emotional attachment to the holy land; that you are a single group whose roots are to this land and whose heart, spirit, character and center is Jerusalem. That your project wasn’t settler-colonialism, conquest through immigration under the aegis of a colonial power, but return or restoration, rendered moral by your religious roots in the land and in your suffering, hence giving you title to the land that transcends Palestinians rights, claims, attachments, and needs. You insisted that Jews require sovereignty for their safety, protection, and, in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide, survival.

At the time you arose in the late 19th century, the Enlightenment had made great progress and emancipated Jews from ghetto enclaves, accelerating integration and erosion of identity leading some Jews to argue for cultural assimilation and others for distinctiveness and autonomy. Zionism in particular looked on emancipation and cultural integration as a threat, the death of a mythical Jewish nation. You insisted on a “Jewish problem,” a congenital Christian/Western anti-Semitism as natural as darkness in nighttime. As Zionists, you were a part of Judaism gone nationalist, and other Jews saw you as a contradiction to liberal, pluralist tradition that could only cause problems for Jews. Because you organized, politically lobbied and agitated, you, political Zionists, took the stage, getting increasing support among Jews in Europe and the US. Still, Zionism remained a tiny minority and did not significantly spread until the rise of Nazi Germany and the genocidal horrors that followed. At that point, the argument for a Jewish state seemed unassailable and found supporters among many non-Jews.

Of course, the reality from the very beginning was that another people existed in Palestine, becoming alive to its national identity and, by the end of WWI, aspirations for self-determination and independence. They populated villages, towns and cities, cultivated the land, had marvelous citrus groves, owned businesses and shops, traded and built factories. They were naturally everywhere you looked. They were by the end of the Mandate, one of the most prosperous and educated people in the Middle East. This reality, their existence and your determination to ignore it, and the injustice and violence it has caused ever since, is the root of the conflict in Palestine.

It was not that you were blind to the fact that this place contained, when the World Zionist Organization was formed in 1897, over 95 percent Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian (12-15 percent of Palestinians) who constituted the overwhelming owners of the country, with the remainder constituting Jews, most of whom were non-Zionist, and others. Nor were you unaware that, by 1917, before the British took over and began to implement their promise to you for a “Jewish national home,” the Jewish colonist population constituted less than 10 percent of the total (50,000 to 60,000) and owned a tiny fraction of the land area. You could not create a viable Jewish state out of thin air, but only at others’ expense and who had nothing to do, and still don’t, with anti-Semitism, who did you no harm. You steadily came to Palestine, though you constituted a tiny fraction of the millions who preferred immigration to the US. By the time of the Nazi ascendance in Germany, immigration to Palestine accelerated as the US and Europe closed their doors. Still, by 1948, at slightly over 600,000, you constituted about 30 or so percent of the population and you owned 7-8 percent of the land surface, despite all your efforts of over fifty years.

So you took Palestine by force and ethnic cleansing, turning over half its population into refugees. Irony of ironies is that those Palestinian villagers whom you cleansed, or those you oppress in the occupied territories, were most likely more Jewish in lineage than you were, many of them descendants of early Jewish converts to Christianity, then to Islam. So are many of the current Palestinian Christians. The UN, after prodigious US arm twisting against its member states, recommended you get 55 percent of the country, gratis. You said you were reasonable and compromising by accepting this, but your argument was devilishly ingenious: you were “giving away” half of a whole you did not own, just as you claim to be compromising today, by merely considering the idea of “giving up” current occupied territory. In any case, your strategy was to wait until an opportune moment to expand. That happened immediately in 1948 as you ended up with 77 percent of Palestine, 22 percent more than was allotted to you by the UN, then again in 1967 when you took the remainder, now the West Bank and Gaza, at which point the Zionist colonial project proceeded in earnest where it left off in 1948.

Your dominant response to Palestinians’ existence was denial and the assertion of a transcendent moral right; the Palestinians after all were part of a larger Arab population of the Middle East, thus justifying exclusive Jewish possession in Palestine. As European colonists, you viewed the Palestinians with a racist lens, as Europeans did peoples of Asia and Africa. Palestine’s colonization was merely a “project” that could be implemented against the wishes of who to you were poor and illiterate people who should make way. Palestine’s Arabs became invisible, non-existent, literally less than human, needing to move over, disappear, for those with superior cultural and intellectual civilization. According to this logic, their resistance then and now is ascribable to their fear and repudiation of the benevolent progress and development Zionists bring with them, not to a natural defense to invasion and oppression.

There was a strong degree of self-delusion in your attitude. The Palestinians were both there and not there: to admit their existence, the reality of “the Arab problem,” was to confront unpleasant truths, to admit that your dream, your colonial project, was unrealizable, to be relinquished. So the Palestinians were imagined, canceled, and interpreted away, denied their humanity, and continue to be relentlessly and violently disbarred from unhindered, unequivocal self-representation. You assumed superiority that emanated in Jewish tradition, exemplified by the biblical phrase, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” You, as Jewish Zionists, are a superior, chosen, elevated people, People of the Book, who used your minds in religious, intellectual, and sublime pursuits while the inferior Goyim, the Gentiles, used their hands and muscle in pursuit of brawn, prostitution, and drunkenness. You were pure; the other degraded. Your life in the urban ghetto or rural village (shtetl) exaggerated the psychological differences.

Your superiority masked an equally strong sense of inferiority caused by centuries of humiliation and shame. This may have led you, Zionists, to overcompensate by emphasizing not only a sort of spiritual rebirth and redemption through labor in a hallowed soil, an activity Jews previously despised, but also a drive to unreflective military and material power, to crush opposition to your project and “threats to Jews.” The Palestinian Esau’s intellectual and cultural inferiority also justified the dismissal of his humanity, eliciting the Palestinians' pounding with merciless violence and rage. European colonial racism was thus overlaid with the psychological complexity of the Jewish experience that has characterized Israeli Jewish attitudes to this day. This psychosis, the need to wish the Palestinians away and the sense of Jewish superiority mixed with humiliation, is at the core of your violence towards Palestine’s indigenous people.

So here you are. You got your state of 1948, including all you took by force, accepted by the international community. You have a prosperous economy, a vital society. You sport the strongest military in the Middle East. You possess ample stockpiles of fearsome WMDs, and not only nuclear, including the means to deliver them to distant cities, and are furtively engaged in advanced research to develop weaponry that annihilates the enemy without hurting the land.You have the West prostrated at your feet, so guilty are they for their inhumanity against the Jewish people. You plumped 500,000 Jews into the West Bank/Palestinian Jerusalem, many of them fanatics hailing from the US, and want the remainder of Palestine, all of it. You war against Palestine and Arabs and you reject all peace overtures and normalization. You energetically work to undermine yourself. You also continue Jewish separation and superiority, socializing a generation of confused young people and racists, insistent that the Palestinians do not share a common humanity with you. The gun falsely empowered and freed you from your historic weakness and humiliation, for you got oppression and chauvinism in return. You deny, with all the psychosis at your disposal, your guilt, unable to reconcile your moral exceptionalism with your tyranny against the Palestinians. How could they possibly be as human with real grievances and needs?

But the world goes around, and our sins catch up with us. You can’t cover the sun with your palm, as an old Arab proverb has it. Your might and power, your clinging to great powers and their elites to protect yourself and maintain your hegemony is beginning to fall apart. Your strategic environment is changing, your great power patron may not be up to the task in the coming decade or two. You’ve exhausted him anyway, cowed his politicians, confused his public, distorted the meaning of right and wrong. Yet, despite all this, all the craziness, you will not let go of your notion of an indivisible Jewish land, the Land of Israel, as if others are mere trespassers. It’s not that there’s only one narrative, that of the Palestinians, it’s that theirs is as truthful as truth gets, and it is logically and epistemologically false to claim the truth is in the middle. You can’t split the truth.

You seem ready to take down the Middle East with you if you have to. You will not leave your tormented victims alone by relinquishing the occupied territories, you will not award them citizenship, you will not establish an authentic peace, you will not accept being a part of the Middle East, your gaze firmly fixed to the west. Your leaders’ imagination is fossilized. Your young people can’t think beyond themselves because they’ve internalized, thanks to your education and socialization, the idea of besieged victims surrounded by violent Arabs ready to take them down. You teach them that the whole world is against them, you take them on trips to concentration camps to bolster the idea of Zionism and justify Israeli might and right, you scare them with the omnipresence of anti-Semitism and that they can exist only by force. What a future you’re constructing for them! Surely, there is a better way, for your young people and for the Palestinian young people. There is sharing. There is forgiveness. The Palestinians are the door to your redemption, the revivification of ethical Judaism. But you won’t grasp any of this.

Still, Palestinians and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, Palestinian children, welcome you. Let’s reset the past, yours and ours. Pretend you just arrived in the Middle East. Start anew. Take justice and peace, take reconciliation, take compassion, acknowledge your sins against the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian people generally, embrace their humanity, live with them in peace, security, and coexistence. This is all possible even at this moment, but you must make “radical” decisions, transcend your psychosis. Most of all you must look deep inside yourself. There is no other way, except the way of destruction.

The End of the Beginning…

In the end McBarak wasn’t slain but resigned and fled to some resort in Egypt. May the Egyptian people at some point successfully prosecute the former tyrant and grant him his wish of dying on the soil of (an) Egypt(ian prison cell).

The Arab 21st century renaissance started in Tunis but it won’t end in Cairo. As John Simpson noted last night (paraphrasing rather generously from memory): ‘If I was the leader of several ME countries (like Jordan, Algiers, Saudi, Syria or Iran) right now, the sound of Egyptian cars honking their horns in support of the revolution would probably haunt me at night and cause me troubled sleep…’

Ynetnews – or... ‘Zionists freaking out’, dixit As’ad AbuKhalil:

"As long as we had Mubarak, there was no void in our relations with the region. Now we're in big trouble," he said.

Israel, Mazel said, had many reasons for concern. "From a strategic point of view, Israel is now facing a hostile situation. It's over, there is no one left to lead the pragmatic, moderate state."

[Still holding on to the old linguistic paradigm, eh Mazel? Dictators/repressive regimes/whatever in the service of t’Empire are… moderate??? My edit]

Mazel said it could take time before a new government was established in Egypt.

"The familiar governmental framework of the past 30 years has dissolved, and it will take a year or two or three before a new regime rises to power.

"The next stage is disbanding parliament, as the people won't accept a parliament based on fraud, and holding new elections. Naturally, the opposition will also want to run in these elections and will ask for a longer period of time to gain recognition. The Muslim Brotherhood will take action as well, of course."

Although previously Mazel (but not Tov…) uttered something incomprehensible:

"It's over, Egypt is no longer a superpower," former Israeli Ambassador to Cairo Zvi Mazel told Ynet. "Egypt has completely lost its status in the area, […]."

Jews sans Frontieres (Gabriel Ash) reacts:

Oh Tel Aviv, don't cry! Dictators come and go. The Empire giveth and the people taketh away. It is unwise to get too emotionally attached. If you allow me to paraphrase an old Midrash:

The colonialist arrives to the new land with a closed fist, as if to say, "this is all mine," but will leave with an open palm, as if to say "I took nothing with me," not even wisdom.

Light relief: Sulayman poops his pants…

Suleiman: ‘we will take care of it…’

Suleiman, pimped by many like Martin Indyk as the reformer who’ll bring democracy to Egypt, in 2005:

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman promised Israel in 2005 that he would prevent Hamas from gaining control over Gaza, according to a US diplomatic cable released on Friday.

According to the cable, which was leaked to WikiLeaks and published by Norweigan newspaper Aftenposten, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau, secretly visited Suleiman, then the head of Egyptian intelligence, in September 2005. Gilad then reported on the visit to US diplomats in Tel Aviv.

Gilad and Suleiman discussed their common fear of Hamas winning the Palestinian elections set for January 2006.

Suleiman said to Gilad: “There will be no elections in January. We will take care of it.”

Suleiman did not elaborate as to how Egypt would stop the elections.
The US embassy in Tel Aviv wrote that Suleiman opposes Hamas because of fears that Islamic leadership in Gaza will strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

It’s really gonna start to stink of very dirty laundry soon on this blog…

This is Ziologic…

At Richard Millett's (who? Start pissing yourself now: a blogger who calls himself ‘not a Zionist’ and an ‘independent’ ‘journalist’ – don’t give up the day job just yet, Rich – the prose still reads as if you had to carve it in stone first):

Jews have a historical right to return. After x,000 years… [my edit]

Palestinians don’t have a right to return. After 60 years (and less)…

I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect Zios like Millett to enthusiastically support the many First People’s movements around the world but you never saw that. Millett and his exceedingly stupid and racist kommentariat are essentially navel staring mediocrities…


Aaahh, Zionism....

Urgent help needed with Arabic!

Dammit, and still he refuses to go…

How do you spell Hosni Mubarak: go to Tel Aviv or go to hell! in Arabic? No, seriously...


I’m almost in awe in a certain nonsensical sense of the double act Mubarak/Suleyman for their own brand of inverted, inside/out, topsy/turvy orthogonal bravoura! I mean, are they hoping to take as many Egyptians down with them as possible? That would positively be more Hitleresque than Himmleresque…

Gideon Levy on ‘ME Stability’…

This so-called stability encompasses millions of Arabs living under criminal regimes and evil tyrannies.

By Gideon Levy

When a tank enters a residential neighborhood, sows fear and destruction, and the local kids throw stones at it, what is this called? "Disturbing the peace." And what do you call the detention of those stone-throwers, allowing the tank to continue on its way without any more trouble? "Restoring order."

That is how we have shaped our disgustingly laundered language to serve our one and only narrative; how we would describe to ourselves the misleading reality in which we live. Meanwhile, tanks are no longer entering residential areas; order is somehow being maintained in the territories without them. The occupier oppresses, the occupied people overcome their instincts and their struggle, and good order is maintained - for now. Stability.

Egypt also suddenly dared to "disturb the peace." Its people, who have had enough of the country's corrupt government and the tyrannical silencing of their voices, have taken to the streets. Riots. The Western world, including Israel, has tensed in the face of this great danger - the stability in the Middle East is about to be undermined.

Indeed, that stability should be undermined. The stability in the region, something which Westerners and Israeli have come to yearn, merely means perpetuating the status quo. That situation might be good for Israel and the West, but it is very bad for the millions of people who have had to pay the price. Maintaining Mideast stability means perpetuating the intolerable situation by which some 2.5 million Palestinians exist without any rights under the heel of Israeli rule; and another few million Palestinian refugees from the war of 1948 are living in camps in Arab countries, where they also lack any rights, hope, livelihood and dignity.

This so-called stability encompasses millions of Arabs living under criminal regimes and evil tyrannies. In stable Saudi Arabia, the women are regarded as the lowest of the low; in stable Syria, any sign of opposition is repressed; in stable Jordan and Morocco, the apple of the eye of the West and Israel, people are frightened to utter a word of criticism against their kings, even in casual coffee-shop conversations.

The yearned-for stability in the Middle East includes millions of poor and ignorant people in Egypt, while the ruling families celebrate with their billions in capital. It includes regimes, the bulk of whose budgets are scandalously channeled to the military, endlessly and unnecessarily arming themselves to preserve the regime - at the expense of education, health care, development and welfare. The stability entails rule that passes from father to son (and not just in the region's monarchies ) and false elections in which only representatives of the ruling parties are allowed to run.

It involves unnecessary, worthless wars, civil wars and wars between countries in which the people give their blood because of the whims and megalomanic urges of their rulers. It represses free thought, self-determination and the struggle for freedom. It consists of weakness, lack of growth and development, lack of opportunity for achievement and almost nonexistent benefits for the masses, whose situation is frightfully stable. In their poverty and oppression, they are stable.

A region rich in natural and human resources, which could have thrived at least as much as the Far East, has been standing stable for decades. After Africa, it is the most backward place in the world.

That is the stability we apparently want to preserve; the stability that the United States always wants to preserve; the stability that Europe wants to preserve. Any undermining of this stability is considered disturbing the peace - and that is bad according to our definition.

But let us remember that when Israel was established, this signified a huge disturbance to the region - one that greatly undermined its stability and posed the greatest danger; but it was a just disturbance, to us and to the West. Now the time has come to disturb the peace some more, to undermine the worthless stability in which the Middle East is living.

The peoples of Tunisia and Egypt have begun the process. The United States and Europe stuttered at first, but quickly came to their senses. They also finally realized that the region's stability is not only unjust, it is misleading: It will be undermined in the end. When the tank invades our lives, stones must be thrown at it; the infuriating stability of the Middle East must be wiped out.

All the King’s Men…

Abdullah dismissed the previously democratically elected government to swear in the new democratically elected government…

Shit, the teleprompter’s gone on the blink again!

Collusion (a count of two)…

Count 1:

Weiss:

This morning and tomorrow the House committee on Foreign Affairs is holding hearings on Egypt. The committee is now chaired by Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, an Israel hardliner. But the ranking minority member, Howard Berman, presumably had a hand in this too. The two Israel lobbyists are Robert Satloff of the thinktank started by AIPAC and Elliott Abrams (a Jewish nationalist who has written that Jews must stand apart from any society they are in except Israel). The other rightwinger is Craner, who works for a Republican institute and I'm told has the usual Israel fervor.

Count 2:

Weiss again:

Cantor’s older brother, Stuart, is on the board of the congregation and of Richmond’s sole Jewish day school; in 2002, Stuart and his wife, Joan, also helped sponsor the annual dinner of the One Israel Fund, which provides aid for Jewish families living in the West Bank.

Eric Cantor BTW, Republican majority leader, is the highest-ranking Jewish elected public official in American history.

Saturday 12 coming: Trafalgar demo for Egypt…

Details at JsF.

I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!

I’m thinking of turning my project of penitence – to write “I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!” 10,000 times with a dunce cap on my stupid head – into a charity sponsored run, with the proceeds going to the Egyptian people…

I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!
I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!
I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!
I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!
I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!
I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!
…

Hard work, you know!

A Villa in the Jungle?

Uri Avnery on Egypt, Camp David and real peace:

MY OWN first meeting with Egypt was intoxicating. After Anwar Sadat’s unprecedented visit to Jerusalem, I rushed to Cairo. I had no visa. I shall never forget the moment I presented my Israeli passport to the stout official at the airport. He leafed through it, becoming more and more bewildered – and then he raised his head with a wide smile and said “marhaba”, welcome. At the time we were the only three Israelis in the huge city, and we were feted like kings, almost expecting at any moment to be lifted onto people’s shoulders. Peace was in the air, and the masses of Egypt loved it.

It took no more than a few months for this to change profoundly. Sadat hoped – sincerely, I believe – that he was also bringing deliverance to the Palestinians. Under intense pressure from Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter, he agreed to a vague wording. Soon enough he learned that Begin did not dream of fulfilling this obligation. For Begin, the peace agreement with Egypt was a separate peace to enable him to intensify the war against the Palestinians.

The Egyptians – starting with the cultural elite and filtering down to the masses – never forgave this. They felt deceived. There may not be much love for the Palestinians – but betraying a poor relative is shameful in Arab tradition. Seeing Hosni Mubarak collaborating with this betrayal led many Egyptians to despise him. This contempt lies beneath everything that happened this week. Consciously or unconsciously, the millions who are shouting “Mubarak Go Away” echo this contempt.

IN EVERY revolution there is the “Yeltsin Moment”. The columns of tanks are sent into the capital to reinstate the dictatorship. At the critical moment, the masses confront the soldiers. If the soldiers refuse to shoot, the game is over. Yeltsin climbed on the tank, ElBaradei addressed the masses in al Tahrir Square. That is the moment a prudent dictator flees abroad, as did the Shah and now the Tunisian boss.

Then there is the “Berlin Moment”, when a regime crumbles and nobody in power knows what to do, and only the anonymous masses seem to know exactly what they want: they wanted the Wall to fall.

And there is the “Ceausescu moment”. The dictator stands on the balcony addressing the crowd, when suddenly from below a chorus of “Down With The Tyrant!” swells up. For a moment, the dictator is speechless, moving his lips noiselessly, then he disappears. This, in a way, happened to Mubarak, making a ridiculous speech and trying in vain to stem the tide.

IF MUBARAK is cut off from reality, Binyamin Netanyahu is no less. He and his colleagues seem unable to grasp the fateful meaning of these events for Israel.

When Egypt moves, the Arab world follows. Whatever transpires in the immediate future in Egypt – democracy or an army dictatorship - It is only a matter of (a short) time before the dictators fall all over the Arab world, and the masses will shape a new reality, without the generals.

Everything the Israeli leadership has done in the last 44 years of occupation or 63 years of its existence is becoming obsolete. We are facing a new reality. We can ignore it – insisting that we are “a villa in the jungle”, as Ehud Barak famously put it – or find our proper place in the new reality.

Peace with the Palestinians is no longer a luxury. It is an absolute necessity. Peace now, peace quickly. Peace with the Palestinians, and then peace with the democratic masses all over the Arab world, peace with the reasonable Islamic forces (like Hamas and the Muslim Brothers, who are quite different from al Qaeda), peace with the leaders who are about to emerge in Egypt and everywhere.

The One Tunnel ‘Solution’ (cough!)…

H/T Phil Weiss.

Bernard Avishai writes about a new ‘approach’ to the TSS. The language is quite striking, just by the title alone: “A Plan for Peace That Could Still Be” implies that even this Zionist scribbler has largely lost faith in a TSS.

Anyway, the genius of this plan is to compensate Palestinian loss of territory with an Israeli ‘concession’ of… land underground (where in the general Zionist narrative Palestinians really belong)! A tunnel, 25 miles long, is to be built to solve the contiguity problem. The tunnel is to run from the South Hills of Hebron to Gaza.

On a semi-serious note this is essentially ‘three dimensional geography’ as originally proposed in the form of Clinton’s ‘kissing points’ but a whole lot longer…

Obama’s Israel Men…

As’ad:

Why this Obama administration is destined to make a fateful mistake in its Middle East policies

Up to the Carter administration, there were Middle East experts in government who could weigh in with their assessment of US interests in the Middle East, free of the considerations of what is good for Israel and its wars and massacres. It is fair to say that this is one of the most major challenges for the US in the region since WWII but there is not a single Middle East expert in the government who can give an assessment of US interests without being obsessed with "what is good for Israel" here. This is why the Israeli calculations are dominating the crisis decision-making at the White House, and the tone and substance of rhetoric. I mean, with people like Feltman and Shapiro (one at State and another at NSC--and both are Zionist fanatics), there is no Richard Parker or Richard Murphy or William Quandt or Gary Sick to offer an assessment of what is at stake for the US in this crisis. This is why the Obama ministration is following the script of Israeli best wishes--which could prove soon to be disastrous for the US. I remember on Sep. 11, I kept thinking without any realization about James Forrestal. I kept thinking of his warnings back in 1948. So there is not a single expert around Obama who can dare to offer an evaluation of the situation from outside the Zionist framework. Not one. You can argue that the Zionist lobby's biggest success since Reagan administration is to monopolize all appointments on the Middle East in the two main branches of government. But Israel's best wishes could be horrific for the US.

Apparently the Weak One and Rashid Khalidi were once (still are?) friends, going by the noises made by the US Palinesque Right during the 2008 elections (about Obama’s friendship with a ‘terrorist’). Well, Khalidi was on Marwan Bishara’s flag ship show Empire (AJ) last night. I suggest that based on that segment Obama seeks council from his (former?) confidant…

Tel Aviv heart Himmler of Cairo…

Barak to Suleiman: ’Thanks for your visit and listen Omar, before you go we’re having a Powerpoint presentation on how to efficiently dispossess, imprison and torture Arabs, come and sit in and your input will be most appreciated!’

Laughing Cow heart Egypt…

Now we know why they called him ‘The Laughing Cow’: because he was laughing all the way to the bank! Yesterday Jeera declared the Mubarak’s family fortune to be $40 – 70 billion and I thought I’d misheard or they’d dropped a bollock. $7 billion perhaps, but surely not 70?!?

But no, between 40 and 70 billion it appears to be. To spend 40 billion in 40 years means having to spend... 2.7 million each day and everyday for these 40 years, BTW. No wonder he’s now suggesting increasing wages of public sector workers! He could single handedly pay for it…

All in all it’s another feather in the cap of unfettered capitalism…

Angry Arab on Bill Maher, after 9/11…

On Mondoweiss a couple of commenters were complaining about the treatment of Mona Eltahawy at the hands of Bill Maher. Some searching yielded nothing, perhaps too early days. But drilling a little deeper around ‘bill maher eltahawy egypt’ yielded something older and more unexpected: As’ad AbuKhalil’s experience on Bill Maher’s show.

Now I profess to not knowing Maher very well, except from a few funny youtube clips. But I know him now. As a swarmy slimeball, full of gratuitous racism (always beware of people that are proud to be ‘politically incorrect’), playing his zombie audience like a fiddle. Here’s just part II of the show, for your delectation. It shows how the Americans started off after 9/11 and how they never really changed direction.



All other parts of the recording are at the bottom of the link above.

And here’s As’ad’s own account of the ‘Maher experience’:

Back in 2001, only weeks after Sep. 11, I was invited to appear on the show that Bill Maher hosted on ABC called Politically Incorrect. It was during a time where I felt that views that were critical of the US were being obscured, maligned, marginalized, and disregarded. I of course accepted the invitation. I was speaking in Merced College the night before, and Maher sent me his limo driver to pick me up and drive me down to LA. They taped the show days in advance. I sat in the green room and then we were ready for the show. The show was supposed to deal with several segments dealing with different issues (including abortion and another topic that I don't remember). I did not know any of the other guests but I recognized Jean Sassoon because she wrote trashy books including one that was particularly trashy called Princess (which I am told was serialized in some tabloids). Sassoon approached me to tell me that she likes Arab men because they are "the best lovers" although she added that she did not want her American boyfriend (or husband) to hear her. I was in a very angry mood politically, and if you remember those days after Sep. 11 you would understand. So we started the show: Maher came before the show and briefly introduced himself and we were told that we have three different segments covering three different topics. And when the show started and then you can see the first segment. During the first commercial break, the producer came to whisper to Maher and then came to me and said that they have decided to cancel the other two topics and that I can proceed with my delivery and that it was good for the show, or words for that effect. Of course, talking about the Middle East is what I do, so I relished the opportunity. And then the show went on. During the break, the "comedic" actor to my right, kept asking me why am I in the US, if I was that critical of the US. And I kept telling him: you call yourself a liberal, and you pose that question to me? Would you ask that question if I were of German background? Because while he would say that, he would add that he was a liberal as if that would excuse or justify his bigotry. In the last commercial break, while the actor was asking me again, I finally said: I give up. I shall answer you. I stay in the US because of my deep love for Chicken McNuggets. And when the show restarts you hear Maher saying: Chicken McNuggets? So now you know that reference. During one commercial break, Maher said to me: I bet you are one of those who don't like Israel. I said: you bet right, I don't like Israel one bit. When the show ended, Maher approached me and said: look, I know that you don't like me, but I would like to have you on my show again. I said sure. But his show was cancelled shortly after (although he had me on his HBO show twice through satellite). Sassoon approached me after the show (despite our contentious encounter during the program) and asked to have her picture taken with me. I obliged although I squirmed when she put her hand on my shoulder. So if you see a picture of me with Sasoon that is the story. I never usually accept the tape or DVD that media firms give you after a show, but this time I accepted the tape because my students asked me. And then Maria (my 2nd ex-wife) asked for the tape and I thought that she still has it because I could never find it when people would ask me. Tonight, former student Peter, wrote me to and said that I gave him that tape and that he is going to put on Youtube, and he did. So here it is in full:

George Lambrakis (‘Zionist freaking out’)

On Press TV’s ‘The Link’, there he was, stating categorically that there exists ‘only 1 form of democracy’. Presumably he meant the kind of corpocracy/kleptocracy that passes for democracy in the US…

Rarely though have I seen a man look more uncomfortable on a show than there. Still, Charlie Wolf’s delicate nerves and lapel badge probably would have produced a wet and smelly result…

No Swiss Fondue for Bush…

Jeera:

George Bush, the former US president, has cancelled a planned visit to Switzerland next week.

While human rights groups have said the cancellation was due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, organisers said they did not want to risk violence during protests by left-wing groups.
David Sherzer, Bush's spokesman, said the former president was informed on Friday by the United Israel Appeal that his February 12 dinner speech in Geneva has been called off.

You’ve gotta give it to the Zios: they look after their former man in Washington…

Mad Mel Phlips, Part Umpteen…

Mad Mel lost it a long time ago. Then lost it. Then lost it again. Again and again and again. In Ziomel’s latest losing it, she discovers… wait for it… the ‘gay agenda’.

From her blog:

For, mad as this may seem, schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ¬science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.

In geography, for example, they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the ¬countryside to cities. In maths, they will be taught ¬statistics through census ¬findings about the number of ¬homosexuals in the population.

In science, they will be directed to ¬animal species such as emperor ¬penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young.

Alas, this gay curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the ¬camouflage of ¬education. It is an abuse of childhood.

And it’s all part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ¬concept of normal sexual behaviour.

Not so long ago, an epic political battle raged over teaching children that ¬homosexuality was normal. The fight over Section 28, as it became known, resulted in the repeal of the legal requirement on schools not to promote homosexuality.

As the old joke has it, what was once impermissible first becomes tolerated and then becomes mandatory.

And the other side of that particular coin, as we are now discovering, is that values which were once the moral basis for British society are now deemed to be beyond the pale.

What was once an attempt to end ¬unpleasant attitudes towards a small sexual minority has now become a kind of bigotry in reverse.

H/T David Osler. Thumbs up!

The US and Omar Suleiman…

Angry Arab (As’ad AbuKhalil) has now called Mubarak’s newly appointed vice President Omar Suleiman the Himmler of the Egyptian regime. Still, Hillary Rodham Clinton is willing to back him to buy USrael a bit of ‘thinking time’. Hey, once you’ve supported bin Laden (yep: al Qaeda!) and the Taleban, there’s not much lower you can sink!

Still, let them support Suleiman, in the end it will make them look as up to their usual tricks again and this time even ordinary Americans are beginning to take note. I feel for the Egyptian People, who will suffer with their lives, just because America’s bad bad habits will die hard… Even as Israel’s ‘pusher’ (of the drug ‘Occupation’) it may end up having killied its customer prematurely…

EDL demo in Luton…

Not a huge success, apparently. Press TV claimed about 3,000, the Beeb about 2,000. Both reports showed Zionist flags (yawn)…

Interesting tid bits: the Beeb interviewed:

• EDL bloke in military garb, stated: ‘there are no Radical Muslims or moderate Muslims, only Muslims’. Nice and clear then…
• American (I kid you not!) tea party organiser, he was building contacts with the EDL ‘to prevent happening what’s happening here from happening in the US’…

Peres, you plonker…

Ha’aretz:

Peres warned against the possibility that Mubarak's ouster would bring the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's best organized opposition movement, to power, saying the fundamentalist group won't bring peace.

"We're very worried about having a change in government or a change in the system of elections without introducing a change in the reasons that brought this explosion, this bitterness," Peres said.

Also in Ha’aretz, Yitzhak Laor:

The problem with Orientalist discourse of our commentators − which sees the world through the prism of the Shin Bet Security Service − is that it helps to seal off the ghetto into which we are gradually locking ourselves, a ghetto within the Middle East and within world history.

That’s just the blurb but the rest is unequivocally and passionately correct. Take this bit for example:

But the person who deserves the prize for folly is Dr. Oded Eran, formerly our ambassador to Jordan. He suggested organizing elections in Egypt under European supervision, to ensure that monitors would turn a blind eye to fraud by the regime during the vote count.

For years, our Orientalists saw a danger in ‏(secular‏) Arab nationalism. Both the right and the left examined Arab intellectuals with a fine-toothed comb in order to prove that they were “pan-Arabists.” What lay behind this, always, was a colonialist questioning of their right to self-determination on a par with our own standards.

Netanyahu’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year

Foreign policy: (in red some of the nonsense)

Israel's prime minister may well be having what Judith Viorst would call a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. You'd think that the region's only democracy would embrace the stirrings of people power on its borders. But with Egypt's direction uncertain and its peace with Israel at risk, that alone should make Netanyahu uneasy. Add to that the Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon, risks of uprisings in Jordan, the way these uprisings have distracted from efforts to contain Iran's nuclear program, and the potential further shift in global sympathies that might follow moves toward democracy among several Arab states, and Bibi faces a potentially seismic shift in Israel's strategic position unequaled in nearly a half-century. As one worried, smart, well-known Israel-watcher said to me the other day, "They shouldn't have located Israel in the Middle East. Too dangerous. They should have put it in the Middle … West." [My emph.] For sure, if Kansas and Nebraska were his neighbors, Bibi Netanyahu would be a much more relaxed man today.

But like the ‘fakestinians’, the Mid Westerners wouldn’t have voluntarily ceded territory either.

Thanks Phil Weiss…

JPost plummets to new depths…

Israelis are indifferent because we realize that whether under authoritarian rule or democracy, anti-Semitism is the unifying sentiment of the Arab world. Fractured along socioeconomic, tribal, religious, political, ethnic and other lines, the glue that binds Arab societies is hatred of Jews.

Wait, t’is only the Glickster…

Thanks As’ad AbuKhalil.

Newsnight on the Muslim Brotherhood

The Beeb’s coverage of the Egyptian revolution has been remarkably non-alarmist with respect to the ‘Islamist danger’. Last night we had a trio, including Douglas Murray, ‘author and commentator’, as well as scribbler of a bookiewook called… wait for it: Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (because I need the hole in the head?)

Aaaww (tries to sound pitiful)… and he’s only young too!

Simply Snotty…

Snotty the goon, critically under-medicated member of a gang of one, is stuck in ‘islamist mode’. ‘Zionists freaking out’ as As’ad AbuKhalil is now fond of saying…

And then my next sortie, this one to Terry ‘I heart Jason Kenny’ Glavin. Not much about the revolution there (not ‘true left’ enough for Terry, I’m guessing…) but Snotty wades in with:

"Leave, leave you traitor, you sold your country to Israel"

You may be sure that if Angry Arab is supportive of this revolution, the results will be Hamas-like.

It is the unfortunate fate of the Arab upheavals that democracy doesn't grow out of them.

But of course, I wish to be mistaken.

Had Snotty actually read As’ad AbuKhalil (I do religiously) he would know that As’ad is totally opposed TMBH and not keen on Hamas either.

There follows then a discussion where commenter ‘Brad’ eventually gets his comments deleted by Uncle Terry to make way for 'Vildechaye’s' ‘Israel uber alles’ approach. Not a word of abuse, racism, anti-Semitism or anything like that from Brad’s side, by the way. Alas, t’is the way over at neoliberal Glavin’s blog. I was once ‘Brad’… Ask for proof…

Pocolocowick gets something right…

Lozowick ruminates:

The only thing that's clear is that the international structure which has been in place for decades is wobbling, and may well soon be gone.

Wobble, wobble, crash!

Michael Chertoff promotes his business assets…

Former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff after leaving office immediately founded the Chertoff Group to get rich real quick from government 'security' contracts and now smells even more money. On CNN (with Piers Morgan, of all people…) he was cackling on about ‘Egypt and al Qaeda’. This shortly after Peter Bergen, CNN’s appointed ‘terrorism expert’, had already quite knowledgably explained that the Muslim Brotherhood really was nothing to fear over there, never mind bin Laden.

Worst person in the world is still old bin, for terrorism and giving the almost entire US pap press quasi-reasons for prattling on about the Brothers…

Bill O’Lielly weighs in on Faux News…

Via Al Jazeera we heard him claim ‘Al Jazeera make their money blaming everything in the ME on the US and Israel’. He also claimed Al Jazeera was part responsible for 'stirring up trouble'…Billo, worst person in the world again, after Mubarak that is…

Oh, and on the side of the angels…

John McCain, but with the usual patriotic deference for the Weak One, categorically states: ‘Mubarak must leave’. A couple of days ago actually…

By his friends you shall know him…

Berlusconi calls Mubarak the ‘wisest of men’.

Fuori Berlusco!

B.E., Before Egypt. A.E., After Egypt.

And now I find myself almost agreeing with Tom Friedman (NYT), he makes some good points:

I’m meeting a retired Israeli general at a Tel Aviv hotel. As I take my seat, he begins the conversation with: “Well, everything we thought for the last 30 years is no longer relevant.”

That pretty much sums up the disorienting sense of shock and awe that the popular uprising in Egypt has inflicted on the psyche of Israel’s establishment. The peace treaty with a stable Egypt was the unspoken foundation for every geopolitical and economic policy in Israel for the last 35 years, and now it’s gone. It’s as if Americans suddenly woke up and found both Mexico and Canada plunged into turmoil on the same day.

“Everything that once anchored our world is now unmoored,” remarked Mark Heller, a Tel Aviv University strategist. “And it is happening right at a moment when nuclearization of the region hangs in the air.”

This is a perilous time for Israel, and its anxiety is understandable. But I fear Israel could make its situation even more perilous if it succumbs to the argument one hears from a number of senior Israeli officials today that the events in Egypt prove that Israel can’t make a lasting peace with the Palestinians. It’s wrong and dangerous.

To be sure, Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s longtime ally, deserves all the wrath being directed at him. The best time to make any big, hard decision is when you are at your maximum strength. You’ll always think and act more clearly. For the last 20 years, President Mubarak has had all the leverage he could ever want to truly reform Egypt’s economy and build a moderate, legitimate political center to fill the void between his authoritarian state and the Muslim Brotherhood. But Mubarak deliberately maintained the political vacuum between himself and the Islamists so that he could always tell the world, “It’s either me or them.” Now he is trying to reform in a panic with no leverage. Too late.

But Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is in danger of becoming the Mubarak of the peace process. Israel has never had more leverage vis-à-vis the Palestinians and never had more responsible Palestinian partners. But Netanyahu has found every excuse for not putting a peace plan on the table. The Americans know it. And thanks to the nasty job that Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV just did in releasing out of context all the Palestinian concessions — to embarrass the Palestinian leadership — it’s now obvious to all how far the Palestinians have come.

No, I do not know if this Palestinian leadership has the fortitude to close a deal. But I do know this: Israel has an overwhelming interest in going the extra mile to test them.

Why? With the leaders of both Egypt and Jordan scrambling to shuffle their governments in an effort to stay ahead of the street, two things can be said for sure: Whatever happens in the only two Arab states that have peace treaties with Israel, the moderate secularists who had a monopoly of power will be weaker and the previously confined Muslim Brotherhood will be stronger. How much remains to be seen.

As such, it is virtually certain that the next Egyptian government will not have the patience or room that Mubarak did to maneuver with Israel. Same with the new Jordanian cabinet. Make no mistake: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with sparking the demonstrations in Egypt and Jordan, but Israeli-Palestinian relations will be impacted by the events in both countries.

If Israel does not make a concerted effort to strike a deal with the Palestinians, the next Egyptian government will “have to distance itself from Israel because it will not have the stake in maintaining the close relationship that Mubarak had,” said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster. With the big political changes in the region, “if Israel remains paranoid and messianic and greedy it will lose all its Arab friends.”

To put it bluntly, if Israelis tell themselves that Egypt’s unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state — they will be talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

What the turmoil in Egypt also demonstrates is how much Israel is surrounded by a huge population of young Arabs and Muslims who have been living outside of history — insulated by oil and autocracy from the great global trends. But that’s over.

“Today your legitimacy has to be based on what you deliver,” the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, explained to me in his Ramallah office. “Gone are the days when you can say, ‘Deal with me because the other guys are worse.’ ”

I had given up on Netanyahu’s cabinet and urged the U.S. to walk away. But that was B.E. — Before Egypt. Today, I believe President Obama should put his own peace plan on the table, bridging the Israeli and Palestinian positions, and demand that the two sides negotiate on it without any preconditions. It is vital for Israel’s future — at a time when there is already a global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state — that it disentangle itself from the Arabs’ story as much as possible. There is a huge storm coming, Israel. Get out of the way.

Palestinian Israelis protest in Tel Aviv: against Mubarak

Jerkowitz (Alan) blames the ‘Hard Left’…

By Focusing Only on Israel, [it] Encouraged Arab Despotism

... he writes. No, seriously.

Next he’ll blame me (personally) for 9/11 and Hamas for the Occupation… He’s capable of it.

Still scheming…

Ha’aretz:

Due to its difficult international situation, Israel must do something, Blair says.

The American, Russian and European Union’s foreign ministers are to take part in the Quartet’s meeting in Munich to discuss the complete standstill in the peace talks. The talks would also touch on the U.S. administration’s apparent confusion about a solution to the crisis.

The Quartet’s closing statement is expected to support the World Bank’s prediction that the PA will complete setting up institutions in the coming months to enable it to establish a state.

The Americans have indicated to the European Union that they would not object to an especially harsh statement if the Europeans were the ones behind it, Jerusalem officials said.

The Political Will and Testament (cough!) of a Zionist Settler from Ma’ale Adumim

From here.

Daniel Marks is a British-born Jew who left these here shores when he was 18 (he’s about 50 now) to make Aliyah for reasons of religious conviction:

I’m often asked by visiting journalists, politicians and academics as to what my solution is. I reject “the Two State Solution” and I’m not prepared for Israel to stop being a Jewish state. I wish neither to give citizenship to all Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria, nor to expel them. I’m great at saying, “No” but rarely say “Yes”. What is my solution? How will I bring about peace and prosperity to all peoples of the Middle East in our lifetimes?

[snip]

One might think that the realization that not every problem has a solution or in the words of Johnny Cash, “There are more questions than answers” would lead to a state of desolation or despondency, but quite the contrary. That is exactly the point where you life goes off being on hold and you begin to live again. Maybe you’ll never run again, but there are plenty of places to walk to. Maybe you’ll be forever falling over, but you’ll be forever getting up too. And there are children to reprimand and grandchildren to enjoy and there is a G-d in heaven to serve too, who waits for the prayers of the sick as he does for the healthy.

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman recently spoke about the peace process and predicted that there would be no peace, “not next year and not for the next generation”. On the face of it this was a message of pessimism and gloom, hardly appropriate for the eve of our Jewish new year when we traditionally wish each other the realization of all manner of wonderful aspirations. However, I contend that Lieberman’s blessing was the blessing of hope. He was taking a cold realistic look at the neighborhood in which we live and at our neighbors. He had the courage pragmatically to look at the Arab world for what it is, not what it might be one day or what we’d like it to be.

As I said we live in the Middle East, not the US Mid-West or even the West End. Our neighbors, for the most part, are vastly more radical than either their fathers or grandfathers were. This has come about as a result of the spread of fundamentalist Islam and because Israel has shown weaknesses on various occasions, convincing them that the only language we understand is force.

Short of the Messiah arriving, there will indeed be no peace in either our or our children’s generation. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing us today is to learn to live with the fact that this is indeed a problem without a solution.

Of course everyone has a plan, but experience has shown that all attempts over the last four decades to solve the problem either by means of war or by means of force have brought about caused a deterioration rather than improvement.

Naturally, that is not to say that there is nothing to be done, quite the contrary. Once one has come to the realization that there are no miracle cures or quick fixes, one ceases to be paralyzed in other areas of life. One’s life is no longer on hold, waiting for a solution, one can begin to live. Paradoxically, the realization that there is no solution becomes something of a solution in and of itself.

It is only the true optimist who can find life, hope and happiness in a world with many unsolved questions, problems that he knows are here to stay.

So we redecorate our houses without asking whether it will one day be given to another, we plant a tree and look forward to its fruits. We bring children into the world knowing that they too will one day don uniform. We drink wine from a local Judean vineyard read a good book or maybe write one, carry on studying our beloved Torah knowing we’ll never finish it. We teach our students to respect everyone friend and enemy alike, but secretly hope that they’ll respect at least us. We look at the old yellowing pictures in our albums of ancestors long gone, who could only have dreamt of waking up to the view of Jerusalem. We thank G-d for being the luckiest generation of Jews since the time of King David and three times a day we pray for peace too.

With broken hearts we pray to our Maker that he might send us a year of peace, acknowledging that nobody else can.