Developing your Web presence

Harry’s Place Racism Watch - Part 1

2012-01-28T15:51:00.005Z

Harrys’ Place, also known to it’s opponents as the Brown Sauce - on account of the frequent appearance of Far Right racist comments in its comment threads, the well known neoliberal and staunchly pro-Zionist blog has in place what by now practically amounts to a policy of deleting/banning ‘anti-Zionist' commenters (I use quote marks because anti-Zionism like most movements is rather a broad church). Bloggers like me, 'The Hasbara Buster' and Tony Greenstein (himself here on HP’s racism) have had comments deleted or have been banned in the past or present. This censorship is based on a standard Zionist trope: anti-Zionism equals antisemitism and thus anti-Zionist critiques of Israel can be dismissed as racism and the deletions and bans justified on the grounds of ‘keeping it clean’. Needless to say as an 'anti-Zionist' I disagree with the AZ = AS equation but that isn’t the object of this post: the alleged identity of anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been proved false extensively elsewhere, see e.g. Tony Greenstein’s blog for extensive debunking.

The question I’m asking is why if the Brown Sauce is so keen on scrubbing its comment sections from “~~anti-Zionist~~ antisemitic garbage” doest it have not the slightest qualms about allowing deeply racist comments, usually but not exclusively of an Islamophobic nature? I’ve seen these appearing with increasing and alarming frequency over the several years I’ve been following this very popular blog.

This post is one in a series of posts aimed at exposing racism in HP’s comment threads and filling up the first instalment with excellent examples of deep seated racism was made particularly easy by a post by frequent HP flyer ‘Sarah AB’, clunkily and with hindsight also ironically titled Anti-Muslim Bigotry vs. Islamophobia. I won’t go into Sarah’s piece, which strikes me not to put a finer point to it as a bit of a w*nk piece. Apparently ‘Islamophobia’ is somehow tainted as a term and ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ is to be preferred. Whatever Sarah, you say tomato and I say… tomato.

So lets get that party started and what follows now is your finest selection of… erm, Islamophobic commentary (two are just plain anti-religious nuttery), lifted from the comment section of said piece, presented here completely unadulterated, any emphasis by the authors reproduced and none added, for your delectation. A sick bag at the ready is recommended for sensitive souls.

Peter @ 26 January 2012, 10:39 pm

Exactly. The absurd, counterproductive (and imo, designed to stir up hatred) term ‘Islamophobia’ was invented for one purpose, and one purpose only (or at least, 2 closely related ones): to promote a victimhood culture, and heap contempt on those who stands in its way by attaching to them the stupid ‘racist’ label.

Armaros @ 26 January 2012, 10:43 pm

I fully reject the crypto fascist term “islamophobia”.

There is bigotry out there, some directed at Muslims because of their faith or because of their race (if they happen to be non white).

I reject the “racist” label also because Islam is not a race and its adherents come from all races and classes.

Trespassers Will @ 26 January 2012, 11:39 pm

What if, having read and understood the fundamental tenets of islam as defined in the quran, you have concluded that islam is repulsive? That it is vile and toxic in its scripture, aspirations, and throughout its entire history? That it has no branch which isn’t revolting?

Does it ever occur to you Sarah, that if anyone should declare his membership of the Ku Klux Klan, it might actually be delinquency on your part if you did not express your disgust? Would it be bigotry, to denounce a KKK follower because to the best of your knowledge, he hasn’t actually set any black people on fire (yet)? Would it make you a klanophobe?

If you state your allegiance to some ideology, or some society or religion, with an agenda of cruelty or torture or crime, you deserve to be called to account by your fellow men and women.

Think of England @ 27 January 2012, 3:11 am

I should be able to express my hatred of Islam all I want; using the Koran to pick up dog poop, for instance. Or my hatred of Christianity; perhaps putting a crucifix in a jar of urine and hoping some museum will buy it. As soon as I’m forced to respect someone’s beliefs, I lose my freedom. I don’t respect religious beliefs; I think they are laughable (at best); pathetic, pitiable, and frightening. Currently, the West, I’m not afraid of Christianity or Judaism (or, Christians or Jews, if you will), even at their worst and they are often horrible, especially the Hassids who are nauseating to me. But Muslims are a different problem. Nothing, no arguments, statistics or whatever, can, I believe, show me that I have nothing to fear from them. All you have to do is read the newspaper; you don’t even have to read JihadWatch. My dislike of Islam is certainly not irrational at all.

Nick (in South Africa) @ 27 January 2012, 6:54 am

All well and good, however the term Hinduphobia doesn’t get banded about. This is practically a science experiment.

There is not a problem with Hindus in the UK, there is with Muslims, it’s that simple.
This is because Islam is a political system that happens to come wrapped in the guise of religion. One with global imperialist aspirations, one that is deeply authoritarian, highly misogynistic, profoundly intolerant, violent and much more besides.

We DO have unfettered serial immigration to the UK of huge numbers of ill educated Muslims with a mediaeval World view. There are now 4 million Muslims in the country and not a hint of any stop to it. This IS causing problems. A very large percentage of these first, second and third generation immigrants hold views inimical to life in a pluralistic tolerant liberal democracy, and these views are directly informed by mainstream Islamic dogma. There IS an ignoble record of this manifested in Muslim violence, hundreds of terror plots, terror attacks, ‘honour’ killings, blatant intimidation, nothing other than utterly cynical sexual predation by gangs of Muslim men on vulnerable white girls, grievance monging by Muslims with hair-trigger sensibilities and special pleading for dress concessions, diet concessions, prayer rooms, protective censorship, faith schools and so on.

People notice.

Islamic Kuffarphobia and the endemic Jew hatred amongst Muslims – both directly informed by Islam – is orders of magnitude a more pressing issue than any Islamophobia amongst the Kuffar.

Charges of Islamophobia are overwhelmingly used by grievance monging Muslims, overweening bleeding-heart guilt soaked liberals and deeply illiberal Lefties in attempts to shut down critique of Islam, mass Muslim immigration and attempts at obtaining privileged status for Muslims.

Many of us despise Islam because it really is profoundly nasty.

CBinTH @ 27 January 2012, 9:03 am

Just popping in to say, that however much I agree that Islamophobia is a politically-manipulative term, and that varying degrees of anti-Islam feeling could simply be described as such, the fact is that we DO have ‘irrational’ responses to everything.
The comment thread has turned into an Islamo-sceptics mutual appreciation society, and people are congratulating themselves on their spiritual, mental and emotional purity.

But I think irrational dislike of Islam (“Islamophobia”) DOES exist, and is even pervasive in our society.

And that I personally am quite Islamophobic.

For example, I personally like to see nuns, not that you get many of them in the UK ; – for me, they carry positive connotations. Perhaps this is irrational. On the other hand, I don’t like to see the Niqab, the full veil, especially on British streets. I don’t even really like the hijab, though to a lesser degree. And yet the headscarf and the wimple follow exactly the same principle, and the nun has a more restricted life and sexuality than the niqab wearer, so why my inconsistency?

I can try to rationalize it all I wish – the coercion or pressure forcing a woman to conform, the wearing of clothing as a badge of belonging (or seperatism, or allegiance,) the implied insult to all women who don’t wear the same, the impracticality that results from the niqab, and (most accurately) a negative reaction simply to mere ‘foreignness’……. But the truth is that none of these truly explains my reaction.

I react that way on a very basic level, and the reaction has vastly increased in intensity since 9/11. Before that, it was more the reaction of a contemptuous shrug – or even acknowledgement of quaint old fashioned customs – but after 9/11 it was something that would please my enemy, and therefore, I find these badges of identity annoying and react as if they’re almost inherently hostile.

So, while Islamophobia is a problematic term, let’s be alive to the fact that, A. We CAN be prejudiced towards a religion, B. These prejudices can affect our attitudes towards innocent people, and C. Since we react emotionally towards ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, we should neither be ashamed nor defensive about this, but simply work to recognise these traits in ourselves, and try to behave and think in an ethical manner. This means being polite and loving towards those who dress differently, and, also, having the intellectual integrity to realise when we are simply looking for ammunition to justify our emotional prejudices.

Peter @ 27 January 2012, 9:06 am

Nick (SA) is spot on. This is not a ’sensational fantasy’, as Sarah characterises it, but a very real situation, which is disastrous to this and other countries. Since it was brought about by the acts of commission (variously stupid and nefarious) and omission of bleeding heart so-called ‘liberals’, it’s unsurprising that bleeding heart so-called ‘liberals’ try to brush it under the carpet.

Albert Fischer @ 27 January 2012, 10:05 am

1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.

Umm yes..? Look at egypt: as soon as a relaxed author such as nagib machfus shows up, they kill them. static and unresponsive to change and homogenous in its twatishness

2) Islam is seen as separate and ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.

Ummm….yes….? The differences are vast and decisive.
3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.

Quite.

4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a ‘clash of civilisations’.

Yes, indeed. have some egyptian state television:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X0Py-1iggFQ

5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
See above.

6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.

I am not aware of any positive responses. or anything positive flowing from islam altogether, as such

7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.

Well they’re not exlcuded from mainstream society are they? they just bought london’s entire zone 1, among other things

8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

Yup

Flaming Fairy @ 27 January 2012, 11:12 am

And that’s a recipe for shutting whole swathes of people up, Normative. What if someone decided that Gay Pride was “Islamophobic”, for instance?

I am in favour of ditching any and all terms which single Muslims out as a unique victim group. They aren’t.

Lamia @ 27 January 2012, 12:04 pm

Think of England and Nick are correct.

It is a self-evident fact that the greater the presence of Islam in a society, the worse that is for freedom of speech, democracy, and human rights. I am not interested in discussing its theological merits or whether it is any more absurd than Christianity, Judaism etel. The point is that currently it is far more dangerous and oppressive than all the other world’s religions put together. It is a blight. I don’t welcome its increased presence in Britain because I see the societies it has created and they are at best miles worse than any Northern European country and at worst absolutely appalling.

I am not going to enthuse about the spread of the religion that is king of the most barbaric, lunatic region on earth, no matter how much some ‘liberals’ wring their hands and some ’socialists’ chant ‘racist!’. Islam deserves no respect from me, only justified caution and dislike. Its numerous murder-preaching, rape-justifying clerics and preachers deserve to be stamped on very hard, preferably fatally.

Evan @ 27 January 2012, 1:43 pm

What Alcuin said at 12:45, and what Nick in S. Africa said at 6:54.
Islam is not a religion. It is a belligerant, imperialistic, intolerant, political movement that seek global domination

There are 56 or 57 majority Muslim countries, almost all of which are completely dysfunctional. Those that aren’t suffering that state of affairs have been able to mask their more primitve and backward aspects by purchasing a veneer of westernisation andf sophistication with ( temporary) oil money.

When that money runs out many of these countries will resemble Somalia.
When it comes to islam, there’s no there, there. People fall over each other in order to embellish, to nuance and to display ‘balance’. WE foolishly commit to islam all sorts of qualities and properties it simply doesn’t have. We canot call something vulgar, even when it is truly vulgar because WE don’t want to be considered vulgar.
Well, consider Attaturk’s vulgarity, raised a pious Muslims and later the founder of secular Turkey when he referred to Islam ( all of it) as a “rotting carcasse”.

And as for the essentialisation aspect, when the various intelligence agencies get to the point where most of their resources and manpower are devoted to keeing tabs on violent and belligerent Muslims, should those managing the budgets of those agencies be accused of essentialisng Islam and Muslims? Are they engaging in bigotry and islamophobia?

Or are they just doing their jobs seeings the nature and number of threats they face coming from Muslims?

Accusdations of islamophobia are nothing more than lame attempts at supressing the awful truth about the ideology.

Nick (in South Africa) @ 27 January 2012, 1:43 pm

Muslims who in public, identify with Islam should be fair game to be held to account for the ideology to which they subscribe, this doesn’t happen nearly enough.

Muslims should be made to feel pressure that their ideology is beyond the pale; because it really and truly is. Self identifying Muslims in dress, deed or word should be treated as pariahs in exactly the same way as members of the EDL and the BNP are. If you rock-up for work in an office in the UK dressed in a dish-dash or a burqua, it is a political statement, one quite clearly endorsing mainstream Islamic ideology, which quite undoubtedly is a form of Fascism. This is functionally no different at all from rocking up to work in BNP regalia.

We need more conversational intolerance towards Islam, not less. We shouldn’t tolerate its intolerance. The fact that it is a religion as well as a political ideology, the fact that most of it’s adherents are brown skinned really shouldn’t be seen as any kind of mitigation. Alas it is seen as mitigation, double standards are applied, the soft racism of low expectation is rife, bend over backwards self hating liberals and more malign Leftists do sow confusion. As does fear of being branded ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ and that’s hugely wrong.

What I won’t do is try to pretend that Islamic ideology is what it isn’t. It isn’t ‘a religion of peace’, it isn’t tolerant…. it’s horrible. I don’t and won’t try to make fluffy, cooing noises in its direction in the hope that it will be de-fanged; indeed I think this approach, which has been quite common, even amongst even HP posters – the David T of yore springs to mind, is very deeply misguided.

Is my view towards Islam an ‘irrational fear’?

Bollocks it is!

Is it Islamophobic – the word tells you more about the person using it than it does about the person or group its directed against.

Muslims are best advised to abandon this especially nasty ideology. Again if we – the British collectively – don’t catch a wake-up we are setting ourselves up for the most appalling sectarian strife.

Trespassers Will @ 27 January 2012, 4:16 pm

Its the equivalent of declaring yourself a SUPPORTER of one. By definition, by scripture, and by practice, islam demands a continuous campaign of violence and oppression against all non members, and absolute unquestioning solidarity between members. Any muslim denying any of these tenets sincerely, is, by definition, apostate.

M=o=r=g=y @ 27 January 2012, 4:24 pm

so in your view being a Muslim is the exact equivalent of being a member of a terrorist organisation.

Being a monotheist (of whatever stripe) is the same as being a Nazi, to be honest.

M=o=r=g=y @ 27 January 2012, 4:32 pm

Look at the history of monotheism. Look at the history of Nazism.

They’re pretty much identical. The same aims. The same methods. The same results.

The same death and destruction.

They’re the same thing.

Iran should have obtained nukes 16 years ago…

2012-01-25T18:27:00.000Z

Robert Fisk in The Independent:

Turning round a story is one of the most difficult tasks in journalism – and rarely more so than in the case of Iran. Iran, the dark revolutionary Islamist menace. Shia Iran, protector and manipulator of World Terror, of Syria and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad, the Mad Caliph. And, of course, Nuclear Iran, preparing to destroy Israel in a mushroom cloud of anti-Semitic hatred, ready to close the Strait of Hormuz – the moment the West's (or Israel's) forces attack.

Given the nature of the theocratic regime, the repulsive suppression of its post-election opponents in 2009, not to mention its massive pools of oil, every attempt to inject common sense into the story also has to carry a medical health warning: no, of course Iran is not a nice place. But ...

Let's take the Israeli version which, despite constant proof that Israel's intelligence services are about as efficient as Syria's, goes on being trumpeted by its friends in the West, none more subservient than Western journalists. The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story.

In fact, we don't know that Iran really is building a nuclear weapon. And after Iraq, it's amazing that the old weapons of mass destruction details are popping with the same frequency as all the poppycock about Saddam's titanic arsenal. Not to mention the date problem. When did all this start? The Shah. The old boy wanted nuclear power. He even said he wanted a bomb because "the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear bombs" and no one objected. Europeans rushed to supply the dictator's wish. Siemens – not Russia – built the Bushehr nuclear facility.

And when Ayatollah Khomeini, Scourge of the West, Apostle of Shia Revolution, etc, took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was "the work of the Devil". Only when Saddam invaded Iran – with our Western encouragement – and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it.

All this has been deleted from the historical record; it was the black-turbaned mullahs who started the nuclear project, along with the crackpot Ahmadinejad. And Israel might have to destroy this terror-weapon to secure its own survival, to ensure the West's survival, for democracy, etc, etc.

For Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel is the brutal, colonising, occupying power. But the moment Iran is mentioned, this colonial power turns into a tiny, vulnerable, peaceful state under imminent threat of extinction. Ahmadinejad – here again, I quote Netanyahu – is more dangerous than Hitler. Israel's own nuclear warheads – all too real and now numbering almost 300 – disappear from the story. Iran's Revolutionary Guards are helping the Syrian regime destroy its opponents; they might like to – but there is no proof of this.

The trouble is that Iran has won almost all its recent wars without firing a shot. George W and Tony destroyed Iran's nemesis in Iraq. They killed thousands of the Sunni army whom Iran itself always referred to as "the black Taliban". And the Gulf Arabs, our "moderate" friends, shiver in their golden mosques as we in the West outline their fate in the event of an Iranian Shia revolution.

No wonder Cameron goes on selling weapons to these preposterous people whose armies, in many cases, could scarcely operate soup kitchens, let alone the billions of dollars of sophisticated kit we flog them under the fearful shadow of Tehran.

Bring on the sanctions. Send in the clowns.

One for Harry’s Place (not): Atzmon to eat Humble Pie…

2012-01-22T17:15:00.008Z

Here’s one that you probably will not hear the Brown Sauce harp on about too much: a crushing defeat for the Atzmonites at the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s (PSC) Annual General Meeting (report by Tony Greenstein).

Always keen to try and smear pro-Palestinian activists with the AS charge, pro-Zionist advocacy groups, blogs and news outlets have been quick to point to ‘support’ for the PSC by known antisemite (and Holocaust Denial supporter) Gilad Atzmon, an unsavoury character the PSC did have some trouble distancing itself from. But Atzmon, whose main claim seems to be that Zionism is caused by ‘perfidious Jewishness’, will have to eat humble pie now that one of his Holocaust denying chums, Francis Clark-Lowes, has been permanently expelled from the PSC (appeals now also exhausted).

There’s much more in terms of victory for those who want to keep the PSC a strictly anti-racist movement, so read that report.

Will the Brown Sauce now at least recognise that associating the PSC with Atzmon and assorted low lifes no longer flies? My money is on HP pretending their nose is bleeding, ditto for the JC, Engage (the latter really should have a duty to report a victory against racism but I doubt if they will) and a small flotilla of 101 keyboard pro-Zionist oppression blogs and blogettes…

An Atzmonite’s antisemitic portrayal of Tony Greenstein:

Francis Clark-Lowes: can someone shove that glass of wine where the sun doesn’t shine? Please?

The Map the President’s Men Didn’t Want You to See…

2012-01-20T16:48:00.002Z

H/T Mondoweiss, from ‘West Wing’:

Jonafun Hoffman exceeds himself…

2012-01-18T18:08:00.004Z

Apparently Jenny Tonge, not exactly the sharpest tool in the pro-Palestinian shed, spoke about I/P in the House of Commons last night. Jonafun Hoffman, indefatigable fighter of ~~anti-Zionism~~, erm… antisemitism, one who gets about and member of the Jewish Inquisition, was there to monitor proceedings. His faithful stenographer Richard ‘I’m not a Zionist’ Millett trolled along to take notes.

From Millett’s report:

And she spoke about why she thinks she comes in for such heavy criticism and put this down to the fact that she stands up for the Palestinians and criticises Israel. The latter, she thinks, is viewed as being anti-Semitic.

When challenged by Jonathan Hoffman to give an example of when criticism of Israel has been called anti-Semitic she said she could give “many examples”, but failed to come through with even one.

Hoffman asking to “give an example of when criticism of Israel has been called anti-Semitic”... The mind seriously boggles… Still, Hoffman’s amazing curveball, deployed together with the Inquisition’s chief weapon - the element of surprise [Classic Python], would definitely have left me with a mouth full of dangling teeth too!

Hoffman and friends: to his left is Roberta Moore, head honcho and Jewish thug-in-Chief of the ‘Jewish wing of the EDL’ and occasional commenter at Richard Millett:

Nick Clegg bends over, spreads buttocks, then ‘criticises’ Zionist Entity…

2012-01-17T16:05:00.000Z

Torygraph:

The Deputy Prime Minister drew a hostile reaction from Israel by saying the government’s continued construction on internationally recognised Palestinian land was “an act of deliberate vandalism” that undermined the basis of the Middle East peace process.

In some of the most critical language ever used by a senior European politician in government, Mr Clegg accused Israel of making the likelihood of a negotiated settlement to the conflict impossible to deliver.

“It is an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise on which negotiations have taken place for years and years and years,” Mr Clegg said.

He said there was “no stronger supporter of Israel than myself as a beacon of democracy in the region”, but added: “The continued existence of illegal settlements risks making facts on the ground such that a two-state solution becomes unviable.

“That, in turn, will do nothing to safeguard the security of Israel itself or of Israeli citizens. That is why I condemn the continued illegal settlement activity in the strongest possible terms.”

Clueless Clegg will undoubtedly be smugly pleased with what is essentially lame and seriously outdated commentary, even though it will have a lot of Israel Firsters foam at the mouth (it’s official Nick: you’re a New Anti-Semite!)

Or is this simply a case of having incompetent ‘special advisors’? “Making facts on the ground”? Settlement building in the West Bank (ooops: ‘Judea and Samaria’!) and East Jerusalem (ooops: ‘a neighbourhood of the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish State’!) has gone on unabatedly and in crescendo since Israel’s pre-emptive war [cough!] of 1967 and has practically reduced the Two State Solution to nothing more than soft porn for the impotent.

Clegg’s therefore no less guilty than any other Western mainstream politician: guilty of aiding and abetting land theft and much more beside that, committed by ‘the only democracy in the ME’ (an irrelevant point if there ever was one)

Mossad False Flag Operations: Posing as CIA agents?

2012-01-14T15:27:00.001Z

Foreign Policy online:

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.
The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.

But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's efforts.

"It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the intelligence officer said. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."

Interviews with six currently serving or recently retired intelligence officers over the last 18 months have helped to fill in the blanks of the Israeli false-flag operation. In addition to the two currently serving U.S. intelligence officers, the existence of the Israeli false-flag operation was confirmed to me by four retired intelligence officers who have served in the CIA or have monitored Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S. government.

The CIA and the White House were both asked for comment on this story. By the time this story went to press, they had not responded. The Israeli intelligence services -- the Mossad -- were also contacted, in writing and by telephone, but failed to respond. As a policy, Israel does not confirm or deny its involvement in intelligence operations.

There is no denying that there is a covert, bloody, and ongoing campaign aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear program, though no evidence has emerged connecting recent acts of sabotage and killings inside Iran to Jundallah. Many reports have cited Israel as the architect of this covert campaign, which claimed its latest victim on Jan. 11 when a motorcyclist in Tehran slipped a magnetic explosive device under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a young Iranian nuclear scientist. The explosion killed Roshan, making him the fourth scientist assassinated in the past two years. The United States adamantly denies it is behind these killings.

According to one retired CIA officer, information about the false-flag operation was reported up the U.S. intelligence chain of command. It reached CIA Director of Operations Stephen Kappes, his deputy Michael Sulick, and the head of the Counterintelligence Center. All three of these officials are now retired. The Counterintelligence Center, according to its website, is tasked with investigating "threats posed by foreign intelligence services."

The report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush "went absolutely ballistic" when briefed on its contents.

"The report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans at risk," the intelligence officer told me. "There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians."

Israel's relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel's activities jeopardized the administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel.

Read the MUST READ rest at FP

Watch an Al Jazeera interview with Mark Perry, here

"In the end," the officer noted, "it was just easier to do nothing than to, you know, rock the boat." Even so, at least for a short time, this same officer noted, the Mossad operation sparked a divisive debate among Bush's national security team, pitting those who wondered "just whose side these guys [in Israel] are on" against those who argued that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Yeah, rock the boat and have to deal with AIPAC types like this one here (spoof alert!), that would be a real pain in the proverbials, as Mark Perry is probably soon to find out the hard way…

The Only (Russian) Democracy in the Middle East

2012-01-13T17:14:00.001Z

Russian MK Michaeli pouring a glass of water over MK Majadele is by now 'old' news (I first saw it at 972mag). Here’s the incident again:

Magnes Zionist has some interesting comments (H/T Jews sans Frontieres):

The Ethics Knesset sanctioned MK Michaeli by banned her from the Knesset for a month. After she expressed pride over the incident, she formally apologized last night. What got her so riled? If you look at tape, you see it was MK Majadele shouting "You shut up!" when she interrupted him. This deeply offended her, and she responded by saying that one doesn't talk in this manner to a female MK, and that she would take it up with Ethics Committee -- the same Ethics committee that subsequently banned her. Of course Majadele yelled, "You shut up!" because he was deeply offended; he saw her remarks not simply as a typical Knesset interruption, but as an affront to all Israeli Arabs, who have been silenced, or not listened to.

How true Maimonides' statement, "One should be offended rather than give offense."

This incident today in the Knesset parliamentary Education Committee probably won't make the mainstream media outside of Israel, or hasn't yet. Will it be shown in America? Sometimes MSNBC's nightly line-up needs some relief from talking heads on Mitt Romney, and they show parliaments from the Far East, or the Former Soviet Union, engaging in fist-fights. It's cute, and it reminds us in America how far we are from that.

So we have MK Anastasia Michaeli, a blond Russian-born settler in Israel, a gentile who became eligible to become a citizen of a modern state after a religious conversion, and is now a member of the ultra-nationalist Russian Jewish party, Yisrael Beitienu, who stands up, calmly pours a glass or water, and then throws it at Palestinian Israeli MK Raleb Majadele, a member of Labor, no less. There had been the usual heated words before that, as the Russian settler kept on interrupting the Palestinian Israeli's speach, while the chairperson of the Parliamentary committee, a fellow Russian-born ultra-nationalist, Alex Miller, looked on.

Folks, this is Israel today. Were there to be a two-state solution next week, were there to be a viable Palestinian state tomorrow, were the problems of the Palestinian refugees solved, the fundamental problem of Israel would not be solved. And what is that problem?

Simply put: A religio-ethnic-exclusivist Zionism that privileges, inter alia, ultra-Russian nationalist religious converts to Judaism, with automatic rights to citizenship, over native Palestinians. And it was always like this. Look at the first four prime ministers of the State of Israel: David Grun, Moshe Shertock, Levi Shkolnik, and Golda Meyerson -- all natives of the Russian Empire. They certainly had better manners than some of the Yisrael Beiteinu members of parliament today -- but the former weren't any less Russian and ultra-nationalistic than the latter.

Ah, the beauty of Israeli democracy,,,the indigenous natives are given the vote, and the political power to have water thrown at them.

Rick Santorum’s War on Islam

2012-01-11T17:32:00.006Z

T’is a particularly cretinous bunch, this year’s Republican contenders for keepers of the US’s nuclear launch codes. The most ridiculous and Palinesque of them all, Michele Bachmann, recently decided to call it a day and we’re now left with a Naqba denier (Lizzard Gingrich), Mitt ‘Mr Bland’ Romney (the most innocuous of a bad lot, it would seem), Dr Ron Paul - a suspected racist, and Rick Santorum, a kind of 'pro-life'/pro mass murder ideal-son-in-law figure for brain-dead Conservative mothers, I imagine (I brush over a few that thankfully don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance).

Santorum’s always struck me as the kind of total nincompoop that could only garner some support in a very large country because assuming the general twit percentage doesn’t vary that much from one country in the ‘Free World’ to another, in the case of the US that makes for dangerously large numbers of twits, quod erat demonstrandum.

Now intrepid Internet sleuth Max Blumenthal has unearthed one of Ricky’s more memorable performances in the shape of an interview given to the truly execrably FrontPage Mag, Uberbigot David Horriblewitz’ outfit.

Richard Silverstein has picked up on the story but his link to Blumenthal is well worth exploring. Mr Santorum's antics however make interesting stand alone reading:

…This will be a long war. This will — remember, when they [Muslims] had the technological ability to fight us, they did, for a thousand years. A thousand years. This is hard for us to understand — a country scantly 250 years of age. A thousand years is incomprehensible to us. It is not to them. It is not to them. Their history is that history.

And they know their history. They know who they are. They know who we are. And we have no idea who they are…

…They are in a whole new war with us. We can choose not to be in one; doesn’t mean we aren’t. We are in a war, and theology is its basis. Just like we were in a war against Communism, and ideology was its basis. We need to understand that.

[snip]

“What must we do to win [against Islam]? We must educate, engage, evangelize and eradicate.”

[snip]

“Look at Europe. Europe is on the way to losing. The most popular male name in Belgium — Mohammad…They [Christian Europeans] are losing because they are not having children, they have no faith, they have nothing to counteract it. They are balkanizing Islam, but that’s exactly what they want. And they’re creating an opportunity for the creation of Eurabia, or Euristan in the future…Europe will not be in this battle with us. Because there will be no Europe left to fight.”

[snip]

We should “talk about how Islam treats homosexuals. Talk about how they treat anybody who is found to be a homosexual, and the answer to that is, they kill them.”

[snip]

“…The Shia brand of Islamist extremists [is] even more dangerous than the Sunni [version]. Why? Because the ultimate goal of the Shia brand of Islamic Islam is to bring back the Mahdi. And do you know when the Mahdi returns? At the Apocalypse at the end of the world. You see, they are not interested in conquering the world; they are interested in destroying the world.”

“The other thing we need to do is eradicate, and that’s the final thing. As I said, this is going to be a long war.” [my emph.]

For a thousand years, Sunni Islam fought Christendom — a thousand years. And in fact, for most of the time, won; for the most of the time, was on the offensive. It wasn’t till the late 17th century that Islam was stopped. And it was stopped at the gates of Vienna, in the heart of Europe, in Austria. The siege of Vienna — the second siege of Vienna in 1683 — that ultimately was the highwater mark of Islam.

Does anybody know when the highwater mark of Islam was? September the 11th, 1683. It was the very next day, on the plains of Vienna, that Christendom — the Holy League, it was called — united. All of Europe…, we conquered — they conquered — the Sunnis, and drove them into finally a treaty in 1699. And for 300 years, they have been silent. Why? Because they didn’t have the resources or the technology to compete with the modern world. For 300 years, they lay silent.

But now Sunni Islam, through al-Qaeda, which is Sunni; through resources, known as oil; through technology that is now off-the-shelf, and through frustration — imagine you’re a Muslim. You are the person who has the faith that is the successor to the two incomplete faiths — Judaism and Christianity. You are the final revelation. You are the one that is going to control the world. You are the one for a thousand years dominated the world. And for 300 years, you sit in a backwater, looking at Christendom thrive, while you sit in squalor and poverty. How can this be?

…This is what we fight. They want to reconquer the world. They want to establish a new Kalifat…

But it’s not just radical Islam; it is also the radical left. Because what we’re seeing now is the old adage you learned when you were a kid — the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the left — whether it’s here in this country, and certainly around the world — sees America today as the enemy. They fight us on college campuses, and they fight us in the streets of Central and South American countries, in North Korea, in other places.

Blumenthal goes on to explain why Ron Paul's (alleged) racism has been plastered all over the US MSM, while Santorum will in all likelihood get off scott free:

The Islamophobic rant Santorum delivered at an event organized by a known bigot was no less extreme than anything contained in Ron Paul's newsletters. But don't wait for the American mainstream press to discuss Santorum's disturbing views on Muslims as anything other than proof of his "authenticity."

Third Intifada?

2012-01-10T16:26:00.003Z

Snotzies from the AOF pointing loaded guns at Palestinians protesting Apartheid in the West Bank:

This video was taken outside Jericho as Israeli Soldiers banned Palestinians to drive their cars in the west banks with National flags attached atop of the cars.

This Palestinian woman was arrested for driving on Israel's apartheid roads today:

Big Hat Tip: Mondoweiss

Israel and South African Apartheid – the Good Times

2012-01-09T17:00:00.004Z

Excellent article by Tony Greenstein:

South African Politicians Never Hesitated to Compare Apartheid and Israel

Here is a quote from the last white South African Prime Minister, F W de Klerk. For those with long memories, you might recall that when the former South African Prime Minister PW Botha stepped down, he was succeeded by the most right-wing candidate de Klerk, leader of the Trasnvaal Nationalists. Which just goes to prove that the ‘leftists’ in settler-colonial countries aren’t necessarily those to do business with. [thanks to Jewssansfrontieres for this]

What I supported as a younger politician was exactly what the whole world now supports for Israel and Palestine, namely separate nation states will be the solution. In our case we failed. There were three main reasons.

We failed because the whites wanted too much land for themselves. We failed because the majority of blacks said this is not how we want our political rights. And we failed because we became economically totally integrated. We became an economic omelet and you can never again divide an omelet into the white and the yellow of the egg. And we realized in the early eighties we had landed in a place which has become morally unjustified.

It comes from a BBC 4 radio programme. Whereas the BBC was implacably opposed to the Boycott of South Africa at the time, something it conveniently forgets to mention now, it is more than happy to pick up the plaudits today.

There is also an excellent article by Chris McGreal in the Guardian Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria which was published in February 2006.

Many have been the comparisons made by South African politicians, irked at the free ride that Israel was receiving, when Zionism was no different from Apartheid. As the South African press asked:

Is there any difference between the way the people of Israel are trying to maintain themselves amid the non-Jewish peoples and the way the Afrikaner is trying to remain what he is? The people of Israel base themselves upon the Old Testament to explain why they do not wish to mix with other people. The Afrikaner does this too. [Henry Katzew South Africa - A Country Without Friends' Midstream Spring 1962 p. 73, RP Stevens, 'Israel & South Africa' Zionism & Racism, p. l6]

Likewise Dr Verwoerd, in many ways the architect of Apartheid, wrote: “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a 1000 years. In this I agree with them. Israel like South Africa is an apartheid- state.” And the Jerusalem Post made clear in April 1976 on the conclusion of a. pact between Israel and South Africa, after Vorster's visit there:

The Afrikaners were especially enthusiastic... seeing a similarity of interest in two 'white' nations at the head and foot of the African continent waging lonely fights for survival against overwhelming black numbers.

This alliance was not of recent origin. The founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the British colonialist after whom Rhodesia was named:

Please give me a statement saying you have examined my programme and found it appropriate. And why do I come to you, Mr Rhodes, you will ask. Because- my programme is. a colonial programme. [T Herzl; Diaries, , Vol III p.105]

B’Tselem End of Year Video (Camera project)

2012-01-05T18:27:00.000Z

Gates of Vienna: rumbled and spreading disinformation

2011-12-26T21:54:00.012Z

EDL's Tommy Robinson assaulted by Pakistanis?

Yesterday I came across a story on ‘Moonbattery’, a Far Right American blog/site that’s always good for a few belly laughs, titled Christmas in Britainistan (these guys are sooo original!) and which alleges that Tommy Robinson, head nutjob of the English Defence League (EDL - now with Zionist flavour!), had been a assaulted by a gang of Pakistanis and hospitalised for the injuries sustained. The post provided Ned ‘Flanders’ May’s (‘Baron Bodissey’, cough!) The Gates of Vienna, a Rense-type sewer of Islamophobia, as the source of the ‘news’ (‘breaking’!). Ned dated the post as 22/12/11 (bear that date in mind).

Honestly surprised that such an attack seemed to have been ignored by just about every news outlet in Britain (and in the full knowledge that there would always be some willing to make political hay out of Tommy’s alleged misfortune), I Googled and found nothing but the usual suspects on the Far Right of US/UK blogosphere parroting the ‘story’ verbatim, all links pointing without exception to Gates of Vienna. Bear in mind that yesterday we were already 25 December, with the first ‘report’ on the ‘attack’ occurring on 22 December, leaving ample time for the story to trickle into the mainstream.

Amazingly, even the EDL’s own newsfeed yielded nothing, zilch, nada… The EDL not cashing in on a juicy story involving Evil British Moooslims attacking the leader of a White ‘resistance’ group and around the time of Christmas too? Pigs will fly.

Because of these oddities I decided to check out Gates of Vienna’s post again. Some aspects of the story are extremely strange. Firstly, Ned writes:

Last night English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson was attacked and beaten up by a gang of “Asians”. The following report just came in from a source in the EDL:

‘[…] Just came in from a source in the EDL […], but no mention of who the source might be. Or how he was contacted by this source.

Then there are the photographs:

'Floating head' Tommy in "ER":

'Floating torso' Tommy in "hospital":

Both are almost certainly Photoshopped: the face is clearly superimposed rather clumsily onto a 'ER/hospital" background.

I’ll give Ned the benefit of the doubt: it looks like he’s been duped by either an over-zealous EDLer or by an impostor.

If I’m proved wrong on this, this post will be deleted. But I’m putting money on not having to resort to that… Okelydokely, Ned!

As an aside, the following comment was made on the 'Moonbattery' post linked to higher up:

angryK9 says:

December 26, 2011 at 9:05 am

Muslims are barbarians. We can’t enjoy peace until they are wiped from the face of the earth.

And with regards to the story of Tommy Robinson’s (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) misadventure there’s more. The Liverpool antifascists have it on good authority that ‘Lennon’ wasn’t beaten up by Pakistanis but by rival football hooligans, the Luton MIGs, a milieu Tommy’s entirely familiar with:

The MIGs, for those who don’t know, are the Luton Town football hooligan firm. It is from their infamous former leader that Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Lennon – takes his alias. The MIGs also have links with the EDL dating back to its foundation, due to the group’s roots in football hooliganism.

So which is the true story? Both have some degree of credibility as well as room for doubt, but ultimately it is the word of one group of fascists against that of another at this moment in time. Either way, what it means is that the leader of the EDL has been laid up – for some time, given reports that he has “bruising of the brain” – and there will no doubt be repercussions. Revenge attacks on Asian youths by angry EDL supporters, or clashes between rival gangs of thugs. Possibly both.

In the meantime, our thoughts should be with Tommy. As the man who reinvigorated street fascism, inspiring a new generation of goons to go on the rampage against Asians and Muslims, it really couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

If this is the true explanation of events, combined with the malicious leaking of the ‘photos’, then that would certainly explain why the story created no headlines…

World must interfere in Israel's internal affairs

2011-12-26T16:00:00.003Z

Gideon Levy

Of all of Israel's complaints against the world, one is especially brazen: Goodness gracious, the world is meddling in the Jewish state's internal affairs.

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she understands what's happening here, and it reminds her more of Iran than Israel, the Zionist response has been: "It would be better for the public's representatives to direct their attention to what is happening in their own countries," as Environmental Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan put it.

When Europe becomes outraged over hate crimes in Israel, the brazen response is the Europeans adopted the lowest of resolutions in taking Israel to task. And when the world takes an interest in Israel's policy toward refugees and migrant workers, this prompts a demand for an end to foreign interference, as Ronen Shoval, the founder of the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu, said.

Israel may be the last country on earth with the right to be outraged over foreign interference. Since its founding, Israel has not ceased working around the world to bring Jews here; it has clandestinely carried out underground subversive activity among shady regimes; it has openly preached abroad for Jews to leave their native lands and immigrate here, or at least send financial support; and Israel has moved heaven and earth against manifestations of anti-Semitism and supports parallel alternative Jewish and Zionist educational systems around the world.

It is also a country that simultaneously calls on the world to maintain the blockade of Gaza because of Hamas' rise to power there. Israel has acted in Lebanon and elsewhere in support of one communal faction against another. It has not ceased to meddle in the internal affairs of foreign countries and entities, so of all countries, it should not be heard to complain about foreign interference.

That is not the only reason, however, that Israel's stance on interference is brazen and ridiculous. In today's world, nations frequently intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries, and Israel does not object. Sometimes, we even support such steps. The world bombed Kosovo and Libya to liberate them from tyranny.

Similarly, it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been threatening Iran over its development of nuclear weapons, which on the face of it is also an internal matter.

The world has also imposed sanctions on Syria, which could be followed by military involvement - again prompted by internal matters. That is the world's role, that's how it should conduct itself when it identifies outrageous injustice or dangerous dictatorship.

Israel is not a dictatorship (aside from the rule it imposes in the territories it occupies, which is, in fact, a long-standing and cruel dictatorship ). The world therefore expects standards of conduct from Israel that are customary in the family of nations to which it aspires to belong. The world has actually refrained so far from really intervening in what has been carried out by the dictatorship of the occupation, where Israel does what it pleases, continually showing contempt for the world. But now the world has begun to direct its attention to what has been going on lately in Israel. That is its right and obligation.

Contrary to the slanderous and foolish comments of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose ministry said European countries were in danger of making themselves irrelevant by their criticism of Israeli settlement policy, that is the only way the world can be relevant. True, at times the world is afflicted with hypocrisy and double standards, but that doesn't give Israel the right to oppose such interference. If the world is witness to discrimination against women, injustice done to refugees and migrant workers and anti-democratic nationalist legislation, it speaks out. Israel cannot respond like Syria or Libya with the argument to leave it alone because these are internal matters.

But all this is just the coming attraction for the major intervention that will be more blatant than anything seen so far and may be coming soon. Once the world despairs of a two-state solution, which no longer has much prospect of being implemented, it will direct its concern to human and civil rights in the one state that already exists: Israel.

Then, the world will say: "You wanted occupation. You wanted the settlements. We will have to accept them, because there's no turning back, but we will by no means accept a situation in which two million Palestinians in the West Bank live forever without civil rights and a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip live under conditions of partial siege. We will not accept such a situation in the new Middle East, which is rising up against dictatorship.

The new world will then tell Israel: Stay in the occupied territories, but give all its residents equal rights and justice. What will Israel say then? Interference in its internal affairs? Foreign intervention? You've got to be kidding.

Melanie Phillips: Take a hint, Lady!

2011-12-25T17:12:00.001Z

Mad Mel Phlipps’ inverted worldview is paying her little dividends these days: it’s the second time in a couple of days her articles invoke almost nothing but opprobrium from the Daily Hate Mail audience.

Here she basically equates Obama and Ron Paul as ‘isolationists’ and get all 35 comments to bitterly oppose her ludicrous stance.

Here she comes all out in defence of Gingrich’s ‘Palestinians are an invented people’ tosh, clutching Ye Olde Mappes firmly in her crooked fist. Of the 22 commenters there’s one numpty cheering her on, about one fence sitter and the rest relegate Mizz Phillips’ ruminations to the circular filing system.

Long gone seem the days when fanatical Israel Firster types ruled the roost at her Spectator blog…

You’d have thought that having been quoted at length by mass murdering Anders Breivik and admired by anti-Muslim crusader Vlad Tepes would make one consider revising one’s position on certain issues but not so for Mad Mel…

Modernity Blog: Good Riddance!

2011-12-25T14:57:00.001Z

Tidings of joy (may be there is a G-d after all)! Belatedly news reaches these shores that Modernity blog (“Modders, you plonker!”) has gone into what will hopefully be permanent hibernation. This twit, who repeatedly called me and anti-Semite and fascist (this on the grounds that Mr Semitophilic believes that in ‘anti-Zionism’, Zionism stands for ‘Jooooos’) has decided to call it a day, blogging wise.

To his credit, this faux-leftist ended his short-lived contribution to the Zioprop blog ‘CiFWatch’ (by ‘Hawkeye’) after about one fart and stopped commenting on the increasingly right wing blog, the Brown Sauce (‘Harry’s Place’, the now Washington based outfit run by David S. Toube - moneyed lawyer to the seriously financially comfortable) not so long ago. Neither of these publications appears on the blogroll of the final version of ‘Modernity blog’, nor on the list of stuff he claims he’ll still be reading.

Always one for fiercely protecting his own privacy but without any qualms about libelling/slandering those willing to fight with an open visor, by means of endless internet linkages, Moddy was your ultimate tinkerwebs hypocrite. With his and his Israeli firster comrades’ capability of ‘deep searching’, Modders would have been capable of linking David Cameron to ‘Lady’ Renouf, if it suited him.

You will not be missed, Moddy, at least not by me, and Christmas has just gotten a lot better. Cheers Modders, Merry Christmas, mate!

Israeli Foreign Ministry official sounds like the Syrian Ambassador to UN!

2011-12-22T15:35:00.001Z

Ha’aretz:

A senior Foreign Ministry official told Haaretz that what would have been a mundane discussion turned into an "attack on Israel," lead by Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin along with the Indian, Brazilian, and South African representatives.

However, sources said that the assault wasn't limited to the representatives of those nations, with European UNSC members joining in as well. The only country reportedly not engaging in the unusual bout of criticism was the United States.

The discussion's focal points were the so-called "price tag" attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank; continued settlement construction; and claims that Israel refused to provide the Quartet with its stances on issues such as borders and security arrangements in a future peace deal with the Palestinians.

"The whole debate was conducted in a disgusting manner," a Foreign Ministry official with knowledge of the UNSC proceedings told Haaretz, adding that "Israel was assaulted with every minute detail, mentioning every mosque that was torched and arguing that state authorities weren't doing anything to stop settler attacks against Palestinians."

Foreign Ministry officials said that the EU representatives "hijacked" the session, when, following it, they decided to release a joint statement detailing the contents of the sealed meeting.

In the statement the diplomats criticized the council's failure to take action against escalating violence by Israeli settlers and urged a speedy resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Britain's UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, also speaking for EU members France, Germany and Portugal, said "Israel's security and the realization of the Palestinians' right to statehood are not opposing goals."

The envoys called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's denouncement of the acts a "step in the right direction," adding, however, that they were waiting to see real results.

On Wednesday, Foreign Ministry director general Rafael Barak held a special ministry session following the statement, with one source saying that the Germany and U.K.-led maneuver managed to enrage even the most moderate among ministry officials, who usually disagree with Foreign Ministry Avigdor Lieberman on his tough stances regarding the Palestinians.

"The Europeans pulled out the horn and turned up the volume to a thousand decibels," one official said, adding that the move was "unacceptable and unfriendly."

Most of the Foreign Ministry indignation was over a portion of the statement that dealt with the price tag attacks, and which hinted that the Israeli government wasn't acting to apprehend the perpetrators.

"It's a blatant interference in Israel's internal affairs," one ministry official said, adding that that statement is "a veiled threat that if Israel doesn't prosecute the perpetrators the EU will drag it into international courts," he added. [my emph.]

We should be so lucky… not that Israel would recognise such a court anyway!

And in other news, that other expert on peace, Vampire Nuland, spokesperson for the ‘honest peace broker’:

The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that the
criticism of Israel issued by the European members of the UN Security Council did not aid in resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“Shouting from the rooftops of the Security Council is not going to change the situation on the ground, which is that these parties have to get back to the table and settle these issues together, and that’s the way we’re going to have a lasting, stable peace,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. [my link]

Palestinians are heroes, braving Israeli dictatorship

2011-12-21T16:19:00.001Z

Amira Hass - Ha’aretz

The Palestinians are heroes, and that's the only fact that's relevant after the slight shock of the hilltop thugs. The hands are the hands of thugs, and the head? The head is the head of the hostile regime under which the Palestinians live and which harasses them every moment of every day, week after week for decades. To live this way and remain sane - that's heroism. "And who says we're sane?" Palestinians answer me. Well, here's the proof: self-irony.

The thugs of the hills are only the icing on the cake. Most of the work is being done by thugs wearing kid gloves. Unlike the people who threw the stone at the deputy brigade commander, these are fan favorites in Israel. The flesh of our flesh. Officers and soldiers, military jurists, architects and contractors in the service of the army, Interior Ministry and National Insurance Institute clerks. The hands are their hands. The head is the head of the demos, the Israeli-Jewish people, who by the democratic process send governments to be the dictator over the Palestinians.

What is the Israeli dictatorship over the Palestinians? Not only control of their space and the creation of isolated enclaves; not only the 19-year-olds who are sent - masked and armed to the teeth - on military raids (560 last month, according to the monitoring group in the PLO's negotiations department ); not only daily arrests (257 arrests in November, including 15 Gazans ) and the 758 temporary roadblocks that were placed on West Bank roads that month.

The dictatorship is not even just a ban on Palestinian construction in more than 60 percent of the West Bank, permission to invent a new law every day to disenfranchise and expel, and the demolition, during 2011, of 500 Palestinian dwellings, wells, cisterns, animal pens, toilets and other essential structures. The dictatorship is all that together, and much more.

The Israeli dictatorship is the art of the double standard (Palestinians cannot build on their agricultural land so as not to impair rural zoning, but the state can legalize a Jewish outpost on Palestinian agricultural land ). It is the champion of self-righteousness and arrogance ("the only democracy" ), and holds an advanced degree in hypocrisy ("ready to return to negotiations any time" ). Instead of going crazy with rage, the Palestinians know that these characteristics will hurt the Israelis themselves.

Anyone who has been harmed by the Israeli dictatorship feels alone, weak, angry and desperate. But every family in its own way cultivates its humanity. In a curious and moving way - despite internal rivalries, an unfair distribution of the burden, manifestations of ignorance and opportunism and disappointing leadership - the ability to remain steadfast and social solidarity are the overall result.

That's the summud that attorney Raja Shehadeh wrote about ages ago, when we still deluded ourselves that the Israeli-Jewish people can heal itself from the disease of lordship. This totality also typifies every individual and family: the ability to remain resilient and show wise restraint, which has become routine bravery and will be translated in due time into mass collective resistence.

The Palestinians are heroes, and that's not simply a flowery journalistic phrase. It's a fact not intended for the thugs, but rather for people who shut their eyes - and they are many. Those who shut their eyes do so because they seek normalcy. What they don't see doesn't exist and doesn't bother them. Israeli normalcy longs for the Palestinians to disappear, or at least to remain silent and finally surrender. But Palestinian bravery will continue to thwart the longings of Israeli normalcy.

Jonafun Hoffman: ‘ISM/PSC desecrate Christmas!’

2011-12-18T19:16:00.003Z

Yup. Jonathan Hoffman the Zionist anti-Zionist’s hero is at it again in quite characteristic clownesque mode:

Today the Israel traducers [ISM/PSC activists] sang carols with the words doctored in order to demonise Israel. Many passers-by expressed their disgust at this desecration of Christmas.

Desecrating Christmas, no less, for having the temerity of demonstrating…

From that (old) linked Jewdas piece:

On the JC blog site, Jonathan likes to abuse fellow posters, preferably calling them ‘trolls’. We can put this aside, perhaps this is standard conversational style in Woodside Park Synagogue. A particular poster, ‘Ben Abuyah’ however, got Johnathan’s back up. ‘Ben Abuyah’ was a critic of Israel, was pretty knowledgable, and, horror of horrors, worked for a Jewish communal organisation. How dare a community organisation employ someone whose views are not specifically endorsed by the Zionist Federation! Jonathan has been pretty clear – Jews who criticise Israel are a best not proper Jews and at worst not Jewish at all. But how does one tell? In good rabbinic style, Jonathan devised a simple and straightforward test for ascertaing someone’s Jewishness, posting the following:

To the Jewish Israel bashers:

Please confirm the following:

1. Examples of active participation in synagogue services over the last six months
2. The number of mezuzot in your home
3. Fluency in reading/speaking Hebrew
4. Participation in rabbinical shiurim in the past six months
5. Positions held within the Jewish community
6. Extent of kashrut observance
7. Examples of active support for Israel in past six months
8. Frequency of synagogue attendance
Has ever such a list been produced in all of Jewish history? Maimonides had his 13 principles but this is a whole other level – no longer is Jewishness to be based on descent or conversion, according to JH it needs to be frequently tested to check whether or not it has lapsed. Some questions remain – do all 8 areas score equally? Or does no. 7 trump all the others? An do Jews who are not ‘Israel Bashers’ have to submit to the quiz or are they exempt? And what happens if you score less than half points? Will the men in black hats come round to put you in cherem?

What was it, one might wonder that led Jonathan to produce such a list? What had got his back up? A notable omission from JH’s list is shabbat observance, a very traditional marker of Jewish religiosity. It turned out that this was very relevant. Ben Abuyah pointed out that JH had been posting on the JC blog on shabbat.

Hilariously, both the shabbat posts and Ben Abuyah’s flagging of them have now disappeared from the JC site. JH was obviously highly gefruntzled by this having his shabbat desecration pointed out; it seemingly led him to do some research and then gleefully ‘out’ Ben Abuyah. At that point the trail goes quiet – though it seems likely that Hoffman will now try to make things difficult for ‘Ben Abuya’ in his communal organisation. (update: Hoffman’s questionaire seems to have also disappeared from the site – the moderators are zealous in their efforts to protect ZF spokespeople)

Special Appeal: Medical Aid to Palestinians

2011-12-16T16:46:00.000Z

Via subscription email.

It is at this time of year, particularly as a father of two boys, that I feel most depressed about the complete injustice and terrible conditions the innocent children of Palestine face every day.

These young children have lived through horrendous atrocities: air strikes and rocket attacks by the Israeli military, death and destruction on an unimaginable scale and grinding poverty caused by decades of military occupation.

Many children in Gaza are deeply scarred by what they have witnessed: frightened, confused and angry. How could they not be? So many still suffer from flashbacks, nightmares, bedwetting, sleep disorders and depression.

I have just returned from Palestine, where I was amazed by the energy and friendship of the children there. Even with their physical or mental scars, the children still have the strength and resilience to look to the future with optimism. But to do so they need our help to heal deep emotional wounds that have harmed their young lives.
Please donate today. You could help us bring comfort and support to a young child who has lost their childhood.

Whilst on visits to Palestine, to see MAP’s work, I have often been questioned by young Israeli soldiers about why I visit and what I do. Their ambivalent attitude towards aid workers throughout Palestine is hard to explain when they can see that we are there to help. They don’t appear to understand or care that a terrified seven-year-old just wants to be a child, just wants to grow up to do something with their life. They ignore the fact that imprisoning people behind a blockade and denying them their fundamental right to access adequate health care will mean they never heal the wounds of conflict. I wanted to tell them about nine-year-old Fatima. She was six years old when Israel invaded Gaza and took her childhood, leaving her a terrified shell of a girl who still finds it hard to cope and play with other children. With your help we can reach children like Fatima, giving them the care and support they need to recover.

MAP’s programmes save and improve the quality of lives in many ways – but none is more important than giving scared children the chance to just be children. Imagine if we could help more children who are hoping that someone will listen giving them the space and time to find their feet again.

We could reach more of these children, but we cannot do this without your support. If you could help us, we could make sure that Palestinian children receive the care they need to heal their physical and mental wounds.

HOW YOUR GIFT TODAY COULD HELP:

£20 could help supply toys, paper and crayons – tools which the children of Gaza can use to help express their trauma.

£50 could help pay for an experienced psychologist to provide expert care to psychologically injured children.

£500 could help a child attend 14 sessions on MAP’s psychosocial care programme and start to recover from their experiences of conflict

Last year I made a promise to the children of Gaza, I promised that MAP would be there to help the children rebuild their lives. I am asking you again to remember those brave children who, despite their suffering, have dreams of a better world. Please will you make a donation today to help us support vulnerable Palestinian children.

To help children cope with trauma, MAP provides a programme of specialist care. We give children the time, attention, support and professional care that helps them to recover and begin to enjoy their lives, to be children again.

Please will you make a donation this Christmas so MAP can continue to give children the medical aid and practical support that could save their lives?

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Steven James

Chief Executive

P.S. Between 7th and 13th December:

• 14 Palestinian children were injured by the Israeli Army in demonstrations in the West Bank
• 1 child was killed by the Israeli Army in Gaza
• 8 children were injured by the Israeli Army in Gaza

For more information on MAP's continuing response please sign up to our E-newsletter - The Monitor or email us at info@map-uk.org or telephone us on 0207 226 4114

Lizard Gingrich: what a toe rag…

2011-12-11T15:06:00.003Z

The latest crop of Republican wannabe nominees is by far the most ridiculous bunch of pond life thrown up by that event in many ‘election’ cycles. From Michele Bachmann (too vapid to mention), Rick ‘Ooops’ Perry, Herbert ‘Us-beki-beki-stan-stan’ Cain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich to Ron Paul, its all of a sadness that defies proper description. One almost, but not quite, feels for Paul. And I’m sure I forget the odd cardboard cut out.

Of all the slimeball vote whores falling over themselves showing just how tough they’ll be on Iran (exception: Ron Paul), thereby securing a good slice of the American Jewish Zionist vote, Gingrich is the most gregarious. In a very recent interview with ‘The Jewish Channel’, Newt basically reiterates an old conspiracy theory in which the Palestinians are an invented people, presumably concocted by the Arab League to make life hard for Israel, nay destroy it:

Someone might try and explain to Newt that prior to 1948 there was no State of Israel either, that prior to 1776 there was no American State and that much more importantly the universal rights of people living somewhere aren’t predicated on belonging to a ‘real’ People or having a ‘real’ Religion. These rights of those living back then in what we now call historic Palestine were brutally violated by the interlopers known as Zionists, to this very day.

Newt, apparently, stands by his musings (he’s not a bad calculator). So if the American public votes in this scumbag we can be sure that the US will be once again an ‘honest broker’ in the ME ‘peace process’!

Worst weekend?

2011-12-07T19:18:00.001Z

Source: JTA

The delicate touch-me-nots of US Zionism are hurting, apparently:

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The Obama administration is reaping a whirlwind of criticism in the wake of pointed remarks about Israel by several U.S. officials over three days.

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, caused an uproar when he suggested on Dec. 1 that hostility among European Arabs and Muslims toward Jews was rooted in anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and should be distinguished from traditional forms of anti-Semitism. Jewish groups condemned his remarks, which drew calls for his dismissal from Republican presidential front-runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

The following day, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta stirred controversy when he told an audience at the Saban Forum, an annual Washington conclave for American and Israeli policymakers, that Israel needs to “get to the damn table” to negotiate with the Palestinians and “mend fences” with its neighbors. The Anti-Defamation League expressed “surprise and dismay” at a speech that it said “disproportionately put the onus on Israel to overcome its isolation.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made waves a day later at the Saban Forum when she reportedly expressed some concerns about the state of Israeli democracy.

The confluence of controversies has added up to a headache for the Obama administration’s Jewish supporters and given fodder to its critics.

“This is the worst weekend we’ve had in a while,” said a Jewish Democratic activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the outcry over the remarks.

See, I wish wholeheartedly that I could call it the ‘worst weekend’, in fact I wish I could simply call it a ‘bad weekend’ but perhaps for a lobby that’s used to having an American administration reply to requests to jump for the Zionist Entity with ‘how high?’, all this must feel like a catastrophic loss of traction. If only it was…

More intimidation tactics by the Israeli Far Right

2011-11-28T17:40:00.001Z

Via email subscription from Peace Now, by Lee Wilson:

Yesterday I got a message to my phone, (as I picked up my kids from school), that said "Lee, Today I Will Kill You".

Not knowing whether this was a prank or a threat I quickly called the other members of our Peace Now team - some of them also received such messages…..we reported this to the police.

It turns out the guy who sent the message was the same guy who told Yariv a few weeks back that he will "put a bullet in his head" and called in a bomb threat to our offices and defaced our Jerusalem branch. He has been arrested 3 times, and released 3 times..why? Because his dad has connections with high up people - when will his Dad realise that his son is dangerous and needs to pay the price for his actions? Will they only do something when he eventually kills someone?

All of this is not unusual as when the Government is running a campaign of persecution and legislation against NGO's and leftist groups, calling us traitors and passing legislation to act against "enemies within" (as some MKs are trying to portray us).

Only last week the Home Security Minister told the Knesset he feared another political assassination, with Peace Now members being the target.

From those Ha’aretz links:

Recently, death threats were sprayed on the apartment building of Ofran, a Peace Now activist, and Peace Now offices in Jerusalem were vandalized in suspected "price tag" attacks.

"Price tag" is the name given by extremists to activities against Palestinians, peace activists or security forces in response to what are considered to be actions against the settlements or illegal outposts in the West Bank.
"Police are conducting a vigorous investigation and arrested a suspect who is still in custody," Aharonovitch told MKs. "The case is still being investigated. The investigations branch is doing all it can to prevent such acts and to investigate fully what happened."

"As for the threat of another political murder, this is indeed a question," Aharonovitch said. "It is my job to be worried. The threat exists. Both we and the Shin Bet security service, it is our job to be vigilant and conduct all operations. We're talking about a threat that covers the entire political spectrum."

The most infamous political murder in Israeli history took place on November 4, 1995 when then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist after a peace rally in Tel Aviv.

Schocken shocker: calling a spade a spade

2011-11-27T14:09:00.002Z

Amos Schocken - Ha’aretz

Speaking in the Knesset in January 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, "Iran is in the initial stages of an effort to acquire nonconventional capability in general, and nuclear capability in particular. Our assessment is that Iran today has the appropriate manpower and sufficient resources to acquire nuclear arms within 10 years. Together with others in the international community, we are monitoring Iran's nuclear activity. They are not concealing the fact that the possibility that Iran will possess nuclear weapons is worrisome, and this is one of the reasons that we must take advantage of the window of opportunity and advance toward peace."
At that time, Israel had a strategy - which began to be implemented in the Oslo accords, put an end to the priority granted the settlement project and aimed to improve the treatment of Israel's Arab citizens.

If things had gone differently, the Iran issue might look different today. However, as it turned out, the Oslo strategy collided with another, stronger ideology: the ideology of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful ), which since the 1970s, apart from the Oslo period and the time of the withdrawal from Gaza, has established the concrete basis for the actions of Israel's governments. Even governments that were ostensibly far removed from the Gush Emunim strategy implemented it in practice. Ehud Barak boasted that, in contrast to other prime ministers, he did not return territory to the Palestinians - and there's no need to point out once again the increase in the number of settlers during his tenure. The government of Ehud Olmert, which declared its intention to move toward a policy of hitkansut (or "convergence," another name for what Ariel Sharon termed "disengagement" ) in Judea and Samaria, held talks with senior Palestinians on an agreement but did not stop the settlement enterprise, which conflicts with the possibility of any agreement.

The strategy that follows from the ideology of Gush Emunim is clear and simple: It perceives of the Six-Day War as the continuation of the War of Independence, both in terms of seizure of territory, and in its impact on the Palestinian population. According to this strategy, the occupation boundaries of the Six-Day War are the borders that Israel must set for itself. And with regard to the Palestinians living in that territory - those who did not flee or were not expelled - they must be subjected to a harsh regime that will encourage their flight, eventuate in their expulsion, deprive them of their rights, and bring about a situation in which those who remain will not be even second-class citizens, and their fate will be of interest to no one. They will be like the Palestinian refugees of the War of Independence; that is their desired status. As for those who are not refugees, an attempt should be made to turn them into "absentees." Unlike the Palestinians who remained in Israel after the War of Independence, the Palestinians in the territories should not receive Israeli citizenship, owing to their large number, but then this, too, should be of interest to no one.

The ideology of Gush Emunim springs from religious, not political motivations. It holds that Israel is for the Jews, and it is not only the Palestinians in the territories who are irrelevant: Israel's Palestinian citizens are also exposed to discrimination with regard to their civil rights and the revocation of their citizenship.

This is a strategy of territorial seizure and apartheid. It ignores judicial aspects of territorial ownership and shuns human rights and the guarantees of equality enshrined in Israel's Declaration of Independence. It is a strategy of unlimited patience; what is important is the unrelenting progress toward the goal. At the same time, it is a strategy that does not pass up any opportunity that comes its way, such as the composition of the present Knesset and the unclear positions of the prime minister.

The term "apartheid" refers to the undemocratic system of discriminating between the rights of the whites and the blacks, which once existed in South Africa. Even though there is a difference between the apartheid that was practiced there and what is happening in the territories, there are also some points of resemblance. There are two population groups in one region, one of which possesses all the rights and protections, while the other is deprived of rights and is ruled by the first group. This is a flagrantly undemocratic situation.

Since the Six-Day War, there has been no other group in Israel with the ideological resilience of Gush Emunim, and it is not surprising that many politicians have viewed that ideology as a means for realizing personal political ambitions. Zevulun Hammer, who identified this ideology as the way to capture the leadership of the National Religious Party, and Ariel Sharon, who identified this ideology as the way to capture the leadership of Likud, were only two of many. Now Avigdor Lieberman, too, is following this path, but there were and are others, such as the late Hanan Porat, for whom the realization of this ideology was and remains the purpose of their political activity.

This ideology views the creation of an Israeli apartheid regime as a necessary tool for its realization. It has no difficulty with illegal actions and with outright criminality, because it rests on mega-laws that it has adopted and that have no connection with the laws of the state, and because it rests on a perverted interpretation of Judaism. It has scored crucial successes. Even when actions inspired by the Gush Emunim ideology conflict with the will of the government, they still quickly win the backing of the government. The fact that the government is effectively a tool of Gush Emunim and its successors is apparent to everyone who has dealings with the settlers, creating a situation of force multiplication.

This ideology has enjoyed immense success in the United States, of all places. President George H.W. Bush was able to block financial guarantees to Israel because of the settlements established by the government of Yitzhak Shamir (who said lying was permissible to realize the Gush Emunim ideology. Was Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan University speech a lie of this kind? ). Now, though, candidates for the Republican Party's presidential nomination are competing among themselves over which of them supports Israel and the occupation more forcefully. Any of them who adopt the approach of the first President Bush will likely put an end to their candidacy.

Whatever the reason for this state of affairs - the large number of evangelicals affiliated with the Republican party, the problematic nature of the West's relations with Islam, or the power of the Jewish lobby, which is totally addicted to the Gush Emunim ideology - the result is clear: It is not easy, and may be impossible, for an American president to adopt an activist policy against Israeli apartheid.

Legalizing the illegal

Because of its inherent illegality, at least in democratic terms, an apartheid regime cannot allow opposition and criticism. The Gush Emunim ideology is obliged to eliminate the latter, and to prevent every effort to block its activity, even if that activity is illegal and even criminal, meant to maintain apartheid. The illegal activity needs to be made legal, whether by amending laws or by changing their judicial interpretation - such things have occurred before, in other places and at other times.

Against this background, we are now seeing the campaign of legislation against, and the unbridled slandering of the Supreme Court, against human rights organizations and against the press, as well as the so-called boycott law, which is aimed at preventing the possibility of dealing with Israeli apartheid in the way South African apartheid was dealt with. It is against this same background that legislation has been submitted that is directed against the Arab citizens in Israel, such as the Loyalty Law and the proposal for a "Basic Law of Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People." It is against this background that a campaign of incitement and intimidation is being waged against the necessary and justified critique being voiced by members of academia.

The Supreme Court, which permitted the settlement project and effectively collaborated with the Gush Emunim ideology, has now become an obstacle that needs to be removed - in the eyes of those who still adhere to that ideology - primarily because the court refuses to recognize the possibility of settling on privately owned Palestinian land and did not overturn the government decision to evacuate the settlements in the Gaza Strip. Because the land belongs to the Jews by divine decree and history (from this perspective, there are similarities between Gush Emunim and Hamas ), there is no choice but to elect to the Supreme Court justices who live on Palestinian land, possibly private land, and those who understand that there is no such thing as "land under private Palestinian ownership."

Similarly, this line of thinking goes, the Supreme Court's interpretation of human rights laws also requires its elimination in its present format. Judgments such as those relating to the Kaadan family (allowing an Arab family to build a home in a Jewish community ); the selling of Jewish National Fund land to Arab citizens of Israel; the amendment to the Citizenship Law (no ruling has yet been handed down, but there seems to be a possibility that a majority of justices will rule it illegal ); the opening of a highway to Palestinian traffic - all these rulings conflict with essential elements in Gush Emunim ideology: the discrimination between Jews and Palestinians (in Israel and the territories ) and the deprivation of the Palestinians' rights, which transform them into second-class people, absentees or, best of all, refugees.

Does an Israel of this kind have a future? Over and beyond the question of whether Jewish morality and the Jewish experience allow such circumstances to exist, it is clear that this is a flagrantly unstable and even dangerous situation. It is a situation that will prevent Israel from fully realizing its vast potential, a situation of living by the sword - a sword that could be a third intifada, the collapse of peace with Egypt and a confrontation with a nuclear Iran. Yitzhak Rabin understood that.

The boys who cry ‘Holocaust’

2011-11-24T16:25:00.001Z

Below is a substantial part of an excellent article by Gary Kamya, which appeared very recently in Salon (the hide out of the also excellent Glenn Greenwald). Replete with loads of interesting and corroborating links it might be best viewed at source. Here’s a taster:

We’ve been through this before. As one of the most disastrous wars in our history is coming to an inglorious end, the same neoconservative hawks who dreamed it up are agitating for a new war that would make Iraq look like the invasion of Grenada — and using the ultimate trump card in American politics to silence debate over it.

When hawks begin beating the drums for war in the Middle East, Israel is usually a big reason why. That was true in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and it is doubly true with the current hysteria over Iran. Despite disingenuous claims to the contrary, the only reason the U.S. is even talking about war with Iran is Israel. As the invaluable M.J. Rosenberg, who knows the working of the Israel lobby as only a former card-carrying member can, notes, “It is impossible to find a single politician or journalist advocating war with Iran who is not a neocon or an AIPAC cutout. (They’re often both.)”

Ever since the International Atomic Energy Agency released its overhyped, old-news report on Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s amen corner in the U.S. has been loudly calling for war.

If American politics did not contain an enormous blind spot, no one would pay any attention to what these discredited ideologues have to say. The Iraq war they championed turned out to be one of the biggest foreign-policy disasters in U.S. history. Their ignorant and Islamophobic view of the Middle East is as breathtaking as their bland willingness to commit America to yet another ruinous war against a Muslim country, this time one four times larger than Iraq and with more than twice as many people. They have a demonstrated track record of complete failure.

Yet these incompetent militarists are still taken seriously. And the reason is simple: They purport to be supporters of Israel. In American politics, you can get away with even the most cracked war-mongering as long as you claim to be “pro-Israel.” And the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for anything having to do with Israel is the Holocaust.

To listen to the neocons and hawks, you’d think Hitler was about to send the tanks over the Polish border. Former U.S. ambassador and Dr. Strangelove impersonator John Bolton said, “The only alternative now is the potential for a pre-emptive military strike against their military program, either by the United States or Israel.

Diplomacy has failed. Sanctions have failed.” For Bolton, Iran is the second coming of Nazi Germany: “If the choice is them continuing [towards a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you’re at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point … We’re still in 1936, but not for long.”

Now read the rest.

Too whacky for Faux News but ZOA HEART Glenn Beck

2011-11-23T20:26:00.003Z

And a big HEART it is too. Whackjob wingnut Glenn Beck got a bit too extreme even for the broadcasters that could easily pass for a spoof, Faux Noise, but the Zionist Organisation of America can’t get enough of him. H/T Antony Loewenstein on Beck’s lachrymose mendacity:

The Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner is a place where conventional thinking about the liberal proclivities of American Jews goes to die. But never quite like Sunday night — when Tea Party darling and Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachman served as the opening act and Glenn Beck was swarmed like a rock star.

Beck, who was on hand to receive the ZOA’s Defender of Israel Award, made his way into the VIP reception at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan shortly after 5 p.m. and almost instantly was beset by a crush of admirers. He found himself wedged into a corner as a crowd of well-wishers surged forward to have their photographs taken with him. Bachmann and her fellow Republican congresswoman, Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, were there, too — but it was clear who the star was.

“Love, love, love, love, love,” Ros-Lehtinen said, extending her hand to Beck, who responded by clasping hers in both of his. All around her, an expanding mass of people pressed in closer, seemingly eager to express the same sentiment.

“I need everyone to back up please,” a photographer practically yelled as he tried to create a cordon around the VIPs to set up his shot. But despite help from Beck’s two bodyguards, an assistant, and assorted publicists and ZOA personnel, the crowd kept pushing ahead.

Crowd control proved to be a recurring problem at the dinner. After the appetizer was served, seemingly half the room converged on Beck and his wife, Tania, tying up the traffic flow in the center of the ballroom and rendering the area impassable. A succession of ZOA officials implored the crowd to sit down so servers could get dinner on the table, but with little effect.

Grabbing the microphone, ZOA President Morton Klein, raised his voice — the first of several times he would do that over the course of the evening — and commanded those standing around to “sit down — NOW!”
…
“Glenn Beck got in touch with me, thanked me for writing this because no one else in the organized Jewish world was defending him, and he asked if we could get together,” Klein told JTA. “We got together, I asked him if he’d be our honoree, he began to almost cry. Tears welled up in his eyes.”

Asked about the discomfort some feel with Beck’s repeated use of Holocaust analogies, Klein, a child of survivors who was born in a German displaced persons camp, claimed ignorance, saying he didn’t watch Beck’s show often enough to have an opinion.

“I just don’t know,” he said.

That Beck, an unabashed crier, became misty at Klein’s offer is eminently believable. Beck appeared to choke back tears at least four times during his hourlong speech — and that was during his less emotional moments.

When he wasn’t battling the urge to cry, he was issuing a battle cry. With arms flailing wildly and face turning the color of the red caviar served in the VIP room, Beck portrayed the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people in apocalyptic terms — as the ultimate showdown between good and evil. Beck was the only speaker at the dinner whose voice reached a pitch more feverish than Klein’s.

Beck said he came to the ZOA as a brother. “It’s personal,” he said repeatedly.
And clearly he has not been chastened by the urgings of some Jewish groups to tread lightly with the Holocaust analogies. Again and again he invoked them, saying the world stood on a precipice like the one it faced in 1939 — only this time it’s worse, as not only is the world ignoring rising evil, he said, it is actively helping it along.

“America is not a collective,” Beck thundered. “America is built on the individual. I am a man and I demand to be counted so others are not numbered again.”
The crowd went wild.

And here’s that horrid, racist little man Morton Klein on the two state solution (2007):

Remi Kanazi - ‘This poem will not end Apartheid’

2011-11-18T15:13:00.000Z

(H/T JsF)

Quote of the day: Yael Dayan

2011-11-13T16:41:00.002Z

Yael Dayan, daughter of the famous Moshe:

If I gave every Israeli Jew an atom bomb to keep beside their bed, they would still feel threatened.

Translated from Dutch, from: ‘In Lood Gegoten. Israel en de tragedie van de Joodse staat’, by Sus van Elzen, ISBN 987 90 8542 305 8, p. 178

Meanwhile in ‘the only democracy in the ME’

2011-11-10T14:30:00.000Z

From PNN, via Mondoweiss:

PNN 9 Nov -- Fifteen of the activists from the Freedom Waves to Gaza flotilla came before an Israeli court on Tuesday, and were advised they could be held for up to 2 months without charges or a trial. One Australian, one British, two Canadians, and 14 Irish activists remain imprisoned by Israel after five days. In order to avoid further incarceration, the judge told the detainees they could sign a statement declaring that they entered Israel voluntarily and illegally. Some of the Freedom Waves to Gaza participants have already been deported at their own expense.

Victoria Nuland: annoying twit of the year…

2011-11-01T14:28:00.002Z

When it comes to deeply annoying (embarrassing would be the word if I were American, heaven forbid!) public persons, spokes people for the White House/State Department/insert whatever, politicians and the like, look no further that to t’other Social Experiment, the good ole’ US of A, for a panoply of muppets that almost make the Iranian regime look like sane folk. And the sooner they ditch one, another pops up like a devil in a box. The latest one to pollute the screens of our boxes is Victoria Nuland, here she is on the Meircan’s decision to withhold funds from Unesco, this on the grounds that that truly perfidious organisation has granted membership to Palestine by overwhelming majority:

Watch it on YouTube.

Kudos to that journalist though. Where were the others?

Writes Gabriel at JsF:

I have a question. What kind of personality it takes to stand there and repeat that horse manure? Who applies for these jobs and who accepts them? Is there a test you have to pass to get this job? Something like finding a kid with a puppy in the park and strangling the puppy?

According to Wiki she “has twice been a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1999 to 2000, she looked at the effect of Anti-Americanism on U.S. relations with other major world powers”… Did you factor yourself into that equation, Victoria? Cos’ for anti-Americans you’re the gift that keeps on giving!

Zionist ‘Humour’ and 'counter arguments' from a Settler…

2011-10-21T13:54:00.006Z

That modern Zionism really doesn’t have a great deal of moral arguments left is quite undeniable: its prolonged and over time strongly accelerated colonial designs on territory acquired by means of military conquest, a practice considered illegal even by its perennial apologist and enabler (or ‘pusher’, to use Gideon Levy’s ‘occupation addiction’ parallel) the USA, means any moral claims or declarations of peaceful intent must be considered totally bankrupt.

This bankruptcy manifests itself among other things from highly reductionist stances a la Alex Stein’s ‘it’s [Israel] good for the Jews’ to Richard Millett’s ‘I’m for a TSS but the territories are disputed, not occupied’.

But today I received the ultimate Britzio argument from Daniel Marks, a Jewish settler from Croydon^(*), from Ma’ale Adumim (for some 38 years) and a devout Jewish person who undoubtedly sees himself as a fully paid up settler member of the ‘chosen people’, in the form of an email sent to me from a walla.com account at 11.45 am.

Daniel’s main contribution was to type ‘Any use?’, and below the fold was then inserted an advert for Maxgentleman Enlargement Pills:

MaxGentleman Enlargement Pills have been featured across major media outlets around the world, including ESP and Fox News, with dozens of positive reviews.

This is the only Male enlargement supplement that has been PROVEN in clinical trials to enlarge your penis ג€“ safely, quickly, and importantly ג€“ PERMANENTLY

Follows then the ubiquitous list of claims and testimonials.

Clearly one can take the Britzionist out of Albion but one can’t take the puerile toilet humour out of the Britzionist.

(*) No, he’s probably not from Croydon, I'm just guessing.

Meet Mad Rachel Abrams…

2011-10-20T14:02:00.001Z

The wife of Elliot Abrams, George W. Bush’s Middle East advisor, on her blog ‘Bad Rachel’ (what’s in a name???) has this anti-Palestinian and Manichean screed about Gilad Shalit, Israeli Jewish children, Palestinians, their mothers and… unmanned animals:

GILAD!!!!!!!!!!

He’s free and he’s home in the bosom of his family and his country.

Celebrate, Israel, with all the joyous gratitude that fills your hearts, as we all do along with you.

Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

Mad, bad, stark raving bonkers and… the wife of a Neocon Jewish ME advisor!

H/T Mondoweiss.

The Lunatics Have Taken over the Asylum

2011-10-16T17:06:00.002Z

Israeli society is standing by as settlers take the reins

Zeev Sternhell - Ha'aretz

Like every year during the days around Yom Kippur, the big question arises once again: How is it possible that we didn't notice the signs of the approaching war? But not only wars have early-warning signs - destructive social and political events do not come like a bolt from the blue either.

There is a growing tendency for the right to distance itself from "price tag" hooligans and to make us forget the fact that these belligerent groups, which are increasingly reminiscent of phenomena in Europe in the interwar period, are only the vanguard of the entire settlement movement. Of course, the vast majority of people living on the other side of the Green Line are disgusted by the torching of mosques, but I don't recall that many of them went out to demonstrate against the pogrom that took place in Anatot at the end of last week, nor that they condemn the daily harassment of Palestinian farmers, the uprooting of trees or the daily reign of terror in Hebron.

They consider the torching of mosques unnecessary and harmful, but daily control over the lives of Palestinians helps to perpetuate the occupation regime, and here the hilltop gangs play an important role in the service of the settlements: The hooligans' activity is living proof of the hopelessness of contemplating any change in the territories. After all, these gangs are drawing the boundaries of the government's power: Even if some day the right is no longer in power or Israel is forced to give in by dint of international sanctions, policy in the territories will not change substantially, because there the rioters are in control, in cooperation with the police and the army and with the general consensus of silence. They hold all the cards; threatening the possibility of a violent uprising against any government that does not serve their interests.

Under these circumstances, any negotiations for an agreement with the Palestinians, whether direct or indirect, are no more than a sad joke. The truth is that Israeli society and its governmental institutions are standing by helplessly in the face of the settlers' regime of fear and blackmail.

The other arm of the pincers closing in on Israel is that of the "respectable right." The two arms combine symbolically in the person of the justice minister: Well ensconced among Israel's wealthiest citizens, Yaakov Neeman serves in the present administration as the envoy of secular and "socially oriented" Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and, at the same time, does not conceal the fact that he hopes for the implementation of a halakhic (religious ) rule of law.

The religious community and the secular ultra-nationalists do, in fact, have a common basis and common objectives: They all consider the principle of Jewish supremacy as the only basis for Zionism and for Israel's existence. Just like ultra-nationalists in Europe during the dark period of the previous century, just like racists all over Europe today, the Israeli ultra-nationalists nurture ethnic solidarity by means of xenophobia and hatred of the other.

In their eyes, a community of all the citizens of the state, which includes the Arabs, is an artificial community, just as the concept of citizenship is artificial, and therefore inferior to the ethno-religious community, which they consider natural. Religion serves as a tool to exalt the privileged Jew and to trample those inferior to him. In this overarching concept, human rights and universal values are seen as infantile principles.

In this situation, signs of disintegration are multiplying in all areas of life. Antidemocratic legislation that has already been approved in the Knesset, with the support of Kadima, and legislation yet to come, is encouraging the erosion of liberal components of state education. That is also how we have come to accept as self-evident the expulsion of foreigners whose children were born in Israel and - according to accepted practice all over the Western world - should have been considered Israeli to all intents and purposes.

These are only a few examples that make radical, Israeli ultra-nationalism seem retrograde and alienated from the best of the democratic tradition. We can reasonably assume that there will be a continuation.

The Two States solution is no longer feasible

2011-10-01T17:02:00.001Z

From Wish you Orwell

If anyone wanted to know what Binyamin Netanyahu actually thinks about the peace process, he said it clearly himself last week: according to Netanyahu, the Palestinian appeal to the UN “will gridlock the negotiations for 60 years”. So, 44 years after the occupation and 18 years after the Israeli government and representatives of the Palestinians began negotiating, Netanyahu thinks it feasible to carry on for some 60 more years, give or take. And, naturally, should anything of the sort happen, this will be the Palestinians fault. If it were up to him – who refused to accept Obama’s plan and commit himself to the 1967 borders – this would all be over by now. But those sinister Palestinians prefer going to the UN.

And with good reason. Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, as mentioned, began 18 years ago. They were supposed to be finished by May 1999 with a final agreement. Unfortunately, we’ve been ruled by Netanyahu for three critical years during that time – and, as Netanyahu told his base, the settlers, he did everything possible to undermine the Oslo Accords while pretending to follow it. Then Barak was elected, Arik Sharon climbed Temple Mount, the IDF fired a million rounds in October 2000 while ignoring the government’s orders for a cease fire, the Palestinians began their great terror wave, Sharon became prime minister, and the rest is history. During this period – between September 1993 and September 2011 – the number of settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories more than doubled.

And not by accident: the West Bank settlements were Israel’s most important national project. During the last decade, while the government axed its support of municipal budgets in Israel proper, the budget per settler rose: It reached 951 NIS per settler per year, which the average in Israel was 303 NIS per person per year. Designated Support – another aid budget by the government – was 2,264 NIS per settler, versus 1,478 NIS per Israeli dwelling in a well-to-do city, 1,859 per person in Arab towns and 1,719 NIS per person in the “development towns”, poor Jewish towns. Furthermore, the government was responsible for 50% of houses built in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as for 35% of the funds invested in building there – as compared to 18% of the houses built in Israel proper, which were founded by the government in only 10% of the cases.

If population growth in Israel proper was 18% on average, in the occupied territories it was 47%. In the early days of the J14 movement, it was noticed that housing in the settlements was much, much cheaper than in Israel; again, this wasn’t an accident. Rather, this was the result of a long-range government plan – beginning in the days of Begin – intended to seduce Israelis to abandon Israel and move to the occupied territories, particularly the West Bank.

Given the fact that a significant part of the settlers is composed of Ultra-Orthodox, this government plan was a major success. In the 1980s, the Ultra-Orthodox were considered to be stubborn opponents of the settlement policy, with the leader of the Lithuanian faction, Rabbi Shach, defining them as baiting the nations and risking of lives. The housing crisis among the Ultra-Orthodox, which came much earlier than to most other Israelis, was quietly solved by shelving these objections and mass exodus of tens of thousands of Ultra-Orthodox to the West Bank.

To quote Ali Abu Nimeh, Israel pretends to negotiate the division of a pizza pie, while munching on the pie. Israel has already swallowed 78% of Mandatory Palestine – even the 1949 lines do not resemble the 1947 UN decision’s borders – and now it is grabbing more and more of the remains, while insisting that any negotiations must recognize “facts on the grounds”, meaning the war crimes it carried out. Anyone negotiating with an Israeli government unwilling to grant the bare minimum, a freezing of settlements during the negotiations (or, in plain English, insisting on right to grab more lands during negotiations) is an idiot. No other way to describe it.

The Palestinians have wised up. They had the sense to turn the situation into an easily understood moral play. They’ll go to the UN, and show Israel, Micronesia and the US as they are: lepers in the international community, the last bastions of an occupation regime which, under Netanyahu, even stopped pretending it is temporary. 60 more years, remember? Remember a settler foreign minister telling the UN there will be no peace?

But, terrifyingly enough, it is not at all clear a return to the 1967 borders is still feasible. In the 1980s Miron Benbenishti presented a scandalous thesis: that given the number of settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the two state solution is a fiction; the facts on the grounds were that of a bi-national state. It did not make him many friends on the Israeli left.

When Benbenishti wrote, the number of settlers in the West Bank was about 30,000. Now it is more than 300,000. Given what happened during the Disengagement, Israel will not survive such an evacuation – if only for the reason that giving each West Bank settler the same terms granted the spoiled Gush Katif settlers will drive it bankrupt. And even if it were to offer such terms, there’s a strong chance of a military coup.

Furthermore, the settlements were built, on purpose, as mines – intended to blow up any chance of a Palestinian state. A few days ago I participated in a tour held by the Ir Amim association, which explains the complex, not to say insane, reality in greater Jerusalem. A quick look at the map they gave us (you can see it here) says all there is to say: You can’t divide this place. Have a look: the blue line is Jerusalem’s fictive municipal border after the annexation of 1967. The blue smudges are settlements. Note the bulge of the red line eastwards – this is the plan of the separation wall, euphemistically called Otef Yerushalaim, “Wrapping Jerusalem”, intended to make the settlements of Ma’aleh Adumim, Kfar Adumim and the rest a part of “Jerusalem”.

Look to the southwest. Here we have a series of settlements – Gilo, Har Homa, and others – whose residents don’t even know they’re settlers. They’ve been taught they live in Jerusalem. They have no idea, and not by accident, that the place they live in was never a part of Jerusalem in any meaningful way. These settlements simply cannot be evacuated.

This makes the Palestinian move in the UN, which will make it clear to Israel that the current situation cannot go on, a good first move, which ought to be supported by all Israeli patriots. But, given that the Netanyahu government will remain obdurate, and will not allow the creation of a feasible Palestinian state, the second act of the Palestinians should be clear cut: they ought to demand that Israel will recognize anyone living in the de-facto country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River as an equal citizen. Because the other solution, the existence of an apartheid state while waiting for Netanyahu’s 60 years to pass is morally unacceptable.

And no, it won’t be easy. And yes, this will have a cost in blood, treasure and abandoned paradigms, foremost among them Zionism. And yes, terrorists from both sides, supported by elements of their side’s armed forces, will try to prevent such a solution. And it’s not at all clear that Jews and Muslims – and in the Middle East, of all places – can recognize others as equals. But, 44 years after the occupation, we have exhausted all other possible solutions. Time to make a decision.

FBI: Thwarting its Own Terror Plot again…

2011-10-01T16:32:00.001Z

Glenn Greenwald.

The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade — much of it valid — but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out — only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.

Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro. And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.

None of these cases entail the FBI’s learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI’s purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them. Each time the FBI announces it has disrupted its own plot, press coverage is predictably hysterical (new Homegrown Terrorist caught!), fear levels predictably rise, and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI’s Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers’ bags). I have several observations and questions about these matters:

Read the rest.

Nearly 2 Times More Construction in the Settlements than in Israel

2011-09-07T13:09:00.002Z

Received by Peace Now subscription email but available in full colour from this webpage. A full colour download of Peace Now’s report on this issue is available from that page.

Addicted to Settlements [my subtitle]

Peace Now research has revealed that whereas in Israel the pace of construction since the settlement freeze (in October 2010 – July 2011) was one housing unit for every 235 residents, in the settlements the pace of construction was a housing unit for every 123 residents, which is to say that there is nearly 2 times more construction in the settlements than in Israel.

Peace Now data, based on the analysis of aerial photos of settlements and field visits, show that while Israel suffers from a housing shortage, in the settlements the dream of a ground-level house with a garden is coming true. Alongside the crowded construction in the big settlements (Modi'in Illit, Beitar Illit and Maale Adumim), there has been an increase in the construction of cottages and villas in the settlements.

Full report here.

The Land Speaks Arabic

2011-09-02T11:58:00.001Z

Last night Al Jazeera aired Maryse Gargour’s interesting documentary film about the Palestinian Nakba once again. For those who haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, here’s a few clips:

And here’s Electronic Intifada’s review of it…

BDS: Some Successes…

2011-08-31T18:53:00.002Z

From: YNetNews

Many Israeli agricultural products have been recently targeted by the Israel boycott campaign: tomatoes, peppers, citrus fruit, carrots, melons, strawberries and celery. But the flowers have been the primary obsession of the divestment movement, which wants to strangle the Israeli economy.

Agrexco, Israel’s leading flower exporter, has recently declared bankruptcy, partially due to the global boycott of its produce, according to some reports. More than 20 organizations in Europe in 13 countries endorsed a boycott of Agrexco.

International pressure, boycotts and sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid government played a major role in ending its power. Modeled on that global campaign, the anti-Israel boycott movement has notched notable victories of late, while making use of an old Marxist lexicon (“imperialism,” “colonialism,” “occupation,” and “settler society”).

The first symbol of the anti-Israel economic campaign, Caterpillar, was far removed from the Western public consciousness. Yet Israeli roses were a better Jewish scapegoat, as flowers are a pillar of Israel’s economy (in the 1980s Israel became the world’s number two flower exporter. Agrexco was boycotted because it’s partially owned by the Israeli government and because the company has some farms in the Jordan Valley and in Tekoa, a settlement at the gates of the Judean desert.

Last year, Norway’s oil fund withdrew its investment from Africa-Israel and Danya Cebus citing their involvement in “settlement construction.” Just recently, the Swedish Coop has decided to terminate all purchases of Soda Stream carbonation devices. Meanwhile, the Methodist Church had passed an “anti-Israel” motion demanding a boycott of goods from “illegal” settlements. Quakers in Britain have also agreed to boycott Israeli products.

Elsewhere, major Dutch pension fund Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn, which has investments totaling 97 billion euros, has divested from almost all the Israeli companies in its portfolio (banks, telecommunication companies, construction companies and Elbit Systems.) A large Swedish pension fund also divested from Elbit over the latter’s role in building Israel’s West Bank security fence. Meanwhile, the Ethical Council of four Swedish buffer pension funds urged Motorola “to pull out of the Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank” or face divestment.

On the cultural front, a film festival in Scotland returned funding to the Israeli Embassy after succumbing to boycott activists who threatened to picket the event. Elsewhere, some major Indian artists have announced the boycott of a show scheduled at the Tel Aviv State Museum in the spring of 2012. Dozens of music stars also endorsed the boycott this past year (Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, Roger Waters).

Western universities infested

And there’s more: A major boycott is going to be approved soon at the Park Slope Food Coop, a renowned cooperative in Brooklyn, affecting Israeli paprika, bath salts, vegan marshmallows and the Soda Stream seltzer machine. Norway’s governmental pension and Germany’s Deutsche Bank divested from Elbit. The flagship London outlet of beauty company Ahava has been closed after years of protest. A Scottish council recently banned Israeli books from its public libraries. Eden Springs, the major Israeli water company, will not have its contract renewed by the famous London School of Economics.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, the oldest commercial corporation in North America, also discontinued sales of Ahava. Although this decision was made for “commercial reasons”, it coincided with an aggressive campaign by several groups advocating a boycott of Ahava.

Most of the Western universities are now infested with a virulent anti-Jewish mood. Students at Edinburgh University just voted in favor of a boycott of Israel. The University of Johannesburg has cut its links with Beersheba’s Ben-Gurion University. DePaul University’s Student Association approved a boycott of Sabra hummus. The French University of Aix en Provence cancelled a meeting with Israeli writer Esther Orner after a boycott by Arab authors. Alan Dershowitz recently charged that Norwegian universities are conducting “an implicit boycott of Israel.”

Several companies, primarily Swedish firm Assa Abloy, which runs Mul-T-Lock, and the partly Dutch-owned Wine Cellars, have pulled out of the Barkan industrial area, near the Israeli city of Ariel. The Spanish government disqualified Ariel University Center of Samaria from competing in the finals of the international contest between university architecture departments to build a self-sufficient house using solar power. The Norwegian EL & IT union, which represents thousands energy and telecommunications workers, has adopted a boycott of the Histadrut labor union federation.

Brazil’s largest trade union voted for the boycott and called for the suspension of Israeli-Brazilian economic agreements and military ties. French firm Veolia, which operated the light rail project in Jerusalem, sold its shares in the project. Deutsche Bahn just withdrew from the same project, with German transport Minister Peter Ramsauer offeringthe following reason for terminating the project: “Palestinian Foreign affairs Minister Riyad al-Malki, members of the German Parliament and media have criticized a project in which DB international is acting as adviser to Israel’s state-run railway.” Italian company Pizzarotti is now under pressure for the same train project.

When Italian stores last year announced the banning of Agrexco, the company’s director, Shimon Alchasov, rhetorically asked me: “Should I mark the products with a yellow star of David?” The late, great historian Raul Hilberg explained that the economic strangling of the Jews in business, education and employment was the first step in the Holocaust. Now the same “Raus mit Uns” (out with us) boycott is bleeding the State of Israel.

Natanyahu’s Magic Hat…

2011-08-01T20:42:00.001Z

From Wish you Orwell (lightly edited for spelling)

Don’t die a fool

Netanyahu’s magic hat is emptying quickly. Unlike his last term, he failed in buying the students for a few slices of pizza, and his attempt to pre-empt the “stroller protest” by parents, planned for today, was particularly pathetic: He offered to lower the bus fare of a parent with a stroller by 50%. The offer was received with appropriate derision. The fact that the leader of the trade unions, lackluster Ofer Eynee, joined the protest belatedly, and the jump-on-band-wagon manoeuvre by Tzippi Livni – she was seen marching with the striking doctors today, after a silence longer than that of Ehud Barak – must have made Netanyahu sweat even more.

I’m hearing from several quarters that Netanyahu has only two rabbits left in his hat. One of them is the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit, who has become a sort of celebrity in Israel. It’s not at all clear this will end the protests, and the manoeuvre becomes complicated because it requires the agreement of Hamas, which, for its own part, is in no rush. After all, a new government – needing a quick boost of popularity – may well pay for Shalit. This particular rabbit, then, ought to be considered a Schrödinger: Netanyahu won’t know if it’s dead or alive until he pulls it out of the hat. Not good. He cannot afford a backfire. Not now.

The other rabbit is going to a splendid little war. Or, if not a full-fledged war, a massive operation which looks just like the real thing. This schtick rarely fails. Israeli air force planes circled over Gaza last night, and in general the IDF seems to be heating the Gaza sector in the last few weeks. And if we’ve already mentioned Ehud Barak, then it’s worth noting he flew again to the US last night, for another meeting with the American leadership. What for?

I don’t know. I do know, however, that security officials in the north have received an official warning from the government that September is going to be hot. Possibly a war, possibly against the Palestinians, possibly against the Israeli Palestinians, possibly against Hizbullah.

It is worth noting that, contrary to myth, most of Israel’s wars were propagated by it, often for a political reason. The 1956 war was a conspiracy of Shimon Peres with two declining colonial powers, France and Britain. Prior to the 1967 war, the Americans asked for time for diplomacy, but the IDF was impatient to the point of a threatened putsch, and war broke out. The attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor took place several days before a general election, which was not a coincidence. The Lebanon War of 1982 needs no explanation. Shimon Peres went to Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, in order to win the coming elections; Being Shimon Peres, he managed to lose them by 0.4%, by shelling Qafr Qana and thereby convincing his Arab voters to stay home and not go the polls. In 2006, the IDF used a border incident – granted, a clear casus belli – in order to start a war intent to wipe the shame of defeat by Hizbullah in 2000. Needless to say, this did not work as planned. Cast Lead was the result of an Israeli wish for conflict, and rejection of Hamas’ attempt at prolonging the ceasefire. One needs a healthy dose of goodwill and bulk quantities of naiveté in order to believe it had nothing to do with the already-declared elections.

Ehud Barak has no political future worth speaking of, and he’s intelligent enough to know that, and know that he is the most hated politician in the history of the republic – so hated, nothing short of seppuku will improve his image. Even that might not do the trick, though it’s certain many people will show up for the funeral, just to make certain he’s really defunct. One wonders whether he’s in the US in order to garner support for a war, which is the only thing which will buy him more time in power. With the exception of 1956 – Eisenhower was livid by the invasion of Egypt, as the US was not consulted, and had the Hungarian crisis on its hands – every other Israeli war has received American support, even if tentative; and Israel did not go to war again without reaching an understanding with the US.

So, should a war suddenly breaks out in the next few weeks; if the northern border, or perhaps the southern, suddenly erupts, as it by its own volition; if Netanyahu makes a surprise TV appearance, pale and resolute, and inform us he ordered the IDF to start bombing Iran, to prevent it from becoming Nazi Germany – should any of this happen, don’t believe a single word you’re told. Assume that the regime is trying to save itself by a war. After all, that’s what our propaganda has been saying of the Arab rulers for years. Do you think Barak is less cynical that Nasrallah? That Netanyahu cares a fig about the citizens more than Nasser did?

One hopes that the very public warning by Meir Dagan – remember him? – and his doubts whether the current security leadership can stand up to an adventurous government will shame the military brass into blocking this grotesque idea. But army life is not conductive to common sense and to the ability to say “no” to your superiors. So, if war suddenly breaks out, our duty will be to disrupt it: Storm the Kirya (military headquarters), block entrance to Air Force bases, and basically refuse to play the part of pawns in Barak and Netanyahu’s attempt to the save the ruling economical-political oligarchy by paying in citizen’s blood. The true patriot, in such a case, will have to face down his government and army.

Let’s hope this does not happen, but let us be ready for it.

The Old/New Clash of Civilizations

2011-07-30T16:02:00.001Z

An excellent piece here by Jerry Haber (The Magnes Zionist) on the Norwegian atrocities. Read and enjoy! (Contains all of Jerry’s links).

In the Norwegian massacres we saw the latest salvo in the clash of civilizations– not between a “Judaeo-Christian” West, and an Islamism bent on taking over the world, but between a totalitarian vision built on fear of the other and feelings of religio/ethnic/cultural superiority, and a liberal vision based on the value of diversity and the necessity to bridge religio/ethnic/cultural divides. This clash of civilizations has been with us for some time: in the twentieth century it reared its ugliest head in the temporary triumphs of Nazism and Stalinism. But it is much older than that; it is found anywhere where a totalitarian worldview is merged with racial, religious, and ethnic prejudice. Tertullian once asked, “What do Athens and Jerusalem have in common?” Well, one thing is tribalism, with its concomitant xenophobia and intolerance of the other.

The reactions on the right to the Norwegian massacre have ranged from the sanctimonious to the nauseating. First there was the assumption that al-Qaeda was involved, since, heck, it’s always the Muslims who poison the wells in their headlong rush towards Armageddon, oops, I mean the messianic world order, oops, I mean the Rapture, oops, I mean the World Khalifate. If you don’t believe me, you don’t know Hebrew/Arabic/Latin, because what they say in their texts and in their cabals is very revealing – I can produce for you any number of ex-Muslims/Jews/PLO-terrorists/Mormons – who will reveal to you the secrets of the order. And frankly, friend, you are in denial – you simply don’t want to know how those Jews/Islamists/Christians are making for world domination.

When the perpetrator turned out to be a rightwing Norwegian and not an Islamist, there was the rush in the rightwing blogosphere to do damage control, because, God forbid, this unfortunate incident could turn out to be a setback for the forces of Good (e.g., Jews, Christians, Old Europe, Zionists, Israelis -- I actually saw that line of thinking in the talk-backs.) So the tactics are to condemn the violence (as perfunctorily and as non-comittally as possible, e.g., talk about “undiluted evil”), to mitigate the act (“lone wolf,” “violent Christian fundamentalist,” “psycho”); not even to mention the ideological motivation; and – equally as important – to move on and not to come back to the story, even though it is one of the lead stories of the week.

For a shining example of a MSM blogger who employs these aforementioned tactics, see the two posts here and here of Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, who now has won my prize for the Dumbest Conservative Blogger of the Year, and, friends, that competition is no cakewalk.

Some social scientists like to distinguish between circles of support for ideologically-motivated violent crimes. At the center of the circle are the perpetrators, the so-called “lone wolves.” In the circle around them are the ideologues who preach violence, and those who do everything but preach violence. In the next circle are the ideologues who condemn the perpetrators in varying degrees, but who nonetheless support their ideological motives, and somehow mitigate the crime (strategies include appeals to “context,” distinctions between just and unjust grievances, injecting distractions such as, “Yeah, but what about suicide bombing?”)

There is usually no good reason to assign responsibility for an attack on innocents to the ideologues in the outer circle. There are many people who share the perpetrator’s ideology who do not condone the act, much less contemplate doing it themselves. I know rightwing ideologues who were initially shocked and dismayed at Yigal Amir and Barukh Goldstein’s actions; some even remained shocked. All people live with contradictory beliefs and self-delusions. Some of them can say that X deserves death and not mean that literally.

But although those who occupy the outside circle – let’s call them the Ideological tribalists – shouldn’t take the rap for the perpetrators, they are certainly responsible for their own bigotry, which itself is a moral wrong, whatever the consequences. Pamela Geller is not responsible for the Norwegian massacres, but she is responsible for the anti-Islamic hate she spews forth – hate that is a carbon copy of the anti-Semitic diatribes of Father Coughlin in the 1930s.

Europe faces serious questions, and different solutions have and will be tried. There are trade-offs in the amount of diversity a society can allow itself to have, and there are many degrees in the middle between enforced assimilation on the one hand and balkanization on the other. The Jerusalem Post editorial that declared that multi-culturalism in Europe has failed should remember how many Jews left Judaism in Europe because of the pressure to assimilate – and how toleration of diversity has allowed varieties of Judaism to flourish in many places. Sure, there has to be some balance – but to err in the direction of diversity befits the liberal society. What cannot be tolerated is hate-filled bigotry, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or None of the Above.

There always are barbarians at the gates. In every generation they rise up to destroy us. The question is how do we fight against them? And even more pressing, how do we recognize them?

Religious/nationalist/ethnic fundamentalism of all kind, coupled with power, not to mention weapons, has been shown time and again to be deadly. Their adherents are the barbarian at the gates; and fighting them is the clash of civilizations. And liberal and conservative moderates of all stripes should ally to fight those barbarians.

I write this not just as a liberal but as an orthodox Jew. Nobody suffers more from religious fundamentalism than religious moderates.

Far Right Reactions to the Norwegian Massacre…

2011-07-28T17:23:00.006Z

H/T to commenter Senhal (on Jews sans Frontieres) for this find.

Scandinavian blogger Oyvind Strommen tries to summarise Far Right ‘counter-jihadist’ reactions to the atrocities committed by the unrepentant Anders Breivic, from the execrable Gates of Vienna, one of Breivics ‘heroes’ (Fjordman) and many in that cluster of blogs gravitating to the murky world of ‘anti-multiculturalism’. Strommen creates a breadcrumb trail of links in this disgusting smorgasbord of hate sites but these links have not been included in my post, so Strommen’s important work is best read at source. Here’s a small (but linkless) sample of his article (Oyvind Strommen):

Quite a few of the many journalists that have contacted me these last few days, have asked me how the extreme right scene that I’ve been following for years has reacted to the terror bombing in Oslo. I’ve answered as best I could, but with this blog post, I would like to give a more thorough insight. It’s an insight into a quite frightening world.

I’ve therefore collected a few of the reactions that came, both immediately – i.e. as the news of the bombing in Oslo reached the world, and after it was revealed that the terrorist was a right-wing extremist sharing most of their own beliefs. Journalists should feel free to use this as a resource in their further research.

Obviously, I have only been visiting a few blog, and rather at random, starting at the blogroll of Gates of Vienna; a central blog in the world of “counter-jihadism”, and a blog where Fjordman – which the blogger describes as his favourite author – is an active contributor. The quoted blogs are written in various languages, and the quotes are left in their original language. More examples can easily be found by any journalist or researcher who takes the time to dig.

Let’s start with Gates of Vienna itself, the blog was liveblogging the terrorist attacks, as news came in. While their original post does note that the “source of the blast in unclear”, commenters on the site quickly concluded who had to be behind it, namely Islamist terrorists. Commenters on the site left comments such as these:

They should thank them for all the cultural
enrichment!

Europe has been infested with venomous parasitic vermin. [linking to a list of
Islamist terrorist attacks]

The TV news report here shows the interview of a Norwegian witness. I did not know Norwegians looked like Arabs.

Fjordman is also active in this debate and answers the last of those comments, in the following way:

In Oslo they do. Arabs, Kurds, Pakistanis, Somalis, you name it. Anything and everything is fine as long as they rape the natives and destroy the country, which they do.

In the post itself, he is quoted the following way:

“Please keep in mind that the left-wing government of Jens Stoltenberg that was just bombed is the most dhimmi appeasing of all Western governments, to the extent that this is humanly possible. They even wanted to fund Hamas openly a while ago. “The most suicidal and cowardly government in a country with no colonial history was just attacked. How do you explain that as a response to Western ‘aggression’?”

This is in itself an interesting comment. The word dhimmi is taken from Islamic teachings, and is used as a sort of codeword in the counterjihadi movement, their variant of the Neo-Nazi term ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government). Here, Fjordman says that prime minister Stoltenberg is essentially some sort of vassal to (the evil) Muslim overrule. Further comments at Gates of Vienna:
This was inevitable. Only a matter of time before other European nations get a taste of their multicultural tolerance that they’ve been cooking for decades.

Here is the report (in Norwegian) from the workshop at the Utøya summer Socialist youth camp on “Combating Xenophobia and Islamophobia.” Wow… talk about irony. I wonder if this experience may have an altering affect on the world views on some of the youth fortunate enough to survive?
The massacre at the children’s camp is a sickening reminder of just how evil and Satanic the cult of Islam is. The attack is reminiscent of the massacre at the Russian school, though in this case without the pedophile rapes and enforced urine drinking.

Later, of course, it was revealed that the terrorist was not at all a Muslim, but a right-wing extremist inspired by the counterjihadists himself. The comment field on this post becomes very silent. Then, as we already know, Fjordman has eagerly tried to distance himself from the man he inspired. This is highly understandable, but it is worth noting that the terrorist had the exactly same ideas on Jens Stoltenberg and his dhimmitude as Fjordman put forth in one of the above comments, that Fjordman’s essays make up a very considerable part of the terrorist’s cut-and-paste-manifesto, and that Fjordman has indeed discussed with the perpetrator on document.no, in a discussion where Fjordman, not the terrorist, put forth the most obviously extreme rhetoric (see my previous blogpost in Norwegian).

Gates of Vienna has also tried to explain the focus on Fjordman and other leading “counterjihadists” as a “double standard”, and seems to believe that the fact that the mass murderer mentions the TV series Dexter twice in his manifesto, a couple of lines in total, is just as good a reason to point at that TV series as the fact that much of the manifesto is made up by Fjordman’s works is a reason pointing at him. Well, I don’t think they actually believe so. But it’s a handy excuse, I suppose. I do wonder how GoV would have related to such a claim from a radical imam after someone from his mosque had carried a violent attack.

No, let’s roll on to 1389 blog (the number refers to the Battle of Kosovo in 1389), who have been trying to explain a whole lot of things away these last few days, mostly through pointing at other blogs. Here we can learn that the Labour Party Youth summer camp at Utøya was not a children’s camp, but rather a camp of young adults. I do not really see the point, and it feels quite unnecessary to point out that many of the victims were minor. 1389 also considers it important to point out that the Labour Party Youth had a boycott Israel-”rally”. Once again, in spite of thinking that the idea of a boycott against Israel is terribly misguided, I do not really see the relevance. Is 1389 trying to say that the terrorism wasn’t that bad, then? 1389 quotes another blog:

After reading this lunatic’s manifesto, it became clear why he attacked this youth center. It was a Leftist indoctrination camp.

Let’s head on to that very blog, the group blog named Blogmocracy, and see how they interpreted the bombing attack in Oslo when it happened. They wrote:

The Norwegian government has lived up to its Quisling heritage. They have appeased Islamic aggression and allow Islamic colonialists to settle their nation. Despite this, a bomb attack on the main government building occurred in Oslo today. [...]The Norwegian people need to get rid of their Leftist treasonous government and display some of that old viking blood. Appeasing

Islamic aggression hasn’t work. It’s time for Norway to stand against Islamic Imperialism!

As it turned out, the terrorist – too – believed that the Norwegian government was treasonous. Now, of course, Blogmocracy too are trying to explain it all away. That also applies for Bare Naked Islam, who shows this video, and refers to their co-ideologist is merely “some guy in Norway”. The comments underneath the video are – however – revealing. The very first one reads:

thats the game for the left. when their muslim pals are murdering innocent people they are oppressed freedom fighters. when someone hits back at muslims or their collaborators they are crazy or christian or pro isreal terrorists and radicals. i don,t agree with this man shooting children to make a piont nor do i agee with the media for their hysterical prononcements. to the left wing media islam is the religion of peace and judism and christianity are the enemy. to these left wing traitors up is down down is up day is night and night is day.
they have no morals or honnor, only an agenda. one not in out best interests.

A bit further down, another commenter writes:

I don’t see Breivic as a ‘lunatic neo-nazi crazed lunatic’, but I also don’t agree with his actions. I am also not denouncing violence because we are in a war. Wars are not won by writing books and posting links on the internet. Wars are won by defeating one’s enemies [...] …And for those dhimmis who did it for nothing, and are killed, I have ZERO SYMPATHY. If you don’t have enough sense to
recognise an enemy, you deserve whatever you get.

And a third one mixes DDT into the story. Yes, really:

Were his actions justified? Well now, if he personally knew someone who was raped by muslims, the answer could easily be yes: IF you admit that the reason the filthy muslims are there in the first place is because of the filthy Liberals and their corrupt practices. Let me ask another question: the Liberals are responsible for the banning of DDT. This resulted in something like 40 M-I-L-L-I-O-N deaths: they make Hitler look like a bloody amateur. Now, would Anders (or anybody else) be justified in killing Liberals because of DDT? I.e. because of all the evils Liberals ARE responsible for, to this very day?

[…]

Now read ALL of it

A little (green) humour:

LGF: possible connection between Anders ‘I heart Israel’ Dickhead Breivik and the EDL’s founding father, Paul ‘Chickenheart’ Ray… Stuff you couldn't make up if they paid you for it.

B’Tselem: How Israel treats juvenile Palestinian stone throwers

2011-07-19T16:20:00.001Z

Ha’aretz

Israel's pretention to be a country with a just legal system appears ridiculous in the face of the other justice system that applies to juveniles that are not Palestinian.

West Bank Palestinian minors accused of throwing stones do have a chance of being acquitted; the odds are about one in a thousand. According to a B'Tselem report published yesterday, just one juvenile defendant out of 835 was acquitted of stone-throwing over the past six years. The others were convicted, mostly through plea bargains. About 60 percent of the convicted minors served prison terms of four months or more. Among those who served sentences of a few days and up to two months in prison were 19 defendants who were 12 to 13 years old.

These are frightening statistics from every possible point of view. The rationale for sentencing the juveniles is well known: The Israel Defense Forces is responsible for the security and well-being of the public in the territories. It must protect civilians there, in addition to its own soldiers. Such protection is not possible without some measure of deterrence. The disparity, however, between theory and practice is outrageous. Israel's justice system throws the book at juvenile defendants, provided they are Palestinian.

[snip]

If someone Jewish throws a stone, the injury inflicted is as bad as if it is thrown by an Arab. The need to punish and deter does not disappear when the scene shifts to the Israeli side of the Green Line.

Israel's pretention to be a country in which equality under the law prevails appears ridiculous in the face of the other justice system that applies to juveniles that are not Palestinian. There, every possible reasonable argument is presented in support of forgiving young people for their passing caprices and to allow them to enlist in the IDF and avoid a criminal record, in the spirit of compassion.

The violent Israeli youth who attacked soldiers and policemen who had been sent at the government's behest to Gaza and the northern West Bank to evacuate settlements six years ago did not have to wait long before their sentences were mitigated. The result is glaring in the cases of the current assaults on the IDF's West Bank division commander, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon, and Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan.

Double standards all the way…

2011-06-28T16:48:00.000Z

Ynet:

Unknown persons sprayed racial slurs and a Star of David on a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Beitilu. The vandals wrote among other things: Mohammed is dead. Police are searching for the culprits.

There’s more (follow the link).

Comments Angry Arab:

If Muslim or Christian Arabs did that on Jewish homes, this would be covered in specials on TV and on front pages of newspapers in the US

I believe it was Shlomo Ben Ami who once stated (paraphrasing from memory): ‘If what was said about Muslims today was said about Jews today all hell would break loose…’

Jello Biafra: not Kosher…

2011-06-24T16:44:00.001Z

Israeli activist urges Jello Biafra not to play in Tel Aviv:

Update:

Well, looks like he’s not going!

Freedom for Palestine

2011-06-13T20:35:00.001Z

Israeli killings on Israel-Syria border

2011-06-06T15:30:00.003Z

The United States said Sunday it is "deeply troubled" over clashes on the Syrian border with Israel that reportedly resulted in 14 deaths, and called for calm on both sides.

Israeli troops opened fire as protesters from Syria on Sunday stormed a ceasefire line in the occupied Golan Heights.

"We are deeply troubled by events that took place earlier today in the Golan Heights resulting in injuries and the loss of life," the State Department said in a statement.

"We call for all sides to exercise restraint. Provocative actions like this should be avoided."

The US statement emphasized that "Israel, like any sovereign nation, has a right to defend itself."

The apparatchiks in Washington are ‘deeply troubled’, apparently. And Israel ‘has a right to defend itself’: with live fire against unarmed protesters (sorry apologists, stones and wire cutters don’t count in my book). As for “Provocative actions like this should be avoided”, read: “As racist supporters of Israel we believe the Arabs should take everything lying down…”

"Despite numerous warnings, both verbal and later warning shots in the air, dozens of Syrians continue to approach the border and IDF (Israel Defense Forces) forces were left with no choice but to open fire towards the feet of protesters in efforts to deter further actions," an Israeli army spokesman told AFP.

Most moral this IDF but not brilliant at aiming in front of feet, apparently. Wait for Mark ‘Iffy Ozzie’ Regev to hasbarah that the shots ricoched…

H/T Angry Arab (As’ad AbuKhalil)

Source.

Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says?

2011-06-02T15:55:00.002Z

Robert Fisk, The Independent.

President Obama has shown himself to be weak in his dealings with the Middle East, says Robert Fisk, and the Arab world is turning its back with contempt. Its future will be shaped without American influence.

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"

And it is true. Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab "spring", save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain's cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

Read the rest at source (h/t Mondoweiss).

Of course it cannot be excluded that the inner circle at the heart of the Empire yet decide to deploy what they’re best at and what they’ve got plenty of: blunt, brute force exercised overtly or covertly.

Lest we forget…

2011-06-01T21:02:00.000Z

H/T Angry Arab (As’ad AbuKhalil), source.

One myth is that the "creation" of the Palestinian refugee "problem" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) was a consequence of the Arab countries' war with Israel. This claim was undermined - almost despite himself - by Israeli historian Benny Morris, who though joining the attack on Abbas' op-ed, noted that 300,000 Palestinians had lost their homes before 15 May 1948.

In fact, as serious historians and research have shown, Palestinians left their homes and villages through a combination of attacks, direct forced removals, and fear of atrocities.

The expulsion of the refugees was ultimately realised by the forcible prevention of their return, the destruction of villages, and the legislative steps taken to expropriate their land and deny them citizenship.

A second myth manipulates the question of the Jews from Arab countries, around 850,000 of whom left between 1948 and the 1970s. Israel's apologists try and suggest that these "Jewish refugees" somehow "cancel out" the Palestinian refugees, as if the residents of Ramla or Deir Yassin were responsible for events in Baghdad and Cairo.

More than a hint here of "all Arabs are the same".

In fact, most scorn the link, such as Israeli professor Yehouda Shenhav who wrote that "any reasonable person" must acknowledge the analogy to be "unfounded". When the US house of representatives in 2008 called for linking the issues of Jews from Arab countries and Palestinian refugees, The Economist wrote that the resolution showed "the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington".

Put simply, one right does not cancel out another. Ask those pushing this propaganda if they support restitution and redress for all refugees, Jewish and Palestinian, and they fall strangely silent.

What those Netanyahu speeches really mean…

2011-05-25T16:02:00.005Z

Thankfully we have those nice folks over at Likud Party central to nicely document any clarification you might need to read Bibi’s lips at AIPAC and in the US Congress. From the Likud Manifesto (but according to commenter Emmanuel, this version is not the latest one):

Settlements

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

Or try this (emph. is mine):

Self-Rule

The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel's existence, security and national needs.

So now you know...

And now note also this bit:

Declaration of a State
A unilateral Palestinian declaration of the establishment of a Palestinian state will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration.

So it isn’t that Likud isn’t capable of updating its… dare I say Charter, it’s more that’s they’re not willing to update it in that particular way (accepting the creation of a Palestinian state). And with these the Palestinians are supposed to negotiate ‘without preconditions’?

NYT: Credo of a Zionist Annexist

2011-05-19T19:57:00.004Z

The NYT ran a piece by Danny Danon, outlining his vision for Israel’s reaction to any plan to recognise a Palestinian state, titled ‘Making the Land of Israel Whole’ (d’yageddit?) Danon isn’t just any old Zionist though, he’s a Likudi deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset. 972mag’s Dahlia Scheindlin calls the article a howler. She’s wrong: ‘howler’ is too much of an understatement.

OVER the past few months, analysts in Israel and abroad have warned that Israel will face what Defense Minister Ehud Barak has termed a “diplomatic tsunami.” [my link] In September, the Palestinian Authority plans to bring the recognition of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 boundary to the United Nations General Assembly for a vote. The Palestinians’ request will almost certainly be approved.

While most voices in the Israeli and international news media are calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to grant major concessions to the Palestinians to forestall such a move, he should in fact do the opposite: he should annex the Jewish communities of the West Bank, or as Israelis prefer to refer to our historic heartland, Judea and Samaria.

In 1995, as part of the Oslo accords, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that “neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” If the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and prime minister, Salam Fayyad, decide to disregard this section of the accords by seeking United Nations recognition of statehood, it would mean that Israel, too, is no longer bound by its contents and is freed to take unilateral action.

The first immediate implication would be that all of the diplomatic and security assistance that Israel provides to the Palestinians would be halted, and the transfer of tax revenues — upward of $1 billion per year — would end permanently. This alone could threaten the very existence of the Palestinian Authority.

Second, a United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood would give Israel an opportunity to rectify the mistake we made in 1967 by failing to annex all of the West Bank (as we did the eastern half of Jerusalem). We could then extend full Israeli jurisdiction to the Jewish communities and uninhabited lands of the West Bank. This would put an end to a legal limbo that has existed for 44 years.

In addition to its obvious ideological and symbolic significance, legalizing our hold on the West Bank would also increase the security of all Israelis by depriving terrorists of a base and creating a buffer against threats from the east. Moreover, we would be well within our rights to assert, as we did in Gaza after our disengagement in 2005, that we are no longer responsible for the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who would continue to live in their own — unannexed — towns.

These Palestinians would not have the option to become Israeli citizens, therefore averting the threat to the Jewish and democratic status of Israel by a growing Palestinian population.

While naysayers will no doubt warn us of the dire consequences and international condemnation that are sure to follow such a move by Israel, this would not be the first time that Israel has made such controversial decisions.

In 1949, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion moved the Knesset to Jerusalem and declared it the capital of the State of Israel despite the 1947 United Nations partition plan, which had designated the city an international zone. Immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol annexed East Jerusalem and declared that the city would remain a united and undivided entity. And in 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin extended Israeli sovereignty to the Golan Heights.

In each of these cases, Israel’s actions were met with harsh international criticism and threats of sanctions; all of these decisions, however, are cornerstones of today’s reality.

Our leaders made these decisions based on the realization that their actions would further Zionist values and strengthen the State of Israel. The diplomatic storms soon blew over as the international community moved on to other issues. It would be wise of Mr. Netanyahu to follow in their footsteps.

If the Palestinians decide that they want to end the Oslo agreement and begin experimenting with unilateral actions, then an unexpected opening will present itself for Israel. Our leaders must seize this opportunity and right a historic wrong by annexing parts of our homeland.

By its friends yee shall know it (part Umpteen)…

2011-05-17T15:45:00.004Z

Of all the idiots in this world, none other than Glenn Beck (GLENN BECK!!!), by now apparently a little too crazy even for Faux Noise, is declaring his undying support for Israel, in Operation Restoring Faith:

Beck detailed current challenges facing the nation — “Things in Israel are going to get bad…it’s only a matter of time.”

“They are going to attack the center of our faith, our common faith, and that is Jerusalem. And it won’t be with bullets or bombs. It will be with a two-state solution that cuts off Jerusalem, the old city, to the rest of the world.”

“It is time to return inside the walls that surround Jerusalem and stand with people of all faiths all around the world.”

He may be right about things starting to hot up in Israel but… “people of all faiths”, Glenn? You’re going to stand with the ‘raghead terrorists’ that demand a return to their homeland?

A Zionist sees sense…

2011-05-09T15:59:00.001Z

It’s not the first time I’ve had to acknowledge Ehud Barak seems capable of common sense thinking. This is after all the man who also echoed namesake Olmert's sentiment about Israel’s [paraphrased from memory] ‘sleepwalking into a one state solution’ and who stated with competent realism that Iran doesn’t pose a realistic threat to Israel.

Now (H/T to JsF and the translator there) in a Hebrew piece in Ha’aretz Barak seems to take reasonable measure of what worldwide growing BDS can do (and will do) to Israel’s economy, as well as clearly state Israel’s limited capability:

"...[Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak believes that a UN declaration of Palestinian statehood without a prior Israeli political initiative will paint Israel into a corner previously occupied by South Africa during the apartheid era. His admonition is pungent and scathing: 'There are elements in the world, quite powerful, in various countries, including friendly ones, in trade unions, [among] academics, consumers, green political parties', he warns, 'and this impetus has culminated in a broad movement called BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) which is what was done with South Africa. This will not happen overnight. The day after September, people will say: 'so now October has come, the sky hasn't fallen, nothing has happened'. This is not true."

Will this happen in December or January?

"It will start coming at us like a glacier, from all corners. There are people in the European Council that deal with export and import, and they are capable, without any government decision, of inflicting significant damage on the Israeli economy. We will see this taking place in academia, we will see this taking place in dockworker unions, consumer groups, and this will seep into governments. This is unwise [apparently referring to Israeli policies which will bring about this outcome]. To me, this uncontrollable process looks more dangerous than what the [Israeli] public perceives at the moment. We have been ruling over another nation for 43 years, this is unprecedented. Perhaps China can allow itself to control some small nations in various corners of its empire, and perhaps Russia can [failing to discern that Tibetans and Chechens have citizenship]. We cannot, there is no chance that the world will accept this. The far right is exposing Israel to dangerous and unwarranted isolation."

Yep, the Far Right. The people in the bunker. Members of the band that played on…

Russia Today: Palestate

2011-04-28T11:55:00.007Z

Despite the rather lame and unpromising title this turned out to be a palatable discussion on Palestine and planned statehood. RT’s own blurb:

Ramzy Baroud from PalestineChronicle.com vs. Alan Elsner from The Israel Project. With a UN vote on Palestinian statehood looming, Israeli PM Netanyahu will propose his own plan in May, which will probably repeat the same peace process rhetoric. But even if the UN votes in favor of a Palestinian state, will it change the status quo?

At some point late on in the exchange the senior Hasbarist (faked victimhood comes natural to people like Elsner) starts lamenting that the moderator should ‘do his job’ but Peter Lavelle, an experienced hand at this game, is having none of it. Here's the whole episode:

Aha… Ahav… Ahava… have gone!

2011-04-01T12:44:00.007Z

Vavavoum! Another BDS success, this time in the heart of London: the AHAVA shop in Covent Garden is closing its doors, thanks to months of anti-settlement protesters at the site the landlords have decided not to renew its lease. Good riddance to the peddlers of Dead Sea based stolen crap, presented as useless lotions and potions once upon a time to be consumed mainly by the brain dead. And not a feather in Richard ‘not a Zionist’ Millett ‘journalist's’ cap either, who up to the very end kept telling his imbecilic entourage just how well AHAVA was doing and what a bunch of ‘LOOOSERS!’ the protesters really were. Now our insipid Zionist tells us that:

My bet is that the protests will continue. They are more about defaming the Jewish state than anything else, and that says all you need to know about the nature of the beast we are dealing with here; anti-Semitism.

And that he’s ‘not playing the anti-Semitism card’! Yet what to expect from a dumb f*ck who denies the settlements are illegal? The man finds himself on the wrong side of just about every argument, including this rather minor one, AHAVA...

Update: I know, I know: you shouldn’t mock the afflicted but as so often with Far Right Zioblogs (are there really any other left?) the comment section provides the real hilarity. Here’s Daniel Marks (or ‘Dannenbaum’ as I call him affectionately), British Zionist settler from Ma’ale Adumim, who clearly ancies himself a bit as the ‘Churchill of Zionism’:

Furthermore, I have no doubt that the enemies of Israel will be turning down the volume of their TV lest the killings of Kadafi and the assassinations of Assad interrupt victory celebrations. Thus I say, “Let them make merry.” The blood of their allies stains the Arabian sands as they murder each other in the most barbaric manner imaginable, but no one can take from them that they have forced a cosmetics shop in London to relocate, “To the victor belong the spoils”.

Like many of you I suspect that this may be but a prelude to struggles ahead. Struggles that may have begun at the Ahava store in Covent Garden, but that shall surely reach other cities of Europe and other capitals of the world. Neither do I believe that in these struggles Jews will or should stand at the vanguard of those opposing the dark clouds of radical Islam. It is for Englishmen to fight for the character of England and Frenchmen to fight for the future of France. If they do, like us they will always prevail. If they don’t, no Board of Deputies or Zionist Federation will be their saviors.

So I say to all those advocates of Ahava, those champions of Covent Gardens that, like the legendary expeditionary force of Dunkirk, you have done all that anyone could have done and now it is time for you all to come home. Bathe in the real Dead Sea where no cosmetics are required, feast on the beauty of the Land of Israel drink of her wine and eat of her fruits.

Peter King: Fear and Loathing in the USA…

2011-03-10T16:56:00.002Z

By subscription email (Jewish Voices for Peace) - with many thanks to Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak.

U.S. Representative Peter King (R-NY), who once said 85% of American Muslim community leaders are "an enemy living amongst us,” is set to hold hearings today to investigate "the extent of radicalization of American Muslims." The idea of hearings that single out one ethnic or religious group in the United States is profoundly offensive to me as a Jew, a Rabbi, an American, and a human being. These hearings come on the heels of a string of shockingly racist attacks and campaigns against Muslims in the United States including:

* Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly in Orange County, who called a fundraiser for womens’ shelters sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America Relief USA(ICNA) “pure unadulterated evil” and said, “I know quite a few Marines who will be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.”

* Efforts to stop the building of mosques and Muslim community centers around the country.

* The District Attorney’s unprecedented criminalization of Muslim students in Orange County for engaging in a garden-variety student protest.

It is painful to see some Jewish groups promoting this hatred and fear because they mistakenly believe it will help Israel. It is also deeply distressing to see this disturbing trend of scapegoating Muslim-Americans being echoed at the highest levels of our government.

Every fiber of our being, as Jews and people of good will, should vibrate with astonishment at these incidents. But if we view this spectacle with "old eyes," as Rabbi Leo Baeck observed upon witnessing the events in 1930s Germany, we must acknowledge that we know this place and time in history from our own experience.

For Jews, viewing the creation of a national narrative about Muslims as "the harmful other" reminds us of our past in Europe in ancient Egypt, and even in early 20th Century America. By trying to assign Muslim-Americans and Islam to the role of the source of evil, they inflame passions and add enmity not only to the American discourse but also to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In this season of change in the Middle East, as people call for freedom, democracy and equality-- largely inspired by the promise of our own democracy-- we should be seeking to build bridges of understanding, not separation.

Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana on Israeli Racism…

2011-03-05T17:40:00.000Z

Electronic Intifafa:

When we released the now famous and censored video Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem, we were widely attacked and dismissed for daring to publicize footage of college-age Jewish kids behaving like racist fanatics while intoxicated. We argued that our footage revealed a deep sickness within Israeli society and among diaspora Jews who defined their Jewish identity according to extreme Zionist ideology ("Censored by the Huffington Post and Imprisoned By The Past: Why I Made 'Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem,'" 6 June 2009).

We insisted that Jews should focus their outrage not at us, but at the statements the subjects of our video made, and recognize the extent to which they echoed the rhetoric of leading Israeli politicians, military figures, pundits and rabbis.

In response, Ben Hartman claimed in Israel's Haaretz newspaper that we were "on a mission to humiliate the Jewish people" ("Jews gone wild: Why camcorders and booze don't mix," 11 June 2009).

American-born Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg argued on his blog that the statements of "a drunken kid in a bar" have no journalistic value, and therefore we were unprofessional ("Racism, Amalek and Videotape " 13 June 2009).

Gorenberg even asserted that because some of the people who appeared in our video were American, their racist opinions had no little or no connection to the Israeli situation. At the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas, who has disclosed that he purchased an apartment with an Israeli-government subsidized loan in a Jewish colony in occupied East Jerusalem, wrote that it's "time for [Blumenthal] to grow up and put [his talents] to good use." ("Best take so far on Blumen-journalism," 5 June 2009).

Meanwhile, YouTube and Vimeo banned Feeling the Hate, while the Huffington Post's Roy Sekoff refused to allow us to publish it, claiming in an email that it had no "real news value," as though the soft core porn that accounted for the content on his and Arianna Huffington's (now AOL owned) site each day did.

A year and a half later, hate crimes carried out by Jewish youths against random Arabs are increasingly common in Jerusalem, and throughout Israel ("Never again? Elderly Palestinian women called "whores" on Yad Vashem tour, while racism explodes across Israel," 30 December 2010).

The most recent attack occurred on 11 February on King George Street, just blocks from the warren of seedy bars where we filmed Feeling the Hate. There, a group of drunken religious nationalist youths attacked Hussam Rwidy, a 24-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, stabbing him while they allegedly chanted "Death to Arabs!" Rwidy and his friend, Murad Khader Joulani, staggered into a nearby restaurant drenched in blood and begging for help. Hours later, Rwidy was pronounced dead ("The final moments of the martyred Husam Rwidy," Wadi Hilweh Information Center -- Silwan, 20 February 2011).

What happened next was eerily familiar to us. After a media blackout imposed by the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security police, the Israeli media produced a series of articles dismissing the gravity of the murder ("Did Israeli media sideline racist motives in killing of Arab youth in Jerusalem?" 23 February 2011).

"A drunken brawl gone bad" was how several reports described the killing of Rwidy, parroting statements by the Jerusalem police that his death was the result of a fight. The two main assailants were initially indicted for manslaughter before overwhelming evidence forced Israeli government prosecutors to charge them with premeditated murder. As with the reaction by prominent Israeli media figures to Feeling the Hate, the racist behavior of Jewish nationalists was downplayed as a product of intoxication, if not dismissed altogether, while the incident was portrayed as an aberration. Any reflection about the trend of racial murders inside Israel was officially discouraged ("Murder of Palestinian highlights Israeli judicial discrimination," 972mag.com, 23 February 2011). And so the band plays on.

With Feeling the Hate, we edited an hour of footage into a four-minute video that focused on the hatred many Jewish nationalists in Israel and the United States felt towards President Barack Obama. Our unreleased footage contains statements by the same kids about Palestinians. The political science major who said "I know my shit" but didn't know who the Israeli prime minister was told us that the Palestinians should all be transferred to a small corner in the West Bank and kept there in a virtual cage. The boisterous young man with the mesh hat who remarked, "We don't want any Nazi shit, Obama!" defended Israeli Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman's proposal to strip citizenship from "disloyal" Palestinian citizens. These drunk kids in bars had a coherent, if very simplistic, ideological basis for their racism. It is called Jewish nationalism.

Because Jewish nationalism is an exclusivist project that defines everyone who exists outside the Zionist spectrum as a potential threat and an obstacle to the ultimate ambitions of Israel, racism directed against Obama and anti-Palestinian racism form a seamless thread. This thread connects automatically to the African and Asian migrant workers who Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called "a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country" ("Netanyahu: Illegal African immigrants - a threat to Israel's Jewish character," Haaretz, 18 July 2010).

It is no coincidence that migrant workers in Israel are increasingly targeted alongside Palestinians in racist vigilante attacks. They are seeking a place in a country that views the removal of non-Jews from as much territory as it can gain control over as a national goal ("Police: Sudanese men stabbed by Israeli gang," Ynet, 12 February 2011).

While young rightists attack migrants in the street, the government may warehouse some migrant workers in what Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin has called a "concentration camp" in the Negev Desert (planners from the Israeli Prison Service described the camp as an "accommodation center" in official material) ("Knesset Speaker: Racist rabbi's letter shames the Jewish people," Haaretz, 9 December 2010).

Though Rivlin condemned the plan, he has simultaneously endorsed a $1.5 billion shekel proposal to build a wall along the border of Egypt. "The goal is to ensure Israel's Jewish and democratic nature," Netanyahu said about the proposed wall.

Tzipi Livni, former foreign minister and leader of the opposition Kadima Party, recently warned that an "evil spirit has been sweeping over the country" ("'Evil spirit' sweeping over Israel, warns opposition leader Tzipi Livni," The Guardian, 10 January 2011).

Her words rang hollow, not only because her party had co-sponsored many of the racist and anti-democratic bills winding their way through the Knesset (see "Can't we all just get along -- separately?" -- David Sheen's disturbing 24 February 2011 interview in Haaretz with Kadima lawmaker Shai Hermesh on the "Communities Acceptance Law"), but because she has personally fanned the flames of extremism through her words and actions.

After the Israeli assault on Gaza in winter 2008-2009, Livni boasted, "Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded" (I Lost Everything," Human Rights Watch, 10 May 2010).

She also praised the Israeli army for "going wild" in Gaza, as The Independent, reported on 13 January 2009 (Israeli cabinet divided over fresh Gaza surge").

Now that some Jewish Israelis are "going wild" against Palestinians inside Israel, and demonstrating "real hooliganism" in racial attacks, does the opposition leader think she has the moral authority to condemn them? If the hooliganism starts in Gaza, where will it end?

Last summer, while living off of Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street, we regularly taped interviews with locals. After the murder of Rwidy, we decided to compile some of those clips into a short video so viewers could get a sense of the atmosphere we lived in. Now everyone can meet a few of our neighbors, like the Birthright Israel alum who believes that if Palestinian resistance becomes too acute, "you gotta just annihilate them." Or the Canadian lone soldier who joined the Israeli Army's Kfir Brigade, a notoriously abusive unit that serves exclusively in the Occupied Territories, who believes he's defending the Jews "from terror, and such," and that there is no such thing as the occupation ("Kfir brigade leads in W. Bank violations," Haaretz, 11 May 2008).

Living among droves of heavily indoctrinated extremists on Ben Yehuda Street was not always a pleasant experience. But then again, had either of us been a Palestinian, it might have been impossible. Though many might want to ignore this fact, after Rwidy's murder, it is increasingly hard to dismiss.

Ahead of the Curve…

2011-02-28T21:51:00.000Z

Mona Eltahawy:

Arabophobic Comment of the Week…

2011-02-28T20:47:00.002Z

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?

2011-02-28T16:39:00.003Z

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

2011-02-26T18:00:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-25T19:01:00.004Z

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?

2011-02-24T16:09:00.008Z

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

2011-02-23T18:23:00.000Z

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…

2011-02-23T17:05:00.000Z

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

2011-02-23T16:54:00.002Z

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...

2011-02-22T17:58:00.004Z

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?

2011-02-22T17:22:00.000Z

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

2011-02-22T16:41:00.000Z

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?

2011-02-21T18:08:00.002Z

… 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…

2011-02-20T17:37:00.001Z

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

2011-02-19T16:53:00.004Z

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…

2011-02-17T18:37:00.001Z

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?

2011-02-17T18:12:00.000Z

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

2011-02-16T18:57:00.002Z

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…

2011-02-12T16:49:00.006Z

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…’

2011-02-11T13:48:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-11T12:53:00.006Z

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!

2011-02-10T21:55:00.003Z

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’…

2011-02-10T21:07:00.000Z

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…

2011-02-10T16:00:00.000Z

~~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)…

2011-02-09T20:54:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-09T15:35:00.000Z

Details at JsF.

I was SO WRONG about ‘Obama for President’!

2011-02-09T15:22:00.000Z

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?

2011-02-08T22:09:00.000Z

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!)…

2011-02-08T21:07:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-08T16:58:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-08T16:33:00.002Z

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…

2011-02-08T16:25:00.002Z

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…

2011-02-07T16:16:00.000Z

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’)

2011-02-07T15:43:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-07T15:34:00.000Z

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…

2011-02-06T21:36:00.006Z

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…

2011-02-06T17:59:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-06T17:00:00.001Z

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…

2011-02-05T22:37:00.002Z

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

2011-02-05T22:09:00.002Z

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…

2011-02-05T21:09:00.000Z

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

2011-02-05T20:34:00.002Z

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…

2011-02-05T16:46:00.004Z

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…

2011-02-05T16:28:00.000Z

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!