[All notes by Tom Gross – May 25th]
In recent days, the international media, particularly in Europe and the Mid East, has been full of stories about “activist boats sailing to Gaza carrying desperately-needed humanitarian aid and building materials.”
The BBC World Service even led its world news broadcasts with this story at one point over the weekend. (The BBC yesterday boasted that its global news audience has now risen to 220 million persons a week, making it by far the biggest news broadcaster in the world.)
Yet the BBC and other media fail to report on the fancy new restaurants and swimming pools of Gaza, or about the wind surfing competitions on Gaza beaches, or the Strip’s crowded shops and markets.
No, this would spoil their agenda. Playing the manipulative game of the BBC is easy. If we had their vast taxpayer funded resources, we too could produce reports about parts of London, Manchester and Glasgow and make it look as though there is a humanitarian catastrophe throughout the UK. We could produce the same effect by selectively filming seedy parts of Paris and Rome and New York and Los Angeles too.
Of course there is poverty in Gaza. There is poverty in parts of Israel too. (When was the last time a foreign journalist based in Israel left the pampered lounge bars and restaurants of the King David and American Colony hotels in Jerusalem and went to check out the slum-like areas of southern Tel Aviv? Or the hard-hit Negev towns of Netivot or Rahat?)
But the way the BBC and other prominent Western news media are deliberately misleading global audiences and systematically creating the false impression that people are somehow starving in Gaza, and that it is all Israel’s fault, can only serve to increase hatred for the Jewish state – which one suspects was the goal of many of the editors and reporters involved in the first place.
STEAK AU POIVRE AND CHICKEN CORDON BLEU
If you drop by the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook for Gaza and the West Bank, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”.
The restaurant’s website in Arabic gives a window into middle class dining and the lifestyle of Hamas officials in Gaza.
And here it is in English, for all the journalists, UN types and NGO staff who regularly frequent this and other nice Gaza restaurants (but don’t tell their readers about them).
Please take a look at the pictures on the above website. They are not the kind of things you see in The New York Times or CNN or in Newsweek, whose international edition last week had one of the most disgracefully misleading stories about Gaza I have ever seen, portraying it in terms which were virtually reminiscent of Hiroshima after a nuclear blast.
In case anyone doubts the authenticity of this information (which is up on the club’s own website), I just called the club in Gaza City and had a nice chat with the manager who proudly confirmed business is booming and many Palestinians and international guests are dining there.
In a piece for The Wall Street Journal last year, I documented the “after effects” of a previous “emergency Gaza boat flotilla,” when the arrivals were seen afterwards purchasing souvenirs in well-stocked shops.
And please see here for more pictures of Gaza’s “impoverished” shops.
STARVED OF WATER AND BUILDING MATERIALS?
While Western media, misled by corrupt and biased NGOs, continue to report on a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports on the Olympic-size swimming pool that opened in Gaza last week.
As reader Joy Wolfe of Manchester, England, a subscriber to this list, points out to me in an email: “How does an area that claims to be starved of water and building materials and depends on humanitarian aid build an Olympic size swimming pool and create a luxury lifestyle for some while others are forced to live in abject poverty as political pawn refugees?”
Another reader, Barry Shaw, writes from the Israeli town of Netanya:
“Gaza City recently opened an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Netanya does not have a municipal Olympic pool. Neither does Ashkelon, or Sderot. Gaza City is part of the Palestinian territory operated by the Islamic terror regime, Hamas. Netanya has been hit by repeated Palestinian suicide attacks, car bombings, and terrorist gunmen that have left over fifty of its citizens dead and more than three hundred injured. The Palestinians receive record amounts of international funding. The victims of Palestinian terror get nothing.”
Another subscriber, Michael Horesh, points out, “The Financial Times of London, a leading media beacon in international money matters and no friend of Israel, observes that ‘Branded products such as Coca-Cola, Nescafé, Snickers and Heinz ketchup are both cheap and widely available in Gaza… [as are] Korean refrigerators, German food mixers and Chinese air conditioning units.’”
AN INDUSTRY OF LIES
While middle class Palestinians plead poverty and receive excessive amounts of international funding, elsewhere in the world (in places like Congo and Zimbabwe and Bangladesh) millions of children really are dying of starvation and disease, all but ignored by those very same governments and aid agencies that pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the Palestinian coffers.
Of course, there is a whole industry of people (UN and EU staff, NGO workers, journalists) who make their living and have a vested interest in continuing to propagate lies about Gaza and West Bank.
As the boats of “humanitarian aid activists” (including a number of European politicians and journalists) left Turkey on Saturday I wonder if they understood what the crowd was chanting.
The crowd shouted: “Intifada, intifada, intifada!” “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed will return!”
GAZA’S OLYMPIC-SIZED SWIMMING POOL
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports (May 18, 2010):
www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=285242
“Gaza – Ma’an – Gaza’s first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society.
“Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project.
“Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches.
“As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.”
WHO BURNED DOWN THE SUMMER CAMP?
(No, it wasn’t a rampaging mob of American supporters of Israel on an AIPAC lobbying trip.)
A UN-run summer camp for Palestinian children was burned to the ground on Sunday and the UN staff threatened with murder. Tens of thousands of Gazan children were due to attend the camp this summer, as they have every summer in recent years.
This is a rare occasion when the international media did report on Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence, although most downplayed any criticism of Hamas or other Islamists in their reports.
***
“A SUMMER PROGRAM OF ARTS AND SPORT”
The BBC reported online:
Masked gunmen have attacked a UN summer camp being set up for children in the Gaza Strip, UN officials say.
The attackers burned tents and destroyed other equipment after tying up a guard.
They also left a letter threatening the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), John Ging…
“The armed men torched the camp, which contained recreational equipment and swimming pools, and completely destroyed it,” UNRWA spokesman Abu Hasna told journalists.
The camp is one of dozens of beach facilities set up by the UN offering a summer programme of arts, sport and other activities for some quarter of a million children in the Gaza Strip…
***
“TEACHING SCHOOLGIRLS DANCING AND IMMORALITY”
CNN explained that the Islamists of Gaza object to the fact that boys and girls were due to participate in activities together at the camp:
CNN began its online report: “A U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza was burned Sunday hours before it was due to open, witnesses said, blaming Muslim extremists who apparently object to boys and girls going to camp together.”
***
Reuters also reported:
“About 20 men, some carrying assault rifles, tore up large plastic tents and burned storage facilities at the site, where tens of thousands of children are due to attend camp sessions…
“Two days earlier, a previously unknown militant group, The Free of the Homeland, issued a statement criticizing the camp’s organizer, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), for, ‘teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality.’”
***
The Al-Jazeera report online adds:
“Dozens of armed attackers also vandalized bathrooms… and assaulted a guard and tied him up… the men also left a letter with four bullets, threatening the agency’s Gaza director and sending a chilling message to the camp’s organizers.”
FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS AND NGOS IGNORE HAMAS’S WORSENING HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
In an editorial, The Jerusalem Post reflects on the atrocious human rights situation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and notes that “an iron curtain of a strict theocracy is slowly descending on Gaza, but many human rights proponents still prefer to depict it as the embattled bastion of freedom fighters…
“Both foreign governments and NGOs, in their inaction, are signaling to Hamas that domestic oppression by its tyrannical regime is tolerable so far as the international community is concerned,” said the paper.
DOZENS MORE WEST BANK ROADBLOCKS TO BE DISMANTLED
Following a meeting between IDF OC Central Command and Palestinian security officials yesterday, Israel has announced the further dismantling of 60 roadblocks and the easing of travel throughout the West Bank. Most West Bank roadblocks have been dismantled since the government of Benjamin Netanyahu assumed power in Israel last year.
The Israelis explained that the success of the Palestinian security forces in fighting terror led to the decision to ease restrictions.
The IDF pointed out, however, that it will “continue to operate firmly against terrorism while sustaining liaison and coordination with Palestinian officials, in order to maintain the life routine and security of all residents” of the West Bank and Israel.
SHIMON PERES ATTACKS THE GUARDIAN’S BLATANT LIES
Israeli President Shimon Peres yesterday accused the British paper The Guardian of telling blatant lies about Israel in a front page story that slandered Israel in general, and Peres in particular.
It is quite something when the president of a country sees the need to criticize a foreign newspaper for failing to maintain elementary journalistic standards – failing to ask for his response before publishing a massive defamation of him, for example. But such are the depths to which The Guardian sunk yesterday. (As I noted on this email list, The Guardian recently had to apologize for running a notorious organ trafficking libel about Israel.)
Additional Israeli government sources added that “documents that Guardian journalist Chris McGreal – who has a long track record of writing anti-Israel pieces – used to run his story are completely fabricated.” (The alleged documents come from a new book by a publicity-seeking anti-Zionist American researcher.)
The story concerned an alleged offer to sell arms, including nuclear warheads, by Israel to South Africa in 1975. Quite why The Guardian decided this is now lead front-page breaking news 35 years later, is beyond me, given how much real current news there is in the world.
Of course, The Guardian has nothing to say about the arms sales by Britain and many other Western countries to Apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. Could its continuous singling out of Israel perhaps be because Israel is a Jewish state?
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
PA launches diplomatic intifada
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH AND HERB KEINON
05/21/2010
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176054
A furious Jerusalem on Thursday denounced a declared Palestinian Authority effort to isolate Israel and eventually have it expelled from the UN as both outrageous and risible.
“Israel is not going to be kicked out of the UN,” said a senior Israeli official. “This is ridiculous.”
He was speaking after the PA announced that it was stepping up its diplomatic and economic “intifada” against Israel.
The idea of intensifying a campaign of delegitimization, leading ultimately to Israel’s UN expulsion, was unveiled on Wednesday night by Nabil Shaath, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and one of the chief architects of the Oslo Accords.
Speaking at a conference in Ramallah, Shaath said: “There is a need to create and endorse new struggling tools, such as the popular resistance, and to increase our efforts in the international arena to isolate and punish Israel, prevent it from deepening its relations with the European Union and attempt to expel it from the United Nations.”
The “nature of the Jews and the Holocaust in Germany helped Jewish communities establish strong strategic ties with countries that have influence in the international arena,” added Shaath, a former PA foreign minister who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli official said such a campaign stood “in complete contrast to the peace process.”
He added: “You can’t on one hand say you want peace with Israel, and on the other hand act to delegitimize us. This is unacceptable and raises questions as to the Palestinian commitment to peace and reconciliation.”
The official said that Israel would raise these issues in the proximity talks, as it already did on Thursday during the talks between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US envoy George Mitchell, when Netanyahu protested against the Palestinians failed effort to block Israel’s admittance into the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
“We will put these issues front and center in our talks,” the official said. “This is totally contradictory to a successful peace process and demonstrates that parts of the Palestinian leadership are stuck in a conflict mindset and are incapable of moving toward peace and reconciliation.”
The official pointed to the PA’s OECD campaign as evidence that there was no chance of Israel losing its seat on the world body.
“At the OECD they only needed to win one vote out of 31 to block our entrance, and were unable to get it,” he said.
The problem was not that the Palestinians might succeed, he added. The problem was the negative mindset that these attempts represented.
Orchestrated by the PA government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the new Palestinian “uprising” also calls for “peaceful demonstrations” in the West Bank against settlements and the security barrier and waging a total boycott of all products manufactured in the settlements.
At the Ramallah conference, which was also broadcast to the Gaza Strip, Shaath called on Palestinians to intensify pressure on Israel through nonviolent means.
“We need to continue and step up the pressure on Israel, regardless of whether the peace talks are resumed or not,” he said. “We need to rally international support for our cause and impose sanctions on Israel. We must pursue Israel in all international bodies and institutions.”
Shaath said Fatah’s declared strategy was “to endorse a growing nonviolent popular struggle” against Israel, in light of the fact that the “armed struggle” had become impossible and undesirable at this phase.
He said that during a recent visit to Gaza he told Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh that “Arab, regional and international circumstances don’t allow us to launch an armed struggle against Israel.”
Therefore, he added, the Palestinians should mobilize their energies to wage a “peaceful resistance” against Israel by isolating it and stepping up the pressure on it.
The nonviolent struggle was “not less honorable than the armed struggle and does not mean surrender to Israeli conditions,” Shaath said.
05/21/2010
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176054
A furious Jerusalem on Thursday denounced a declared Palestinian Authority effort to isolate Israel and eventually have it expelled from the UN as both outrageous and risible.
“Israel is not going to be kicked out of the UN,” said a senior Israeli official. “This is ridiculous.”
He was speaking after the PA announced that it was stepping up its diplomatic and economic “intifada” against Israel.
The idea of intensifying a campaign of delegitimization, leading ultimately to Israel’s UN expulsion, was unveiled on Wednesday night by Nabil Shaath, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and one of the chief architects of the Oslo Accords.
Speaking at a conference in Ramallah, Shaath said: “There is a need to create and endorse new struggling tools, such as the popular resistance, and to increase our efforts in the international arena to isolate and punish Israel, prevent it from deepening its relations with the European Union and attempt to expel it from the United Nations.”
The “nature of the Jews and the Holocaust in Germany helped Jewish communities establish strong strategic ties with countries that have influence in the international arena,” added Shaath, a former PA foreign minister who is closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli official said such a campaign stood “in complete contrast to the peace process.”
He added: “You can’t on one hand say you want peace with Israel, and on the other hand act to delegitimize us. This is unacceptable and raises questions as to the Palestinian commitment to peace and reconciliation.”
The official said that Israel would raise these issues in the proximity talks, as it already did on Thursday during the talks between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US envoy George Mitchell, when Netanyahu protested against the Palestinians failed effort to block Israel’s admittance into the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
“We will put these issues front and center in our talks,” the official said. “This is totally contradictory to a successful peace process and demonstrates that parts of the Palestinian leadership are stuck in a conflict mindset and are incapable of moving toward peace and reconciliation.”
The official pointed to the PA’s OECD campaign as evidence that there was no chance of Israel losing its seat on the world body.
“At the OECD they only needed to win one vote out of 31 to block our entrance, and were unable to get it,” he said.
The problem was not that the Palestinians might succeed, he added. The problem was the negative mindset that these attempts represented.
Orchestrated by the PA government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the new Palestinian “uprising” also calls for “peaceful demonstrations” in the West Bank against settlements and the security barrier and waging a total boycott of all products manufactured in the settlements.
At the Ramallah conference, which was also broadcast to the Gaza Strip, Shaath called on Palestinians to intensify pressure on Israel through nonviolent means.
“We need to continue and step up the pressure on Israel, regardless of whether the peace talks are resumed or not,” he said. “We need to rally international support for our cause and impose sanctions on Israel. We must pursue Israel in all international bodies and institutions.”
Shaath said Fatah’s declared strategy was “to endorse a growing nonviolent popular struggle” against Israel, in light of the fact that the “armed struggle” had become impossible and undesirable at this phase.
He said that during a recent visit to Gaza he told Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh that “Arab, regional and international circumstances don’t allow us to launch an armed struggle against Israel.”
Therefore, he added, the Palestinians should mobilize their energies to wage a “peaceful resistance” against Israel by isolating it and stepping up the pressure on it.
The nonviolent struggle was “not less honorable than the armed struggle and does not mean surrender to Israeli conditions,” Shaath said.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Israel as Czechoslovakia
Melanie Philips – Spectator
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5861291/israel-as-czechoslovakia.thtml
Tuesday, 23rd March 2010
So it’s now not just a crisis between the Obama administration and Israel. By a remarkable coincidence, the UK government has now upped the ante too against its sole ‘friend’ and ‘ally’ in the Middle East. First the Obamites deliberately and gratuitously escalated the non-event of Israeli building permits just across the ‘green line’ in Jerusalem – in a Jewish area which is hemmed in between other Jewish areas – into a full-scale dressing down of Israel, provoking the worst crisis between America and Israel for three decades. Then today, Israel’s ambassador to the UK was summoned into the Foreign Office and told that, to mark Britain’s deep displeasure at the alleged theft by Mossad of the passport identities of a number of British/Israeli citizens in order to kill the Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai last January, an Israeli diplomat – said to be a Mossad operative – was to be expelled from Britain.
The word ‘disproportionate’ comes to mind.
There is still much about the killing of Mabhouh which remains mysterious and indeed inexplicable – such as the enormous number of some 27 agents apparently involved in the operation. And Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that the Mossad was involved, although Britain says there are ‘compelling reasons’ to believe that it was involved in the misuse of the British passports.
‘Compelling reasons’, eh? Nor proof, note. But who needs proof when, in the eyes of the British government, Israel is guilty a priori? You might think that the killing of such a vile enemy of humanity would be a cause of some grim satisfaction in the desperate struggle under way to defend life, liberty and justice against those who would destroy them. But no – as Douglas Murray points out -- Britain punishes those who are in the front line of such a defence, while allowing a free pass, not to mention public platforms and even government jobs, to those who work for the destruction of Britain, Israel and the free world.
As I understand it, stealing passport identities is a common tactic of a number of intelligence agencies – maybe even, it is said, the British MI6. That is, if they were actually stolen in the manner to which Miliband has cryptically alluded – which, to this observer at least, is far from proven. For sure, the passport-holders in question had nothing at all to do with the killing of Mabhouh. But if their passport identities were cloned, that in itself proves nothing at all beyond that bald fact.
Certainly, if they were indeed stolen and the lives of these British Israeli citizens put recklessly at risk, this would be invidious one would hardly expect the British government not to protest. But to throw out a diplomat is one of the most serious signs of diplomatic disapproval a country can take. To do so against a supposed ally suggests a very serious breach in that relationship, way beyond the likely displeasure caused by such an occurrence. To do so, furthermore, after a series of consistently hostile acts against Israel by the British government – taking the side of Hamas over Israel’s self-defence in Cast Lead, enforcing an embargo on spare parts for Israeli warships, inciting a boycott of Israeli goods from the disputed territories, refusing to vote against the grotesque Goldstone report -- suggests a consistent strategy of throwing Israel under the bus.
And to do so while the crisis between Israel and America is still in progress suggests that Hillary Clinton has been murmuring into the ear of her girlish crush David Miliband, as Gordon Brown marches dutifully in lockstep with Obama in the common cause of delegitimising Israel in order to throw it to the genocidal Islamic wolves.
As Michel Gurfinkiel writes:
Problems arise time and again among good friends or among allies. In spite of their special relationship, the U.S. and the UK have quite often quarreled. But friends and allies usually make sure to calm the issues down. In fact, this is what validates their bond. On the other hand, when a friend or an ally allows the disagreement to grow into a crisis or fuels the fire, that means that it is not a true friend or ally any longer. Remember Jacques Chirac, the president of France from 1995 to 2007, who, on a state visit to Israel in 1995, turned a minor misunderstanding with his Israeli security escort in the Old City into an argument between the two countries. Chirac elicited completely unnecessary apologies from then-Prime Minister Netanyahu. Such behavior merely signaled what was to come: Chirac’s alignment with Yasser Arafat and similar figures in the Middle East.
The former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once protested – to general diplomatic outrage – that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the thirties. It looks horribly if the repetition of that catastrophic history is precisely what the US and UK governments have in mind.
The signals from the UK and US administrations could not be clearer. As Iran races to obtain its genocide bomb, Obama and Miliband are preparing to abandon its putative victim – and, in turn, their own countries -- while grovelling to the enemies of civilisation. The systematic delegitimisation of Israel has done its infernal work all too well in softening up the public –in Britain, at least – for the final annihilation of those who only want to be allowed to live in peace in their historic homeland. As the lynching of Israel proceeds, who in the American and British political establishments will have the integrity and courage to stand up and say, ‘Not in my name’?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5861291/israel-as-czechoslovakia.thtml
Tuesday, 23rd March 2010
So it’s now not just a crisis between the Obama administration and Israel. By a remarkable coincidence, the UK government has now upped the ante too against its sole ‘friend’ and ‘ally’ in the Middle East. First the Obamites deliberately and gratuitously escalated the non-event of Israeli building permits just across the ‘green line’ in Jerusalem – in a Jewish area which is hemmed in between other Jewish areas – into a full-scale dressing down of Israel, provoking the worst crisis between America and Israel for three decades. Then today, Israel’s ambassador to the UK was summoned into the Foreign Office and told that, to mark Britain’s deep displeasure at the alleged theft by Mossad of the passport identities of a number of British/Israeli citizens in order to kill the Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai last January, an Israeli diplomat – said to be a Mossad operative – was to be expelled from Britain.
The word ‘disproportionate’ comes to mind.
There is still much about the killing of Mabhouh which remains mysterious and indeed inexplicable – such as the enormous number of some 27 agents apparently involved in the operation. And Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that the Mossad was involved, although Britain says there are ‘compelling reasons’ to believe that it was involved in the misuse of the British passports.
‘Compelling reasons’, eh? Nor proof, note. But who needs proof when, in the eyes of the British government, Israel is guilty a priori? You might think that the killing of such a vile enemy of humanity would be a cause of some grim satisfaction in the desperate struggle under way to defend life, liberty and justice against those who would destroy them. But no – as Douglas Murray points out -- Britain punishes those who are in the front line of such a defence, while allowing a free pass, not to mention public platforms and even government jobs, to those who work for the destruction of Britain, Israel and the free world.
As I understand it, stealing passport identities is a common tactic of a number of intelligence agencies – maybe even, it is said, the British MI6. That is, if they were actually stolen in the manner to which Miliband has cryptically alluded – which, to this observer at least, is far from proven. For sure, the passport-holders in question had nothing at all to do with the killing of Mabhouh. But if their passport identities were cloned, that in itself proves nothing at all beyond that bald fact.
Certainly, if they were indeed stolen and the lives of these British Israeli citizens put recklessly at risk, this would be invidious one would hardly expect the British government not to protest. But to throw out a diplomat is one of the most serious signs of diplomatic disapproval a country can take. To do so against a supposed ally suggests a very serious breach in that relationship, way beyond the likely displeasure caused by such an occurrence. To do so, furthermore, after a series of consistently hostile acts against Israel by the British government – taking the side of Hamas over Israel’s self-defence in Cast Lead, enforcing an embargo on spare parts for Israeli warships, inciting a boycott of Israeli goods from the disputed territories, refusing to vote against the grotesque Goldstone report -- suggests a consistent strategy of throwing Israel under the bus.
And to do so while the crisis between Israel and America is still in progress suggests that Hillary Clinton has been murmuring into the ear of her girlish crush David Miliband, as Gordon Brown marches dutifully in lockstep with Obama in the common cause of delegitimising Israel in order to throw it to the genocidal Islamic wolves.
As Michel Gurfinkiel writes:
Problems arise time and again among good friends or among allies. In spite of their special relationship, the U.S. and the UK have quite often quarreled. But friends and allies usually make sure to calm the issues down. In fact, this is what validates their bond. On the other hand, when a friend or an ally allows the disagreement to grow into a crisis or fuels the fire, that means that it is not a true friend or ally any longer. Remember Jacques Chirac, the president of France from 1995 to 2007, who, on a state visit to Israel in 1995, turned a minor misunderstanding with his Israeli security escort in the Old City into an argument between the two countries. Chirac elicited completely unnecessary apologies from then-Prime Minister Netanyahu. Such behavior merely signaled what was to come: Chirac’s alignment with Yasser Arafat and similar figures in the Middle East.
The former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once protested – to general diplomatic outrage – that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the thirties. It looks horribly if the repetition of that catastrophic history is precisely what the US and UK governments have in mind.
The signals from the UK and US administrations could not be clearer. As Iran races to obtain its genocide bomb, Obama and Miliband are preparing to abandon its putative victim – and, in turn, their own countries -- while grovelling to the enemies of civilisation. The systematic delegitimisation of Israel has done its infernal work all too well in softening up the public –in Britain, at least – for the final annihilation of those who only want to be allowed to live in peace in their historic homeland. As the lynching of Israel proceeds, who in the American and British political establishments will have the integrity and courage to stand up and say, ‘Not in my name’?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Israel is the Easiest Target
By OLIVER WORTH – Jerusalem Post 25/03/2010
What better way to deflect domestic criticism in the UK than to pander to swaths of bigoted voters by taking unjustified measures against the Jewish State?
The decision of the British government to expel an Israeli diplomat is just the latest in a spate of hypocritical, discriminatory actions the United Kingdom has implemented against Israel. However, such moves are not only grounded in a long-held British willingness to victimize Israel, but in a British government with no qualms about abusing its relationship with an ally to cover up its own failings.
How convenient that on Tuesday the BBC news service’s headline changed straight from “Labor suspends three ministers” to “Britain expels Israeli diplomat.” Of course, this sudden change is more than just convenient – a contrived act on behalf of the British to use Israel as a smoke screen for its own problems. Even more worrying is the distinct possibility that Britain is simply following the US lead on how to divert domestic problems – by picking on Israel.That this trend has been propagated by Israel’s supposedly greatest friend, the US, is truly disturbing and requires immediate action. It didn’t take President Barack Obama long to realize the best way of dealing with the embarrassment of seeing his foreign policy goals fall by the wayside was to focus on Israel.
While in Egypt there has not been so much as a sniff of democracy since Obama’s “historic” speech in Cairo, and Guantanamo Bay looks less likely to close than a McDonald’s during rush hour, Obama is guaranteed a plethora of great international headlines by manipulating a friendly nation, and dangling the prevention of Iran’s nuclear program – undoubtedly an existential threat – in front of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.The gross hypocrisy of the British is as baffling as it is disgraceful; after all, the British response to terrorism has been to launch wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, however justifiable, were both immensely costly in term of civilian casualties.
Naturally, the mere suggestion of the UK being castigated like Israel in the UN Human Rights Council, despite widespread allegations of torture and various war crimes, is laughable, never mind the idea of British leaders being prevented from fulfilling their duties under laws of universal jurisdiction.REGARDLESS OF whether Israel was involved in the Dubai assassination or not, the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was an exercise in what Britain has proven inept at doing itself – taking care of a dangerous terrorist with the loss of no civilians whatsoever.
The question begged is why, when thousands of refugees are purposefully displaced in Sri Lanka, human rights are consistently clamped down on in China and more than half of the world’s population fail to have their right to democratic leadership realized, is Britain picking on Israel for a crime it hasn’t even been convicted of?The answer is simple. Israel is by far the easiest target, guaranteed to captivate the media and win over a public salivating at the thought of seeing it strung up. What better way to deflect domestic criticism than to pander to swaths of bigoted voters by launching unjustified measures against the Jewish state?
As Gilad Schalit languishes in Gaza in contravention of the Third Geneva Convention, Britain can be counted on to do the bare minimum to secure his release, while accusing Israel of being the nation showing a disregard for the two countries’ diplomatic relationship. It is, rather, the British, unable to prevent their own legal system being abused for racist endeavors, who should be red-faced over the recent breakdown of relations.
The wording of Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s announcement to Parliament on the decision to expel the Israeli diplomat was grounded in irony. Why Miliband feels in a position to talk of the “intolerable” way in which a “friend” operates is deeply questionable. Britain is in no place to be preaching morality, never mind to a free, democratic nation.
British Jewry, in its muted action, has goaded the willingness of the British government to stab Israel in the back. We are undoubtedly in a situation where the British government has no fear of provoking the pro-Israel and Jewish population into meaningful action, rendering Israel by far the easiest target when finding a scapegoat to cover up domestic misgivings. This must be the wake-up call.
While the British Jewish leadership was happy to let the disgraceful universal jurisdiction fiasco get sorted out behind closed doors, this expulsion is a step too far. The expulsion of an Israeli diplomat is grounded in discrimination and bias. Britain would not take such measures against any other state, even those hostile to the UK.
This is not just an attack on the State of Israel but on Britain’s own Jewish population. If British Jewry does not now stand up and be counted, then when?The writer has been a frequent observer of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and is now based in the United Kingdom.
What better way to deflect domestic criticism in the UK than to pander to swaths of bigoted voters by taking unjustified measures against the Jewish State?
The decision of the British government to expel an Israeli diplomat is just the latest in a spate of hypocritical, discriminatory actions the United Kingdom has implemented against Israel. However, such moves are not only grounded in a long-held British willingness to victimize Israel, but in a British government with no qualms about abusing its relationship with an ally to cover up its own failings.
How convenient that on Tuesday the BBC news service’s headline changed straight from “Labor suspends three ministers” to “Britain expels Israeli diplomat.” Of course, this sudden change is more than just convenient – a contrived act on behalf of the British to use Israel as a smoke screen for its own problems. Even more worrying is the distinct possibility that Britain is simply following the US lead on how to divert domestic problems – by picking on Israel.That this trend has been propagated by Israel’s supposedly greatest friend, the US, is truly disturbing and requires immediate action. It didn’t take President Barack Obama long to realize the best way of dealing with the embarrassment of seeing his foreign policy goals fall by the wayside was to focus on Israel.
While in Egypt there has not been so much as a sniff of democracy since Obama’s “historic” speech in Cairo, and Guantanamo Bay looks less likely to close than a McDonald’s during rush hour, Obama is guaranteed a plethora of great international headlines by manipulating a friendly nation, and dangling the prevention of Iran’s nuclear program – undoubtedly an existential threat – in front of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.The gross hypocrisy of the British is as baffling as it is disgraceful; after all, the British response to terrorism has been to launch wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, however justifiable, were both immensely costly in term of civilian casualties.
Naturally, the mere suggestion of the UK being castigated like Israel in the UN Human Rights Council, despite widespread allegations of torture and various war crimes, is laughable, never mind the idea of British leaders being prevented from fulfilling their duties under laws of universal jurisdiction.REGARDLESS OF whether Israel was involved in the Dubai assassination or not, the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was an exercise in what Britain has proven inept at doing itself – taking care of a dangerous terrorist with the loss of no civilians whatsoever.
The question begged is why, when thousands of refugees are purposefully displaced in Sri Lanka, human rights are consistently clamped down on in China and more than half of the world’s population fail to have their right to democratic leadership realized, is Britain picking on Israel for a crime it hasn’t even been convicted of?The answer is simple. Israel is by far the easiest target, guaranteed to captivate the media and win over a public salivating at the thought of seeing it strung up. What better way to deflect domestic criticism than to pander to swaths of bigoted voters by launching unjustified measures against the Jewish state?
As Gilad Schalit languishes in Gaza in contravention of the Third Geneva Convention, Britain can be counted on to do the bare minimum to secure his release, while accusing Israel of being the nation showing a disregard for the two countries’ diplomatic relationship. It is, rather, the British, unable to prevent their own legal system being abused for racist endeavors, who should be red-faced over the recent breakdown of relations.
The wording of Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s announcement to Parliament on the decision to expel the Israeli diplomat was grounded in irony. Why Miliband feels in a position to talk of the “intolerable” way in which a “friend” operates is deeply questionable. Britain is in no place to be preaching morality, never mind to a free, democratic nation.
British Jewry, in its muted action, has goaded the willingness of the British government to stab Israel in the back. We are undoubtedly in a situation where the British government has no fear of provoking the pro-Israel and Jewish population into meaningful action, rendering Israel by far the easiest target when finding a scapegoat to cover up domestic misgivings. This must be the wake-up call.
While the British Jewish leadership was happy to let the disgraceful universal jurisdiction fiasco get sorted out behind closed doors, this expulsion is a step too far. The expulsion of an Israeli diplomat is grounded in discrimination and bias. Britain would not take such measures against any other state, even those hostile to the UK.
This is not just an attack on the State of Israel but on Britain’s own Jewish population. If British Jewry does not now stand up and be counted, then when?The writer has been a frequent observer of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and is now based in the United Kingdom.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Israel’s first real response to Goldstone
By YAAKOV KATZ 15/03/2010 - Jerusalem Post
Over a year after Operation Cast Lead, the vindication of the IDF has finally begun.
Over a year after Operation Cast Lead and following wide-ranging criticism and countless international condemnations, the vindication of the IDF has finally begun.The 500-page report revealed Monday by The Jerusalem Post and authored by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is the first real, aggressive Israeli response to the Goldstone Report, taking it apart piece-by-piece and explaining the true nature of the conflict against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.There are chapters on Hamas’s use of mosques, hospitals, ambulances and schools.
There is an entire section dedicated to unmasking the Palestinian police force in the Gaza Strip, which the Goldstone Report claimed was a civilian force, saying Israel’s attacks against policemen were unjustified.There is another section dedicated to explaining the events that led Israel to launch Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, a period of time almost completely ignored by judge Richard Goldstone and an issue illustrated most recently by the interview Col. Desmond Travers, the Irish officer who sat on the panel, gave in which he claimed only two rockets were fired into Israel in the month preceding the operation. In reality, there were close to 200.
What is interesting about the Malam report is that it does not focus on the IDF and the way it operated inside the Gaza Strip. Instead it focuses strictly on Hamas, its tactics and the way it cynically uses civilians as well as civilian infrastructure to hide behind and launch attacks from within against Israel.The results are astounding.While Hamas’s use of mosques was known, the Malam report shows that it was extensive and was a pillar of Hamas’s overall military doctrine (almost 100 mosques were used to store weapons and launch Kassams). While everyone has heard the story about how Hamas terror chiefs hid in the basement of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Malam report reveals maps of other hospitals which were surrounded by mines, Hamas military posts and tunnels.
While Malam and its head, Col. (res.) Reuven Erlich, should be applauded for their work, the question that needs to be asked is why a non-profit organization run by former Military Intelligence officers is doing what the Foreign Ministry, IDF Spokesman’s Office and Prime Minister’s Office should have been doing immediately after the air force launched its first missile into downtown Gaza City on the first day of the operation.
The radio waves are full these days of commercials from Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein’s new campaign to get regular Israelis, during their travels abroad, to explain that they don’t ride camels or eat only barbecued foods. Instead of wasting taxpayer’s money, Edelstein’s budget should go to establishing an official response team that will be responsible for writing such reports and disseminating them to the media, not a year after the operation but rather as the fighting is still going on.
Until this happens, Israel has only itself to blame for the level of criticism it faces after every war and operation.And if not for Erlich and his team of expert researchers, Israel wouldn’t even have the report that Malam released on Monday. Instead we would be focused on camels and barbecues.
The full report can be downloaded from the following web site, however you should be aware that the report is 500 pages long and will take time to download
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/g_report_e1.pdf
Over a year after Operation Cast Lead, the vindication of the IDF has finally begun.
Over a year after Operation Cast Lead and following wide-ranging criticism and countless international condemnations, the vindication of the IDF has finally begun.The 500-page report revealed Monday by The Jerusalem Post and authored by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is the first real, aggressive Israeli response to the Goldstone Report, taking it apart piece-by-piece and explaining the true nature of the conflict against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.There are chapters on Hamas’s use of mosques, hospitals, ambulances and schools.
There is an entire section dedicated to unmasking the Palestinian police force in the Gaza Strip, which the Goldstone Report claimed was a civilian force, saying Israel’s attacks against policemen were unjustified.There is another section dedicated to explaining the events that led Israel to launch Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, a period of time almost completely ignored by judge Richard Goldstone and an issue illustrated most recently by the interview Col. Desmond Travers, the Irish officer who sat on the panel, gave in which he claimed only two rockets were fired into Israel in the month preceding the operation. In reality, there were close to 200.
What is interesting about the Malam report is that it does not focus on the IDF and the way it operated inside the Gaza Strip. Instead it focuses strictly on Hamas, its tactics and the way it cynically uses civilians as well as civilian infrastructure to hide behind and launch attacks from within against Israel.The results are astounding.While Hamas’s use of mosques was known, the Malam report shows that it was extensive and was a pillar of Hamas’s overall military doctrine (almost 100 mosques were used to store weapons and launch Kassams). While everyone has heard the story about how Hamas terror chiefs hid in the basement of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Malam report reveals maps of other hospitals which were surrounded by mines, Hamas military posts and tunnels.
While Malam and its head, Col. (res.) Reuven Erlich, should be applauded for their work, the question that needs to be asked is why a non-profit organization run by former Military Intelligence officers is doing what the Foreign Ministry, IDF Spokesman’s Office and Prime Minister’s Office should have been doing immediately after the air force launched its first missile into downtown Gaza City on the first day of the operation.
The radio waves are full these days of commercials from Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein’s new campaign to get regular Israelis, during their travels abroad, to explain that they don’t ride camels or eat only barbecued foods. Instead of wasting taxpayer’s money, Edelstein’s budget should go to establishing an official response team that will be responsible for writing such reports and disseminating them to the media, not a year after the operation but rather as the fighting is still going on.
Until this happens, Israel has only itself to blame for the level of criticism it faces after every war and operation.And if not for Erlich and his team of expert researchers, Israel wouldn’t even have the report that Malam released on Monday. Instead we would be focused on camels and barbecues.
The full report can be downloaded from the following web site, however you should be aware that the report is 500 pages long and will take time to download
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/g_report_e1.pdf
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Letter to Rachel Corrie's Parents in Haifa
First terrorist attacks and Katyushas, now Haifa is about to become the victim of yet another indignity. It is to be the scene for a legal assault by the parents of Rachel Corrie. The Corries are now suing the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces in Israeli court. They and their Arab lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, a radical activist (involved in the movement for a world boycott of Israel), filed a civil suit in Haifa court and the first hearing is scheduled for March 10.
Ironically, the Corries were themselves briefly kidnapped in Gaza by Hamas terrorists in January 2006, when they were in town to show the local jihadis their support.Palestinian gunmen burst into a Rafah house early Wednesday and tried to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in 2003 as she protested the impending demolition of a house in the southern Gaza town, according to a witness.
The five gunmen appeared to be affiliated with the Fatah movement, according to Samir Nasrallah, the Corries' host. The gunmen eventually relented after being told who their targets were, he said.
According to the Telegraph, "The gunmen wanted to kidnap the couple as bargaining chips to secure the release of a militia leader, Alaa al-Hams, arrested on suspicion of ordering the kidnap of the British human rights activist Kate Burton and her parents ."
The Corries later issued a statement in which they denied they had been kidnapped at all. They had just been hosted at gunpoint. But the simple truth is that the Corries were released once the terrorists realized they were a far more valuable asset for Hamas if they were running around free.
The following letter has been published by Steven Plaut from Haifa University to "welcome" the Corries to Haifa.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrie,
You are coming to our lovely town to sue Israel, claiming that your daughter was "killed by an Israeli bulldozer." But you neglect to mention the circumstances under which she was so killed (nor the fact that she died from her injuries while under Palestinian medical care).
You have stated, "She had been working in Rafah with a nonviolent resistance organization, the International Solidarity Movement, trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and wells." Homes and wells, huh?
Well, she was not. Rachel was trying to prevent the demolition of tunnels used to smuggle weapons for Palestinian terrorists seeking to murder Jewish civilians. ISM openly endorses Palestinian "armed struggle" against Jewish children and civilians and openly collaborates with terrorists. It has hidden wanted terrorists and their weapons in its offices. It is an accomplice in murder. Lying is not the best way to drum up sympathy for your daughter.
You say your daughter died trying to protect an "innocent house." Again, this is not the truth. That "innocent house" was camouflage for a not-so-innocent terrorist smuggling tunnel, and the residents of that innocent house knew all about the tunnel.
Your daughter was in a war zone as a belligerent, on behalf of a movement of Arab fascists seeking to destroy Israel and murder as many Jews as possible. Your daughter died while interfering with an anti-terror operation carried out by soldiers in a land in which she had no business being at all.
You demand that we feel your pain at the loss of your daughter, yet your daughter conscripted herself as an accomplice for those seeking to murder my children. You feel no pain for the scores of martyrs in my own city of Haifa murdered by those same terrorists.
Your daughter put herself in harm's way by challenging a large bulldozer and positioning herself where the operator could not see her. You know quite well that the bulldozer operator was not seeking to harm her.
You have written, "We had not understood the devastating nature of the Palestinians' situation." Of course, youhave never expressed any interest in the devastating nature of the Jews' situation. The Jews have been battling Arab fascism and genocidal terrorism for a hundred years, before, during, and after the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews. Your daughter was helping those who perpetrate Nazi-like atrocities against randomly selected Jews.
You smugly praise the propaganda play about your daughter, which ignored all the other Rachels - the Jewish victims of terror in Israel who were murdered by genocidal terrorists.
Your daughter, and apparently you as well, never had any understanding of the Middle East conflict. The Middle East conflict is not about the right to self-determination of Palestinian Arabs, but rather about the right to self-determination of Israeli Jews.
For a century the Arabs have attempted to block any expression of Jewish self-determination, using violence, armed aggression, and terrorism. The Arabs today control 22 countries and territory nearly twice the size of the United States. They refuse to share even a fraction of one percent of the Middle East with Jews, even in a territory smaller than New Jersey.
The Arab countries invented the Palestinian people and their "plight" as a propaganda ploy in imitation of the German campaign on behalf of Sudeten self-determination in the 1930s. Just as the struggle for "Sudeten liberation" was nothing more than a fig leaf for the German aggression aimed at annihilating Czechoslovakia, so the struggle for "Palestinian liberation" is nothing more than cover for a jihad to destroy Israel and its population.
Your write, "Clearly, our daughter has become a positive symbol for people."
I am afraid you are mistaken. Your daughter has become a symbol for dangerous foolhardiness. She essentially committed suicide as an empty gesture to assist murderers and terrorists.
You want the world to mourn for your daughter, who died while working with monsters out to murder our children. On the pages of anti-Semitic propaganda web magazines you denounce Israel, but you do not have a single word of sympathy for the families of the thousands of innocent Israeli victims of the terrorists with whom your daughter chose to ally herself.
On behalf of the citizens of Haifa, all of whom your daughter's Hamas friends are trying to murder, I remain,
Steven Plaut
Ironically, the Corries were themselves briefly kidnapped in Gaza by Hamas terrorists in January 2006, when they were in town to show the local jihadis their support.Palestinian gunmen burst into a Rafah house early Wednesday and tried to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in 2003 as she protested the impending demolition of a house in the southern Gaza town, according to a witness.
The five gunmen appeared to be affiliated with the Fatah movement, according to Samir Nasrallah, the Corries' host. The gunmen eventually relented after being told who their targets were, he said.
According to the Telegraph, "The gunmen wanted to kidnap the couple as bargaining chips to secure the release of a militia leader, Alaa al-Hams, arrested on suspicion of ordering the kidnap of the British human rights activist Kate Burton and her parents ."
The Corries later issued a statement in which they denied they had been kidnapped at all. They had just been hosted at gunpoint. But the simple truth is that the Corries were released once the terrorists realized they were a far more valuable asset for Hamas if they were running around free.
The following letter has been published by Steven Plaut from Haifa University to "welcome" the Corries to Haifa.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrie,
You are coming to our lovely town to sue Israel, claiming that your daughter was "killed by an Israeli bulldozer." But you neglect to mention the circumstances under which she was so killed (nor the fact that she died from her injuries while under Palestinian medical care).
You have stated, "She had been working in Rafah with a nonviolent resistance organization, the International Solidarity Movement, trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and wells." Homes and wells, huh?
Well, she was not. Rachel was trying to prevent the demolition of tunnels used to smuggle weapons for Palestinian terrorists seeking to murder Jewish civilians. ISM openly endorses Palestinian "armed struggle" against Jewish children and civilians and openly collaborates with terrorists. It has hidden wanted terrorists and their weapons in its offices. It is an accomplice in murder. Lying is not the best way to drum up sympathy for your daughter.
You say your daughter died trying to protect an "innocent house." Again, this is not the truth. That "innocent house" was camouflage for a not-so-innocent terrorist smuggling tunnel, and the residents of that innocent house knew all about the tunnel.
Your daughter was in a war zone as a belligerent, on behalf of a movement of Arab fascists seeking to destroy Israel and murder as many Jews as possible. Your daughter died while interfering with an anti-terror operation carried out by soldiers in a land in which she had no business being at all.
You demand that we feel your pain at the loss of your daughter, yet your daughter conscripted herself as an accomplice for those seeking to murder my children. You feel no pain for the scores of martyrs in my own city of Haifa murdered by those same terrorists.
Your daughter put herself in harm's way by challenging a large bulldozer and positioning herself where the operator could not see her. You know quite well that the bulldozer operator was not seeking to harm her.
You have written, "We had not understood the devastating nature of the Palestinians' situation." Of course, youhave never expressed any interest in the devastating nature of the Jews' situation. The Jews have been battling Arab fascism and genocidal terrorism for a hundred years, before, during, and after the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews. Your daughter was helping those who perpetrate Nazi-like atrocities against randomly selected Jews.
You smugly praise the propaganda play about your daughter, which ignored all the other Rachels - the Jewish victims of terror in Israel who were murdered by genocidal terrorists.
Your daughter, and apparently you as well, never had any understanding of the Middle East conflict. The Middle East conflict is not about the right to self-determination of Palestinian Arabs, but rather about the right to self-determination of Israeli Jews.
For a century the Arabs have attempted to block any expression of Jewish self-determination, using violence, armed aggression, and terrorism. The Arabs today control 22 countries and territory nearly twice the size of the United States. They refuse to share even a fraction of one percent of the Middle East with Jews, even in a territory smaller than New Jersey.
The Arab countries invented the Palestinian people and their "plight" as a propaganda ploy in imitation of the German campaign on behalf of Sudeten self-determination in the 1930s. Just as the struggle for "Sudeten liberation" was nothing more than a fig leaf for the German aggression aimed at annihilating Czechoslovakia, so the struggle for "Palestinian liberation" is nothing more than cover for a jihad to destroy Israel and its population.
Your write, "Clearly, our daughter has become a positive symbol for people."
I am afraid you are mistaken. Your daughter has become a symbol for dangerous foolhardiness. She essentially committed suicide as an empty gesture to assist murderers and terrorists.
You want the world to mourn for your daughter, who died while working with monsters out to murder our children. On the pages of anti-Semitic propaganda web magazines you denounce Israel, but you do not have a single word of sympathy for the families of the thousands of innocent Israeli victims of the terrorists with whom your daughter chose to ally herself.
On behalf of the citizens of Haifa, all of whom your daughter's Hamas friends are trying to murder, I remain,
Steven Plaut
Monday, March 1, 2010
“One Million Jews help the Mossad” - BBC.
By Douglas Murray, Daily Telegraph blogs
February 18, 2010
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/douglasmurray/100026549/bbc-broadcast-one-million-jews-help-mossad/
Amid all the excitable nonsense being talked about dead Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh I think the BBC has topped the lot. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4's PM programme last night broadcast (at 17:35 mins) one interviewee explained that up to one million Jews worldwide might be on hand to assist Mossad in executions. That would mean about one in every dozen Jewish people worldwide is a secret assistant to assassins.
Now I must have more than a dozen or so Jewish friends. So which is it?
Maybe I know two? It makes you think doesn't it?
The next time I am at a friend's child's bar mitzvah the likelihood is that on at least 10 separate occasions during the day I'll be helping myself at the buffet beside, or dancing opposite, someone who secretly helps in assassinations. Which will certainly make me more circumspect about my dance moves, not to mention barging in at the buffet queue.
Most people are terrible at keeping secrets, and Jews are no different from anyone else in this regard. So the idea that up to a million of them keep this secret knowledge strikes me as not just one of the most ridiculous, but in the present climate one of the most dangerous, ideas for the BBC to pump into circulation. Yet it typical of the lather nearly all the press have got into with this Dubai business.
February 18, 2010
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/douglasmurray/100026549/bbc-broadcast-one-million-jews-help-mossad/
Amid all the excitable nonsense being talked about dead Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh I think the BBC has topped the lot. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4's PM programme last night broadcast (at 17:35 mins) one interviewee explained that up to one million Jews worldwide might be on hand to assist Mossad in executions. That would mean about one in every dozen Jewish people worldwide is a secret assistant to assassins.
Now I must have more than a dozen or so Jewish friends. So which is it?
Maybe I know two? It makes you think doesn't it?
The next time I am at a friend's child's bar mitzvah the likelihood is that on at least 10 separate occasions during the day I'll be helping myself at the buffet beside, or dancing opposite, someone who secretly helps in assassinations. Which will certainly make me more circumspect about my dance moves, not to mention barging in at the buffet queue.
Most people are terrible at keeping secrets, and Jews are no different from anyone else in this regard. So the idea that up to a million of them keep this secret knowledge strikes me as not just one of the most ridiculous, but in the present climate one of the most dangerous, ideas for the BBC to pump into circulation. Yet it typical of the lather nearly all the press have got into with this Dubai business.
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