Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Dan Bielak Has Some Words

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives... where Mike is totally out of control and needs to be stopped at all costs!}

{Visit Dan's blog at danielbielak.blogspot.com}

Every once in awhile I like to front page a comment that looks promising for discussion. I very much hope that Dan will not mind if I front page this comment and discuss it at some length. Dan writes:

Until recently, I always took for granted that I was "liberal". To me the phrase "ultra liberal", still, despite what has been happening among, and to, and by, what I now call the so-called "Liberal Left", does not really have, for me, negative connotations. To me the phrase "ultra liberal", still, has kind of the same connotation as the phrase "ultra good".

However, I no longer consider myself to be "liberal". I have learned certain things that I didn't know at the time when I thought of myself as being "liberal". Seeing the behavior of the contemporary Left, and hearing and reading the words of people such as Thomas Sowell (a former Socialist, by the way) has caused me to become aware of certain things that I wasn't aware of before, and has broadened my horizons -- my knowledge and understanding.

For the record, I do consider myself a liberal because on the issues (and it's the issues that count) I fall on the liberal side of the equation. The term "liberal" has shifting meanings and shifting connotations, but from a classical standpoint, as well as from a contemporary standpoint, I am a liberal.

The classical meaning, i.e., the 18th and 19th century meaning of "liberal" means favoring democracy, a free press, free market capitalism, freedom of religion, and so forth. This is what the western system (and the Constitution of the United States) is founded upon. It represents the western political Enlightenment in opposition to the "Old Regime" of European feudalism. By this definition Ronald Reagan was also a liberal.

The contemporary meaning of "liberal," however, as it emerged in the middle of the twentieth century, is what we might call "rights liberalism." Women's rights. The rights of minorities. Gay rights. And so forth. That being the case, I am a liberal in the contemporary sense, as well, since I favor universal human rights and freedom of opportunity for all people, including ethnic and sexual minorities.

Part of the problem that we have is that western "progressives" have given up on universal human rights in favor of the multicultural ideal. This means that they have sold Jews, women, and Gay people in the Middle East entirely down the river. The contemporary left has, thus, abandoned its entire reason to be. Once western feminists started talking about how the burka is liberating for Muslim women, it was all over. The progressive-left has been unable to reconcile its fundamental contradictions and thus no longer stands for anything. This is why we see essays on large progressive sites like Daily Kos lauding the fascist, sexist, homophobic, and genocidal Muslim Brotherhood as something akin to a civil rights organization.

However, I do not consider myself to be "Conservative". The political party associated with the contemporary "Conservative" movement -- the Republican Party -- is still headed by members of the bigoted selfish supremacist "Establishment" social class. However, the ideas and agenda of the contemporary "Conservative" movement is, in fact, mainly Classical Liberal.

The political views that I hold are Classical Liberal.

I am not a "conservative" either.

The Western Left, as a whole, has become a populist totalitarian racist movement, and has allied itself with a huge global racist genocidally anti-Jewish, totalitarian, supremacist, imperialist, world-domination-seeking, political movement -- the Islamic supremacist political movement -- a revival of authoritative Islam. Furthermore, the political party of the Left in the United States of America -- the Democrat Party -- has come to be controlled by wealthy actual Marxist Radical totalitarians and their organizations.

The progressive-left is, as Dan notes, the most racist political movement in the west today, due to the fact that they consider people of color, particularly Palestinians, to be so inferior that they cannot be held to normative standards of human decency. This is what has been called "humanitarian racism" and it is just as pernicious as the more traditional forms of racism that the progressive-left claims to oppose. Furthermore, the progressive-left does have totalitarian instincts which we constantly see on an individual basis, as well as from the kind of collectivist inclinations which led many on the left to support Soviet Communism in the early-middle part of the last century.

Republican supposedly "Conservative" political candidates have, at least, the pressure of their constituency to uphold the U.S. Constitution against the efforts of the purveyors of Sharia. Democrat so-called "Liberal" candidates are colluding with, and enabling, the purveyors of Sharia.

This is correct.

There are elements in the progressive movement that have joined with radical Jihadis in opposition to the Jewish people, and the Jewish state of Israel, as we see in the BDS movement. We also saw it in the flotilla nonsense from over a year ago, in which progressive racists such as Alice Walker joined with actual Jihadis in an effort to confront Jews on the high seas.

Their progressive message to us was, "Shut up. Go back to Auschwitz!"

I now choose to support Republican supposedly "Conservative" political candidates rather than Democrat so-called "Liberal" candidates.

I choose to support Winston Churchill rather than Benito Mussolini.

Ignorant, bigoted, indoctrinated, totalitarian, racist so-called "Liberal" Leftists may call me a "warmonger" -- even though I disapprove of any and all violent action, and even though I am advocating for beneficial non-violent skillful actions.

In the 1930's, self-professed "Liberal" "Pacifists", and many Socialists, excused and defended the Nazi regime of Germany and called any people who expressed opposition to the Western collusion with the Nazi regime of Germany "warmongers".

Unlike Dan I am not a principled pacifist and believe, given the history of the Jewish people and the ways in which both Christians and Muslims have kept our numbers artificially small over the course of many centuries, that Jewish people have a right and an obligation to stand up for ourselves against aggression.

In today's world the primary aggression against the Jewish people is Muslim aggression in the Middle East, which is the very source of Palestinian grievances. The Palestinians, and their western-left allies, generally blame the Jews for Palestinian social and economic dysfunctions, claiming that it is Israeli oppression which is the source of those dysfunctions.

This is false.

The source of Palestinian social and economic dysfunctions is the long history of Arab-Muslim race-hatred toward, and oppression of, the Jews of the Middle East. The reason that there is a so-called "occupation," which is to say, the reason that there are checkpoints and the security barrier, is because Jewish people, given our history, reserve the right to protect ourselves.

Until such a time as their Koranically-inspired aggression abates they will continue to live in the poverty and misery that their own hatred toward us creates.

We must, however, stop blaming ourselves for the consequences of their hatred.

Their hatred toward us is not our fault. It was never our fault and it is still not our fault.

Israel is not perfect, but it is a far better place than most countries on this Earth.

We need to remember that.

{Visit Dan's blog at danielbielak.blogspot.com}

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Peace Activist Urges Jews To Speak Out

geoffff


How could this blog resist an invitation like that ...



... delivered  free, frank and fair by those nice folk who bring us the Echonetdaily.



Israeli-born Palestinian-rights and peace activist Avigail Abarbanel continues to feel the wrath of family and Jews everywhere after turning against everything she’d been taught about the state of Israel and how it came into being.
But she is no longer afraid to speak out against her own ‘tribe’ and urges Jews everywhere not to remain silent and to speak up for human right and against injustice, especially in Palestine

And so on. Do be my guest.

OK here's the thing. I was not in room 2b of the Rainbow Serpent wing of the  Byron Bay Community Centre  at high noon on Saturday, in between the crystal jewellery weaving psychic healing class in 2a and the Gyuto monk peace chanting across the hall, in time for the great commune no Jew state touring book launch. This was because of a prior commitment and a life.  I regret this some now because I am a little curious. However it is a forty minute drive each way and that alone gave me a vague and uneasy feeling there was something unholy about the whole venture. I can't quite put my finger on it..  At least I still have my gold coin.


Anyway here's the Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill  critical review of the book with twenty five authors of the same ethnicity and indulged liberal backgrounds, and pretty much identical politics, all residents in the English speaking liberal democracies where they belong to the same cultural classes that host them and for which they produced the book to prove that they were done being a tribe. They are beyond that now.


The book looks a bit thin to me and that's just from the photo. The photo incidentally is as close as this blog is likely to  get. I've seen weightier promo brochures slapped together in a single night by a team a fraction that size and who still had plenty of time to cut the slides for the breakfast briefing. 


Update






How many trees had to die to produce this pro-war street brochure?


The Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill critical review here.





Friday, June 22, 2012

The War of Words

Like every war, this war against Israel and the Jews is being fought with words as much as guns, bombs and missiles.  Those waging this war against the Jews are used to waging wars. They do it among themselves all the time and they know how to deploy words and lies against their enemies. It is second nature.

David Singer has just written a take on this

The Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Information has now issued a book instructing Palestinian Arabs on the words they should use to replace ” the Israeli and American dissemination of poisoned terms".
Palestinian Arabs are encouraged to use terms that indicate that Israel is the result of “a racist, colonialist endeavor,” and the book instructs Palestinians never to use the name “Israel” alone but instead to use the term “Israeli colonialism.” To use “Israel” by itself is damaging, according to the PA, because to do so “describes Israel as a natural state.”
Whilst most of the misleading and deceptive terms to be employed are not new – the book highlights official PA approval and acceptance of the use of such terms in the semantic war that has been ongoing for the last 130 years – alongside the actual conflict that has been played out between Jews and Arabs during that period.
For example – the use of the term “West Bank” was introduced by Jordan in 1950 to replace the biblical names “Judea and Samaria” – names that had been used throughout the centuries and were still being used by the British Mandate authorities in 1948. This change of name has been an effective propaganda tool in trying to erase any Jewish connection with and entitlement to these areas after they were occupied by Jordan in the 1948 War of Independence and subsequently lost by Jordan to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War
Similarly the use of the term “freedom fighter” instead of the term “terrorist” has had an impact on the way the Jewish-Arab conflict has been perceived.
...
Exactly. Read it all.
If I'm ever charged with murder I want the man who first said "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"  as my defense counsel.

[Hat tip  Shirlee]


The Obama Administration's Chilling and Vapid Response to Anti-Jewish Violence

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives}

The Obama administration, on the question of Israeli security, is simply not to be trusted. The administration claims "to have Israel's back," but I would not believe that for one second. Obama wrecked whatever potential there may have been for a resolution of the conflict, yet continues to implicitly justify anti-Jewish violence in the Middle East through his racist obsession with where Jews live in Judea and in Jerusalem.

And make no mistake, demanding that Jews be allowed to live over here, but not over there, is racist. Period. There is no reason in this world why Jews should not be allowed to live in a Palestinian state, but every time that Barack Obama complains that Jews are building in Judea he reinforces the racist view which says that Jews have no place on historically Jewish land.

In recent days Hamas has shot over 100 rockets into southern Israel. 100 rockets. There is no other country on the planet that would allow its citizenry to be terrorized, but if Israel responds western "progressives" will launch into furies of righteous indignation. There is nothing more hateful in the eyes of the progressive-left then Jewish self-defense, which is always portrayed as aggression.

So, Hamas is once again seeking to murder the Jews, as is consistent with its charter wherein we read:

I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill...

In response to this Jew-Hating genocidal madness the US Department of State has issued this declaration:

Gaza Rocket Attacks

Press Statement

Victoria Nuland
Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC

June 19, 2012

We strongly condemn the rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, which has dramatically and dangerously escalated in the past day. As we have said many times, there is no justification for the targeting of innocent civilians and call on those responsible to take immediate action to stop these cowardly acts.

We regret the injuries sustained in today’s violence. To avoid an escalation of the situation, we encourage all parties to exercise restraint.

What a chilling and vapid response.

"We encourage all parties to exercise restraint."

In other words, Israel must take its beating and like it. This is, apparently, known as "having Israel's back." What a terrific friend this administration is. Hamas bombs the holy hell out of southern Israel for days on end and Israel's Best Friend Forever tells it to shut up and take it.

This, of course, comes from the same Victoria Nuland who doesn't quite know where Jerusalem is to be found.



Q: What is the capital of Israel?

MS. NULAND: Our policy with regard to Jerusalem is that it has to be solved through negotiations. That’s all I have to say on this issue.

Yes, what a great friend this administration is to the Jewish people and to the Jewish state of Israel. 35 hundred years of Jewish history in Jerusalem magically disappears as Ms. Nuland scratches her head and as the bombs continue to drop.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Humanity is Great

geoffff


If you think there is no hope that the Arab Muslim world will ever snap out of the trance that has their societies sleepwalking in a Jihadist goose step towards the cliff  you should listen to this man, back in Israel for the first time in five years..



He could have been one of the most powerful terrorist bosses in the region. Instead he chose to be a human being.

hat tip Oldschooltwentysix






Toads on Tour

geoffff

There's been an update in the great "free speech and debate" Byron Bay Israel Bash this weekend.




Echonetdaily,  has published comments from Shirl and me  to a letter they published from one of the promoters of a tour by an obscure Scottish based anti-Zionist activist by the name of Avigail Abarbanel. It took them a little while but they did it. The background to this is in the last post.

You might think that unremarkable but it took us a little by surprise.

These little local papers and their internet shopfronts are not officially affiliated with the Australian Greens but they are sympathetic and are part of the broader movement. This of course is their right and this blog is glad to see these papers around. But who is officially affiliated with the Australian Greens anyway? The Greens NSW branch has refused to hand over details of its membership to party federal officers.

 Affiliation can be a fair question even of Greens senators. The party's spokesperson on international affairs in the Senate happens to be formerly one of the most senior and active apparatchiks of the Australian subsidiary of the Communist Party of Joseph Stalin  and was until the party finally fell apart after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For all of her life  she devoted herself to the political interests of the Soviet Union in Australia and she did that full time right up until there was no longer any Soviet Union.

Welcome to the Socialist Party of Australia. Disappeared from time somewhere between this and this.  Wiped from the pages of history as their latest hero would say. How many other members of this fallen nest of  alien vampires found a home in the Australian Greens is probably something that not even Bob Brown knows.

The ugly old hard left don't really hold much for people not doing what they are told let alone speaking out of turn. I expect Greens of the old pre-takeover party have discovered that for themselves. Perhaps Bob Brown was among them. Never mind old comrades. It could have been worse. Instead of taking over your NSW branch they could have finally taken over the country. Then they would have taken you out the back and shot after a ten minute process.

There are a few straws in the wind that suggest some change for the Greens on the pro-war, pro-genocide, pro-imperialist totalitarianism front; policy-wise. A hint here and there that they may be trying to drag themeslves from the sticky moral fugue that has gripped them since their Marrickville moment. I' ll save that for another post but here's a tantalising thought. Could some Greens actually be trying to take back their party?.

Anyway it turns out the whiny little letter in The Echo pushing Avigail Abarbanel's upcoming book promotion at the Byron Community Centre was  merely pushing part of an organised national tour by our earnest anti-Zionist activist. Shirl has kindly sent me the  itinery via the Brisbane branch of one of the crackpot cults that carry this intellectual virus.They are the usual suspects but I don't mind giving the event a plug. Let the sun shine in as they used to say around Byron Bay and Nimbin. I might even show up.

The only mildly interesting thing about Abarbanel is how ordinary she is and how ordinary doubtless are the other twenty five contributors to this book that presumably she organised. Many hands make light work. This is a commune book if there ever was one. Also how transparent she is about the psychological source of her anti-Jewish State obsession. She hates Israel, and has devoted herself to its destruction, because she has really serious hate/love vengeance issues with her living mother. You can't make this stuff up. This is not satire. It is the tragic truth.  If you wrote a character like this into a novel or script the work would be dismissed as clumsy and cartoonish. It is impossible to dislike a person like this. Some pity perhaps but it is also impossible to take her seriously. As a character in fiction she would only work as comedy.

Yet these characters are important and the old hard left cults spend a lot of effort nurturing them. Why? What is their use? Abarbanel isn't even Israeli any more. But she is Jewish. Or at least Jewish enough. That is the point. The Israel obsessives honestly believe that by having a few Jews upfront in their campaigns to destroy the Jewish state they have trumped any obvious suggestion of antisemitism.  They have in fact merely confirmed it. They will never understand that.

So should I show up at Byron Bay Community Centre at the correct time and date this weekend? It's only a forty minute drive and I haven't been to Byron for a while. Have a beer and burger at Strop's pub.  Check out the new video surveillance cameras. Maybe take in some of that famous free speech and debate that Byron Bay and the Greens have suddenly given themselves a reputation. Perhaps even take part and report back. Just like Daphne Anson did recently at an event organised by a branch of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in rural England addressed by a rabbi  from Neturei Karta.

I dunno. The weather forecast this weekend is for perfect and spending any time in an enclosed space with a bunch of Jew hating commo wanker hippies and posers uglier than warts on a cane toad is just one more slice our of life. It's a big ask. Besides I fear I may lack Daphne's cool. I might say something rude.

I'll think about it.

Hat tip Shirlee

Cross posted Israel Thrives

Friday, June 15, 2012

Keep BDS Out Of My Valley

geoffff


Many will know that I have an issue with the Tweed Echo, an openly aligned Australian Greens "independent" newspaper distributed in the Tweed Valley of northern NSW (where I live), with an internet  offshoot, that in the past has  had some difficulty masking the anti-Israel obsession that has come to characterise and define that side of Australian politics. Should there be any doubt about that you need only attempt to question the Greens on their policy on whether Israel has a right to exist.  They are agnostic. As shameful and disgusting as it is, Australia has a political party that refuses to acknowledge that the Jewish state is not only a legitimate expression of Jewish nationhood born of a hard fought national liberation movement but even refuses to accept that the country and the Jews have a right to be left in peace. The Australian Greens refuses to oppose war and the open threats of genocide and instead apes the ugly rants of the rat bag nasty left and their Islamist and other fascist allies.

About a year ago I wrote a letter to this paper in response to some pretty cranky stuff they published even by the Australian Greens standards. Elsewhere I provided a preface:


A nasty Echo from the past


In the Tweed and Byron Shires there are a lot of Greens. They are everywhere. They are like blowflies at a Barcaldine barbeque. They even have their own newspaper, the Echo. It is the only openly politically aligned newspaper around. While one can respect their industry they show all the hallmarks of their party, including a marked intellectual cowardice. Like most Greens, they are right wing, to the point of reactionary, masquerading as progressives. They campaign against everything. Every now and then their campaigns spill over into something very ugly indeed.

The paper had published an openly antisemitic letter , just in time for the annual Byron Blues Fest. The usual grubby and odious muck. Here's an extract:
"No question of debating the issues, just a tirade of abuse and slander against those who feel strongly enough to take a stand for the human rights of the Palestinian people.
"This is the usual Zionist propaganda onslaught which sets out to crush and silence all opposition both within Israel and the shrinking West Bank and elsewhere in the world.
"The problem is not one of anti-Semitism but one of aggressive, nationalistic, expansionist Zionism. You do not have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. President Woodrow Wilson, a devout Presbyterian, was also a self-professed Zionist, so too is US Vice President Joe Biden. Zionists wrote the Balfour document."
At the time I let it pass. As you do. You would go mad if you tried to respond to this hateful filth every time it pops up.

Not content with the the paper decided to put on display its "non-anti-Semitic but anti- Zionist" credentials by publishing this choice little editorial titbit. I reproduce it in full.
"An Australian delegation will join the international Freedom Flotilla 2, which will set sail next month to break the blockade of Gaza and end Israel’s illegal collective punishment of the people of Gaza. The Australian contingent includes Sylvia Hale, former Greens member of the NSW Parliament, Vivienne Porzsolt of Jews Against the Occupation, Alex Whisson of Australians for Palestine, and youth worker Michael Coleman. The boats will carry humanitarian aid and medical supplies. Our experience with the pro-Israel lobby suggests that the delegation will be accused of anti-semitism, along with Backburner for reporting it."
Excuse me while I vomit.

So here is the letter I sent them.
Dear editor,
Your nasty little sneer about the "pro-Israel lobby", and your complaint about "accusations of antisemitism", pretty much sum up the main reason why your party, the Greens, has no place in mainstream Australian politics.
You complain about your "experience with the pro-Israel lobby". Given that you have never published anything that could be remotely described as "pro-Israel", it can only be that you never publish opinions that differ from yours or the "experience" you claim is very limited indeed. None at all. What is your problem? "They" can't be bothered with you? Who do you mean by this "lobby" anyway? Israel is solidly supported by every major political party in our country. As you would expect from a liberal democracy for the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and the only state there that provides and guarantees full political and civil rights for Arabs. Only some of your party's candidates and some of "One Nation"'s attack Israel so obsessively.Why? If by the "pro-Israel lobby", you mean Australian Jews, then say so. We need to know. About you. Not them.
Your complaint about allegations of antisemitism is absurd. I don't believe you. Some years ago I issued a challenge on Margo Kingston's Webdiary site, that would be famous in part of your paper's core market. Webdiary, I mean. The challenge was to produce a single example of someone serious, seriously suggesting that criticism of Israeli policy, or government, was of itself antisemitism. No takers. A few attempts but no cigars. Not one. It's been over five years now.
The opposite is the truth. It is impossible to defend Israel, and the democratic secular Zionist principles that underpin it, without being accused of racism. Sooner or later it always happens. Always. It is also true that much of the incessant attacks on Israel, especially from the political extremes, and from militant Islamism, is driven by antisemitism. This cannot be honestly denied. It is everywhere.
I said then how ubiquitous your whiny complaint was. "Anybody who criticises Israel risks being labelled an antisemite". Rubbish. A lie. Produce an example. Just one will do. This lie was intended to intimidate or pre-empt those who seek to defend Israel especially against its harshest critics. Nothing has changed.
The situation in Gaza can be summed up in a sentence. Israel has the stark choice of either attempting a military blockade or simply allowing Hamas to become as lethally armed as Hezbollah. Gaza is an Iranian colony ruled by a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood. Their grievance with Israel has nothing at all to do with "occupation". Gaza is not "occupied". Their grievance has everything to do with the fact that Israel is free, liberal and democratic and, above all, with the fact that Israel is the Jewish state. They say so again and again.
Nor do I accept that for you this is about the "Palestinians". The old hard left that now control your party in this state does not give a rat's arse about the Palestinians. They never have and they have been around for a long time. If they gave a damn at all they would be hollering from the rooftops for the liberation of these tragic people from the death grip of Hamas. For them, this is not about the Palestinians at all. Even less is it about the millions of people from Tunisia to Syria and beyond right now risking their lives in a desperate brave struggle for some of those freedoms that Israeli Arabs enjoy as of right and have for decades. For the old hard left, this is about something else entirely.
It is an outrage that your party sought to impose BDS sanctions on Israel, as part of a global campaign aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state, almost as soon as it took effective control of a Sydney council. I can think of no clearer example of abuse of elected office at local government level. I will be publicly asking Greens candidates, especially any standing for re-election in the Tweed Shire, precisely what her position on BDS is. I will do this in an open detailed letter that I will copy you and other local press. If the Greens want this argument then I for one will be happy to oblige.

 And what happened? You know what happened. The Echo declined to publish the letter. This is how  they demonstrate their commitment to free speech and debate.

But today, almost exactly one year later, they did publish this letter.


Speaking in defence

Ex-Israeli Defence Force platoon commander and now psychotherapist, Avigail Abarbanel, is the editor of Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists. She was due to be part of a panel at the Limmud Oz Jewish cultural festival, Monash University, during the long weekend, but the event was cancelled without explanation. The Limmud Oz Board have been accused of political censorship.
Byron Bay’s reputation as a centre for free speech and debate, and as a vigorous supporter for writers through the Writers’ Festival, will welcome Avigail to the Community Centre on 23 January at noon where she will speak to her book. Entry is by gold coin donation.
Gareth Smith, Byron Bay
and check out this comment they also published!
Yes, I heard about Avigail’s problem with censorship at Monash on one of Philip Adams’ radio shows this week. She and her colleague explained themselves very well, to Adams’ obvious discomfort. He’s a notorious supporter of Zionism, having an apostate daughter living in Israel, although he pretends to be ‘open minded’ about the Middle East.

Catch it on ABC RN archives
A huh. Well I too am passionate advocate of free speech and debate so I posted this comment.
It is a serious disgrace to Australian democracy that we harbour so many haters of Israel and the Jews; especially it seems around Byron Bay masquerading as a “centre of free speech and debate”. Try telling the truth. The last thing you want is free speech and debate.
I have no idea who Avigail Arabanel is but you can be certain that if she had anything worthwhile to say she could have said it in Israel. Israel is the centre of free speech and debate in the Middle East. Israel is the only centre of free speech and debate in the Middle East. Why did she have to come to the other side of the planet to say it?
By my count there were 159 presenters at the Limmud Oz 2012 festival of Jewish culture and learning last weekend.
Who knows how many were , in your words, “due to be part of a panel discussion?”. Hundreds? Over a thousand? Look for yourself.
I have no idea why Avigail was “cancelled without explanation” from one of the hundreds of panels that must have been convened during the festival. Anyone who has had anything to do with the organisation of this sort of event, such as the Byron Writers’ Festival for example, will know this is unavoidable but I know one thing for certain .
Your paper has shown not the slightest bit of interest in anything that the other hundreds of speakers at Limmud Oz 2012 have had to say and you can be sure that not one of them will be invited to speak at the Byron Bay Community Centre, irrespective of the date.
Please do not lecture Israel and the Jews about free speech and debate. I don’t think you quite understand the concept.
Geoffff’s Joint, Bar and Grill.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
So how has this centre of free speech and debate handled my latest post?

We don't know yet. My comment is still "awaiting moderation."

We'll see. Who knows? This may be the first time ever the Australian Greens and their supporters have ever allowed a contrary opinion to their anti-Israel blather to b published. Anyone prepared to lay odds?
I will let you know. 

cross posted Israel Thrives





Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Palestinian Jesus


Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.)

The Palestinian theft of Jewish history remains one of the more insidious tactics in their efforts to erase Jewish claims on the land of Israel. Italian journalist and friend of Israel, Giulio Meotti, writes:

At UNESCO’s next session, which will run from June 24th to July 6th in St. Petersburg, the UN cultural body will assess the Palestinian request for admission of the “Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem” to the list of world heritage sites.

The Christian shrine will become Palestine’s first world heritage site.

Next in line is the Hevron’s Cave of the Patriarchs.

So the Palestinians are claiming both the Church of the Nativity and the Cave of the Patriarchs as "Palestinian heritage" sites? It just boggles my mind that so many people would thoughtlessly accept such a designation. The Church of the Nativity was originally a Jewish site and obviously Jesus was a Jew. Thus to claim it as a "Palestinian heritage" site is a lie on its face.

It is true, of course, that the Church of the Nativity has, for obvious reasons, a special resonance with Christians and this should be honored by everyone. We are, after all, talking about the alleged birthplace of Jesus, so naturally Christian claims should be respected. Muslim claims hold significantly less sway due to the fact that for Islam Jesus was merely one prophet among others and is not a figure at the center of their faith.

But the Cave of the Patriarchs? This is one of the holiest sites within the Jewish religion and thus to designate it as a "Palestinian heritage" site would be a crime against the Jewish people. The site may be "Palestinian" in that Hevron is largely an Arab-Muslim town, but the ancient heritage of that town is unquestionably Jewish.

The Palestinians are trying to erase any trace of Jewish history in Judea and Samaria. Yet a few days ago Israeli archaeologists discovered a seal bearing the name “Bethlehem” in ancient Hebrew script from First Temple times, one of the most important pieces of physical evidence supporting the Jewish claim to the town before it became revered as the birthpace of Jesus.

That Judea and Samaria are historically Jewish regions is beyond question. According to A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present, edited by Eli Barnavi, there were about 2 million Jews living in the area over three thousand years ago, within a world population of about 120 million. If the Jews of the Middle East had been allowed to develop normally, without our numbers being kept artificially low through the imposition of dhimmitude under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism from the 7th to the 20th centuries, there would be many, many more of us currently among the living in that part of the world. Our diminished numbers in the region are a direct result of Arab-Muslim imperial persecution of the Jews.

Nonetheless, both the historical and archaeological evidence definitively shows the long Jewish attachment to that land. The Palestinian attachment only goes to the middle-end of the 20th century because it was only at the middle-end of the 20th century that the Palestinians emerged as a distinct people, as Newt Gingrich (of all people) was brave enough to remind us.

Mustafa Barghouti, the influential so-called “moderate” leader within the Palestinian Authority, in December 2009 claimed that Jesus is “the first Palestinian who was tortured in this land”.

The Palestinization of Jesus, with the corollary of an Islamicized Christianity, is one of the most lethal weapons in the Arabs’ war against the Jewish State.

Identifying Jesus as “a Palestinian living under an occupation” has become normative for Christian Palestinianists in the current anti-Israel crusade.

The claiming of Jesus by the Palestinians as one of their own would be comical if it weren't so insidious. It is an effort to use Jewish history, and that includes the history of the emergence of Christianity, as a club against us. It is a Palestinian effort to rob us of our history in order for them to claim it as their own. In this way, not only do the Palestinians seek to destroy Jewish claims on historically Jewish land, but even seek to rob Jews of our very identity.

If they can steal our history they turn us into ghosts.

It doesn’t matter that Jesus was not born a Christian, but a Jew, and that Bethlehem was a Jewish town in Judea, not a Muslim one - because there was no Christianity before his death and certainly no Islam for hundreds of years after his death.

It doesn't matter that the Palestinian Authority persecuted Arab Christians in its midst.

The Palestinian Arab leadership has been successful in turning the Christian narrative against the Jewish people. In this theological-political operation, there is no space for the Jewish tomb of Rachel as well. The Palestinians will try to convince UNESCO to call the shrine Bil Bin Rabah mosque.

The entire Eretz Yisrael is a myth, a colonialist construct, a Jewish plot, as far as they are concerned.

As far as Palestinian and Arab propagandists are concerned the Jews have little or no historical connection to the land of Israel. From an historical perspective this is clearly nonsense, but the purpose of propaganda is to make reality bend to the will the propagandist. The Arab-Muslim / Palestinian effort to kill, or remove, the Jews from Jewish land can only rely so much on rockets and bombs. What they really need is for the world community to join them in their belief that the Jews have no legitimate historical claims to a Jewish state on historically Jewish land.

This we cannot allow them to do, not only because it would represent a terrible injustice to the Jewish people, but also a terrible injustice to the field of history as a discipline of knowledge.

Let them propagandize, but let us not be shy about speaking the truth.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Barack Obama: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing



Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives)

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama told Orthodox Jewish leaders on Tuesday that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority may be too politically weak to deliver a peace agreement and that he fears that the window of opportunity for a deal is closing.

If an opportunity for a negotiated end of hostilities between the Arabs and Jews in the Middle East is closing it is, in part, because of Obama's own behavior. The counterproductive demand for "total settlement freeze" drove Mahmoud Abbas up his tree where he resides to this day. Obama put Abbas in a position in which he could not afford to be seen as softer on Israel than the American president and thus refuses to negotiate.

Nevertheless, Obama said he intends to continue to promote the two-state solution. In a meeting with Orthodox Union leaders at the White House Obama said that he had been consistent in his support for Israel throughout his first term as president.

Continue to support the two-state solution? He never supported it to begin with. In fact, it is Obama who has done much to undermine any possibility of a negotiated two-state agreement. This may not have been his intention, but it was his effect. Furthermore, Obama has been anything but consistent in his support for Israel. On the contrary, Obama has been arbitrary and capricious, not consistent. One cannot tell Jewish people where they may be allowed to build housing for themselves in the ancient Jewish capital of Jerusalem and then claim to be supportive of Israel. It simply does not work that way among any but the most dhimmitudenous among us.

Obama said that differences with Israel were in part due to the quirk of history of a centrist US government and a right-wing Israeli government coexisting. He noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to act without restraints, but that most leaders wanted the same.

It's debatable just how "right-wing" the Netanyahu government is, given the fact that it supports two states for two peoples and it is equally debatable just how "centrist" the Obama administration is. In any case, does Obama think that Netanyahu is his untrained poodle that wants to act without restraints? What an unbelievably imperious remark. So Netanyahu wanted to "act without restraints" and it was Obama who needed to restrain him? Restrain him from doing what, exactly?

Nevertheless, he stressed that he and Netanyahu got along well. He noted that his statement on settlement construction freeze was based on the position of the four previous administrations.

The first sentence in the above paragraph is a lie and the second one is a deception. Anyone who has been following Israel-US relations knows that Obama dislikes Netanyahu, which is why he could say to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!" when he thought the mic was off.

More importantly, while previous US presidents may have opposed the settlements it was only Obama who turned a freeze on settlement construction into a precondition for negotiations, thus ruining any possibility for an end of hostilities. Obama. No one else.

Obama noted that both Israel and the Palestinians felt the US pressure to reach a compromise which created tensions. He stressed that although Israel felt it was the only one being pressed, Washington did the same with the Palestinians. Obama added that the fact that the US was more responsive toward Israel created a problem with the Palestinians.

More nonsense.

While Obama demanded that Israel cease construction even within existing settlements he asked nothing of the Palestinians other than that they show up for negotiations. He didn't even require them to stop inciting their own people with genocidally racist Jew hatred.

Obama stressed that his commitment to Israel could not be questioned but that he could not be expected to agree with Israel on all matters.

Well, this much is certainly true. We can't expect Obama to agree with Israel on all matters. For example, Israel is generally opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood because the Brotherhood is historically derived from, in part, Nazi Germany and wishes to impose Sharia throughout the entire region, which would make Jewish people, once again, either dhimmis or dead.

Obama is not opposed to the Brotherhood and referred to the rise of radical Islam throughout the Middle East as a good thing.  Think of Rosa Parks, he said.

So, no, we cannot expect Obama and Israel to agree upon everything.

That much is certain.

Monday, June 4, 2012

"Islam to Topple Man-made Democracy"

geoffff



From the Gatestone Institute that oldschooltwentysix linked in the last post on the Harold Rhode article Existential Questions Facing the Muslim World , here's another just published piece about a couple of charming little outfits called Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland and the increasingly sluggish law enforcement, judicial and political responses in these little countries to a radical challenge to their democracies. I guess they know the ropes.

What is it with little European countries and radical right wing bullies in the streets?

And something even more chilling. Islamic extremists, from the same group that proved that it is now acceptable (again) in Holland to storm a public meeting and demand that the liberal speakers be executed (in this case outspoken Muslim women) , are setting up a parallel legal system in Belgium.

Way to go. Don't like the government? Fine. Ignore it. Set up your own court system. There are heaps of guys with "the knowledge" who will stick up their hands to be the judges and they already have the law so they don't need a legislature. Likely they already have their police as well; in one form or another.

We owe it to liberal Muslims everywhere and to brave reformers across the Arab world, and in Iran, where they risk imprisonment, torture and murder, to stand up to this.

In September, Sharia4Belgium established Belgium's first Islamic Sharia law court in Antwerp, the second-largest city in the country. Leaders of the group say the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium to challenge the state's authority as the enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.

The self-appointed Muslim judges running the Islamic Sharia court apply Islamic law, rather than the secular Belgian Family Law system, to resolve disputes involving questions of marriage and divorce, child custody and child support, as well as all inheritance-related matters.

Unlike Belgian civil law, Islamic Sharia law does not guarantee equal rights for men and women; critics of the Sharia court say it will undermine the rights of Muslim women in marriage and education. Sharia4Belgium says the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.

"Islam to Topple Man-made Democracy" Soeren Kern

Cross posted Israel Thrives

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Existential Questions Facing the Muslim World

by oldschooltwentysix


I never had a distinct awareness of Harold Rhode until I read Existential Questions Facing the Muslim World, his recent article at Gatestone Institute.

Rather than getting into a debate over who he is, as many prefer to do, perhaps a better route is to examine what he says. You need not agree with the substance, but in my mind there is certainly value to look at different sides of the issues, particularly when they are controversial in scope.

The article begins:

Many parts of the world, such as Korea, China, and India - basically medieval kingdoms fifty or sixty years ago -- are now among the pacesetters of the modern world, both producing, and improving on, existing inventions. The Muslim world, however, often better off than these countries just half a century ago, has remained as it was, or has even, in many instances, deteriorated.

This inertia in the Islamic world seems to stem not from any genetic limitations, or even religious ones, but purely from Islamic culture.

Although one can gain some insight into Islamic culture from books and other written material, if one is to really understand the Muslim world, there is no substitute for sitting in coffee or tea houses, spending time with Muslims, and asking them questions in their own surroundings and in their own languages. A result of these approaches would seem to indicate, with respect, some of the factors citizens of the Arab and Muslim world might wish to consider to use their extraordinary talents even more fully:
Whether anyone reading here wishes to delve into the factors with Rhodes is a personal choice. The topics he addresses are:

  • The Ability to Question
  • The Role of the Individual vs. the Role of the Group
  • Encouraging Creativity
  • The Ability to Admit Failure and Learn from It
  • The Learning Process
  • Taking Responsibility for One's Actions
  • How Information Is Passed On To Others
  • The Western Concept of Compromise
  • The Western Concept of Peace
  • Book Publishing
  • The Status of Women
  • The Oil Curse
He concludes with reference to Palestinians and Jews:

Palestinians, as well, are easily capable of accomplishing what anyone else does, if only their education, governance and cultural incentives were changed from destroying their neighbor, Israel, to building a felicitous society. Palestinian political leaders, however, seem to have decided that the rewards from the international community, at least for them, will be greater if they are seen as victims receiving perpetual handouts, rather than as leaders receiving rewards linked to accomplishments. The economic system seems to have evolved into bribes in exchange for promises that are never kept, followed later by the request for still more bribes.

Ironically, all genetic analyses of the many ancient Muslim Palestinian families indicate that they are largely from the same genetic stock as Ashkenazi Jewry. [...] So what is the difference here? The Jewish culture encourages questioning and thinking from an early age, whereas the Palestinian Muslim culture does not. What is encouraged instead is the unexamined acceptance of whatever is set before one, whether on government-run television or in government-written textbooks. Religion has nothing to do with this situation; Islam therefore is not the problem: Islamic culture is. Only when Muslims address their culture head-on can there be any real hope for their world to overcome its self-imposed limitations and start fully contributing to the wonders of the 21st century.
I suggest the article is both informative and thought provoking, and worth a full read, no matter one's persuasion, including those who habitually reject most anything uttered by political adversaries, and will leave it at that.

cross posted from Israel Thrives
                              oldschooltwentysix

Christopher Hitchens

geoffff



Hitchens would have looked more like this when he wrote the article but perhaps one of the privileges of death is that there is no prospect of being suspected of vanity over the choice of the photograph.



Here's another essay from Arguably well worth a second visit. Greek Fire picked a piece on Pakistan that will stick in the back of your mind forever. Here's another on Lebanon.

It's impossible to read these accounts and not think how ordinary the people, how normal and natural their needs and hopes and how they are the first victims of the cynical and hateful ideologies let loose among them by ugly men.

And just by the way. Whatever happened to the Christians of Lebanon? At one time they had a share in the country that was supposed to guarantee them a place in the country forever. What did they call it? A "bi-national state"? Something like that. 


The Swastika and the Cedar

As Arab thoroughfares go, Hamra Street in the center of Beirut is probably the most chic of them all. International in flavor, cosmopolitan in character, it boasts the sort of smart little café where a Lebanese sophisticate can pause between water-skiing in the Mediterranean in the morning and snow-skiing in the mountains just above the city in the afternoon. “The Paris of the Middle East” used to be the cliché about Beirut: by that exacting standard, I suppose, Hamra Street would be the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Not at all the sort of place you would expect to find a spinning red swastika on prominent display. Yet, as I strolled in company along Hamra on a sunny Valentine’s Day last February, in search of a trinket for the beloved and perhaps some stout shoes for myself, a swastika was just what I ran into. I recognized it as the logo of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a Fascist organization (it would be more honest if it called itself “National Socialist”) that yells for a “Greater Syria” comprising all of Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, and swaths of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. It’s one of the suicide-bomber front organizations—the other one being Hezbollah, or “the party of god”—through which Syria’s Ba’thist dictatorship exerts overt and covert influence on Lebanese affairs.

Read on ...



Saturday, June 2, 2012

Obama Administration Jerks Around the Jews of the Middle East



Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.)

The Jews of the Middle East remain under siege.

After 1,300 years living under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism, followed by 100 years of an Arab-Muslim war against those Jews, much of the world scream to the heavens that Israel must stop protecting itself. That is, much of the world scream to the heavens that Israel must dismantle those inconvenient check-points and allow Hamas to gain additional weaponry, in order to fulfill their genocidal ambitions, by ending the blockade of Gaza.

Recently Ehud Barak has suggested that Israel end the "occupation" by unilaterally withdrawing from much of the western bank of the Jordan river, which is precisely my suggestion for quite some time, now. The idea is for Israel to end the "occupation" of Judea and Samaria by declaring its final borders and removing the IDF to behind those borders. Since the Palestinians refuse to negotiate, and since the Arab governments refuse to end their genocidal war against the Jews of the Middle East, then Israel needs to take matters into its own hands, despite what happened after the Gaza withdrawal.

The Obama administration, however, is having none of it:

WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday rejected the notion of unilateral Israeli steps toward separating from the Palestinians.

“We have discouraged unilateral action from both sides,” Clinton said when asked about the possibility during a press conference while on trip to Denmark.

“The United States believes there is no substitute for direct talks between the parties.”

Several leading Israeli voices, including most recently hints by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have raised the possibility of unilateral Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank – though presumably they would not be as extensive as those sought by the Palestinians – in the face of a longtime stalemate in negotiations to reach a peace agreement.

The progressive-left, in general, and the Obama administration, in particular, are playing a sick and evil game against the Jews of the Middle East. The Jews represent a tiny and abused minority in that part of the world who want nothing more than to be left the hell alone. They have built Fortress Israel in an attempt to protect themselves from the long, long history of genocidal Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism. This is why there is such a thing as the so-called "occupation." This is why there are check-points. It is because Israeli Jews have no intention of allowing their children to be slaughtered in their beds.  Diaspora Jews, like Peter Beinart, may think that the real problem is that Israeli Jews are mean to the Palestinians, but the Israelis themselves cannot afford any such acidic and counterproductive delusions.

What most diaspora Jews want, meanwhile, is acceptance. They want a kitzel behind the ear by their non-Jewish political friends and in order to get that scratch they are willing to blame the entire ungodly situation on their brothers and sisters in Israel. At worst they are anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and at best, with a few notable exceptions, they simply keep their mouths shut about Arab-Muslim genocidal anti-Semitism.

The Jews of the Middle East, however, cannot afford progressive Zionist delusions concerning the possibility of a negotiated end of hostilities if only they would jump through whatever hoops that the Palestinians or the Arab League or the Obama administration demand that they jump through. Israeli Jews know that the Palestinian-Arabs do not want a country in peace next to the Jewish one because if that was what they wanted they could have had it long ago.

This being the case, some Israeli leaders, such as Barak, are considering a unilateral end of hostilities or, at least, a unilateral end to the "occupation." If the Palestinians refuse to negotiate, which they do, then Israel absolutely must do what it needs to do in order to break the stalemate and now we have the Obama administration demanding that the status quo must continue.

As I say, this is a sick and evil game being played on the Jews of the Middle East by the progressive-left and the Obama administration. By insisting that an end of hostilities must come through negotiations they are, in effect, insisting that hostilities never end. This is particularly egregious given the fact that it was the Obama administration that screwed up any possibility of a negotiated end of hostilities to begin with.

The long Arab-Muslim war against the Jews of the Middle East continues and the Obama administration enables it.

Racist Pogrom Downunder

geofffff



This look like a race riot to you?



Sure it is. One side was drinking Toohey's New. The other Canadian Club and Coke.

That's a race riot for a start.

And there were at least two girls involved.


 Flash. After a vicious race riot in the heart of Sydney last night in which no one was injured but someone took his belt off and observers reported seeing someone else chased down Darlinghurst Road, liberal/progressive social commentators have been sifting through the implications for an increasingly racist Australia..  Although no one who took part can remember exactly what happened  this morning and as no one was hurt no one could care less anyway but everybody on the  left agreed that they think it was a race riot and therefore the rioters were inspired by a speech by Israel's far-right foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman in London last week. It had to be that.





Shirlee has sent a link to Michael Brull's latest article in The Drum suggesting I comment. Well not at The Drum, that's for sure. It's a good thing Shirlee sent the article because there is no way I would have seen it otherwise. I don't read Michael Brull. No offence to Michael. I'm sure he's a very pleasant young man. It's just he does not speak to me.  Also I don't often look at The Drum. Again no offence to The Drum. It's just that there are so many hours in the day and I calculate there would have to be at least one hundred and fifty before I got around to The Drum.


For the benefit of the vast bulk of this blog's best selling audience who live beyond the fair shores of  my country, Michael Brull is no one in particular you should know. Almost nobody in Australia has heard of him either. .The Drum also is nothing you need concern yourself.  Few Australians do..

Michael Brull is a "left/liberal"  or "progressive" style "Zionist" who thinks Israel has to redeem itself from the past and save itself from the Occupation. Otherwise racism and fascism beckon. I hope  I have done this thing no injustice. Indeed, depending on how "progressive" or "left/liberal" a "Zionist" you are, Israel is "on the way" or "well on the way" or "nearly there". I think that's it. Sure there are plenty of strands to it but that's the basic party line as far as I can make out. It's a continuum.   Once Israel "finally gets there", I guess that means you are now officially an "anti-Zionist" and they give you a red badge, a black beret, a rusty revolver and call you comrade with a capital "C".

Someone ungenerously referred to Michael Brull as Loewenstein Lite. For those who don't know, Antony Loewenstein is Australia's only full time professional anti-Zionist. He too is someone who need trouble you no more.  More politely, you could think of Peter Beinart as a kind of Michael Brull with a brain.

The Drum is directed at the Australian inner city public sector degenerate left and self appointed upitself elite demographics (just as the Australian Greens is their party) and therefore of no interest at all to the Australian public except that they have to pay for it all.

Every fortnight or so The Drum runs an Israel bashing essay; or it did the last time I looked. .These may have thinned a little since it became official underground Australian Greens policy to shut up about Israel in public for the time being at least but it seems Michael has been getting more gigs in The Drum lately and Antony fewer. For the ABC this counts as balance.

None of these essays are worth a reply on the merits. People like Michael Brull scan the Israeli English language media for something that fits their world view. Some bad new from Israel. They clutch at any grubby straw in a golden flood of good news. It must stick in the craw; the fact that despite it all Israel is such an enormous success. Israel's technological achievements alone cannot be ignored anywhere in the world and you boycott it at your peril. Be my guest.

Finding bad news in Israel is a global industry. You can be certain that the incident in Sydney last night received barely a moment's attention in Australia today and of course none at all outside Australia. The incident in Tel Aviv would be troubling for an Israeli but of  no particular significance for anyone else. Israel is a magnet for African asylum seekers and economic migrants because they know that if they can actually get to the country they will be treated humanely.

But there's 60 000 of them. Think about it for a second. It really shouldn't take more than that. That's like 200 000 illegal entrants in Australia and many millions more where they came from. Of course it must stop. Of course they can't all stay. It's a no brainer isn't it?  Let them keep drowning in gang run horror passages or stop it. Do you want a country or don't you?

But here's the rub. Where do I get off giving Israelis advice on such matters?  Seriously where could I possibly find the chutzpah?  I'm an Australian for crying out loud. We are on the other side of the planet and we don't even have a land border with any other country..

Asylum seekers, and it seems their descendants, can and do create social tension everywhere in the world, but for countries like Australia and Israel nothing like what we see in Europe notwithstanding some pretty ugly scenes here.



And yet Israel cops the spotlight. Remember this is the ABC that runs The Drum.  The Australian public broadcaster. The BBC's ugly sister.

So it begs the questions does it not?

Why would an Australian take exception to the way Israel is dealing with a pretty serious problem that Australians consider grievous at a fraction of  Israel's?  Indeed why would an Australian take any particular interest in what an Israeli minister said in London let alone Lieberman ? Does he seriously think anyone else does? Who would even know?  Why the two step dance with Israeli politics?

Ultimately there is the one question they are so desperate to avoid they may stop even trying to throw sand in your eyes and settle for rubbing it only in their own..

What do they seriously expect the Israelis to do now that what passes for a Palestinian leadership has once again officially abandoned even the pretence of a two state solution and revealed Oslo was a fraud all along? Just go away? Is that the policy of the left/liberal/progressive Zionists now?

cross posted Israel Thrives

[hat tip Shirlee]


.