Monday, December 29, 2014

Europe -- The Real Enemy of Arabs and Jews

geoffff

Again. Still.

Given their history you would reckon these creepy people would at least try to pretend to muster the courage and common decency to keep their faces shut.

Not Europeans. Creeps.

Here is the opinion of a Palestinian. 
To prevent this Palestinian State that Europeans seem determined to push down our throats, many people are discussing a "Palestinian Spring" revolution. They simply do not know what else to do to protect ourselves from these "Goodists" of Europe.
Do they honestly think we will have better lives in a "Palestinian State"?
What we talk about is how the Europeans and their diplomats are paying our leaders to kill the Jews for them -- with their money but with our lives -- so that they can finish the job without getting their hands dirty and still keep on feeling good about themselves.
ISIS operatives are already in Egypt, ready to take over the Sinai Peninsula, and with their eyes set on Libya. Is this what the Europeans really want?
Listening, in both English and Arabic, to the latest speeches of Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and his fellow Fatah Central Committee members, we get the uncomfortable feeling that the Palestinian State, now being promoted in Europe, will not only be a threat to the stability of the entire region, but to us who have to keep living here, as well to those countries in Europe who promote it.
As Palestinians discuss among themselves -- far from the diplomats in their five-star hotels -- rather than accept this "gift" that Europe seems determined to push down our throats, many people increasingly see no choice but to launch a "Palestinian Spring" revolution. It would not be, as you might think, to rid them of Israel but finally to rid us of our wretched leadership and corrupt system of government -- and to stop the European counties that are imposing this brutal system on us by financing it.
We have been fortunate enough to see from Israel how a democracy works. So although a Palestinian Spring revolution might cause chaos in the region and elsewhere for a while, its chances of success are far more assured than in the other places in the Middle East, where it has been tried but has not always succeeded.
We do not want to do this, of course, but if we are forced by Europe to have this corrupt dictatorship called Palestine, terrorist groups such as Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and ISIS will flood the West Bank in less than week, and our lives will be even worse than what we have now. We simply do not know what else to do to defend ourselves from these "Goodists" of Europe.
The Palestinian leadership, which represses people rather than confers with them, would of course deny all this to the European diplomats. The Palestinian leaders just want to keep the funds coming and keep their jobs. And of course, the European diplomats do not talk to us, the man on the street, the frustrated rest of us. They only talk to each other, their "counterparts," as they call them, in their air-conditioned meeting rooms and hotels.
We have been fortunate enough to see from Israel how a democracy works. So although a Palestinian Spring revolution might cause chaos in the region and elsewhere for a while, its chances of success are far more assured than in the other places in the Middle East, where it has been tried but has not always succeeded.

What we talk about is how the Europeans and their diplomats are paying our leaders to kill the Jews for them -- with their money but with our lives -- so that they can finish the job without getting their hands dirty and still keep on feeling good about themselves.
And they evidently think that we cannot see through this plan. And to thank us they will to trap us under another corrupt Arab dictatorship?
It is not the fault of the Israelis. In a weird way, the Israelis are just the other victims whom the Europeans -- in collusion with our leaders -- are manipulating us to hate. The Europeans pay our leaders to shape how we think. It is a brainwashing that never lets up.
The Europeans put their own people on trial for "hate speech" when they have said nothing but the truth; and yet they pour millions into non-stop propaganda and bloodthirsty hate-speech on our government-controlled TV -- the only kind we have here. They fund any baseless sewage our leaders can think up.
The usual claim is "occupation," but the Israelis are only "occupying" the West Bank because we -- in the form of Jordan -- occupied land promised to them, and then repeatedly attacked them.
A more recent claim is "settlements," but the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] was formed in 1964, before there were any "settlements," so what exactly was it planning to "liberate"? If you look at any Palestinian map to this day, it encompasses the entire country of Israel. To the Palestinian Authority and many Arabs and Muslims, all of Israel is one big "settlement."

Last week, Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi said, "Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and Nazareth are Palestinian, despite the Americans and the Israelis." Next week it will be some other pretext.
What is becoming more and more clear is that just about everything going wrong here can be laid at the feet of Europe, at the feet of the leaders there who fund and cheer on the corruption and lawlessness which they would not tolerate in their own countries for a minute, but which they expect us to.

Continues here.

Monday, December 22, 2014

Just When You Thought The Australian Left Could Not Get More Depraved

geoffff


An Islamist terrorist murders people in the heart of Sydney. So what does the Australian Left do?

They call Murdoch a terrorist because his papers reported this. These people are beyond a joke. 

There is something sinister going on here.

My reply on site follows.





The Only Terrorist Organisation Involved In The Sydney Siege Is The Murdoch Press Empire

By Joshua Dabelstein

One man's terrorist is another man's media mogul. Joshua Dabelstein believes he's found the real source of fear and loathing in Australia.
I saw a headline this morning that has had me spend the day with a laptop open trying to write — trying to understand — what it is that we must take from the nightmare that Australians shared this week.
I’ll get to that headline in a while. I’m on the bus now, heading towards Martin Place, the bobble heads to my left and right who I usually watch flick angry birds and scroll through news feeds are today holding flowers, riding with me, chatting.
I want to start a conversation. I want to start a conversation, about conversation. I hear the dialogue of the terrorist regurgitated all around. The terrorist I speak of however is not quite dead.
When Rupert Murdoch tweets that one man’s madness ought be a ‘wake up call’ for Sydney, the real wake up call is the grand irony with which a web of fear is spun for profit, by generating a different type of violence: a social violence, a violence imposed upon our very zeitgeist by those who control the means by which we get our information. 
The real wake up call compels the thinking Australian to question the way in which political agendas will shape the Australian zeitgeist post Sydney Siege.
Many of us understand that he-who-should-not-be-named carried out a terrorist plot in accordance with a personally bastardised version of religious extremism, and are subsequently able to disregard it as demonstrative not of a coordinated international terrorist agenda, but rather one man’s madness.
The violent rhetoric of the mass media challenges this measure. Murdoch wants to turn this into a conversation about Islam.

What a disgusting piece of pig ignorance is on display here. My reply.


geoffff
Posted Sunday, December 21, 2014 - 11:27


You're obsession with newspapers that you do not agree with is all that needs to be known about you.
To call Murdoch and his papers "terrorists" is actually obscene. What is it with the Left and Murdoch?
Is it because Murdoch's flagship paper the Australian is the only paper in Australia with a pro-Israel editorial policy (even though John Lyons is one of the most viciously anti-Israel commentators in Australia) and this offends your antisemitc core values?
Is that it? 
I happen to think that Fairfax and the ABC are bloody disgraceful with a hideous and dangerous bias. But I don't obsess about it.
I do my little bit to expose them at every opportunity as the creepy gang of losers they are. Then I move on. And read the Australian which I do every day.
Not you guys. There is something profoundly unhealthy about you. 

And
geoffff 
Posted Sunday, December 21, 2014 - 11:27


One of the reasons I come here apart from to do my absolute best to get as far up the nose of the gutless losers that hang out here is that occasionally there is a gem among the comments that sums it all up in a few words.
And so it is here.
Dear writer:
The title of your article is insulting to the victims of this tragedy. The only terrorist in this story is the killer.
At least you call him terrorist. This is good, as some journalists went further and said that he is not a terrorist because he did was not connected to any terrorist organisation.
But you refuse to acknowledge the obvious: that this was an act of Islamic terrorism. You say:
The little voice in the head of the man whose name I refuse to remember might have been a Jew, or a Christian, or a Muslim, or a purple dishcloth called Nathan
No that is not true. You are missing the point. This was an act of Islamic terrorism not because the perpetrator was a Muslim, but because he did this in the name of Islam. This fact was underlined by a comment of his lawyer, who said that "His ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common sense and objectiveness". This can be said of many Islamists. It is not accidental that he was previously on ASIO watch list. He was clearly an Islamic extremist even before the siege, and there is no point denying it. What to do about it is another matter entirely. But the debate is useful and has nothing to do with terrorism.
Thank you. BorisG
Many will not understand that last sentence and it is not how I would have expressed it but that is because I hold that Political Islam is a terrorist ideology in precisely the same way that National Socialism was a terrorist philosophy.
I too have forgotten the name of this individual and how he came to be where he was on the day is only of incidental interest to me. To dismiss this man as some lone lunatic in a random act of criminality is a delusion  that we can no longer afford. The real question is how many other "lone wolves" are out there.
Snap out of it!
This is a struggle against a determined, resourceful and utterly implacable enemy. It is the same enemy that murdered Australian tourists in Bali.  Likely it is retaliation for Afghanistan. Murdering children in their school in Pakistan one day. Murdering innocent people in a chocolate shop in Sydney the next. 
It is as straight forward as that.
That the ideologues behind the Sydney murders did not even know the suicide killer who chose himself is what makes this war so dangerous. This is a global war and this "lone wolf" strategy that the enemy has deployed must be met head on.
There once was a time when the Left could be counted on to stand up to fascism. If not actually physically fight it, then at least recognise it for what it is and take every opportunity to argue it down.
Not any more. That takes too much courage I guess. The modern Left is nothing if not gutless.   
Get it into your heads. This is not a war against Muslims. It is a war against a fascist ideology that has attached itself to a religion. It is hardly the first time in history this has happened.  Muslims should be in the vanguard of this war. After all they are in the vanguard of the victims.



geoffff
Posted Sunday, December 21, 2014 - 11:34
Death cult incidentally is exactly the right phrase to describe this evil crime against the intellect..
But I would say that. I believe I first used the term ten years ago.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Meanwhile In The US

geoffff

Could it be that their universities are even worse than ours?


UCLA Prof Assigns Pro-Israel Book in Order to Trash It

by Cinnamon Stillwell
American Thinker
December 19, 2014
Be the first of your friends to like this.
It seemed too good to be true: the required reading in UCLA history professor James Gelvin's fall 2014 class, History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1881 to Present, includes a pro-Israel book, Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel (2004). Described by the New York Times Book Review as "[e]specially effective at pointing to the hypocrisy of many of Israel's critics," the Washington Post Book World called it a "lively, hotly argued broadside against Israel's increasingly venomous critics."
Why would a professor so openly critical of Israel assign such a work? To balance his own unfavorable views on the topic, perhaps? To spark classroom debate on complex issues?
Not quite. A source at UCLA tells Campus Watch that students are reading Dershowitz in order to locate and write about the alleged errors, a requirement that does not extend to any of the other reading material.
Would that Gelvin's students could apply such scrutiny to his own book, The Israel Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (2014), which is also required reading. Martin Sherman, formerly of the University of Southern California and the Hebrew Union College, reviewed the book for the Middle East Quarterly in 2010 and concluded that it provides:
... an account of the Israel-Palestine conflict which is appallingly shallow, shoddy, and slanted. ... [I]t will certainly underscore the mendacious manner in which this topic is dealt with in mainstream academe.
Nor does it apply to the third assigned book, Jimmy Carter's The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East (1985), although Gelvin recommends in the course syllabus that students purchasing them from the UCLA bookstore do the following:
Be sure to borrow or buy used copies of the Dershowitz and Carter books. I'll be damned if either of those two poseurs get a dime in royalties from my course.
Such hostility may surprise, given Carter's scathing anti-Israel polemic, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid (2006), and his many public apologias for the terrorists of Hamas. But his 1985 work describes his experience negotiating the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, an act long despised by anti-Israel activists for its required recognition of Israel's legitimacy by the Arab world's leading state. Whatever the case, Gelvin's course syllabus grandly informs students that both Carter and Dershowitz are "poseurs."
Elsewhere in the syllabus, Gelvin employs the jargon of post-colonialism, referring repeatedly to the "Zionist Colonization of Palestine" and to "Zionism and colonialism." His online reading assignments include several anti-Israel so-called "new historians": University of California, San Diego sociology professor Gershon Shafir; University of Arkansas anthropology professor Ted Swedenburg; University of Oxford emeritus professor Avi Shlaim; and the (now repentant) Ben Gurion University history professor Benny Morris. However, he also incorporates reading material from early Zionist leaders Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion, and former Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz.
Gelvin's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict is summed up in the syllabus's introduction, where he describes it as simply a "dispute between the two rival sets of nationalisms." By emphasizing nationalism and downplaying religion and culture, Gelvin, like many of his cohorts in Middle East studies, is able to portray both sides as morally comparable and equally at fault.
This is not the first time Gelvin's tendentiousness has been obvious to his students, some of whom described him at Bruinwalk, a website that features reviews of UCLA professors, as follows:
  • "Professor Gelvin is not a historian but rather an advocate of [the] Palestinian cause."
  • "I feel bad for people who enter his class hoping to get an unbiased and fair representation/analysis of the situation in the Middle East—all you will get is a one-sided OPINION."
  • "My experience of the Arab-Israeli conflict, through Gelvin's eyes, has left me feeling angry at Israel."
  • "I hope anyone that takes his class can tell the difference between what's fiction and reality. If you thought you learned history, you didn't; you only learned what he wanted you to know. . . . My grade on the papers definitely went up after I started to write them [sic] pro-Arab."
In response to the emergence of academic watchdogs, he claimed in 2003 that "[w]hat really irks those guys is that I don't use my classroom for political purposes, and thus my lectures don't advance their political agenda." In light of such evidence, however, Gelvin's attempts to portray himself as an objective scholar are unconvincing. By engaging in this blatant misuse of power, Gelvin is doing a disservice to his students and to the field of Middle East studies. It's all there in the syllabus.

Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.

It Has To Be Said

breakup


Sorry, we are just not that into you.  It’s not us, it’s you.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Hostages Taken In Heart Of Sydney CBD

From Uncommon Sense

Probable Muslim terror attack in Sydney CBD underway right now - Mon morning 15 December


Martin Place, Lindt café, Sydney.


A number of hostages (possibly about 20) have been taken in a siege in Sydney's CBD.

At least three people can be seen through the windows of a cafe in Martin Place with their hands raised.

An Islamic flag has also been seen hanging in the window of the Lindt Chocolat Cafe.

Witnesses have reported hearing loud bangs that sounded like gun shots.

One block of Martin Place has been cordoned off between Elizabeth Street and Phillip Street.

Dozens of police cars are at the scene and one police officer has drawn his gun.

Police have urged members of the public to avoid the area.

Let us hope and pray for a safe resolution. Maybe this will wake up our apathetic general public about the inevitable hard end of the effects of Islamisation in a western democracy.


A screengrab apparently showing a jihadi flag being flown inside the Lindt Chocolat Cafe.

Muslim terror event now going for just over 3 hours.

Note: Mobile phone services have been shut down in part of Sydney CBD. So you may have difficulty reaching places/people.

Lindt Australia CEO Steve Loane said he believes there are 40 to 50 people inside the cafe, including customers and staff.
Other reports are suggesting there may only be 13 hostages.
 
Central CBD closed. Trains not stopping at Martin Place.
 
Hostages were seen holding the flag, which has white text that says: "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

NOW LET"S WATCH IF ANY POLITICIANS, POLICE OR JOURNALISTS WILL BE SO STUPID TO SAY THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM.

Dozens of heavily-armed police officers wearing protective clothing and helmets have taken up positions in the area with guns drawn.

Witnesses have reported hearing loud bangs that sounded like gun shots.


end of  Uncommon Sense report. 

geoffff

Latest

From press conference with NSW Premier and Police Commissioner  2 00 pm


There is at least one gunman and heavily armed. If there were gunshots there was no mention of this.

The number of hostages is described as "undisclosed" . I don't think they have any idea. This is an up market coffee shop in the middle of the financial district and it would be peak business. I saw an estimate from the business owner of a number that is scary.

There has been no "direct" contact and therefore any demands are unknown. 

Get this. . A journalist at the conference asked "there's a flag with white writing being held at the window by a hostage. What does it signify?"

Says Commissioner (breaking into a sweat and changing colour)

"We do not know at this point the nature of this and our experts are working on it."

The Premier had just reassured us that the Police are all over this, thoroughly trained and the "best in the world". 




Sunday, December 14, 2014

Caroline Glick Shoves It Up Pompous Smug-Ugly Danish Ambassador



Now do you get it?

Europe sets a standard for Israel that massively exceeds anything it has or would ever accept applies to it. Unless this is about capitulation. The surrender of the civilisation, which it may well be. In that case Europe is on its own. It's a case of you first.

Whatever it is, Caroline Glick is right on the mark. At the core of this is a really creepy obsession with the few million Jews left in the world. 

Beyond that is the nasty anti-Arab racism deeply rooted in declaring that Israelis must be held to a higher ethical standard than Arabs. How often have you heard that?

Why? I don't get that.

You would have to be serious racists to declare Arabs to be of a lower moral order so as to excoriate Israel on grounds that for them would be unimaginable. That I think is the problem.

  

Monday, November 24, 2014

Johnny On The Spot Blames It All On Illegal Jews


  

geoffff




The picture is of an avian specimen very common around here grabbed at random from Google and identical to a creature that prances around the courtyard among the water dragons all day and peers through the glass door of my office most mornings as I type. 

Quaint and nosy  you would think it had no fear but that is only because it is typical of its species and is just too stupid to get out of the way.   In truth, they will startle at sudden movements as easily as any native bird.  The species is notorious for intrusive cloying and other obsessive behaviour if you feed them and this is not recommended. 

The other picture is of a common Australian Bush Turkey.

John Lyons appears to have such limited sources for a professional  journalist. He will take as gospel (I suspect literally) anything he is told by one side, even Hamas,  with  perfect credulity while his idea of Israeli input is to pick among  the flash, fury,  flotsam and jetsam  of a free and open society for material for his case.  He regards official Israeli sources with contempt.  He has a tin ear for  tales  that ring about as true as tinnitus. There is no evidence he has ever sort a contrary view on his favourite themes (settlements, settlers, Jerusalem, international law, etc ) . There is no evidence that he  understands that he is just an instrument of war in that part of the world or he does not care.  As a consequence he makes appalling errors of fact in a dangerous game.

Ergo no credibility.

From his latest piece in the Australian. 

Did a gang of fifty masked men thirsting for revenge for the synagogue massacre burst out of Yitzhar to attack villagers with rocks while Israeli soldiers looked on with guns pointed in support of this blood crazed mob of Klan style fanatics in lynch frenzy, as Lyons claims?

He has seen the tapes, he says.

Well, not really.  Not from the Yesh Din footage Lyons cites with such terror.

 There is a stone fight between two gangs of youths (probably both sides masked but you only see one gang fully.)  Soldiers are trying to suppress one side by pointing weapons.  You can not see what is being done from the other side but there is stuff being tossed about. Perhaps three stones are thrown by the Israelis but they could have been feints and at least two were lobbed at the camera of the Israeli activists there to film (and incite?) the fun.

Not a good look but is this terror?

 A longer video shows soldiers running off an Israeli kid about to toss a rock. Only one kid is lightly injured in the whole incident so the soldiers didn't do too bad job.

And there were closer to ten children in the gang than fifty. ( With Lyons, "settlers" with stones and bad intent are "masked men".  Palestinians are "children").   Nor are they all masked. And the Israelis say the clash had nothing to do with the massacre but was sparked by a crop fire attack. 

Did the mayor of Ashkelon fire Arab labourers in an act of discrimination and revenge, as Lyons says?

Hardly the wrath of Assad but not true anyway. Mayor Itamar Shimoni announced  that he was stopping "until further notice" the work of Arab labourers building bomb shelters in nursery schools in the city  close to the Gaza Strip.  Guards would be posted at about 40 pre-schools near construction sites where Arabs work.

"Whoever thinks this is illegal can take me to the Supreme Court," he told a news crew. "I prefer, at this time, to be taken to the Supreme Court, and not, God-forbid, to be taken to a funeral of a kindergarten child."

Not revenge but a security measure from an elected public official under pressure from a community under pressure. 

Says Lyons


"Over the last week both sides have targeted a place of worship for the other -- last week Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque and this week the two Palestinians rampaged in the synagogue.

Is even that true?

Not that it matters at all but it is not. It was a suspected price tag attack but it is only an allegation. There's a fire in a vacant mosque so it has to be the Jews. End of story. No one hurt but obviously an inflammatory religious thing, like murdering rabbis at prayer, so there's the moral equivalence and the much vaunted  "cycle of violence" rolled into one.

This is how this works. Your crackpot settlers torch a mosque in the night?  They share the blame for the murder of the rabbis and so do you. This is how the Lyons mind works but it gets worse.

Lyons rises to a crescendo


“We won’t let our boy ride his bike outside. We’re worried that settlers who live five minutes away will try to kidnap him.”
The woman’s home is 2km from where 16-year-old Mohamed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped in June before having petrol poured on him and burnt alive. The day before men in a car tried to take a Palestinian boy off the streets but his parents fought them off. The man who led the Khdeir kidnapping told police: “They took three of ours (Jewish youths), let’s take one of theirs.”
A sports club for children in East Jerusalem now has guards in case of further kidnap attempts. Parents of Palestinian children at the French Lycee warn their children not to speak Arabic in public.
One Christian Palestinian executive, who works for the Catholic Church near the Old City, is now frightened to walk into the centre of Jerusalem “in case people realise I’m an Arab”.

I don't believe a word of this.

We are now getting close to the worst.  A  group of thugs carry out an unspeakable crime that shocks the nation. They are quickly hunted down and arrested. But this is the cycle of violence and cancels out the Hamas murders of the abducted teenagers applauded by Palestinians and celebrated by the leadership.

What is missing from this analysis is any concept of the rule of law or indeed common human decency and morality. This is important because it allows Lyons to get to the core. All the settlements including east Jerusalem are illegal anyway and so any "law" is muted or irrelevant to the Jews  over the Green line or it seems who are not. The settlements are the root of all evil. Their illegality poisons the well.  The appalling crime of one or two becomes the crime of all Jews. The murder of Israelis is a lesser crime which some how just does not count.

The whole bizarre and dirty house of cards collapses if the settlements are not illegal. This is why Lyons and those like him can never entertain the thought.  For them, the law has nothing to do with it anyway.  This is politics and ideology. The Jews are illegal. Everybody tells him so especially if they are Muslim.    

Lyons has the usual swamp of words about the settlements and settlers . Outposts. Armed gangs roaming the countryside murdering olive trees. Stolen land. White brick closed communities under guard strangling Palestinian land, poisoning the wells and killing the two state solution.  

Lyons boasts that he is there to see for himself and reprimands anyone  with a view that does not acknowledge his finely lasered expertise.  How would you know about the settlements, he has berated community leaders. You 're in Melbourne.  I'm in Jerusalem. 

He could be on the moon for all I care and sometimes I think he is. However there is another man observing from Jerusalem whose authority and credibility well and truly exceeds that of John Lyons .

This is what Isi Leibler recently said about this. Contrast it with Lyons' report.


The two-state solution is not currently feasible, but as an eventual goal it must not be abandoned. In the long term Israel would lose its identity as a democratic Jewish state if it absorbed millions more Arabs. It is therefore crucial that while enhancing political autonomy and living standards for Palestinians, Israel remains committed to achieving two states for two peoples.
The government must commit to restricting construction to the existing settlement blocs and Jewish East Jerusalem. (In practice, this has been the case: Only 507 units were started in the first half of the year, the lowest rate of construction for several years.) This would conform with the assurances that President George W. Bush gave to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, as an incentive to withdraw from Gaza, that in any future settlement America would support Israel’s sovereignty in areas that had undergone major demographic change.
...
We should display unity by supporting our prime minister’s policy of rejecting further territorial concessions until the Palestinian leaders separate from Hamas, engage in negotiations and display flexibility to enable us to achieve our security requirements. We will not be denied the right to construct homes in our capital or in the major settlement blocs, which will remain within Israel. We seek the support of the United States but we must retain our sovereignty.

What does Lyons really want?  The hint is in the last sentences.


Amid the new violence, it seems there is only one chance to end this tragedy -- an urgent political solution for a Palestinian state that would end Israel's control over 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
The critics of such a solution argue that this would not guarantee peace -- and they may be right. [may?]
But what is guaranteed is that if current course is continued there will be much more bloodshed. 

Lyons wants an unilateral withdrawal to the green line with no guarantees. He wants the total abrogation of the  "land for peace" formula that has underpinned peace efforts since 1948. He wants the surrender of the land and Jerusalem with no peace. He wants surrender. He wants the suicide  of the state.

Where else could this lead?

This is the "two state solution" that dares not speak its name. It is about time it did. It is about time Lyons and the rest spat it out. 

cross posted  Jews Downunder
                      Israel Thrives     

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Egypt's War on Terrorism: World's Double Standards

Egypt's crackdown in Sinai once again exposes the double standards of the international community toward the war on terrorism. While it is fine for Egypt to demolish hundreds of houses and forcibly transfer thousands of people in the name of the war on terrorism, Israel is not allowed to fire back at those who launch rockets and missiles at its civilians.
The Egyptians have finally realized that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has become one of the region's main exporters of terrorism.
What is perhaps more worrying is the fear that the security clampdown in Egypt will drive Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip to resume their attacks on Israel.
Needless to say, the international community will continue to ignore Egypt's bulldozing hundreds of houses and the forcible eviction of hundreds of people in Sinai.


Egypt's War on Terrorism: World's Double Standards

Monday, November 3, 2014

The Academic Intifada?

geoffff

This is from an academic lawyer at the University of Edinburgh. 

As we know, the Clown of Ramallah recently accused the Jews of genocide thereby once again proving that Israel has no partner for peace. It is extraordinary to have to note that there are people in our universities who have been tasked to know about these things as a matter of law and who actually take this spiteful bad faith slur seriously.  

Look at this piece about "this summer's Israeli offensive".

That's the starting point. Anything before or to the side never happened and what ever misery came after is the result of a crime that only an expert can define. 

Not a word about the attack on Israel. The starting point is a military attack by Israel on civilians.  At face value there is no distinction between a Hamas fighter killed in a war launched by Hamas out of the blue and an innocent civilian caught in the backwash. Their role as "Palestinians" martyred in the war with the Jews defines them now. It is taken as read that the war was the Jews' fault. Or if the war was not their fault then they should not have defended themselves. Or they should have defended themselves more nicely; or something. 

Proportionate is the word of last resort. The last lie in the stitch up.

Define it please. They never do.

How Scotland would behave if suddenly confronted by a vicious army of trained zealots fuelled by some crazy Dark Ages ideology jumping out of tunnels at random while shelling the towns from the rear? 

It would not be a long dig back into Scottish history to note how Scots behave with a fraction of the provocation and none of the threat. 

If we cannot hold Scotland up as the standard on proportionality, with a straight face, who can we? England? Give us a break. Alan Dershowitz has asked Ed Miliband some fair questions that the British may feel  also have a right to know.   France? Sure. Ask the Rainbow Warrior. New Zealand?

New Zealand has pretty much evolved into a gutless excuse for a country with a moral spine bypass, so who knows,  NZ may be proportionate and allow its population to be terrified and murdered rather than respond, if faced like something out of Gaza.  

You can only daydream on what the NZ national defence strategy would be. Hand out Kiwi passports to the population of Gaza and register them  with the Australian social security system?

As NZ was among the first to respond to the war against the Nazis and fought on gamely until the end, on that account alone, the offspring have one free pass. 

Norway perhaps. It has form. The country managed to Quisling out of World War Two and there is every sign the Norwegians are once again leading the world fascist appeasement and surrender campaign.

Here is a definition.  Proportionate is what it takes to put an end to the violence and get the country back to normal as soon as possible and with the minimum impact on life and limb; especially life and limb of those in the forces deployed to end the violence, and the life and limb of civilians and most especially the country's own civilians. 

Operation Protective Edge is at the leading edge of the meaning of proportionate. Polls indicate most Israelis feel that Protective Edge did not go far enough. The opportunity could have been taken to root out Hamas once and for all, leave Gaza a vacuum doubtless to be warred over by the PA, Islamic Jihad ISIS and whatever else pops out of the ground like a jihadist killer on a mission.

That is proportionate.  It is about as proportionate as it gets.

It is a sad fact of history that the most inhumane thing to do to the "Palestinians" is to leave them to themselves. There is nothing else for it. 
  
The role of Hamas, the rockets, the threats, the attack tunnels and serviced bunkers so elaborate it would impress a James Bond villain, the actual attacks, the kidnappings, the Hamas ordered murder of those kids, the relentless rocket attacks, hundreds a day, the pain of everyday life under the dome, the call up ,... all of this not relevant as it does not fit the narrative and is immaterial to whatever manner of war crime the Israelis are guilty of by prearrangement of the Russell Tribunal, the "international law" industry  or whatever other abomination of the law that has been petrodollared out of near extinction for a purpose.

Not a word of course about the sixty six young men who lost their lives that summer defending their homes and homeland because one of the branches of raging Islamic imperialism decided that a sudden vicious attack on the Jews was the thing to do that summer and would do wonders for its self esteem, standing and survival. 

Not a word about the murdered civilians.

The starting point for this legal academic is the crime. But what crime? Take out self defence, as this legal academic appears to have done, or at least admits only partially and grudgingly, like a Glasgow condom, then anything short of submission to massacre is a war crime.   

There is a crisis in our universities. There is a crisis in the law. We see it everyday.

The full piece is here.

First a response as published on the thread. Note the IDF reckoning (the only source known not to by tainted by the Hamas propaganda machine) in excess of 2,100 Gazans were killed in the most recent Hamas attack of whom 55% were civilians. 

















What did this summer’s Israeli offensive amount to? EPA

When, in armed conflict, civilians are killed on a large scale, when schools are attacked and children are orphaned, charges of genocide are often not far behind. In discussions about Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli military attack on Gaza earlier this year, accusations of genocide have therefore played an important role.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, recently accused Israel of carrying out a “war of genocide”. The National Lawyers Guild of America raised the charge of genocide in a letter to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requesting that the matter be investigated. Genocide was also investigated in a special session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which resulted, a few weeks ago, in one of the most detailed assessments of Operation Protective Edge to date. It is a crime for which the international authorities can impose a sentence of life imprisonment (as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda did on several occasions following the 1994 atrocities in that country).

Tribunal gathering

The Russell Tribunal was originally set up by Bertrand Russell in the 1960s to investigate allegations of US crimes in Vietnam. It is not a court of law, but its jury contains prominent legal minds (including Prof John Dugard, Prof Richard Falk and Michael Mansfield QC), as well as people who have made their mark in other fields of life (including the film director Ken Loach, the writer Paul Laverty and the author and activist Christiane Hessel).







Ken Loach and Roger Waters EPA
Click to enlarge

I was invited to address the tribunal on the legal elements of genocide (but was not involved in the drafting of its findings). For some, it may have been a somewhat surprising presentation. Lawyers have traditionally given genocide a very restrictive interpretation – and a good part of my talk thus dealt with the reason why applying it to the situation in Gaza is not straightforward. To my mind, “genocide” is simply not the correct term for the Israeli offensive.