Al Jazeera will likely broadcast tomorrow the horrific murder of that little girl, and the others, filmed by that monster in Toulouse. This should come as no surprise. Al Jazerra has always specialised in death porn. It seems its audience has quite a taste for it.
Al Jazerra is the preferred broadcaster of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Our ABC.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Toulouse Murders
A "lone wolf" with a support network of Jihadists incited to murder children by the incessant blood libel, retailed everywhere by the "progressive left", that Israel deliberately targets children in Gaza and elsewhere.
Do they drink their blood?
For the Jews the war did not end in 1945. It has never ended.
Is no lie too obscene for the "progressive left"?
Do they drink their blood?
For the Jews the war did not end in 1945. It has never ended.
Is no lie too obscene for the "progressive left"?
Is Israel a Racist State?
Ask Simon Deng. This is a man who knows about racism.
Thank you for those kind words:
I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. –I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.
In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.
In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.
I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?
In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.
As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.
My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.
AM YISROEL CHAI!
The people of Israel lives!
Thank you
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Dame Joan Sutherland
I have absolutely no idea why but in an attempt to get my mind off those murders in Toulouse I am putting up Dame Joan's final aria from the Sydney Opera House.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Antisemitic Murders in France -- "Ho Hum"
On another blog I had a "debate" with an anti-Israel commenter who has grown bored by "accusations of antisemitism" even while he denied the right of the world's only Jewish state to exist, let alone defend itself. . You will notice he has reared his ugly head on this blog. At least his ugly legs. The refrain from other commenters was also predictable. This is a conflict 12,000 miles away. It has nothing to do with Australia.
At the time I refrained from making the comment that was most prominent in my mind knowing that I would be labelled as an alarmist. I now regret that. Australian Jewish schools have also been put on alert. They have been on alert for weeks. It is known they are terrorist targets and the intelligence and security agencies of our country have said so. The Australian Jewish community has been officially warned.
Thanks Australian Greens and other leftist scumbags around the world. You have the blood of children on your hands.
How long before someone among this miserable filth presents a theory that the murders was a Mossad operation? A "false flag" operation intended to ... whatever ... Trust me with this. It will happen. No lie is too disgusting for the morally depraved left.
At the time I refrained from making the comment that was most prominent in my mind knowing that I would be labelled as an alarmist. I now regret that. Australian Jewish schools have also been put on alert. They have been on alert for weeks. It is known they are terrorist targets and the intelligence and security agencies of our country have said so. The Australian Jewish community has been officially warned.
Thanks Australian Greens and other leftist scumbags around the world. You have the blood of children on your hands.
How long before someone among this miserable filth presents a theory that the murders was a Mossad operation? A "false flag" operation intended to ... whatever ... Trust me with this. It will happen. No lie is too disgusting for the morally depraved left.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Pat Condell : "Telling the Truth about Islam"
Pat Condell is a "militant atheist".
All I can say is thank God for militant atheists like Pat Condell.
Listen to it all.
All I can say is thank God for militant atheists like Pat Condell.
Listen to it all.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Canadians Get It
What kind of an obscenity would you have to be to be a supporter of "Israel Apartheid Week"?
The Honourable Jason Kenney has a pretty good idea.
Would not it be great if Australian ministers had the guts to speak out like this?
The Honourable Jason Kenney has a pretty good idea.
Would not it be great if Australian ministers had the guts to speak out like this?
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Making A Pest Of Myself at the Greens Blogs
Just posted this to here.
http://www.kateausburn.com/2012/03/09/stand-for-freedom-of-all-australians/#comment-26325
http://www.kateausburn.com/2012/03/09/stand-for-freedom-of-all-australians/#comment-26325
What??
You’re no longer claiming to be an expert on Israel?
Funny how the Greens have suddenly shut up about BDS and the “one state solution”.
Nothing to do with the fact Chomsky and Finkelstein have condemned BDS as an antisemitic cult? Which of course it is. Even your own guys say so.
A bit hard to claim you support “freedom”, I suppose, when in fact you are advocates of war, robbing Israelis (including Arabs) of all their civil and political rights for no other reason than they are not Dhimmis, keeping Palestinians on display in cages in Arab countries like animals in a zoo, terrorism, the brutal oppression of women, gays, religious and ethnic minorities and nasty ugly theocracies (such as Hamas) run by superstitious, ignorant and violent men.
The Greens have had their Marrickville moment. The fact you came out openly for genocide will not look good in an election year. We won’t forget.
Hypocrites. We can not accept a single thing you say on any subject.
Awaiting "moderation". A huh.
ABC Unleashed
I spoke too soon. The ABC has unleashed the usual Israel bashing poisonous nonsense that always pours from the public broadcasters from the same nasty little men whenever Israel carries out an act of self defence.
You have to admire the surgical skill that Israel can deploy against these cowardly gangsters. Also the Israelis intelligence on the ground in Gaza must have the murder gang bosses jittery. The gangsters only managed to murder two of their shields before departing this world for all eternity. Unless of course the Big Bounce theory is right. In which case we will be waiting ...
You have to admire the surgical skill that Israel can deploy against these cowardly gangsters. Also the Israelis intelligence on the ground in Gaza must have the murder gang bosses jittery. The gangsters only managed to murder two of their shields before departing this world for all eternity. Unless of course the Big Bounce theory is right. In which case we will be waiting ...
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Why the Israel Hating Left Has Finally Shut Up About Israel.
3 March 2012 was an historic day at Webdiary. Israel was banned from discussion there.
This blog was opened to display the post that pulled off this astonishing achievement. The final straw.
Yes this is true. It is not an attempt at some form of joke. Australia's most venerable and best known left wing blog has banned "Israel". No joke. Israel. Banned from Webdiary.
"It is the opinion of the Editors that it's time to end this subject and close the comments box, and, for the time being at least, to add the 'Israel/Zion/anti-semitism' trope to the list of things we won't publish any further comments on."
To fully appreciate the scale of this achievement you need only go to the blog search facility at WD and type in "israel". I get 29,200 results and that just from a search of topic headings. "Britain" only gets 5,120. The "united states" and "us" only 2,130 between them. "Australia" only gets 33,200.
Now look at the whole list of banned subjects (and why).
"Webdiary will not publish comments or host discussion on the following matters:
"1. Denial of the existence of the holocaust.
"2. Allegations that a Western power or powers were behind the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001
"3. "False flag" theories.
"Why these three? It isn't just because of the content, but also because experience of these debates tells us that in fact no debate is possible: the two (or more) sides endlessly repeat the same arguments to which the other side isn't listening."
To which we now add
"4. 'Israel/Zion/anti-semitism' trope"
Note the reason. Not because these are havens for every crackpot loony lefty and their nazi allies; but because no one is listening to each other.
The problem for Webdiary was too many people were listening. And rolling around in disgust. And laughing their heads off.
I didn't mean to get "Israel" banned just like I didn't mean to get the other three topics banned. But I did it and now that it has happened I'm claiming credit for all four.
This blog was opened to display the post that pulled off this astonishing achievement. The final straw.
Yes this is true. It is not an attempt at some form of joke. Australia's most venerable and best known left wing blog has banned "Israel". No joke. Israel. Banned from Webdiary.
"It is the opinion of the Editors that it's time to end this subject and close the comments box, and, for the time being at least, to add the 'Israel/Zion/anti-semitism' trope to the list of things we won't publish any further comments on."
To fully appreciate the scale of this achievement you need only go to the blog search facility at WD and type in "israel". I get 29,200 results and that just from a search of topic headings. "Britain" only gets 5,120. The "united states" and "us" only 2,130 between them. "Australia" only gets 33,200.
Now look at the whole list of banned subjects (and why).
"Webdiary will not publish comments or host discussion on the following matters:
"1. Denial of the existence of the holocaust.
"2. Allegations that a Western power or powers were behind the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001
"3. "False flag" theories.
"Why these three? It isn't just because of the content, but also because experience of these debates tells us that in fact no debate is possible: the two (or more) sides endlessly repeat the same arguments to which the other side isn't listening."
To which we now add
"4. 'Israel/Zion/anti-semitism' trope"
Note the reason. Not because these are havens for every crackpot loony lefty and their nazi allies; but because no one is listening to each other.
The problem for Webdiary was too many people were listening. And rolling around in disgust. And laughing their heads off.
I didn't mean to get "Israel" banned just like I didn't mean to get the other three topics banned. But I did it and now that it has happened I'm claiming credit for all four.
"Israel" is banned because the Greens are split. BDS was a monumental strategic mistake for them. They have had their Marrickville Moment. On the one side are the Marxist-Leninists who regard Israel as the most important issue in the world and are demanding its destruction via a "one state solution". On the other side are the tree huggers who suspect advocating genocide might be a bit iffy politically especially in an election campaign. To add insult to injury Chomsky and Finkelstein have identified BDS as an "antisemitic cult". The only way the Greens think they can keep the whole sorry cart of crackpots together is if everybody just shuts up about it and hope it just goes away.
Now is the moment to go in hard.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
"Chainsaw" Justin Saturday
Photo: Justin Obode
A picture of someone's feet that "Chainsaw" has been trying to pass off as his.
We have no idea whose they are, the poor soul. But given there are ten toes, are not especially hairy and there are no visible scales we can be absolutely certain they are not Justin's.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Trembling Israelites
Another great piece from Isi Leibler on the sorry state of Anglo-Jewry.
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3927
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3927
The Forgotten Refugees
A few days ago an activist in Sydney sent me this DVD.
I will reproduce it as best as I can.
How the antisemitic left can disregard these people, and still claim they are champions of human rights is all you need to know about these ugly people.
And some other forgotten refugees.
The Australian Greens have sold their souls to racism. As bad as any. I can't wait for the next election.
I will reproduce it as best as I can.
How the antisemitic left can disregard these people, and still claim they are champions of human rights is all you need to know about these ugly people.
And some other forgotten refugees.
The Australian Greens have sold their souls to racism. As bad as any. I can't wait for the next election.
The Post That Got "Israel" Banned From Webdiary
Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism
Perhaps as late as 1947 opposition to Zionism could not be characterised as necessarily antisemitic. In 2012 it most certainly is.
There are strong supporters of Israel, especially in the centre-left who will argue cogently that they are not Zionists. The argument is compelling if you were born after 1948 and therefore had no hand in the establishment of the state. The truth is that like Michael Lumish I have never thought of myself as a Zionist even though I have been a passionate supporter of Israel and everything it stands for since June 1967. Friday June 9 1967 at 6.00 pm AEST to be precise. Before then I was just a supporter.
It is only in the last few months that I have used the term and I reckon I have written in excess of 500 000 words about this and related matters in the last eight years on this blog alone. War and Peace is only 550 000 words. I recall beingcalled a Zionist many times. (well yeah ?...). There have been a few commenters over the years who have demanded I 'fess up and admit it which I found amusing. It's not as if I'm an undercover Socialist Alliance member and unrehabilitated Stalinist in the Greens parliamentary wing, or something. I bet there are heaps of those in the branches. In NSW probably all of them; but I digress.
I think its time to reclaim the word Zionist, thoroughly demonised by the antisemitic left starting in 1967 on Kremlin orders, and I will explain why.
I didn't use the term not because I find it in the slightest way offensive, perhaps even a compliment, but because it struck me as inappropriate and even pretentious especially for an Australian born after the war. I took no part in the establishment of Israel. I am not even an Israeli citizen. Zionism was the collective name of the political movements among the Jews and others that had as their object the establishment of a Jewish homeland and state. After 1917 the British irrevocably committed the Zionist movement to what the British called Palestine, or at least part of it, as the place for the national homeland and which after all was the obvious place from the start. At the time it wasn't even under British control but that was very soon to change. There was a very big war going on and wars that big must be won. It is an excellent idea to win all wars, big or small, if your country has been dragged into one (like ours). Far better of course to avoid them in first place but the alternative to winning could be catastrophic. Full control by the British did not happen until the Ottoman Empire fell apart as a consequence of being on the losing side of World War 1 and British and French civil servants carved up the whole region between them over drinks.
There were no Arabs in Palestine at this time who thought of themselves as "Palestinians" but there were Jews and they formed what became the Jewish Legion. Note the name. The Zion Mule Corps. It was deployed at Gallipoli and probably would have supplied front line Diggers at one time or another. A number lost their lives of course. There would have been Jews among the Turkish troops too. There were many among the Germans.
Gallipoli was not the only place where Australian and Palestinian (that is Jewish) troops would have intermixed. There should be little sympathy for the British administration of Palestine. They broke their promise to the Zionists and broke the terms of the League of Nations mandate and international law by not allowing the establishment of a Jewish state in even a tiny part of Palestine; and they committed other appalling mistakes such as blocking the immigration of Jewish refugees fleeing for their lives. They continued the illegal blockade even after the war. The British rule was cruel and stupid and run entirely in the interests of the British. In the event it disaffected both the Arabs and the Jews and lead to a brutal three way civil war that raged right up to May 1948 In the end the civil war was won decisively by the Yeshuv but it was a close run thing. Everyone knows what would have happened had the Yeshuv lost. This is history. However those who denounce the British takeover of "Palestine" as "imperialism" should remember that Australians fought and died in those campaigns. This is not history. It seems that all you have to do to be an "imperialist" in some eyes is to win the war. It doesn't matter who started it.
"Unlike their counterparts in France and Belgium, the Australians in the Middle East fought a mobile war against the Ottoman Empire in conditions completely different from the mud and stagnation of the Western Front. The light horsemen and their mounts had to survive extreme heat, harsh terrain, and water shortages. Nevertheless, casualties were comparatively light, with 1,394 Australians killed or wounded in three years of war. This campaign began in 1916 with Australian troops participating in the defence of the Suez Canal and the allied reconquest of the Sinai peninsula. In the following year Australian and other allied troops advanced into Palestine and captured Gaza and Jerusalem; by 1918 they had occupied Lebanon and Syria. On 30 October 1918 Turkey sued for peace."
The point of all this is that on this view Zionism ceased to exist in May 1948 having finally achieved its purpose. It became history. Anti-Zionism should also have become history. The term survives especially in the Diaspora because the Zionist bodies and groups have continued, indeed become even more vibrant, to accommodate those who support the state. Over the years they have been able to be of enormous benefit to Israel.
I throw in a little history because I know how much the progressive Israel bashing left and their Jew hating allies in totalitarian states like Saddam's Iraq, Syria and Iran love history. That's always struck me as odd because anyone with any knowledge of history would know that the case for the Jewish state was always compelling, astonishingly successful and has been of tremendous benefit to the world. It could have been of tremendous benefit for the Palestinians and other Arabs too but for their spiteful mediaeval political cultures. For many Palestinians and other Arabs it has been of tremendous benefit.
Why do they talk about history so much? There must be a point to it.
When they talk about history they don't mean true history. They mean their distorted, grievance laden and bizarre keyhole take on history that has little to do with facts and much to do with inciting naked hatred and fear in the street as a political tactic to grasp or keep power. That's what totalitarian states do. The Soviet Union especially under Stalin. Mao's China. Hitler's Germany. Pol Pot's regime. Saddam's Iraq. Nasser's Egypt. Iran since the revolution. Syria. They all do it. That's why the Israel bashing left includes so many open and undercover members of the Socialist Alliance and their allies. Even outright lifelong Stalinists. They want to do the same in Australia and the rest of the West and they think the militant Islamists and their genocidal policies will help.They could be right.
They are used to doing the bidding of foreign totalitarian states run by psychopaths and tyrants. They did it right to the end with Stalin and his successors who funded them until the end. They were his willing agents in his cold war against the liberal democracies. Another group did the same for Mao. Hitler had his supporters and agents here even after the outbreak of war. Not just Nazis and fascists but communists and their allies, including "pacifists", who were deployed by Stalin to help Hitler. The communists did so much to sabotage the war effort they had to be suppressed under emergency regulations. The same happened in France and the UK. This continued right up until Hitler threw Operation Barbarossa at Stalin prompting the mother of all policy reverses. These are the same people who are now allied with totalitarian Islamist regimes including Hamas and Iran.
Why do you think they do that?
Could it be they hate their own societies more than they have any respect for any concept of others' human rights even while they suck liberties and material wealth undreamt of by the people they target?
Could it they just hate people?
Could it be they just hate Jews?
Is it some strange demented religion thing akin to the bizarre doomsday death cults that inform official ideology in Iran for example?
Is it just about power?
Someone here suggested I could not see the forest for the trees and inferred my vision was blurred by the strength of my support for Israel. In fact the complete opposite is true as is usually the case with opponents of Israel. It is they who have an astonishing absence of any feel for historical context and a truly amazing ability to filter whole slabs of it out and replace it with myth if it doesn't fit the ideology. The years between say 1910 and 1950 were perhaps the most tumultuous in history. Revolutions that turned the lives of billions upside down. World wars. Invasions. Genocide. The collapse of empires. Genocide again. The disappearance of countries by the score and the emergence or re-emergence of even more. Partitioning everywhere. India. Ireland. Africa. Lebanon and Syria. The Gulf. Virtually the entire Middle East come to think of it. Brutal civil wars as civil wars always are. Migration on a vast scale to countries like the US, Australia and Canada. The mass movement of whole populations, often expelled or fleeing wars, tyranny, persecution or man induced famines. It is well not to lose sight of what a tiny insignificant sideshow the saga of the Arabs and Jews in Palestine was in those years. Even 1948 and the nasty civil war that preceded it was little compared to what was going on in India or China, for example, at the same time. The progressive left has entirely lost it with this. They have selected Israel/Palestine out like a grain of sand picked with tweezers from a beach and magnified it with an optical telescope; and sometimes the result is so absurd it is comical. If you took their and their allies narrative at face value you would think that not only was the accommodation of the Jews in their own restored homeland the greatest travesty in all of history but nothing else really happened.
Why do they do that do you think?
Its nearly sixty-five years since Israel was established and there's been an awful lot of Jewish and Arab blood shed since then. But that was hardly something new for either people and it has to be said in all frankness that there are many many more Arabs and Muslims who are killed by other Arabs and Muslims, often with particular brutality, than are killed by anyone else. There is a reason for this. It is because so many of their countries have been occupied by political cultures of one sort or another that spawn grievance building monstrosity killing machines like those that oppress the people of Syria and Iran and its colonies right now.
This has to be said. Since 1948 perhaps 15000 Palestinians have been killed in operations in which the IDF (or Jewish civilians) were involved. Not all of them were killed by the IDF. Almost certainly there have been more people killed in Syria in the last few months. This is a horrible calculus and a single violent death is terrible but it may bring some perspective to the scale of these things that the progressive left must ignore to hold an anti-Zionist position. Of those 15000 probably about 3000 were civilians, mainly in the intifadas. But perhaps upward of another 40 000 Palestinians were killed in operations in which the IDF had no involvement. These were conflicts with other Arab factions and states and within the Palestinian factions themselves and it seems most of those casualties were civilians. In those years also more than 200 000 Muslims were killed in the Lebanon civil war. 400 000 Muslims were killed in the Afghanistan civil war prior to 2001.How many have lost their lives to the Islamic revolution in Iran and other revolutions is anybody's guess. 1 million in the Iran Iraq war. Ten of thousands of Muslims have been victims of Islamic terrorism, perhaps ten times as many as non-Muslims. Even Al Qai-da kills eight times as many Muslims as non-Muslims.
Who are the Islamophobes here?
Certainly being a Muslim is no shelter from other Muslims in that part of the world. Unless of course they happen to be Israeli citizens.
It is the Arabs who are the principal victims of their sick political cultures, one after the other, and compared to these casualties, especially civilian casualties, the "Israel/Palestine" conflict is small beer indeed. Even the Arab/Israeli conflict as a whole is a sideshow.
Why do the progressive left pretend not to know that?
In those years since 1948 Israel has become one of the most successful nations on the planet. There is no question it has become the focal point of world Jewry. The 60% of Jews who live outside of Israel also live overwhelmingly in liberal democracies; and family and other connections are strong and getting stronger. The business network is perhaps only rivalled by the Chinese. It's large Arab minority are far and away the most free in the Arab world. The economy is booming while most of the rest of the West is in deep recession. The country has turned itself into a global high-tech hub. All this has been achieved in what modestly could be called difficult circumstances.
The Israelis are proud of their state and what they have achieved and they have a right to be. This is natural and proper. Australians too are proud of their country I have noticed and they too have a right to be. Certainly I am. Of course both countries have social ills and other problems, sometimes grave, but in both enormous resources and intellect are poured into overcoming them. That too is something to be proud of. In a number of other countries the exact opposite happens. The resources and energy are poured into creating violent social divisions and hateful grievances. There is someone around here who has defined this achievement and pride as a kind of national narcissistic personality disorder but he is an anti-Zionist and therefore has a special problem. Ulttimately he is an anti-Australian.
Michael Lumish's blog, Israel Thrives, has a list of taboo subjects among the US version of these leftists. Thing that should never be raised let alone discussed. With a little tweaking the same list would serve as what it takes to get your mind to the place of the modern Western anti-Zionist.
This is a (partial) list of taboo topics around I-P within progressive-left venues. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.
1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.
2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.
3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.
4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.
5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.
6) "Pallywood."
7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.
8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.
9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."
10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.
11) Human rights violations against women and children in the Muslim Middle East.
1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.
2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.
3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.
4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.
5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.
6) "Pallywood."
7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.
8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.
9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."
10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.
11) Human rights violations against women and children in the Muslim Middle East.
To which I would add:
12) The robbing and expulsion of Jews from Arab lands and their refuge in Israel.
13) Muslims killing other Muslims in vastly greater numbers than they kill or are killed by non-Muslims; and the sick political cultures that spawn this.
14) The tsunami of antisemitism in the West, and especially across Europe, and its connection to Muslim immigration.
15) The explosive resurgence of theological antisemitism in a form as virulent as that among Christians in the Dark Ages, and the rehabilitation of cultural antisemitism in popular entertainment.
16) The official abandonment of the two state solution by the Palestinians, and their allies and friend in the West, and its replacement with a policy that would see Israel reduced to a rump state without sovereignty over its borders or jurisdiction over its own population.
In the face of all this it seems to me it is time to declare as a Zionist and to define it. This is important because it also defines the anti-Zionist.
My sort of Zionist is a human rights activist who works for the protection of the most basic civil liberties and political rights of Israelis, men and women, and especially their right to live in a liberal democracy. Also for the basic rights of the Palestinians to be freed from the cages in the Arab countries where they have been kept on display like animals in a zoo for over sixty years. Peace and prosperity, and mutual recognition, through a two state solution in a firm economic alliance that bridges East and West to the betterment and progress of both. Freedom for all from antisemitism, bigotry, violent religious chauvinism and terrorism. .
Above all Peace. Peace with a capital "P".
An anti-Zionist opposes all that.
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