The Ugliest Slur in Egyptian Politics -- "J'accuse"

"I accuse you of being a Jew!"




geoffff

Memri has released a video of the campaign manager of a disqualified candidate for the Egyptian presidency showing how easy it is to make the vilest allegation possible about someone's background and how impossible it is to prove otherwise. His candidate, Islamist, Abu Ismail, was disqualified because his late mother allegedly held dual American-Egyptian citizenship. It seems this prohibits him from running for president.

It could have been much worse as the campaign manager repeatedly demonstrates.

They were ready for him the second time. They threw him off air.

The incidents occured on Al-Mehwar TV on April 17, and Sada Al-Balad TV on April 18.

On Sada Al-Balad TV, he again accused a moderator of being Jewish. The moderator responded that the photo was not her, but her co-host. She then made it very clear that the “Jew” smear would not stand, saying, “I do not allow you to accuse me of being Jewish.”

He was then ordered to leave the studio. Slander charges may follow even though it is clear he did not mean such a horrible thing to be taken literally.

There is after all a limit.

The Israeli Left is Dead (Or, at least, Dying)

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives)

I wrote a piece some time ago in which I put forth the proposition that the western Left killed the Israeli Left. Of course, the reasons for the demise of the Israeli Left are not singular, but it makes considerable sense that Israelis know who their friends are and who their friends are not. So long as the western progressive movement accepts anti-Semitic anti-Zionists as part of their larger coalition and so long as they tell the Jewish people, who remain under siege in the Middle East, that their persecution is their own fault, and that their efforts to end that persecution represents the "oppression" of their persecutors then it makes sense that Israelis would abandon the progressive-left.

Which they have.

Over at the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick is discussing:

Israel’s return to its Zionist roots is the greatest cultural event of the past decade. It is also an event that occurred under the radar screen of the rest of the world. No one outside the country seems to have noticed at all.

The outside world’s failure to take note of Israel’s cultural shift owes to its failure to recognize the significance of the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians on the one hand and the failure of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza on the other hand.

Caroline is claiming that Israelis have come to their senses and have thrown the progressive-left, along with their anti-Zionist buddies, into the dust-bin of history. This seems to be the case.

Caroline ticks off some of the reasons why the Left has died in Israel.

The failure of Oslo and the realization that they have no partner with which to come to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities. The Durban Conference of 2000, in which the UN gave full-throated expression to anti-Jewish racism. The aftermath of the Gaza withdrawal, a moment that traumatized Israeli society and that saw thousands of Palestinian rockets. The refusal of much of the international community, particularly on the Left, to even acknowledge that Israel had ended the occupation there. And, of course, the infamous Goldstone Report which progressives used as a cudgel to beat up on their favorite whipping boy.

She concludes:

From Obama to J Street to the EU, international actors interested in forcing Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians cannot understand why their attempts continue to fail. How is it possible that despite their best efforts, Netanyahu remains in power and the Left can’t get any traction with the public? For the answer, they need to look no farther than Mosh Ben-Ari, his dreadlocks, and his rendition of Psalm 121. Israel’s adolescent rebellion is over.

One of the more egregious aspects of the western progressive-left, particularly the diaspora Jewish Left, is in their self-righteous and arrogant insistence that they know what is best for the Israelis and that they must save Israel from itself.

The fact of the matter, of course, is that they do not know what is best for Israel and the Israeli public knows that they do not.

And for that I am particularly grateful.

President Obama Speaks on Preventing Mass Atrocities

geoffff


... with a moving introduction by Elie Wiesel.

Every  horror in history was unthinkable before it happened.

[hat tip Shirlee]

Crossposted    Israel Thrives

The Ethnic Cleansing of Old Jerusalem

geoffff



The War of Independence
The greatest Arab atrocity of the war occurred on May 13, 1948, at the Etzion Bloc settlements. Dozens of surrendering defenders, including some twenty women, were killed at Kfar Etzion just north of Hebron,. The Etzion Bloc had seen a previous massacre in January 1947 when a Haganah platoon of 35 soldiers sent to help them with medical supplies and ammunition was slaughtered by hundreds of Arab militants. Their stripped, mutilated bodies were found the next day by a British patrol.


Ben-Yehuda St. Jerusalem 1948


Shirlee emails a just published eye witness account by British clergyman, Hugh Jones,  of the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem after the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the fall of the ancient Jewish Quarter to the British sponsored and officered Arab Legion and the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Jews from their City.

Caught between Jewish and Arab forces fighting in Jerusalem’s Old City was Hugh Jones. Refusing to flee to safety, Jones instead recorded a journal, never before published, that offers a unique personal glimpse of the drama and tragedy of Israel’s birth

Sixty-four years ago, in the days and weeks around the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, Jews and Arabs were battling for control of Jerusalem. The Jewish areas of the city were cut off by Arab ambushes along the road up from the coast. The bitterest fighting raged in the Old City, where Arab and Jewish soldiers battled house to house inside the walls as Jewish forces tried repeatedly — and failed — to break in from outside.

Also in the Old City in the midst of the fighting was a British missionary, Rev. Hugh Jones of Christ Church. Warned by British authorities to “urgently consider the desirability of leaving Jerusalem,” Jones stayed nonetheless and, holed up in the church’s compound near Jaffa Gate with 50 others, observed the violence raging outside, and sometimes inside, the compound’s walls. He wrote a remarkable journal that has, like Jones himself, been forgotten. It was rediscovered two years ago in the archive at Christ Church, and appears here as a unique take on the dramatic and horrific days around Israel’s birth.

Jones’s journal includes descriptions of violence, asides about regular life — notably the reverend’s seemingly unshakable commitment to tennis, which not even a war could dampen — and expressions of the faith that sustained him through the harrowing events that saw the loss of the Old City by Jewish forces and the creation of the state of Israel.

The Journal is compelling reading. See it here.

Hat tip  Shirlee

Update

Yom HaAtzmaut , Israel Independence Day, this year falls on 26 April 2012 ( Iyah 4 in the Hebrew Calendar).  Iyah 4 commences at sundown of the previous day, this year 25 April 2012.

Shortly it will be sundown 25 April 2012 in this part of Australia.

Hat tip Shirlee

Does “Progressive Zionism” Stand for Anything?

Mike L.

(Cross-posted at Israel Thrives)

If so, it's hard to see just what.

Prior to Obama's ruination of whatever potential there may have been in the peace process, there was still a possibility that the Left's incessant demands for additional Israeli concessions might have been justified. While there was still a chance at a negotiated end of hostilities it made sense to compromise and to seek compromises. But those days are dead and Barack Obama helped kill them.

This being the case, the Progressive movement has nothing to say, or should have nothing to say, about the Arab-Israel conflict and the very last thing they should be doing is pressuring Israel to do anything. The likes of Peter Beinart and Thomas Friedman and J-Street (and anyone who suggests that the “Palestinian narrative” needs to be taught to little Jewish kids in Israel) have been discredited. Progressive-left American Jews, who seem to think that the real problem is not so much Hamas but Likud, are in no position to lecture Israelis about their own security needs.

Beyond propelling Palestinian-Arab propaganda and discouraging discussion on some very important issues to the Jewish community, and often in the nastiest manner possible, the progressive movement has nothing to say on the Arab-Israel conflict. They haven't had a fresh idea since the beginning of Oslo, but Oslo is long over.

Propelling Palestinian-Arab Propaganda:

“Progressive Zionists” propel Arab propaganda. They do not mean to do so, but do so nonetheless. They do so by discussing the issue within the frames set for them by the anti-Israel propagandists, themselves. There are all sorts of ways that this is done and we've only really begun to discuss some of them here at the bar and grill.  Language is hugely important. Progressive-left Jews who frame the discussion in such a manner that Israel is already guilty before the conversation even begins are framing the matter in ways designed by their enemies. Talk of “Occupation” with a capital “O,” for example, buries Israel before the conversation even gets started. But that is only one example that illustrates progressive-left framing that serves the purpose of anti-Israel propaganda. There are plenty more and we will be discussing them going forward. That much I assure you.

Alan Dershowitz, who I very much respect, likes to tell audiences that he has opposed Israeli-Jewish building in the territories since 1973. If I had an opinion in 1973, I probably would have agreed with him, but this is no longer 1973. Before the Palestinians finally, really let us know that there would be no negotiated settlement anytime in the near future, with a little help in that direction from Barack Obama, giving in to their racist demands might have made sense if it were to actually result in peace. It didn't. That being the case there is no reason why Jewish progressives should continue to insist on the ethnic cleansing of their fellow Jews from Judea or to continue sucking up to non-Jewish political powers by telling other Jews where they may, or may not, be allowed to live.

Discouraging Necessary Discussion:

But perhaps the worst disservice that progressive-left Jews do to their fellow Jews is in the stifling of discussion and debate. Because progressive Jews have absorbed much of the Palestinian narrative, they find all sorts of topics verboten. Anyone who transgresses the line gets lambasted, defamed, and ridiculed. I have a whole long list of things that one is not allowed to discuss on the progressive-left,including among most progressive-left Jews, unless one wants to have one's character dragged through the mud.

They won't discuss the centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism. They won't discuss 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. They won't discuss Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict. They won't discuss the Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history. They won't discuss "Pallywood." They won't discuss the historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement. They won't discuss the perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one. They won't discuss the Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred. And they won't discuss human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East. And they would much rather discuss the virtually non-existent white supremacist threat over the real threat of the rise of radical Islam throughout the Muslim world under the false banner of "Arab Spring."

And, thus, “progressive Zionists” say virtually nothing and stand for virtually nothing.

No wonder the Israelis have moved on.

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Oh, and by the way, while I am here, let me have a cheese burger, medium rare, with extra onions, a side of fries, and... ahhhh... a Fosters!

Tanks.

And The Band Played Played Waltzing Matilda ...

Today is ANZAC Day in Australia.

Soon it will be dawn over Gallipoli  ...

[Hat tip Ron]

Why Are These Facts Not Well-Known?

Daniel Bielak

•  The British Mandate of Palestine included what is now Jordan.

• - There were more Jewish refugees from Muslim states than there were Arab refugees from Israel.

• - All of those refugees -- Jewish and Arab -- were caused by a self-declared intendedly genocidal "Jihad" attack on Israel by Muslim Arab states in 1948.

• - Jordan occupied Yehouda and Shomron from 1949 to 1967, and Jordan renamed Yehouda and Shomron to the name "The West Bank" -- referring to "the west bank" of the Jordan river.

• - Egypt occupied what is now called "The Gaza Strip" from 1949 until 1967.

• - Between the years 1949 and 1967, the leaders of Muslim Arab states, and the leaders of what, in the 1960's, came to be called the 'Palestinian movement,' had no intention of establishing any 'Palestinian' Arab state in "The West Bank" and in what is now called "The Gaza Strip."

• - The Jewish refugees from Muslim states in the Middle East found refuge in Israel and in other countries. The Jewish refugees from Muslim states in the Middle East who found refuge in Israel became citizens of Israel, and the still living members of, and the descendants of, those Jewish refugees from Muslim states are citizens of Israel and constitute approximately fifty percent of the Jewish population of Israel, and refer to themselves as Mizrahi, which means "Eastern" in Hebrew.

• - There have been tens of millions of refugees since the end of World War II, almost all of whom have been relocated to, and absorbed into, the countries to which they fled or were expelled -- such as several million ethnically German people who lived in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia (Sudeten Germans) who, immediately after World War II, were expelled from the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and who, subsequently, were relocated to, and absorbed into, Germany.

• - British officials created the Arab state of Transjordan in The British Mandate of Palestine between 1922 and 1924.

• - In 1946, Britain granted autonomy to Transjordan, and Transjordan was renamed Jordan.

• -Jewish leaders in the British Mandate of Palestine accepted the 1947 partition plan and every other earlier similar proposition for the creation of one Arab state in, and one Jewish state in, the part of the British Mandate of Palestine which did not become Jordan. The Arab leaders in the Middle East refused the 1947 partition plan and every other earlier similar proposition for the creation of one Arab state in, and one Jewish state in, the part of the British Mandate of Palestine which did not become Jordan.

• - The still living members of, and the descendants of, the Arab people who did not flee from Israel are citizens of Israel, and constitute approximately twenty percent of the population.

• - All citizens of Israel have equal civil rights by the law in Israel, and are granted equal protection under the law in Israel.

• - Anyone who is deemed to be Jewish -- by ethnicity, or by religion -- by the government of Israel can be automatically granted citizenship of Israel. This automatic granting of citizenship to people who are Jewish is similar to the automatic granting of citizenship, by other democratic countries, such as Japan, and some European countries, to people whose ethnicities, or whose parents' nationalities, are those of the nationalities of those democratic countries.

• - Anyone, whether or not they are Jewish, can apply for, and be granted, citizenship of Israel, in the same way that anyone can apply for, and be granted, citizenship of other democratic countries.

• - Israel is the nation of the Jewish people. Just like Ireland is the nation of the Irish people. And just like Japan is the nation of the Japanese people. And just like Italy is the nation of the Italian people. And just like Thailand is the nation of the Thai people. Israel is, therein, the Jewish state. Just like Ireland is the Irish state. And just like Japan is the Japanese state. And just like Italy is the Italian state. And just like Thailand is the Thai state.

• - The land area of Israel is approximately two percent of the total land area of the Middle East.

• - There are over twenty Arab states in the world. There are fifty-six Muslim states in the world. There are several officially Christian states in the world. There are many national states in the world: Thailand, Japan, over 20 Arab states, several European states, etc.

• - There is only one Jewish state in the world: Israel.

• - The founder of the 'Palestinian movement', Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a member of the Arab aristocratic Husseini family, and organized Arab anti-Jewish massacres in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to the late 1930's, and was appointed, by British officials, to the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.

• - Haj Amin al-Husseini joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and was an early leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

• - Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the most prominent, and one of the most influential, Muslim leaders in the Muslim world during the 1930's and 1940's.

• - Haj Amin al-Husseini resided in Germany from 1941 to 1945, and was an adjoined official of the Nazi regime of Germany, and, with his colleague Adolf Eichmann, was a co-architect of the Nazi 'Final Solution' -- the mass-murder of approximately six million Jewish people in Europe by the Nazi regime of Germany.

• - Haj Amin al-Husseini, as the head of the Arab Higher Committee, was the coordinator of the 1948 Muslim Arab attack on Israel by the armies of several Arab states.

• - Haj Amin al-Husseini was the mentor of, and an uncle of, Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat (Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini), and provided Nazi training, from German former Nazi officials, to Yasser Arafat and other Muslim Arab "Arab Nationalist" (Muslim Arab officially Nazi-affiliated) militia terrorist commandos.

• - In 1958, Yasser Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir ("Abu Jihad") and other Muslim Arab "Arab Nationalists" (Muslim Arab Nazis), including Mahmoud Abbas, founded Fatah, under the guidance of Haj Amin al-Husseini.

• - In 1964, in Egypt, the "Arab Nationalist" then-President of then-Soviet-supported Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and members of the Soviet KGB, founded the PLO (the Palestinian Liberation Organization).

• - During the 1960's, Yasser Arafat was trained in the Balashikha KGB special-ops school in Russia, and was groomed to become the head of the PLO, and, between the years 1969 and 1970, Yasser Arafat, as the head of Fatah, took the position of head of the PLO.

Why are these essential basic facts of the situation not well known?

Because of phenomena described in the following articles:

Why and How the West is, with Lies, Vilifying Israel, by Daniel Bielak.

Jewish Stockholm Syndrome, by Daniel Bielak.

"A Near Perfect Media Crime", by Geoffff, a terrific Australian blogger.

The Lobby, by Daniel Bielak

Crossposted from Israel Thrives

Islamic totalitarian imperialism, genocide, gendercide and the Left

geoffff

An old friend emails :  I will be interested when your political blog has focus on gender politics. Now that would be interesting reading!

The term "gender politics" could straddle a wide range of human inter-relations but I know what she means and she is quite right. An enormously important issue needs focus from blogs like this. Two issues really. The treatment of women, (and gays of course -- but that is another subject), across much of the increasingly extremist Muslim world but especially in those lands where one or another strand of Islamic totalitarian imperialism has got a stranglehold.  And the rust-flaky tin ear that the West , especially the left and most especially the feminist left, has for the horrible plight of Muslim women.

Indeed the hypocrisy can reach a level where the word is not enough to describe the bizarre double think contempt for reason and common morality that the left routinely finds itself spouting. A new word is needed. In a moment some examples but first we must steel ourselves to look at this and to admit what we see before us without the cant.

Be warned. This video is unpleasant.

This is a shorter YouTube version of the same interview:

All this does is put a human face to what everybody already knows. Rape is a political weapon routinely deployed against women who dare to assert independence in Iran and other Muslim totalitarian states. Rape victims can be executed for adultery. A virgin who finds herself convicted of a capital crime will be raped before she is hanged, beheaded or stoned to death.  Polygamy is routine. Girls marry who they are told to marry often while still children.  Women in the streets are harassed and humiliated by thugs who deem their dress indecent for the pettiest reasons and who may have the power of the state to carry out random "chastity inspections".   Women taking an active role in the world can be impossible. Birth rates are the highest in the world condemning women to a grueling empty life of painful drudgery and poverty that men believe is their lot.  Illiteracy rates for women are far higher than the already high rates for men. Getting an education is often discouraged and can be fatal.

Honour killings are rife for women or young girls who do anything from being seen in company with a man without a chaperone to refusing an arranged marriage.It is estimated that 2/3 of killings in the Palestinian territories are this type of murder.

To say that women are second class citizens is to inflate the concept of citizenship. Women are not citizens of any class in these lands. From the cradle to the grave they are chattels.

Now one would think that this appalling state of affairs would attract some interest in the luvvie left/liberal classes in the West. A passing nod at least while spewing on you know who for instance. Not a bit of it of course. On the contrary those on the left, including what London based Australian blogger Daphne Anson succinctly describes as women of a certain age, are among the most vocal supporters of these nasty ugly man riddled misanthropic cultures and regimes.

So at this point I will hand over to Daphne to describe this phenonomen more fully

Female Israel-Bashers Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Hypocrisy (video)

Once upon a time, at a Zionist conference in Melbourne, Australia attended by a lot of university students, I heard a young man (bless him!) during the break remark to one of the madrichim present that hasbara should make much more of the fact that women's status in Israel compares so favourably to that of women in nearby countries.

To my disgust, the slightly older man merely shrugged and walked away. But there's no doubt the student was right.

I've been spring-cleaning, and in my desk drawer I found a cutting from the London Daily Telegraph that someone had sent me, dated 9 September 2002. The small News-in-Brief item bears the eye-catching heading "Man Beheads His Daughter".

The report reads:

'An Iranian cut off his seven-year-ol daughter's head after suspecting she had been raped by her uncle, the Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper said yesterday, But a post-mortem examination showed she was a virgin.

"The motive behind the killing was to defend my honour, fame, and dignity," the father said.' Reuters, Teheran.

I can sense the leftwing feminist yawns right now, as the wimmin for Palestine concentrate their ire and fire on the one nation in the Middle East that protects women's rights.

In a region of the globe and among cultures that so often treat girls and women as trash, Israel, as Bibi Netanyahu so eloquently pointed out last year (see my sidebar) "Israel is different".

The following video encapsulates that difference in a nutshell. It shows the types of horror that too often confronts the female sex elsewhere in the Middle East, reminds us of the vile treatment that certain of Israel's Muslim enemies advocate for Jewish women, and demonstrates how rights for Israeli women, irrespective of background, are enshrined in Israeli law.

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Here in Daphne in another post on  "the willingness of the western women, in particular, to act as presenters on [Press TV] that is funded by a regime which stones women to death and colludes in the gang-rape of virgin female prisoners prior to execution is especially repulsive and odious...

So, therefore, is the willingness of anti-Israel female activists such as Baroness (Jenny) Tonge to give interviews to Press TV.

And so, of course, is the willingness of so many common-or-garden female Israel-bashers to act as apologists for the Iranian regime.

Launched in 2007, Press TV, broadcasting 24/7, claimed a regular viewing figure of almost 10 million British homes.

Among those regular viewers, evidently, is the all-female coven that constitutes my local Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch. A trio of these middle-aged/elderly women (whose antics range from harassing shoppers outside supermarkets stocking Israeli produce to initiating an online petition asking David Cameron to apologise for the Balfour Declaration) ..."

When it comes to Israel and the sheer blooded minded extremist Muslim racism of which it is the principal target,  the feminist left, just like much of the rest of the Western left, are not even conflicted. It's to hell with the women. They don't even rate a thought.

[hat tip Lesley]

In Praise of Jewish Settlers

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives.)

As the progressive-left has emerged as the foremost racist political movement in the West today, Jews who live in Judea and Samaria have been targeted as one of the groups that it is OK, sometimes even mandatory, to spit hatred at from the Left.

This is bad enough when it comes from progressive racists in general, but far worse when it comes from progressive-left Jews. Progressives tell the world, following Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama, that the reason there is no peace in the region is because some Jews actually live, and build housing for themselves, in Judea.

The crime of Jews building housing for themselves on ancient Jewish land is said to prevent peace in the region and endanger American troops there.

I would like to suggest that those who think along such lines are, in fact, the very people who are preventing a negotiated conclusion of hostilities. The problem is with them, not with the settlers. When the President of the United States complains about Jews living and building in certain sections of Jerusalem, or in Judea and Samaria, he creates the conditions under which anti-Jewish racism becomes justified and peace becomes impossible. Anti-Jewish racism is promoted because the implication is that Mahmoud Abbas is correct to seek a Judenrein "Palestinian" state on Jewish land. If even progressive-left Jews believe that Jews must live here, but not over there, they justify Arab-Muslim race-hate toward us. The reason that peace becomes impossible under these circumstances is because Mahmoud Abbas cannot afford to be seen as softer on Israel than the American president, thus Abbas refuses to negotiate so long as Jews build housing for themselves on land that Jordan dubbed "the West Bank."

There is a very long history of non-Jews demanding that Jews be allowed only to live in certain places. Both the history of dhimmitude, and the history of European ghetto life, is replete with non-Jewish leaders insisting that Jews may live in certain areas and may not live in other areas. When Barack Obama makes the same demand it resonates in an extremely negative manner with those of us who have an inkling of this history and who understand that it is both racist and counterproductive. Just because Jews build housing for themselves in Judea, this does not mean that Abbas and Netanyahu cannot sit across from one another and draw a line on a map.

The settlers, as a group, have done nothing wrong. Some of these people are deeply religious Jews who wish to live where our forefathers walked. There is nothing the least little bit wrong with that. Others are merely Jews who wish to find relatively inexpensive housing and there is nothing wrong with that either. The problem is not with them, but with Arab-Muslim racism against them. It is Arab-Muslim racism towards Jews which insists that Jews should not be allowed to live on that land or that any future state of Palestine must be a Jew-free enclave.

Every once in a while we will read, usually in the left press, that the settlers in Judea and Samaria are behaving badly, even in a criminal manner. There are reports of conflicts with the local Arabs or what is referred to as "price tag" retaliations. I would submit that there is not a population of any size in the world that is free of criminal behavior and that this is true of the Jewish settlers no more than it is true for anyone else. Suggesting that Jews should not be allowed to live in Judea because of criminal behavior would be like suggesting that Italian-Americans should not be allowed to live in New Jersey and for the same reason.

Of course, Barack Obama would never suggest that Italians should be allowed to live here, but not there, in the United States. Any such absurd assertion would be met with slack-jawed incredulity and immediately recognized as the racism that it is. That the president of the United States can make that suggestion about Jews in the Middle East suggests something rather ugly about his relationship to the Jewish people in general. That many progressive Jews would agree with him, while spitting hatred at their brothers and sisters on the west bank of the Jordan river, says far more about them than it does about the settlers.

We need to start thinking about the conflict in fresh ways and that means letting go of the presumptions of Oslo. During the peace process the assumption was that Jewish compromise would be met with Palestinian-Arab compromise toward a final negotiated conclusion of hostilities. Since the Obama administration has rammed the final nails of the peace process into its coffin, we must shed those old assumptions. The fact of the matter is that the Palestinian-Arabs have refused offer after offer after offer for a state of their own in peace next to the Jewish one.

This is a fact that we must incorporate into our understanding of the situation.

The problem is not with Jews living on land where Jews originally came from, but with an Arab-Muslim racism toward us that is so intense that they are willing to use the Palestinian-Arabs as a bludgeon against us. The local Arabs do themselves, and their children, no favors when they embrace genocidal radical Islam in the form of Hamas.

Of course, given the fact that Barack Obama has compared the rise of the Jihad in the Middle East to both the American Revolution and to the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s, it becomes difficult to know just who is more delusional, them or him?

In the mean time, Jewish people will continue to live on, and build on, Jewish land, as well they should. If the Palestinian-Arabs ever decide that they want a country for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one they can have that. All they need to do is agree to it.

Until they are ready to give up their war against us, they will continue to damn their own children to live with the humiliation of check points and the various restrictions placed upon them. Israel is going to do what it needs to do to prevent terrorism against their own people. If the local Arabs do not like it, then they can finally (at long last) accept a state for themselves in peace.

If they are not willing to do that then they have no one to blame but themselves.

ISM Exposed: How the ISM Sucker-Punched the IDF Again

ISM activists posing with AK47s in Jericho alongside Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorists

A revealing article on the odious ISM by this investigative journalist who spent years undercover in the group and observed first hand its violent tactics and its spit in your face lying propaganda techniques.

It operates in co-ordination with and under the direction of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, and the Al Aqsa Martys Brigade. They are therefore active and committed genocidal  antisemites by definition. Israel has no business letting them into the country.

...


The ISM uses a motto coined by the late Malcolm X – “By any means necessary” – in implementing what they consider to be revolutionary tactics in bringing down the Jewish state, which they see as a first step in bringing down Western democracy. Lying and media manipulation are encouraged and elevated to an art form. Talk of ‘nonviolent resistance’ is solely for media consumption, since the ISM promotes armed revolutionary ‘resistance’ against Israel by serving as human shields for terrorists.

And so, it is in this context that for two hours leading up to the two minute video of Colonel Shalom Eisner striking Danish ISM activist Andreas Ayas, the ISM used their bicycles, bodies, and even physical assaults to obstruct the IDF in a closed military zone and prevent anti-terror operations. Earlier in the day, Colonel Eisner was struck by a stick-wielding ISM activist, leaving him with a couple of broken fingers.

...

Read it all. Wretched wraiths of dried up intellect who have managed to convince themselves that Israel and the "Zionists" are the source of all evil in the world and are determined to use all the liberties, tolerances, political freedoms and rights of the liberal democratic state to bring down liberal democracy, and to destroy those liberties, freedoms and rights utterly everywhere, while slandering and facilitating the murder of Jews. 

And they call us the fascists?

[ hat tip Shirlee]

He's from Tasmania .. nu? So what can you do ...?

Boy does he ever get angry or what whenever they lose the argument. 

I know his manners are appalling but at least he is not picking his nose at the moment.

Long time readers will know I found him in the Devil's Gullet reserve while bushwalking in the Tasmanian Wilderness about ten years ago. He was living in a shack in a hole right in the middle of the gullet itself. Here is a picture I took at the time.



He was surviving on the raw flesh of Tasmanian Devils and other small furry animals including wombats with mange when I literally stumbled over him. He was asleep under a rock and I accidentally stood on him. Health authorities believe he single handedly spread this nasty infectious disease to the mainland; a feat that he remains oddly proud of to this very day.

If you think that is disgusting it gets worse. He sought to justify this diet by claiming the beasts were road kill and so fair game. Turns out he had stolen a Harley from a touring motor cycle club and used it to kill his own road kill. He wasn't too fussy about the roads either.

So I threw him a few tins of little Basil's Banquet Classic Dog Food Chicken & Spinach and a packet of his emergency rations Smackos and, fair dinkum, I haven't been able to get rid of him since.

I have tried getting him an honest job but it has proved futile. I managed to get him a contract clearing unexploded cluster bombs in southern Lebanon and land mines in Cambodia by kicking them with his bare feet. At first this looked promising. We were able to undercut all the other bidders because he worked for all the Banquet Classic he could eat and he didn't need any equipment except a change of hessian rags every three months. But the venture failed when he changed shape and both WorkSafe and the RSPCA insisted we stop overfeeding him.

Idiots. They have no idea what he does if you stop overfeeding him. Anyway here is a picture of him after six months on the Lebanon contract.


He can bearly stand up. You needed a taser to get him out of bed in the morning and as you can see he has lost seven toes off each foot.

I keep him around because I feel an obligation to the wildlife and and because he amuses me. He never fails to prove the exact opposite of the point he is so stridently trying to make. Never. It's uncanny.

Challenging anti-Zionist Jews -- What do they want?

geoffff

I am a very occasional lurker at the blog of British author, novelist, broadcaster and cultural commentator Norman Lebrecht, Slipped Disc.  For me the most interesting way of seeing things is from the inside; in this case classical music and related cultures from the standpoint of the artists themselves. However that is not the reason I first went to this site.

That was because I was looking for a place to comment on a strangely spine tingling and bizarre incident at the Royal Albert Hall last September when "pro-Palestinian" agitators, mainly it seems musicians and other artists, including inevitably a number of Jews, disrupted a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms forcing a break in the broadcast. I had already had plenty to say on the subject elsewhere but Mr Lebrecht kindly provided the perfect place and all the space I needed.  Really.

This  may well have been the first time ever that musicians sought to tear down a performance by other musicians in front of their audience for any reason, let alone because of their nationality or citizenship. I do believe these creeps set a precedent.

The political class to which these people belong has been neatly nailed by Dr Mike Lumish here and at Israel Thrives. These are Jews who "represent the height of Jewish dhimmitude. They believe as fervently as any "Palestinian" that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, racist state that must make way for yet another Arab state in the region. This is a form of dhimmitude so complete that the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victimhood has taken over their thinking on the subject completely. They know with a clarity that Yassir Arafat would have admired that the Jews are guilty and that Israel was born in sin. The "New Historians," such as Ian Pappe and an earlier version of Benny Morris, did much to advance this toxic and false notion among Jewish people throughout the world."

Not just Jewish people of course. The anti-Zionist left always, repeat always, has had a few Jews upfront for cover for their antisemitic campaigns. They have always done this. Sometimes their tame Jews lead the charge. For some reason difficult to fathom the left thinks this is a winning hand.This is important for them; and not just the left. But it is the left that incessantly protests that because they have on board some Jews they could not possibly be antisemitic. 

As usual they protest too much. They do this without the slightest hint of irony. They have no concept they are proving the point against them. 

Each time I hear the "Jew defence" I think well ... duh ...

Jews are often fractious and outspoken. It's part of the culture. They challenge one another and they challenge others and by doing that they mean no disrespect.  It is not a random spray of destiny that Israel has over fifty political parties but at the end of the day is always able to form a government. It is difficult to imagine how Israel could be any other way. At the beginning of the twentieth century a large majority of the world's Jews lived in countries where their basic human rights, especially expression, were suppressed or denied. Now the vast majority live in liberal democracies. This is why you will find all sorts of Jews saying all sorts of things.

This is because they are allowed.

Nobody would think that a virulently anti-American US citizen had something worthwhile to hear solely by virtue of his nationality. A rabid hater of Catholicism deserves no more attention just because she is a lapsed Catholic. Yet with the Jews there is a different dynamic at work. Mike linked a diagnosis from this writer. Oslo syndrome. Says it all.

Norman Lebrecht has savaged the decision by the Israeli interior minister to bar former Nazi, Gunter Grass, from entering Israel; a matter also discussed on this blog and at Israel Thrives. Fine. I can respect the opinion, also shared by Alan Dershowitz, although I'm not sure how the Israelis are expected to feel about being lectured from abroad on matters pertaining to the state's sovereignty and security while at war. But what caught my eye was a near perfect example of a thoroughly Dhimminised Jew who commented on the thread of the article.

Here is his world view, informed by the Grass affair, and here is the man, Dr. Martin Gak is a Philosophy PhD from The New School for Social Research currently leading the Centro de Estudios Filosoficos y Fenomenologicos Acanzados, Buenos Aires.

Surely we can't get better than this. An academic, in the southern hemisphere, as far away from those whose lives are in the balance as you can get without leaving the planet, who has swallowed so  completely the Palestinian and left narrative that it is simply beyond him to understand that to oppose Zionism, 64 years after the Jewish state was founded, can only mean to oppose Jews and to support the hysterical brutal war against them waged by Arab Muslims who are explicit in their desire to see the destruction of Israel and the Jews. They say so again and again. Why don't they listen?

It's the dishonesty of these people that disgusts me most. Universities everywhere, including Australia, have "anti-Zionists" on staff with tenure and these often include Jews. If you will the destruction of Israel, why not say so? Why mumble your words? If you think that advocating the stripping of free people of all their civil and political rights, for no other reason than they are Jews, or perhaps more to the point, not Muslims, then please explain how this is not the vilest form of antisemitism? Please tell us how the dismantling of a hugely successful and productive liberal democracy in the face of Islamic totalitarian imperialism will benefit humankind.

They must know that Israelis, like free people everywhere, will fight to the death before they see their precious state destroyed and replaced by an abomination like the regimes that oppress the people of Iran, Syria, Gaza and a dozen other places. So would Australians. So would many others I suggest. How can anti-Zionists, including Jews, honestly deny that they are  pro-war?

Posted at Slipped Disc and The Radical Secularist.

Cross posted at Israel Thrives.

Left-Wing Jewish Dhimmitude

Mike L.
One of the problems that we have as a community is in the prevalence of left-wing Jewish dhimmitude among so-called "progressive Zionists." This is essentially the same as what we often call "Jewish Stockholm Syndrome" or what Kenneth Levin dubbed "The Oslo Syndrome" in his book by that name.

The main symptom of left-wing Jewish dhimmitude, and it is a left-wing phenomenon, by the way, is in the incorporation, in greater or lesser degrees, of the "Palestinian narrative" into one's own way of viewing the long Arab-Muslim war against the Jews in the Middle East. The more the "Palestinian narrative" informs one's thinking, the more of a Jewish dhimmi one is.

I would argue that pretty much all of us have this ideological infection to one degree or another. At its most benign it reveals itself in the use of terminology that inherently favors one's enemies. For example, instead of calling Judea and Samaria "Judea and Samaria," Jewish dhimmis will tend to use the term "West Bank." "West Bank" however is the term that Jordan adopted in the middle of the twentieth century to remove any Jewish association with that land. Thus every time that we use the term "West Bank" we are adopting language specifically designed to wash away Jewish history on Jewish land. We thereby reinforce the position of the enemies of the Jewish people. This is so not because we need to keep that land, but because it tends to erase Jewish history on that land.

But this is Jewish dhimmitude at its most benign. Almost all "liberal" Jews, including me, have tended to use the term "West Bank" when refering to that area. It's only fairly recently that I, myself, began to refer to "Judea and Samaria" or, say, "the western bank of the Jordan river." Another less benign use of language which betrays a measure of Jewish dhimmitude, however, is in the use of the word "Occupation" with a capital "O." It is as if we are to believe that measures that Jews in the Middle East use to protect themselves from hostile Arabs, such as check points, represent the Mother of All Occupations, the Uber-Occupation, the Occupation from which all other occupations derive. When one uses the term "Occupation" one is signalling an embrace of the "Palestinian narrative." Israeli guilt, and Palestinian innocence, is inherent in the term.

Even so, progressive-left Jews who tend to identify with the "Palestinians" are largely well-meaning. They want what most of us want, an end to the conflict in a two-state solution. This level of Jewish dhimmitude is generally not malicious, although it sometimes is. What mainly it is, however, is counterproductive. This reason that it is counterproductive is because one cannot win an argument with one's ideological opponent if one insists upon discussing the issue using one's opponents language. Left-wing Jewish dhimmis of this medium sort are constantly doing battle with anti-Zionists and Israel Haters within frames developed by the anti-Zionists and Israel Haters, themselves. By doing so they earn the contempt of both the non-Jewish Left and the entire Right, including the Jewish Right. The non-Jewish Left holds them in contempt for seeming to justify the "Occupation," while the conservative-right holds them in contempt for seeming to justify Arab malice toward Jews and the Jewish state.

The worst Jewish dhimmis, however, are Jewish anti-Zionists and Israel Haters. Someone like, say, Norman Finkelstein is a Jewish Dhimmi Par Excellence. People like him or Chomsky or the Jews in groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (an anti-Zionist organization) represent the height of Jewish dhimmitude. They believe as fervently as any "Palestinian" that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, racist state that must make way for yet another Arab state in the region. This is a form of dhimmitude so complete that the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victimhood has taken over their thinking on the subject completely. They know with a clarity that Yassir Arafat would have admired that the Jews are guilty and that Israel was born in sin. The "New Historians," such as Ian Pappe and an earlier version of Benny Morris, did much to advance this toxic and false notion among Jewish people throughout the world.

What I would suggest, now that Oslo is most definitely done with, is that we root the "Palestinian narrative" out of our thinking as much as possible in order to take a fresh look at the conflict. This is certainly easier said then done and represents a process that must take place over time, perhaps even over years of the life of the individual. This is not to suggest that every detail of the "Palestinian narrative" is false. It is merely to suggest that every detail of the narrative should be held up to scrutiny to make certain that we Jews remain fair to ourselves.

For example, Mahmoud Abbas has claimed that any future state of Palestine must be Judenrein and Barack Obama has validated this notion by formally complaining to PM Netanyahu about Jews building for themselves in parts of Jerusalem where he does not want them to live. If, as a Jew, you believe along with Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama that Jews should be allowed to live over here, but not over there, then you have definitely fallen into dhimmitude. You are siding with non-Jews over Jews on the question of where Jews should be allowed to live. It's pretty revolting and is entirely unfair to a whole segment of the Jewish population, the so-called "settlers," that Jewish dhimmis perpetually demonize and spit hatred towards.

And that is really at the heart of the matter. We cannot expect others to be fair to us if we cannot even bring ourselves to be fair to one another. The Jews of the Middle East have come through 1,300 years of second and third class citizenship under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism, followed by the Long Arab War which continues to this day. A good place to start in rooting out the "Palestinian narrative" is in recognizing the larger history as a context for understanding the struggle. This is why someone like Dan Bielak continually emphasizes the need to tell the factual truth about the history of the struggle. I tend to disagree with Dan that an assessment of historical facts is a relatively simple matter. The reason for this is because there is an inherent subjectivity in the writing of history. Nonetheless, Dan is absolutely correct that history is in our favor, which is plenty good enough reason to emphasize it.

In any case, now that the Arabs have definitively killed and buried the peace process, it is time to start thinking in fresh terms.

The longer we wait to do so, the longer the status quo will continue. I recommend against.

Cross posted from Israel Thrives.

Culture Wars

geoffff

Just happened to tune into MAX while looking for something else and caught part of the Ultimate MAX 80's Rock Countdown.


At number 6 was this video from British punk group The Clash in 1982. Rock the Casbah.

1982. Thirty years ago. Do you think anyone would risk producing something like this now? Perhaps they got away with it because no one listened to the lyrics? I doubt it; but I'll reproduce them here anyway.  People weren't so scared of Islamic extremism as they are now. In fact it hardly occurred to us back then that we had to take the intimidation seriously. Now we know that otherwise they will kill somebody.


Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin to the top
The sheik he drove his cadillac
He went a cruisnin down the ville
The muezzin was a standing
On the radiator grille

Chorus
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy casbah sound
But the bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail

Chorus

Now over at the temple
Oh! they really pack em in
The in crowd say its cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy casbah jive

Chorus

The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the casbah way

As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare

As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed

Chorus

He thinks its not kosher
Fundamentally he cant take it.
You know he really hates it.



I prefer the IDF version.

Rock that casbah ...

Moses Was a Muslim

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives.)

Interview with Dr. Omar Ja'ara, lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus, and specialist in Israeli affairs on PA TV:

We must make clear to the world that David in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to David in the Quran, Solomon in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to Solomon in the Quran, and neither is Saul or Joshua son of Nun [of the Bible]. We have a great leader, Saul, [in the Quran] who defeated the nation of giants and killed Goliath. This is a great Muslim victory. The Muslims of the Children of Israel went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and unfortunately, many researchers deny the Exodus of those oppressed people who were liberated by a great leader, like Moses the Muslim, the believing leader, the great Muslim, who was succeeded by Saul, the leader of these Muslims in liberating Palestine. This was the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the nation of giants led by Goliath. This is our logic and this is our culture. - Palestinian TV (Fatah), Feb. 15, 2012

The Jewish people have long experience with replacement theology. For centuries Christians told one another that the Jewish covenant with G-d was no longer in effect due to our rejection of the divinity of Christ and that, therefore, Christianity represented the new "Israel."

Thankfully, this trend in Christian theology has long ago faded out. Islam, on the other hand, is involved in a theft of Jewish history and Jewish traditions and Jewish identity the likes of which Christians never even began to approach.

In the clip above we have a Palestinian-Arab academic, Dr. Omar Ja'ara, claiming that Moses was a Muslim. It's pure theft of Jewish religious tradition, but this is just one example of an ongoing effort to steal Jewish identity in order to remove any connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

Similar claims are that the Tomb of the Patriarchs is a mosque, a bit of nonsense that UNESCO has agreed with. That Jesus was the "first Palestinian shaheed." That the Palestinians have 4,000... 5,000... 9,000 years of history on Jewish land. That the "Nakba" is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust.

Even the name "Palestinian" is the name that Jews under the British mandate referred to themselves by. It was appropriated by the local Arabs only years after the Jews no longer so identified, because they had become Israelis.

If stealing Jewish identity is a "Palestinian" tactic to replace the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, another tactic is simply denying Jewish history, altogether. Thus, for example, Arafat tells Bill Clinton that Solomon's Temple was not in Jerusalem, what Dore Gold has dubbed "Temple Denial."

These efforts are just the kind of thing that fly entirely under the radar of even people with an interest in the ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews. I think that it is important that we remain aware of Muslim efforts to replace Jews, or to steal our history or identity, and highlight it whenever possible in order to limit its influence.



And, no, sorry, Anne Frank was not a "Palestinian," either.

Europe's auto-immune disease

An article by Melanie Phillips just published.



In decadent Europe, freedom of speech is dying. Loudly trumpeted as a ‘human right’ for any attacks on America, Israel, Christians or on the core values of the west, it is swiftly transformed into ‘hate speech’ and the shutters are slammed down on the speaker whenever Islam is in the frame.

Lars Hedegaard is President of the Danish Free Press Society, which is devoted to defending freedom of expression -- particularly against the threat from radical Islam to extinguish it on the spurious grounds of‘Islamophobia’. With no sense of irony, Denmark is trying its damnedest to shut Hedegaard up on precisely those grounds.

This witch-hunt has now reached its third round. In January 2011, Hedegaard was tried and aquitted for racism and hate speech over remarks he made two years previously concerning sexual abuse within Muslim communities. After his acquittal was appealed, however, he was retried and convicted. I wrote about all this, and the way in which both the acquittal and the subsequent conviction turned on what were essentially technicalities, on my previous blog here.


...


Europe is clearly suffering the political equivalent of auto-immune disease -- destroying its own defences while embracing those who repudiate life, liberty and reason itself.



Read it all. It will ruin your day.

Jew Splits Anti-Zionist Lip

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives.)

In certain quarters people are upset that an IDF officer smacked an anti-Zionist activist in the mouth with his rifle.

Speaking strictly for myself, I find it very difficult to care.

Andreas Ias is a member of the anti-Zionist International Solidarity Movement (ISM) that believes that Israel must dissolve itself as a Jewish state by allowing millions of non-Israeli Arabs to move into the country in order to swamp the minute, and thus vulnerable, Middle East Jewish population. The guy is a member of an organization that is an enemy to the Jewish people and who would, if he could, deprive the Jews of the Middle East of their means of self-defense. Toward this end he seeks to help "Palestinians" delegitimize the Jewish state through stunts that are meant to make Israel look bad before the world community.

And now the poor guy has a busted lip.

Gee, I'm heart-broken, I tell ya.

Israeli humour

geoffff


For some reason that post about the comical failure of the pro-war activists to get their boats out of the harbours last year, to take part in the annual Death to the Jews left/liberal jihad and charity drive, reminded me of my current favourite Israeli commercial. It was just one thing after another for the hapless losers. Engine trouble, mysterious sinkings in the night, water police, problems with officialdom, unexplained explosions ...

Recently I bought a new tablet. I don't have to tell you what make.

Left/liberal Peace Activists at Work

geoffff

This is the gift that the Destroy Israel Now left/liberal activists left for the Jewish state after their detention and deportation from Ben Gurion airport following their annual "Flytilla" Pallywood-style publicity stunt aimed at demonising Israel and supporting overt genocidal antisemitism. Current members of the Australian Greens , including former parliamentarians and local counsellors, and their Australian friends and allies, participate in these protests.

As usual, the protest was a damp squib; about as successful as a North Korean missile launch. Most of the dickheads didn't even manage to get on the planes, reminiscent of last year's Death to the Jews Flotilla when most of their boats didn't manage to get out of the Mediterranean harbours. Not even Turkey.

Last year a number of blogs did a good job at outing Australian participants in these obscene pro-war demonstrations. Not all of them are keen to show their faces and even then most often on Press-TV, the official English language broadcaster of the regime that hangs gays and child rape victims from cranes, exterminates religious and ethnic minorities as policy and tortures and butchers university students and other dissidents in the streets.

It's a bit harder this year because most of them didn't get anywhere near Ben Gurion airport to unfurl their Welcome to Palestine banners. Welcome to Palestine. Whatever could they mean by that? Ben Gurion is in Tel Aviv.

(h/t Mike L / Doodad)

Progressive-Left "Humanitarian" Racism

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives)

Mike L

The most racist political movement in the West today, aside from radical Islam, is the progressive-left.  I come out of that movement and I am here to tell you that it is absolutely crawling with a kind of insipid racial condescension that you will not find anywhere else within the American political scene.

Those of us who come out of the progressive movement in the United States tend to assume that racism is a malicious right-wing conservative tendency, whereas the truth is that the American conservative-right has done a much better job of marginalizing its racists than has the progressive-left.  It will make me few friends to say so, but it happens to be the case, and I give considerable credit to William F. Buckley.

People are now beginning to awaken to the situation and this article by Manfred Gerstenfeld, entitled "Beware the humanitarian racist," is one that is worthy of attention.  The reason for this, of course, is that Gerstenfeld is right.  Contemporary progressive-left racism is different from the more traditional forms of racism, but it is the prominent form in the twenty-first century west.

Progressive-left racism, which is to say contemporary western racism, when it is not directed at Jews takes the form of "humanitarian racism."  That is, it is <i>well-meaning</i> racism and therefore not even generally acknowledged as racism.  Its primary form of expression is that of condescension.  Among many people on the progressive-left non-white people are considered so inferior that they should never be held responsible for their own behavior.  Consider it a kindly form of racism. Thus when a French Muslim Jihadi kills some French soldiers, a rabbi and 3 little Jewish girls, out of love for Allah and because they tell one another that Jews are mean, progressives refuse to acknowledge radical Islam as the source of hatred.  Instead they blame Americans, or the West more generally,… and the Jews.

The United States and the West are to blame, or so they tell themselves, because of our racist and militarist and colonialist and imperialist pasts and present.  The Jews are to blame because we, both diaspora and Israeli, tend to support the Jewish state.  Among anti-Semitic progressives, Israel is considered (contradictorily enough) as an imperial puppet of the West, as well as the nefarious power behind the scenes, pulling the strings, over western media and governments.

In this way humanitarian racism lends support to radical Islam because it agrees with certain fundamental premises of that genocidal movement.  The convergence of radical Islam with the western Left is a phenomenon that I refused to face until the Mavi Marmara incident.  This was a case of “well-meaning” progressives joining forces with actual genocidal Jihadis in order to confront Jews on the open seas.  When Israel sought to detain this ship so that it would not be allowed to break the blockade of Gaza, Israeli soldiers were clubbed and knifed by Muslims seeking martyrdom in an effort to murder Jews.

They were then lionized as “peace activists” throughout the progressive left.

Progressives, in effect, told the world that Koranically-based genocide of the Jews, a little project that has been ongoing for 1,400 years, was actually a matter of “resistence” and thereby something to be supported.

It should be noted, however, that there are distinct differences between progressive-left humanitarian racism and progressive-left anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.  The first thing to acknowledge is that the former is very widespread throughout the progressive movement, while the latter is not.  The former is encouraged, while the latter is tolerated.  Humanitarian racism is the primary form of racism in the West today, while anti-Semitism cloaked under the banner of anti-Zionism is accepted by the progressive-left under the alleged umbrella of “human rights” and “social justice.”

Why any Jewish person would continue to support a political movement that stands directly against our own well-being is beyond me.  Why any Jewish person would support a president of the United States who tells the world that the rise of radical Islam, under the misnomer “Arab Spring,” is something akin to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, is also beyond me.

The time to stand up is now.

Bye bye Bobby Boy Scout

AKA  Dirty Deal Doc. I was working on a piece on why this blog has it in for the Australian Greens when the head toad jumped. Don't worry. Nothing has changed. This blog still has it in for the Australian Greens.

I've got a theory on the resignation. Brown has never really been in politics. All those years the Greens have been the indulged spoiled brats at the table. No one took them too seriously. They can't do much harm people thought and their heart is in the right place. They are allowed to be irresponsible because they will never have responsibility. They are big kids and the other kids love them and Bob Brown is just an oversized boy scout.

That changed. For the first time the Greens were getting a taste of the blowtorch that serious politicians have always worked with.  For the first time parts of the media put them under the cynical and skeptical focus that had been reserved for the major parties and especially the conservatives.

Bob and Paul woke up one morning in Senegal and realised that the boy scout was a real power politician with a party with factions that despised and leaked on one another, with critics and enemies, and serious scrutiny of who they are, where they come from and what they are about; and perhaps worst of all the passionate contempt of numerous people including whole communities who regard Brown and his colleagues as a physical threat to their families.

Peter Pan looked in the mirror and suddenly, in a second, to his horror realised he had grown up. He saw something ugly and it wasn't just his face.

Of course he resigned.

That bizarre Earthian speech was his last grab at convincing himself and anybody who would listen that he's different; he's a good guy really and his heart is in the right place. Really quite spiritual; you know with the aliens and comets and misty mountains and stuff.  It was a direct play to the crystal waving, astrology touting, organic, alternative, way out weirdo party faction that spawned him in the first place and to which he now returns.

Gunter Grass

Another piece from Dr Mike Lumish I lifted from his blog Israel Thrives to which this blog is a proud contributor.

An unnecessary sideshow has been opened by the probably ill-advised decision of the Israeli interior minister to bar Grass from entry to Israel. One can understand this. Grass is no ordinary former Nazi. He is a former member of the Waffen SS. He claims he was conscripted and he never fired a shot. This could be true. Much of the Waffen SS were not required to do the shooting themselves. They often used Ukrainians, German special miltary police units and others to fire the guns and in any event more often used gas.

Grass's poem is a thing of supreme ugliness. An ugly thought steeped in bigotry expressed in a clumsy and ugly way. Israel is a threat to the world because the Jews might preemptively nuke Iran and kill millions of Iranians using German submarines. Maybe they will take out the military use equipment the Germans have sold to Iran into the bargain.

It is striking that the "this is hypocrisy because the Jews have the bomb too" brigade always put Israel and Iran into the same "region". Away. Not here. Perhaps it's because both countries start with the letter "I".  Iraq too is definitely in the "region".

But what really is the "region"?  India? Why not; another "I" country. Pakistan?  China? Russia? France? UK? All of these countries are within range of Iran's missiles. They all have nukes. Why does Grass pick out Israel as suddenly the threat? Because it is being suddenly threatened?

Here is an essay by Allan Dershowitz on why barring Grass from Israel was a mistake that should be reversed.

The decision by Israel's Interior Minister to bar German writer, Gunter Grass, from entering the Jewish state is both foolish and self-defeating. Grass wrote an absurdly ignorant and perversely bigoted poem comparing Israel to Iran and declaring Israel to pose a great danger to world peace. He also warned Germany that by selling submarines to Israel, it is becoming complicit in a crime against humanity.

These wrong-headed views deserve to be rebutted on their demerits, as Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did quite effectively in his public response to Grass, by exposing his "shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran, a regime that denies the Holocaust and threatens to annihilate Israel," by pointing out that "it is Iran, not Israel, that threatens other states with annihilation," and that it is Iran who supports the Syrian regime's crackdown of its people and "stones women, hangs gays and brutally represses tens of millions of its own citizens." Grass' poem has also been effectively critiqued by Israelis across the political and literary spectrum. That is as it should be in an open, vibrant democracy, accustomed to rancorous public debate. But a great nation, committed to freedom of expression and dissent, should not bar a critic, even a critic as bigoted as Grass, from its territory.

Gunter Grass has always had a problem with Jews, from his early days as a member of the Hitler youth and Nazi SS to his most recent application of a nasty double standard to the Jewish state. But his ridiculous poem doesn't pose any security threat to Israel that would justify his physical exclusion from the country.

Maybe. Read the article. The Israelis says they are just pointing out Israel has to bar former Nazis by law. Perhaps they are merely taking the opportunity to remind Grass of that. It certainly does not impede the right and power of this particular former Nazi to express himself. Just at some physical distance is all.

geoffff

Günter Comes Full Circle

Mike L.

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

Nobel prize winning writer, Günter Grass, was a Nazi.

As a member of the Waffen SS, he was a soldier and a fighter for Nazi beliefs, values, and ideals. If he was a "good" Nazi he believed that Jews are responsible for much, if not most, of the world's misery and therefore needed to be stomped like a cockroach.

The Germans didn't slaughter the Jews because they were mean, they did it because they believed that the Jewish people were a disease on German culture and society, if not cultures and societies throughout the world. In particular, the Nazis accused its population of Jews (which amounted to about 1 percent of the whole) of being responsible for World War II, itself. They considered the Jewish people a menace who needed to be crushed. Whatever else Günter Grass thought that he was doing as a young Nazi, he promoted this bloody defamation of the Jewish people. It was a view that led to the slaughter of two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, including much of my own family.

Since that time, of course, Grass has redeemed himself... or so we all thought. The writer of The Tin Drum was widely believed within liberal Jewish circles to be a Nazi who reclaimed his humanity. In all fairness, I have not closely followed this man's career, but he is someone that I was aware of growing up. I read The Tin Drum as a kid and I saw the movie. My recollection, faulty as it may be, was that this was an artist of sensitivity and intelligence.

That's what I thought.

Every once in awhile... however... unfortunately... to my never-ending horror and disgust... an artist or thinker that I admired comes busting out with malicious anti-Semitic nonsense of the type that historically has gotten us killed. When I first heard Helen Thomas yammering about the need for Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and to move back to Poland and Russia and Alpha Centauri Seven, I practically fell out of my chair. I just couldn't believe it.

And now we discover that the great, world-renowned writer, Günter Grass, still believes that the Jews are a menace to the world who want nothing more than genocide for another people, for no other reason than shear malice. He wrote:

It is the alleged right to the first strike / That could annihilate the Iranian people/ Subjugated by a loud-mouth / And guided to organized jubilation / Because in their sphere of power / It is suspected, a nuclear bomb is being built.

Annihilate the Iranian people? Really? Merely because we "suspect" a bomb is being built?

Over at Bloomberg News, Jeffrey Goldberg has some words:

Perhaps it reads better in the German, or perhaps Grass is simply T.S. Eliot’s inferior in anti-Semitic poetry, but put aside the poem’s aesthetic shortcomings and consider the idea advanced in the first two lines: That Israel, which in reality is contemplating targeting six to eight nuclear sites in Iran for conventional aerial bombardment, in fact wants to annihilate the Iranian people in a “first strike.”

This is, of course, delusional. Not even the Iranian regime seems to believe this. To make yourself believe that Israel is seeking to murder the 74 million people of Iran, you must make yourself believe that the leaders of the Jewish state outstrip Adolf Hitler in genocidal intent.

In this way the former Nazi, Günter Grass, much like his former compatriots, the original Nazis, is again telling the world that the Jews are a menace that must be stopped at all costs. The hideous irony is that the Israelis are not calling for the genocide of anyone. All they want is to be left alone so that they can build computer doodads and send Natalie Portmans out into the world.

The fact is, however, that many of the surrounding 200 to 300 million Arabs (and Persians) are calling for the slaughter of the Jews. We are 1/50th of the region's population, yet western European's often tell one another that the Jews are menacing the Arabs and Muslims, even as so many Arabs and Muslims scream to the hillside about their genocidal desire to murder us.

How's that for twisted and sick?

And, so, Günter Grass comes full circle. He started out supporting a political movement that defamed the Jewish people, leading to our slaughter, and now he intends to go out defaming us again.

Good-bye, Günter.

You're done for the day.