Pat Condell Fires Both Barrels at Saudi Arabia

geoffff


Pat Condell let fly with some inconvenient truths about Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago. You know ... the usual nit picky stuff about how they spend hundred of millions exporting venal religious hatred in the guise of textbooks, setting up terrorist indoctrination centres disguised as mosques and schools while treating women as somewhere in status between livestock and human beings, executing homosexuals with enthusiastic hypocrisy  etc etc  ...

Here is his latest video which takes up  the theme and in particular on what  active and dangerous threats to free expression in the West Wahhabism and Sunni Theofascism have become. No one says it quite like Pat Condell.

Can I say this?

Perhaps not for much longer.

(hat tip  Shirlee)

Clive James

geoffff




We are about to lose Clive James so soon after the loss of Christopher Hitchens. The two had to be great friends.   Like Hitchens , Clive James is writing bravely to the end.

"This month has been the launching season for my new collection of poems, Nefertiti in the Flak Tower. Not many younger people, I have been discovering, know what a flak tower is, or was. Perhaps I should have called the book something else. One of the poems in the book is called ‘Whitman and the Moth’: it might have been wiser to call the book that. Early in the launching season I was asked to read the poem aloud on that excellent radio programme Front Row. The poem is a meditation on the old poet at the point of his death and I’m afraid I found the right voice for it exactly".

Hitchens last published work Arguably is perhaps the finest collection of previously published political essays and reviews in the English language since Orwell of whom Hitchens was a great admirer and I like to think at times actually seems to channel. Given that both were atheists the notion amuses me.

hat tip : kae

The Bar and Grill Executive Summary #1

geoffff

This blog has just now got to this video on our allied blog, Israel Thrives, currently off with close ones for a short break to launch a genocidal blitzkreig on the defenceless and for the most part harmless rainbow trout population of some region in wet and hilly Oregon. A good week's work in anyone's books.

I was struck again while listening to these guys by a weird and recurring sense of astonishment and despair that they are even having the discussion ; and then that hope that mixes in that the mere fact of the discussion and all the other debates by free men and women around the world will prove the bleeding obvious and carry the day. A leap of faith, if you will, and to see a Christian friend of Israel put the point so passionately has given this blog cause for pause.

The very fact that these most passionate of issues can be debated in this way is the point, the whole point and nothing but the point. That has simply not  been possible across much of the Arab and Muslim world and the prognosis is not remarkable anywhere despite the Arab Spring and that's putting it as charitably as possible.

At one time this blog worked in one of those jobs that required advising other busy managers and professionals of the implications of a specialised but often enormously complicated and potentially dangerous area affecting their operations nationally and abroad. There are alot of jobs like that and mine was certainly nothing remarkable .It was a conservative firm so I was given a lot of latitude. A curious fact.

When the heat was on, which was most of the time, it was useful to deliver the advice upfront and in point form. Put the firm's conclusions on the front page in language you would appreciate if you were in their shoes. More importantly reach some conclusions. Don't piss about. Obvious when you think about it but it was a radical concept at the time. The clients seemed to like it.

So this is a report in that style.

• The Middle East dispute is not about the Middle East and it is not about the Jews. It is about the poor hapless Palestinians least of all.

• There is only one cause of the dispute between Israel and those parts of the Arab and Muslim worlds that declare they are in dispute with the state. This is an implacable and strategically convenient hostility to the very concept of the Jewish state as a Jewish state. In this calculation the plight of the "Palestinian people" enters not at all.

• This in turn is driven by the warlike political cultures of a number of Muslim and Arab states and entities that are themselves routinely engaged in brutal wars among themselves. The political culture across the region is  identical in all material respects to that of pre-1945 Europe. In many ways the regimes that rule these states and factions owe much of their political cultures to that of pre-war Europe. The cost in human terms of the wars and conflict with Israel although horrific is of several orders of magnitude less than the cost in death, injury, displacement and general human misery and stagnation generated by even one of the lesser conflicts among these regimes and factions but this matters not at all. The need and urge for an enemy that is external to them all is irresistible. It varies in intensity in time and place but can reach a genocidal pitch.

• The Israelis will never surrender their state. No free people would. That this is now the open and official demand of the "Palestinian cause", supporters of the "cause" are openly exposed as pro-war and most of all anti-Palestinian. Notions such as the "binational state" and other grotesque bigoted shams offend the intelligence, and as their proponents could not really expect to be taken seriously, are cynically dishonest as well as profoundly racist. They are equivalent to demanding that South Africans revert to the oppression of an apartheid state or that American blacks submit to slavery; and are about as likely to be adopted.

• There is no greater enemy of the Palestinian people than the "Palestinian cause".

• Israel is close and convenient but is by no means the only target. It is not even the main target. It is certainly not the target that is most vulnerable or at risk not even in the Middle East. Israel is strong and appears to have snapped out of a spell woven by post-Zionists or non-Zionists  or ex-Zionists or whatever-Zionists now notoriously out of fashion in Israel but apparently not yet in the diaspora, given that now the "Palestinian cause" has made its position crystal clear. The Jews are to lose their state without a fight. Sure. That's going to happen. So 1990's. Like tattoos and Goth fashion. Quite quaint really.

• The "Palestinians" are by now a real and distinct people no matter what you might think of the leadership ethos which on the whole is no better or worse than that prevailing over much of the Arab and Muslim world which of course is appalling.. The people deserve to be recognised as a people if that is what they were indeed able to freely choose in the unlikely event the "Palestinian cause" could be persuaded to allow that to happen anyway. It would mean accepting Israel and allowing Palestine to exist both of which the "Palestinian cause" fiercely opposes. It would also mean peace with Israel and the "Palestinian cause" opposes that most of all. It was created to prevent peace and the "Palestinian cause" is itself at the mercy of a turmoil of foreign influences that reach from Tehran to the great universities of the West  most of which are now more or less openly pro-war as a matter of regime policy or ideology.

• None of this will change while the "Palestinian cause" has growing support especially from the West even though it has once again declared for the destruction of Israel. It sees and interprets the intense pressure on Israel to accept the blame for existing while itself being exempted from any apparent pressure to accept the two state solution as clear evidence that the "cause" is in the ascendancy. The "cause" is probably right to think this of itself but ultimately the "Palestinian cause" is not even about Israel. Even if Israel was to cease to exist the "Palestinian cause" would survive intact in one guise or another and the misery of the Palestinian people would continue unabated  even if the whole notion of Palestinian nationhood was to die with the Jewish state. It would worsen. Ultimately the "Palestinian cause" is even less about the Palestinians than it is about "Israel" and it is risible to suggest that it has anything at all to do with Nakba. The Nakba is the least of the atrocities the "Palestinian cause" has delivered on the Palestinian people and there is plenty more where that came from for the Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims..  

Cross posted Israel Thrives.

Diaspora Jews Demanding the Boycott of Jews Born in the Wrong Place

geoffff

Seriously, is there anything more disgusting? Can you imagine any other people on the face of the planet who would attack their own because of an accident of birth, no matter what they might perceive to be their politics?


What Isi Leibler said:

...

Diaspora Jews fall into an entirely different category. When they call for global boycotts of Israeli settlements, they are effectively promoting delegitimization and paving the way for broader boycotts. Besides, unlike their delusional Israeli counterparts, they are mere observers, physically unaffected by the negative repercussions of their actions.

...

Today, we are witness to a sea change in public opinion at the grassroots level, both in Israel and the diaspora, with a broad recognition that the current Palestinian leadership cannot possibly be considered to be a genuine peace partner. One can of course debate the pros and cons of this approach. However, to legitimize and describe as a Zionist, a Jew calling for a boycott of Israeli settlements, gives credence to activities which have the potential of impacting disastrously on Israel. There must be red lines. Many of us have reservations about diaspora Jews publicly condemning the democratically elected Israeli government on security issues but we recognize that in a democracy they are entitled to their views. But that surely does not apply to those directly calling for boycotts against sectors of Israeli society.

Exactly. In fact I would put it far more strongly than Isi Leibler. Far more. I would start with the phrase "sheer mindless gutlessness combined with wilful fuck you ignorance" and move on from there.

In the meantime demanding the murder of Israeli soldiers is now an acceptable form of Judge Stamped free  expression in Australia. The Netzarim Junction blood libel has made it to the streets of Sydney thanks to a Sydney judge.. 




Crossposted Israel Thrives 

All Criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitic!

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives)

There is an article in this morning's Jerusalem Post by Benjamin Kerstein entitled, "Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!" When I first noticed it I rolled my eyes and moved on by because the premise is so obviously nonsensical. Of course not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. If all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic then Israel, itself, is the most anti-Semitic country on the entire planet.

Nonetheless the idea seemed so outrageous and so patently false on its very face that I decided to see what the writer was saying. Perhaps his title, like mine above, was meant as snark. But, nope. Kerstein means precisely what he says. All criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic for historical reasons. This is what he writes:

All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because of the specific historical circumstances under which we currently live. That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non-anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible. And, ironically, these are circumstances that Israel’s opponents have themselves created.

To hold that this is not the case requires acting – and demanding that others act – as if these circumstances do not exist, even as they sit as patiently as a pachyderm in the parlor waiting for us to notice them and, sometimes, when our self-willed ignorance grows too infuriating, murder our children and set off bombs in our streets.

Nonetheless, these circumstances are not complex, nor are they numerous. They are simply these: A large portion of the world, West and East, has come to believe that Arabs and Muslims have earned the right to murder Jews.

This last bit, I have to say, is unquestionably true. Those of us who follow the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic party on the question of the Long Arab War against the Jews see this constantly. That is, we are constantly told that the reason that so many Arabs and Muslims seek to murder the Jews in the Middle East is because those Jews are mean. In places like Daily Kos or the Huffington Post or the UK Guardian (not to mention TIME magazine, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania) we are constantly told that the reason Palestinians strap suicide belts onto children and send them off into areas crowded with Jews is because Israel is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid state and that if Israel would simply end the Occupation (with a capital "O") then the local Arabs would become as gentle as narcofied lambs.

In this way, the Jews of the Middle East, who, as a tiny minority in that part of the world, have been subject to 14 centuries of persecution, are at fault for that persecution. Just as so many Germans in the early-middle part of the twentieth century told one another that the Jews have it coming, so today many, many western progressives tell themselves precisely the same thing. What it amounts to is the notion that if for 2,000 years we Jews have been unjustly persecuted and oppressed, thus artificially holding down our numbers, in this generation we really DO deserve whatever beating the Arab world wishes to give out.

Every generation of Jews prior to 1948 was perfectly innocent, but NOW we just happen to actually be guilty.

Derived from this right, they have also come to believe that the destruction dismantling, and erasure of the State of Israel, and the slaughter, expulsion, and/or perpetual subjugation of its Jewish population are entirely legitimate and indeed desirable.

That is, ultimately, what anti-Semitic anti-Zionism of the kind found so commonly on the left is about. That's what anti-Zionism means. It means that after 2,000 years of getting our collective ass kicked it is immoral and wrong for Jewish people to come together in their own self-defense because it means effectively fighting back against Arab Muslim persecution and, as everyone seems to know, Jewish self-defense is immoral and unacceptable.

Derived from the preceding is the belief that the Jewish people in general, in Israel or the Diaspora, either do not exist as a people deserving the same rights as other peoples, or are an evil and debased people who must be slaughtered, expelled, and/or perpetually subjugated in order to prevent them from committing further debased evils.

The western left never puts it in these kinds of terms. They never would because they see themselves as enlightened anti-racists. Instead, they often talk to one another about the Occupation (with a capital "O") and what a shame it is that the Jews are behaving something like Nazis. What usually, but not always, goes unspoken is the idea that if Israel is something akin to Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa then it must be dismantled as a Jewish state and any such effort can only lead to war, if not a second Holocaust.

So, is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitic?

No.

I'm sorry, but despite the above the very notion is still ridiculous on its face. Nonetheless, it's not really that difficult to understand where Kerstein is coming from. Israel represents about half the world's Jewish population and it is surrounded by people numbering 60 to 70 for every Jew and a very great proportion of those people hold murderous hostility toward those Jews. People in the west do not really understand, or care to understand, what a precarious position those Jews live under. People in the west do not really understand, or care to understand, that the Jews in the Middle East have been living under siege since they were freed from dhimmitude in the early part of the twentieth century.

In the comments of Kerstein's op-ed we read this:

Freezey

Bizarre and counter-intuitive proposals like all criticism is anti-semitic are a mark of either Power or Desperation.

The western progressive-left thinks that Israel is powerful, but the truth is that the Jews of the Middle East are desperate. They desperately wish to be left alone to raise their children in peace, to work on computer and medical technology, and to send Natalie Portmans out into the world. That's what they want, but instead they live with constant hatred coming at them from all quarters and bloodthirsty violence directed at them from many in the local Palestinian population.

When malicious progressives direct their hatred toward the Jews of the Middle East they are confusing victims with victimizers and seeing their own hatred in noble terms.

There is a reason why young Jewish kids in Israel must go into the IDF and it is not because the Jews of the Middle East are essentially militaristic and mean. It is because so many of the 400 million Arabs surrounding those Jews are hell-bent for fury and hundreds of millions of westerners seem to favor the Arabs over those Jews.

One thing that I know for certain is that if the shit ever really hits the fan over there and we end up with a whole mess of dead Jews (and dead Arabs), the tendency on the western left will be to blame the Jews for the hostility against us.

That's the way it has been every generation for 2,000 years.

This one is no different.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem --- And the Media Lie of Two Cities

The Czechs Get It.

geoffff




It is easy to look at Europe and despair at how easy it is for free people to surrender even their basic liberties in the face of a bizarre prevailing political culture of the hour or even to submit to outright physical intimidation. People of the fashionable left who march in the streets of London or Paris behind banners that glorify Hamas or the "Palestinian Resistance" or which proclaim "We are all Hezbollah Now" have already lost any respect for themselves and the vast cultural achievements of their countries.  Little European countries that prosecute politicians for "hate speech" for making some observations about the dangers of Islamic extremism while savagely defending and protecting the worst forms of genocidal racist incitement pouring from Islamic extremists are already priming themselves for another Nazi occupation.

It is gratifying to see that there are still some liberal democracies in Europe that have enough respect for human rights and their own nationhood to actually support liberal democracy abroad and enough courage to stand up to the ugly fanatics who want to see it torn down at home; and to recognise them for who they are. These tend to be countries of liberal tradition that not only had to endure fascist occupation seventy years ago but also had to throw off Stalinist rule within the living memory of most.

The Czech Republic is the prime example.

Yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Prague with seven Cabinet ministers. Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas took the opportunity to tell the Israeli press that the Czechs had “a special feeling” for Israel.

“We’ve got a full understanding of Israel’s situation as a small, democratic country in a very dangerous region with very dangerous neighbors,” Necas told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview before the meeting.

He said the Czech Republic would like to continue to be a strong supporter of Israel within the European Union. “We are concerned about the Iranian missile and nuclear programs,” he said.

Israel’s situation was reminiscent of Czechoslovakia’s in the 1930s, Necas said. In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded the country, citing the need to defend its German-speaking minority.

“We’ve got a special feeling for Israel’s situation – that of a small nation surrounded by enemies. We remember our situation in the 1930s, when the small democratic Czechoslovakia had neighbors that wanted to destroy it or take part of our territory.”

Without question the Czechs will remember something else.

In 1938 Czechoslovakia  not only was an advanced liberal democracy but had a strong and professional military and a world class armaments industry. This did not prevent the cowards of London and Paris in charge of the two great democracies of Europe selling out the little country to the Nazis in a midnight meeting with Hitler while the Czech ambassador was forced to wait outside the door to hear the fate of his nation.

It would be three generations before the Czech people were free of totalitarianism and were to get back their democracy.

The appeasement of racist hatred and tyranny only serves to inflame it. The Czechs know this. We are watching exactly the same thing now. Appeasement of totalitarian imperialism does not avert war. By its nature totalitarian imperialism in any form will only be satisfied by complete submission. Appeasement ensures war and makes certain that when it comes it will more terrible than anyone can imagine. 

Crossposted Israel Thrives

Say "Hello" to Daphne Anson

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives.)

One of my favorite new pro-Israel bloggers is Daphne Anson. I am highlighting her blog because I think that it is important that pro-Israel bloggers support one another and because I just happen to like her work.

She says of herself:

I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair.

Interestingly enough, as my readers know, it was the Mavi Marmara affair that also inspired me to start pro-Israel blogging in earnest. What shocked me at the time was that the effort to break the blockade of Gaza was an effort that saw a coalition of western progressives working with actual murderous Jihadis for the purpose of violently confronting Jews on the high seas.

That was quite a wake-up call, I have to tell you.

In any case, I very much encourage the Bar and Grill readership to check in with Daphne. She is very much a welcome addition to the pro-Israel / pro-Jewish blogosphere... despite the fact that, sadly, she is probably not a San Francisco Giants fan.

The Netzarim Junction Blood Libel -- When Will the Western Media be called to Account?

Part One

geoffff




This blog has an ongoing interest in what is commonly called the Muhammad al-Durrah incident, perhaps the most dangerous and vile blood libel in all of history. Without question it is the fastest and most widely spread. What once took days and months to reach perhaps a county or country now reaches the world in a second and once it is planted is there forever.

Previous pieces on this affair are here,  here and here.

I know the Bar and Grill has readers who may not be completely familar with the concept of the "blood libel" and what a truly disgusting and dangeous thing it is. Wikipedia has a pretty good run down  on this strange and cultish phenonomen but the internet is teeming with reliable information as always.

A blood libel in its purest form is the ancient allegation that Jews murder Christian (or more latterly Muslim) children as part of their religious rituals. At one time the libel was that the Jews crucified a Christian child at around Easter time to re-enact the killing of Christ. The innocence of the child was symbolic of the innocence of Jesus. Common variations include Jews drain the childrens' blood to use in the baking of matzo as part of the Passover ceremony (which usually occurs around Easter).

Likely these choice little fantasies from hell have their origins in the Christian Bible and specifically to a reference in  Matthew 27:25. where after Pontius Pilate has publicly washed his hands of the fate of Jesus the  crowd shouts "His blood be on us and on our children" about yet another Jew (one of thousands) about to suffer an horrific death under the Roman occupation.

Sure. That sounds likely.

In doing so, so the story goes, in some mediaeval Christian minds at least, the Jewish people as a whole and for perpetuity bore direct responsibility for the crucifixion and were therefore fair game for persecution and extermination. Or so The Guardian says, and The Guardian is never short of a good story  when it can be twisted into an opportunity to bash conservatives and Americans.

Thanks alot, lunatic religious fanatics with mediaeval minds. Deicide. This blog admits to the occasional rough night over the course of his life and for sure some beer has been spilt and the odd glass broken. But I have never killed anybody; least of all God. I'm certain I would remember if I had.

Perhaps the most repellant feature of the twentieth -first century so far is how many lunatic religious fanatics with medieval minds there are,  more than ever it seems, and how tolerated they are even in the heart of Europe at the very scene of countless atrocities inspired  by the mindset.

The Guardian curiously ignores the substantial English contribution to the blood libel. A nasty piece of theological propaganda written perhaps a hundred years after the death of Christ and at the peak of the turmoil of the Judeo/Christian split, as bad as it was, was raised to a much more potent and dangerous level first in England. The libel was tied to an actual child's death, who was then given the status of martyr and the central figure of an officially condoned cult that drove the murder and persecution of Jews, happened first in England. This is indeed the defining pattern of the blood libel since the twelth century. This is what distingushes it from even the most venal kinds of war propaganda such as WW1 images of German soldiers spearing and hoisting babies on bayonets.

The blood libel is different.  First there is the sick lie. Then comes the glorious martyr. Next the cult and finally the massacres of innocent and helpless Jews over and over again including inevitably the killing of children in the cruelest ways possible. This apparently is important for the libellers. There have been hundreds of these. In 1144 there was William of Norwich.  In 1255 there was Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln.  Simon of Trent in 1475. The Holy Child of La Guardia in 1491.

It is so easy to think of this as the work of a depraved clergy from an ignorant and superstitious age when the supernatural ruled the everyday that has now passed into distant history. Since then there has been the Enlightenment surely?

Lest we think that this is entirely a thing of the Dark Ages that went out of fashion with witchhunts and the Inquisition, all of these children were among those canonised by the Roman Catholic Church as late as the ninteenth century and often retained their sainthood and cult status, based entirely on the fabrication of Jewish ritual murder, as late as 1964. The Russian Orthodox Church to this day has only one child saint. , the patron saint of children with his own annual feast day, who the Church alleges was ritually murdered by Jews to make matzo for Passover.

It took until 1955 for the Anglican Church to place a plaque at the former shrine of Little Saint Hugh whose remains were buried in the Lincoln Cathedral to say his death  inspired a hateful and murderous legend and cult.

In the twentieth century the blood libel prospered and moved on from Christianity. It was a staple of the Nazi gutter press of course but had already infected the Muslim world and this was spread with relish by Nazi allies and Islamic ideologues  such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

In  1910 the Jews of  Shiraz, Iran were  accused of murdering a Muslim girl. The  Jewish quarter was pillaged and12 Jews killed in the subsequent pogrom. In 1928, the Jews of Massena, New York were  accused of kidnapping and killing a Christian girl. The 1946 Kielce pogrom against Holocaust survivors in Poland was sparked by an accusation of blood libel. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia specifically accused Parisian Jews of a blood libel.

In 1986 the Syrian Defense Minister, as his contribution to Arab literature, published The Matzah of Zion. The book renewed ritual murder accusations against the Jews of Damascus. It has been cited by Syrian UN delegates and  at October 2002 was into  its eighth reprint and being translated into English, French and Italian

And on and on it goes. In 2003 a 29 part television series Ash Shatat ("The Diaspora") was broadcast in Lebanon by Hezbellah and since across the Arab world. The series is based on the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, (also now a staple across the Muslim world) depicts the Jewish people as engaging in a conspiracy to rule the world and presents Jews as people who murder children for their blood.

The Arab Muslim world, and Iran, and beyond, is drenched in the blood of the blood libel.

• .

A hundred years ago the Jew haters only had the pulpit and the printing press to spread their hideous lie.


"Christians, take care of your children!!! It will be Jewish Passover on March 17"

They still have the pulpit and the press of course, but now they have something new and I don't mean just the internet. They have the entire Western left/liberal media at their disposal. Which brings us to the Netzarim Junction blood libel; the first fresh blood libel of the twenty-first century..




This was a blood libel in its purest sense and across the Muslim world it played as such as was intended. It has all the elements. The contemptible and sick lie in this case cynically staged. The irretrievably evil Jews forever condemned by God himself. The noble and innocent child martyr well on his way to sainthood.. The blood thirsty religion inspired cult and then the massacres of innocent Jewish people with a special emphasis on their children.

But at once, while this was going on in all its fury, in the West it was given just a very slight new spin by the self appointed high priests of this secular multicultural era; the progressive left intelligentsia in the universities and the left/liberal media. In an instant they grabbed the libel with both hands and in a frenzied mob rage they waged their own paper pogrom against the very concept of a Jewish state.

They took God out of it of course. It would have been unenlightened and embarrassing to leave him there and besides he was no longer needed. They knew you could get a perfectly good blood libel raging against the Jews without resorting to God, at least in the West. The Nazis and the Stalinists had proven that.

All you need is faith.

.

[To be continued]

Update 22 May 2013  Another post on this here

Crossposted at Israel Thrives

The Failures of Progressive-Left Zionism: The Settlers

Mike L.

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives.)

Progressive-left Jewish Zionists are failing the Jewish people.

If the first way in which progressive-left Zionism is failing is in its ostrich-like reluctance to acknowledge, and seriously discuss, the rise of the Jihad throughout the Muslim Middle East, another way is through their justifying bigotry against their own people.

Progressive-left Jews are encouraging hatred toward their fellow Jews.  Jews who dare to live in Judea and Samaria are targets not only of Palestinian terrorists, but of progressive-left diaspora Jews who spit hatred at those people.  What is most galling, perhaps, is that these "settlers" are living under exceedingly difficult circumstances, while their Jewish prosecutors live in clean, safe apartments and houses in Europe, Australia, and North America.  Those of us who live in the United States need not worry that a crazed Jihadi will sneak into our 3 month old baby daughter's room and chop off her head.  Yet, progressive-left diaspora Jews feel free to malign these people.

I think that it is a disgrace and I've written about this before. In a 2010 piece entitled Liberal Jewish Suckers, I wrote:

I personally do not care whether Jews live there or not. I am not in favor of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Nor do I oppose Jewish settlements in the West Bank. For that matter, I also do not oppose Episcopalians living in Skokie, Illinois, nor Rastafarians living in Kathmandu, Nepal, nor Ethiopians living in Walla Walla, Washington. What we are being told, though, is that Jews living, and thus building, in the West Bank is an impediment to the peace process. This is nonsense. How can the mere presence of Jews in the West Bank prevent Mahmoud Abbas from sitting across the table from Benjamin Netanyahu? All they need to do is agree on Israel's final borders, and thus the borders of the forthcoming Palestinian state, and then those Jews who live in the newly formed state of Palestine will be living under Palestinian rule. Presumably many will leave under those conditions because, or so I guess, most would prefer not to live under Palestinian sovereignty. But should that not be up to them?

Of course, it should. The problem is that when Barack Obama demanded "total settlement freeze" then Mahmoud Abbas was put into the position in which he could demand nothing less, thus ruining any potential there may have been for a negotiated peace. Now, this is, of course, terrible enough, but what compounds the problem is progressive-left Jewish hatred toward those very people who Abbas and Obama do not want living, and thus building, on historically Jewish land.

To my mind there are few things in this world more revolting than Jews who whip up hatred toward other Jews. I do not like it when anti-Semitic Jewish anti-Zionists, the Finkelsteins of the world, spit poison and hatred at the Jewish state of Israel and I do not like it when progressive-left diaspora Jews spit poison and hatred at the so-called "settlers." It creates bigotry and it justifies violence against us. It gets used by anti-Semites to justify the very hatred that necessitated the creation of the Jewish state to begin with.

Why must any future state of Palestine be Judenrein? Israel does not demand that their Palestinian population pack up and move out, yet not only does Abbas and the PA insist upon the dismantling of Jewish settlements in their areas of jurisdiction, but even liberal American Jews do so. This is not only a form of unjust bigotry, it is, itself, an impediment to the peace process. Let me be clear. It is not Jewish settlements in the West Bank that is an impediment to the peace process, but the insistence that Jews must not be allowed to live, and thus build, in the West Bank that is the impediment to the peace process.

In this way progressive-left diaspora Jews, who complain bitterly about Jews building housing for themselves in Judea, end up justifying the conflict. If the very idea of Jews building housing for themselves in Judea is so horrendous, and if diaspora Jews whine and bitch and moan about it, how can we blame the Palestinians for refusing to accept Jewish people on that land?

I know that some will say that it's not about Jews, per se, but about Israeli nationals. This is nonsense. Does anyone honestly think that anyone else would care if those people were Muslim? Of course, not. The problem here is not that they are Israelis, but that they are Jews.

Pretending otherwise fools no one.

Congressman Joe Walsh Calls for a Single State

Mike L.

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

Over on the Jerusalem Post, congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois is calling for the creation of a single state between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. He writes:

It reminds me of that definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, everyone who continues to cling to the delusion of a two-state solution is insane. There is no such thing as a two-state solution. It cannot work, it has not worked, and it will not work.

It is true that it has not worked and it is probably true that it will not work, but it is utterly false to suggest that it cannot work. Of course it can work. But it can only work if the Arabs allow it to work. It will not work so long as they absolutely refuse to accept Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land. It is Arab intransigence that is killing the two-state solution, nothing else.

As much as progressive-left Jews would like to blame other Jews... Jewish conservatives, the Likud, Avigdor Lieberman, the evil "settlers" (like the Fogels) with blood dripping from their sharpened fangs... for the death of the two-state solution, such blaming is little more than a product of Jewish Stockholm Syndrome. After all, if the problem is really one of "bad" Jews then it can be dealt with. We just need to scold and malign and marginalize and demean those bad Jews until they shut the hell up and move elsewhere and then everything will be A-OK and the Palestinians will, at long last, accept a state for themselves next to the Jewish one.

But, sadly, the problem here is not Likud, nor the evil settlers, nor even that arch-demon Avigdor Lieberman, but the Palestinians, themselves.

The Palestinians have broken their word again and again. They continue to intentionally fire rockets at innocent Israeli families and children, and they have betrayed the fundamental tenet of the two-state solution they tout by cutting Israel out of negotiations and going directly to the United Nations.

Moreover, the Palestinian Authority continues to incite violence against Israelis. It pays the salaries of imprisoned terrorists convicted of killing Israelis and glorifies suicide bombers at public events. The PA’s magazine Zayzafuna recently presented Hitler as a role model for the Palestinian youth on account of all the Jews he had killed.

The Palestinians have proven themselves to be absolutely murderous. What they want is a single Palestinian state from the river to the sea, just as the congressman wants a single Jewish state from the river to the sea. The difference is that the Jews have always been willing to compromise while the Arabs have never been willing to compromise. He is right, of course, that the Palestinians, a people born from the greater Arab world specifically for the purpose of opposing Jewish national rights on Jewish land, continue to incite hatred among their own children toward Israel and toward Jews, in general. It is the very hatred that they whip up among themselves that is the cause of their own misery. And while Arabs in the Muslim Middle East have been hating on Jews for a very, very long time, it is only within living memory that they have had to pay any price for their ongoing persecution of the Jewish people.

This solution is the best one for everyone, especially the Palestinians. They will trade their two corrupt and inept governments and societies for a stable, free and prosperous one. Those Palestinians that wish to may leave their Fatah and Hamas-created slums and move to the original Palestinian state – Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. It was the only justification for its creation. Even now, 75 percent of its population is of Palestinian descent. Those Palestinians that remain behind in Israel will maintain limited voting power, but will be awarded all the economic and civil rights of Israeli citizens. They will be free to raise a family, start a business and live in peace, all of which are impossible under Arab rule.

Limited voting power.

That, right there, is the problem. Israel obviously cannot be a democracy if it only offers limited voting power to any groups of people under its sovereignty. Therefore, what Israel needs to do is not take all of Judea and Samaria, but simply declare its final borders, remove the IDF to behind those borders, and wish the Palestinians the very best luck in the world as they create their brave and beautiful new future under their own, surely democratic, government in downtown Ramallah.

And then say "bye-bye."

Good-bye and good luck.

Daniel Gordos v Peter Breinhart

geoffff


This blog's formerly resident troll (who regrettably had to be put down after he contracted a terminal case of mange of the mouth) recently demanded this blog's review of  the latest left Zionist product of the apologist/appeasement industry; The Crisis of Zionism by Peter Beinart.

The troll got a review copy, it seems. This blog did not. Therefore not having read the book this blog declines to review it. A trivial copout I know and not normally regarded as a handicap for reviewers but there you have it.

However here is the next best thing. A debate between Daniel Gordos and Peter Breinhart on   “Zionism is a failing experiment—and American Jews are hastening its decline.”

A review of the debate from the (left/liberal) Jewish Daily Forward is here.


(hat tip  Israellycool)

Come on USA. We Need You.

geoffff


This is a comment that Daniel Bielak posted to Israel Thrives, a blog to which this blog is a proud contributor, and I reckon is worth front page treatment here.

This blog is as pro-American as anyone can get without actually being an American. Indeed more pro-American than many Americans it seems; but I am under no illusion about this and in a crucial year when Americans will once again make a decision that has enormous implications for us all it may be timely to be reminded that we know that liberal democracy is no failsafeguard against an appalling mistake.

Even Abraham Lincoln  warned that you can fool all of the people some of the time. A simple majority for one day in the mighty country that more than any other inspired it all could be enough when liberal democracy itself is once again threatened by an ugly totalitarian ideology promising a  Dark Age a thousand years long.

Daniel Bielak

I think that the members of Left despise, and have despised, only the American military and the militaries of all other countries that the members of the Left, in their minds, associate with the American military.

And now, the members of the now-Fascist Left, feel racist genocidal hatred only toward the military of, and toward the members, in general, of, the intendedly genocidally besieged very small nation of the Jewish people, Israel (which, by the way, in fact, is not, nor has ever been, supported by the government of the Unites States of America, but which, in fact, rather, has been intentionally intendedly fatally undermined by the intelligence agencies, and foreign policy departments, and the executive administrations, of the government of the United States of America). Talk (by lying leaders of Western governments who are scapegoating Israel, and who are pretending to be friends of Israel) is cheap. Actions (the actual actions* by those leaders of Western governments -- which are actions that are almost entirely unreported by the non-Jewish racist anti-Jewish members of, and by the Jewish Stockholm-syndrome-affected egomaniacal morally bankrupt members of, the Western mass media) are what matter.

Many members of the now-Fascist Left express support for the militaries and murderous terrorist cells of Islamic supremacist fascist intendedly genocidal racist anti-Jewish governments and political organizations.

By the way, I, myself, in the past, disliked the American military (and militaries, in general). I still view all violent action as being wrong and unbeneficial. But I now have an appreciation for, and compassion for, the members of the American military, and for, especially, the members of the military of Israel, and for the members of the militaries of all democratic countries.

I appreciate, and, have compassion for, especially the members of the military of Israel because the military of Israel is a mainly conscripted military constituted mainly of most of the young Jewish people of the besieged very small country of the Jewish people, and because, despite the extremely difficult situation that Israel is in, and that the military of Israel is in, the military of Israel has developed, and adheres to, an extremely high humane code of ethics of behavior, as far as how high and humane the ethics of behavior of any military can be.

And the military of Israel, of course, as Jewish people have always been, is viciously libeled by genocidal anti-Jewish racists -- political, and academic, and journalistic, and religious clerical -- Arab, and Muslim, and Western, and, as always, Jewish -- with verbal and visual lies of omission, and with verbal and visual blatant lies - which are lies that are readily believed by very many of the members of Western societies (culturally Christian-European -- Christian and formerly Christian -- societies) -- societies in whose culture belief in racist bigoted antipathetic wrong views about the Jewish people is a deeply engrained part.

The government of the United States of America gives 3 billion dollars of financial aid per year to Israel, which is money that the government of the United States of America requires the government of Israel to spend on buying weapons from the United States of America.

An important fact to know is that the founding membership of the CIA was constituted by several thousand German former Nazi officials who, soon after World War II, were recruited into the CIA by the founder of the CIA, Allen Dulles - who, with his friend, Jack Philby, provided, and profited from providing, petroleum from Muslim Arab states to the Nazi regime of Germany during the 1930's. Jack Philby was a British official who was one of the main administrators of the British Mandate of Palestine, and was a self-professed Socialist, and converted to Islam in 1930, and was a fervent supporter of the Nazis.

The following are two books about some of this, and about other aspects of this aspect of the situation that Israel is in. The books are by John Loftus, who was a U.S. Justice Department federal prosecutor who had above Top Secret security clearance in the U.S. government. However, by the way, John Loftus has expressed the false belief that Islam is a "peaceful religion", and that Wahabi Islam is a heretical sect of Islam. And, by the way, John Loftus is a Democrat.

The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People, by John Loftus and Mark Aarons

America's Nazi Secret: An Insider's History, by John Loftus


Note: * The government of the United States of America gives a total of over 3 billion dollars of financial aid per year to Muslim Arab states in the Middle East. The government of the United States gives more military aid to the Saudi family dictatorial Islamic regime of Saudi Arabia than the government of the United States of America gives to any other state in the world.

The Rhythm of Israel

(Hat tip  Elder of Ziyon)

Pat Condell Serves It Right Up Saudi Arabia.

geoffff

Pat Condell is perhaps the clearest voice on the internet on violent Islamic extremism and the unnatural and disgusting perversions that fuel it. It is an excellent use of five or six minutes to hear what he has to say.

"Saudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton."

""The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still "constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide" and that "it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority".

""In a separate diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks last night, the militant group which carried out the Mumbai bombings in 2008, Lashkar-e-Toiba, is reported to have secured money in Saudi Arabia via one of its charity offshoots which raises money for schools.""

The Independent
6 December 2010



Wikileaks cables have exposed Saudi Arabia (and other Sunni states) as the sponsors of terrorism
"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," according to Hilary Clinton in one of the leaked cables.

The Guardian
5 December 2010



Donors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are estimated to have been sending up to $100 million annually to radical Islamic schools in Pakistan that back extremist groups, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable.

$100 million donated to radical Islamic schools


Saudis export anti-Christian and anti-Jewish textbooks across the world

Textbooks used in Saudi Arabia’s schools contain virulent forms of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry that continue to fuel intolerance and violence around the globe, says a new report.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The problem is far greater than the five million students in Saudi Arabia who use these texts every day, said Nina Shea, director of the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“Because of the Saudis’ great oil wealth, it is able to disseminate its textbooks far and wide,” she wrote in the report, Ten Years On.

“[These textbooks] are posted on the Saudi Education Ministry’s website and are shipped and distributed free by a vast Saudi-sponsored Sunni infrastructure to many Muslim schools, mosques and libraries throughout the world.

“This is not just hate mongering, it’s promoting violence,” she said in an interview. It is exporting terrorism through textbooks.

Christians are referred to as “swine” and Jews as “apes,” while being blamed for much of the world’s ills.

Saudi High School textbooks preach hate

Dec 8, 2011

""A twelfth-grade Saudi textbook is teaching hatred of Jews and jihad to liberate Palestine, according to MEMRI. The report illustrates that hatred and violence continue to be themes in Saudi educational materials, ..."

""Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it," states Saudi textbook Studies from the Muslim World."

The Investigative Project on Terrorism
 30 September 2011

Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. It is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet.

The Atlantic
May 2007

The Geofffff's Joint Peace Prize -- Special Mayday Award

geoffff


This blog overlooks the Australian east coast and from the balcony is the Pacific Ocean gently breaking on a sandy beach. This small part of the ocean is known as the Coral Sea and therefore part of the vast battlefield where in May 1942 the US Navy, aided by the RAN and the RAAF, saw off a Japanese invasion fleet headed for Port Moresby hundreds of miles to the north at the very darkest hour of the Pacific war.







This morning two  US veterans were among those who gathered for a dawn service in Townsville in north Queensland to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea.

The men, who are in their 90s, served on the USS Lexington, one of two aircraft carriers that fought in the battle off the north Queensland coast one month before the Battle of  Midway. The Lexington, which had survived Pearl Harbour, was lost in the battle.

Today is also the first anniversary of the despatch of Osama bin Laden and naturally President Obama is playing it for all it's worth. Enough of him.

One year ago today heliborne United States Navy Seals from the Red Squadron of the Joint Special Operations Command's United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group took out the nastiest terrorist  in all of history and in doing so put on notice fanatical Islamist criminals and enemies of humanity everywhere that none of them are beyond reach.

Recently this blog founded the Geoffff's Joint Peace Prize in an attempt to shore up the global peace prize credibility problem following the award of the Nobel peace prize to such luminaries as the psychopath arch-terrorist and child killer, Yassir Arafat, and Nazi Islamist apologist and peddler of racist slander Archbishop Desmund Tutu,  and also the award of the Sydney Peace Prize to crackpot democracy hating Israel basher, Noam Chomsky, Marxist antisemite, John Pilger and Arafat PR front woman and 9/11 denier, Hanan Ashrawi.

So can there be really any doubt who deserves the honour of the Geoffff's Joint Peace Prize this 1 May 2012 ?

Congratulations US Seals. The prize of course is yours.

Thanks again US Navy.


Making and keeping the peace for over seventy years. Always welcome in Australian ports.

Crossposted   Israel Thrives

Why Do They Capitalize the "East" in East Jerusalem?

Mike L.

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

One of the things that I am most interested in within "I-P" discourse is how prevalent language influences our ways of thinking on the subject. For example, I gave up on the usage of "West Bank" when I learned that the term was invented by the Jordanians in the middle of the last century.

Those of us who care about the Jewish people, and therefore care about the Jewish state, need to be much more cognizant of how the language that we use predetermines conclusions. If speaking of the "Occupation" with a capital "O" condemns the Jews of the Middle East before the conversation even gets started, and if so much of the language that we use was created by those who hate the Jewish presence in the Middle East, then why should we use that language?

There is no such place as East Jerusalem. There is the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, like every other city on the planet, has an eastern part and a western part and a northern part and a southern part. But the eastern part of the city, which is to say, the Old City and adjacent neighborhoods, is not a separate and distinct entity. That being the case, why is it that I constantly see the term "East Jerusalem" in the western press?

I would suggest that it is due to the common notion that "East Jerusalem" is "Arab East Jerusalem" and, therefore, the Jews have no real claim on the foundational city of the Jewish people where we have had a presence for over 3,500 years. Just as calling Judea and Samaria "the West Bank" tends to erase the fact that it is historically Jewish land dating back millenia before Arabs turned up as conquerors, so referring to the Old City and adjacent neighborhoods as "East Jerusalem" tends to suggest that it is separate from the rest of the city, which it is not.

This being the case, I would very much recommend deleting that usage. If you care about the well-being of the Jewish people you should not use terminology that automatically puts us back on our heals. If you understand that we have been subject to 14 centuries of ongoing Arab-Muslim persecution in that part of the world, and that they portray our self-defense to that persecution as their oppression, then we must not use the language of our enemies to describe our own circumstance.

Doing so not only misrepresents Jewish history in the Middle East, but promotes Jewish persecution there.