Are The Greens Australia's First Islamist Party?

geoffff

Two days ago two  Australian Greens politicians publicly refused to sign the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism. Not only that, they were proud of themselves. They even submitted an article to New Matilda claiming credit for it. As if this was something honourable and courageous. Here it is.  Do read it all but to sum up the reasoning there were too many bits in the declaration about Israel being the Jewish state and therefore Israel should not be boycotted on that account or its supporters singled out for racist abuse at UN conferences like Durban. And also Zionism is racism.

Whilst there are some interpretations of Zionism that are compatible with a peaceful, multi-ethnic and religious state, in its name Palestinian homes have been demolished, the granting of Israeli citizenship has been granted based on the grounds of race and religion and illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank have been constructed.

The usual lies about home demolitions, illegal settlements, "apartheid walls" and comparisons with South Africa, and of all places Burma, but see the phrase in bold.  So much for Jewish nationhood. Israel alone of the nations has no legitimacy because to identify as Jewish in the Jewish homeland is to discriminate "on the grounds of race and religion".  

No doubt there will be more Greens lining up to show their contempt for the political and other human rights of Israelis because they are Jews, or more to the point not Muslims. I commented about this noble stand of principle here and left this at New Matilda.

It is just a simple outright lie that people who have criticisms of Israeli Government policy at checkpoints or building approvals risk being labelled antisemites. 

They do not. Read this disgusting article and you will see this lie at full strength.

 If you believe that the existence of the Jewish state is the reason for the misery of the "Palestinian" people then you are not necessarily an antisemite. Ignorant, with the intellectual depth of a child's wading pool in summer and driven by dinner party activism probably but not necessarily a full blown racist.

If you stand for the destruction of the Jewish state then you are an antisemite. If you are agnostic on the question of whether the Jewish state should be torn down as if it was the old apartheid regime in South Africa then you are an antisemite. No amount of mealy mouthed  double talk of the type you see here will disguise that.

This is why the Greens are correctly labelled as full blown racists. And pro-war. Their presence in Australian politics, like that of One Nation's two decades ago, shames us all

One of these politicians is David Shoebridge. Two weeks ago Shoebridge attended a Nakba Day rally during which he demonstrated his passion for human rights by entertaining Iranian Press TV with a long and friendly interview about the evil Israelis. Shoebridge is spokesperson for his party on Gay and Lesbian rights.  

What can you say? I tried this.

Greens campaign against combating racism? Greens giving comfort and support to regimes that publicly murder Gays? Greens complicit in the brutal oppression of women abroad?  You better believe it.

Welcome to Greens foreign policy.

And welcome to Shoebridge's website where you will find this text book piece of subliminal racism, and not so subliminal antisemitism.  

The Racist World of the Greens.

This is not some sort of satire. This cartoon is genuine and comes from the official site of this Greens parliamentarian  and anti-Israel activist. It is the official Greens position and provides the background for this.

It's the usual four map illusion with mirrors that has been debunked so thoroughly it raises ugly thoughts about the motives of those who deploy it. But deploy it they do and in this case with a couple of twists unique to the Australian Greens  There are a couple of perversions of their own which really should settle the question of  whether it is populist ignorance or deep rooted prejudices that drive Greens foreign policy interventions.

Can you spot these?

The first map is the biggest lie as noted by the Elder. As is usual it is a snapshot of the Mandate for Palestine in 1946 thereby sidestepping any possible thought crimes  that might occur among the punters had the snapshot been taken in 1920 when the Mandate was created or in 1922 when Palestine was illegally split by the British hiving off 77% to a new Arab state east of the river where Jews were forbidden to live by law. Still are. This also avoids any possibility of curiosity about the history of Zionism and the Jewish struggle for national liberation in the explicit context of the rule of international law in the twentieth century.

But there's something else. In the usual map one lie what is here shown as the white bits, if they are shown at all, are explained to be "Jewish owned land" and indeed probably do correctly depict the extent of privately owned land lawfully held by Jews and Jewish bodies at that time. The lie is that the balance was "Palestinian"  owned land. It was not. The vast bulk of it was not private land at all. It was public land and the suggestion that it was owned by one section of the population to the exclusion of another has to say something about the mindset. However it gets worse:

On the Greens' map the white bits are not even described as "Jewish owned land". Instead they are depicted only in the negative, as not part of "Palestine". According to the Greens a Jew lawfully owning land in the Mandate for Palestine was sufficient to remove the land from whatever polity the Greens imagine applied at that time. The land had in effect been stolen solely by virtue of being owned by Jews. 

And the other thing? "Shrinking Palestine", with the Jewish bits steadily expanding from what looks like the aftermath of an attack by a plague of sabre toothed moths on an antique table cloth, to big shark like bites, is coloured green; the natural colour of empathy for this party. Look at the poor green little country being gulped up in big bites as if the Jews are Great White Sharks attacking a school of painted pilchards.

The other lies are dealt with by the Elder  It is almost amusing to see the period 1967 to 2012 skipped without so much as a yadda yadda yadda as if several wars, two intifadas, two peace treaties, one land for peace deal, two unilateral withdrawals and the Oslo fraud happened without so much as a blink of the eye*; but note one other oddity. Map three shows Gaza then administered by Egypt and the West Bank then under Jordanian control as an "UN mandate". What UN mandate? Am I missing something?

It's almost as if truthfully showing there was no "Palestine" and no "mandate" over "Palestine" right up until 1967 when at any time an independent "Palestine" was there for the making might derail the narrative. All the "Palestinians" and the Arab states had to do was want a state of "Palestine" . They did not. They wanted something else. Something they can never have. They still do. Nothing has changed.

The Greens prefer to lie about this. 

Here's another map. Here's some truth from some Irish activists.  The Greens will never accept the implications of this.

Where Middle East Jews No Longer Live

*Not to mention the expulsion and flight from persecution and pogroms of Jews from Muslim lands, many more in number than the Palestinian refugees, where they had lived for a thousand years and more before there were Muslims and who with their descendants comprise a majority of the Jewish population of modern Israel. Greens might feign some kind of emotion about the lost Jewish civilisations of Russia and Europe. It would be politically correct to do so. But you will never hear a whisper of interest about the lost ancient Jewish cultures of Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan and so on. That would be politically incorrect.   

cross posted Israel Thrives

Muslims And The Meaning Of Jihad

geoffff

Pat Condell on Muslims and the repudiation of violent Jihad.

It's time to take sides.

The London horror and jihad denial

Soldier's Islamic murderer should have been arrested years ago, but wasn't

Terrorist proclaimed "an eye for an eye" after attack

Islamic murderer's former university hosted extremists

Man charged for "offensive" tweets

85 year-old woman arrested for shouting outside a mosque. Held in police custody.

Greens Campaign Against The Combat Of Racism

geoffff

What me?

Greens 

Hell no!! We won't sign! 

Demonising Israel, blaming it alone for the condition of the "Palestinians", spitting racist slurs especially  the "apartheid state" lie, overlooking human rights abuses on a vast scale to single out one tiny country that alone in its region of the world and far beyond upholds human rights, to declare Zionism an illegitimate expression of nationhood and to press for boycotts that are declared to be aimed at the "euthanasia" of the state  in the face of violent Islamic imperialism and antisemitic aggression. And which just happens to be the world's only Jewish state.

To overlook as irrelevant or unimportant, or to deny the worst resurgence of genocidal racist hate talk and violence since the Nazi era including even a huge popularity surge for Nazi parties in some European countries.

To pay no heed at all to violent Islamic antisemitism on an industrial scale. 
  
Not antisemitism as far as the Greens are concerned. In fact all of this is on the Greens' platform. This and worse could be the back chatter of any Greens branch meeting anywhere in contemporary Australia. 

You can see the contemptible doublethink gymnastics involved in this for yourself from the party's spokesman on Gay and Lesbian rights and you won't even have to go to Iranian Press TV where he is also quite happy to press his idea of a human rights campaign. 

I've highlighted the naughty bits that the Greens hang their hats on claiming an exemption for themselves from common bigotry. Do you see a pattern here? Anything at all to do with Israel. No matter how remote. 

Sure.  They'll get away with that one. Their hats are not all they will hang. 




 
The London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism
Preamble
We today in London resolve that;
Challenging Antisemitism 

Parliamentarians shall expose, challenge, and isolate political actors who engage in hate against Jews and target the State of Israel as a Jewish collectivity;
Parliamentarians should speak out against antisemitism and discrimination directed against any minority, and guard against equivocation, hesitation and justification in the face of expressions of hatred;
Governments must challenge any foreign leader, politician or public figure who denies, denigrates or trivialises the Holocaust and must encourage civil society to be vigilant to this phenomenon and to openly condemn it;
Parliamentarians should campaign for their Government to uphold international commitments on combating antisemitism -including the OSCE Berlin Declaration and its eight main principles;
The UN should reaffirm its call for every member state to commit itself to the principles laid out in the Holocaust Remembrance initiative including specific and targeted policies to eradicate Holocaust denial and trivialisation;
Governments and the UN should resolve that never again will the institutions of the international community and the dialogue of nation states be abused to try to establish any legitimacy for antisemitism, including the singling out of Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena, and we will never witness – or be party to -another gathering like the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and other related Intolerances in Durban in 2001;
The OSCE should encourage its member states to fulfil their commitments under the 2004 Berlin Declaration and to fully utilise programmes to combat antisemitism including the Law Enforcement programme LEOP;
The European Union, inter-state institutions, multilateral fora and religious communities must make a concerted effort to combat antisemitism and lead their members to adopt proven and best practice methods of countering antisemitism;
Leaders of all religious faiths should be called upon to use all the means possible to combat antisemitism and all types of discriminatory hostilities among believers and society at large;
The EU Council of Ministers should convene a session on combating antisemitism relying on the outcomes of the London Conference on Combating Antisemitism and using the London Declaration as a basis.
Prohibitions
Governments should fully reaffirm and actively uphold the Genocide Convention, recognising that where there is incitement to genocide signatories automatically have an obligation to act. This may include sanctions against countries involved in or threatening to commit genocide, referral of the matter to the UN Security Council, or initiation of an interstate complaint at the International Court of Justice;
Parliamentarians should legislate effective Hate Crime legislation recognising “hate aggravated crimes” and, where consistent with local legal standards, “incitement to hatred” offences and empower law enforcement agencies to convict;
Governments that are signatories to the Hate Speech Protocol of the Council of Europe ‘Convention on Cybercrime’ (and the ‘Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems’) should enact domestic enabling legislation;
Identifying the threat
Parliamentarians should return to their legislature, Parliament or Assembly and establish inquiry scrutiny panels that are tasked with determining the existing nature and state of antisemitism in their countries and developing recommendations for government and civil society action;
Parliamentarians should engage with their governments in order to measure the effectiveness of existing policies and mechanisms in place and to recommend proven and best practice methods of countering antisemitism;
Governments should ensure they have publicly accessible incident reporting systems, and that statistics collected on antisemitism should be the subject of regular review and action by government and state prosecutors and that an adequate legislative framework is in place to tackle hate crime;
Governments must expand the use of the EUMC ‘Working Definition of antisemitism’ to inform policy of national and international organisations and as a basis for training material for use by Criminal Justice Agencies;
Police services should record allegations of hate crimes and incidents -including antisemitism -as routine part of reporting crimes;
The OSCE should work with member states to seek consistent data collection systems for antisemitism and hate crime.
Education, awareness and training
Governments should train Police, prosecutors and judges comprehensively. The training is essential if perpetrators of antisemitic hate crime are to be successfully apprehended, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced. The OSCE’s Law enforcement Programme LEOP is a model initiative consisting of an international cadre of expert police officers training police in several countries;
Governments should develop teaching materials on the subjects of the Holocaust, racism, antisemitism and discrimination which are incorporated into the national school curriculum. All teaching materials ought to be based on values of comprehensiveness, inclusiveness, acceptance and respect and should be designed to assist students to recognise and counter antisemitism and all forms of hate speech;
The Council of Europe should act efficiently for the full implementation of its ‘Declaration and Programme for Education for Democratic Citizenship based on the Rights and Responsibilities of the Citizens’, adopted on 7 May 1999 in Budapest;
Governments should include a comprehensive training programme across the Criminal Justice System using programmes such as the LEOP programme;
Education Authorities should ensure that freedom of speech is upheld within the law and to protect students and staff from illegal antisemitic discourse and a hostile environment in whatever form it takes including calls for boycotts.
Community Support
The Criminal Justice System should publicly notify local communities when antisemitic hate crimes are prosecuted by the courts to build community confidence in reporting and pursuing convictions through the Criminal Justice system;
Parliamentarians should engage with civil society institutions and leading NGOs to create partnerships that bring about change locally, domestically and globally, and support efforts that encourage Holocaust education, inter-religious dialogue and cultural exchange.
Media and the Internet
Governments should acknowledge the challenge and opportunity of the growing new forms of communication;
Media Regulatory Bodies should utilise the EUMC ‘Working Definition of antisemitism’ to inform media standards;
Governments should take appropriate and necessary action to prevent the broadcast of antisemitic programmes on satellite television channels, and to apply pressure on the host broadcast nation to take action to prevent the transmission of antisemitic programmes;
The OSCE should seek ways to coordinate the response of member states to combat the use of the internet to promote incitement to hatred;
Law enforcement authorities should use domestic “hate crime”, “incitement to hatred” and other legislation as well as other means to mitigate and, where permissible, to prosecute “Hate on the Internet” where racist and antisemitic content is hosted, published and written;
An international task force of Internet specialists comprised of parliamentarians and experts should be established to create common metrics to measure antisemitism and other manifestations of hate online and to develop policy recommendations and practical instruments for Governments and international frameworks to tackle these problems.
Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism
Participants will endeavour to maintain contact with fellow delegates through the working group framework, communicating successes or requesting further support where required;

We, Representatives of our respective Parliaments from across the world, convening in London for the founding Conference and Summit of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism, draw the democratic world’s attention to the resurgence of antisemitism as a potent force in politics, international affairs and society.

We note the dramatic increase in recorded antisemitic hate crimes and attacks targeting Jewish persons and property, and Jewish religious, educational and communal institutions.

We are alarmed at the resurrection of the old language of prejudice and its modern manifestations in rhetoric and political action -against Jews, Jewish belief and practice and the State of Israel.

We are alarmed by Government-backed antisemitism in general, and state-backed genocidal antisemitism, in particular.

We, as Parliamentarians, affirm our commitment to a comprehensive programme of action to meet this challenge.

We call upon national governments, parliaments, international institutions, political and civic leaders, NGOs, and civil society to affirm democratic and human values, build societies based on respect and citizenship and combat any manifestations of antisemitism and discrimination.

A Global Tsunami Of Antisemitism

geoffff

Posts have been slow here on account of the ape spending most of his time kicking around other sites and not bothering to cross post back to the Bar and Grill. So many targets. So little time.  In the meantime ...

An important article by Isi Leibler on the global crisis that dares not speak its name.

Participants at the fourth conference of the Global Forum for Combating anti-Semitism, held under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry this week in Jerusalem, will be provided with data highlighting the accelerated global erosion of the status of Jews and Israel

.

In the post-Holocaust era, many had predicted, mistakenly, that the world’s oldest hatred would recede, even anticipating that anti-Semites would soon become an extinct species. Instead, defaming Jews has emerged as the greatest global political growth industry – a virtual tsunami. In fact we are witnessing a resurrection of the medieval paranoia which effectively blamed Jews for all the disasters of mankind.

The most concentrated venom is relentlessly directed against ‘the state of the Jews’ (anti-Israelism) which is now the principal vehicle employed to demonize Jews. It dominates debates at the UN and other international organizations where rogue states and barbaric regimes seek to delegitimize the state of the Jews.

A must read

The Root of the Benghazi Scandal

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives.}

As of this moment the Benghazi scandal centers around four ugly facts.

1) The Obama administration refused to bolster security at the Benghazi facility despite requests to do so by Ambassador Stevens who was subsequently murdered by Jihadis.

2) The Obama administration failed to come to the aid of Ambassador Stevens and his staff despite the fact that they had all night to do so.  This was not an attack that took half an hour or one hour or three.  It went on throughout the night and yet the US military was told (by someone) to stand down.

3) The Obama administration then lied to the American people about the source of the attack, claiming that it was due to some internet video concerning the life of Muhammed, and did so for political and electoral reasons.  Obama had told Americans that Qaeda was, if not defeated, on the run, and he knew that if the administration admitted that this was a terrorist attack by a Qaeda affiliate, the lie would have been exposed and that would have harmed his bid for reelection.

4)  The Obama administration then lied about lying through White House spokesmen, Jay Carney, who insisted that the White House did not force any substantive changes to the CIA talking points which originally sourced the attack to Islamists.

There is a lot to answer for here and what we clearly need is a fair and independent investigation into the matter so that the truth can be more closely apprehended.

It needs to be understood, however, that the root of the scandal is Obama's foreign policy ideology.  That's the key. The Obama administration has a policy of bolstering political Islam and partnering with Islamists throughout much of the Middle East, particularly in Egypt.  According to Professor Barry Rubin, the reason that the Obama administration bolsters political Islam and partners with Islamists is out of a delusional and ahistorical belief that there are "moderate" Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, and "extremist" Islamists, like Qaeda.  The "moderate" Islamists tend not to use violence to bring about the Jihad against Israel and the west, although they tend to support the "extremist" Islamists who are now going so far as to cut the hearts from their victims and eat those hearts before the cameras... as utterly revolting as that might be.

Political Islam (or "radical Islam" or "Islamism") is a rising political movement throughout the Muslim Middle East that is characterized by hatred and a form of theological fascism as defined by Sharia law.  As a movement it oppresses women, going so far as to stone them to death for the "crime" of marital infedility.   Adherents murder Gay people outright, sometimes hanging them from cranes as we have seen in Iran.  Their hatred for Jews - those infamous "children of apes and pigs" - is absolutely legendary bordering on genocidal.  And, needless to say, they absolutely loathe the decadent west, particularly that Great Satan, the United States.

Obama's stance toward political Islam, and thus toward Israel, is grounded in a number of fundamental misunderstandings.  The first misunderstanding is in the nature of political Islam, itself.  Political Islam as we know it today derives from the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood going back to the late 1920s in Cairo.  The movement was always fascistic, is still fascistic, and, in fact, sided with the Nazis during World War II.  Either Barack Obama knew this or he did not know this.  If he did not know this then the man is not competent to make decisions regarding American foreign policy in that part of the world.  If he did know this then his behavior borders on treasonous.

Barack Obama thought that he could partner with the Islamists and help moderate them.  This is false.  There is no way that any American administration can moderate a theological and revolutionary fascist movement under the umbrella of Islam because the movement, itself, opposes the west.  They may for practical reasons cooperate with the west and hold elections, but their primary ideology is that of the Caliphate.  They will never stand with the west because their entire reason to be is in opposition to western interests.  Nonetheless, Barack Obama sought to court political Islam and thereby helped usher the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt, scrubbed any reference to Islam from the internal administration conversation around terrorism, and hoped to show good faith to the new Libyan government by allowing Jihadis to provide security to the American diplomatic team in Benghazi.

And this is why Ambassador Stevens and his people are now dead.

There are those on the hard right of the American political scene who think that Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim and that this explains his eggregious behavior.  There are those on the hard right who think that Barack Obama is a crypto-Islamist and that he actually favors the rise of political Islam as a good in itself.  I disagree.  What's clear is that Barack Obama is not nearly so intelligent as they kept telling us that he is.  Obama seems to have thought that he could somehow work with and moderate the movement.  He thought that supporting radical Islam in the Middle East, or the Brotherhood in Egypt, would promote American interests if he could get them to moderate their positions.

I have to say, though, that it takes a special type of stupidity to think that helping your enemies, while subverting your friends, can possibly be in the interests of the American people or our allies; a little fact that Barack Obama unwittingly taught Ambassador Stevens the hard way.

My suspicion is that Obama and his people are beginning to awaken to this reality, but it is far, far too late and there is little that they can do at this point to change course, anyway.  Barack Obama made a crucial and fundamental miscalculation at the beginning of his tenure and he will never admit what a profound mistake it was to support political Islam in that part of the world.  He cannot admit it because it would be tantamount to acknowledging responsibility for failure, which he will never do.  He won't do it and his supporters won't do it, even if they recognize it, which itself is rather doubtful.

Making Life Impossible For Scientists In Britain And The Helpless In The Middle East

geoffff

Letter from Denis MacEoin  to Malcolm Levitt of Southampton University regarding a statement of support from Levitt for Stephen Hawking's boycott.

It is a struggle to understand why activist academics are never able to say exactly what they are activists for without having a nasty thought about their motives.  

Prof. Malcolm Levitt
Dept. of Chemistry
Southampton University

 

11th May 2013

Dear Professor Levitt,

I am not a chemist nor, indeed, a scientist of any kind. My academic background exists in a very different field, but one, I hope, that is of particular relevance to the subject of this e-mail. I am a former lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies and a former editor of The Middle East Quarterly, an international journal. My PhD was in an adjunct area of Persian Studies. I have a particular interest in the Middle East (where I have lived, first in Iran , later in Morocco ) and my several visits to Israel have created in me a particular interest in matters relating to that country, both religious and political.

I was alerted today to a statement you made recently relating to the decision by Professor Stephen Hawking to boycott a conference due to be held in Israel, when you said ‘Israel has a totally explicit policy of making life impossible for the non-Jewish population and I find it totally unacceptable.’ Assuming I have quoted you correctly, I feel impelled to ask you where on earth you obtained such a manifestly nonsensical view. Like anyone, I feel free to criticize Israel when its government policies stray from the straight and narrow. Like any country, Israel makes mistakes. But when critics level accusations that are simply divorced from reality – that Israel practises apartheid, for example, or that it is ‘a Nazi state’ – then I cannot let such remarks pass by.

Israel is the one country in the Middle East (and often far beyond) of which it plainly and categorically cannot be said that it ‘has a totally explicit policy of making life impossible’ for adherents of any but the dominant faith. In Iran , for example, members of the indigenous Baha’i religion (about which I have written extensively) are hanged, imprisoned, denied employment in all professions, refused entry to the universities, and are threatened with genocide. Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews there are treated harshly. For many, life is impossible. Jews have been driven out of all the Arabs countries. In most Arab countries (notably Egypt ), Christians are persecuted, churches are destroyed, and whole communities have been leaving over the past ten years and more. Those are all countries you would do better to condemn.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East whose Christian population has risen steadily since 1948. And Israel ’s treatment of the Baha’is is exemplary: they have their international centre in Haifa , where they have built gardens, terraces, and white marble buildings facing the Mediterranean , half of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that puts the Iranian regime to shame. The other half of the UNESCO site is situated outside Acre and contains the holiest of the Baha’I shrines. In Iran , every single one of the Baha’i holy places has been bulldozed, never to be rebuilt. Every Baha’i cemetery has met the same fate.

In Israel , then 1967 Protection of Holy Places Law guarantees the safety of all Jewish and non-Jewish sacred sites:

 

1. The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.

 

1. Whosoever desecrates or otherwise violates a Holy Place shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of seven years.

 

2. Whosoever does anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of five years.

 

2. This Law shall add to, and not derogate from, any other law.

 

3. The Minister of Religious Affairs is charged with the implementation of this Law, and he may, after consultation with, or upon the proposal of, representatives of the religions concerned and with the consent of the Minister of Justice make regulations as to any matter relating to such implementation.

 

4. This Law shall come into force on the date of its adoption by the Knesset.

 

This Law is rigorously applied to Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Baha’i and other holy places. There is nothing remotely like it in any Islamic country. In Saudi Arabia it is expressly forbidden to build churches, synagogues, temples, and it is illegal for Christians and others even to meet in their own homes to worship.

The Israeli law of citizenship and other related laws confer on all citizens the same rights and responsibilities. This applies to non-Jews as fully as to Jews. Arabs are full citizens of the state, they may vote in all elections, they may form political parties (and there are quite a few of them), they may stand for parliament (and a great many serve in it), they serve as members of the Supreme Court, as judges in other courts, as university teachers and professors, 20% of all students in all universities are Arabs (with Arabs forming 18% of the population), and so on. There is, quite flatly, no law or regulation calling for any form of apartheid. Go to Israel (and it may help you a lot to do so) and watch: no restaurants barred to Arabs, no shops barred to Arabs (Christian or Muslim), no buses for Jews only, no trains, no university campuses, no hotels, no beaches. All Israelis have the same rights.

Not only that, but consider the situation of women in Muslim countries, especially now that Salafi and other radical Muslim groups are taking over across the region. In Israel , women have full rights with men. That includes Muslim and Christian women. In all Muslim countries, homosexuals face hanging, flogging, and other cruel punishments. In Israel , they hold gay pride marches. Muslim and Christian as well as Jewish men who are gay only have rights and protection under the law in Israel .

I have hinted at religious freedom and its denial in all Muslim states. The Israeli position has been set out thus:

"Every person in Israel enjoys  freedom of conscience, of belief, of religion,  and of worship. This freedom is guaranteed  to every person in every enlightened, democratic  regime, and therefore it is guaranteed to  every person in Israel . It is one of the  fundamental principles upon which the State  of Israel is based… This freedom is partly  based on Article 83 of the Palestine Order  in Council of 1922, and partly it is one  of those fundamental rights that "are  not written in the book" but derive  directly from the nature of out state as  a peace-loving, democratic state6'…  On the basis of the rules – and in accordance  with the Declaration of Independence – every  law and every power will be interpreted  as recognizing freedom of conscience, of  belief, of religion, and of worship."

I find it remiss of you, as someone endowed with considerable intellect, to have been so grossly misled about the reality of life in Israel . Your statement goes beyond the limits of reasonable and fair discourse. I can only consider you to have been misled by unprincipled persons who wish to disseminate falsehoods about Israel for base motives. In the face of the facts I have given and your freedom to board a plane to Israel in order to see all of this for yourself, I have to ask you to apologize to the citizens of a moral, ethical and democratic people, both Jews and Arabs, who have endured almost daily attacks from enemies determined to wipe them from the face of the planet. That Jewish Israelis have had the patience and moral strength to hold out the hand of friendship to so many Arab citizens while experiencing suicide attacks and rocket fire from their brethren across the border should inspire you to think again. As a university teacher you have a responsibility to dissociate yourself from such a totally explicit lie as the one you have uttered. Please reassure me that you understand the points I have tried to make.


Yours sincerely,


Dr. Denis MacEoin

hat tip Malcolm

Letter From Israel

  elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                        

Worrying

 

A comment recently made about people in the West not having to worry about losing their butchers in suicide bus explosions made me contemplate worrying.  It is personal, local, regional and national.  It is, in fact, universal.

 

A plane overhead this morning, quietly making its way across a brilliantly blue sky, covers the width of Israel in about 10 seconds.  Unless we’re at war, the skies over our small town are never disturbed by airplane noises.

 

So why does a plane cross our quiet sky this morning?  Has Assad decided (in his palpable wisdom) that he’s the one who will finally bring us to destruction?  Did Hezbollah at last accumulate the arsenal that Iran is trying to trans-ship across Syria?  Too bad someone keeps interrupting that flow.

 

Will the border hold between Syria and the Golan Heights?  Can the IDF stop an incursion there, or one of innumerable Syrian refugees from Jordan? Oh dear.

Both my daughters drive SUVs.  Both have been involved in accidents where their cars were the definite winners.  They assure me that they are as safe as safe can be.  I have had two serious car accidents.  Do their reassurances help assuage my unease?  Not a bit (tfu, tfu, tfu).  And let’s not even talk about lead-footed grandsons learning how to drive on our inconsiderate roads.  I really don’t want to think about that.

 

I developed a theory a long time ago that we all have a worry space, something like a stomach which, when empty, insists on being refilled.  I have no idea where it is.  I have never investigated this theory—as is, it satisfies my personal disquiet—but I have a feeling it’s pretty much common.  Health concerns feature prominently with haunting apprehension for the humans in your life.  As soon as the tax bill is satisfied, worry shifts to the condition of the plumbing, until that’s fixed and then: The car.  The job.  The dog.  You know what worries you.

 

Could they be training flights?

 

So those are the contents of my worry space.  I’m happy to report that there is constant motion within the space; when one worry ceases or is solved, another takes its place.  No need to feel overwhelmed; your worries are safe.

 

cross posted  Israel Thrives

The Netzarim Junction Blood Libel -- You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet

geoffff

"...peekaboo ..."

Some will say this is no case for levity but sometimes the eternal comedy of the universe just demands a moment of it. Where is Muhammed al-Durah? He would be twenty-four or perhaps twenty-five if he is still alive. I've got no idea. You would have to ask his father or Hamas or perhaps France 2 and they for sure will never tell you. They will take that information to their graves. Apparently it's a French thing. But I've already made an educated guess about where he was on the night of 30 September 2000. He was home with his family watching himself on CNN. Chances are they were eating KFC.  It's finger-lickin' good.

Two days ago an Israeli Government enquiry delivered its report on the affair .  Twelve years after the event. Hallelujah. Better late than never as the Archbishop said to the Inquiry Into Child Abuse In Religious Organisations. (sorry. Australian joke).  First of all he was not shot by the IDF. Ahuh.  I recall saying exactly that the first time I saw the clip on the ABC News at about the same time as young Muhammed as we now know was watching himself on CNN and every other station that broadcasts into Gaza. Again and again and again.

There were many reasons to conclude that. It was more convincing the closer you looked at it. This was something else entirely. There was no question about it. 

Nevertheless I was grievously duped. I thought I was looking at something that might be even worse than what we were being invited to perceive. Something sinister beyond  imagination. Something new. It seemed to me the shooting of this child had to be deliberate. And if it wasn't the Israelis who else could it be?

There was no doubt this thing gurgled quickly into a blood libel in classic form but if the killing was deliberate, or even a stage accident, what horror was this?  An ideology with a hold over a population, and a man, the bosses can do this to a son and a regard for human life so scant they do it with a careful plan. A martyrdom operation. To what end? To create a blood libel as ugly as they get to launch a war of racist hatred against Israel and the Jews. 

Was this a snuff film? Probably the only one ever made of the genre that wasn't apocryphal and it was being broadcast into every home in the world with the television news for a purpose that was the antithesis of life itself.

Peekaboo. I see you. That's a childish trick too far. Perhaps Muhammed will debut next week in a heat of the French version of The Voice singing the Brahm's Lullaby and clear up the mystery for all as soon as the court has delivered its verdict on the latest appeal. 

We know now there is not a shred of evidence that the child was killed or even hurt. He was not shot by anyone; as this blog and others have been saying for twelve months and more. This was  an elaborate and rehearsed hoax that needed the active participation of Hamas, the "Palestinian" foreign press stringers at the scene and especially the France 2 man, the PA police, hospital staff, the extras and "the street" and something else absolutely critical besides. 

For this terrible deception I blame the Australian media but that's only because I'm Australian. Like just about everyone I believed the boy was dead. I bought the prissy explanation that the last seconds of his life were just too terrible to show. No need to see.  We are the ABC and what you are seeing is the best professional journalism your money can buy. Trust us. He's dead. France 2 tells us so. 

That critical something else needed, apart from the active conspirators themselves, and they were legion, was the open ended acquiescence of France 2 and the rest of the Western media in the narrative. Take the story and run.  It needed the media to consent to being duped and therefore to dupe the rest of us.  This  near perfect media crime had to have a complicit media anxious to take and carry the story and this thing got that in spades. It's almost as if the conspirators at the centre of this evil thing seemed to know they could count on that.

People are still writing books about the Dreyfus Affair and they will be writing books about this affair as well a hundred years from now and for much the same reason. Those who think this will be quietly dropped don't understand Jews. For that reason it is fitting that the legal part of this drama is being played out in the French courts. The imminent decision turns on a narrower legal point than whether this was the outright fraud it obviously is and it will be interesting to see whether the court will grab what wiggle room it can to avoid a politically unpopular decision. Richard Landes certainly has these concerns. 

Whatever happens this will not be the end of it.   

Judicial cowards will always find a way if they have to. This will be a measure of how far the French judicial system has buckled and even decayed under the pressure of  this nasty crowd ideology. Perhaps very seriously.  Perhaps not all. There are many closely watching. 

This site provides all the background needed on this affair. The Elder has started collecting al-Dura stamps.   And the excellent CiF Watch has been bringing up the Guardian's disgusting role in this racist libel in excellent detail and ungentlemanly style. Australian media take note. There is a point where being duped becomes willing and another where electing to stay duped crosses to joining the conspiracy. 



cross posted Israel Thrives