Who Needs Section 18C

geoffff

This is a dangerous idea  that will get you banned from the Australian media by the authorities and by the guardians of Australian basic values such as freedom of expression.

Radio presenter Michael Smith dumped after comments about the Prophet Mohammed

Updated Sun 29 Jun 2014, 11:52am AEST

PHOTO: Stood down: Michael Smith. (AAP: Jane Dempster)

Sydney talkback radio host Michael Smith has been told he will no longer be filling in on 2GB after making controversial comments about the Prophet Mohammed.

The former 2UE presenter made the comments on Thursday during his regular guest spot with 2GB host Ben Fordham.

Smith was discussing the recent controversy over a talk the Festival of Dangerous Ideas had booked - and later cancelled - with a Muslim activist, titled Honour Killings Are Morally Justified.

He compared the festival's invitation to Uthman Badar to asking the leader of the Ku Klux Klan to speak.

Smith said the founder of Islam was "a man who promoted the idea that it was OK to marry a six-year-old and consummate the marriage when the little girl was nine".

The broadcaster had been due to fill in for afternoons presenter, Chris Smith, from Monday for three weeks.

On Saturday he wrote on his website that 2GB program director David Kidd had called and cancelled the booking, telling him he could not "call a deity a paedophile".

hat tip Shirlee

Cry Freedom!

geoffff

What exactly?

Over at friend blog Israel Thrives there was a brief discussion over whether an extended Nike ad made for the World Cup used a subliminal or even overt appeal to base racism to sell their Asian sweatshop extruded products to the violently racist and especially antisemitic market that happens to be a major focus of this huge multinational's top line business plan.

No way says Mike L and whatever Mike says should be heard with respect is what I say. Mull it over before you disagree.  Mike is dead set wrong says some other guy and I get the feel the consensus is there is something sinister about the use of this image by a thoroughly and expertly informed corporation  as the spearhead of the marketing kick off of its brand at the World Cup. 

No Jews here. Do you want us to drop our pants to prove it?

Such a carefully thought through and strategically critical stand for a global brand to take. Can you imagine how much they spent to come up with this? How much research went into it. Do you really think they did it by mistake? 

As subliminal messages go I much prefer this one. It was a great gig for Che Gorilla who has been down in the jowl a little lately after being banned by The Conversation for being rude and anonymous.

This is the anthem of the national liberation movement of the gorillas. The song of all primates really. Chocolate and freedom! Long may they rule.

hat tip Martin Leaf

Pat Condell : Why I Support Israel

geoffff

This really should not be that hard. 

And why he says you should too. I could add some more reasons. Overwhelming self interest would be close to the top of the list. 

BDS Movement: Barbarians inside the gates


10 facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict


Israeli Arabs: We do not want to live in a Palestinian state

PA religious official publicly calls for genocide of Jews


Leader of Hezbollah won't be happy until every Jew on earth is dead


Fear and fundamentalism as the modesty police patrol Gaza


Gaza militants violated the laws of war

G-d Bless Australia!

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives and Jews Down Under.}

Tom Wilson writing in Commentary tells us:

Australia has announced that it will no longer refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied territory.” Tony Abbott’s government has put out an uncompromising statement of intent, informing the world that, “The description of East Jerusalem as ‘occupied’ East Jerusalem is a term freighted with pejorative implications which is neither appropriate nor useful. It should not and will not be the practice of the Australian government to describe areas of negotiation in such judgmental language.” This announcement is made all the more significant on account of the fact that back in January Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop publicly disputed the notion that Israel’s settlements should be considered illegal either. 

This is terrific news and Australia is proving itself to be a true friend and partner to both the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel.  Of course, the Obama administration and the European Union remain supportive of Hamas while complaining about the fact that Jews build housing for ourselves on historically Jewish land.

Wilson writes:

In recent days both the United States and the European Union have mounted vocal protest against Israeli plans to build new homes in existing Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. This is an astounding response that exposes the full extent of the hostility toward the Jewish state that emanates from both the EU and the Obama administration. For while the newly formed Hamas-backed Palestinian government has received endorsement from both the White House and the Europeans, building homes for Jews in the ancient Jewish holy city of Jerusalem has provoked a degree of condemnation out of all proportion with reality.

The Obama administration continues to make the very same mistakes over and over and over again.  Their opposition to Jews who build housing for themselves even as they embrace the genocidal organization, Hamas, as a "peace partner" clearly demonstrates the general tone of anti-Jewish / anti-Israel hostility emanating from the European capitals with Obama leading the charge from behind.

Of course, neither the EU, nor the Obama administration, could have gotten away with the ridiculous notion that Jews building housing for themselves on Jewish land is some crime against humanity were it not for progressive-left diaspora Jews who assured them that they were correct to focus their ire on those other Jews over there, the bad ones - like our friends Yosef and Melody - who live where neither Barack Obama, nor Mahmoud Abbas, want them to live.

If western-left diaspora Jews blame their fellow Jews for the attacks against those Jews, then how could we possibly expect anything less from non-Jewish western leaders?  If we will not stand up for ourselves, why in this world would we expect them to stand up for us?

The fact of the matter is that diaspora Jewry made a highly consequential error when it agreed with Mahmoud Abbas that Jews should not be allowed to build housing for themselves in Judea.  Obama and the Europeans could not make a stink about Jews building homes were it not for the fact that western Jews went along with it.  Certainly it would have been far more difficult for someone like Obama to object to Jews who build housing for themselves if his Jewish friends and advisers had not gone along and if the diaspora Jewish community had not done so.

We have no one to blame but ourselves, but in the meanwhile we still have some friends in the world.

Thank you, Australia.

Posted here by Mike Lumish of US blog Israel Thrives.

Australian Anti-Israelism Having A Bad Day

geoffff

Not a good week to be an anti-Israel activist down under. 

First punch was in the universities when a BDS motion in the local branch of the academic union of Sydney University got comprehensively shelved with the back of a shovel when it was realised that to provide Jake Lynch, Stuart Rees, Peter Slevak, Nick Riemer et al with a platform to push a toxic policy on the union so malodorous that it might invite a response that will consume the time and resources of the union and distract it from doing bloody silly marginal things such as its job. 

Checking out the size and fit for a racist policy will do that. We have seen this before in universities everywhere. More frequently and recently than you might care to think about.  

Right now is a good time to ask why our universities are nesting these "peace and conflict" departments given how whiffy is the pedigree of the discipline globally and that's just for a start. It is a pretty good question any time but when universities are under pressure and there is a risk of loss of real academics surely the question becomes more pressing.

This is the introduction but read it all. An unusually balanced and fair account from New Matilda which is under new management. Jumping Jake Lynch earlier piece is linked below that.

Then my comment.

Union Backs Away From BDS Motion

By Nick Rowbotham

Keywords: 

university of sydney

nteu

jake lynch

nick rowbotham

A motion to discuss support for a boycott of Israel has been voted down by members of the University of Sydney NTEU, after the issue again reared its head at the sandstone institution. Nick Rowbotham reports.

The Sydney University branch of the national academic union has overturned a previous vote in support of a “broad discussion” around endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Approximately 120 members attended a meeting on Wednesday at which the General Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Grahame McCulloch, spoke against “a Union-sponsored debate on the merits of the BDS.”

“At a time when universities and trade unions are under siege from the Abbott Government, an NTEU Branch as important as the University of Sydney cannot afford the division and fruitless procedural wrangling that has been generated by this ill-conceived general meeting decision,” he wrote in an email before the meeting.

Sydney University NTEU members had voted to support a debate about BDS at a branch meeting on May 15. The vote was overruled by the union’s executive branch committee the following week, triggering outrage from pro-BDS members of the union, which led to the resignation of branch Vice President Damien Cahill and the eventual involvement of the national General Secretary.

On Wednesday, members voted 68-56 against a debate on BDS in the branch, overturning the vote on May 15, which is understood to have passed almost unanimously with around 35 NTEU members in attendance.

That follows  from an article on 4 June by Sydney University's Jumping Jake Lynch himself, Mr BDS Australia, four years running, where the pitifully losing case was put by him. Read it if you must but here's a fair summary.

Jumping Jake and his mates simply can not understand why they and Palestine are not at the centre of everything for everyone, that the role of Israel and the Jews in the scheme of things really does not  warrant the attention they give it and that on its own is creepy enough without all this other stuff. That's about it really. I don't believe I'm being too harsh.

  

BDS is racism. There is no doubt about it. If you look it straight in the eye you can actually see the spit and the snarl. You either know what is meant by that or you do not. That antizionism is antisemitism is a truth that really should not need explanation by this stage of this old and sad game. Indeed antisemitism is the lowest form of racism as some one on one of these threads has noted.

BDS is intellectually contemptible.  It relies on a sleight of hand that allow its proponents to avoid saying exactly where they stand especially about the existentialist stench that hangs over the whole stage. Avoid even thinking about it really. Like most radical leftist and other lethal campaigns it is designed to give all the wiggle room needed to keep the populist appeal about “occupation” and “settlements”  strong while dodging wedges and pain that might flow from the knowledge that this is essentially just another racist and violent movement from a political culture that is steeped in brutal bigotry and little else.

If you are in a campaign that gets all hazy and snappy about what exactly is the end game then maybe you should get out a map and check under the nearest light exactly where you are standing.  Most  activists are clear and upfront about their objectives. Proud of what they stand for. Zionists are.

BDS is an exception. Getting them to admit that they stand for the destruction of Israel as the sovereign Jewish state is beyond boring.  They squish and flap around like a flounder on a rock.  

It's as if BDS and its urgers in the universities and the fringe parties are so ashamed of the only end game they could rationally have in mind that they have to hide it in the papers in the attic like a dirty family secret. 

Lets face the truth here. This mob has always had a problem with Jews, Zionism and Israel. At least since the days of Marx and Trotsky . Not to mention Stalin.

Universities have always harboured academics who were antisemitic or otherwise racist.  At times it has reached fever pitch. The idea of gas chambers to put down the genetically inferior, including races, first came from leading US scientists of the influential eugenics movement in the 1920's.  

By the 1930's these various schools of thought were dripping from university balustrades from Boston to Sydney in one guise or another. Something like BDS is now only with a different kind of nazi in the background.   .

By then the boycotts in the universities had well set in.

It is likely that the incidence of anti- Israelism and antisemitism has always been much higher among academics than it is in the general population. In Europe this has been proven. It is a curious phenomenon. It says much.   

Boycotts are about attacks on people because of who they are perceived to be. To excuse an affront to an individual by asserting that it was really an act against the group to which she is perceived to be a member, whatever group,... institution, nation, race... whatever ... is the oldest and glibbest  line in bigotry. 

Very soon there will be an allegation that the "Zionists" are behind this big BDS fail in Sydney. BDS has been "silenced" at this university they will say. Mark my words. They will say this. They always do.

The truth is the opposite. The more talk the better I say. Everything is an opportunity to educate. The problem for BDS is that it does not bear much scrutiny.  A racist movement, a catastrophic failure in its impact on events as it was always certain to be, bullying, astonishingly hypocritical,  at times threatening, at times comical, always venal and capricious, especially when it attacks artists and musicians, and with a message so thin, flash and dopey it makes the Gays for Sharia Mardi Gras float look like the Next Big Thing.

No wonder they are ashamed of themselves. 

That'll help the Palestinians. 

cross posted Israel Thrives

Czechs Get It

Milos Zeman     President of the Czech Republic in Israel --- June 2014

“The only holiday of independence which I can never leave out is the celebration of the independence of the Jewish State of Israel.

There are other nations with whom we share the same values, whether it’s free elections or a free market economy, but no one is threatening to delete those states from the map. No one shoots at their border towns and no one wants to see the citizens of those nations driven out of their country.”

There is a term called political correctness and I consider it to be a euphemism for political cowardice. So I refuse to be cowardly.

It is necesarry to name the enemy of human civilization and this enemy is international terrorism associated with religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance. This fanatical creed does not only attack a single nation, as we saw after September 11. Muslim fanatics in Nigeria recently captured 200 young Christian girls. And in the flower at the heart of Europe, an abominable killing took place at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.”

I am not reassured by the claims that this is the work of only a small fringe group. Quite the contrary. I believe that xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism stems from the essential ideology that these fanatical groups are based on.

And let me provide a proof of this assertion in a quote from one of its sacred texts. ‘The Jews will hide behind stones and trees. Then the tree will call out, ‘A Jew hides behind me, come and kill him.’ The stone will call out, ‘A Jew hides behind me, come and kill him.’

I criticized those who call for the killing of the Arabs, but I don’t know of about any mass movement that calls for the mass murder of Arabs. I do however know of an anti-civilizational movement which calls for the mass murder of the Jews.

One of the articles in the Hamas Charter calls for killing Jews.

Do we really want to pretend that this is only a small group of extremists. Can we really be politically correct and insist that they are all good and that only a tiny number of the extremists and fundamentalists are committing these crimes?

One of my favourite essayists, Michel de Montaigne once wrote: “Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse evil.”
We began the Arab Spring, which became the Arab Winter, and the fight against the secular dictatorships has become a battle run by Al-Qaida.
Let’s throw out political correctness and call a spade, a spade.

Yes we have friends in the world to whom we express our solidarity, but this solidarity costs us nothing because these folks are never threatened.

A true sense of solidarity is solidarity with a friend who is in distress and in danger, and so here I am. 

hat tip Uncommon Common Sense