Johnny On The Spot Blames It All On Illegal Jews

  

geoffff




The picture is of an avian specimen very common around here grabbed at random from Google and identical to a creature that prances around the courtyard among the water dragons all day and peers through the glass door of my office most mornings as I type. 

Quaint and nosy  you would think it had no fear but that is only because it is typical of its species and is just too stupid to get out of the way.   In truth, they will startle at sudden movements as easily as any native bird.  The species is notorious for intrusive cloying and other obsessive behaviour if you feed them and this is not recommended. 

The other picture is of a common Australian Bush Turkey.

John Lyons appears to have such limited sources for a professional  journalist. He will take as gospel (I suspect literally) anything he is told by one side, even Hamas,  with  perfect credulity while his idea of Israeli input is to pick among  the flash, fury,  flotsam and jetsam  of a free and open society for material for his case.  He regards official Israeli sources with contempt.  He has a tin ear for  tales  that ring about as true as tinnitus. There is no evidence he has ever sort a contrary view on his favourite themes (settlements, settlers, Jerusalem, international law, etc ) . There is no evidence that he  understands that he is just an instrument of war in that part of the world or he does not care.  As a consequence he makes appalling errors of fact in a dangerous game.

Ergo no credibility.

From his latest piece in the Australian. 

Did a gang of fifty masked men thirsting for revenge for the synagogue massacre burst out of Yitzhar to attack villagers with rocks while Israeli soldiers looked on with guns pointed in support of this blood crazed mob of Klan style fanatics in lynch frenzy, as Lyons claims?

He has seen the tapes, he says.

Well, not really.  Not from the Yesh Din footage Lyons cites with such terror.

 There is a stone fight between two gangs of youths (probably both sides masked but you only see one gang fully.)  Soldiers are trying to suppress one side by pointing weapons.  You can not see what is being done from the other side but there is stuff being tossed about. Perhaps three stones are thrown by the Israelis but they could have been feints and at least two were lobbed at the camera of the Israeli activists there to film (and incite?) the fun.

Not a good look but is this terror?

 A longer video shows soldiers running off an Israeli kid about to toss a rock. Only one kid is lightly injured in the whole incident so the soldiers didn't do too bad job.

And there were closer to ten children in the gang than fifty. ( With Lyons, "settlers" with stones and bad intent are "masked men".  Palestinians are "children").   Nor are they all masked. And the Israelis say the clash had nothing to do with the massacre but was sparked by a crop fire attack. 

Did the mayor of Ashkelon fire Arab labourers in an act of discrimination and revenge, as Lyons says?

Hardly the wrath of Assad but not true anyway. Mayor Itamar Shimoni announced  that he was stopping "until further notice" the work of Arab labourers building bomb shelters in nursery schools in the city  close to the Gaza Strip.  Guards would be posted at about 40 pre-schools near construction sites where Arabs work.

"Whoever thinks this is illegal can take me to the Supreme Court," he told a news crew. "I prefer, at this time, to be taken to the Supreme Court, and not, God-forbid, to be taken to a funeral of a kindergarten child."

Not revenge but a security measure from an elected public official under pressure from a community under pressure. 

Says Lyons

"Over the last week both sides have targeted a place of worship for the other -- last week Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque and this week the two Palestinians rampaged in the synagogue.

Is even that true?

Not that it matters at all but it is not. It was a suspected price tag attack but it is only an allegation. There's a fire in a vacant mosque so it has to be the Jews. End of story. No one hurt but obviously an inflammatory religious thing, like murdering rabbis at prayer, so there's the moral equivalence and the much vaunted  "cycle of violence" rolled into one.

This is how this works. Your crackpot settlers torch a mosque in the night?  They share the blame for the murder of the rabbis and so do you. This is how the Lyons mind works but it gets worse.

Lyons rises to a crescendo

“We won’t let our boy ride his bike outside. We’re worried that settlers who live five minutes away will try to kidnap him.”
The woman’s home is 2km from where 16-year-old Mohamed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped in June before having petrol poured on him and burnt alive. The day before men in a car tried to take a Palestinian boy off the streets but his parents fought them off. The man who led the Khdeir kidnapping told police: “They took three of ours (Jewish youths), let’s take one of theirs.”
A sports club for children in East Jerusalem now has guards in case of further kidnap attempts. Parents of Palestinian children at the French Lycee warn their children not to speak Arabic in public.
One Christian Palestinian executive, who works for the Catholic Church near the Old City, is now frightened to walk into the centre of Jerusalem “in case people realise I’m an Arab”.

I don't believe a word of this.

We are now getting close to the worst.  A  group of thugs carry out an unspeakable crime that shocks the nation. They are quickly hunted down and arrested. But this is the cycle of violence and cancels out the Hamas murders of the abducted teenagers applauded by Palestinians and celebrated by the leadership.

What is missing from this analysis is any concept of the rule of law or indeed common human decency and morality. This is important because it allows Lyons to get to the core. All the settlements including east Jerusalem are illegal anyway and so any "law" is muted or irrelevant to the Jews  over the Green line or it seems who are not. The settlements are the root of all evil. Their illegality poisons the well.  The appalling crime of one or two becomes the crime of all Jews. The murder of Israelis is a lesser crime which some how just does not count.

The whole bizarre and dirty house of cards collapses if the settlements are not illegal. This is why Lyons and those like him can never entertain the thought.  For them, the law has nothing to do with it anyway.  This is politics and ideology. The Jews are illegal. Everybody tells him so especially if they are Muslim.    

Lyons has the usual swamp of words about the settlements and settlers . Outposts. Armed gangs roaming the countryside murdering olive trees. Stolen land. White brick closed communities under guard strangling Palestinian land, poisoning the wells and killing the two state solution.  

Lyons boasts that he is there to see for himself and reprimands anyone  with a view that does not acknowledge his finely lasered expertise.  How would you know about the settlements, he has berated community leaders. You 're in Melbourne.  I'm in Jerusalem. 

He could be on the moon for all I care and sometimes I think he is. However there is another man observing from Jerusalem whose authority and credibility well and truly exceeds that of John Lyons .

This is what Isi Leibler recently said about this. Contrast it with Lyons' report.

The two-state solution is not currently feasible, but as an eventual goal it must not be abandoned. In the long term Israel would lose its identity as a democratic Jewish state if it absorbed millions more Arabs. It is therefore crucial that while enhancing political autonomy and living standards for Palestinians, Israel remains committed to achieving two states for two peoples.

The government must commit to restricting construction to the existing settlement blocs and Jewish East Jerusalem. (In practice, this has been the case: Only 507 units were started in the first half of the year, the lowest rate of construction for several years.) This would conform with the assurances that President George W. Bush gave to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, as an incentive to withdraw from Gaza, that in any future settlement America would support Israel’s sovereignty in areas that had undergone major demographic change.
...
We should display unity by supporting our prime minister’s policy of rejecting further territorial concessions until the Palestinian leaders separate from Hamas, engage in negotiations and display flexibility to enable us to achieve our security requirements. We will not be denied the right to construct homes in our capital or in the major settlement blocs, which will remain within Israel. We seek the support of the United States but we must retain our sovereignty.

What does Lyons really want?  The hint is in the last sentences.

Amid the new violence, it seems there is only one chance to end this tragedy -- an urgent political solution for a Palestinian state that would end Israel's control over 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank.

The critics of such a solution argue that this would not guarantee peace -- and they may be right. [may?]

But what is guaranteed is that if current course is continued there will be much more bloodshed. 

Lyons wants an unilateral withdrawal to the green line with no guarantees. He wants the total abrogation of the  "land for peace" formula that has underpinned peace efforts since 1948. He wants the surrender of the land and Jerusalem with no peace. He wants surrender. He wants the suicide  of the state.

Where else could this lead?

This is the "two state solution" that dares not speak its name. It is about time it did. It is about time Lyons and the rest spat it out. 

cross posted  Jews Downunder
                      Israel Thrives     

Egypt's War on Terrorism: World's Double Standards

Egypt's crackdown in Sinai once again exposes the double standards of the international community toward the war on terrorism. While it is fine for Egypt to demolish hundreds of houses and forcibly transfer thousands of people in the name of the war on terrorism, Israel is not allowed to fire back at those who launch rockets and missiles at its civilians.
The Egyptians have finally realized that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has become one of the region's main exporters of terrorism.
What is perhaps more worrying is the fear that the security clampdown in Egypt will drive Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip to resume their attacks on Israel.
Needless to say, the international community will continue to ignore Egypt's bulldozing hundreds of houses and the forcible eviction of hundreds of people in Sinai.

Egypt's War on Terrorism: World's Double Standards

The Academic Intifada?

geoffff

This is from an academic lawyer at the University of Edinburgh. 

As we know, the Clown of Ramallah recently accused the Jews of genocide thereby once again proving that Israel has no partner for peace. It is extraordinary to have to note that there are people in our universities who have been tasked to know about these things as a matter of law and who actually take this spiteful bad faith slur seriously.  

Look at this piece about "this summer's Israeli offensive".

That's the starting point. Anything before or to the side never happened and what ever misery came after is the result of a crime that only an expert can define. 

Not a word about the attack on Israel. The starting point is a military attack by Israel on civilians.  At face value there is no distinction between a Hamas fighter killed in a war launched by Hamas out of the blue and an innocent civilian caught in the backwash. Their role as "Palestinians" martyred in the war with the Jews defines them now. It is taken as read that the war was the Jews' fault. Or if the war was not their fault then they should not have defended themselves. Or they should have defended themselves more nicely; or something. 

Proportionate is the word of last resort. The last lie in the stitch up.

Define it please. They never do.

How Scotland would behave if suddenly confronted by a vicious army of trained zealots fuelled by some crazy Dark Ages ideology jumping out of tunnels at random while shelling the towns from the rear? 

It would not be a long dig back into Scottish history to note how Scots behave with a fraction of the provocation and none of the threat. 

If we cannot hold Scotland up as the standard on proportionality, with a straight face, who can we? England? Give us a break. Alan Dershowitz has asked Ed Miliband some fair questions that the British may feel  also have a right to know.   France? Sure. Ask the Rainbow Warrior. New Zealand?

New Zealand has pretty much evolved into a gutless excuse for a country with a moral spine bypass, so who knows,  NZ may be proportionate and allow its population to be terrified and murdered rather than respond, if faced like something out of Gaza.  

You can only daydream on what the NZ national defence strategy would be. Hand out Kiwi passports to the population of Gaza and register them  with the Australian social security system?

As NZ was among the first to respond to the war against the Nazis and fought on gamely until the end, on that account alone, the offspring have one free pass. 

Norway perhaps. It has form. The country managed to Quisling out of World War Two and there is every sign the Norwegians are once again leading the world fascist appeasement and surrender campaign.

Here is a definition.  Proportionate is what it takes to put an end to the violence and get the country back to normal as soon as possible and with the minimum impact on life and limb; especially life and limb of those in the forces deployed to end the violence, and the life and limb of civilians and most especially the country's own civilians. 

Operation Protective Edge is at the leading edge of the meaning of proportionate. Polls indicate most Israelis feel that Protective Edge did not go far enough. The opportunity could have been taken to root out Hamas once and for all, leave Gaza a vacuum doubtless to be warred over by the PA, Islamic Jihad ISIS and whatever else pops out of the ground like a jihadist killer on a mission.

That is proportionate.  It is about as proportionate as it gets.

It is a sad fact of history that the most inhumane thing to do to the "Palestinians" is to leave them to themselves. There is nothing else for it. 
  
The role of Hamas, the rockets, the threats, the attack tunnels and serviced bunkers so elaborate it would impress a James Bond villain, the actual attacks, the kidnappings, the Hamas ordered murder of those kids, the relentless rocket attacks, hundreds a day, the pain of everyday life under the dome, the call up ,... all of this not relevant as it does not fit the narrative and is immaterial to whatever manner of war crime the Israelis are guilty of by prearrangement of the Russell Tribunal, the "international law" industry  or whatever other abomination of the law that has been petrodollared out of near extinction for a purpose.

Not a word of course about the sixty six young men who lost their lives that summer defending their homes and homeland because one of the branches of raging Islamic imperialism decided that a sudden vicious attack on the Jews was the thing to do that summer and would do wonders for its self esteem, standing and survival. 

Not a word about the murdered civilians.

The starting point for this legal academic is the crime. But what crime? Take out self defence, as this legal academic appears to have done, or at least admits only partially and grudgingly, like a Glasgow condom, then anything short of submission to massacre is a war crime.   

There is a crisis in our universities. There is a crisis in the law. We see it everyday.

The full piece is here.

First a response as published on the thread. Note the IDF reckoning (the only source known not to by tainted by the Hamas propaganda machine) in excess of 2,100 Gazans were killed in the most recent Hamas attack of whom 55% were civilians. 

"Looking into the mind of a perpetrator is difficult, if not impossible. Take the attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Gaza. That they occurred is a matter of fact. But the motive is far from clear. Sometimes military considerations were invoked (Hamas had reportedly used residential areas and even hospitals as launch sites for rockets). Sometimes the attacks may have been accidents. Sometimes no clear explanation was provided. This makes it difficult to satisfy the requirement under international law that genocidal intent had been the “only reasonable explanation” for the perpetrators' acts."

The allegation of "genocide" against Israel for defending her civilian population from determined terrorist attack should be deeply concerning for those worried about the rate of erosion of core values in the West; especially it seems in the universities. It is such a travesty of truth, justice, language and the law that it is actually obscene.

Here is what should be the starting point. The truth.

Cut away the hysteria and war propaganda and you will see a landmark achievement. The IDF took out a sophisticated, heavily armed, experienced and intensely trained militia, equivalent to two divisions of the Iranian army, dug into a vast complex of serviced concrete tunnels and bunkers carefully positioned in and under residential blocks, schools, mosques, hotels and especially under the Israeli built hospital.
Hamas et al had stockpiled tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, vast quantities of war materiel, with human shields in place by the thousands and with the strategic advantage of knowing that Israel must supply them with all the food, water, power and drugs they need out of an overriding humanitarian imperative for the civilian population that for all purposes Hamas was holding hostage for their lives.

The IDF achievement is miraculous. About 1800 "palestinians" had their lives thrown away by their war criminal bosses out of which likely about 1000 were jihadist killers armed and in the act. Among them was an astonishing number of the war criminal bosses themselves.

Of the approximately 800 civilians it is certain that most were killed by Hamas et al , mostly by reckless accident but also by execution, often in public.

And there are people in out universities who are examining the ISRAELIS for war crimes?

This is obscene. Is there any wonder that once again our universities have come under grave suspicion of nurturing bigotry, genocidal racism, and irrational violent ideology especially whenever anything to do with Israel and the Jews is on the agenda (which is pretty much all the time).

The University of Edinburgh has one of the worst reputations in the world in this regard. Jewish students have been forced from their courses by the festering rank hostility they are expected to endure apparently with the acquiescence at least of their professors. Academics attached to the faculty would be better utilised researching why and how such a thing has come on so quickly and so close to home, rather than in some spurious search of the boundaries of language and decency in a determined if ultimately failed bid to fit up the Jews on a fake and perfidious charge of genocide.

1. 

   Paul Behrens

   Lecturer in International Criminal Law at University of Edinburgh

What did this summer’s Israeli offensive amount to? EPA

When, in armed conflict, civilians are killed on a large scale, when schools are attacked and children are orphaned, charges of genocide are often not far behind. In discussions about Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli military attack on Gaza earlier this year, accusations of genocide have therefore played an important role.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, recently accused Israel of carrying out a “war of genocide”. The National Lawyers Guild of America raised the charge of genocide in a letter to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requesting that the matter be investigated. Genocide was also investigated in a special session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which resulted, a few weeks ago, in one of the most detailed assessments of Operation Protective Edge to date. It is a crime for which the international authorities can impose a sentence of life imprisonment (as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda did on several occasions following the 1994 atrocities in that country).

Tribunal gathering

The Russell Tribunal was originally set up by Bertrand Russell in the 1960s to investigate allegations of US crimes in Vietnam. It is not a court of law, but its jury contains prominent legal minds (including Prof John Dugard, Prof Richard Falk and Michael Mansfield QC), as well as people who have made their mark in other fields of life (including the film director Ken Loach, the writer Paul Laverty and the author and activist Christiane Hessel).

Ken Loach and Roger Waters EPA

Click to enlarge

I was invited to address the tribunal on the legal elements of genocide (but was not involved in the drafting of its findings). For some, it may have been a somewhat surprising presentation. Lawyers have traditionally given genocide a very restrictive interpretation – and a good part of my talk thus dealt with the reason why applying it to the situation in Gaza is not straightforward. To my mind, “genocide” is simply not the correct term for the Israeli offensive.