I have to share with you an inspiring story (How to win over a hijab-wearing student)
from The Point of No Return blog which is dedicated to information about Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
Michelle Huberman screened ‘Forgotten Refugees, a film about the plight of mizrachi Jews and Arab anti-Semitism.
During he course of the screening of the film to a hostile audience at the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London, and after a question and answer session with Matti Haroun, the audience clearly understood that there was an issue here that they hadn’t previously confronted.
A Pakistani girl in full hijab was the one most interested in the film. In the end she and a few of the students asked for more information and a copy. Michelle gave away half-a-dozen copies, plus some fact sheets.
Well done Michelle and Matti – brave and inspiring. Please read it all.
Continue reading about Bearded in the Lion’s den – how one man made anti-Zionists think
A couple of months ago I decided to start posting on the Jewish Chronicle (JC) Blogs.
I didn’t realise what I was about to discover; what I did discover was something of a revelation.
I don’t just post articles, I participate in the discussions which arise out of the majority of posts.
When I first arrived I landed in the middle of what I call the Blog Wars. Despite this being the JC, the blogs are open to anyone provided that they stick to some obvious rules. The blogs and their comments are moderated and it is not unknown for comments to be removed or even for bloggers or commenters to be banned.
What most surprised me was that I soon found there are two main camps: pro-Israel/Zionist and anti-Israel/Zionist. There are also one or two neutrals.
Almost every blog post can be the catalyst for some right old ding-dongs between these two camps. It’s a sort of Jewish version of the Guardian’s CiF (Comment is Free).
I actually found this very interesting, not only could I see how the ‘other side’ thinks, I could also challenge them, be challenged by them, argue with them, but never, of course, persuade them. This is an excellent training and test ground to hone your own arguments, to make sure of your facts and sharpen your own polemics.
It is also, at least for me, as a bit of an old lefty, an opportunity to question your own views and convictions in the light of the counter arguments. But, I can honestly say, this self-examination has not fundamentally changed my views, but it has reinforced my commitment to balance and to avoid dogmatism.
Both sides in these Blog Wars tend to be unyielding, entrenched and assured of their own righteousness. Little quarter is given. Israel is rarely criticised by the Zios and the anti-Zios will continue to sympathise with Hamas and Hizbollah.
By far the most revealing of the anti-Zios is a certain representative of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfjfP). I am not going to name names here; go and read the blogs; it’s unfair to mention any individual here who is unlikely to respond in person and I’m not going to discuss or reproduce the comments that have appeared in the JC. I’ll simply summarise what these discussions ‘below the line’ reveal.
The JfjfP representative is polite and seems to try very hard to be poised and restrained. JfjfP are part of the left wing bloc that organises demonstrations for Palestinians and Palestine and against Israel and Zionism.
This particular JfjfP member claims she is not anti-Israel and recognises Israel’s right to exist (well thanks). She is, however, of the opinion that Israel is a colonialist experiment, that the Occupation is illegal and cruelly prosecuted, that Hamas are understandable freedom fighters, that it is Israel and Israel alone and its policies which are the cause of the conflict; if only Israel would seek peace, negotiate with Hamas and the PA, this peace would magically materialise and 100 years of strife would dissipate into thin air, no-one would attack Jews anymore and her ideal, presumably Marxist, certainly Socialist, state would rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of Israel.
In other words, socialist ideology colours her opinion of Israel which is demonised in her mind to the extent that it can never be right, can never be lawful, because it is an illegitimate state in the first place. And because of this ideological blindness she, like so many others on the far left, be it George Galloway, Alexei Sayle, Tony Benn, Gerald Kaufman and, indeed, a number of post-Zionist Israelis who take the same stance, she is prepared to overlook the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, the misogyny, the Islamofascist death culture of Hamas and its fellow travellers; for her, their charters are just pieces of paper and they can be persuaded to make peace and forswear their previous acts and deeds and policies and bigotry.
Thus the far left supports representatives of the most dangerous, religio-political movement of our times: fundamentalist Islam. They do this in the name of their own socialist vision of the world and history.
The level of self-delusion, double-think and self-deception involved in this world view is astonishing and frightening. It is anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-Enlightenment and it makes a pact with the real devil by demonising an imperfect state – Israel.
I am not saying that we Zionists and pro-Israel supporters never take an ‘Israel can do no wrong’ position. It does happen and it happens more when Israel is under mortal threat. What room is there for any self-criticism when your opponents are relentless in theirs. Yet I can never ever find the ‘other side’ critical of the Palestinians and their supporters. It’s as if they are perfect, blameless, beyond criticism because if they do anything wrong the Zionists forced them to do it. At the same time, I do find a very lively debate in the Israeli press and the Jewish World.
There is a big difference between fair criticism and an agenda of demonisation and delegitimisation.
It is very sad indeed to encounter Jews who see history only through a socialist or Marxist prism, even if it means contributing to the efforts of those who would destroy Israel and kill all Jews and, therefore, the very Jews who now support them.
I wonder why some Jews who claim to uphold true Jewish values through sympathy and justice for Palestinians must also simultaneously join in with the chorus of the demonisers of their own people.
Why do they have to create a soi-disant ‘Jewish’ group?
What is it that is so important for them about Jewish values that they have to group together as not-in-my-namers?
What is Jewish about denying the right to Jewish self-determination?
What is Jewish about sympathy, even tacitly, for those who would commit genocide of the Jews given half a chance.
What is it that is Jewish about demonising fellow-Jews?
I’m currently reading Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, The Finkler Question, I found a very apt and devastating paragraph which amusingly describes Jews who give succour to their would-be destroyers. In the book there is a group not too dissimilar from JfjfP called ASHamed Jews:
To be an ASHamed Jew did not require that you had been knowingly Jewish all your life. Indeed, one among them only found out he was Jewish at all in the course of making a television programme in which he was confronted on camera with who he really was. In the final frame of the film he was disclosed weeping before a memorial in Auschwitz to dead ancestors who until that moment he had never known he’d had. ‘It could explain where I get my comic genius from,’ he told an interviewer for a newspaper, though by then he had renegotiated his new allegiance. Born a Jew on Monday, he had signed up to be an ASHamed Jew by Wednesday and was seen chanting ‘We are all Hezbollah’ outside the Israeli Embassy on the following Sunday.*
*Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question, Bloomsbury 2010, pp 138-9
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I’d like to bring your attention to an article recently published by Denis MacEoin on his blog entitled ‘Lies, lies, and lies about lies.
As Denis MacEoin is not a Jew and as he is a lecturer in Islamic studies and editor of the Middle East Quarterly and as he has written and studied and, indeed, earned a PhD on Islamic and Middle East subjects, I think that the neutral observer should give considerable respect to his views on a related subject: anti-Semitism.
In his article MacEoin does not mince his words:
I’m going to start this by talking about anti-Semitism. You’re probably all aware that anti-Israel activists, when told they are anti-Semites, hotly deny the charge, saying they are just opposed to Israel and its policies. I don’t believe them, any of them.
Strong stuff. Even though the staunchest Zionist is prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, when it comes to the ‘A’ word, to those who criticise Israel or the policies of its government, anti-Israel ‘activism’ is MacEoin’s subtle point here.
MacEoin continues by describing how, after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism became unfashionable and how, initially, the Left was pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli.
Then it all changed. Why? His theory is that the Left requires a a cause, someone to ‘pity’ as he defines it. As the Jews in the shape of Israel were no longer ‘pitiable’. Suddenly some atavistic European Jew-hatred rematerialised in anti-Israel or anti-Zionist polemic. MacEoin seems to say that there is a psychological aberration in the thinking of these Europeans which makes them dislike strong, even arrogant, unrepentant, assertive Jews/Israelis.
For some reason, a lot of people don’t like this. But they still don’t like to be called anti-Semites, because anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and they aren’t racists. They think they aren’t racists because anti-racism is the keystone of modern right-on politics. But they are racists, so they have a problem. They have a lot of circles to square, and to do that they have employed a range of lies that cast a spell on the media and most of the general public. It goes something like this. The Jews are no longer suffering, but someone must be suffering in order to deserve our pity, and the obvious candidates for victimhood are the Palestinians, because those nice Arabs I met at our conference tell me they are. This must mean that the Jews are… A hard think here, I suppose, then the obvious answer. The Jews, sorry, the Israelis are Nazis. Not ‘like the Nazis’. They are Nazis.
In other words, so aghast are these people at their own racism and historical guilt that they have to cleanse their Socialist souls by imprinting their own self-hate on the objects of this guilt. The only way they can justify this strange irrational hatred is by moral inversion and by transferring the historical crimes against Jews to crimes against Palestinians by Jews.
if there’s to be some sort of equivalence, there has to be a Holocaust. What? you say. What? But it’s obvious, they reply. There has been a Holocaust of the Palestinians. If this makes you feel nauseated, I don’t blame you. You ask, when, how many, where? They sneer and talk about Jenin (51 dead) and say it’s worse than gas chambers. And to make this worse, a lot of them deny the real Holocaust, aided and abetted by a UN member state, Iran.
So Israel is always referred to in terms of the darkest possible aspects of human behaviour: Holocaust, massacre, apartheid, racism, Nazism.
They hate Israel with a viciousness that can only originate in dark psychological problems with Jews. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t know how to solve it, but it’s the most dangerous single thing in the world today. I mean it.
MacEoin does not really explore why so many on the Left are so enamoured with people and regimes that should be inimical to their core beliefs. Why does George Galloway, for example, so love Hamas which represses women, kills gays and indoctrinates young minds to hate and martyrdom? Why did he appear to idolise Saddam who gassed his own people amongst his many other crimes. Why does Chavez love Ahmadinejad. Why does the IRA feel fellowship with Hamas and Hizbullah?
MacEoin has the answer – anti-Semitism. But that is almost too simple. The Leftists see a successful, highly technological, democratic, free society in Israel, yet a society that is basically capitalist and supported by the great bogeyman of the Left – the United States. Is it, perhaps, envy. Envy that their politics does not work, that they have based their political life on a system that does not produce wealth, freedom, humanity. And to make things worse, it’s those damned Jews who are showing them the error of their thinking.
But let me add a rider, as I always do. Israel is not perfect. There are many things to criticise about Israel as there are in other western democracies. Israel’s perceived injustices in the West Bank, its wars in Lebanon and Gaza can all be subjected to scrutiny and criticism.
But the debate, when it comes to Israel, whether from the Left or from Muslims and Islamists is always so hysterical, so hate-ridden, so genocidal, so shrill, so irrational and so vile that it does not leave any room for valid criticism. No other country in the world is treated in the press or at the UN like Israel. And if you think that is because Israel is the nastiest country in the world, then go there and take a look. Go to the West Bank. Go to Gaza. Then go to Sudan and Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran; go to Tibet and North Korea. Then tell me Israel deserves this level of vilification and demonisation.
You may then come to the conclusion that, essentially, MacEoin is right.
With people like Denis MacEoin around there is still hope, at least, that hordes of irrational Jew-haters and enemies of civilisation can yet be defeated.
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What’s happening in Spain? Two politicians, Pilar Rahola and former Prime Minister José María Aznar, have now made statements strongly supporting Israel. Maybe after the Madrid bombings they realise that Israel’s existential struggle, with all its flaws, is fundamentally just.
Pilar Rahola should not be supporting Israel. She is a far left politician; a position that normally defaults to vilification of Israel and unquestioning support of the Palestinians.
For Pilar Rahola the struggle of Israel is the struggle of the world. She has not made just one fine statement, but two, in support of Israel. Her website also highlights the middle east and anti-Semitism.
Tablet Magazine reports a translation of a conference speech against that conference’s anti-Israel stance. She points out the singling out of Israel when obnoxious regimes appear to get a free pass:
Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona?
Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?
Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?
Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?
Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan?
Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?
Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism?
Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist?
Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism?
The last point is of special note. The current Israeli maritime blockade is seen as a punishment of Gazans rather than as a defence against Hamas. The occupation of the West Bank justifies past terrorism and Palestinian incitement is ignored or given lip service.
And finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet?
To this question she has a subtle and compelling answer in another speech ‘Jews with Six Arms’ delivered at the Combating anti-Semitism conference in Spain:
The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom, wherever there was injustice. It was the depository of the utopic hopes of society. It was the great builder of future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking the utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out the good and the evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.
This historic treason to freedom, is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like Noa, the singer, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, that left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Tsahal, but applauds Hamas’ terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis. It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder.
So the far left has lost the international argument. It needs to find a cause to rally round, to find a victim and demonise the ‘oppressor’. And when that ‘oppressor’ is a successful, capitalist, free society then the far left is offended and threatened. When their demon state produces world class science and research they have to boycott it. When that society is open and democratic they only point to its failures and its occupation whilst ignoring the root cause of that occupation, namely Palestinian and Arab rejectionism.
This is no better demonstrated by the concept of ‘freedom’:
And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!”
Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom.
The demonisation is linguistic as well as conceptual:
When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter’s code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her.
Almost a definition of demonisation.
And lurking beneath this hatred and obsessive demonisation is the old European hatred:
Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of antisemitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lie. If, also, we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of antisemitism, we conclude that contingencies may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian antisemitism and of the modern political antisemitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel. For example, the Medieval Jew who killed Christian children to drink their blood, connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the western antisemite DNA…
And this finds a perfect resonance with Islamic Jew-hatred.
I urge you to read her speeches in full. She is certainly a voice in the darkness and a true latterday Pasionaria.
She is not alone. In the Times this week former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, wrote ‘If Israel goes down, we all go down’.
In this article Aznar puts the case for Israel and succinctly states the truth about Israel now lost in worldwide hysteria and malignity:
In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.
Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.
Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.
He then explains how the Israel/Palestine issue is not just a border dispute or a legal nicety:
The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.
… Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.
He mourns the decline of the West’s moral backbone which it exchanges for fashionable platitudes:
The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.
He then sets about describing his fight back against this attack on western values and democratic integrity by announcing a new Friends of Israel initiative. I urge all of you who love freedom and righteousness to sign up. This is not about giving Israel carte blanche. Criticising Israel and its policies is everyone’s right. Willing her destruction, demonising its people and Jews generally is not acceptable. Recognising its achievements and working for a peaceful resolution of the conflict to benefit everyone in the region and making the world a safer place should be our goal. Making Israel the fount from which all evil flows can only be called one thing and we all know what that thing is.
Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.
VIva Rahola y viva Aznar.
No one should doubt the towering intellectual and oratorial skills and abilities of Sir Gerald Kaufman.
He has been both shadow Foreign and shadow Home Secretary.
But that was all some time ago.
At some point, Sir Gerald, never shy to proclaim he is a Jew, fell out of love with Israel and Zionism and espoused the Palestinian cause.
Well, nothing wrong there. He is quite entitled to believe that Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians is flawed, oppressive or however he preceives it.
As an MP and a prominent British Jew, and also as person of considerable intellectual talent (Queen’s Oxford), he also has a duty to be fair, reasonable and see the conflict in its proper historical context.
What he fails to grasp, it seems, (and he is by no means the only British public figure or even Jew to do so) is that he is fatally compromised by not condemning or declaring that Hamas is the root cause of the Gaza situation. By meeting prominent Hamas leaders in Gaza in 2009 he sanctions their actions against Israel and their own people in Gaza. He also ignores an essential point and it is this: Hamas want to destroy not just Israel, but all Jews; they are virulently anti-Semitic and Jews who support them are probably a source of great amusement and ridicule.
Yesterday, during the debate in Parliament on the Queen’s Speech he took advantage of parliamentary privilege to make a long (over long) speech in which he accused the (Muslim) Liberal Democratic candidate for Gorton of running an anti-Semitic campaign against him during the run-up to the General Election.
Sir Gerald accused his opponent of targetting Muslim voters and directing them not to vote for Kaufman simply because ‘he is a Jew’. He also accused his opponent of telling Muslim Labour supporters to remove posters from their windows because they should not vote for a Jew.
I have no idea if these accusations are true; only a full investigation by the Lib Dems (I nominate Baroness Tonge for the task) could find the truth.
Sir Gerald praised the vast majority of his Muslim constituents for not bowing to the bigotry of the Lib Dem candidate and on that point I can wholeheartedly agree – good on them.
However, the irony is lost on Sir Gerald. Here was, allegedly, a Muslim telling other Muslims not to vote for a Jew regardless of his track record on Gaza, Palestine and Israel. And this is exactly what all Islamists or fundamentalists or whatever you want to call them, believe: namely, all Jews must die. It’s quite simple; they want to eradicate Jews because that is what they believe their religion teaches them, because that is what radical Imams preach, because they have drunk from the same poisoned well as the Nazis. Israel must perish not just because Jews have ‘stolen’ Muslim land but quite simply because they are Jews.
I am content for Sir Gerald to fight for Palestinian rights, but I a not content for him to ignore the true intention of Hamas and support a regime who wish him dead as much as they wish to see any Jew dead, except in his case he is still useful to them.
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The appearance of the British National Party’s leader, Nick Griffin, on the BBC”s prime political debating programme, Question Time, last night has for weeks been the subject of extraordinary media focus, heated debate and political demonstration.
The BBC devoted almost the entire programme to questions about the BNP, statements by Nick Griffin and the party’s policies.
Chairman David Dimbleby pressed Griffin on his history of Holocaust denial and Griffin lamely stated that he had changed his mind about it although he couldn’t express his views because of European Law which might lead to his arrest if he were to enter certain European countries. However, he did say that he had changed his mind on the ‘numbers’ after reading about a German radio intercept of 1945! The inadequacy and ludicrousness of this response was not lost on fellow panel members. Clearly Griffin is prepared to have his mind changed (somewhat) by German radio intercepts but not by the testimony and meticulous records of those same Germans, let alone thousands of survivors and other witnesses.
But the BNP is now no longer anti-Semitic, of course, its main scapegoat now is Islam and Muslims. At one time he was heard to say that ‘they’ can stay if ‘they’ accept this is a British and Christian country. How very generous of him. Where does he propose to send millions of British citizens were they not to accept his terms of tenure?
At one extraordinary moment he made a bid to show his pro-Semitic credentials by saying that he and his party supported Israel in Operation Cast Lead against Hamas. Well thanks for that, Mr Griffin’ with friends like you etc,
But isn’t this so typical of neo-Fascists. They delude themselves that by supporting Israel (Jews), who they hate, against Muslims, who they hate even more (only for now whilst it is politically advantageous to scapegoat Muslims), they are demonstrating some sort of moral purity and acceptability by trumping anti-Semitism with Islamaphobia.
The BBC’s reason for inviting Griffin was that since the BNP now had two MEP’s (including Griffin himself) and a million votes in the European elections, its charter had to be impartial and a BNP member had as much right to an invite as the Green Party or UKIP. But it then chose to atone for a sin it said it had not committed by focusing almost exclusively on Griffin and the BNP, something which has not been the case with other minority parties. So the BNP would be justified in complaining to the BBC about unfair treatment, would it not? Either Griffin is a panel member like all others or he is not. If he is not, then maybe he shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.
Whether the BBC’s biased attack on the BNP has any effect on that party’s standing remains to be seen. I hope there are a million people out there who watched Griffin and who now regret ever voting for him.
The Liberal Democrats might also be given pause to consider that their policy of Proportional Representation in the UK parliament would inevitably lead to candidates such as Griffin gaining a foothold in UK democracy as they have done with a PR system in Europe.
Griffin’s performance was appalling. He showed himself to be an oleaginous, sniggering, cowardly, intellectual midget who had no place on a panel of this calibre.
Continue reading about Nick Griffin – a supporter Israel can do without
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One of the most disturbing aspects of the global war of deligitimisation of Israel is the alliance of the European extreme left with terrorism.
So, for example, Respect’s George Galloway is quite jubilant about supporting Hamas and denies that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map. Meanwhile Gerry Adams, former IRA supremo turned politician, also sees fit to cosy up to Hamas.
Of course, the common interest of the extreme Left, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is their loathing of Zionism. The fact that this includes loathing of Jews generally is glossed over by the Left, is denied or represented as paranoia or an attempt to scotch criticism of Israel. It is why the Dutch Labour Party supports demonstrations at which bigots call out “Hamas Hamas, Joden aan het Gas” (Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas). Here’s a YouTube video where Harry van Bommel, a Dutch Socialist MP, is leading a chant of “Intifida” to an unchallenged background chant of “Hamas Hamas, Joden aan het Gas”
Now the Dutch Labour Party, the main opposition in the Netherlands, according to Ha’aretz
…demands Israel accept Hamas as a partner for dialog
As seems invariably to be the case with some Left wing elements, they see the world through the prism of their own ideology. This prism appears to have a very large blind spot, so let me state it again for the umpteenth time: Hamas is a viciously anti-Semitic terrorist organisation which will not recognise Israel, wants to destroy Israel and kill ALL Jews. You don’t make deals with your would-be murderers.
Don’t believe me? Then just look at the Hamas charter. Or if you think that is just political positioning, here’s an example from Palestinian Media Watch.
I reproduce it here, but if you go to the website you’ll be able to experience the delights of a Hamas TV broadcast.
Bulletin
Apr. 19, 2009 Palestinian Media WatchHamas Racism:
Jews are evil – “Their children will be exterminated.”
Imam who participated
in “Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace”
calls for extermination of Jewsby Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
A Hamas cleric who once participated in an international conference of “Imams and Rabbis for Peace” — whose delegates vowed to “condemn any negative representation” of each other’s religions — has wholeheartedly espoused Hamas’s racist ideology in a recent Friday sermon on Hamas TV.
Ironically, this latest profession of Hamas’s genocidal racism was preached and broadcast at the start of the month in which the UN is meeting in the “Durban II” conference in Geneva to condemn Israel as being “racist.”
According to the Hamas interpretation of Islam, the Jews are inherently evil, seek to rule the world, and are a threat to Muslims and all of humanity. Therefore they are destined to extermination. In the words of Hamas religious leader Ziad Abu Alhaj, “Hatred for Muhammad and Islam is in their [Jews'] souls, they are naturally disposed to it…”
He asserts that because of the Jews’ inherent evil, the Jewish state, “Israel … is a cancer that wants to rule the world.” One can find the details of the Jews’ plan in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which he jokingly refers to as “The Protocols of the Imbeciles of Zion” (a play on words in Arabic). He concludes that the Jews are destined to be annihilated:
“The time will come, by Allah’s will, when their property will be destroyed and their children will be exterminated, and no Jew or Zionist will be left on the face of this earth.”
[Hamas (Al-Aqsa) TV, April 3, 2009]He also claims that the Jews wanted to murder Muhammad.
This imam, who is preaching the genocide of Jews, participated in the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace in 2006, which also featured many prominent rabbis from Israel. The final statement from the Seville conference included the pronouncement, “. . . We condemn any negative representation of these [religious beliefs and symbols], let alone any desecration, Heaven forbid. Similarly, we condemn any incitement against a faith or people, let alone any call for their elimination, and we urge authorities to do likewise.”
The following is the text of the Hamas sermon calling for the extermination of Jews:
“Who is it that is leading the world today in the vicious, all-encompassing war against Islam and Muslims? The answer is clear: it is the Jewish nation. It is the Jews who today are leading the all-encompassing war against Muslims…
We, the Muslims, know the nature of Jews the best, because the Holy Quran taught us. The prophetic traditions explained at length to Muslims the true nature of Jews… Their war and their hatred for Muhammad and Islam is in their souls, they are naturally disposed to it.
Israel today lives in the heart of Arab-Muslim territory, and it is a cancer that wants to rule the world. Know, my brothers! The Jews’ expansion today brings the dissemination of an ancient thinking…
They argued with Allah’s prophet Moses; they wanted to kill Allah’s prophet Jesus, and wanted to murder Allah’s prophet Muhammad…
The Jews want to destroy every inch … Perhaps their famous book, which they deny [its authenticity] – known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but we call it, “The Protocols of the imbeciles of Zion” – in this book, my brothers, the Jews set down their plan to besiege the entire world by land, by air, and by sea – conceptually, economically, and its communications, as is happening today…
The Jews’ grandeur today, and their ascent to the world’s throne, is because America, with all of its power, is ruled by the Senate, I won’t say ‘American’ but rather ‘Jewish’ [Senate] … The time will come, by the will of Allah, when their property will be destroyed and their children will be exterminated, and no Jew or Zionist will be left on the face of this earth.”
I wonder if Harry van Bommel would do business with a Belgian terrorist organisation calling for the killing of Dutch children and wiping the Netherlands off the map or saying that Dutch Protestants are controlling the world with their evil religious animus.
I wonder what George Galloway and Tony Benn really think when they read this, if they do, or are they too busy trying to find an apology for it. The double-think involved is staggering; George Galloway, for example has given an impassioned interview about the enormity of the Holocaust, but supports groups bent on a second one.
As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes the podium at Geneva, no doubt the European Far Left will be cheering from the sidelines.
On April 20th, in Geneva, the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance will begin in Geneva. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was invited and will attend.
This is the long-awaited follow up to the first conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 which turned into an anti-Israel hate-fest.
The conference was effectively hijacked by the anti-Israel lobby and its original aims completely lost in a torrent of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric and resolutions. Israel and the United States withdrew in disgust.
The draft documents, (which were eventually rewritten but not adopted by all parties – you can guess which ones adopted the originals), expressed “deep concern” at the “increase of racist practices of Zionism and anti-Semitism”. It thus attempted a sleight of hand to discriminate between this particular form of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The draft continued to describe “movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority”.
Notice the “in particular” and the lies about “racism” and “racial superiority”. Firstly, which “race” is doing the racism against which other race? Jews are not a race, unless you are a supporter of Hitler’s views on this matter. Israel has the most racially diverse population in the Middle East by a very long way.
“Racial superiority”? We have already debunked the “Jews as a race” canard, so this is covert language for Jews being the “Chosen People” which the anti-Israel camp interpret as “racial superiority” and which leads to the “International Jewish Conspiracy”. It also alludes to the “Right of Return” which is wilfully misinterpreted by this bunch of hypocrites as giving preference to Jews right to citizenship and not allowing Palestinians a right to return to their pre-1948 homes. You can characterise this as discriminatory, but “racial superiority?”
I don’t propose to go in to the reasons and arguments about the “Right of Return” of Jews and Palestinians because I can refer you to this article.
If you read the final Declaration from Durban I it is not difficult to see that the countries now baying for Israel’s blood would fail to live up to almost every paragraph of the Declaration’s stated aims. Durban II is hypocrisy made manifest, the apotheosis of the inverted moral order spreading its vicious and malicious hatred throughout the world.
In Geneva, the draft resolutions try to reintroduce the Israel- and Jew-bashing rhetoric of the first conference and to press for a resolution against “defamation” of religion which seeks to silence any criticism of Islam. Once again Israel has been singled out among all nations. Despite strenuous efforts to have the draft resolutions amended, which has been successful to a limited extent, as things stand, the draft is so clearly a document not against racism or xenophobia but actually its opposite: a slur against the Jewish people and Israel which is itself a form of the very xenophobia the Conference is supposed to be designed to condemn and an attempt, by seeking to limit freedom of speech, to suppress criticism of the religious intolerance and bigotry of those states drafting the anti-Israel lies.
President Ahmadinejad’s presence itself indicates that he is there to orchestrate his own Nuremberg rally. As Arutz Sheva reports:
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor slammed Ahmadinejad as “the representative of a regime which consistently breaches human rights, which assassinates opponents and persecutes minority groups, which exports hatreds and terrorism throughout the Middle East.”
They might also add that he is a Holocaust denier and contemplates the destruction of Israel as a desirable goal.
Canada, Israel, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia and now, at last, the United States have all refused to take part in this obscene parody of a Conference. Some Jewish groups intend to go to have their voices heard and to demonstrate. Notably, the UK is still sending a delegation.
My view now is that the Conference should be boycotted. Boycott the boycotters. Deny them any legitimacy.
See the BBC which is quite balanced for a change (having improved on its earlier wishy-washy attempt).
Meanwhile the UN sits on its hands and watches. So much for its founding principals.
I have to pass on to you the words of Anna Bayevsky. I do not apologise for quoting in full. I do not have a web link. (April 20th is Hitler’s birthday – he’d be so proud of the neo-Nazis who have hijacked this Conference. On that day The March of The Living will once again take place at Auschwitz-Birkenau when the Jewish Youth of the world commemorate the Holocaust. The next day is Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Memorial Day)
STATEMENT BY ANNE BAYEFSKY AT THE THIRD SUBSTANTIVE PREPARATORY MEETING OF THE DURBAN REVIEW CONFERENCE
April 17, 2009
United Nations, Palais des Nations, GENEVA, SwitzerlandThe eyes of millions of victims of racism, xenophobia and intolerance are upon YOU, the representatives of states and the United Nations. And instead of hope you have given them despair. Instead of truth you have handed them diplomatic double-talk. Instead of combating antisemitism you have handed them a reason for Jews to fear UN-driven hatemongering on a global scale.
The Durban conference – allegedly dedicated to combating racism, antisemitism and other forms of intolerance – will open April 20th on the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler without agreement on even so much as remembering the Holocaust and the war against the Jews. Your draft words on the Holocaust – the very foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – have been narrowed to the barest mention from previous versions. And if the minor reference survives at all – it will be a testament to your interest in Jews that died 60 years ago, while tolerating and encouraging the murder of Jews in the here and now.
Furthermore, the draft before you demonizes the Jewish state of Israel and then has the audacity to pretend to care about antisemitism in a single word buried among 17 pages. Antisemitism means discrimination against the Jewish people. Since it is evident that almost none of you have the courage to say it, the face of modern antisemitism IS the UN – your – discrimination against Israel, the embodiment of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
Over and over again we have heard a massive misinformation campaign about the content of these proceedings and the draft before you. We have heard the tale that this draft does not single out Israel, that the hate has been removed, that the fault of the antisemitism at Durban I was that of NGOs while states and the UN were blameless.
Perhaps you think that journalists and victims will not bother to read for themselves the Durban Declaration adopted by some governments. There is only one state mentioned in it – Israel. There is only one state associated with racist practices in it – Israel. And yet the very first thing that this draft before you does is to reaffirm that abomination, abomination for Jews and Arabs living in Israel’s free and democratic society, and for all the victims of racism ignored therein. Lawyers call it incorporation by reference when they hope nobody reads the small print. The propaganda stops here. We have read it. We understand the game. And we decry the ugly effort to repeat the Durban agenda to isolate and defeat Israel politically, as every effort to do so militarily for decades has failed.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chair of this Preparatory Committee also told us this week that the Durban Declaration in all its aspects is a consensus text. Perhaps they are unfamiliar with the Canadian reservations made in Durban in 2001 which state categorically that the Middle East language was outside the conference’s jurisdiction and not agreed. Perhaps they failed to notice that one of the world’s greatest democracies, the United States, voted with its feet and walked out of the Durban I hatefest? The Durban Declaration has never represented a global consensus among free and democratic nations. When the head of the Islamic conference treats Durban as a bible, in their words, it is more accurately a defamation of religions.
This week you decided which states ought to serve in a leadership role at next week’s conference. Among them are some of the world’s leading practitioners of racism, not those interested in ending it. You have also decided to hand a global megaphone to the President of a state which advocates genocide and denies the Holocaust.
So in a state of shock and dismay we address ourselves not to the human rights abusers that glorify the Durban Declaration or its next incarnation, but to democracies — and we ask: Will Germany sit on Hitler’s birthday and listen to the speech of an advocate of genocide against the Jewish people and grant legitimacy to the forum which tolerates his presence? What about the United Kingdom, the birthplace of the Magna Carta? Or France that helped to ship last generation’s Jews to crematoriums?
You could have fought racism. You chose instead to fight Jews. You could have promoted the universal standards against racism already in existence. You chose instead to diminish their importance in the name of alleged cultural preferences. You could have protected freedom of expression. You chose instead to undermine it by twisted concepts of incitement. You could have brought victims of racism together in a common cause. You chose instead to pit victims against each other in an ugly struggle for meagre recognition. For those democracies that remain under these circumstances you are ultimately responsible for what can only be called an appalling disservice to real victims of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance around the world.
Continue reading about Durban II – Ahmadinejad’s Nuremberg Rally
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Ken Loach, the British film director, has claimed that it is “‘understandable” that there should be a rise in anti-Semitism since the Gaza conflict, the Jerusalem posts reports.
If there has been a rise I am not surprised. In fact, it is perfectly understandable because Israel feeds feelings of anti-Semitism.
He goes on:
When history comes to be written, I think this will be seen as one of the great crimes of the past decades because of the cold blooded massacre that we witnessed. Unless we take a stand against it, we are complicit.
And all this at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine – a “a symbolic citizens’ initiative that claims to reaffirm the importance of international law in conflict resolution”.
What Loach and other are “complicit” in is the usual one-sided demonisation and singling out of one state whilst ignoring the crimes of those seeking to annihilate it. By ‘understanding’ that Israel’s perceived crimes are responsible for anti-Semitism he is saying that it is “understandable” that all Jews are responsible for Israel’s actions. He makes no condemnation of this linkage. By expressing this belief he himself is complicit in the rise of anti-Semitism because he makes no stand against such a belief. Even Muslim leaders in the UK told their co-religionists NOT to blame Jews for the actions of Israel.
Did Mr Loach “understand” the huge rise in attacks on Muslims as a result of 9/11 or 7/7? No. Because there were very few attacks on Muslims in the UK whose citizens did not perpetrate a blood-libel against them. But in the wake of Operation Cast Lead anti-Semitic incidents in the UK and Europe went through the roof. Only Jews are responsible for the actions of other Jews in Mr Loach’s perverted logic.
I would also ask Mr Loach if he has taken a stand against President Bashir of Sudan, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the Taleban, the Russians for Chechnya (seeing as he is a supporter of Chechen independence) and South Ossetia.
But most importantly I would ask him if his kangaroo court of concerned citizens (which not only makes the accusation but then becomes judge and jury in a mockery of justice) is even going to look at Hamas’s actions and condemn them or does he “understand” Hamas’s motives as well.
And I would ask him why the Russell Tribunal does not even follow – vis-a-vis Hamas – some of its own aims as expressed when “trying” the United States for war crimes in Vietnam:
1. Has the United States Government (and the Governments of Australia, New Zealand and South Korea) committed acts of aggression according to international law?
3. Has there been bombardment of targets of a purely civilian character, for example hospitals, schools, sanatoria, dams, etc., and on what scale has this occurred?
4. Have Vietnamese prisoners been subjected to inhuman treatment forbidden by the laws of war and, in particular, to torture or mutilation? Have there been unjustified reprisals against the civilian population, in particular, execution of hostages?
Replace “United States” with “Hamas”.
On item 1: Hamas were and still carry out daily rocket attacks aimed specifically at the civilian population of Israel which is an “aggression according to international law”.
On item 3: as per item 1 the targets are “purely civilian (in) character” and are indiscriminate. As for scale: over 6000 such attacks since 2001.
On item 4: Gilad Shalit has been held since 2006 without access to the Red Cross contrary to international law. We do not know if he has been tortured. After Operation Cast Lead Hamas was widely reported as taking reprisals against anyone it deemed as being complicit of collaboration especially its political enemy Fatah. It carried out summary executions and woundings against civilians.
This is not Loach’s first attack on Israel. In 2007 at the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival he called for “international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions”. In 2008 he condemned the celebrating of Israel’s 69th anniversary as “tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves to the haunting tune of lingering dispossession and multi-faceted injustice”.
I believe even in the world of the self-appointed, self-righteous and self-lefteous Ken Loach and the Russell Tribunal there are clear grounds for an “indictment” and “prosecution” of Hamas.
I am sure the entire world is watching with baited breath.
Continue reading about Ken Loach says Israel is responsible for rise in anti-Semitism
The Arab and Muslim world is awash with anti-Semitism. Some times it is blatant, sometimes it is in the guise of anti-Zionism. Sometimes it’s just plain ludicrous.
A video on the MEMRI website has been posted which shows an Egyptian cleric railing against Starbucks. This time the canard that Starbucks gave money to Israel and/or the Israeli Army is avoided. Instead Safwat Higazi concentrates on the Jewish symbolism of the Starbucks logo. Yes, you read correctly. Now read on.
Apparently the logo depicts Queen Esther.
This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia.
the MEMRI video translates. He goes on to urge good Muslims to boycott the Starbucks stores in the Middle-East. After a complete misrepresentation of the Purim story, which he has clearly never read, thence to the peroration:
We Want Starbucks To Be Shut Down Throughout The Arab And Islamic World… Can you believe that in Mecca, Al-Madina, Cairo, Damascus, Kuwait, and all over the Islamic world there hangs the picture of beautiful Queen Esther, with a crown on her head, and we buy her products?
What do you notice about this story? Israel is not mentioned at all. It’s a rant against Jews. Why should this man be stirring up trouble without grounds (all puns intended, by the way)?
For some time rumours have been spread that Starbucks gave money to Israel and the IDF. This is denied on the Starbucks website:
Is it true that Starbucks provides financial support to Israel?
No. This is absolutely untrue. Rumors that Starbucks Coffee Company provides financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army are unequivocally false. Starbucks is a publicly held company and as such, is required to disclose any corporate giving each year through a proxy statement. In addition, articles in the London Telegraph (U.K.), New Straits Times (Malaysia), and Spiked (online) provide an outside perspective on these false rumors.
Has Starbucks ever sent any of its profits to the Israeli government and/or Israeli army?
No. This is absolutely untrue.
Is it true that Starbucks is teaming with other American corporations to send their last several weeks of profits to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army?
No. This is absolutely untrue.
Clearly Mr Higazi has heard these rumours and presumably he has also heard the ones about the Jews being responsible for 9/11, World Wars I and II, global warming and the tooth fairy.
Anti-Semites will find whatever fuel they can to stoke their own prejudices. Please observe that this is a rant against Jews, so any pretence of anti-Zionism can go straight out of the window.
Anti-Semitism is rife in Egypt. Almost a national obsession. On the streets of Cairo you can easily find a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which is a best seller. Blood libels against the Jews abound. And all this is a nation that is Israel’s ‘peace partner’. Who knows to what extent this trash is believed in Egypt where there is a current battle between Islamists and the existing regime and political status quo. Mubarak’s government isn’t exactly a Western democracy but at least it provides some sort of stability and resistance to Jihadis.
But what about poor Queen Esther? Well, the current logo has moved on since the early days when the nature of the Queen Esther figure was a little more obvious. Wikipedia tells us:
Valerie O’Neil, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said that the logo is an image of a “twin-tailed siren” (the siren of Greek mythology).[25] The logo has been significantly streamlined over the years. In the first version, which gave the impression of an authentic 15th century European woodcut, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully visible double fish tail. The image also had a rough visual texture. In the second version, which was used from 1987-92, her breasts were covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, used since 1992, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails.
Higazi is representative of a large group of Muslim clerics for whom the Jews are simply evil. Just consider: so what even if the logo DID represent Queen Esther, is that such a crime? No, the true crime is that because some of the founders and management of Starbucks are Jews that makes the company persona non grata in the Muslim world. But here’s the killer punch: the Starbucks website also tells us:
Do you work with a Middle East partner to operate Starbucks stores?
Through a licensing agreement with trading partner and licensee MH Alshaya WLL, a private Kuwait family business, Starbucks has operated in the Middle East since 1999. Today Alshaya Group, recognized as one of the leading and most influential retailing franchisees in the region, operates more than 274 Starbucks stores in the Middle East and Levant region. ….
We partner with Alshaya Group to operate Starbucks stores in Egypt, Kuwait, KSA, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Jordan and Lebanon in the Middle East region….
We are also committed to hiring locally, providing jobs to thousands of local citizens in the countries where we operate.
In other words, the operation in the Middle East is merely a franchise operated by a Kuwaiti company and provides employment for thousands of people. But Mr Higazi isn’t interested in that, he is only interested in his narrow-minded Jew-hatred.
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