Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Year: 2011 (Page 5 of 11)

Reaction to my article about the Channel 4 programme: “Sri Lanka, the Killing Fields”

20/06/2011 / / 2 Comments

There has been an unexpected reaction to my previous article on the Channel 4 programme shown last week: Sri Lanka, the Killing Fields.

This blog post is about to become the most viewed I have written in two years of writing this blog.

I found this a little bizarre because my blog is about Israel.

The main purpose of my Sri Lanka blog was to highlight what I perceive as the double standards of the UN and the international community.

So I am bemused as to why my post has had so many hits in such a short space of time.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason is that Israel and Palestine so monopolise the news media and the blogosphere, that it is seen as THE conflict, the most important one to resolve and a major cause of the ongoing ‘war’ between Islam and the West.

Sri Lanka, on the other hand, and the Tamils in particular, have relatively few bloggers and virtually no attention from the media.

So when someone writes about Sri Lanka, it has a much larger impact than a similar article about Israel where my voice struggles to be heard in a plethora of shrill voices on both sides.

In my article I committed the sin of comparing the actions of the Sri Lankan army, on two occasions, to the actions of the Nazis. This is always a risky thing to do. Let me clarify; I compared the No Fly Zones to the gas chambers because both used simulation to dupe victims into believing they were safe when, in fact, the opposite was true. In retrospect, this was not appropriate.

I then compared Ban Ki Moon’s visit to a Tamil internment camp as being similar to the Red Cross visiting Theresienstadt and reporting all was well. This comparison is, perhaps, a little more felicitous.

The overwhelming majority of visitors have been supportive of my article.

One of the first commentators took me to task about accusing the Sri Lankan government of genocide when most Tamils live in the south and in comparative wealth and comfort.

Here is a legal definition of genocide found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG).

Article 2 defines genocide as, inter alia:

“…. any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ….”

In my judgement, these conditions were met based on the evidence I have seen. Others more qualified will make theirs.

In the Sunday Times this week A A Gill was disparaging of the Channel 4 programme. He pointed out that no Channel 4 reporters witnessed the events and almost all the footage came from unconfirmed sources.

In these days of citizen journalism, in areas of the world where news reporters are not allowed, the evidence from private citizens and combatants is vital in telling the world what happened even if, as in this case, these video clips are horrific trophy recordings apparently taken by soldiers who appear to be enjoying the rape and slaughter.

This evidence of the dehumanisation of one group by another and how that can lead to war crimes and, yes, genocide, are all too familar to the Jewish people. Those who document the dehumanisation of Jews by Hamas, Islamic clerics and Palestinian Authority TV and literature, have no doubt that, given the opportunity, Jews would be subject to the same deranged slaughter as the Tamils and probably far worse.

At least in Sri Lanka Tamils still live and many prosper; they still have positions of authority in Sri Lankan society. No-one is suggesting that they must all be killed because they are an evil virus hated by G-d and humanity. Only the Jews have that dubious honour.

There are several initiatives by NGO’s and even politicians to ensure that any war crimes in Sri Lanka are punished.

However, I doubt that the UN Human Rights Council will have a permanent agenda item for Sri Lanka as it has for Israel.

I wish the people of Sri Lanka well and I hope that justice and reconciliation will resolve the conflict and allow all communities and faiths to live together with mutual respect and toleration.

 

 

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields – what genocide actually looks like

15/06/2011 / / 28 Comments

Last night Channel 4 screened what must be one of the most disturbing programme ever shown on British television.

It was shown after 11pm to minimise the chances that children would watch it.

The programme has been posted on the Channel 4oD website here.

This was a programme about the 2009 assault on the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan army.

The programme included stomach-turning graphic mobile phone footage of summary executions, hundreds of dead bodies, including those of women who had been raped and then shot.

It showed hospitals and hospital field units being bombed and shelled.

You felt the fear, the desperation, the horror, the hopelessness.

We saw the UN leaving a town to its fate because the government said it could no longer guarantee the safety of its personnel and we saw the people of that town pleading with the UN not to go.

We saw UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s cursory and rapid visit to what can only be described as a concentration camp, rather like the Red Cross visiting Teresienstadt and reporting all is well.

We saw how the Sri Lankan government created protected zones whose only equivalent that I can think of are the gas chambers of the Nazis who duped their victims into believing they were safe and then killed them.

Corralled into an ever-shrinking space, civilians were bombed and shelled. Thousands died. Desperate doctors performed amputations on children without anaesthetic. Disease, starvation, infection decimated the population.

And it wasn’t just the Sri Lankan army who were guilty. The Tamil Tigers are by no means innocent. They prevented their own people from escaping so they could use them as human shields, killing many who dared to run for their life.

The programme left no doubt that both sides were guilty of serious war crimes, but the Sri Lankan government, in its attempt to end the decades long conflict with the Tamils, embarked on a policy of genocide. Any Tamil was guilty by association. There was no mercy. The army was out of control and rampant.

The Sri Lankan government employed deceit to cover up its crimes; it did not allow journalists to enter the war zone, it tried to convince the world that a ‘No-Fly Zone’ had been created to protect civilians when its purpose was clearly the opposite. It sought to maximise casualties hiding behind the excuse that the Tigers were using these zones to fire at the army.

It deliberately targetted hospitals to such a blatant degree that the Tamils pleaded with the Red Cross not to pass the army the co-ordinates of their field hospitals because evidence was clear that when they did so, a few hours later, they were shelled.

As I watched, my stomach turning at every scene, some so difficult to watch I actually had to avert my eyes, I was struck by both the similarities and the differences between this conflict and the Israeli’s assault on Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009, Operation Cast Lead.

First, the similarities: both the Sri Lankan government and the Israelis were responding to a concerted campaign by a terrorist organisation whose stated aims was to ‘reclaim’ a homeland. Both terrorist groups had used suicide bombing, intimidation and ruthless subjugation of its own people.

In both the Israeli and the Sri Lankan offensives there were accusations of deliberate targetting of civilians, attacks on civilian infrastructure and protected buildings.

The more rabid opponents of Israel accused them of massacre or genocide. The Goldstone Report found evidence of possible war crimes, breaches of the Geneva Convention, failure to protect civilians, the use of human shields, illegal use of weaponry.

The accusations against Israel have been largely refuted and subjected to a long and thorough investigation by the IDF into hundreds of complaints by Palestinians and soldiers as well as reported incidents in the media. Richard Goldstone recently announced that if he had known then what he knows now the report would have been different, but he still stood by the report nevertheless.

Those who read this blog will know that I believe most of the accusations against Israel to be baseless. Notwithstanding, Israel had a case to answer and answered it in a very comprehensive and detailed way rebutting almost all the accusations and specific incidents. These conclusions are, of course, rejected out of hand by those who do not believe Israel as capable of self-investigation as any other Western democracy.

I do not believe that Israel had a deliberate policy of targetting civilians, in fact, the opposite was true. There were incidents which were negligent or ill-judged and tragic. These do not add up to war crimes or genocide.

There are no accusations of rape against the IDF, even by Hamas and no woman ever came forward with any such suggestion.

There were no accusations of summary executions of bound prisoners and no such evidence exists.

There were incidents where civilian infrastructure was hit: schools, mosques, even hospitals. In the case of schools the IDF has demonstrated that these were often used by Hamas to fire from in full knowledge that the IDF could not return fire or if it did, risked injuring children.

There was no systematic attack on schools. As for mosques, it was clear that these harboured weapons and ammunition. The IDF returned fire from some Hamas operatives using hospitals as cover to fire upon them. This is permitted in warfare.

There was no corralling of civilians and then shelling of those civilians. In one incident the IDF told a family to move to a house which was subsequently shelled and many family members killed.  There is no evidence that this was anything but a tragic mistake.

The figures bear this out. Between 1300 and 1400 known people killed of which, even by Hamas’ reckoning 700 were combatants. The IDF figures show far fewer non-combatant casualties.

Let’s consider the worldwide condemnation of Israel for attacking Gaza from where thousands of rockets had been fired over a considerable period of time. And this after Israel had evacuated Gaza completely. Soon after, Hamas took control and began suicide attacks and bombings and a barrage of indiscriminate rockets fired at towns in Southern Israel.

Israel was accused of disproportionality even though very few people actually know what that means in international law.

Muslims marched all over the world calling Israelis baby-killers, genocides and aggressors and called for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Investigations which led to the Goldstone Report were begun with great haste.

Israel was vilified by the world media.

Now look at the Sri Lankan campaign against the Tamils.

At least 40,000 civilians were killed and relatively few combatants. The actual figure may be much, much higher. It could be more than 100,000.

There was torture, rape, clearly deliberate targetting of hospitals and civilians.

What happened in the UN? There was a very low-key call for an investigation which the Sri Lankan government rejected.

The whole thing was buried and soon forgotten.

There was no worldwide condemnation.

Sri Lankans were still safe to walk the streets of Europe and play Test Match cricket.

There were no flotillas, no high-profile demonstrations in the world’s capitals (there were some by the desperate relatives of Tamils abroad).

In short no-one really gave a damn. Not the UN, not the EU, not Sri Lanka’s neighbours.

I have had issues with Channel 4 programmes about Israel but I have to congratulate them on bringing this horrific genocide to public attention.

Yes, genocide, targetting an ethnic group and deliberately killing, raping and starving that group with the resulting deaths of tens of thousands of people is genocide. Killing up to 700 innocents in Gaza is not.

If the Israelis committed crimes they pale into insignificance compared to the horrors of Sri Lanka plain for all to see.

Sri Lanka, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, Cambodia – all killing fields where hundreds of thousands died or are still dying.

Yet, UN Watch reports the inestimable Hillel Neuer’s address to the unintentionally ironically named UN Human Rights Council:

Mr. President,

History will record that the highest human rights body of the United Nations met today for no objective reason. Nothing in recent events, nothing in logic, nothing in human rights justifies today’s debate.

Our meeting is automatic—the consequence of a decision adopted four years ago, shortly after this council was created, to keep a permanent agenda item on one country only: Israel.

History will record that at a time when citizens across the Middle East were being attacked by their own government—by rifles, tanks, and helicopters—the UN focused its scarce time and attention on a country in that region where this is not happening; the only country in the region which, despite its flaws, respects the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion; the only country in the region with free elections, an independent judiciary, and the equal treatment of women; the only country where gays are not persecuted, arrested or stoned to death, but, on the contrary, march in their own annual parade, as they did in Tel Aviv three days ago.

Mr. President, that is why the logic of this agenda item represents the opposite of human rights, and why it embodies the pathologies that so discredited this council’s predecessor.

Indeed, this item is so unjust, so biased, so selective, so politicized, and so contradictory to this council’s own principles of equality and universality, that it was condemned by the Secretary-General himself, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, on 20 June 2007, the day after its adoption.

And so we ask: In its recent 5-year review, despite everything happening in the Middle East, why did the Council decide to perpetuate this item, an act that will be finalized this week by the General Assembly?

Mr. President,

History will record that when citizens were being persecuted or massacred by their own governments—in Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere—the UN chose to turn a blind eye to the victims, and instead endorsed the cynicism, hypocrisy and scapegoating of the perpetrators.

Thank you, Mr. President.

So now we can add the massacres in Syria on which the UN remains all but silent. Not forgetting the many thousands of Palestinians killed, harassed, made stateless and left to rot by Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other states.

Genocide of Palestinians? Even the Ma’an news agency reports an 8 fold increase in Palestinians since 1948 with more than 5 million in Israel, and the Palestinian territories.

So don’t tell me about Palestinian genocide, just tell me about the intended Jewish genocide announced, documented and planned by Hamas, Hizbollah, Ahmadinejad and several Muslim clerics in the region.

And while you are at it, please explain why the entire world is fixated on perceived Israeli crimes and so sanguine about millions massacred elsewhere.

I see no mention of the C4 documentary in any of my Twitter connections, not one. Did anyone mention it in parliament? Where was Gerald Kaufman that staunch defender of human rights? Where is George Galloway? Tony Benn? Where Cameron or Millipede and where Clegg? Anyone heard William Hague call it unacceptable or Cameron mention prison camps? Does Jenny Tonge understand why a Sri Lankan soldier can hold a rifle against the head of a Tamil and blow his brains out?

Why has no-one called for the destruction of the the Sinhalese majority Sri Lankan state and the creation of a ‘free’ Tamil one.

Where are our religious leaders? Where are the Methodists or the leaders of West Dunbartonshire Council? Who’s banning products from Sri Lanka? How many Sri Lankan politicians and soldiers have been threatened with arrest if they set foot in the UK?

Sorry, I forgot, Israel is by far the most evil state in the world and must be singled out for special opprobrium even if that means less time and attention spent on real criminals.

You see, the poor Tamils have no well-organised international groups keeping their grievance in the forefront of world attention.

They do not have the benefit of a red-green alliance.

Naksa – what happened to Israeli hasbara?

07/06/2011 / / 0 Comments

On Naksa day, June 5th, Palestinians and Arabs have recently decided to commemorate the day that the 6 Day War started and which they lost. The war that led to the loss of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.

On Sunday hundreds of Syrians tried to cross the Israeli border at Majdal Shams and Quneitra.

After the experience of the Nakba Day riots on the same border the IDF were better prepared to repulse these invaders.

Various news reports from Israel (foreign reporting is not allowed in Syria) showed images of the IDF firing live ammunition and tear gas.

Syria has reported 20 dead and 350 injured.

Israel is condemned again.

The Israelis say their procedure was to fire over the heads of the rioters, then fire tear gas, where that was practical, and if all else failed, to fire at the legs of the invaders.

I have seen no evidence that the IDF killed a single invader.

Reports say that the Syrians were stupid enough to throw Molotov cocktails towards the border which started fires which led to Syrian landmines exploding and causing injuries.

Yet we have not seen a single Syrian news report of these casualties, their funerals, interviews etc (as far as I know).

Because the media accept the word of a Syrian regime currently involved in murdering hundreds of its own citizens and repeat this over and over, it is now accepted wisdom that Israel killed ‘innocent’ Syrians.

So where are the Israeli efforts to rebut these reports?

Why do they allow these lies, if lies they be, to propagate?

Where is there version of events? Where the news conference?

It’s the Mavi Marmara all over again.

No doubt in a year’s time we’ll see the evidence that no-one was killed by Israelis. When it’s too late and the damage is already done.

When will they ever learn?

An email exchange with Cllr Jim Bollan of West Dunbartonshire Council

07/06/2011 / / 3 Comments

I have been given permission by a correspondent to publish this exchange of emails with Jim Bollan, the Scottish Socialist Party councillor who proposed a blanket boycott of Israeli goods in 2009.

This boycott has recently caused much debate in the Jewish pres and blogosphere.

I have already written about it here, here and here.

Let’s see where your sympathies lie.

I have been asked to withhold the name of the correspondent.

To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, 5 June 2011, 18:46
Subject: I’m puzzled

I’m so sorry to read about your boycott against Israel. As a Scottish Israeli I find it shameful to read of book boycotts and the like form your council. As you know, Israel is the only democracy in this region and without it there would be a swathe of undemocratic countries from Africa to Asia that give women, gays and many, many others no rights at all.

Why would you not want this little country to exist, I wonder?

Please take the time to explain your point of view to me….

 

On 5 Jun 2011, at 20:56, Jim Bollan wrote:

Please read the information on the Council’s website to understand our actual position not what you perceive it to be.  The Council’s BDS policy was unanimously agreed as a result of the murder of over 1,000 innocent Palestinians in Gaza by the IDF in 2009.  No doubt you will have seen the news today that there has been another 11 extra judicial killings of Palestinians on the border with Syria.  Can you point out to me where I said “I do not want this little country to exist”?

Thanks

Jim Bollan

Leven Ward

Mob [redacted]

Home  [redacted]

[email protected]

 

To: Jim Bollan <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, 5 June 2011, 19:57
Subject: Re: I’m puzzled

To answer your last point first: by promoting BDS you are clearly aligning yourselves with those who want to destroy Israel step by step. Boycotts are extreme action by people who actually want to eliminate an entity. Check this out.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifZLk6Ei9-U&feature=youtu.be

There’s nothing wrong with criticising Israel – I have plenty criticisms of my own….. but Israel pulled out of Gaza, leveled the settlements and in return received thousands of rockets on towns and cities in the South. I assure you that it was not the intention of Israel to harm innocent people, but, as happens in all wars, civilians were killed and sadly many were killed because Hamas was using civilians as human shields, placing missile launchers in school and homes. Tell me, how would you react to years of rockets fired on Dumbartonshire (sic)?

As far as events on today’s border – those who approached the border were clearly warned – in Arabic – but they chose to violate the border nevertheless. Shame on their leaders. Once again if thousands of demonstrators were trying to penetrate the Scottish border would you not expect the armed forces to react?

Can you tell me where your concern is for the 1,500 killed in Syria over the past few weeks? And what about those killed in Libya? Do you have concerns for human rights in Iran, in North Korea, China etc. etc. etc.? Do you not want to boycott these regimes or is it only Israel who warrants a boycott ? I am trying to understand your reasoning.

If you really cared and were interested in solving the conflict in this area you would applaud the present Israeli government which has voiced acceptance of a 2 state solution and you would be  demanding/pushing/encouraging both sides to get to the negotiating table right away rather than denigrating Israel and hailing Hamas.

 

On 5 Jun 2011, at 22:08, Jim Bollan wrote:

Boycotts are non violent unlike the IDF who murdered another 11 unarmed innocent Palestinians today on the border with Syria.  Surely a civilised Country that Israel considers itself to be should have arrested these unarmed demonstrators and put them in front of a Court to be tried?

Thanks

Jim Bollan

etc.

 

To: Jim Bollan <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, 6 June 2011, 17:00
Subject: Re: I’m puzzled

Concerning boycotts: BDS may be non-violent, but their aim (as I’m sure you’re aware) is to delegitimize Israel and ultimately destroy it. BDS campaigners have announced that their goal is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state, not a change of policy. Anyway, the decision of your council to boycott Israel was made two and a half years ago and so the events of yesterday are not relevant to that decision.

You are very emotive in the terms you use to describe what happened yesterday. ‘Murder’: totally wrong; ‘innocent’: totally right. Categorical; black and white; nothing in between.

Israel has the right, like every other country in the world, to defend its borders and to keep out invaders either violent or otherwise. The Syrian government set up these demonstrations beforehand – as they did with the ‘Nakba’ day demonstrations – and stirred up its people to violate the borders. This was an action encouraged by the Syrians to detract from its own atrocities of recent weeks, and that tactic certainly seems to have worked for you, Mr Bollan.

As you will no doubt have seen on the news reports, there were thousands of protestors moving towards the Israeli border in a calculated strategy to breach that border in what was clearly a hostile act. They proceeded despite numerous warnings, both verbal and by shots fired in the air. Attempts by the IDF to disperse the crowd by non-violent means did not deter them. The youths were not innocent or unarmed. They fired sling shots, threw Molotov cocktails and hurled stones. It was a calculated, coordinated action against Israel to which huge crowds of Palestinians responded. Live fire was used only as a last resort. ‘Murder’? ‘innocent and unarmed’? Don’t be so naive.

Incidentally, note the difference of approach by the Lebanese government: they declared the border area a closed military zone and….no casualties!

You didn’t answer my previous questions. I will rephrase them for you:

Why is it only Israel out of all the countries in the world that you boycott?

Why do you you not condemn Syria for killing over 1,500 of its own people over the past few weeks? Or Iran/Saudi Arabia/N. Korea/China…..and so on?

Why do you not recognise Israel’s right to defend its borders?

And lastly: do you believe the state of Israel has a right to exist? A simple yes or no, please.

 

On 6 Jun 2011, at 19:35, Jim Bollan wrote:

All 23 were killed on the Syrian side of the border, not one crossed the fence.  They were throwing rocks and garbage over the fence.  They were unarmed. In my book that is extra judicial killing, ie murder. Why don’t you approach your local Councillor/Representative and urge them to bring forward a BDS motion to your local Council to boycott Syria?

Thanks

Jim Bollan

etc

 

To: Jim Bollan <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, 6 June 2011, 18:32
Subject: Re: I’m puzzled

I find bizarre that you swallow the Syrian narrative without a question. But since you give that regime such credence, here’s what Al-Thawra, Syria, reported June 6, 2011: ‘Ahmad Amin, who was wounded in his attempt to break throughthe Syria-Israel border on Naksa Day yesterday, said that many of his friends had hoped to die as martyrs on the land of the Golan Heights. He promised to try again to cross the border, until all the occupied Arab lands are liberated.’ Um, peaceful protests? Just throwing garbage? I think not.

And….. why are you so reticent in answering my questions?

[Name redacted]

PS The emails between us have been interesting. It’s obviously we’re not going to agree but I have one piece of advice for you: don’t believe anything the Israelis say, if you so choose, but do yourself and your constituents a favour and at least question the narrative you’re being fed from the Arab side.

 

On 6 Jun 2011, at 20:37, Jim Bollan wrote:

I do, on a regular basis.  I make my own mind up on what is right and wrong, after analysis based on my beliefs and principles.

Thanks

Jim Bollan

etc

 

To: Jim Bollan <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, 6 June 2011, 18:44
Subject: Re: I’m puzzled

I know politicians have the gift of evasion but I’ll try once more: can you please answer the questions I asked you?

 

Jim Bollan wrote:

You may not always like the answers you get to questions but I think that is more to do with the answers you receive…are not to your liking.

Thanks

etc

 

Now, is it just me, or do you think that the councillor did not satisfactorily provide answers to the questions?

Maybe this little delicacy posted by CifWatch might throw some light on Mr Bollan and his politics:

Amjad Awad, one of the two suspects from the West Bank village of Awarta who acknowledged breaking into the Fogel family residence in Itamar, back in March, and stabbing to death the parents, Udi and Ruth, and three of their children (4-year-old Elad, 11-year-old Yoav and three-month-old baby Hadas) said the following to reporters in court, recently, per The Jerusalem Post:

“I don’t regret what I did, and would do it again,” Amjad Awad told reporters in court. “I’m proud of what I did and I’ll accept any punishment I get, even death, because I did it all for Palestine,”

Chilling doesn’t begin to describe the hate which would allow someone to lack even the most elementary sense of remorse for murdering children while they sleep.

Yet, there will always be extreme Israel haters who manage to contextualize such crimes and, if not outright justifying them, find a way to ask, as Ben White did about the rise of anti-Semitism, if such homicidal Jew hatred could at least be “understandable”.

Here’s the response by Jim Bollan, West Dunbartonshire Council member and fierce proponent of his council’s boycott of all Israeli goods, to an anti-boycott activist who forwarded him the Jerusalem Post story cited above:

Jim Bollan is truly the quintessential Israel hater – never able to summon genuine and unqualified moral outrage at the death of innocent Jewish civilians (even infants) without asserting a moral equivalence, and suggesting that there must be a good reason why such terrorists committed the horrific crimes they did.

The Hamas-loving Bollan is simply a poster child for the mendacity of the BDS movement.

There is actually zero evidence that any Syrians (there is no evidence they were Palestinains) were killed by the IDF.

See here: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/so-where-are-amateur-videos-of-golan.html and especially here: http://honestreporting.com/syria-pays-cash-for-riot-media-takes-propaganda-for-free/

If Cllr Bollan has any evidence of Palestinian children being slaughtered by the IDF as a deliberate act of murder, then I’d like to see it.

More importantly, if someone is justified to murder a Jewish family because of the actions of its army, then surely he would understand the 7/7 attacks, the 9/11 atrocities and also would understand, as someone commented on the CifWatch article, if Jews all over Europe murdered innocent German and Polish and Russian and Lithuanian babies in their beds because of the actions of those countries’ armed forces in the 1940’s

Of course, no such actions ever happened nor would they. No one goes around Ireland murdering innocent Catholic babies because the IRA bombs blew up innocent Protestant children.

Cllr Bollan demonstrates his complete moral destitution and a chilling ideology which resonates well with those dark forces, especially in the Middle East and especially amongst Israel’s neighbours, who would destroy that country and kill all Jews. I don’t suspect this is what Cllr Bollan supports, but it’s what the forces he appears to be sympathising with are bent on achieving.

Maybe the good people of West Dunbartonshire will think carefully about who they elect next time.

The real meaning of a Palestinian Right of Return

06/06/2011 / / 1 Comment
H/T Elder of Ziyon

This cartoon appeared in the Palestine Times:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the Elder says a picture is worth a thousand words, let me explain.

The key is the symbol of the Right of Return. You may see Palestinians waving keys during protests. The inference is that they have the actual keys to their ‘former homes’, even though almost all of them were born outside of Israel and it was their parents, grandparents and other forbears who may have lived in what is now Israel.

It is always claimed that all these ‘refugees’ want is justice and to have their homes and property returned.

Yet this cartoon clearly demonstrates the real reason and motivation behind the Right of Return: to erase Israel from the map; but, just as subtly,  the Palestinian key removes the symbol of the Jews. The Right of Return,* then, is merely a ploy to destroy the State of Israel and remove all Jews from the land.

(*No such Right exists in international law for any descendants of refugees anywhere. UN Resolution 194, which is always quoted as granting this right, does no such thing.)

 

 

 

Let’s see the difference between how the BBC reports Tripoli and Gaza

06/06/2011 / / 0 Comments

I’ve just seen a very carefully balanced piece of reporting from Wyre Davis on the BBC news.

Reporting from Tripoli in Libya, he and other reporters were taken to a hospital where they were presented with the sight of a baby girl in a serious condition.

The ‘uncle’ of the girl told reporters, with some clumsy prompting, that the girl’s injuries were as a result of enemy bombing and this was an example of how Nato protects civilians.

Wyre produced a scrap of paper from a hospital employee telling them that the girl was the victim of a road traffic accident.

Davis then continued with a report from the scene from the alleged bombing where the only visible ‘casualties’ were a dead dog and some domestic animals.

Then the girl’s uncle turned up and under pressure from reporters revealed he was a government employee.

So the whole sorry story was an amateurish attempt to lie about the effect of Nato bombing. Wyre Davis told us that this was a trumped up attempt at propaganda.

Now compare to the never-ending pictures from Gaza, in 2009, of the dead bodies of children, the reports from hospitals, the ‘eye-witness accounts’ the escorting of western journalists by Hamas through rubble, the stories of deliberate targeting of civilians, UN sites, schools, hospitals, mosques.

Do you remember how the likes of Jeremy Bowen believed everything that Hamas and Hamas-controlled citizens said to him. Do you ever recall a scintilla of scepticism about reports from a terrorist organisation and a terrorist-controlled entity?

Yet, in Libya, because the UK and its allies are involved, scepticism and journalistic instinct suddenly are to the fore. When Israel is involved, and we just saw this in reports from the Syrian border, dictaorships, terrorists and shadowy individuals are believed, and it is up to Israel to try to rebut lies and baseless accusations and blatant propaganda.

West Dunbartonshire motion shows that the Left prefer terrorists to democracies

02/06/2011 / / 2 Comments

If you’ve been following my previous posts you will know that West Dunbartonshire Council passed a resolution/motion in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, to boycott ALL goods from Israel.

This week the story was news again and has unleashed a Twitter tirade, emails and phone calls as well as blog articles and now online newspaper articles.

We now discover that the person who tabled the motion is Cllr James Bollan, a member of the Scottish Socialist Party and a former member of the Communist Party.

ynetnews.com has published some interesting tidbits about the Councillors response to anti-boycott activist Stephen Franklin:

following the uproar over the Scottish decision, Bollan had this to say about the Palestinian terror group: “Hamas was elected and are freedom fighters alongside the Palestinians fighting an illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.”

There seems to something strange at play here when the first assertion which Bollan makes to back up the legitimacy of an organisation, which is classified as terrorist in Europe and the USA,  is that they were democratically elected.

Whilst I would have grave concerns about the legitimacy of that election, I wonder whether Mr  Bollan has information with regard the date of the next election in the Gaza Strip. Any offers?  Thought not.

We all know that some of the worst dictators in the world, all of whom are probably admired by Cllr Bollan, were democratically elected: Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Robert Mugable on Zimbabwe.

Presumably Cllr Bollan would fully support these countries in their various forms of ‘democracy’ which include, inter alia, the oppression of women and their human rights, killing gays, starving their own people, and rigging elections.

I would put it to the Councillor that an election does not afford the elected the right to fire rockets, thousands of them, into a neighbouring country, abduct that country’s citizens, send in human bombs, target school buses and demand the death of all Israelis and Jews everywhere.

I would also point out that the ‘Occupation’ that Councillor Bollan and his friends in Hamas refer to is not what you think it means. They believe that Israel is occupied Palestine and they will never desist from attacking Israel even if it where to withdraw from Judea/Samaria/West Bank.

Next statement from Bollan was this:

Scots believe in equality and justice…words unknown to Zionists

This is rather typical of the brainwashed parallel universe such people live in.

Whereas I have no doubt most Scots believe in these worthy principles, coming from the mouth of someone who casts Islamofascist antisemites as ‘freedom fighters’ who do not believe women have the same rights as men. whose idea of justice is to throw their opponents off tall buildings and hide behind their citizens and ambulances, in mosques and schools whilst firing rockets, grenades and guns at Israeli soldiers, this is a bit rich, to say the least.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have a judiciary that is not controlled by the government, a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to crticise the government.

Perhaps Councillor Bollan would like to point me in the direction of another country in the region which provides its citizen with these basic human rights?

And even if he doesn’t believe it, does that then justify supporting an organisation, a government in his terms, which denies all these things to its citizens.

Responding to a Ynetnews inquiry, Bollan confirmed that the statements attributed to him were accurate, and added the following: “One important point I made that strangely was not published along with my comments on the enclosed blog was that Hamas was elected with a bigger majority than the Israeli government.

He’s having  a laugh isn’t he? It’s not that difficult to get a good majority by intimidating the other side and actually killing them, as happened to Fatah supporters who ran in the only direction they knew would be safe; no, not Egypt, Israel. They fled from Hamas to save their lives and even had to let those unjust, murderous, inequal Israelis save them.

Maybe the Councillor, despite his election to the august body known as West Dunbartonshire Council (and one would hope that the Councillor did not copy the tactics of his heroes, Hamas, by tipping some Scot Nats off the top of Dumbarton Rock to muster his votes) still has no idea that absolute majorities are often difficult to come by in truly democratic parliaments, such as the Knesset, which operates a proportional representation system.

Following earlier reports of the West Dunbartonshire boycott, and the uproar over the decision to ban Israeli books as well, regional council Spokesman Malcolm Bennie said: “The municipality will not boycott Israeli books printed in Britain, only books that were printed in Israel.”

Oh, it’s that specific is it? These guys are such humanitarians.

At the time, Bennie admitted that Israel is the only country being boycotted by the council, adding that the municipality had no intention of issuing a ban on products originating from Iran, Syria or Libya.

And before you say that WDC don’t buy anything from these countries, let me remind you that Cllr McColl said in his video on his blog site this week that the boycott was symbolic.

Indeed, what a load of symbolics.

The WDC is so principled when it comes to standing up for the oppressed people of the world that its myopic vision can only see Palestinians being attacked by Israelis.

It doesn’t see the slaughter in Syria or Libya; it doesn’t see the starving millions in Darfur or or Zimbabwe; it doesn’t notice ethnic cleansing in Tibet; it didn’t utter a word about Burma and the house arrest for several years of Ang Sun Suu Kyi.

No, it only object to Israel defending itself.

Why is this.

Do you have a couple of hours? No? OK, I’ll summarise.

The (Far) Left supports Palestinians because it sees them as the victims of colonialism, oppression and confiscation. The Left needs a new victim to raise the Red Flag over, and if it can’t be red, then green will do because these people are colour blind and ideologically lobotomised.

George Galloway, a good example; he abhors and attacks anyone who dare question the Holocaust but he runs into the arms of Holocaust deniers like Hamas or Nasrallah – where’s the logic?

Although I doubt they will miss those lovely new potatoes from Tesco, let’s hope that enough pressure can be brought to symbolically overturn this decision.

The Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2009 that boycotts were illegal. Specifically of Israeli goods. So I believe that WDC are acting illegally and any other council in the UK or Europe that is so minded are also breaking the law.

If there are any Scottish advocates out there who want to take this up pro bono, I’ll be pleased to hear from you.

West Dunbartonshire councillor responds to Israel boycott furore

31/05/2011 / / 6 Comments

The Scottish councillor at the centre of the furore caused by recent reports that, as part of its Israel boycott, it was banning books by Israeli authors, has issued an unprecedented video on his website, refuting these claims.

Cllr McColl also described personal abuse that he had received by phone and email and on Twitter.

He also described as ridiculous a blog which may have been mine, and certainly contained the information which I posted on Sunday.

As a reminder, here is the notice that WDC put out on their website in response to the attention they were receiving from those opposed to their policy.

West Dunbartonshire Council utterly refutes recent media claims that it has ‘launched a boycott on Israeli books’.

The Council’s boycott does not in any way seek to censor or silence authors and commentators from Israel.

The Council’s boycott only relates to goods ‘made or grown’ in Israel. The vast majority of mainstream books by Israeli authors are published in the UK and are therefore not affected by this boycott. Only books that were printed in Israel and transported to the UK for distribution would be potentially boycotted.

In the two and a half years the boycott has been in place there has never been a case when the library service has been unable to purchase a book it wished to as a result of this boycott.

Contrary also to some media reports the boycott is not retrospective and absolutely no books have been or will be removed from our library shelves as a consequence of the motion.

West Dunbartonshire Councillors voted to introduce the boycott in 2009.

The full motion is:

‘This Council deplores the loss of life in Palestine which now numbers well over 1,000.  This Council also recognises the disproportionate force used by the IDF in Palestine and agrees to boycott all Israeli goods as a consequence.  Officers should immediately cease the purchase of any goods we currently source, which were made or grown in Israel.  Officers should also ensure we procure no new goods or produce from Israel until this boycott is formally lifted by WDC.’

So the book thing seems to be a red herring.

It all boils down to the decision taken two and half years ago during Operation Cast Lead (the Israeli offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2008-9) that Israel used disproportionate force and killed 1000 people. As a result of this, they decided unanimously at a council meeting to ban the purchase by the council of all products from Israel.

There is a special page on the councillor’s website here: http://www.cllrjmccoll.info/israel.html with the video embedded at the top.

It is also found on YouTube and I’ll embed the two videos below.

There is also a statement by Cllr McColl on his web page, which I’ll also reproduce, as it includes more detail on the council’s motivations at the time which are, apparently, still in place two years after the event. Note that this is a ‘Personal Statement’ by the councillor with my annotations interpolated.

Personal Statement
The following is intended to answer a number of questions that have been asked and assertions made in emails etc…
This boycott was not made at the request, suggestion or upon reading a pamphlet from any Anti-Israeli or Pro-Palestinian group.

This boycott was in response to and in support of international media coverage two years ago by the BBC, AP, CNN, SKY, REUTERS which showed Israeli forced murdering innocent women and children and firing rockets at civilian targets.

To say that Israelis were murdering innocent women and children is a blood-libel against the IDF which is without foundation. Although it can be argued that there were incidents where innocents died due to mistakes by the IDF, to use the word ‘murder’ is unconscionable and unfounded.

The charge of deliberately firing rockets at civilian targets was made by the Goldstone Report and refuted by an IDF report.

The councillors reliance on reports from the BBC, AP and Reuters et alia is touching; but these organisations were seriously biased in their reporting at the time and swallowed Hamas’ narrative and propaganda.

The Goldstone Report has now been seriously compromised by its author’s somewhat equivocal quasi-retraction.

Far from being ‘murderers’ which is the Hamas/Far Left accusation, Col Richard Kemp told the UN that no other army in history had done more to protect civilians.

Why did WDC rush to judgement in 2009 and why have they not re-evaluated this motion in light of new evidence?

It is enlightening to note that the original motion was tabled by Cllr Jim Bollan of the Scottish Socialist Party and his blog sports a Red Flag and an image of Lenin. He is a former member of the Scottish Communist Party. So we know where he is coming from.

Yet the entire council was minded, as one, to declare the boycott in 2009.

I have never seen, read or heard any material from Pro-Palestinian or Anti-Israeli groups and I would put little stock in either. I get my information from reputable, recognised sources.

Yet he was prepared to vote for for Cllr Bollan’s motion who is a signatory of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s appeal for funding of its BDS campaign (http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3631:scottish-psc-financial-appeal&catid=257&Itemid=200079)

Hamas’ use of hospitals and other civilian buildings (and indeed civilians themselves) as human shields is utterly despicable, but that does not give the Israeli Government the right to kill those unfortunate enough to be used by this terrorist organisation.

So according to Cllr McColl it is Israel who is responsible for the deaths of human shields and not Hamas; Israel cannot defend itself, therefore, and must acquiesce to the tactics of real murderers, namely Hamas.

This is also to ignore the extraordinary lengths that the IDF went to to minimise casualties.

We have recently seen dozens of human shield civilians killed by Nato bombs in Afghanistan. Civilians have been killed by Nato in Libya. Is the Cllr suggesting that Israel’s actions were more reprehensible than Nato’s or were they both operating against an immoral and ruthless enemy that cared less for its own citizens than Israel and Nato?

West Dunbartonshire Council remains committed to our boycott of Israeli goods and our resolve has only been strengthened by the torrent of vile abuse threats of violence against our families that has come from people who claim to be peace loving people.

So the main reason for continuing the boycott against an entire country is anger at threats made by that country’s misguided supporters.

There is a certain air of malice in this paragraph. It is Cllr McColl and his colleagues who are now the victims and they are well and truly p***d off.

Whilst I utterly deplore personal threats, especially to children, and name-calling, maybe this brief unseemly episode will give the councillor and his colleagues some idea of  what it is like to have your children threatened daily by Kassam rockets rather than words, and what it’s like for Israelis to be accused of being Nazis constantly by Palestinians, their supporters and the Left wing politicians who are responsible for the sort of boycott they are supporting.

This is not an anti-Semitic act.

I don’t care whether you are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Agnostic or any other such label you might want to give someone. We are all members of the human race and we should all stand together in asking the Israeli Government to think again about their methods.

How noble. What we should all be standing together doing is condemning Hamas’ rockets and their charter which seeks the destruction of the State of Israel and all Jews – that’s anti-Semitism, councillor.

And where are your noble moral principles when it comes to motions against Libya, Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, Sudan, China;  I could go on.

If you have moral principles, why are they so uniquely selective against one state.

Even if I were to concede all the accusations against Israel were true, that would still not justify your singling out of one country.

You say it’s a symbolic act. No-one believes, of course, that Israel cares about the purchasing habits of one Scottish council, but by joining the BDS movement on the Palestinian side, this takes your act beyond symbolism and into the camp of the demonisers and delegitimisers.

Thus, WDC stands shoulder to shoulder with Hamas, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and every other Israel hater and boycotter in Scotland and beyond. Nice one councillor.

I agree that the Israel Government has the right and responsibility to defend their people, but I do not agree that this should come at such a high cost. They need to think again.

The definition of ‘proportionality’ as a casualty numbers game is absurd.WDC need a lesson in international law and the laws of armed conflict. These laws do not describe warfare as a zero sum game or a boxing match.

In fact, the proportion of combatant to non-combatant deaths in Operation Cast Lead was far lower than any other conflict in recent times; and that includes Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Afghanistan. Considering the conditions, and the blatant disregard for life by Hamas, the ratio is extraordinary. Extraordinarily low, that is.

I’m sure the Israeli government (which is not the one which initiated Cast Lead, by the way) would love to hear from Councillor McColl and his colleagues some ideas about how they can stop a murderous, Islamofascist enemy from firing thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and civilians (a war crime), firing RPG’s at school buses and kidnapping soldiers.

And how they can do this without killing civilians.

And whilst they are giving the Israeli government the benefit of their great experience in warfare and the laws of proportionality, maybe they can let them know what would be proportional; how many deaths would have been ‘proportional’ then? Or would 1000 Israelis have had to die for WDC to deny the motion before the council in 2009?

That assumption on your part says more about you than it does about me. To quote a Jewish woman from Glasgow who telephoned me on this issue,

“We are brought up in a culture of ‘poor wee us’, automatically thinking that the world is against us and perhaps we should take stock of that before we draw conclusions about other people’s motivations.”

Ah, playing the sympathtic Jew card now. We are all paranoid that the world is against us. This distorts our moral compass. This is why the Israelis/Jews feel justified in massacring innocents. Yada, yada.

No, we are not paranoid, we see the torrent of delegitimisation and demonisation against the State of Israel that WDC are now taking part in.

Such suggestions are inherently anti-Semitic even if unconsciously.

The reason the Council discussed this matter was because it was raised by an individual Councillor as a private member’s motion.

You’d have to ask Cllr Jim Bollan what his personal motivations were for bringing this forward, but I do not believe him to be racist. I have never found him to talk down or discriminate against anyone.

Now just passing the buck. Didn’t Cllr McColl vote for this? What does Cllr Bollan’s motivation matter.  What were Cllr McColl’s motivations? Herd mentality?

It is not normal for issues of International significance to be brought before Council my individual members. Our main function is to govern our small local area and provide Education and Social Care services as well at things like refuse collection and recycling.

Main function’? Sole function, surely. Would Cllr McColl expect Eshkol Regional Council in Israel to pass a motion banning Scottish goods if it were outraged by the actions of the Black Watch in Iraq? They would tell them to mind their own business.

We do on occasions hear motions from members of this type, although never before a boycott. For example, the Council has condemned the actions of China, Burmha [sic] and various other places and has twice since 2007 been successful in aiding Amnesty Internation [sic] to free political prisoners from such countries.

Yet more nobility. But how pathetic. Why not boycott China for its civil rights abuses, jailing dissidents, executing thousands, destroying Tibetan culture. Similarly Burma. And if you are going to say that WDC do not buy from Burma, well, how about another symbolic gesture?

Singling out Israel is immoral.

All I ask is that when you read this and other responses you might get from our Councillors, that you look at this issue objectively and try to see this from our point of view.

Er, yes – you feel that it is your duty to boycott one country and not the dozens of others whose actions are much worse and don’t have a neighbour lobbing missiles at them on a daily basis.

My Great Grandfather fought in WWII and was awarded the highest decoration an enlisted man can get in the British Army for his bravery on the battlefield in the fight against Hitler’s Nazis and being compared to such evil people is not only extremely hurtful, but the first time I read one of these emails, I was physically sick.

If you are one of the many many people who have been sending vile emails, please…I urge you to take a step back and consider your position from our point of view.

Well, I’ve covered this. Maybe Cllr McColl’s great grandfather fought in WWII and I honour and respect his memory and all those who fought against Nazism. The Councillor may recall that many Israelis’ grandparents and great grandparents and other relatives were murdered by the Nazis. The Councillor’s disgust does not excuse his support of a motion to boycott just one country above all others. Maybe his illustrious forbear would have had his own views on his great grandson’s judgement in this matter.

Any further threatening email received will be forwarded to the police.

Quite right.

So, in summary this whole matter is sheer hypocrisy.  Only Israel is subjected to this default role as murderous aggressor despite the truth being the very opposite.

Oh yes, innocents died and mistakes were made. Tell me one army that doesn’t do so, especially given the circumstances.

It is the sheer arrogance and self-righteous indignation of this council which really stands out.

An indignation it accords to no other country in the same degree.

And WDC actually encourages the spread of its anti-Israel stance based on the reports of credulous journalists and the propaganda of terrorists.

It makes ME physically sick.

Declaring a unilateral Palestinian state would be illegal

30/05/2011 / / 0 Comments

H/T Elder of Zion

In September the Palestinian Authority, backed by the Arab League and over a hundred other countries, will try to have ‘Palestine’ declared as a state based on the ‘1967 borders’.

It will thus bypass several UN Resolutions and bilateral agreements and trigger a likely annexation by Israel of areas it will now claim as part of Palestine.

Whilst I have always conceded that a two-state solution is the only likely one to bring long-term peace, the only way this can be achieved is via negotiation.

The JCPA has published an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon signed by several international jurists and lawyers.

The core of this letter is reproduced below which explains the illegality of such a move:

    1. The legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel was the resolution unanimously adopted by the League of Nations in 1922, affirming the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People in the historical area of the Land of Israel. This included the areas of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, and close Jewish settlement throughout. This was subsequently affirmed by both houses of the U.S. Congress.
    2. Article 80 of the UN Charter determines the continued validity of the rights granted to all states or peoples, or already existing international instruments (including those adopted by the League of Nations). Accordingly, the above-noted League resolution remains valid, and the 650,000 Jews presently resident in the areas of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem reside there legitimately.
    3. “The 1967 borders” do not exist, and have never existed. The 1949 Armistice Agreements entered into by Israel and its Arab neighbors, establishing the Armistice Demarcation Lines, clearly stated that these lines “are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.” Accordingly, they cannot be accepted or declared to be the international boundaries of a Palestinian state.
    4. UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) called upon the parties to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and specifically stressed the need to negotiate in order to achieve “secure and recognized boundaries.”
    5. The Palestinian proposal, in attempting to unilaterally change the status of the territory and determine the “1967 borders” as its recognized borders, in addition to running squarely against Resolutions 242 and 338, would be a fundamental breach of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in which the parties undertook to negotiate the issue of borders and not act to change the status of the territories pending outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
    6. The Palestinians entered into the various agreements constituting what is known as the “Oslo Accords” in the full knowledge that Israel’s settlements existed in the areas, and that settlements would be one of the issues to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. Furthermore, the Oslo Accords impose no limitation on Israel’s settlement activity in those areas that the Palestinians agreed would continue to be under Israel’s jurisdiction and control pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
    7. While the Interim Agreement was signed by Israel and the PLO, it was witnessed by the UN together with the EU, the Russian Federation, the U.S., Egypt, and Norway. It is thus inconceivable that such witnesses, including first and foremost the UN, would now give license to a measure in the UN aimed at violating this agreement and undermining major resolutions of the Security Council.
    8. While the UN has maintained a persistent policy of non-recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem pending a negotiated solution, despite Israel’s historic rights to the city, it is inconceivable that the UN would now recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state, the borders of which would include eastern Jerusalem. This would represent the ultimate in hypocrisy, double standards, and discrimination, as well as an utter disregard of the rights of Israel and the Jewish People.
    9. Such unilateral action by the Palestinians could give rise to reciprocal initiatives in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) which could include proposed legislation to declare Israel’s sovereignty over extensive parts of Judea and Samaria, if and when the Palestinians carry out their unilateral action.

Even though the US and other countries, including the UK, will veto this on the UN Security Council. the intention of the resolution and a vote in favour in the General Assembly is intended to isolate Israel and give a kind of de facto respectability to the Palestinian claims.

A peace agreement was intended to end the conflict. This does not end the conflict. It leaves the Palestinians still claiming that millions of descendants of refugees from 1948 should be entitled to ‘return’ to Israel and that Jerusalem is the capital of ‘Palestine’.

The PA will claim a consensus legitimacy for its ‘Palestine’ whilst still removing Israel from its maps of ‘Palestine’.

Establishing ‘Palestine’  on the 1967 borders will do absolutely nothing to further the cause of peace; in fact, it will do the exact opposite.

Scottish Council puts the Dumb into Dumbarton – boycotting Israel and the hypocrisy of the BDS campaign

27/05/2011 / / 17 Comments

This is a cross-post by Michael Ordman of  Good News From Israel and shows the hypocrisy and ignorance of those who would, in their blindness and ideological zeal, boycott divest and sanction Israel. Note that this is not simply boycotting goods manufactured in the ‘occupied territories’ but ALL goods.

Following the decision of the West Dunbartonshire Council to boycott all goods produced in Israel, council workers now need to perform the following actions:-

1.  Computers & Technology

  • Remove all Intel Pentium and Celeron computer processor chips from council personal computers (desktops, laptops and notebooks) as these were either developed or manufactured in Israel.  Note that the revolutionary new Ivy Bridge processor will be manufactured in Israel.
  • Any computers that still work need to have their anti-virus software and personal firewalls removed as this technology originated in Israel.  Any computers running the Windows XT operating system must be turned off immediately as this was developed in Israel.  All current Microsoft operating systems are not to be used as Microsoft is heavily reliant on its Israel R&D centre.
  • The departmental firewall will also need to be switched off.  Employees should no longer open external emails as most of these will be infected with viruses
  • No outgoing emails can be sent. The algorithm (code) that’s used today for sending e-mails, was made by an Israeli who worked at the Ben-Gurion University in Be’er-Sheva in 1980
  • Before accepting any printed material, check that the supplier has not used the Israeli device that might have saved up to 50% of the ink used.
  • At home, do not use Facebook as many in-built and add-on applications are Israeli-developed.
  • Do not watch videos on the Internet as the platform used to upload them may be from AOL and hence from an Israeli company.
  • Do not use Video On Demand (VOD) to watch movies as you may inadvertently see an advert displayed using Israeli software
  • Do not purchase any games devices as these are likely to use Israeli technology.
  • Do not read books using an e-book as this may contain Israeli technology.
  • Do not use data storage as it may have been developed at Israel’s storage technology R&D centre
  • Do not buy an electric car as it is likely to be powered with an Israeli battery or use Israeli developed charging mats

2.  Phones & Voicemail

  • Discard all mobile phones, as this technology was developed in Israel, where the first mobile phones were manufactured.  Mobile chip technology from a single Israeli company has now been installed in over 100 million devices.
  • Only department heads may retain mobile phones for emergency situations.  However the use of SMS (Texting) is expressly forbidden as this facility was developed in Israel.
  • No 4G devices can be used as the chipset is Israeli.
  • Turn off your voice-mail service and delete any recorded messages.  Israeli companies invented the voice-mail system.
  • If your call is not answered by someone you know, hang up.  Israeli call-centres and call-centre technology is in widespread operation in the UK.
  • Do not use the Internet to search for answers to your questions as this may involve use of an Israeli-developed search engine.  Better to remain unenlightened.

3.  Food and Drink

  • Council restaurants and canteens must dispose of cherry tomatoes, which were developed in Israel.  Employees must ensure that no cherry tomatoes are included in sandwiches brought into office premises.
  • The ban also applies to honey and any products derived from honey.  Israel has developed solutions to the world-wide problem of bee-colony collapse, so that any products derived from bees might only be available now due to an Israeli invention.
  • Avoid drinking any of the world-recognised award-winning Israeli wines
  • No delicious home-made drinks from Israeli-manufactured household drinks machines
  • Avoid any fruit from South Africa or Peru as produce from these countries is being marketed with Israeli brand names
  • No agricultural products from the following areas must be consumed as they use water irrigation and agricultural technology provided directly from Israel.
    • Most of Africa
    • China
    • India
    • Indonesia (a Muslim country)
    • Nepal
    • Many others – please check.

Much fruit and vegetables (including organic) imported into the UK has been enhanced using Israeli technology.  This saves millions of people from starving around the world but is not a good reason for you to eat it.  For safety, only eat fruit and vegetables that you have grown yourself using seeds that have been in your family for generations.

4.  Dealing With People

When interviewing prospective employees or holding meetings with members of the public or other organisations you must check that they have no association with the following countries and areas that have accepted aid from Israel.  The council must avoid acknowledging Israel’s contribution to world relief. Also, any associated products from these areas may also have been contaminated by Israeli technology.  These locations include:

  • The Congo (oil tanker fire disaster July 2010)
  • Angola (mines cleared by Israeli technology – July 2010)
  • Mississippi (bioremediation technique used to clean up after oil spills developed in Israel)
  • China (a major purchaser of Israeli technology, and recipient of medical aid and training)
  • South Africa (Israelis trained their doctors to perform circumcisions to prevent the spread of AIDS – July 2010)
  • Cameroon (opthalmologists from Haifa restored vision to patients and trained local medical teams in these procedures – Aug 2010)
  • Haiti (Israel set-up the largest field hospital to treat victims of the earthquake and hurricane and provided vital assistance for over a year)
  • Romania (Israeli doctors treated babies following fire at a neonatal unit – Sep 2010)
  • Ghana (receiving technological aid from Israel since 2006;  Israel is now providing neonatal units to save many of the 4,800 babies that die each year)
  • Philippines (signed major trade agreement with Israel in Nov 2010)
  • The Maldives (although non-Islamic worship is banned here, Israeli eye-doctors performed free operations for citizens in Dec 2010)
  • Kenya (Israel’s Agency for International Development built a state-of-the-art Emergency Room in a hospital serving 6 million Kenyans in Jan 2011)
  • Uganda (Israeli solar-powered refrigerators were provided to store vaccines used to eliminate an outbreak of Polio from the country in Jan 2011)
  • Vietnam, whose milk industry is being totally transformed using high-yield Israeli cows (Feb 2011)
  • Chile, whose rescued miners were treated to a tour of Israel as part of their “Pilgrimage of Thanks” (Feb 2011)
  • New Zealand (Israel sent several rescue teams, temporary shelters and water purification systems following the Christchurch earthquake in Feb 2011)
  • Japan (As well as rescue teams, Israel supplied geiger counters and Israeli thermal imaging cameras are monitoring the reactor cores – Mar 2011)
  • Sri Lanka (Israel conducted a massive airlift with food, 50 medical staff and rescue teams only 48 hours after the Tsunami in Dec 2004)
  • India (Israel sent an fully-equipped field hospital following Gujarat earthquake in Feb 2001)
  • El Salvador (Israel relief aid following earthquake in 2001)
  • Georgia (Israel contributed food and seeds for farmers following severe drought in 2001)
  • Turkey (Israel relief aid following earthquake in 2000)
  • Mozambique ((Israel relief aid following floods in 2000)
  • Colombia (Israel sent medical aid and food following earthquake in 1999)
  • Venezuela (President Chavez has forgotten Israel’s aid following floods of 1999)
  • Central America (Israel sent emergency medical aid teams and equipment to help victims of Hurricane Mitch in 1998)
  • Pakistan (2005) and Peru (2007) both accepted aid from Israeli NGOs following earthquake disasters.
  • Peru’s hydo-electric power plants are also being built and run by an Israeli company.
  • Rawanda, Mexico, Chad, Sudan (Darfur) and Malawi all have received medical assistance from Israel’s NGO IsraAID.

5. Health

  • Destroy all personal medication.  Many medicines will have been manufactured by Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest generic drugs company in the world.
  • AIDS and HIV suffers note that AZT and Hypericin-based drugs have all have been developed or improved following research at Israel’s Weizmann Institute or Hebrew University; also a treatment that destroy HIV-infected cells without damaging healthy ones
  • Diabeties sufferers – Israeli scientists have developed new devices for measuring and injecting Insulin
  • Multiple Sclerosis  -Copaxone – one of the most efficient medicines and the only non interferon agent, was developed by Teva
  • Myeloma – the drug Velcade was developed over a period of 30 years by scientists at Haifa
  • Emphasema – avoid the Israeli protein replacement therapy
  • Check all vaccines as many of these have been developed in Israel.
  • Ensure that all X-rays do carry a radiation risk, as the only radiation-free system is Israeli
  • Do not use Epilady (or epilator) – this hair removal device was invented by two Israelis
  • Ensure any colonoscopy or gastro investigation does not use internal Israeli cameras such as the Pillcam.
  • Do not protect babies and infants from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome with the Babysense system from Israel.
  • Do not undergo surgery to install an artificial heart, as the first artificial heart transplant took place in Israel.
  • Sufferers of Parkinsons must avoid the brain pacemaker – pioneered in Israel to stop tremors.  Also Levodopa to reduce motor disturbances. Or magnetic cortex stimulation
  • Do not take any form of medication to combat cancer.  Israeli scientists have been developing treatments in this area for decades.  Full list available on request.
  • Kidney transplants must only use kidneys from donors of the same blood group.  Israel’s revolutionary new methods allow donors from other blood groups.
  • Treatments derived from Stem Cell research must be avoided as most of this is Israeli-developed
  • If you or your family are struck with a bacteria infection, do not take alternatives to older, ineffective bacteria-resistant antibiotics as an Israeli discovery will have been responsible for the modern, effective drugs.
  • Epileptics must avoid any treatment that may have benefited from the Israeli discovery of the underlying mutant gene.
  • Employees of Arab origin must not make use of the only database for matching potential Arab donors of bone-marrow – in Israel.
  • Check that any pain relief medication is not based on soya as an Israeli doctor discovered the beneficial effect of the soya bean.
  • Before any surgery or medical tests, check that hospital catheters have not been protected from infection using the new plastic from Israel that disables micro-organisms
  • Sufferers of sleep apnea must avoid tests using the breakthrough Israeli device for diagnosis.
  • Employees with a family history of heart disease and arteriosclerosis must not use the Israeli device for early detection of these.
  • Sufferers or relatives of sufferers of the eye disease Age-related Macular Degeneration must not use Israeli implants to arrest the disease.
  • Avoid throat surgery as this may utilise Israeli surgical lasers.
  • In the event of a spinal injury or disease, do not accept spinal implants – likely to be an Israeli product or development.
  • Heart rhythm problems must not be solved with the Israeli-developed heart pulse generator.
  • Any incident of stroke or head trauma or onset of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, epilepsy, glaucoma or brain tumour must avoid using any of the Weizmann Institute’s patented methods of treatment.
  • Do not use the revolutionary new Israeli bandage that saved Arizona senator Gabriella Giffords after she was shot in the head.
  • Do not allow dyslexics to benefit from the Israeli Internet-based reading system.
  • Sufferers from liver disease must avoid using the Israeli-developed antibody immunotherapy treatment.
  • All heart stents are off-limits as most of these originate from Israeli medical companies
  • If you break a bone badly, reject any treatment that involves introducing collagen, as this may have been manufactured from Israeli plants.
  • Reject all dental treatment as your teeth may need to be scanned with an Israeli-developed dental scanner
  • Treat skin allergies only with steroid creams as the new safer non-steroid alternative is Israeli

6. Other impacts of the boycott:

  • Reject all products from the USA.  Analysis conducted in a typical US state shows that Israeli innovations were responsible for $2.4 billion in direct revenue to its economy in 2009 and generated nearly 6,000 jobs.
  • Do not tutor your children in advanced Mathematics techniques which may have originated in Israel.  Also, if these techniques are used in your children’s schools, withdraw your children immediately.
  • Keen ornithologists should consider giving up their hobby as many rare species stop off or reside in Israel during their twice-yearly migration.
  • Avoid going to any football matches featuring teams with Israeli players.
  • Destroy all your recordings of Madonna, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Deep Purple, Bon Jovie, Justin Bieber, George Benson, Moby and many, many more artists who have ridiculed the stupid and illogical boycott and have proudly performed (or will shortly perform) concerts in Israel.
  • Destroy any recordings of U2, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Beck, Rihanna Coldplay and any artist whose music has been recorded using the sound technology of the Grammy Award winning Israeli company Wave Audio.  You also must get rid of any personal copies of Shrek, American Beauty and Star Wars.  Do not trust anything recorded by Sony, JVC, Toshiba or Dell.
  • Don’t go to see “The Black Swan” with Natalie Portman, or watch any old films with Elizabeth Taylor – both lovers of the Jewish State.
  • Do not stay in hotels or visit shopping centres owned by Israeli companies (sorry, you will need to check which ones yourself).
  • Do not have anything to do with the banks who are using Israeli software to prevent fraud.
  • Do not use any Credit or Debit card as the Security monitoring system used by the Credit companies is likely to be Israeli.
  • Do not buy an engagement ring containing a diamond as it is possible that this may have been cut in Israel.
  • Do not travel by air as your plane might be towed by the Israeli-built “Taxibot”.
  • Do not use public transport inside Amsterdam, Moscow or Northern China in case you benefit from Israeli transportation devices.
  • If you suffer a power or network failure, be grateful that at least you haven’t installed the Israeli system that prevents power outages.

Finally, you need to leave all your taps running when you leave home and must never flush your toilet, because Israel provides water-saving technology to over half of the planet. It also is providing sewage treatment technology across the world, including to the UK.

Seriously, let’s hope that the idiotic decision by West Dumbartonshire Council to boycott of Israeli products is flushed down the toilet of history.

 

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