Whom The Gods Would Destroy: UK Jewish Students Cancel Appearance By Pro-Israel Activist

Remember my blog post here? Well, a new chapter in the "Sad Old State of Cloud Cuckoo Land" is unfolding thanks to a bunch of jelly babies on campus.

Attorney Brooke Goldstein, director of the New York-based Lawfare Project, which specialises in challenging lawsuits mounted in the West by Arab dictatorships and Islamic extremists, has been touring Britain with a comparable organisation, UK Lawyers for Israel.  She has addressed attendees at a reception at the House of Commons hosted by the Henry Jackson Society, as well as students at two London University campuses.

However, the Jewish Chronicle reports that Leeds University Jewish Society has cancelled, with just a couple of days' notice, her appearance there, apparently on the grounds that she gave legal advice to Geert Wilders when he faced trial for "Islamophobia".

Ms Goldstein is quoted as saying, inter alia, that the Leeds students are

"trying to prevent me from speaking about how we defend their rights, as someone who advocates on their behalf. I think it's disgraceful, it's Orwellian...."

London barrister Jonathan Turner, who heads UK Lawyers for Israel,  is reported as observing that it is

"absurd to deny a platform to a speaker on the grounds that she has supported freedom of speech for Wilders and others, especially when she was not even intending to talk about Wilders. On the same basis, one would deny a platform to Alan Dershowitz, who has supported freedom of speech for the Ku Klux Klan."

And that stalwart Zionist leader Jonathan Hoffman, who needs no introduction to regular readers of my blog, comments with customary vigour:

"Just as Benny Morris was cancelled by Cambridge Israel Society in Feb 2010, we witness spineless Jewish students crumbling in the face of false charges of Islamophobia. Meanwhile, in the Alice In Wonderland topsy-turvy world of British academia, Palestinian societies are free to host the most outrageous antisemitic extremists. Thus Brooke Goldstein gets labelled as an extremist while Ken O'Keefe is given legitimacy."

Well said, sir!

How very very sad, how very very disturbing, that Anglo-Jewry's Trembling Israelites are raising another generation of the lily-livered.

How does that old saying go? Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius ("Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad") ...

"Nice Middle Class White Women Are So Sought After To Head Palestinian Solidarity Initiatives": An Anti-Israel Activist Explains Why

One of the characteristics of the Israel-demonising movement in the West is the disproportionately large and prominent role of middle-class Western women, including militant feminists, not merely in its ranks but at its helm.  I made my first foray into this topic with this post

Many supporters of Israel are amazed and perplexed by the hatred such women have for a country that, in stark contrast to misogynistic Islamist movements including Hamas, guarantees women's rights and which was, indeed, the first state in the Middle East to enfranchise Arab women.

I guess many would not hesitate to use the phrase "useful idiots" to describe these distaff opponents of Israel.

Just how useful these dames and damsels are to Israel's rabid enemies is indirectly confirmed in an article by Laura Stuart, "a British revert to Islam" and an alumna of the Mavi Marmara and of first Viva Palestina  convoy to Gaza writing in an extremist Israel-hating online journal (host to such types as Gilad Atzmon, Alan Hart, and Stuart Littlewood).

She writes, inter alia:

'There may have been a time in years gone by when Muslim activists found it beneficial to suppress their Islamic identity. Solidarity movements needed white people to give them a broad appeal. A group of Muslims who identify as Muslims were easily portrayed by Zionists as a bunch of jihadis....

.... [N]ice middle-class white women are so sought after to head Palestine solidarity initiatives.

 ... Palestinians residing in exile in the U.K. find no place within these so-called Palestinian solidarity movements. Palestinians will find that without compromising either their Islam or the legitimate anger they feel towards those who oppressed and displaced them, they cannot operate in pro Palestine movements. Because of the over-zealous political correctness found wherever so-called anti zionist Jews are running things, Palestinians will be excluded from belonging to the very campaigns that claim to represent their interests.  I myself have been asked many times to tone down my Islamic identity when speaking on camera and even for using verses of the Quran in my writings ...."

And she continues:

'The Palestine Campaign in the west is totally controlled by “gatekeepers” – people of the left who maintain a very strict version of political correctness to the point of rendering themselves totally ineffective....

Do I want to bring down the state of Israel? For sure I do. Jews, Muslims and Christians will live peacefully side by side again once this criminal genocidal entity is brought down...

In my years as an activist I have made a personal observation that the more “manly” activists in the movement come in for the most attacks. The political left have a strong aversion to “alpha males” in fact I would go as far as to say the politcal [sic] left is almost a “testosterone free zone”....

Islam and its followers are the only real threat to Israel....'

 Read the whole article here  (Hat tip: Michelle)

"Palestine Is Occupied By European Colonialists": Galloway on "Criminals" and "Victims" (video)

I've only just come cross this long, fiery, and bitter anti-Zionist speech by George Galloway at the University of Indonesia on 27 January.  Yikes!

The Victims Of Gaza (video)

Here's a video relating to the current attacks by Gazan terrorists on civilians in southern Israel.  It includes statements by media spokespersons Mark Regev (from the Prime Minister's Office), and Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovich of the IDF:

From that remarkable blogger, Challah Hu Akbar, I learned earlier that at least a score of the individuals killed by the Israeli counter-strikes were terrorists: six from the Popular Resistance Committees (AhmedHanani, Zuhiral-Qaisi, MahdiAbu Shawish, Mansour Kamal Abu Nuseira, Hussein Barham Al-Breim, AhmadDeeb Salem) and fourteen from Islamic Jihad (FayiqSaad, MuatasimHajjaj, AhmadHajjaj, ShadiSayqali, UbeidGharabli,  MuhammadMaghari, HazimQureiqi, Muhammadal-Ghamry, MuhammadHararah, MahmoudNajim, RaafatAbu Eid, HamadahSalman Abu Mutlaq, MuhammadThaher, Bassamal-Ajla).  Other victims were four civilians (AyoubUseila, Adelal-Issi, MohammadHassoni, FayzaHassoni; Adel al-Issi may have been used, as the Hassonis seem to have been, as human shields).
For the photos of those from Islamic Jihad see here

"I Used To Hate Israel.... Not Any More": A Pro-Israel Irishman On Palestinian Terrorism & On Israel-Bashing In The Emerald Isle

An Irish activist posing beside IPSC wares

Since my last post showed the antics of some of the more fanatical Israel-bashers in the Emerald Isle, members of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (over the months we've met some of its activists via video several times, of course), I feel compelled to draw readers' attention (in case any of you haven't already seen it) to the marvellous article that young Irish film maker Nicky Larkin had in, of all newspapers, The Independent (home of Robert Fisk and in many respects as reprehensible as The Guardian regarding Israel) a couple of days ago.

Nicky Larkin writes as a former opponent of Israel who had a change of heart as a result of his experiences in the West Bank and Israel.  Here's a brief taste:

'I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard....

....[T]he Palestinian mantra was one of "non-violent resistance". It was their motto, repeated over and over...

Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.

This aggression continued in Hebron, where I witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.

Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street -- Tel Aviv's most fashionable quarter, a street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.

He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent running towards the base he'd patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.

The pills in their bloodstream meant they felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.

Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.

Israel is a refuge -- but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.

Irish President Higgins at an anti-Israel demo

The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.

An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it's not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English...'

Read the entire superb article here (Thanks again, Ian and Rita!)

Playing At Being An IDF Soldier In Limerick (video)

The opening seconds of this video set in Limerick focus on a quaint, almost bizarre, sideshow that evokes a vanished era.

Then the camera swings to a scene nearby, where members of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign - reputedly one of the most extreme such groups in the British Isles - stage a show of their own.  As one (a familiar face and voice to Iwatchers of the Israel-demoniser movement in Ireland) blares anti-Israel propaganda through a megaphone, a bloke who definitely does not look good in uniform (if my ears serve me correctly he later explains that it's that of the "British racist state" and claims that when Israelis don a uniform they change) pretending to be an IDF soldier at a checkpoint, bashing a Palestinian with the butt of his rifle ...

Along come two Arab girls to sign the BDS petition on offer - one is evidently known to the BDSers and the other, questioned by megaphone man, confirms that she is from Saudi Arabia.  Approving noises all round from the welcoming, excited BDSers. Not a word, of course, from those BDSers about the (true) apartheid practised in that country against women and non-Muslims, nor about the heinous punishments meted out by the barbaric "justice" system of the tribal kingdom.

Ah! If only my Muse was moved to compose a limerick about these folk below and their double standards ...
(Update: For a wonderful must-read article on this very issue by pro-Israel Irish film maker Nicky Larkin,   see here - hat tip: Ian and Rita)

John Bolton On The Obama Administration's "Delusional" Policy Regarding Iran (video)

"Can Obama Be Trusted?" asks Isi Leibler in his latest Jerusalem Post column.  A moot point.  And here's the USA's former UN ambassador warning about Obama's policy towards Iran yet again:

(I'm glad to acknowledge the conservative uploader, teacheru.us)