Daphne Anson: Here Come the Girls!

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Monday, 25 October 2010

Here Come the Girls!

In Trafalgar Square a gaggle of Western women of a certain age surrounded by Palestinian flags listen approvingly as Israel is vilified by a succession of speakers. In a sleepy town on the other side of the country a “peace choir” of female voices, with a hyper-active female conductor, holds regular pavement concerts flanked by pro-Palestinian placards and at Christmas includes in their repertoire carols with words altered to demonise Israel. In that and other towns across Britain women picket supermarkets and hand out leaflets demanding that other shoppers boycott Israeli produce.

In the United States, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a long established pacifist group affiliated to the Women’s Coalition for Peace (which is sponsored by the New Israel Fund) blames Israeli policy for causing an increased incidence of birth defects and leukaemia in Gaza, denounces Operation Cast Lead and Israel’s actions on the Mavi Marmara and accuses the IDF of “merrily” gunning down innocents. It claims that “the U.S. unjustly calls Hamas 'terrorist' and thus requires the Palestinian Authority Police to arrest or otherwise persecute Hamas affiliates... Hamas is being badly discriminated against by the U.S. and Israel because of its religious beliefs.” To read more go to www.israport.org/blood-libel-nif-linked-group-blames-israel-for-leukemia...

In Canada, notice of a conference held in Montreal from 22-24 October calls on “all feminists” to participate in a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference at which artists, academics, activists…and concerned individuals will converge upon Montreal for this historic conference, which aims to consolidate and push forward the global movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israeli apartheid… The Conference workshop ‘Israeli Apartheid as a Feminist Issue’…[will] explore ways in which feminist organizations in Quebec, Canada and beyond can contribute to the BDS movement”.

Tony Blair’s embarrassing sister-in-law Lauren Booth, as nauseating an apologist for Hamas and for Iran as you are likely to encounter in the female of the species – witness her regular appearances on Ahmadinejad’s propaganda news channel Press TV and her apparent call for Jihad against Israel at a rally in London some months ago – converted to Islam six weeks ago having visited the Fatima al-Masumeh shrine in Qom, and vows to fight on for Palestine and against perceptions that Islam is a violent religion:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgXedDnVbBs
Read more here here http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/europe/1489-al-quds-day-let...
and here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323278/Tony-Blairs-sister-law-L...

Sarah Colborne, campaign and operations director for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – who got a massive write-up on Al Beeb’s news website back in June after arriving home from the Mavi Marmara with what BBC hack Peter Jackson in a brazenly biased report described as a “graphic and disturbing” account of her experiences – appeared at Saturday’s demonstration outside the Ahava store in London to cheer on her rank and file, but icily refused to answer (“I will not engage with you”) when asked whether she condemns Article 7 of the Hamas Charter, which enjoins Muslims to kill Jews: http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/palestine-campaign-head-v...

New Zealand anti-Israel activist Julie Webb-Pullman, one of six Kiwis in the latest Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza, is thrilled to attend a sit-down lunch reception (on 22 October) with Hamas’s President Ismail Haniya and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar. Mind you, it was only after a complaint to female organisers of the reception that the Hamas leaders had so far met only male members of the convoy that Ms Webb-Pullman got to encounter her heroes up close and personal. Both Haniya and Zahar graciously put their signatures upon a local Islamic scarf she proffered - and back in the antipodes this revered relic will be auctioned to raise more money for Gaza. “Viva Palestina! Viva Ismail and Mahmoud! Viva Women!!!” the 50-something activist exults on the Kia Ora Gaza blog, as flushed with joy as a schoolgirl with a crush on a pop star.

Also enjoying the occasion was Pippa Bartolotti, a Green Party candidate from Newport in South Wales, pictured here holding the swastika-resembling flag of the fascistic, expansionist Syrian Social Nationalist Party (hat tip: Harry’s Place). On her blog she writes concerning Gaza: “News riddled with propagandist manipulation, secrets untold, deaths, murders and politics fudge the situation, but one thing is clear: the people living in Gaza are fenced in, denied everything but enough food to keep them just above malnutrition levels, and subject to ever changing sadistic laws which the Jewish population would find intolerable. In short Gazans are kept in a prison by the state of Israel, aided and abetted by the US and Europe.... my contribution to their plight is to draw attention to the moral decay of those who perpetuate this inhumanity.” Ms Bartolotti told Press TV: ““It’s only the people that are going to make a difference because the governments are pathetically weak. They’re in the pockets of Big Money and Big Money supports Israel”. See the video posted at Harry’s Place hurryupharry.org/2010/10/18/greens-and-nazis/
and also her article at http://www.progress.org/2010/napoleon.htm

How strange it all seems, that so many Western women invest so much time in excoriating Israel, a comparative bastion of female freedoms and the first country in the Middle East to give Muslim women the vote, while practically ignoring – or even excusing – the insults to and outrages upon members of their sex perpetrated in the Muslim world. Is it a modern version of Rudolf Valentino Seductive Sheik Sexual Fantasy Syndrome? I wish I knew. Such exclusive concentration on Israel’s misdeeds, real or imagined, wouldn’t be due to antisemitism or anything as crude and as ugly as that. Would it?

As Phyllis Chesler, who received an invitation to that Montreal Conference mentioned above, puts it: “Ah, for a minute there I thought the conference would actually address real apartheid, namely that which is practiced by Islam in terms of both gender and religious apartheid; and indeed, in Gaza and on the West Bank, where honor-related violence, including honor killings, normalized domestic violence, forced veiling, polygamy, arranged child marriage and Arab female illiteracy, is rife and rampant. No such luck.”

Read more:
www.phyllis-chesler.com/887/palestinianization-feminism-montreal

11 comments:

Ray Cook25 October 2010 at 03:41
Daphne, you just get better and better.

Lauren Booth's conversion to Islam is her own personal affair, but how does her stand against violence to women (she is active in the V-Day movement) and her feminism, let alone her left-wing credentials explain away her love of Hamas and the Ahmadinejad regime which are both so egregiously in violation of the very rights she has fought against?

What is this sickness that is infecting the Western world? If you are against Israel, then anything you do, even contradicting your own morals, is acceptable and explicable in terms of Israel-hate.
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Daphne Anson25 October 2010 at 03:55
It totally perplexes me, Ray. The stonings of female adulterers ... the rape-by-militia of virgin prisoners in order to enable their death sentences to be carried out (since virgins may not be executed) - these horrific abrogations of the rights of female human beings by Iran just seems to pass Ms Booth by. Otherwise, I don't understand how she could continue broadcasting for Press TV a moment longer.
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Bella25 October 2010 at 04:14
Funny, I was thinking about the same thing and found this interesting article about why Western feminists are so hands-off when it comes to the position of women in the Muslim world:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_why_feminism.html
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Empress Trudy25 October 2010 at 04:58
We should take up a collection to treat them all to an all expenses paid vacation to Gaza or Iran for 3 months.
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Felonious Monk25 October 2010 at 09:18
The Booths are Roman Catholics. The Roman 'Church' venerates, amongst many others, Our Lady of Fatima.

It should be noted that the Protestant and Pentecostal Churches have nothing to do with this.

Ms Booth's sympathy with the Arab-Islamic empire and her Catholic background would leave her spiritually vulnerable to whatever spirit/s haunt the Fatima al-Masumeh shrine in Qom.

Her sister is a New Age Catholic who has, to some extent, influenced her husband. However, this may not be all it seems.
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Shirl in Oz25 October 2010 at 12:55
Hang on here, on the subject of Lauren Booth

Am I missing something?

How can she be a Muslim and a feminist?

Oxymoron screams at me here.
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Anonymous25 October 2010 at 14:10
Great writing Daphne. Arab women in Israel get the best education of anywhere in the Middle East. You won't hear Lauren Booth or any other of these female lemmings saying that ....

Jonathan Hoffman
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Daphne Anson25 October 2010 at 18:00
Many thanks for all your comments - and for that link, Bella!
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Daphne Anson25 October 2010 at 18:09
I'll be bookmarking this for a close read, Bella:
Why Feminism is AWOL on Islam by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal ...
US feminists should be protesting the brutal oppression of Middle Eastern women. But doing so would reveal how little they have to complain about at home.
www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_why_feminism.html
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Anonymous26 October 2010 at 00:45
'I don't care about Israel's security' | Oy Va Goy! (Chas Newkey ...
8 Jun 2010 ... Lauren Booth put in quite a performance at an Israel-bashing demo in London at ... Yes, and how bizarre it is that an ostensible feminist, ...
www.oyvagoy.com/.../i-dont-care-about-israels-security/
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Daphne Anson27 October 2010 at 18:42
Yes, Anon, the OyVaGoy post is great - shows her on video shrilly inveighing against Mark Regev and calling for Israel to be attacked!

Here's a good post:
http://mideastparalleluniverse.blogspot.com/2010/10/particularly-female-israel-derangement.html
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

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January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. 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 lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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