Why Ariel Sharon's Ghost Haunts Barack Obama: David Singer explains

Here, entitled "Palestine: Sharon’s Ghost Returns To Haunt Obama," is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Michael Oren – one of seven members of the recently formed Kulanu party elected to Israel’s new Parliament – seems destined to play a pivotal role in torpedoing President Obama’s proposals for a two-state solution aimed at resolving the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict.

Agreement has reportedly been reached between Israel’s Prime Minister elect Benjamin Netanyahu and Kulanu chairman Moshe Kahlon for Kahlon to be appointed Finance Minister. Fellow Kulanu members  Yoav Galant and Eli Alalouf will serve respectively as Housing Minister and Environmental Protection Minister.

Still unannounced is the replacement for Tzipi Livni – who headed the Israeli team in peace talks with the PLO – but who now seems destined to enter into Opposition. These peace talks have remained in a state of suspended animation since April 2014 – despite intensive American efforts to have them resumed.

President Obama’s proposals – first enunciated in 2011 – were re-stated as recently as July 2014 by White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region Philip Gordon at the Ha'aretz Israel Conference for Peace:

“A lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace. While the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, a secure Israel.

Negotiations should therefore result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. Any peace agreement will require robust security provisions that safeguard Israel’s security. And the Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in an independent, sovereign and contiguous state.” 

The idea that Israel should be required to make mutually agreed land swaps for territory it retains in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) was never stipulated or mentioned in the letter given by President Bush to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 – whose terms were overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407:9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95:3 the next day. (“American Written Commitments”)

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had declared at the Annapolis International Conference convened by President Bush on 27 November 2007 that any resumed negotiations: 

“will be based on previous agreements between us, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Roadmap and the April 14th 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.” 

Michael Oren – Kulanu’s diplomatic voice and former Israeli Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 – recently called for these 2004 American Written Commitments to be resuscitated:

“A decade ago, in April 2004, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received a letter from American president George Bush, Jr. recognizing Israel's right to build in long-standing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem like Talpiyot-East and Ramot. Furthermore, Israel was now allowed to build in settlement blocs crucial for Israel's security, and in which some 80 per cent of Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria reside […] According to the Bush-Sharon letter, these areas will remain within Israel's borders in any arrangement arrived at with the Palestinians […] it's time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.” 

Obama is going to find it impossible to impose his land swap proposals – if Oren has any say.

Sharon’s ghost has tantalisingly returned to haunt Obama.

Here We B[DS]loody Well Go Again

Pardon the "great Australian adjective", but that infamous set of  mendacious maps which does yeoman service to the anti-Israel cause has now turned up on the side of public buses in Copenhagen:

To quote the Israel-libellers:

 Copenhagen bus adverts call for settlement boycott

May the world's buses carry messages of justice for the Palestinians.

The campaign started yesterday in the Capital of Denmark.

If enough funds are collected through the website, the campaign will go country wide. Check the FB-page and website below.

In Danish it says:

"Our conscience is clear! We neither buy products from or invest in the settlement industry".

(Charlotte and Lizzie)

 http://nejtaktilbsp.dk/

https://facebook.com/nejtaktilbsp

‪#‎nejtaktilbsp‬

I know of at least one pro-Israel activist who has sent a message of protest to Denmark's ambassador in his country, expressing disgust at the bus ad (especially coming as it does just two months after the murder of a Copenhagen Jew standing watch outside a Copenhagen synagogue during a bat mitzvah ceremony), directing the envoy to  this post that shows the maps for the libels they are, and politely requesting that the ads be removed.

Update: Read NGO Monitor's detailed analysis here

More BDS afoot, this time to dissuade American diva Dionne Warwick from performing in Israel next month: 

Meanwhile, this latest article by the frank, fearless and free Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh entitled "The Palestinians No One Talks About" is highly recommended.

(Oh, and so is my latest Tuesday column on Elder of Ziyon!)

Miliband & Other Crawlies

Poor Ed Miliband.

The ethnically Jewish atheist leader of Britain's Labour Party (pictured; yes, I'm too kind to post one of those grotesque snaps online showing him making hard work of chomping through a bacon sandwich recently) has vowed to outlaw "Islamophobia" if, by some unhappy mischance, he should end up as Britain's prime minister next month.

Britain's "first Jewish prime minister," according to him, blithely choosing to forget the Tory Benjamin Disraeli, who although baptised in childhood was gloriously conscious of his Jewishness, and dubbed "the Hebrew conjuror".

Miliband told the editor of the UK-based The Muslim News:

“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime.

“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country,” he said.

.... “We will challenge prejudice before it grows, whether in schools, universities or on social media. And we will strengthen the law on disability, homophobic, and transphobic hate crime,” [his party's manifesto] said.

.... The Muslim community is as an “incredibly important, incredibly rich, incredible asset to our country” ...'

So how frightfully wretched it is that Red Ed has been the subject of an antisemitic tweet by a female Muslim Conservative candidate, Gulzabeen Afsar.

She's apologised and removed the tweet, and has been suspended from the party.

 Daniel Greenfield has noted:

"Gulzabeen Afsal helped raise money for Islamic Relief UK, a group that the UAE has listed as a terrorist organization and that Israel has accused of raising money for Hamas...."

Hers was not the only low message left on social media over the weekend.

On Saturday, Anzac Day, when Australia remembers its war dead, a reporter for the public broadcaster SBS made a number of highly inappropriate tweets,and is refusing to accept his the consequences.  To quote The Australian newspaper:

'The move by SBS to sack sports reporter Scott McIntyre over highly offensive Anzac Day tweets has sparked a fresh debate over freedom of speech....

The Australian understands McIntyre’s view is that the move to sack him was unfair and he is likely to contest the decision.

While he is still considering his options, it is understood he is not going to take his termination “lying down”.

McIntyre, who has worked at SBS for 10 years, declined to comment yesterday. The worst of the tweets, which have not been deleted from his ­social media account, read: “Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave’ Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan.”....'

On Facebook, the offending tweets have been gleefully reproduced by a Muslim group in Australia and by Muslim members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir.  And these have been approvingly shared by a radical feminist activist with links to Socialist Alliance.  None so queer as leftist feminists climbing into bed with Muslim anti-feminists.  It's that word Palestine that's the aphrodisiac.

And, lowest of the low, are these comments regarding Israel's aid to the victims of Nepal's devastating earthquake:

 Israellycool, I see, has more

But let's come back to Miliband and that promise of his to outlaw "Islamophobia".  Douglas Murray has vowed immediately to test any such legislation:

"There are many things to say about this, but allow me confine myself to three points:

If Ed Miliband does become Prime Minister and chooses to make ‘Islamophobia’ illegal would he mind letting us know what he thinks ‘Islamophobia’ is? After all a ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear. The Charlie Hebdo staff were often called ‘Islamophobes’ before (and after) two Islamists went into their magazine’s office and shot most of them in the head.... 

I cannot help noticing that some actual, serious ‘hate-speech’ occurred while Labour were last in power, yet nothing seemed to have been done. Consider this speech by Michael Adebolajo at a ‘Unite Against Fascism’ rally in 2009. What else was Adebolajo doing here other than inciting anti-non-Muslim violence and prejudice? Of course Michael Adebolajo actually followed words with deeds and went on to behead Drummer Lee Rigby. Where were the hate-speech laws that day?

 And finally, I hate to grandstand, but I suppose I should point out that if Ed Miliband were to become Prime Minister and were to decide to make what people call ‘Islamophobia’ illegal then I’m very happy to test the law straight away. Indeed I will immediately put on a gathering of academics, writers, Quranic-scholars and philosophers – Muslim and non-Muslim – to discuss Islam. It is possible that some of those gathered may disagree with the foundational claims of Islam. I, for instance, may repeat my belief – not being a Muslim – that it is highly unlikely that the Quran was ‘dictated’ by God.... "

Read the rest here

Disruptive Demonics: London Jew-haters target the Jerusalem Quartet

Disrupted in full flood outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London's Southbank a few days ago, by a Sikh security guard, the thespian manqué who blares her demonisation of Israel every chance she gets, tells him arrogantly "I am talking!" and then, angrily: "The more you tell me to keep the volume down the more I'm going to shout louder"

She eventually started up again, spewing her venom against Israel and the Jerusalem Quartet, and by the end was clearly in need of a Fisherman's Friend (or three)

On hand to support her with their obnoxious chants and banners were the usual crowd of Jew-haters, including the seemingly ubiquitous plummy-voiced woman with long grey hair who some months ago tried the caper of boarding Tube trains to recite Israel-libelling "poetry" to the travelling public.

At the end two usual suspects tell proudly how they disrupted the concert, and boast that the concert hall's  staff were obviously on their side.

See also here

And here

"Look, Mom, There Are The Jews": In Berlin, With Israeli Flags Against The Hatemongers

Signalling Their True Intent

As reported by the Jerusalem Post prior to the event on Saturday:

'A pro-Palestinian conference ... has come under attack because of its ties to Hamas and its erasure of Israel on a Middle East map.

“This is a direct pro-Hamas and anti-peace event, with the participation of hard-core Palestinian, British, and German supporters of rejectionism and incitement against Israel,” Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor watchdog organization, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

“The sponsors are reportedly Hamas-front organizations, and the published list of participants include [British Lib Dem] MP Tessa ["several members of my family were Jewish"]Munt, a radical supporter of demonization and BDS,” said Steinberg.

“There is no justification for Germany giving legitimacy to any event in support of terrorists that are waging an immoral war against Israel, with thousands of rockets directed at civilians.”

It is expected that the 13th Palestinians in Europe Conference, which has been held twice in Germany, will attract some 3,000 attendees. The Palestinian Community of Germany (PGD) and the London-based Palestinian Return Center (PRC) are the organizers.

According to German media, the Berlin Senate interior agency classifies the PGD as an organization with Hamas supporters. Germany and the EU have designated Hamas as a terrorist entity. The interior agency noted that the annual Palestinian conference is “one of the most import activities” of Islamic supporters. The logo of the conference shows a map of the Middle East without the State of Israel.

A major aim of the conference is to demand the return of all Palestinians refugees to Israel. Critics say the “right of return” would dissolve the Jewish character of the state.

Asaf Romirowsky, the executive director of Scholars for Peace in Middle East, told the Post, “the full demand of a right of return represents a clear call for the destruction of the State of Israel. Thereby it is anti-Semitic and not in any kind of way furthering peace. The totality of the right of return gives the impression of a halo and legitimacy of conversation, but in reality demands the destruction of the State of Israel.”....'

See also here

This sordid exercise, with its ill-concealed aim the eradication of the sovereign state of Israel,  has of course gone ahead, but there was a rally of brave souls on hand to represent truth and decency (my title, "Look, Mom ..." is derived from a quotation in the link just posted) :

To quote the uploader into YouTube:

"Around 60 anti-Hamas, pro-Israel protesters demonstrated outside the 'Palestinians in Europe Conference' event in Berlin, Saturday. Police reportedly removed a handful of participants from the demonstration.

Approximately 3,000 Palestinian supporters gathered inside to hear speeches, music and film with a video conference from Turkish president, Recep Tayyib Erdogan...."

According to this report,

 "The loudest applause ... went to a British Labor MP, Lord Norman Warner ..."

(That's this old chap, incidentally.  Does he share the Israel-disappearing agenda of the conference organisers, or is he just a dunderhead who doesn't realise he's being used?  I think we should be told.)

Incidentally, for an brand-new insight into antisemitism and racism in Turkey, see here

The Seventh Century Touch: Physician, heal thyself

My previous post concerned antisemitism in Iran, and the blood libels that have become part and parcel of the regime's hostility to Jews and Israel.

Helping to peddle Iran's propaganda generally in the West are British journalists and interviewees who are only too happy to broadcast their own spleen against Israel by appearing on the Iranian regime's satellite channel Press TV.

And even though Press TV is no longer allowed to broadcast over the UK airwaves, it continues to be accessible via the internet.

Overnight on Thursday, rockets from Hamas-held Gaza were fired across the border into Israel.

British anti-Israel propagandist RT journalist Harry Fear has chosen the Press TV version of events to alert his faithful on social media to the latest violence:

Predictably, howls of outrage have ensued from followers Western and  non-Western, male and female, alike.

There are naive useful idiots.  But mainly there are  the disguised and undisguised Jew-haters.

 "First rocket fired by Gaza ? BS"

"Looks like they've had a head start. It's 'normally' during Ramadan"

"May the wrath of God be upon Israel. Can't believe I'm reading this"

 "UNBELIEVABLE!!! When will these zionists just die already!!? The most dark and filthy beings on the face of the earth!!! And the whole world will just turn a blind eye, even after 7 decades!!!"

 "i did not n will not turn blind eye ... Israel n its allies are the real terrorists"

"Israel is the cancer at the heart of the mideast !"

"defend itself from what exactly? from a country weakened by the oppression of the illegal state of Israel?"

"They are stijl guests on that soil... what kind of People are they? They never can stop! Ridiculous"

 "Zionist scum"

"Sick Zion race, shame on them"

"Burn in hell israhell"

 Par for the course.  Of course.

One post, made in response to a lone commenter – a Hindu man living in India – who defended Israel's right to defend itself is especially shocking, especially as the young Tunisian man who made it is not an uneducated person devoid of secular learning and steeped in the Dark Ages but a medical student, no less.

He's greeted the pro-Israel Hindu man with this noisome sentiment:

"I hope deeply from my heart that someone came rape your wife or girl or sister kick you out of your land kills yours parents and say this land is his right because a book dated 3000 years ago say so ..."

 So far, several persons have liked this abominable comment.

And unless she has a bogus profile, one of them is female.  A Western woman at that.

Just goes to show how visceral the hatred of Israel is in some warped minds.

And how the primitive notion of women as property, and not merely property but property that can and should be punished to atone for the "sins" of their male family members, lingers in others.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza that is apparently journalist Fear's most-trodden patch, courtesy of his employer RT:

In A Persian Casket

Now, here's a welcome antidote to the canard pushed by the Iranian government , eager to ingratiate itself in Western circles, aided and abetted by its apologists on Press TV and elsewhere, that da Joos have been and are treated well in the regime of the mullahs.  It is a canard that's been advanced recently by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, softening up American opinion ahead of the nuclear deal.

Writes Shahrzad Elghanayan, a freelance photo editor and writer of Iranian Jewish heritage who's writing on a book about her grandfather, Habib Elghanian:

'When Khomeini returned from exile in February 1979 as the head of the Islamic revolution, my grandfather was among the first civilians he went after. On May 9, 1979, my grandfather was executed after a 20-minute trial on trumped-up charges that included being a “Zionist spy.” The Revolutionary Court did not allow my grandfather to have a lawyer. After a firing squad killed him, the new regime stole what he had spent his lifetime building.  (Most of the rest of my family had already left Iran by then.) The execution prompted Sen. Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.) to sponsor a resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran – which would prove to be a key moment in souring diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the new regime.

Khomeini’s government instituted measures ensuring that from the earliest days in school, children were programmed into the party line. Salman Sima, a self-described moderate Muslim, says that every morning beginning in grade school, he had to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” He says his religion teachers would say things like,  “if you do something wrong, you will die a Jew.” The indoctrination was so effective on him that he didn’t realize he suffered from an ingrained anti-Semitism himself until three years ago — at age 28. Imprisoned three times in Iran for his student activism, he now lives in Toronto. “I realized that even as a human rights activist, I had hidden anti-Semitic feelings,” Sima told me. “It was the result of having been brainwashed since an early age.” Clearly, this sort of inculcation doesn’t work on everyone, but it’s disturbing nonetheless. And it does seem to work on some: Just this week, an Iranian Web site owned by a member of Parliament published a story accusing Jews of killing non-Jews to use their blood for rituals, an age-old trope.

....The relatively few Jews who remain in Iran tell foreign journalists they have no complaints about daily life. As [Irnian Foreign Minister] Zarif points out, they are free to attend synagogues. They also conduct their businesses and continue to have a representative in parliament, as they did before the revolution. But like all Iranians who are not government cronies, they know the rules and boundaries of coexistence. For the past three decades, they have uttered monolithically anti-Israel opinions. They can’t hold high office or teach in universities.

Listening to the foreign minister’s version of Iranian-Jewish history makes me wonder what the nation’s youth is learning about its past. Maybe now that Iran is working to earn the international community’s trust, it’s finally time for its leaders to acknowledge past injustices.'

Read the rest here

But that's not all.

www.washingtoninstitute.org

Shi'ite theologian Mehdi Khalaji , a Fellow of the Washington Institute, demonstrates the depraved extent to which the age-old blood libel against the Jews (there was one in the Persian/Iranian town of Shiraz in 1910 that triggered others) has permeated present-day Iranian political discourse:

He begins his article:

"On April 18, the prominent Iranian website Alef published an article whose title roughly translates to "Who Are Human History's Most Bloodthirsty People?" The long, detailed essay, complete with footnotes, pictures, and video clips, accuses Jews of killing non-Jews to use their blood for ritual purposes.

Alef is owned and supervised by Ahmad Tavakkoli, a member of Iran's parliament who formerly served as minister of labor and social affairs and president of the parliamentary research center. A prominent conservative figure who received his PhD in economics from Nottingham University in Britain, Tavakkoli is also cousin to the Larijani bothers -- Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of the human rights council in the judiciary, Sadeq Larijani, chief of the judiciary, and Ali Larijani, speaker of the parliament. Soon after the article appeared in Alef, other hardliner websites such as Mashregh News (mashreghnews.ir) republished it."

And concludes:

'Judaism is an official minority religion in the Islamic Republic, and Jews have a representative in the parliament and are free to practice their religion in synagogues across the country, including in Tehran -- a city whose hundreds of thousands of Sunni residents are not allowed to have a mosque of their own. Nevertheless, Iranian officials are known to make implicitly and explicitly anti-Semitic statements against Israel and Jews, and the government makes no effort to curb anti-Semitic propaganda by local extremists. In the past, such statements were generally political, with some element of the traditional Muslim complaints about Jews falsifying God's message and rejecting the true prophet Muhammad. Since 1979, however, the spread of more primitive anti-Semitic lies has increased, especially the blood libel.

Googling such accusations in Persian turns up many related articles, particularly on apocalyptic websites. [Emphasis added; remember the Twelfth Imam prophecy, which I referred to here and here? Apocalyptism in post-1979 Iran is explained in the video below by an urbane scholar]

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcZOrLsjG-M

More disturbingly, the blood libel has been creeping into mainstream media for some time, with occasional statements made by commentators on important websites or even state television. Although no Iranian officials have made such statements, none of them have reacted to the spread of this libel, including this week's prominent Alef article. Similarly, no Iranian clerics have denounced this libel against what is officially regarded as a divine religion, i.e., Judaism.

In today's Iran, anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic discourses are sometimes mixed in textbooks, media, religious/political propaganda, and secular intellectual literature. This helps the regime justify its anti-Israeli agenda in the region, casting Jews as genuine enemies who do not want to see the Islamic Republic progress, especially with regard to nuclear technology. What matters most is that such mixed discourse cannot easily be criticized inside Iran by those intellectuals who are concerned about the long-term negative ramifications of anti-Jewish sentiment.'

Read the entire disturbing piece here

As Elder of Ziyon concluded, having drawn attention  here to these rampant blood libel obscenities,

"Nothing gets published on Iranian websites without permission of the government, and this is a clear and conscious decision to promote Jew-hatred in Iran. Antisemitism is official Iranian policy. [His emphasis]

Westerners who had guided tours of Iran and then claim that Iran has no antisemitism, like Roger Cohen, are once again shown to be useful idiots."

In Britain, Another Brainwashed Bunch Votes For BDS

Norwich is the cathedral city in England's East Anglia region which has the dubious honour of being remembered in the history books as having been the scene, in the twelfth century, of the first blood libel of medieval times.

In the late twentieth century one of Britain's several "new universities" was established in Norwich, the University of East Anglia.

The students of this pleasantly situated seat of learning have evidently swallowed the blood libels in modern dress that run rampant against the little State of Israel, for their union has voted in favour of BDS.

Scroll down to the final item here to read the motion and its supporting documentation in all their Israel-demonising crap.

Or if that'll prove too much like contemplating used toilet tissue, read the synopsis provided below.

As reported here:

'The University of East Anglia's student body has endorsed the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, in a motion passed last Thursday.

Meeting for the final time this academic year, the Council of the Union of UEA students passed the motion "in support of international law and human rights in Palestine" with 41 in favour and 15 against, with 11 abstentions.

The motion commits the SU to severing ties with companies that "facilitate Israel's human rights abuses, military capacity, or settlement expansion", as well as to opposing any university contract with complicit companies.

 The SU also resolved to lobby the university "to adopt an academic boycott of Israeli universities" and provide scholarships for Palestinian students.

The motion describes Israel as "an apartheid state" and mentions specific crimes and abuses including illegal settlements, atrocities in Gaza, and "systematic" discrimination in both the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and inside Israel's pre-1967 lines.

Israel's "expansion" in the oPt is described as "a settler-colonial project, predicated on the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of its indigenous people."

Proposed by a member of the campus Amnesty International group [Alex Bustos] and seconded by the Ethnic Minorities Officer [Hussam Hussein], the motion notes recent pro-BDS resolutions at NUS National Executive Council, NUS Women's Conference, NUS Postgraduate Conference and NUS Black Students Conference.

In addition, it was recalled that students have voted for boycotts of Israel on campuses across the UK, including "Kent, Goldsmiths, Birkbeck, Kingston, Swansea, Exeter, Brunel, the University of Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Dundee, Essex, Sussex and SOAS."

The case for BDS, according to the motion, is based on "Israel's multitude of human rights and international law violations" and its lack of accountability. The motion affirms Palestinian students' right to education unhindered by discrimination, and the necessity of international solidarity from students in response to the BDS campaign.

The motion asserts that "global boycotts are a non-violent, legitimate and effective tactic", that "all other methods of pressuring Israel and the ending of the occupation have failed," and that members of an academic community "have a responsibility to ensure that ethical considerations and social justice are at the heart of research and academia."

The Union Council rejected a proposed amendment which would have removed BDS from the motion. Procedural motions to delay the vote were also voted down.'

Ironic that Amnesty International has declined to single out antisemitism specifically for condemnation, yet one of its campus reps on the UEA campus has no hesitation in singling out Israel, and Israel alone, for Boycott, Divestment and Sanction. 

Bats & Boycotts: Two Aussie Blondes

A still from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzU_YADWck

You may remember her here. 

She made a real fool of herself, and showed how viscerally, battily antisemitic she is, in explaining that the logo for the 2012 Olympics was a conspiracy by "Jewry" and "the world Zionist predator". With input from the Freemasons, apparently.

And you may remember my description of her here:

 'Born in 1946, Michèle Mainwaring was a beauty queen – Miss Newcastle [NSW], 1968 – who went on to marry, in 1970, an Australian psychiatrist of Russian background, she controversially styling herself Countess Griaznoff on the basis of a disputed title in his family, before making a brief marriage in 1991 to the Australian financier Sir Frank Renouf, nearly thirty years her senior, with whom she set up home in London, where she continues to be based.

As Lady Renouf, she has become notorious for her support of and personal friendship with some of the big beasts of the Holocaust denial movement including Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zündel ... the Frenchman Robert Faurisson ... Australian Holocaust denier Frederick Toben – as well as Bishop Richard Williamson and the Holocaust minimiser – he denies that he’s a denier altogether – David Irving....

In 2005, during his trial in Vienna for Holocaust denial, which she attended, Lady Renouf organised financial support for Irving's family, maintained his website, and called for "so-called Holocaust victims" to be "exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas" ...

She’s described Judaism as a "repugnant and hate-filled religion" and travelled to Teheran in 2006 for the "International Conference - Holocaust Review: A Global Vision", where she reportedly declared that Judaism possesses a "dangerously misanthropic tendency" and a "fundamentally anti-gentile narcissism", and that “the anti-gentile nature of Judaism” causes antisemitism....

 Lady Renouf is obsessed with the bizarre notion that Birobidjan – the Jewish autonomous oblast in the far east of the Soviet Union, that Stalin dreamed up, is the true destination of the Jews; she wants the Israelis to up sticks and relocate there....'

Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

She was wallowing in the cesspool of Jew-hatred again, a few days ago, at a gathering of Holocaust Deniers in a London Hotel.

To quote the perspicacious Douglas Murray:

'[The] Mail on Sunday had an interesting account of a meeting in London of Nazis, neo-Nazis, British National Party types and anti-Semites of various other hues. The paper infiltrated the meeting and exposed what was said - which is a very good service and deserves praise.

.... But I confess to feeling fairly unbothered by such a gathering where the best they can do in terms of personnel is to find an admirer of Hitler from Spain, a retired schoolteacher wearing a British Union of Fascists lapel badge and carrying a book by Oswald Mosley and the absurd ‘Lady’ Michele Renouf, a former ‘hand model’ whose brain has never been what I suppose her hands once were.

According to the Mail on Sunday, Pedro Varela, the Spanish man, gave a speech about ‘the children of darkness’, during which:

 ‘He also appeared to call for a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses, saying: “In the Middle Ages, the Jews had all the gold in the world but they were living in the ghettos. They still have the gold of the world and are the masters of it…”’

Barrister Mr Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the British Board of Deputies, the man who so successfully interceded with the Anglican authorities following January's despicable 9/11 Facebook post by Stephen Sizer, and who deserves to win the forthcoming presidential election at the Board, says, reports the Mail,

'The material from this white supremacist group makes ugly reading,’ said barrister Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

On the face of it, their proceedings should be investigated to ascertain whether criminal offences have been committed, including incitement to racial hatred.’

That's understandable, and in keeping with Mr Arkush's robust leadership style.

Nevertheless, it's hard not to agree with Douglas Murray when he suggests when we consider the real danger to Jews and Jewish interests the pathetic little group of Holocaust Denying nutjobs palse into insignificance when compared to Natalie Bennett (incidentally, like Lady Renouf a native of New South Wales, and her UK Greens):

'Natalie Bennett, the Green party’s Australian-born leader, has confirmed her stance. Bennett has told the Jewish Chronicle that she not only supports an economic boycott of Israel but a cultural boycott too. This presumably means that Bennett believes British citizens should not listen, for instance, to a performance by a Jewish pianist who has been born in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

 Or visit an exhibition by a painter from Israel or receive medical assistance from a Jewish surgeon who has migrated (aren’t the Green Party in favour of open borders?) to the historic homeland of the Jewish people seventy years after the creation of the State of Israel.

I suppose that for the time being Bennett would still allow us to hear a Jewish pianist so long as the said pianist had not asserted their right to go to live in the world’s one and only Jewish state. But it is striking that the only type of migrant Bennett thinks we should boycott and disdain are Jewish migrants.'

I think it's time I trotted out this Australian newspaper headline again.  It's from the Sydney-based Hebrew Standard, and I think the year is 1946.

A reasonable view to hold in the immediate wake of the Shoah.

But, alas, it  what  Conor Cruise O'Brien called "a very light sleeper" was only slumbering after all.

In The B[BC]eginning ...

British prime minister David Cameron is a slippery sort of character who nevertheless has made  the right noises when he observes:

 "....As well as the new threat of extremist Islamism, there has been an insidious, creeping attempt to delegitimize the state of Israel, which spills over often into anti-Semitism. We have to be very clear about the fact that there is a dangerous line that people keep crossing over. This is a state, a democracy that is recognized by the United Nations, and I don’t think we should be tolerant of this effort at delegitimization....

 .... People have every reason to be concerned because you’ve got several things happening at the same time. You’ve got the poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism, which is targeting Jews generally. You’ve got specific attacks in Europe. And you have the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses or in public life, including sadly in Britain in some cases. Plus, you’ve got the issue of delegitimization being pushed, the boycotts of the state of Israel by universities and the like, and soon you add all these things up and you can see why some in the Jewish community are very concerned...."

For a glimpse into how the forces of delegitimisation began to take root in Britain, not long after the Six Day War, with help from elements within the BBC, please see my latest article here for the Elder of Ziyon blog.

Free Tuesday Lunchtime? Go on a date with Natalie!

More Israel-bashing from the UK Greens' leader Natalie Bennett, an export to the Motherland from sunny Sydney (sorry about that, but at least she's not so articulate as previous leader Caroline Lucas):

And more from one of her party's electoral candidates:

'Tanya Williams, the Green candidate for Twickenham, South West London, made the remarks during an Amnesty International hustings on Tuesday.

According to the news website SW Londoner, she said: “It needs to be pointed out that they [Israel] are a racist state and an apartheid state.”

“South Africa got its act together after decades of campaigning and I hope Israel may eventually too. I think it is time to stand up to the myth that Israel and Palestine are both equal participants in this conflict.”

Two Israel-bashing as-a-Jews discuss Greens tactics

She also allegedly urged the UK government to end political and economic trade ties with Israel. “I personally think we need to stop supporting Israel, whether that’s trading arms with them, or politically, or treating them like a beacon of democracy in the Middle East which they are not,” she said.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has now called on the Green Party to condemn Williams for her “inflammatory” comments, “which attacked the only democracy in the region,” according to one member.

Board Vice President Alex Brummer told SW Londoner: “The comments on the Middle East from the Green Party candidate in Twickenham are wholly unacceptable.

“They are based on falsehoods, ignorance and sheer prejudice against Israel and its supporters.

“Remarks like this can only fuel antagonism against the British Jewish community at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise.” '

Natalie's going to be answering questions live on Facebook on Tuesday (details below); maybe friends of Israel want to be there and (so to speak) tickle the lady up a bit.

Details here

Questioners are already waiting in line ...

An Enemy's Anemone

A little bit of silliness to brighten Monday morning.

The English national flower is the rose, right?  The rose, however, is not confined to the British Isles alone.  There are species of roses native to Europe, but also to North America and to Asia, including Japan.

Needless to say, however, nobody accuses the English of "stealing" the rose for their emblem.

The Scottish national flower is the thistle, yet the thistle is not confined to Scotland alone.  Its native habitat stretches from Portugal to Scandinavia to Kazakhstan. 

Needless to say, however, nobody accuses Scotland of "stealing" the thistle, just as no one accuses France of stealing the lily ("fleur de lis"), and so on.

I think you have guessed what's coming...

The much-loved pretty little red "crown anemone" (anemone coronaria), known in Hebrew as calanit metzouva, from the word for "bride", grows wild throughout the immediate region, and figures in local legends.

In the image above it's seen on an Israeli poster dating to 1949.

In 2013, following a poll, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel declared it their country's national flower.

Needless to say, just as Israel has been accused to stealing a "Palestinian" bird, so it's been accused of stealing a "Palestinian" flower.

In this potty example of the charge, the accusation is that the anemone coronaria has been declared a "Jewish flower":

Gives a whole new meaning to "flower power", doesn't it?

In Sydney Soon, A Campus Law School Hass Fest

The rather squalid all-day event that's going to take place in the Staff Common Room of the Law Faculty  at the University of New South Wales campus in the Sydney suburb of Randwick on 24 April was excitedly touched on about a fortnight ago in a video (I wouldn't bother, if I were you) by a veteran Aussie Israel-basher of Jewish birth, Vivienne Porzsolt (of "Jews Against The Occupation", one of those would-fit-into-a-telephone-booth outfits).

With former NSW parliamentarian (Greens, need you ask!) and publisher Sylvia Hale (the Hale half of Hale and Iremonger), Ms Porzsolt went on the Flotilla in 2010 and had a nice little adventure.
In the video mentioned above she sits alongside Peter Slezak, another Israel-bashing "as-a-Jew", who's going to be a speaker at the Randwick hate-fest.

The keynote speaker will be the notorious Israel-bashing Ha'aretz journalist Amira Hass, who's currently already in Australia working her mischief magic among the we-hate-Israel set.  (Sorry, folks, this dinner to meet her in Sydney is all booked out!)

Opening the event will be legal eagle Hal Wootten (born 1922, so they'd better provide him with a comfy chair), founder of the UNSW law school.

Spreading Hass among the usual suspects

Regarding the UNSW hate fest (admission free), we learn:

“The symposium Law, Rights and Resistance in Occupied Palestine is organised by postgraduate students, with support from a group of academic staff members at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). This event will examine and discuss the extent to which contemporary public international legal frameworks including international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law, allow or disallow forms of resistance to occupied rule in Palestine. As well as a legal focus, it will feature theoretical, post-colonial, historical, political and anthropological perspectives on the notion of ‘resistance’. We believe an interdisciplinary approach is necessary in order to accentuate and engage with the diverse forms of resistance that take place in Palestine as a consequence of the nature and character of the occupation.

Some of the specific concerns that will be addressed include:

Whether there is a legal right, as opposed to a mere moral right to resist occupied rule under international law and, if so, under what conditions it can be exercised.

 What characterises the right to resist? What forms can it take? What are the boundaries of resistance?

 What are some manifestations of daily forms of resistance and civil disobedience from occupied Palestine?

 How has Palestinian resistance to occupation evolved over time?

 What is the role of academia, particularly scholars in international law, in perpetuating or resisting the occupation?

We warmly welcome scholars, students and the general public to attend this important event..."

 Programme here

Although not an overt Israel-delegitimising event like the now-cancelled University of Southampton Law School conference, this is still an odiously one-sided, unbalanced event that lacks the differences of opinion one expects at an academic symposium.

It is simply and blatantly an exercise in propaganda

Little wonder that

'One university staff member told -the antipodean news service] J-Wire: “This one-sided anti-Israel bash dressed up an academic symposium is very concerning”.'

Darling, They're Playing Our Song!

There's a longhand riposte to this:

and this:

 But let's try the shorthand version.

(It really needs to be updated, with British rather than Aussie images, but it's a start):

Meanwhile:

Whatever can veteran Jew-hater Hardyment mean?

"Their time is coming?"

In the old Mother Country today, such dark hints seem to be fashionable.  

Jeremy Bowen's Hero

He's at it yet again, is the BBC's snottily out-of-control "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen, displaying that noisome bias (and ignorance) of his, and getting away with it. See also BBC Watch's post  here

Needless to say, this latest outrageous piece of nonsense from Bowen should be vigorously protested, as, once again, he transgresses his employer's rules and regulations.

Some insight into this egregious BBC man's disgraceful penchant for injecting his own bias into what passes in his mind for analysis can perhaps be discerned from the disclosure on Twitter the other week that veteran, now retiring New York Times reporter John Burns is a journalistic hero of his.

Just consider this credo of Burns to which Bowen admiringly drew attention:

Q [to Burns]. How do you manage to not get mad at the injustices man heaps upon other humans? Especially children and women? Does it ever provoke you to take matters into your own hands and get justice, instead of being a neutral observer? — Mani Subramanian; Boston

A [from Burns]. I’ve always felt that passion is a legitimate — an indispensable — tool for a reporter in the face of the malevolent outrages of war.... Bottom line, I have held stubbornly to the belief that the reporter’s duty is not to be neutral in the face of outrage so much as to be fair, the more so when neutrality has the damnable effect of making unequal things appear equal. Identify the villains, and depict them as the satanic killers they often are? Yes, but never at the cost of obscuring the perpetrators’ accounts in justification, however mendacious, of what they have done. [Emphasis added]

For all that, it would be vain to deny that editors have their own bounden trust to save reporters — not infrequently so, in my case — from the excesses of their passion with the cruel but necessary judgment of the blue pencil. You ask if there has ever come a moment to take matters into my own hands? There have been great reporters who have — Ernest Hemingway would never have claimed to have been neutral in the Spanish Civil War, nor even always fair — but ours has not been an age that favors his kind of swashbuckling commitment. In our time, it has become common for young reporters to give as their moral code, indeed as their reason for choosing the profession, that they aim to create a better world. It is a handsome thing, but one that can foster a missionary complex — a hubris, even — that can favor a blindness to inconvenient facts to the advantage of others.

The ABC's newly-appointed Jerusalem correspondent Sophie McNeill openly confesses to being a reporter with that "missionary complex" (as we saw here)  despite the rules and regulations of her employer (Australia's equivalent of the BBC).

Bowen does not appear to aspire to Ms McNeill's level of proudly biased reportage, but neither is he fair.

And as a result he must be counted among the less than scrupulously objective reporters who have helped to kindle public prejudice against Israel.

Daphne At The Court Of The King & Emperor

"This man is a dentist. So we can't show you his face on television" runs the iconic OralB toothbrush ad:

This man rules the world, so he won't show his true face* on the internet:

And since he rules the world, it follows that he's the king and emperor of pro-Israel bloggers.

This is just to inform readers of this blog that I'm truly honoured to have been given a weekly Tuesday column on his site.

So far I've written two posts, both on topics that non-Australians in particular might find of interest.

They both (here and here) happen to be of an historical bent, though with a topical relevance.

I hope to cover a range of themes, though, and hope I'm worthy of my place at the court of legendary Elder.

*