Daphne Anson: Shmatter Chatter

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)

Thursday, 1 January 2015

Shmatter Chatter

A Happy New Year to all readers! I'm especially grateful to regular commenters, and to those who send me information for possible posts: please be assured that, even if I don't use the material, I read it with interest, and it is all valuable grist to the mill.

To kick off 2015, here's a photo of some usual suspects welcoming the Palestinian soccer team to Sydney yesterday:

Photo credit : Peter Boyle

And it's got old Daph thinking about the seemingly infinite variety of shmatter, usually in the form of tee-shirts, that the Israel-hating crowd resort to in order to display their propaganda.

Sweltering in the Aussie sunshine, needing to complete some proper work, and not in the mood at the moment to offer profundities, I've been inspired by the above image to dash out an album of anti-Israel clobber, with the occasional trinket and banner thrown in.

For example, in no particular order:

Anti-Israel apparel for sale at a Muslim event in Paris:

At a separate event in France, the BDS movement rakes in the cash from "Generation Palestine":

In London, footie fans join the chorus:

In Cardiff a few days ago, a loquacious Irishman sporting a football jersey in Palestinian colours, with two female sidekicks (not so attired, but who joined him in chants of "Viva Palestina") demonises Israel before a football game, claiming that Gazan "children sleeping in their beds" were killed by Israel "because they were the wrong race" (the second footie banner reads "Hornets Against Apartheid"):

It's a mug's game; this drinking vessel (yes, it does have a handle) is on offer from Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA). That substitute for the letter i leaves nothing to the imagination:

Nor does this, FOA casualwear:

Accessorising with FOA bling (eloquent red bit, huh?):

Similar honesty about aims from Students for Palestine at Melbourne University (well, a flag's sort of shmatter):

The FOA mug in black (I assume it's also available in green):

But don't be caught drinking Coke from this vessel! ...

Fun and games in London: the FOA kicking off its current BDS campaign (#NotInMyFridge) against Coca Cola:

An umbrella at a BDS extravaganza in Japan:

A design as modelled by a social media friend of our old mate the vicar of Virginia Water; this particular friend is not reticent about posting antisemitic memes, but our old mate carries on regardless (perhaps he needs to go to SpecSavers):

Another design, in London in August (no, this chap's not making a moot point about Hamas):

Another London marcher, 2014:

In France, wearing the message in English (all the better for the publicity machine):

Still in France, "Generation Palestine" (apparently, despite the grey-haired demonstrator):

What the smart BDSer is wearing in Marseille:

A French demonstrator against Alicia Keyes' gig in israel

French dog; English slogan. Careful, little fellow: there are plenty who'd boycott you as "unclean"(just heed those poisoned dogs in Spain):

Also in France, blonde hatred and ignorance:

In Australia, favoured clobber at an annual anti-Israel run:

An as-a-Jew Aussie academic on his way to Federal Parliament to spread the word, 2014:

An unashamed antisemitic creep at an anti-Israel rally in Australia:

In America, wearing her hatred on her sleeve:

Another American, I think (sorry, can't make the image any bigger since it blurs):

In America's "City of Brotherly Love":

More stylish shoulder bags, Gallic fashion:

In bonnie Dundee, the Scottish city that, thanks to George Galloway, pioneered shmatter chatter by flying a Palestinian flag at its council chambers in the late 1970s and has been twinned with Nablus since 1980:

Also in Scotland, a tee-shirt logo giving the aim away:

This bozo's from Jewish Voice for Peace, folks:

A Jewish BDSer at the Open Hillel conference at Harvard in October; the tee-shirt's standard issue, but note the matching logo on the cap:

The daddy of all anti-Israel lies:

In America, another useful idiot (no shmatter here, but I was struck by the pose):

Not standing very comfortably, by the look of those crossed legs ...

As an Israeli man (much respect to you, sir!) wrote on the Facebook page of Jewish Voice for Peace where the (uncropped version of) that final photo is to be found:

'Just which Palestinians are you all talking about? The Palestinians who, in 1948, fled their homes to neighboring countries when the Arab world attacked Israel and told the Palestinians they can return after Israel is destroyed?

Or the Palestinians who lived in the West Bank under Jordanian (then Transjordan) occupation and annexation when Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and lost both the war and the West Bank to Israel?

Or the Palestinians who, while living in Jordan in the 1970s, envisioned Jordan becoming their Palestinian state and started a civil war where King Hussein ultimately killed thousands of Palestinians and forcibly removed many from of his country, making them refugees?

Or the Palestinians who entered the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, and murdered 11 Israeli athletes?

Or the Palestinians who infiltrated a high school in Ma’alot, Israel, took 102 students hostage, injured 50 and murdered 22?

Or the Palestinians who, among others, hijacked an Air France jetliner to Entebbe, Uganda, and held hostage more than 100 Israelis?

Or the Palestinians who were exiled from Jordan to a peaceful Lebanon and started a civil war that cost more than 120,000 lives and created more refugees, with many exiled from Lebanon?

Or the Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro ocean liner and shot, murdered and threw overboard Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish American paraplegic in a wheelchair?

Or the Palestinians in the Abu Nidal Organization who murdered an estimated 600 Palestinians from rival factions?

Or the Palestinians who wrote and live by the Hamas Charter that states, among other things, “… Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors”?

Or the Palestinians who enticed young and susceptible Palestinians to become suicide bombers with the promise that when they murder Israelis, they’ll receive rich rewards in the afterlife and financial security for their families?

Or the thousands of Palestinians in Ramallah who cheered as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from a second story window after they were tortured and hacked to death?

Or the Palestinians who honored a suicide bomber with a military funeral for murdering 15 people (including seven children and five from one family) at the Sbarro pizza café in Jerusalem?

Or the thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza captured on video cheering as two airliners purposely crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11?

Or the Palestinian families who received $25,000 from Saddam Hussein for their children’s “successful” suicide bombings?

Or a Palestinian like Yasser Arafat (although he was Egyptian born), who became a billionaire by stealing money from other Palestinians as they lived in squalor?

Or the Qatari born and Egyptian-raised Omar Barghouti (who refers to himself as a Palestinian), who co-founded the boycott, divestment, and [including educational] sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel while getting his doctorate at an Israeli university?

Or the Palestinians from Hamas (a group the U.S. and other countries label a terrorist organization) who, when they took control of Gaza, shot several hundred Fatah Palestinians in the legs, purposely crippling them for life?

Or the more than 100 Palestinians from Fatah crippled by Palestinians from Hamas who, at the confidential request from Mahmoud Abbas to Shimon Peres, received new legs and rehabilitation at a medical center in Israel

Or the two Palestinians who proudly confessed to the knife attack and murder of five members of the Fogel family, including the father, mother, and three of their six children, ages 11, 4 and 3 months?

Or the Palestinian mother, Raida Abu-Mustaffa, whose baby’s life was saved through funding and a rare heart operation by a Jewish doctor at an Israeli hospital, yet the mother dreamed that her daughter would one day become a martyr?

Or the gay Palestinian man who, while living in Tel Aviv (considered one of the gay-friendliest cities in the world), pleaded with Israel’s high court not to be deported to the West Bank because it would lead to persecution by his family and his detention, torture and death by Palestinian security forces?

Or the Palestinians in the West Bank who, in 2013, committed 27 honor killings against their wives, sisters and daughters?

Or the Palestinians who, since childhood, have been educated by books and newspapers that claim Jews are sub-human, satanic and animals, and that Israel is the root of all of their problems?

Or the Palestinians who grew up in refugee camps while Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Kuwait and Brunei became some of the wealthiest countries in world, gave virtually nothing to help the Palestinians and have purposely kept them in refugee camps as political tools since 1948?

Or the Palestinians who, for decades, promoted terrorism against Israel forcing Israel to build a security wall (that virtually ended all suicide bombings) and now call it the Apartheid Wall?

Or the Palestinians who, after Israel voluntarily withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, giving the Palestinians land and self-determination, have fired more than 11,000 rockets at Israel, killing Israelis and causing thousands of injuries?

Or the Palestinians who, since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, have committed thousands of terrorist acts (not including rocket attacks from Gaza), murdering 1,472 Israelis?

Or the Palestinians from Hamas who kidnapped and murdered three Jewish teenage yeshiva (Torah study) students?

Or the Palestinians who denounced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas because he condemned the kidnapping and murder of the three Jewish teens?

Or the Palestinian mother of Abu Aysha (one of the suspected murderers of the three Israeli teens) who said if he truly did it … “I’ll be proud of him till my final day. … I raised my children on the knees of the [Islamic] religion … their goal is to bring the victory of Islam”?

Or the Palestinian father of 17-year-old Mohammed Khdair, apparently murdered in retaliation for the three yeshiva boys, who said, “Whether Jew or Arab, who would accept that his son or daughter would be kidnapped and killed? And you want Israel to stop the bloodshed”?'

He's still awaiting an answer.

2 comments:

deegee4 January 2015 at 21:57
Boycott Coca Cola? Like the Palestinians do. Coca Cola manufactures in Ramallah. http://www.nbc-pal.ps/
http://youtu.be/cvQ4p4UsHAc
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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)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

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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