Honeyed Words Do Not a Friend of Israel Make

As is customary, Australian politicians, with at least half an eye on the ballot box, have sent greetings to the Australian Jewish community this Rosh Hashana.

The message from "socially progressive" yet burqa-compliant Senator Richard di Natale, federal leader of the incorrigible Israel-bashing pro-BDS Greens (see here and here and his own shameful backtracking on Israel's status as a Jewish state here and here), takes the entire honey chamber pot for the most sweetly sickening (and all-in-vain) vote-snivelling:

"On behalf of the Australian Greens, I would like to wish a warm Shanah Tovah to everyone welcoming in the Jewish New Year this week.

Rosh Hashanah is a time of reflection for Jewish communities across the world. Families and friends come together in diaspora communities from Melbourne to Minsk with one eye cast hopefully towards the future, and another looking back on the year that has past. It is a time for optimism, when the sweetness of your dreams for a better world for all is reflected in the sweetness of the food on your tables.

The Greens believe that our diversity is one of our nation’s greatest strengths. The proud mosaic of different cultures, faiths and ethnicities that make up our multicultural Australia is made that much richer by each of its parts. The contribution that the Jewish community has made to this tapestry is a profound one, and all out of proportion to its small size. We at the Australian Greens acknowledge and celebrate this.

It is with that history in mind that I wish you in the Jewish community a blessed Rosh Hashanah, and hope that your new year is filled with sweetness and joy.

Warm regards ..."

As one wag put it on J-Wire, "Next we will be receiving a RH greeting from Roger Waters".

Meanwhile, here's another bloke who, being entirely unprompted by the thought of maybe catching a Jewish vote or two, has proved that imitation (or at any rate advocacy of imitation) really is the sincerest form of flattery.
  
To quote from the Memri TV transcript:

'Shi'ite Iraqi cleric Salam Al-Askari delivered a sermon in which he called upon the Muslims to imitate the Jews, who had emerged from the Holocaust and managed to win the respect of the world through science. Sheikh Al-Askari said that the Jews' scientific discoveries made Europe see them as "a nation we need." The Islamic nation, on the other hand, has become the world's headache, he said. Sheikh Al-Askari posted the sermon on his YouTube channel on August 28, under the title "Don't Be Mad. Strong Words. Imitate the Jews in This." 

Salam Al-Askari: "The Jews suffered... The Nazis killed and burned them. They were brought in groups to special places, where they were gassed and they suffocated and died. The Jews were killed in droves. They wanted to emigrate but some European countries banned the Jews from entering. 'We will not accept them,' they said. They were tormented in Germany... Today, when our countries suffer, the youth emigrate to Europe. But back then, Europe shut its doors to the Jews.

In 1905, Lord Balfour... You know, Balfour from what we call the 'accursed Belfour Declaration'...  He struggled fiercely in the British Parliament to stop Jewish immigration to the U.K. He wouldn't allow the Jews to come. That was in 1905. In 1917, he was the one who founded the Zionists' state in Palestine, and handed it over to them. My brothers, we are talking about 1917 – a mere 12 years later. Within 12 years, the Jews went from being displaced to having a state. The entire European world sympathized with them, and they became the leaders of the world to this very day. What exactly happened? Let us shed some light on these pages in history. Let us benefit from the experience of others.

What happened was that the Jews put their greatest minds into science. Through science, they made the entire world kneel before them, and accept and respect the Jewish nation. How? Let me give you an example. The same Lord Balfour who banned the immigration of European Jews declared, 12 years later: 'I am Zionist to the bone.' He was asked what happened: '12 years ago you were against them.' He said: 'What Zionized me – or what turned me into a Zionist – is acetone.' Acetone is a substance used in gunpowder for cannons.

They used this substance to make rockets and win war. Britain was successful in the first and second World Wars. A Jew called Chaim Weizmann invented, or discovered, acetone, which was used in gunpowder for rockets. If not for the work of this man, they would not have won the war. Lord Balfour changed his mind: 'Wow, these Jews have brains!'

The first nuclear reactor in the U.S. was opened by a Jew. The group that made the first nuclear bomb that the U.S. used against Japan, thus winning the war... What tipped the balance in WWII in favor of the Allies were the two bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. You've all heard about this, right? This bomb that terrified the world was manufactured by Jewish minds. It was designed by the minds of Jewish physicists. Europe declared officially: 'We need the Jewish nation.'

Some years ago – I don’t know how many – a European writer wrote an article titled... Forgive me for saying this, but this is what people are saying about us. We shouldn’t always think of ourselves as kings, giants, the best people around. Look what people are saying about us. [A writer] wrote an article titled: 'What would happen if we removed the Muslims from the face of the earth?' This was a study, with references, some of them wrong, but just so that you see how far we lag behind in global civilizational progress... The conclusion of the article was that if Muslims were removed from the face of the Earth, there would be no more headaches in the world – no bombings, no bribery, no plundering, and no kidnapping....

We are two billion Muslims in the world. How many Jews are there worldwide? 17 million. 17 million... There are more people in central and southern Iraq. That is the number of the Jews in the whole world. How many Nobel prizes in the field of science have they won, and how many have we won, in the last century? We, with almost two billion Muslims have won 10 Nobel prizes in a hundred years. They number 17 million, and how many prizes have they won in the past hundred years? 200. They have won 200 prizes, 50-60 of them in physics alone. In other words, if we were to say that the physics of the 20th century is Jewish, nobody could call it an exaggeration."'