As Much an Arab Story as a European

Well known for her Point of No Return blog, Lyn Julius has recently authored Uprooted: How 3,000 years of Jewish Civilisation in the Arab World Vanished Overnight, published in London by Vallentine Mitchell. 

Now she has written searingly as follows:

 On the day that the world commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the U.K. liberal newspaper The Guardian declared in an editorial : “The Arabs, meanwhile, cannot be blamed for feeling that Europe’s blood debt to the Jews was paid with what they see as their territory.”

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, meets with Adolf Hitler in 1941. Credit: German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons.

The myth of the Arabs as innocent bystanders, who had no responsibility for the Holocaust—and indeed, paid the price for a European crime when Israel was established—is widely believed.

The Arabs, like other third-world peoples, are only ever seen as victims of Western oppression and colonialism. They cannot themselves be guilty of oppressing others.

The West self-righteously deplores the old European anti-Semitism of the “far right.” But a new Green-Brown-Red anti-Semitism—encouraged by an alliance of the Far Left, the Greens and Islamist sympathisers—is studiously downplayed, ignored by the media, or blamed on Israel.

Truth be told, the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism was exported to the Arab and Muslim world as early as the 1930s. It gave ideological inspiration to Arab nationalist parties like the Ba’athists in Syria and Iraq and paramilitary groups like Young Egypt, founded in 1933. Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the central plank of the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and their ideological cousins, Islamic State, who sought to impose Allah’s kingdom on Earth through jihad and forced conversion of non-Muslims.

The Holocaust was, in the words of author Robert Satloff, as much an Arab story as a European. In spite of efforts to trumpet the stories of individual “righteous” Muslims who rescued Jews (particularly in Albania), scholars continue to uncover evidence of Arab sympathy and collaboration with Nazism.

Said Walter Doehle, German Consul in Jerusalem, wrote in 1937:

“Palestinian Arabs in all social strata have great sympathies for the new Germany and its Führer..…If a person identified himself as a German when faced with threats from an Arab crowd, this alone generally allowed him to pass freely. But when some identified themselves by making the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute, in most cases the Arabs’ attitude became expressions of open enthusiasm, and the German gave ovations, to which the Arabs responded loudly.”

When Tunisia came under direct Nazi occupation between November 1942 and May 1943, some 2,000 Jews were sent to work in labor camps. The reaction of Tunisia’s Muslim majority was, according to Satloff, “widespread indifference.” He wrote:

“Gestures of support and active assistance for the minority being displaced, disenfranchised, plundered and conscripted into forced labour were very rare. Arab passers-by would publicly insult and physically attack individuals.”

Although he was not the only collaborator with Nazism—Fawzi al-Qawuqji, Rashid Ali al-Kelani, Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir, Hassan Salama and Arif Abd al-Raziq spring to mind—the role played by Palestinian leader and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in fomenting anti-Jewish incitement and violence, not just in British Palestine but across the Arab world, is key. From 1931, he conflated “Zionists” with “Jews.” Any Jewish community became fair game for collective punishment—and still is.

The Mufti met with Hitler in Berlin in November 1941 to discuss the extermination of the Jews in the Middle East. He spent the rest of the war as a guest of the Nazis.Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny (later executed as a war criminal) in his Nuremburg Trials testimony stated, “the Mufti was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.”

On a visit to Auschwitz, the Mufti reportedly admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently. Throughout the war, he broadcast regularly on German radio to the Middle East, preaching his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab masses back home.

Had the Allies not liberated Tunisia from the Nazis, Libya from the Italian fascists, and Algeria and Morocco from the Vichy regime in 1943, it is a fair bet that the local Arab population would not have lifted a finger to halt the deportation of the Jews of Palestine and the Arab world to death camps.

Arguably, North African states, having not yet achieved independence, were not responsible for Jewish suffering: anti-Jewish measures were implemented by the Vichy regime and the Italian fascists. But the Iraqi government cannot so lightly be let off the hook. Iraq, independent since 1932, was the scene of a pro-Nazi coup in 1941, leading inexorably to the Farhud, the Iraqi-Jewish Kristallnacht. In this two-day orgy of murder, rape, mutilation and looting, up to 600 Jews were killed, according to British archival records. The exact figure will never be known.

The Palestinian Mufti played a central role in plotting the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq.

The Mufti was personally responsible for the deaths of 20,000 European Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. He organized the killing of 12,600 Bosnian Jews by Muslims, whom he recruited to the Waffen-SS Nazi-Bosnian division.  He personally stopped 4,000 children, accompanied by 500 adults, from leaving Europe and had them sent to Auschwitz and gassed; he prevented another 2,000 Jews from leaving Romania and 1000 from leaving Hungary for Palestine—they too were sent to death camps.

Only three years after the end of World War ll, the members of the Arab League were bent on emulating the Nazis. They set about making the Arab Middle East judenrein (free of Jews). They applied Nuremberg-style laws, criminalising Zionism, freezing Jewish bank accounts, instituting quotas, imposing restrictions on jobs and movement.

The result was the mass exodus and spoliation of a million Jews. Yet very few Arabs acknowledge they are to blame for the so-called Jewish nakba (catastrophe). Holocaust denial goes hand-in-hand with Jewish nakba denial.

In 1945, the Mufti of Jerusalem should have been tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg. He was indicted, judged and convicted by Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity, arising from his pivotal role in the Handschar and Skandeberg SS divisions which deported Balkan Jews from Kosovo, Macedonia and Thrace. But the Allies shrank from offending the Arabs.

Not only has the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism never left the Arab and Muslim world, it has grown exponentially. Muslim immigrants have carried the virus of Jew-hatred back into European countries. Saudi petrodollars have financed the spread of Islamism, with its implicit anti-Semitism, worldwide.

That is why today, in the Arab and Muslim world, Holocaust denial is alive and well.

The ghost of Nazi-inspired, anti-Jewish bigotry was never exorcised from the Arab world. In fact Arabs became its torch-bearers. On Jan. 14, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose university thesis was an exercise in Holocaust denial, shocked all right-thinking individuals with a speech dripping with anti-Semitism, and blaming the Jews for their own deaths in the Holocaust.

Eichmann himself hoped his “Arab friends” would continue his battle against the Jews who were always the “principal war criminals” and “principal aggressors.” He hadn’t managed to complete his task of “total annihilation,” but the Muslims could still complete it for him.

Enough said.

(Images added by Daphne. For the original article and its links go here)

David Singer: Trump Readies to Dump PLO for Jordan-Israel Negotiations

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump and America’s UN Ambassador Nikki Haley  – virtually within hours of each other – have laid the groundwork for Jordan to replace the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner under President Bush’s 2003 Roadmap – endorsed by the United Nations, European Union, and Russia – and Bush’s 2004 Congress-endorsed commitments to Israel.

Haley told the UN Security Council:

1. Real peace requires leaders who are willing to step forward, acknowledge hard truths, and make compromises. It requires leaders who look to the future, rather than dwell on past resentments. Above all, such leaders require courage.

 2. Abbas’s two-hour speech to the PLO Central Council on 14 January

· Declared the landmark Oslo Peace Accords dead.

· Rejected any American role in peace talks.

· Insulted President Trump

· Called for suspending recognition of Israel.

· Invoked an ugly and fictional past, reaching back to the 17th century to paint Israel as a colonialist project engineered by European powers.

Such a speech indulging in outrageous and discredited conspiracy theories is not the speech of a person with the courage and the will to seek peace.

3. King Hussein of Jordan was a leader with courage. In 1994, he ended 46 years of war and entered into a peace agreement with Israel that holds to this day. When King Hussein signed the peace treaty, he said:

“These are the moments in which we live, the past and the future. When we come to live next to each other, as never before, we will be doing so, Israelis and Jordanians, together, without the need for any to observe our actions or supervise our endeavors. This is peace with dignity; this is peace with commitment.”

Abbas’s recent actions demonstrate Abbas is the total opposite of King Hussein.

Haley certainly pulled no punches.

Trump – attending the World Economic Forum in Davos – had some additional dismissive remarks to make about the PLO:

1. The PLO disrespected America by not allowing America’s great Vice-President Mike Pence to see them.

2. Money was never on the table. America gives the Palestinian Arabs tremendous amounts, hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That money is on the table. Because why should America do that as a country if they’re doing nothing for America?

3. Trump doesn’t know whether Israel-PLO negotiations will ever take place.

Trump and Haley have clearly indicated that the ground is rapidly shifting under a corrupt PLO edifice that:

 · unashamedly continues to fund murderers of Israelis and non-Israelis

 · is not yet tired and disgusted of such killing

Replacing Abbas will not solve the PLO’s dilemma. Abbas’s speech to the PLO Central Council was frequently interrupted by loud applause from the entire PLO leadership gathered in Ramallah.

Trump ominously remarked that Israel would have to pay for Jerusalem being taken off the table as the toughest issue requiring resolution in any negotiations.

Israeli concessions can be more easily negotiated if Jordan – not the PLO - is Israel’s negotiating partner – because:

· Amman is Jordan’s long-established capital

 · Jordan also enjoys negotiating rights on Jerusalem’s future under article 9 (2) of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty:

“In this regard [freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance] in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”

Israel-Jordan negotiations indeed represent the best opportunity to end the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.

The PLO has seemingly done its dash – and hundreds of millions in cash – in defiantly taking on Trump.

The Unacceptable Whiteness of Being

Yesterday (26 January) was Australia Day, a public holiday Down Under, when many people surf, swim, picnic in the parks and on the beaches, and of course chuck another shrimp on the barbie.  And talking of beaches, here's a snapshot that's just gone viral on social media, attracting numerous adverse comments:

I don't know what beach this sign went up on, nor who made it.  But one thing's certain: it's not a sign under official auspices, for there are no official bodies by the titles given.  It's a fake.  So all the people getting their budgie smugglers in a twist can relax.

Far more worthy of condemnation was the violence and  anti-white racism on display at some of the indigenous and pro-indigenous rallies demanding an end to Australia Day each 26 January in commemoration of the First Fleet's arrival in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, marking the beginning of European settlement.

Many Australians have sympathy with those who believe that celebrating Australia Day on what indigenous people consider and dub "Invasion Day" is divisive.  Many Australians take the point entirely of people who believe that 1 January (the day in 1901 that Australia became a federated nation) is more appropriate.  One of the numerous supporters of the latter view is respected political figure and aboriginal leader Walter Mundine, a member of the Bunjalong people of northern coastal New South Wales, but he was not slow to condemn some of the participants in yesterday's Invasion Day marches as extremist troublemakers.

Take, for instance, the "Invasion Day" rally in Melbourne yesterday which degenerated into an anti-white hatefest at which the organiser ranted "F**k Australia, hope it burns to the ground" and at which spectators at the official celebrations were jeered at, insulted, and spat upon.

The history of aboriginal-European relations in Australia is fraught with controversy, with historians (Geoffrey Blainey, Keith Windschuttle) who have dared to present a view at odds with the prevailing view of white-inflicted deliberate genocide castigated if not virtually demonised.  It's become fashionable to deride Captain Cook, the gifted British navigator who "discovered" Australia in 1770, as a harbinger of genocide and the post-1788 settlers as colluding in genocide, in a way that smacks of anti-white racism and holds up the British collectively as a race of villains.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-42813211

It's a component of that anti-white racism that, as seen, inter alia, in the Black Lives Matter movement, continues to gather pace.  Indeed, this presentation of whites as almost inherently evil is becoming odiously common.  (With some left-liberal Jews on the bandwagon. They should look at this Australia Day video and think again.)

As popular conservative columnist Andrew Bolt wrote here, universities are subscribing to the perfidy.

In July we learned that in Connecticut

'Serious explorations into race should focus on the problem of whiteness and be grounded in the claim that it’s a hegemonic “power apparatus,” a Fairfield University professor suggested at a recent conference aimed at pushing “radical social change” in higher education.

The remarks from associate professor of philosophy Dr. Kris Sealey, who spoke about her strategies for discussing race in the classroom, were presented at a diversity conference for employees of Jesuit colleges.

“So more and more, the courses that I teach on race have become courses in which I expect my students to engage in the hegemonic power of whiteness,” said Sealey, who’s taught courses such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Critical Race Theory.”...'

 In August California's Stanford University foreshadowed 

'a class this fall called “White Identity Politics,” during which students will “survey the field of whiteness studies” and discuss the “possibilities of … abolishing whiteness,” according to the course description.

Citing pundits who say “the 2016 Presidential election marks the rise of white identity politics in the United States,” the upper-level anthropology seminar will draw “from the field of whiteness studies and from contemporary writings that push whiteness studies in new directions.”

Questions to be posed throughout the semester include: “Does white identity politics exist?” and “How is a concept like white identity to be understood in relation to white nationalism, white supremacy, white privilege, and whiteness?”....'

In October Australia's Deakin University held this exercise in reverse racism, flushed out by Bolt:

'Don’t Talk to white People: On The Epistemological and Rhetorical Limitations of Conversations with white People for Anti-Racist Purposes:

Productive dialogue with white people for anti-racist purposes is precluded by the political limits prescribed by the “principle of interest convergence,” (Bell 1980) occluded by the epistemological condition of “white ignorance,”... Nevertheless, much popular effort is spent—dare I say wasted—in attempts to talk white people out of their racism... Consequently, I propose that we stop talking to white people—or as I will describe them throughout this paper, following James Baldwin, ‘those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white.’ (Baldwin 1998). This paper examines why we should refrain from engaging in such conversations, noting the difficulties and problems associated with the discursive orientation toward whiteness.

[and]

Playing Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds: Racist Anti-Racism in Academia:

This paper examines anti-racism in academia by way of a close reading of popular tropes around the epistemic liberation of people of colour in academic contexts. To this end, I examine several films, beginning with Dangerous Minds, and deconstruct their narratives, which I argue are all reducible to a variation of ‘the white saviour’ narrative...

With action deemed to be white, anti-racism is taken to be dependent on generous or virtuous white action. Even in academia, I argue, the dominant understanding of anti-racism is predicated on a racist white messianism - a more just future is taken to be predicated on white administration, white theorisation, white publications, white generosity, white patronage. I offer in its stead a model of epistemic justice that rejects white salvation.'..."

Last month the University of Michigan held

'A two-day professional development conference [which] aimed to help white employees deal with their “whiteness” so they could become better equipped to fight for social justice causes, according to organizers.

The whiteness session utilized the “Privileged Identity Exploration Model” to help white participants explore the “discomfort” of their “white identity,” according to organizers....

[University of Iowa professor Sherry]Watt states there are eight defenses people use to avoid recognizing their privilege. Examples of defenses include “denial,” where someone simply refuses to admit their privilege, and “minimization,” where someone trivializes the impact of their privilege.'

 And there are a lot more where those came from, including this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XDWn0Q7tqg

Here's recent social media post by an (anti-Israel) Australian academic:

 

Nobody on the left calls it out for the prejudice that it is. People who dare to point out that misogyny and wife-bashing were and often are characteristic of what used to be termed "Third World" cultures  risk obloquy.

 And, of course, anti-white racism directly informs sections of the anti-Israel movement:

For a variation on which theme see Dr Mike Lumish's article here

A Green Tickled Pink

The zany Medea Benjamin

co-founder in 2002 of the infamous Codepink organisation

recently wrote an as-a-Jew pro-BDS piece in The Guardian that has been replicated elsewhere.
Here, for instance, with Ms Benjamin looking rather demure in the accompanying photo:

 A rather different look by her at this anti-Ahava protest:

And a very different look indeed from her mullah-pleasing apparel at an Israel-bashing conference in Teheran:

Being an inveterate Israel-basher and BDS activist herself, the Welsh Greens' deputy leader Pippa Bartolotti has shared the article to her Facebook page with, inter alia, the following introduction:

Incidentally Bartolotti's still unmoved by requests to remove this obscenity from her Facebook post that attracted some 470 comments, many from angry "Zionists":

Her response to such a request (a response that at least has the merit of enabling us to remind ourselves of what slime many Greens are made of):

"Abbas is Making Himself Irrelevant" (video)

Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton condemns Abbas's speech (be sure to see previous post by David Singer), sniffs an appeal to antisemitism within it, and suggests that Jordan's King Abdullah should take over parts of the West Bank ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41dMB_EFP5s

David Singer: PLO Ditches Trump, Undermines Future UN and EU Support

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s extraordinary two-hour-long anti-American and Jew-hating diatribe delivered on January 14 must inevitably see:

Israel refusing to resume negotiations with the PLO 

Another Arab partner replacing the PLO to negotiate with Israel in implementing President Trump’s eagerly-awaited ultimate deal.

The viciousness and vindictiveness of Abbas’s attack on the internationally-recognised legal right of the Jewish people to its own independent State – as endorsed by:

·        the United Nations (“UN”)  1947 Partition Plan

·        the European Union (“EU”)  1980 Venice Declaration

·        UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338

·        The 1993 Oslo Accords

·        President Bush’s 2003 Road Map - supported by both the UN and the EU

requires the UN and EU to unequivocally reject Abbas’s racist, false and misleading claims.

Abbas’s speech was delivered at what has been described as “a Palestinian Central Council meeting in Ramallah”.

In fact it was a very well stage-managed event involving the attendance of some 80 of the 132 Councillors and about 500 other persons. One vacant seat was reserved for the “Republic of Lithuania”. Diplomats from other countries were undoubtedly present.

The backdrop included two huge screens each containing five maps of Palestine from 1947 onwards – conveniently excluding 78% of Palestine – today called Jordan - granted independence by Great Britain in 1946.

President Trump has already reacted to Abbas’s following inflammatory remarks by withholding US$65 million to UNRWA:

1.      "Let them [the US] not do us a favor by paying us money... We do not want anyone to pay us.”

2.       "We will not accept the deals the US wants to impose on us. We will not accept its mediation after the crime it committed against Jerusalem.”

3.      "There are two names that I don’t want to mention, but my conscience is bothering me, so I have to mention them. American Ambassador David Friedman... He says: "There is no occupation, who said there’s an occupation? Israel is building on its lands." ... The second name, their Ambassador to the UN Ms. Haley… who said: 'I wear high heels not for fashion, only to hit whoever attacks Israel.' I say to her – and may she hear me – [our] response is going to be worse, but not by way of high heels.”

4.      “The Americans are always telling us that we must stop paying salaries to the families of the martyrs and the prisoners. We categorically reject this demand.”

Further retaliatory action by Trump seems certain.

Interestingly Abbas also claimed:

"We made a decision at the [Arab] Summit in Amman in 1980 that every state that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or that transfers its embassy to it – we must cut our relations with it."

The Minutes of that Summit actually record:

“The Conference also emphasized that the liberation of Arab Jerusalem was a national duty and a national obligation, proclaimed the rejection of all measures taken by Israel, requested all nations of the world to adopt clear and defined positions in opposition to the Israeli measures and resolved to break off all relations with any country recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or transferring its embassy there.”

Attendees at the 1980 Summit were:

    ·        Bahrain

    ·        Djibouti

    ·        Iraq

    ·        Jordan

    ·        Kuwait

    ·        Mauritania

    ·        Morocco

    ·        Oman

    ·        Qatar

    ·        Saudi Arabia

    ·        Somalia

    ·        Sudan

    ·        Tunisia

    ·        United Arab Emirates

    ·        Yemen

How many of these countries will now break off diplomatic relations with America following its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will serve as a useful indicator of the support the PLO can continue to receive in the Arab world.

Abbas’s Ramallah rant has provided irrefutable evidence that the PLO has no further role to play in peacefully resolving the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.

Hart Disease

As many readers will know by now, Alan Hart is no more.  Aged 75, the (non-Jewish) inveterate Israel-demoniser, whose Twitter page shows that he was tweeting anti-Israel propaganda almost to the end, shuffled off this mortal coil last week, deeply mourned by inveterate Israel-demoniser Gilad Atzmon (see, for instance, here) and others of that ilk.

Hart (Arafat's biographer and author of the odious 2010 book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews) was a former newspaper journalist, chief Middle East correspondent for Independent Television News (ITN), and presenter of the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Panorama.  He became a regular on Iran's satellite news channel Press TV, delighting his masters with his diatribes against the Jewish State and its supporters.

Wikipedia's article about him (which provides footnoted sources) tells us of such sentiments of his as:

"The colonial enterprise that Zionism is has corrupted everything it touched, beginning with the United Nations and including the mainstream media, what passes for democracy in the Western world (America especially) and Judaism itself"

And:

"[T]he Zionist state, which came into being as a consequence of Zionism terrorism and ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist ... In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not and cannot take from the Palestinians by force.... 

Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism's call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. The incoming Zionist Jews were mainly foreign nationals of many lands... The notion that there are two entire peoples with an equally valid claim to the same land is an historical nonsense."

Hart described Zionists as "The New Nazis" and argued that

"Europeans and Americans could have stopped the original Nazis and prevented the extermination of six million Jews. If Europeans and Americans do not stop the New Nazis, it is likely that their end game will be the extermination of millions of Palestinians."

Regarding 9/11 he stated on various media outlets that

 "The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes." 

He speculated that the planes had been fitted with transponders and that Israeli Mossad agents guided them into the towers.

“My guess is that at an early point they said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation's running what do we do, and the Zionists and the neo-cons said let's use it."

Moreover:

"In my analysis there's enough evidence – visual, technical and scientific, and from eye-witnesses including fire fighters – to invite the conclusion that the Twin Towers, like Building Seven, were pre-wired for controlled demolition with nanothermite, the highest-tech military explosive."

 In a guest post on the well-known UK blog Harry's Place in 2009, Middle East analyst Jonathan Sacerdoti analysed Hart's modus operandi on his Press TV discussion programme:

 "The fact that Alan Hart was presenter, chairman and organiser of the ‘debate’ (he selected the panel and even the audience) only added to the sense of foreboding surrounding the programme.... [A] quick web-search will tell you all you need to know about his unconventional views on Israel and Zionism, and how they cannot possibly be rooted in antisemitic sentiment because he has a Jewish accountant....

Hart’s choice of panellists for the programme made it clear before anyone said a word that the project was nothing more than a thinly disguised hate-fest. He was joined by his regular sidekicks, Ilan Pappe and Hajo Meyer (both Jews, he boasted), in arguing that ‘Zionism’ was to blame for antisemitism. The estimable Jonathan Hoffman and Carol Gould represented the ‘other side’ as the cameras recorded what was to be one of the more surreal and amateur television productions I’ve experienced.

Alan and his regular helpers continued their desperate ongoing attempts to be recognised as ‘revisionists’, rewriting history and current thought as they see fit, while Hoffman and Gould were clearly intended to act as nothing more than fig leaves for this brazen, three-pronged attack on Israel, reason, and polite debate. With the dice weighted against them, it wasn’t easy, but Jonathan Hoffman, the co-Vice Chairman of the Zionist Federation, and Carol Gould, an author with an informed and authoritative perspective on the Middle East, held their ground well in the face of unrelenting bullying tactics....

Hart, it seems, is a man with a pronounced fear of being criticised, despite his frothing tirades against the Jewish state of Israel and its right to exist. His aggressive manner and apparent inability to form a logical line of argument don’t help his case.

From start to finish, the programme was a stitch-up....

[Hart's] fanatical assertions were usually backed up (if at all) by reference only to his own absurd books, while anything that Hoffman and Gould said was shouted down as ‘propaganda’, even when they gave accurate and specific references and figures. Instead of engaging with them, Hart threatened to chuck out Hoffman from the room.

It was Hart’s impotent and repeated threats to have Hoffman removed from the studio that really laid bare the true, absurd nature of the programme ... [N]o chairman interested in facilitating such a debate would ever invite guests to participate, only to shout over them, repeatedly cut them short, fail to offer them a chance to answer questions, and threaten to have them ‘evicted’ simply for expressing the views they had been invited to express in the first place....'

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum is an ancient adage.

But what about Jew-haters? Does "Speak no ill of the dead" apply to them?

On Atzmon's Facebook page Mr Hoffman has observed amid the tributes to Hart:

And brought upon himself criticism for his criticism, including personal attacks from Hart fans framed in antisemitic terms.  Here's an example:

Yes, Mr Hoffman does not flinch.  He isn't made that way.

A Thorn Among the pro-Pallywood Thespians (video)

Beautiful carriage. Beautiful diction. Beautiful hair.  Who can deny that London-based anti-Israel activist Sandra Watfa has natural stage presence?

Strangely enough, however, most of the hoped-for audience at this performance of hers about a week ago outside London's South Bank Centre seem merely to glance at the lady, and walk on by.

Perhaps, like us, they have heard the message delivered by her and her handmaidens so often before that it's grown stale. 

Or perhaps, like us, they recognise balderdash and baloney even when delivered in even louder and more histrionic tones than usual.

There's a reason for the discomfiture on the faces of star performer and attendants, and that redoubling of the thespian's art.  If you listen at about 0:54 you will probably guess who's arrived to heckle.

If you fast forward to about 11:54 you will know for sure.

Well done that man!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UWLEhOu03c

(MrAlexSeymour video)

More of Mr Hoffman next time, please Alex.

Hood - um - Hijabwinked

Out of Toronto, a viral headliner of a story that had public figures including prime minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, and the city's mayor thundering about the "islamophobia" involved, and even made prime time television news in Australia: an eleven-year-old girl walking to school twice had her hijab cut by a man who came up behind her.

But after an investigation, Toronto police now tell us that the entire story, which served as a stick with which to beat Canadian society despite the fact that anti-Muslim "hate crimes" have actually dropped in Canada, was entirely made up.

And why would that be?

Ezra Levant of the Rebel Media has sussed things out:

David Singer: Israel-Jordan Negotiations Could Follow PLO Threat to Boycott Trump

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) threat to refuse to negotiate with Israel unless President Trump withdraws his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel could see Jordan replacing the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner to end the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.

This threat – unless unconditionally revoked – would give Trump the opportunity to consign the PLO to the political wilderness by inviting Jordan to step in and negotiate with Israel over Trump’s eagerly-anticipated “ultimate deal”.

Jordan-Israel negotiations would offer Jordan the opportunity to recover a substantial part of Judea and Samaria (“West Bank”) annexed by Jordan in 1950 – albeit illegally – but subsequently lost to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War (“disputed territory”).

Should Jordan buck at entering into such negotiations – some 60% of the disputed territory – under Israel’s full administrative and security control since the 1995 Oslo Accords and containing just 5% of the West Bank’s entire Arab population (“Area C”) – could be annexed by Israel.

PLO-Israel negotiations over the last twenty-five years – with United Nations, UNESCO and European Union backing – aimed at creating a 22nd Arab state in the disputed territory for the first time ever in recorded history – have failed abysmally.

Such a State was an artificially-contrived creation that could never be justified on historic, geographic or demographic grounds. It had actually been rejected by successive Arab leaderships on many occasions since first being proposed by the 1937 Peel Commission.

Joint 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winners – Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat – all understood Jordan’s pivotal role in ending the Jewish-Arab conflict:

1. Jordan is the major part (78%) of the Palestinian Arabs’ homeland according to article 2 of the PLO Charter.

Farouk Kadoumi - Head of the Political Department of the PLO – reinforced this reality  – telling Newsweek on 14 March 1977:

 “Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people.”

2.      Peres declared on 31 August 1978: 

“Jordan is also Palestine… I’m against two Arab countries and against another Palestinian country, against an Arafat state. Today 50 percent of the inhabitants of Jordan are Palestinians and that is the Palestinian state…"   

Peres backed this up – telling the Jewish Telegraph on April 19, 1991: 

“It is not obstinacy to regard the populations of Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza as having greater similarities than differences. The Jordan River is not deep enough to turn into a knife blade serving to cut one piece of territory into three slices. Most of Jordan’s population are Palestinians: the residents of the West Bank are Jordanian citizens and Jordan has distributed tens of thousands of passports to residents in the Gaza Strip. Jordan is therefore an existing State. It has an army. There is therefore no need to set up another State, another army."

3.      Yitzchak Rabin told The Australian newspaper on May 27, 1985: 

“One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb.”

     Rabin’s solution to end the conflict:  

“… the Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the Jordan River there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees.”

Jordan-Israel negotiations on the political future of the disputed territory open up options to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict never before considered. If Trump’s Jerusalem Declaration helps bring such negotiations about – then Trump could well succeed where all other American presidents before him have failed.

Taking on Trump could herald the PLO’s political demise after 54 years of failed leadership.

Looking Ahed to a Birthday

In glorious downtown Sydney today, an inglorious combination of ultra-left and Islamic foes of Israel come out to shill for Pallywood's Ahed Tamimi.

To quote an activist:

"Ahed’s birthday is on January 31 — and there will be global protests on this day to demand her release from prison."

 (Photographer: Peter Boyle for Green Left Weekly)

Ultra-left Senator Lee Rhiannon lends her notoriously Israel-demonising voice to proceedings:

 Meanwhile,  a ridiculous piece by UCIrvine professor and Israel basher Mark LeVine:

'....Not long after her arrest, the scholar Shenila Khoja-Moolji rightly asked why the world has shown such support for Malala Yousafzai, but not for Ahed. Both are young women who’ve faced incredible violence and oppression, and both share the same grit and determination. But it’s also clear that Ahed is a very different person with a different story. She’s suffered less physically, at least so far. But she also didn’t have the luxury of being “saved” by her former colonizer. Spirited away to the UK to be healed, given citizenship, given a Nobel Prize. Feted around the world as a symbol of what a Muslim women can and should be. And, of course, Malala stood up to America’s mortal enemy, the Taliban, while Ahed is fighting America’s darling, Israel. As long as there’s no understanding of how close Israel’s treatment of Palestinians mirrors the Taliban’s treatment of women – no rights, permanent confinement to ever smaller prisons, violence and murder without regard to international law or morality – there’s no chance Ahed will ever be seen in the same light as Malala....'

A well-justified piece by Israel-based human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky:

'.... Urged on by her parents, Ahed Tamimi miraculously seems to appear whenever the cameras start rolling, trying to manipulate the media and provoke Israeli soldiers to create some viral video.

This girl should be given an Oscar for “Best Actress Starring in a Fake Protest”, not lauded as a hero or symbol of resistance.

It is important to note that the Israeli soldiers were only in Nabi Saleh to stop a violent Palestinian riot following President Trump’s December 6 announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In this case, the soldiers acted with the utmost restraint and professionalism. They could have easily succumbed to Ms Tamimi’s trap and arrested her on the spot.

That the Palestinians and their enablers in the international community seek to lionise Ms Tamimi only helps perpetuate this conflict by placing children in harm’s way. Israeli authorities had no option but to make it clear that assault against IDF forces will not be tolerated.

Meantime, Ms Tamimi’s father, who has played the role of “director” in his family’s ongoing PR campaign, said: “I’m proud of my daughter. She is a freedom fighter who, in the coming years, will lead the resistance to Israeli rule.”

Whatever one’s views on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, we should all agree that children belong in school, not paraded on the battlefield.

Such cynical and blatant exploitation by the Tamimi parents constitutes gross abuse....'

Oh, and LeVine's concern for women's rights?


How about this, as an indication of young and modern thought?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=VtYyarrCk_k

A Tale of Two Vehicles

“Every day we have people who are hurt, every day we have people who are insulted," French Jewish leader Richard Abitbol has been quoted as saying recently.

"We can be hurt by words, but we don’t mind, but when we are hurt by a knife, a gun, you can’t say I don’t mind. In a few decades, there will be no Jews in France. And there is also a problem in Europe. There are almost no Jews now, they are leaving. So, it’s terrible what I will say, but Europe is continuing in peace what Hitler had done by war."

 And now comes this report, of a kosher store near Paris being set alight.  That's cultural enrichment for you.

The threat to European civilisation, to the values of the Enlightenment, to Jews, and to women's rights, posed by the inexorable mass migration of Muslims into Europe, does, of course, agitate many minds concerned for the future of the continent, with foreboding expressed by numerous well-informed and decent people including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray, Melanie Phillips, and Mark Steyn, to name a mere handful.

Their warnings, which should make free peoples everywhere pause for thought, seem to cut no ice with the Australian-based so-called Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI), a high-handed censorious thought-policing organisation about which I've blogged several times before. 

What would appear to be its increasing focus on right-wing "hate speech" seems to be borne out by a recent article by the OHPI's CEO (and, whisper it softly, sole staffer?) Dr Andre Oboler on the Jewish website J-Wire:

'After Charlottesville American attitudes on Hate Speech are shifting....

The gap between violent extremism and hate speech has narrowed after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017.

The rally which became violet, ultimately led to the vehicular attack by a 20 year-old far-right activist which killed Heather D. Heyer and injured 19 others. President Trump’s refusal to call out right-wing extremism following the attack became a tipping point in American attitudes to hate speech....'

The article goes on to explain that under new rules Twitter has closed a number of right-wing accounts, but those of 'military or government entities' will not be affected.

'The new rules seek to “reduce the amount of abusive behaviour and hateful conduct”, a move which still seeks to create some sort of distinction between “speech” and “action” even as it enlarged the scope of what crosses the line into unacceptable activity on Twitter. A spokesperson explain that, “If an account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human, it will be permanently suspended”. When it comes to Tweets, hateful imagery will be hidden and users will have to click a button to see it. Such imagery includes “logos, symbols, or images whose purpose is to promote hostility and malice against others based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin”. This sends the message that those promoting hostility and malice against minorities can continue to use Twitter for this purpose provided their account isn’t clearly setup exclusively for this purpose....

Finding hate symbols like swastikas or racial slurs with such approaches is straight forward as the context in which they appear seldom matters. Other hate speech which uses more general language is harder to detect....

Twitter has taken an important step to tackle online hate, but there is a growing concern that rather than tackling the online hate which has the most impact on society, the focus is instead drifting to those forms of hate which are the easiest and cheapest to find. If we want to stop the spread of hate, we need to do better.'

Unfortunately, the OHPI has become known for meddlesome mischievousness and double standards.

Take a look at its latest report, concerning the recent Flinders Street outrage in central Melbourne shortly before Christmas, in which a driver mowed down pedestrians in cold blood (one of the badly injured, a gentleman of 83, has since died).  

Notice how, referring to a number of tweets by "islamophobe" Amy Mek, the OHPI seeks to downplay or even deny the oppression of women in Islam  (Dr Oboler abhors "islamophobia"):

And notice how the OHPI is now (is that the royal "we" its CEO is using, incidentally?) liaising with the police, already, in the state of Victoria (where violent crime by youths of South Sudanese background is spiralling out of control) in thraldom to political correctness:

No wonder so many people abhor the Online Hate Prevention Institute's meddlesome mischievousness and double standards.

We see this abhorrence in the three comments that Dr Oboler's J-Wire article attracted:

1.

Do we really want a privatised censorship?

Do you all understand that one day pro-Israel speech could be deemed “hate speech”?

2.

Sorry, but I don’t agree with “hate speech laws”. What a person thinks doesn’t hurt anyone: what they say can lead to someone being hurt, but it is what they DO that can hurt people, and that is punishable by law, as it should be.

I have seen many good people hurt by these “hate speech laws” simply for telling us news we are not hearing, and expressing a concern for the safety of innocent people – and that often includes Jewish people. To be labelled “far right” these days is merely to be proud of your race, faith and country, and unwilling to throw it all away for some disastrous Utopian fantasy.

Freedom of speech is the most important asset we have, and we must not sacrifice any of it in the false hope of protecting innocent people. Rather, we should meet any hateful speech we hear with a deafening crescendo of disapproval and ridicule.

3.

Readers may well not be aware that Dr Oboler is the self-appointed censor of online “Hate Speech.” What is “hate speech”? No one knows – it is whatever he thinks “hate speech” is. I and others have repeatedly asked him how he defines “hate speech,” and he has consistently refused to answer. In matters of defining “hate speech,” he is the prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and executioner, and the court proceedings are secret. Sounds like North Korea? You bet it does. And how many examples of, say, leftists calling Israel “genocidal” or “an Apartheid State” has he zapped? How many online Islamic sites denouncing the Jews in anti-semitic terms has he zapped? Maybe zero is the answer? Only right-wingers need apply. Frankly, if it is a choice between some ratbag online nonsense and a self-appointed private censor answerable to no one, the latter is the more dangerous. America has a First Amendment to protect its people from self-appointed censors.

 Yep.  As someone once said, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" ...

Hot & Heavy in Old London Town: "The Whole of Palestine is Occupied!" (videos)

If I'm not mistaken, the well-built chap who tells the beautifully spoken lady behind the camera at around 0:54 on the first of these three videos "Go away! I know you!" is Kamel Hawwash, professor of engineering at Birmingham University, and decidedly not a fan of what we hear a ranting speaker term "the Zionist Entity". A London bobby is also not too keen on the lady's presence, as she films anti-Israel protesters bussed in from the West Midlands outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square at the weekend.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3m5IAIz_mQ

To quote the uploader:

C4T Campaign4Truth

Published on Jan 7, 2018

On Saturday 6 January 2018, a Shabbat lunchtime, West Midlands Mosques decided to bus peoiple down to demonstrate outside the American Embassy at London's Grosvenor Square against President Trump's decision to honour the US committment to move its Israeli Embassy to Israel's capiral city, Jerusalem. Filming there we found antisemitism again masked as "anti-zionism", that ruse to hide race hate against Jews. The worst culprits were the Jews and the Imams on that podium speaking to a scant audience of not more than 100.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94b3N814L2g&t=28s

Campaign4Truth

Published on Jan 7, 2018

Part two of our day at Grosvenor Square that hosted a pile of Jew hating travellers from the West Midlands mosques to propagate their hatred in London, amongst them a couple of Jews spreading antisemitism to an audience lapping it up whilst clearly despising those two Jews for being, well, Jews. Hear our interview with a well indoctrinated courier with a background infashmir, that place in Asia that experiences a similar India/Pakistani struggle to that of Israel/Gaza. You'd think these people would be protesting for their own kinfolk instead of raising hate against Jews, based in a total lack of any knowledge of the history and background.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPea1gZNnXk

C4T Campaign4Truth

Published on Jan 7, 2018

Part 3 of our day at Grosvenor Square yesterday with more Jew hate than is good for the psyche. Imagine if we were saying this in reverse about that bunch of bigots who bussed down from the West Midlands to insult Jews with impunity!