Western Weasels Mark the "Naqba" (videos)

BDS Quebec, with a gaggle of Neturei Karta nutjobs, out on the streets demonising Israel:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9w1ppuaeGg

And in Ireland, Israel-haters with familiar chants:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blGF5QWsplY

Lentin's Loathsome "Elegaic J'Accuse"

Born into a Christian family in Lebanon, Professor Ghassan Hage of Melbourne, whom we've met before on this blog in connection with his petition against Israel of a few years ago, co-written with Sydney academic John Docker, and his on-going pro-BDS stance, is highly critical of white colonial settlement in countries such as Australia, which appears to inform his attitude to Israel.

Sometimes his indictment of white colonial settlement can appear so harsh as to give the impression, rightly or wrongly, of reverse racism.

See, for instance, this poetic contribution of his on social media:

Born in Haifa in 1944, Associate Professor Ronit Lentin of Dublin is one of a number of Israel-hating  academics  from Eretz/Medinat Israel resident in Britain and Ireland.  Her name appears here as one of the endorsers of "The One State Declaration" of 2007 authored by Ilan Pappe and others, which if implemented would end Israel's existence, and her anti-Israel activism is well-known.

Ghassan Hage's poem (what she calls his 'elegaic J'Accuse') has inspired her to write one of her own, adapted from "white colonial Australia to Palestine," as she puts it:

We stole the lands of another people but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We expelled 800,000 of the owners of the land, renamed their villages and settled our own people in them but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We uprooted their trees and planted European conifers to cover the ruins of their depopulated villages, which they are not allowed to settle but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We massacred whole villages, tortured their men, raped their women and beat their children but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We bombed their cities, demolished their homes and built concrete walls to separate them from each other but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We installed hundreds of checkpoints preventing the owners of the land from getting to hospital to give birth or get treatment but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We started war after war outside the non-declared borders of our state, leaving hundred of thousands homeless, claiming self defence but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We put the owners of the land under military government, enlisted them as collaborators and informers, and controlled their movement and freedom of expression but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We put thousands of the owners of the land in prison and hundreds in administrative detention without trial but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We build our settlements on their lands while preventing them from tilling their fields and picking their olives but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We allowed our illegal settlers to beat their children on their way to school and to take over their homes but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We kept thousands of citizens in 'unrecognised villages' without electricity, water, roads or schools but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We extra-judicially execute the owners of the land, arrest their children in dawn raids and try them in military courts but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We lock up asylum seekers whose cases we don't process in concentration camps away from our towns, into some of which they cannot enter but that's not who we are we are better than this.
We deny the owners of the land the memory of their catastrophe but that's not who we are we are better than this.
You see we are Holocaust survivors, and their land had been promised to us by our god and those doubting our right to expropriate, kill, settle, imprison, shoot, bomb, torture are antisemites.

 Demonising, and demonic, stuff, eh?
 

"BDS is Under Attack in Ireland"

Our Israel-hating chums in the Emerald Isle, home to some particularly vociferous examples of the Israel-hating fraternity, are fuming.

As reported here:

'The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign said it feels vulnerable following a decision by Bank of Ireland to close its bank accounts in the Republic and in Northern Ireland....

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Group has had accounts with Bank of Ireland since it was first established in 2001.
It said it was first contacted about this issue by the bank in July with a series of questions including what the funds in the account were used for and if it transferred any money to Palestine and if so to whom.

 The Campaign's treasurer Martin O'Quigley said it fully answered the bank's questions and provided it with a copy of its constitution and of its audited accounts for 2015.

It said most of its funds are spend in Ireland raising awareness of Palestinian issues.

The only money or aid it sends to Palestine is to a factory in the West Bank which manufactures traditional Palestinian scarves which the campaign buys as solidarity items.

But it said Bank of Ireland informed it that it does not fit the bank's appetite for risk as Palestine is deemed to be a high-risk country....

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Group has opened new accounts with AIB [Allied Irish Banks] but said it feels vulnerable that a bank could withdraw facilities without what it believes to be any good reason.

It is considering an appeal to the Banking Ombudsman. 

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald branded the decision by Bank of Ireland as "outrageous"....'

 Meanwhile, the ISPC  have issued a statement on social media:

' #BDS is under attack in Ireland: As you may have heard on RTE Radio's This Week program  the Bank of Ireland have closed the accounts of the IPSC - after 15 years of banking with them - and not given us a proper reason, merely citing "risk".

Needless to say, this has had a damaging effect on our ability to finance ourselves through loss of time and income, and on our ability to organise in defence of Palestinian rights. It's difficult to escape the conclusion that this attack on our ability to bank is a politically motivated measure to silence a human rights organsiation that campaigns for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it fulfills its obligations under international law (a campaign the Irish government views as entirely legitimate). Such closures of accounts of BDS-supporting organisations have occurred all over Europe, in France, Germany, Austria and Britain.

The closure has of course had an adverse effect on our finances - and we ask you to please consider making a regular subscription to our help us in our "risky" work advocating for freedom, justice and equality for the people of Palestine."

For Martin O'Quigley, see this mind-boggling rant of his a year ago, in which, inter alia, he declares that Gaza will be "unliveable by 2020".

 To quote the uploader:

"Martin O'Quigley, Chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign spoke at the demonstration in solidarity with refugees and migrants in Dublin on Saturday 12th September 2015. Mr. O'Quigley was invited to speak about the situation facing Palestinian refugees in particular, having been denied their right of return to their homes by Israel for almost seven decades.

Many of those fleeing war, terror, repression and hardship in the Middle East and Africa are Palestinians – some are refugees for a second or third time. The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is proud to endorse this demonstration calling on the Irish government to do more for refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe via dangerous journey in which thousands of people have died. In many cases either Western intervention, or Western indifference, has caused the crises which have led to the creation of the problems faced by these people.

 Therefore it’s not enough to merely take in those seeking better lives, the Irish government must seek to remedy the root causes, including supporting sanctions on Israel until it respects international law, ends it occupation of Palestine and allows the millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, a right denied them for almost 70 years." [Emphasis added]

On such arrant nonsense and misinformation and ill-will does the anti-Israel cause rest.

Look at the antisemitism contained in the comments on a report regarding the (no great friend to Israel) Irish president's praise of Shimon Peres here

Despicably,  taking an ill-deserved swipe at Peres (in the Irish Times on 30 September) was Dublin-based ex-pat Israeli academic Ronit Lentin, a known Israel-basher.

'Sir, – Israel’s former president Shimon Peres was anything but a “symbol of hope and reconciliation in the Middle East” (Editorial, September 29).

Deeply involved in the Zionist settler colonial enterprise in Palestine from its inception, Peres was charged with establishing the Israeli military and air industries (not its “defence industry” as some commentators call it), as well as Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.

Peres was responsible for persuading France and Britain to attack Egypt in 1956, an imperialist war, not an Israeli response to an existential threat as argued at the time.

He was instrumental in instigating the 1967 war, and, as a member of the ruling (socialist) Mapai party, was one of the architects of the settlement project.

More specifically, Peres ordered the kidnapping of the whistle-blowing nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu and gave the order to massacre the Palestinians sheltering in the UN camp in Qana, Lebanon. Peres later claimed he didn’t know that people were hiding in the UN camp, but eyewitnesses said this was a lie and that Israel, which had occupied Qana in the Lebanon invasion of 1982, had a video of the camp and knew exactly what it was doing.

As an Israeli citizen I take no pride in Shimon Peres, a war criminal who should have been prosecuted rather than awarded the by now meaningless Nobel Peace Prize. – Yours, etc,...'

Odious stuff.

Black, Red & Emerald

Thank goodness for the organisation Irish4Israel.

They provide a welcome and necessary antidote to the inexorable vilification peddled by such types as the dramatis personae in this 24 minutes long documentary, made and presented by a former Press TV hack, Hassan Alkatib.

It does shed light on the question why Irish republican types hate Israel as much as they have traditionally hated their imperialist occupier, Great Britain.

In Ireland's Parliament, Talk of Israeli "Terrorists"

Irish President Higgins pictured a few years ago

The Trotsykite chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement (we all know what such movements are often synonyms for, of course, and this one is true to form, targeting the United States and its allies and interests) Richard Boyd Barrett, born  in November 1967, is an extreme example of a member of the generations that grew up after the Six Day War and have learned to perceive Israel only as a "military occupier" with no empathy whatever for the dire situation in which Israel has found itself since its foundation due to Arab rejectionists nor appreciation for the humanitarian efforts and breakthroughs wrought by the embattled little Jewish State.


On 9 June in Ireland's Parliament, in which he sits for Dún Laoghaire, he spewed out invective against Israel, cherry-picking unrepresentative firebrand statements attributed to certain Israelis and using them in a shamelessly distorted attempt to demonise the Israeli government and the Israel position as a whole.

This is rich, considering Mr Barrett's apparent support for Hamas as suggested by, for instance, this news item from 2009 which shows him attending an Islamic event in Ireland's capital and questioning Israel's very right to exist:

'Pro-Hamas speakers at a fundraising event held ... in Dublin at the weekend argued that the recent violence in Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, was a “victory” because it put the Middle East conflict back on the international agenda and galvanised Muslims worldwide.

The Al-Aqsa Festival, which was headlined “Gaza Victory: The Road to Al-Quds”, drew hundreds of people to the RDS [Royal Dublin Society] Concert Hall on Saturday.

The event, organised by the Palestinian Rights Institute – a body established several years ago by Palestinians living in Ireland, was covered by a TV crew from Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language channel.

Speakers included Azzam Tamimi, the Palestinian director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, and Sheikh Yousef al Baz, a Muslim cleric from the West Bank.

Speaking in Arabic, Sheikh al Baz said the January conflict between Israel and Hamas had “revived the issue of Palestine throughout the world after it was almost dead”, and it had “restored to every Muslim his honour and dignity”. He argued that the war had proved that “resistance is the only way, and not negotiation”.

Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by the EU and Washington.

Sheikh al Baz’s speech prompted shouts of “Allahu Akbar” from the audience, drawn mostly from the Muslim community. “We supported the jihad and we will do so until Allah grants us victory,” the cleric said. “And that day is not far.”

Pro-Hamas paraphernalia, including DVDs featuring armed Hamas fighters and Sheikh Yassin, the group’s spiritual leader who was assassinated by Israel in 2004, were on sale at the event.

Mr Tamimi, who has written a number of books on Hamas, railed against the US and Europe for insisting that the organisation must meet certain conditions, including recognising Israel’s right to exist, before any engagement occurs.

“Once you recognise Israel, you say to the world that the rape of my country and my people is acceptable,” Mr Tamimi said. “It is a crime against humanity to recognise Israel’s right to exist because that would legitimise the crimes against humanity Israel has committed.” [Emphasis added, here and below]

Had Hamas agreed to meet the conditions laid down by the international community, he said, “they would no longer have my support”.

Hamas, Mr Tamimi argued, was “an alternative to those who sold out” and it “represents our dream” as the “true representative of the Palestinian voice”.

“When the world opposes Hamas, it opposes Palestinian self-determination,” he said, adding that the international community must recognise the “legitimacy Hamas has gained through resistance and elections”.

Branding the EU as “cowards” for not engaging with Hamas, Mr Tamimi added: “Hamas is who the world should be talking to if it is serious about solving the Palestinian issue.”

Later, Mr Tamimi drew applause when he praised insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He said he disagreed with the Taliban’s views on certain matters, but added: “With regard to their attitudes to liberation I say ‘Long live the Taliban’.”

Richard Boyd Barrett of the Irish Anti-War Movement told attendees that it was “entirely legitimate” to argue that “Israel has no right to exist” because “it is not a normal state but a state built on violence, oppression and apartheid”.

“We must convince people that [Israel] has no right to exist as long as it denies rights to Palestinians,” he added.

Organisers told The Irish Times that the €7,000 raised at the event would be given to Human Appeal International, a registered charity with offices in Manchester.

Human Appeal International was one of 36 organisations banned by the Israeli government last year due to alleged links with Hamas.'

 The "Taoiseach" to whom his remarks are addressed is the prime minister of Ireland, Enda Kelly, who as requested by Barrett gives his reaction to the statements as quoted:

"The Demonization Of Israel Through False Or Simplistic Images Of The Struggle For Israel's Independence Has Penetrated Right To The Heart Of The pro-Palestinian Soul"

Wrong at a rally (today): where did this Sydney kid learn that fashion?!

Lapping up Lies (I use the capital L advisedly) is, whether through naive ignorance and gullibility or sheer malice, a widespread characteristic of the West's leftist Israel-haters, whether it be on the origins of the Jewish People, on the Israeli response to sustained aggression on its borders, or on the origins of the Jewish State.

 The words in my header are those of that great Irish friend of Israel, Professor Denis MacEoin, who writes, inter alia:

'Anti-Israel propaganda has been driven from the start by lies distortions and a massive rewriting of history. Blame for everything is piled on the Jews, while the crimes of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, are exonerated.

The American Vice-Consul, along with British officers and the British High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, stated at the time that the Arabs were encouraging flight while the Jews were doing all in their power to prevent it.

The Hagana's behavior was the exact opposite of "ethnic cleansing." Once order was restored, Arabs were appointed to key posts and part of the supplies originally earmarked for the Jewish inhabitants were given freely to the Arabs.....

Anti-Israel rhetoric in Ireland is commonplace, and the press regularly prints diatribes against the Jewish state. A particularly galling example of this occurred when the Irish Examiner, a newspaper with a long history and a claimed readership of 189,000 per day (but a circulation of about 37,000), published an op-ed piece on July 31 by a little-known journalist, Victoria White, the wife of Eamonn Ryan, leader of the Green Party in the Irish parliament, the Dáil.

Entitled, "We are washing our hands of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians", this piece was an uncompromising diatribe, a spittle-flecked assault on Israel that dragged out the usual false claims of "ethnic cleansing" during Israel's War of Independence in 1947 and 1948.

Ms. White seems either to have stumbled on or been given an infamous and widely discredited book by an anti-Israel Israeli "historian," Ilan Pappé. His book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), has long been castigated as a non-history in which facts are distorted, important information disregarded, and only one side of the story told. There is no space here to write a review of Pappé's fiction, but it is the sort of book, like the equally discredited, totally fraudulent "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," that poorly educated pro-Palestinian activists revel in without setting eyes on other histories by far better historians than Pappé.

It is obvious that White has not read anything else. She does not quote even once from any of the major historical studies of this crucial period, such as Efraim Karsh's deeply-researched Palestine Betrayed (2010) or Benny Morris's archive-based re-evaluation, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War. White thinks she knows all the answers. She does not.Now, an op-ed like White's in a small Irish newspaper may be small enough beer in itself, yet it is important to comment on what it stands for. White may be taken to stand for that vast brood of anti-Israel writers, journalists, and hacks who cobble together a warped narrative out of one or two books and a couple of pamphlets by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, while quite happily dismissing professional historians who work on archival material from across a mountain of sources.

Riight at a rally (one of Mudar's current tweets)

The demonization of Israel through false or simplistic images of the struggle for Israel's independence has penetrated right to the heart of the pro-Palestinian soul. Like most amateurs, White never checks or cross-checks her sources. She takes sides without any mastery of the facts, and fetishizes Palestinian victimhood as if it were the golden standard by which all moral issues must be judged. So her diatribe merits a rational, historical refutation....

Anti-Israel propaganda has been driven from the start by lies, distortions, and a massive re-writing of history. Blame for everything is piled on the Jews, while the crimes of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, are exonerated. Israel was and is a legally established state, and the 1947-48 war was initiated, sustained, and fought as a jihad by Arabs in an attempt to kill as many Jews as possible two years after the end of the Holocaust.

The charges against Israel — just like those being made today over Gaza — must be refuted one by one through the judicious use of accurate historical facts, an emphasis on the morality of Israel's struggle to survive, an equal stress on the immorality of those who seek to wipe the tiny nation out, and a firm refutation of charges brought by the ignorant and the gullible.'

Read all of the professor's fine article here

As for "Apartheid" ...  Spot a familiar face in this Palestinian wedding crowd?

Bigotry With An Irish Brogue (includes video)

In this video uploaded to YouTube by the praiseworthy group Irish4Israel, a hate-filled BDS bully, cheered on by similar bigots, directs an expletive-ridden tirade at Professor Alan Johnson during the latter's address against BDS at the University of Northern Ireland, Galway on 5 March.

Despite the best efforts of honourable individuals such as the professor, the following motion was passed the following day by 1,954 votes to 1054, which means that NUIG Students' Union is the first students' union in the Emerald Isle to uphold the odious BDS campaign:

“That NUI Galway Students’ Union actively supports the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the State of Israel.”

Watch the results being announced and the jubilation of the bigots, with references to "reactionary fascists", "apartheid", and other canards; those who've watched other videos featuring anti-Israel activity in Ireland will recognise a familiar voice towards the end:

Needless to say, Israel's arch-critics within and without Ireland are similarly cock-a-hoop. 

Martin O'Quigley, who chairs the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), widely seen as one of the most vicious of such organisations, is quoted thus:

"This is an historic victory for those who stand in solidarity with Palestinians living under the heel of Israel’s racist, apartheid system of occupation and colonisation. The IPSC salutes all those students who stood with the oppressed on the right side of history and endorsed this measure, despite a stream of venomous anti-Palestinian propaganda and dirty tricks being injected into the debate from off-campus forces, including the Israeli Embassy in Ireland’s failed attempts at using social media to influence the outcome.Particular credit is due to the NUIG Palestine Solidarity Society whose hard work lay behind the tabling and passing of the motion. We hope other universities and ITs in Ireland will now follow suit in establishing such Palestine solidarity societies and seeking to table similar motions. We cannot think of a better way to round off this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week in Ireland."

 Crows a representative the NUIG PSS:

"This is a landmark victory in Ireland for the growing international campaign to boycott Israel until it complies with international law and ends its illegal occupation of Palestine, and no doubt NUIG SU is just the first of many SUs in Ireland to endorse such a campaign.

NUIG Students decided that, in the footsteps of the successful international boycott campaign against South Africa’s apartheid regime in the past, we will not be silent towards international racism and colonialism in our own time. Alongside promoting awareness of the BDS movement more broadly, NUI Galway SU will now stand unambiguously against instances of institutional collusion between NUI Galway and Israeli oppression ..."

 Read (and see) more here 

In Dublin, BDSers Protest "Made in Israel" Film Festival

More talk of apartheid and boycott from this array of usual suspects, including Dr David Landy, a Jewish academic, who declares: "[A]n Israeli state film festival isn’t acceptable to have when [Israel] is attacking every single aspect of Palestinian life, culture and the economy."

From his Trinity College Dublin staff profile we learn, inter alia, that "His academic work is informed by and informs his involvement in solidarity work, and he has served (2009-2010) as the chair of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign...."

Roger Waters Endorses Teaching Pack On "Israel & Palestine" For Irish Schools

At its launch at the Royal Irish Academy the aged rocker tells his audience that the document, issued by lobby group SADAKA, the Ireland Palestine Alliance (which among its other objectives aims at the return of the "all Palestinian refugees" that would of course mark Israel's demise as a Jewish State), would "kick up a big stink in certain quarters" ...

And so it should, if only for carrying the notoriously mendacious four-map set ...

"We Don't Need No Thought Control," huh?

See more here

And as noted here, Palestinian activist Dr Mustafa Barghouthi is in Dublin this week under SADAKA's auspices, and will meet foreign affairs minister Eamonn Gilmore, as well as participating in discussions with academics, trade unionists and NGOs.

He'll also be addressing a public meeting  "How Israel sabotaged the Two State Solution".

Incidentally, for a taste of Hibernian hostility to Israel in a documentary made by a former Press TV hack who tweets hatred of Israel see here

Old Irish Trot Slugs A Left Hook (Or Three) At Israel

An old Trotskyite from the Emerald Isle, where hatred of Israel is particularly vicious, especially among those who support and supported the Republican cause against the British, has perniciously denounced the Zionist Entity in an op-ed in The Irish Times, entitled "It is the everyday harassment that shows the hatred behind official Israeli ideology".

Battle of Bogside veteran Eamonn McCann credits the influence of a deceased Irish journalist called Mary Holland, who (though he doesn't volunteer the fact) just happens to have been his partner and the mother of two of his children:

"As soon as you walked out of the hotel, she recalled, you could see something was terribly wrong. Arabs shrinking back on the pavements to allow Jews to pass, being literally, physically pushed out of their way if they didn’t move fast enough, and, worst of all in her account, the Arabs’ heads-down acceptance of it all." 

McCann (read more about him here), who also cites the influence of, among others, the repellent Tony Cliff (born in Eretz Israel as Yigael Gluckstein) writes of "the settled hatred that lies at the heart of Israel’s official ideology" and confidently predicts Israel's "downfall in the end".

Courtesy: Jean Vercors

I guess, then, he and his ilk will be glad to see the back of "settled hatred" such as this and  this

And this:

More Zionist reflections on the old Irish Trot here and here

"Axis Of Evil": The Blarney & The Bitterness (video)

Here's a nasty little newly uploaded video showing snippets of sheer hatred by Irish extremists for both Britain and for Israel.

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has the reputation of being the most extreme in (if I may use the term) the British Isles.  Need we be surprised, when we see the hateful sentiments here?

As for a true Axis of Evil, that's been identified by this Lebanese politician, who condemns Hezbollah as an occupying force in his country, and akin to Nazism and Fascism (hat tip: reader Rita).

Of course, many Israel-haters in the West proudly declare of themselves: "We are all Hezbollah now".  Figures.

Apartheid 101 (videos)

Such animations may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they're undeniably well-intentioned:

Meanwhile, this kind of thing (which demonstrates why Irish4Israel, the subject of my last post but one, is to be welomed and supported) has been in full swing around the Israel-demonising world:

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes, so while "in" the Emerald Isle let's see what our loquacious old "friend" with the lean and hungry look has been up to lately.  Ah, 'tis more of the same, so it is!

(Drat! I had great expectations of that pigeon in the opening shot ...)