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)
Showing posts with label Dvir Abramovich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dvir Abramovich. Show all posts
In Oz, and beyond, at least 15 minutes of infamy for "comedian" Isaac Butterfield (no, I've never previously heard of him either), who thinks the Shoah is a suitable subject for "comedy".
Melbourne Herald Sun, 22 April 2019
Butterfield claims on his social media accounts that he's been misrepresented in that press report and will duly respond on his "channel".
Meanwhile:
As we read here, Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich said Butterfield should apologise for the comments.
“It’s never OK to spew such hate rhetoric, and Isaac Butterfield should be ashamed for his hideous remarks that crossed all lines and which trampled on the memory of the dead,” he said.
“It is beyond shocking to exploit the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust to generate despicable jokes.
“When you consider that the corpses of those killed with the poison gas were often cremated in ovens, Mr Butterfield’s email response of ‘get out of the oven’ is disturbing and vicious.”
He urged the festival organisers to consider whether he should be given a platform in future.
However, a Melbourne Comedy Festival spokeswoman said performers are able to express their views, even those deemed offensive.
“The festival does not censor artists’ work and the annual event represents the individual views, observations and humour of the artists involved,” the spokeswoman said.
“Melbourne audiences have the intelligence to make calls about the work of various comedians and either support them or hold them to account for their views.”
Mr Butterfield declined to respond to questions by the Herald Sun.
His performance Why So Serious? is said to “explore the PC culture of our ever so changing world — from the good, the bad to the ugly”.
Almost 20,000 people have signed an online petition for him to be elected to the House of Representatives this May to challenge “this crazy left-wing agenda and politically correct world”.
But is the near-annihilation of European Jewry an appropriate subject for levity? Most reasonable people must surely think it monstrous.
On Facebook, in the meantime, beneath a female poster's criticism of Butterfield's Holocaust "humour", fans of Butterfield have written such contemptible comments as these:
Being a well-brought up gal (and also very conscious of the old adage that "pride has a fall") I hate to boast and am not very fond of boastful types.
Nevertheless I'm quietly chuffed that in my blogging career I've had a couple of scoops, so that my keyboard warfare has not been entirely wasted!
One, happening to spot and screen-grab Stephen Sizer's despicable 9/11 tweet shortly after it was posted and sending it to the London Jewish News after the Jewish Chronicle (caught inexplicably napping) in effect told me "Thanks but no thanks".
The rest, of course, thanks to the British Board of Deputies' current excellent president, is history!
Two, bringing this propagandistic play that's on the current VCE curriculum to readers' attention, having, to my amazement, failed to find any mention (much less condemnation) of it in the expected sources.
Now, The Age newspaper has picked up the story, owing to the admirable Dr Dvir Abramovich of the Anti-Defamation Commission in Victoria expressing real and justified concerns.
Needless to say, the Israel-bashers are mounting a counter-attack, including some from, or linked with, a frightful group of leftist as-a-Jews that I won't bother to name.
"There is a well-funded and powerful cottage industry of NGOs, journalists, academics and activists who are crystal clear about their unabashed anti-Israel ideology. The goal of their openly declared war is to damage Israel’s standing in the court of world opinion and to bring about its collapse."
That's the opening paragraph of a typically hard-hitting article written for his regular op-ed column in Australian Jewish News last month by Dr Dvir Abramovich, a prominent Jewish Studies academic at the University of Melbourne, who's also chair of the local B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission.
Later in the article Abramovich justifiably declared:
'Billions of people are manipulated by a tsunami of malicious op-eds, dishonest news items, scurrilous caricatures and disparaging articles that are awash with crude fabrications. Too many adopt the skewed narrative, lock, stock and barrel....
Which brings us to Breaking The Silence (BtS) a radical Israeli NGO, with a budget of nearly four million shekels. Bankrolled mainly by European countries, and foreign entities, it is made up of former Israeli soldiers who are paid to collect anonymous testimonies and evidences of “crimes” so as to prove that Israel is guilty of “intimidation, instilling of fear, and indiscriminate punishment of the Palestinian population.”
In 2009, BtS accepted 75,000 shekels from Oxfam on the condition that it will interview as many soldiers as possible who will confirm the IDF’s “immoral actions”.
Last week, BtS published a new report relating to Operation Protective Edge which accuses the IDF of “indiscriminate fire on civilian targets” and “deliberate mass destruction”.
It has been reported that The Arab Human Rights Fund, which has links to Global jihad and the PFLP, provided BtS with US$300,000 to craft the report. Now Hamas is calling for Israeli “war criminals” to be brought to trial in the International Criminal Court.
Here are some BtS quotes, “Israeli self-defence measures are pretexts for ‘terrorising’ Palestinians”, and “We are the oppressors … we are creating the terror against us basically”. Got it? It’s the fault of terrorist Israel.
Unsurprisingly, reports from BtS (produced in English only for overseas consumption) which depict the IDF as dehumanising, unethical and as the worst serial violator around, are splashed across the international headlines, chipping away at Israel’s image.
BtS is a convenient pipeline, a weapon in the hands of Israel’s assorted haters. By its own admission, BtS is not a “normal human rights organisation”, or as Haaretz correspondent Amos Harel noted, “They have a clear political agenda, which is no longer really covered under the term ‘human rights organisation’.”
BtS deliberately withholds context, and uses misleading headlines and hearsay. There’s no description of the complex situation of fighting armed terrorists hiding in houses, or that the IDF sends leaflets to warn civilians, or that Hamas fired rockets from schools and hospitals, dug tunnels to launch mega-attacks, and used children as human shields.
The infamous Goldstone Report, referenced and thanked a BtS report 27 times, since it aided Goldstone to reach his discredited findings that the IDF “repeatedly opened fire on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them.”
The distorted accusations contained in BtS reports are impossible to verify because the group refuses to hand over their documents, or disclose the identity of those making the complaints, or provide the date or military unit detailed in their accounts, thereby preventing the IDF from investigating the “allegations”.
As part of its propaganda warfare, BtS does global speaking tours, helping to fan the flames of rabid anti-Zionism, and denying Israel the legitimate right to protect its citizens from murder.
For the real story, as told by Israeli soldiers, go to the Facebook page #my_truth.'
The following week, under the title "Breaking my Silence," a squalid defence of BtS appeared in the same paper. It was written by a Tel Aviv-based former student of Dr Abramovich, a young woman named Kate Rosenberg who in Melbourne attended a Jewish day school and Habonim Dror. Inter alia, she fumed:
"Dr Abramovich's words smack of a frightening growing trend in Israel which likens democratic values to being anti-Israel or to suggest that believing in the human rights of African refugees or Palestinians to [sic] being anti-Jewish."
In the current issue of the paper, a leftist in supporting her and BtS shows his naivety in the face of current reality in commending their work "in trying to bring Israel closer to the ideals of the 1948 Declaration of Independence." But then, as another correspondent notes, BtS
"disqualifies itself from acting as an agent for change ... because its work is infested with an ideology that insists, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that only Israel and the occupation are blocking peace, not Palestinian extremism.
Hence, BtS is always quick to defend the rights of Palestinians, but never supports the right of Israel to defend itself from rocket and terror attack....
By highlighting and often inflating out of all proportion a few unfortunate incidents of the sort which are inevitable in any large-scale conflict, BtS sets out to delegitimise the entire IDF and its matters of fighting as inherently immoral in order to further its explicitly political ends...."
That the IDF behaved with commendable restraint in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge has been confirmed by such respected observers as Martin Dempsey (chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff), Michael Shmitt and John Merriam (US military law experts), Colonel Richard Kemp (former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan), and Australian general Jim Molan. The fact that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed was 1:1 (compared to the norm of 3:1 in similar conflicts) underlines that.
In a splendid refutation of Kate Rosenberg's "grossly simplistic, Israel-bashing" piece, Dvir Abramovich writes inter alia:
"Rosenberg knows very well that BtS, which has close to zero electoral and public support in Israel, sends its "star recruits" to tour campuses around the world, unafraid unafraid to spread their animus-filled venom about the IDF. There, they are free to brainwash impressionable students and to contribute to the chilling festival of demonisation....
Campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism [I do wish the Aussie Jewish press would adopt the "antisemitism" spelling - D.A.] and anti-Zionism, and BtS adds dangerous fuel to the spreading fire of intimidation and hostility directed at Jewish students.
Irresponsibly, Rosenberg recycles the libellous Goldstone slander that the IDF indiscriminately fires on highly populated areas in Gaza....
The same soldiers who stand guard at night and risk their lives to ensure that Rosenberg can sleep comfortably, safe and sound, in her bed, are depicted as part of a vicious, murderous military machine....
BtS hurts Israel, empowers the BDS gang, and gives credence to those who want to put Israel on a list, as a recent UN draft report recommended, alongside ISIS, al-Quaeda, the Taliban, Syria and Sudan as an entity that systematically harms children....
Rosenberg speaks of the value of Achvat Amim. Perhaps it's time to show a little solidarity towards her own country. After all, what is the Jewish value of vilifying one's own nation to the delight of its enemies? ...."
