Butterfield 'ate

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:

An Australian Medico's "Cruel Misrepresentation" of the Shoah

Few remarks regarding the Holocaust can be as frightfully disgusting as those made by a senior Australian doctor, Paul Bauert, comparing the plight of (immigration queue-jumping) "asylum seekers" at present detained offshore, and Jews incarcerated in the Auschwitz death camp.

As reported in The Australian newspaper,

'The paediatric representative from Australia’s peak medical body has suggested asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru are in a worse situation than Jews in Auschwitz because people who knew they were going to be gassed by the Nazis “found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening”.

Paul Bauert of the Australian Medical Association [pictured]... said the mental health of detainees in Manus and Nauru had deteriorated because there was no certainty about their future.

 “The main reason for the impairment of mental health — as Viktor Frankl the psychiatrist from Auschwitz described very well in his book Man’s Search for Meaning — the main problem that these people have is a lack of meaning, a lack of any end to what is going on, a lack of certainty,” Dr Bauert told Sky News.

 “And this more than anything causes severe mental health damage. Even those who finally knew they were about to be condemned to the gas chamber at least found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening.” ....'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjA7bxH4uRE

He's been shamed into tweeting an apology of sorts for his foul comparison: 

“My comments this morning were intended to reflect the writings of an eminent Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz. The words I used did not convey the complexity of what he wrote. My deep apologies for causing offence. Auschwitz was a humanitarian disgrace."

In a Sky News interview with Peta Credlin, Peter Wertheim, joint CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), has robustly condemned Bauert's odious remarks, terming them "an offensive dumbing down of history," "extremely cruel to the few Holocaust survivors we have left", and "a cruel misrepresentation of what these people actually went through".

And the ECAJ has not surprisngly and quite justifiably made a formal protest to the Australian Medical Association, terming Bauert's apology on Twitter "inadequate".

As Dr David Adler, president of the non-leftist Australian Jewish Association (AJA), has written:
 :

"I worked for the AMA as Deputy Medical Secretary when it was a quality professional organisation in the past. That’s where I learnt something about policy and advocacy. I put my heart and soul into it and have a sense of gratitude for the experience and contacts gained during my time there. So it is distressing to see the decline of this once prestigious and respected body."

Declares the AJA:

"Trying to conflate an analogy with the Holocaust to support the "Medivac" Bill of Dr Kerryn Phelps is a shameful disgrace.

The Holocaust was a systematic attempt on an industrial scale to exterminate an entire people. Whatever your view of off-shore detention, it is nothing of the sort and to link the two is as ridiculous as it is offensive.

Dr Paul Bauert for the Australian Medical Association (AMA) even suggests that Holocaust victims found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening as they were taken to gas chambers. He is grossly in error - many Holocaust victims were deliberately misled with the gas chambers disguised as shower blocks.. Even the Zyclon B gas was dispersed through shower heads.

AJA President Dr David Adler is formerly AMA Deputy Medical Secretary. He adds "It saddens me to see a once presitigous and highly professional body fracture into an ill informed political activist group. No wonder AMA membership has declined dramatically and only a minority of doctors belong".

We note that Australian security experts have warned that the Medivac Bill would result in people who present risks to others entering Australia.

Would the AMA be comfortable with the restoration of people smuggling and its associated death toll at sea? What of potential victims of those who are a security risk gaining entry? How does it reconcile this with the mission to preserve life?

The AMA stands condemned for using the Holocaust as leverage for a political agenda and meddling in matters of border security."

"A Killer is Coming to Town" (videos) (Updated)

In Old London Town, more public ventilating by the anti-Israel brigade.

First, in this video by our old mate Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMEEbKuqKCc)

Now, complete with an introduction invoking Holocaust Memorial Day, this venomous anti-Trump, anti-Netanyahu speech by bling-wearing socialist David Rosenberg, one of the Jewish Socialists associated with that odious Roll of Shame I blogged about earlier: 

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9pfXtc1dtQ)

Hear that appreciative crowd roar!

Funny peculiar (not funny ha ha) that those who use sexism as a stick with which to beat Donald Trump, and who loudly affirm their opposition to"fascism," overlook the institutionalised misogyny of Islam and the threats to society posed by Islamofascism.  Innit.

Update: Footage from the Israel Advocacy Movement.  Those guys at the end, singing Hatikvah and flaunting the Israeli flag with a flourish, I like the cut of their jib!

 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6SvM2hZsl8)

To quote the uploader:

Published on Feb 7, 2017

"Here's some footage from yesterday's anti-Israel protest. Gone are the days when thousands of antisemites would parade down Whitehall screaming for the destruction of Israel. These days the best they can rustle up is a few ageing leftists, outraged idiots and antisemitic Islamists to scream (in a barely audible tone) for the destruction of Israel.Europe is waking up to the truth that the left's obsession with Israel is antisemitic. This dear PSC, is why your ranks were swelled by "ageing" leftists - you're an antisemitic relic from another generation. Your obsessive hatred of the world's only Jewish state does not wash with the younger generation... we see through your bigoted propaganda.We would like to thank Sussex Friends Of Israel and the ZF UK - Zionist Federation for organising such a successful welcoming for the Prime Minister of Israel on such short notice. We would also like to thank the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for yet again showing us their true colours."

Meanwhile, in Stoke-on-Trent, allegations of leftwing antisemitism (Hat tip: Ian G.)

This Bad Taste Rosemary Is For Remembrance (Not)

In the language of flowers rosemary (ros marinus, to give it its Latin title, meaning "dew of the sea") signifies "remembrance".

Ophelia, in Shakespeare's Hamlet,  says to Laertes:

Look at my flowers. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembering. Please remember, love. And there are pansies, they’re for thoughts.

Sprigs of the popular herb are often placed on official war memorials at commemorative ceremonies. 

However, a British Labour councillor in Nottingham named Rosemary has not exactly lived up to her name.

Despite a certain photo of the railway line leading to Auschwitz being one of the most iconic symbols of remembrance of the Shoah, this Rosemary tweeted this, in response to outrage following her mockup of a Conservative Party poster:

This is the Conservative poster:

 And this is what Rosemary did with it:

It's reported inter alia on Right Of Centre here that

'Cllr Healy, who is a prolific tweeter of anti-Conservative Propaganda, retweeted the mocked up poster early yesterday morning. The poster compares the Left’s extreme ideas of Conservative party policy to the Holocaust. The poster has replaced the long green country road going off into the horizon on the real Conservative poster with the infamous site of the railway leading into the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The poster also has a new strap line of ‘More people on zero hours. More tax cuts for the rich. No more NHS.’

It is estimated that 1.1 million people, many of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz as part of the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’.

Garry Hickton the Conservative PPC [prospective parliamentary candidate] for Nottingham East, which contains Mapperley, exclusively told Right of Centre “This is disgusting I know Polish and Jewish people who will be extremely disgusted by this. I work for the Coop and they have ethical policies. I will ask them to remove funding from the Councillor concerned, The Coop will not want to have any association with the Labour councillor concerned.”The Conservative Group Leader on Nottingham City Council, Cllr Georgina Culley, was equally shocked by Cllr Healy’s comments. She reported to Right Of Centre “Councillor Rosemany Healy has retweeted this image and presumably believed it to be funny. It is not in any way funny, this trivialises the horrors of the holocaust and I think Councillor Healy and her party should be ashamed. The City Council should also act to distance itself from the perpetuation of these tweets, such remarks are offensive and a public representative should know better.”'

Councillor Healy has now been suspended from her party, but there are demands that she should resign her seat, or be expelled:

 'James Spencer, Chair of Nottingham Conservatives commented: “I’m absolutely astounded that an elected representative in Nottingham would share such a disturbing and sinister image.

“To say it is vile is an understatement, the Labour Party in Nottingham should deal with this action with the severity it deserves. She should not just be suspended, she should lose her seat.”'

 See here and here