Not Only Fools in April

Paris, 2014: New York Times image

Fools all the year round.

They are leaders and activists, Jewish and non-Jewish, who pussyfoot around the issue of Muslim antisemitism, afraid to call its name.

 American lawyer and political analyst Judith Bergman, citing as her focus example this event, has the measure of  Muslim antisemitism's craven deniers and the consequences of their unwillingness to tell the story like it is:

"The unwillingness to address Islamic Jew hatred at conferences dedicated to exploring the topic of antisemitism does not only represent an astounding pandering to the worst kind of political correctness. It depressingly mirrors the extent to which governments all over the world barely dare to mention the issue of Islamic Jew hatred and supremacism, without performing a little dance of dhimmitude every time they are confronted with the issue, professing that Islam is not the problem.

Most of all, however, the unwillingness of these antisemitism conferences to recognize the Islamic threat against Jews today represents an appalling betrayal of fellow Jews who have fallen victims to Muslim Jew hatred. They send the unmistakable signal to especially European leaders that they can go on pretending that the criminal acts perpetrated against European Jews by local Muslims have nothing to do with Islam and that they should just keep focusing on right wing antisemitism." 

 Read her searing article here

Paris: Edgar Charts A Mindset

It's reported here that Professor Farid Esack of the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, declared in a Facebook post:

“I am not praying for Paris; I am not condemning anyone. Why the hell should I? I had nothing to do with it. I am sickened by the perpetual expectations to condemn. I walk away from your shitty racist and Islamophobic expectations that whenever your chickens come home to roost then I must feign horror. Stop supporting and funding terror outfits, get out of other people’s lands and continents, stop outlawing peaceful resistance such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, to occupations, abandon your cultural imperialism, destroy your arms industry that provides the weapons that kill hundreds of thousands of others every year. The logic is quite simple: When you eat, it’s stupid to expect that no shit will ever come out from your body. Yes, I feel sorry for the victims on whom the shit falls. But, bloody hell, own it; it’s yours!” 

 What he said is not extraordinary, of course.

Listen, for instance, to a British Muslim spokesman on the BBC's "Moral Maze" program here

Note how quickly Israel is mentioned.

 Blogger Edgar Davidson has provided a helpful guide to the mindset, introducing it thus:

"In the light of the Paris attacks many people have been bemused at multiple contradictions in what many Muslims (and leftists) have been saying. For example, on one hand many believe Mossad carried out the attacks, but on the other hand they also believe the attacks are the inevitable result of Muslims being 'persecuted' by Israel and other Western countries.  So, here is a reminder of a simple chart which clearly shows how rational many Muslims (and leftists) really are about politics."

 See his chart here

This article, entitled "America: Your Solidarity with Paris is Embarrassingly Misguided," has been warmly recommended on Facebook by some of the usual suspects, and contains the line "I mourn for Palestinians, whose land was usurped — and whose lives and infrastructure and families and sense of security and HOMES are under siege and occupation by an illegal and actively terrorist State."

Gee, the Left are the race obsessives!  And reverse racists to boot.

What a load of ordure somebody called Lulu Nunn deposited in The Independent the other day, forgetting that Paris is not an exclusively (whisper it) a white city.

More ordure here

If these people are so concerned with showing sympathy for non-Europeans they could begin by showing sympathy with Israel, where a very large proportion of the population is of Mizrahi heritage.  After all, look at all the terrorism that the Israelis have had to endure since 1948: statistics  here.  (Hat tip: Ian G)

Manic Preacher: "Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews!" (video)

At an Al-Aqsa mosque rally late in October, one of those manic preachers we've become used to seeing preaches genocide:

To quote the uploader and translator, the inestimable Memri.org,

'Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian preacher Ali Abu Ahmad said: "Allah willing, the Caliphate will be the one to liberate Jerusalem very soon, after annihilating the rulers of the wicked [Arab] mini-states,... and it will annihilate the Jewish entity." He further called upon Allah to "annihilate the Jews" and to "bring the whip of torment cracking down upon them."...'

In Gaza, Olde Tyme Preacher Spreads The Love (video)

Don't these guys ever modulate their voices?

To quote the uploader, Memri TV:
'In an October 23 Friday sermon in Gaza, Abu Hamza 'Ashur raised an explosives belt in the mosque, saying: "The next martyrdom-seeking operations will be carried out with explosives belts... By Allah, we will annihilate you with it. We will turn you into lifeless corpses and into scattered body parts." The sermon was posted on the Internet.'

Scottish PSC Chief Napier: "Zionism makes its way forward in cold blood ... Zionism is a criminal conspiracy" (video)

Ghastly rabble-rousing stuff here. Firebrand Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chief Mick Napier, delighting his "Muslim friends" at the London Al Quds Day rally with his demogogic denunciation of Israel and his introductory remarks declaring that "no state has the right to exist..."

 

  

Among the inevitable fan club sending congratulations on what one has called an "inspirational" speech is a message from an Irish composer and anti-Israel activist:

 Grotesque.

Meanwhile, what a surprise (not) ...

"Glory, Glory, Palestine!": Muslims march against Israel in London (video) (updated again)

On so-called Al Quds Day, a massive mob of Muslims march with their banners and slogans condemning Israel.  At the head of the procession, a Neturei Karta nut is clearly visible, and later, amid the hijabbed hordes, a couple of western women are spotted ...

The chant "Glory, Glory, Palestine," adapted from Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," provides a surreal touch ...

In this video by our old friend Alex Seymour, more westerners hove into view, and more chants assail the eardrums:

 Oh, and if you can bear to watch, check it out for the German Israel-demoniser.

Yet more footage.  Despicable chants and sentiments.

 I don't know who the bloke in the kippa is:

Still Laid Up On The Beam Ends

Well, here I am, still laid up on my beam ends, thanks to the flu (yes, it's that time of the year Down Under.)  I'm afraid that I couldn't manage a Tuesday column this week for Elder of Ziyon, though readers who are interested in the quite remarkable degree of goodwill towards Israel that pertained during the Yom Kippur War may enjoy my last week's column.

As the column notes, even Gerald Kauffman was on Israel's side.

But then, as a commenter noted wryly, MP Gerald wasn't confronted by the reality of a significant Muslim presence in his electorate back then.

Talking of Islam, here's (hat tip: Vlad Tepes blog)  an interview with the Christian scholar Raymond Ibrahim that deserves attention.

It certainly deserves the attention of the naive teachers at this Yorkshire state school.

Another lovable crusty old fella:

 Meanwhile, among the anti-Israel Christian and Muslim forces on social media, united by their antisemitism, a new set of cartographic crapology is doing the rounds:

Two New Olde Tyme Pieces

 Feeling really crook today, to use an Aussie expression. and can only manage these.

An Egyptian cleric on Isis:

 A Turkish cleric on Jerusalem:

Feathers From A Bradford Duster

"Today a rooster; tomorrow a feather duster" (Australian saying)

Poor Gorgeous George.

The ex-Respect MP with the monstrous ego still compares himself to a lion, to judge from his bravado in that appallingly graceless losing speech of his in Bradford West after his resounding drubbing at the hands of Labour's Nazeem Shah was announced.

Ms Shah, of course, had been traduced by him as a liar regarding revelations of her forced marriage to a stranger in her "British Asian"  family's country of origin when she was 15 and its registration in Britain when she was 16 (the legal minimum age for nuptials in the UK) so that the groom could settle there.

Tapping into the party of Muslim "victimhood"

So this is an especially sweet victory for her.

In defeat, George let rip with:

 "I don’t begrudge the Labour members here their moment of celebration of course.

 But there will be others who are already celebrating: the venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating.

 The hyena can bounce on the lion’s grave but it can never be a lion and in any case, I’m not in my grave. As a matter of fact I’m going off now to plan the next campaign."

But really George is just another of the 2015 British General Election's many fine examples of roosters, once cocks of the walk, who are now feather dusters. (They include the atrocious antisemitic anti-Israel Lib Dem David Ward, thrown out of his own Bradford seat by a discerning electorate!)

Let's have a look back at a sample of George the Duster's feathers, which, while he was still a rooster strutting about Bradford with his particular set of chums, were preened during his failed election campaign:

First, from "Team Galloway":

Then, squawking from the cock himself:

On the mean streets:

A vow about an alleged paedophile (hardcore "Islamophobes" will doubtless see the irony in this), who just happens to have been a stalwart defender of Israel in Parliament:

Campaign literature of the member for Pakistan Palestine:

With the granddaddies of the party and the 'hood:

Hmmm, segregated on the top deck where the cold winds blow, while the menfolk sit cosy and snug inside the campaign bus, George?

 Contrasting himself with his Labour opponent:

And one of several mocking squawks about members of her family being in his camp:

Naz Shah sure is one woman on top now, though, eh, George?

As the saying goes: "pride has  a fall".

The Seventh Century Touch: Physician, heal thyself

My previous post concerned antisemitism in Iran, and the blood libels that have become part and parcel of the regime's hostility to Jews and Israel.

Helping to peddle Iran's propaganda generally in the West are British journalists and interviewees who are only too happy to broadcast their own spleen against Israel by appearing on the Iranian regime's satellite channel Press TV.

And even though Press TV is no longer allowed to broadcast over the UK airwaves, it continues to be accessible via the internet.

Overnight on Thursday, rockets from Hamas-held Gaza were fired across the border into Israel.

British anti-Israel propagandist RT journalist Harry Fear has chosen the Press TV version of events to alert his faithful on social media to the latest violence:

Predictably, howls of outrage have ensued from followers Western and  non-Western, male and female, alike.

There are naive useful idiots.  But mainly there are  the disguised and undisguised Jew-haters.

 "First rocket fired by Gaza ? BS"

"Looks like they've had a head start. It's 'normally' during Ramadan"

"May the wrath of God be upon Israel. Can't believe I'm reading this"

 "UNBELIEVABLE!!! When will these zionists just die already!!? The most dark and filthy beings on the face of the earth!!! And the whole world will just turn a blind eye, even after 7 decades!!!"

 "i did not n will not turn blind eye ... Israel n its allies are the real terrorists"

"Israel is the cancer at the heart of the mideast !"

"defend itself from what exactly? from a country weakened by the oppression of the illegal state of Israel?"

"They are stijl guests on that soil... what kind of People are they? They never can stop! Ridiculous"

 "Zionist scum"

"Sick Zion race, shame on them"

"Burn in hell israhell"

 Par for the course.  Of course.

One post, made in response to a lone commenter – a Hindu man living in India – who defended Israel's right to defend itself is especially shocking, especially as the young Tunisian man who made it is not an uneducated person devoid of secular learning and steeped in the Dark Ages but a medical student, no less.

He's greeted the pro-Israel Hindu man with this noisome sentiment:

"I hope deeply from my heart that someone came rape your wife or girl or sister kick you out of your land kills yours parents and say this land is his right because a book dated 3000 years ago say so ..."

 So far, several persons have liked this abominable comment.

And unless she has a bogus profile, one of them is female.  A Western woman at that.

Just goes to show how visceral the hatred of Israel is in some warped minds.

And how the primitive notion of women as property, and not merely property but property that can and should be punished to atone for the "sins" of their male family members, lingers in others.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza that is apparently journalist Fear's most-trodden patch, courtesy of his employer RT:

"On The 25th of December ... People Around The World Will Celebrate The Birth of a Palestinian Socialist"

In my previous post I linked to several unpalatable examples of Yuletide fare, including one that our old mate Stephen Sizer appears to be promoting (does the Bishop of Guildford know, or care?).

Here is another unpalatable nugget.  I nearly called it "indigestible" but unfortunately there are many people with a vested interest in swallowing such crap with relish, and encouraging others to do so.

And because traditional religious instruction, like history itself, is not taught in schools, there will be an untold number of morons and dupes only too ready to digest this poison.

I have always said, and I will say again: one of the major reasons for the diminution of philosemitism in the Western world is because few people read the scriptures anymore, and in consequence fail to identify with the Jews and with Israel against Pharoah, Haman, and everybody else who seek to destroy them.

Palestinian Partners For Peace?

This video, from the now thankfully restored Memri.org video channel on You Tube, has been doing the rounds of pro-Israel sites today, and no wonder.  For it shows an impromptu rant at the Al Aqsa Mosque by Omar Abu Sara that reveals a bloodthirsty bigotry against against Jews rooted in Islamic tradition, with the speaker reiterating the view that Jews are "the most evil of Allah's creations, and warning that "we shall slaughter you without mercy":

Meanwhile, having read Ronen Bergman's article here regarding Mahmoud Abbas's dissertation. American academic Mike Lumish, who blogs at Israel Thrives, observes there (and in his cross post at Jews Down Under):

'Mahmoud Abbas completed his PhD dissertation for Lumumba University in Moscow in 1982.

For years I have been reading that this piece of writing – which to the right is the original cover – entitled “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” was one in which he denied the Holocaust....

 The problem here is not Holocaust denial, but something perhaps quite worse.  Abbas is accusing the Zionist movement, and thus the many hundreds of thousands of Jews who participated in it in the mid-1940s and who lost their families to the Nazis, of colluding with the Nazis to persecute their own people – even unto genocide – in the service of Zionism....

 This man is a liar who will say absolutely anything.  There is nothing within the movement for Jewish liberation which comes even remotely close to what Abbas accuses us of.He is claiming that the early Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to commit genocide upon the Jewish people in order to extort land in the Middle East and compel European Jews to move to that land.  While that is heinous enough it thereby implies that today’s Jewish supporters of the Jewish people – within the tradition of Zionism, as if there were only one – represent the contemporary form of Nazi ideology.  In the imagination of Mahmoud Abbas, not to mention G-d only knows how many of his progressive-left western allies, Zionism is the ideological and functional equivalent of Nazism today....

 To my mind [Abbas's dissertation] as revealed by Bergman] drives the final spike into Abbas' standing as a negotiating partner.

The man was elected to a four year term that ended five years ago. 

He also wrote the checks for the Munich Massacre during the 1972 Olympics, so why bother with him?

In truth, he should be in prison....''

Do read Mike Lumish's entire piece, and Bergman's too, as Lumish urges.  (Warning: A dovish friend of mine, who's rather a fan of Mr Abbas, has been left somewhat shaken as a result of doing so...)

Meanwhile, behind a paywall, in a report by Ean Higgins entitled (should you wish to google it) "Tony Burke cancels Palestine speech", today's (9 December) issue of The Australian notes that  Australian Labor Party (ALP) federal MP Tony Burke has, at the eleventh hour, cancelled his planned speech to the Inaugural General Meeting in Lakemba, a suburb of Sydney with a strong Muslim presence that falls within his constituency, of the newly formed lobby group Labor for Palestine (described on its Facebook page as "a grassroots network of ALP members and trade unionists that works to campaign for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people"):

"The decision came after The Australian highlighted the fact that the contact person for the event was Fahad Ali, a medical student at Sydney University who has been known as a leader of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel and lauded by prominent pro-BDS academic Jake Lynch....

Mr Ali recently appeared on his Facebook page under a flag of a terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is not proscribed in Australia but is on the list of terrorist organisations against which Australia imposes financial sanctions under a UN Security Council resolution."

Anglo-Jewish Ostrich Leaders Attempt To Muzzle Israeli Islam Expert Mordechai Kedar

As reader Ian points out in a comment on my previous blog, there has been good news coming out of the UK this week: the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), has rescinded its controversial decision to join the accursed BDS movement, a movement of which, incidentally, a reviewer of the important new book The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel writes inter alia:

'.... [T]he BDS agenda is at heart not just pro-Palestinian but anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli, if not actively anti-Semitic. One of the convictions shared by several contributors is that many people sign on to the BDS movement without realizing that it is committed, not to a peaceful two-state solution, but to the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The official BDS movement website (bdsmovement.net) features the unimpeachable slogan “Freedom Justice Equality,” but when you get to its actual demands, they turn out to be as follows:

1. Ending [Israel’s] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194

Most Americans (and most Israelis) would agree to the second item, and many to the first; but the third, read correctly, means putting an end to Israel as a Jewish state. This is a demand that virtually no Israeli Jews, even the most liberal, would accede to, as the BDS movement knows full well. To include this core demand, then, means that BDS is not about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but prolonging it, and taking sides in it. It follows that any boycott adopted on these terms can never be withdrawn as long as the Jewish state continues to exist.' (Read more here)

To quote Dan Leon, one of the architects who comments below the line here:

"I am very pleased that the RIBA Council came to this conclusion today. 

The issues associated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are very important indeed and need to be discuss and debated with a view to forging a true and equitable peace for all parties, based on mutual understanding and mutual respect - but the RIBA is not the correct forum for such a debate. It was confirmed as such, being outside the RIBA's remit, and the RIBA have correctly regularised the matter.

For our Institute to seek the exclusion of another country's professional body would have been wholly wrong and counter productive to this end. It would have been negative, and silence any opportunity for engagement and exchange.

It is not necessary to drag up all the arguments again here, but legal opinion confirmed the March motion on Israel as 'discriminatory'. How could that remain on RIBA policy?"

 Elder of Ziyon has a most interesting piece on  the RIBA fracas here

More welcome news this week are tweets by UKIP leader Nigel Farage, still riding the crest of a wave which seems set to drench Tories in next year's May General Election, has been bold enough to declare on Twitter:

And as reported in the Jewish Chronicle, Nigel Farage

'has blamed Muslims for what he called “a sharp rise in antisemitism” in Britain and Europe.

 Speaking during his weekly phone-in show on London’s LBC Radio, Mr Farage told a caller from Highgate: “I have detected quite a sharp rise in antisemitism, not just in this country, but across the rest of Europe too.

“What’s fuelling it is that there are many more Muslim voices, and some of those Muslim voices are deeply, deeply critical of Israel. In fact, some of them even question the right of Israel to exist as a nation.” .... [Emphasis added]

Mr Farage also noted: “It’s quite interesting because there aren’t actually that many Jews in the country - there’s only a few hundred thousand.

“It just shows you what an extraordinary group of people they are, the success they’ve achieved....'

It seems that Farage has dipped his toe where certain elements within the British Board of Deputies fear to tread.

For it's also reported in the Jewish Chronicle, the distinguished and forthright Israeli Professor Mordechai Kedar, an expert on Arab culture and on Islam, who will be addressing the Zionist Federation's Israel Advocacy Conference as well as the meeting illustrated at left, is persona non grata in some quarters:

'The Zionist Federation this week cancelled appearances at three Jewish schools by an outspoken Israeli academic following concerns about his links to an anti-Islamist activist banned from Britain.

Dr Mordechai Kedar, an expert on Israeli Arabs who regularly appears to defend Israel on Arabic stations such as Al Jazeera, was due to begin a speaking tour on Wednesday night.

But ZF chairman Paul Charney said that he had removed the schools from the tour after the intervention of the Board of Deputies.

Dr Kedar, who lectures at Bar-Ilan University, has spoken at events organised by Stop the Islamisation of Nations, founded by the Jewish American Pamela Geller, who was banned from Britain last year in a move supported by the Board of Deputies."

Two of the synagogues at which Professor Kedar (including the Spanish and Portuguses Synaggue in Lauderdale Road) was due to speak have also, it seems, disinvited him.

The case against Professor Kedar addressing synagogues and schools was made in the Jewish Chronicle here by Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who wrote in part:

'.... In 2012 Dr Kedar was announced as a director of "Stop Islamisation of Nations" (SION). Speakers at SION's conference that year included Tommy Robinson, then a leader of the English Defence League. In 2013, SION's founder Pamela Geller was banned from entering Britain. SION advocated the "immediate halt of immigration by Muslims" into Europe as well as legislation to ban foreign funding of mosques and of departments of Islamic Studies departments in our universities along with a range of further legal restrictions.

From a Manhattan platform of "Stop Islamisation of Nations" beside the EDL, Dr Kedar
mocked multiculturalism:"… [Muslim immigrants into Europe] are multiplying - - somebody said "rats" … and there is [sic] 18 wives and all that …"

This is typical of Dr Kedar's language. On Aljazeera, he taunted his Arab interviewer saying his ancestors had buried theirs daughters alive. This summer, he said during an Israeli Broadcasting Authority interview "the only thing that deters a suicide bomber. If he knows that when he pulls the trigger, or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s it. "

Under attack, he later explained he had been analysing and not advocating. This is not evident from the transcript....'

 It isn't? As I wrote, soon after Kedar made that statement, here:

'[T]wisting the truth comes second-nature to those who hate Israel and seek its destruction.

Take, for instance, what the prominent Israeli scholar Professor Mordechai Kedar, of Bar-Ilan University's Department of Arabic, said early this month on Israeli radio's Hakol Diburim (“It’s All Talk”) following the news that the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers had been murdered :

 “The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.

You have to understand the culture in which we live.  The only thing that deters [Hamas leaders] is a threat to the connection between their heads and their shoulders.... Terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them — the only thing that deters them is if they know that their sister or their mother will be raped in the event that they are caught. What can you do, that’s the culture in which we live...

 I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts. The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s all. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, in order to preserve his sister’s honor.”

 It is extremely doubtful that the professor was recommending that Israel should resort to such base conduct; as an expert in Arab and Islamic culture he was explaining how Israel's Islamic enemies view the world, and by implication how impotent Israel is given their outlook.'

Mr Pinto-Duschinsky is, of course, entitled to his views.  But equally Professor Kedar is entitled to his, based on long familiarity with Arab culture and with Islam, and to voice them, for, as the rabbi of Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue, at which Kedar won't now be speaking, is quoted as saying:

"We probably would have had him and let him explain his comments."

As Paul Charney, chairman of the Zionist Federation, argues:

'What’s worse than a call for a boycott of an Israeli academic?

A call for a boycott of an Israeli academic from within our community.

At the Zionist Federation, we are committed to bringing over expert speakers to educate and enthuse our audiences. We don’t necessarily agree with all their views; we can’t, since our speakers cover the political and religious spectrums, reflecting the diverse backgrounds they come from. But we do think they should all be heard.

Apparently not everyone thinks this way. There has been a concerted effort to smear the reputation of renowned Professor Mordechai (Moti) Kedar prior to his arrival in the UK.

 Dr Kedar’s 25 years in military intelligence and academia makes him an expert in the Islamic and Arabic worlds, and his “crime” is to talk about the disaster that these twin spheres have wreaked in the Middle East.

But a few days after Israel commemorated the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the region, and now when Christians commiserate with their co-religionists facing the same fate, we’re not supposed to talk about this.

For all his forthright views, Moti is in high demand as a commentator across global media – including such lion dens as Al Jazeera Arabic. The Arab world, therefore, is apparently more tolerant of dissenting views than some sections of our community. These self-appointed guardians believe Jewish students must be protected from his views – views that Moti’s own Arab students queue up to hear.

In a country where people will happily condemn Israel in the most disgusting terms, but won’t speak out against Isis because it’s “Islamophobic,” we’re suddenly being asked to fight with one hand tied behind our backs - in case we cause offence.

But if there’s one thing we can learn from Moti, it’s that when it comes to the Middle East, you can’t afford to bury your head in the sand.'

 Update: Unflinching British blogger Edgar Davidson:

"Anti-Semites Have Never Really Distinguished among Zionists, Israelis & Jews"

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, young children, anti-"Zionists" in the making, are recruited into helping to rid a supermarket's shelves of Israeli goods.  See the video below; at about 0.25 (or do my ears deceive me?) a mother's voice tells her children that the cart of removed produce is the "Jewish cart".

Windows of the local synagogue  were smashed by thugs last month.

And now a plaque on the house that was the birthplace in 1918 of Chaim Herzog, whose father was at that time the city's rabbi, has been taken down ostensibly for nearby residents' safety:

'[A]ccording to one DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] councillor, the plaque has had to be removed due to a spate of attacks.

Brian Kingston said there was concern for the safety of those living in the area.

"Attacks have included the scrawling of anti-Israeli graffiti on the building and items being thrown at the plaque and the house," he said.

"Recently some youths were stopped in the process of trying to remove the plaque with a crowbar.

"Out of concern for staff and for residents living in neighbouring houses, the community group and the Ulster History Circle have decided that it was best to remove the plaque for the foreseeable future, and it was removed at the end of last week.'

These incidents in Belfast, while not as serious as many that are occurring elsewhere, are indicative nonetheless of the antisemitism that has erupted in Britain  during the current Gaza crisis.

"While I may not be Israeli, I am a Zionist — an ideology so misunderstood of late that it has become akin to a four-letter word. Used as a term of abuse for Jews by jihadis, alongside ‘crusaders’ for Christians, ‘Zionist’ has found its way into popular parlance", observed a (decidedly non-Likudnik) British Jew  in a London newspaper recently.

"Being a Zionist simply means that you believe the Jews have the right to a homeland, a safe haven....

The other day, a friend said to me: ‘I have no problem with Jews, just Zionists.’ She couldn’t understand why this might be perceived as anti-Semitic.

Let me state for the record that I — and almost every other Jewish person I know — think what’s happening in Gaza is awful....

But I also believe in Israel’s right to defend itself from years of rocket attacks by Hamas, a terrorist group which uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, deliberately stores its weapons in schools and hospitals and has stated many times that it wants to see the outright destruction of Israel.

....Seeing the suffering of a Palestinian child injured in an Israeli bomb attack is heartbreaking. But is it any more heartbreaking than the suffering or death of a child in Syria or Iraq?

Yet everyone, from Facebook friends to Hollywood stars such as Penelope Cruz, seems to think that what’s happening in Gaza merits special attention — and that the Israelis deserve special condemnation.

Why? I can only think it’s because Israelis are mostly Jewish, and the world is only comfortable when Jews are victims, underdogs, kept in our place. It’s no coincidence that, for centuries, anti-Semites have perpetuated the myth that a international conspiracy of Jews runs the world.

The difference now is that criticising Israel is seen as the politically correct thing to do. Facebook friends whom I’ve never seen make a political statement, or discuss any topical issue, now post link after link to articles and videos that decry what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.

Often their posts betray ignorance about the facts and history of a very complicated, very old conflict. Some posted links are years out of date, others inaccurate or fabricated propaganda, like an oft-shared video purporting to show an Israeli child beating a captured Palestinian child which, in fact, turned out to be film of a Lebanese child beating a Syrian child.

These posts do little but spread confusion and stir up hatred. People who would never dream of writing anti-Muslim sentiments — because it’s not politically correct and, perhaps, because they would be scared to — quite happily post anti-Jewish ones, thinking they have the moral high ground.

In their criticisms of Jews they betray old prejudices: Jews are too rich, too successful, too clever for our own good, we have a ‘superiority complex’.

If you dare to respond negatively, you face a barrage of criticism and, worse, the accusation that you are supporting ‘genocide’."

And, as Professor Efraim Karsh, formerly of London and now of Jerusalem, writes:

'Let's admit it: Israel can never win the media war against Hamas. No matter what it does, no matter how hard it tries.

Not because the Islamist terror group that is raining missiles on its cities and villages and using its own hapless subjects as human shields is the underdog in this conflict, but because the sight of Arabs killing Jews (or other Arabs for that matter) is hardly news; while the sight of Jews killing Arabs is a man-bites-dog anomaly that cannot be tolerated....

Just as western politicians and the media have ignored Hamas's indiscriminate missile attacks on Israeli civilians but jumped up and down over Israel's military response, so they have been bending over backward since 9/11 to embrace their Muslim citizens and to accommodate their perceived needs and sensitivities while remaining willfully blind to the fact that it is Jews, not Muslims, whose lives have been most adversely affected by increasing hostile attitudes on the ground – after all it is the Jews, not Muslims of Europe, who are emigrating in record numbers to find a safe haven. It is Jews who feel vulnerable to attack, and who have faced the most violence, and whose institutions from synagogues to community buildings to Jewish newspaper offices have been under heavy police guard for years, because of events in the Middle East – no Muslim community in the West has had to undertake similar security precautions.

The truth of the matter is that since anti-Semites have never really distinguished among Zionists, Israelis and Jews (notwithstanding repeated protestations to the contrary), and since Israel is the world's only Jewish state, it has been tacitly construed as epitomizing the worst characteristics traditionally associated with Jews and has attracted the full brunt of anti-Jewish bigotry and hatred hitherto reserved for individuals and communities, not least because it has reversed the millenarian Jewish condition of dispersal, minority status and powerlessness. If prior to Israel's establishment Jews were despised because of their wretchedness and helplessness, they have hitherto been reviled because of their newly discovered physical and political empowerment.

So much so that 64 years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, the Jewish state remains the only state in the world whose right to self-defense, indeed to national existence, is constantly challenged....'

Read the professor's entire article here

And for a casual antisemitic reference to New Zealand's halachically Jewish prime minister see here

A Warning From Wilders

The Dutch politician has a warning for Israel:

Chillingly, at The Hague:

 Hat tip: Vlad Tepes blog

And from a perspicacious Aussie (coincidentally of Dutch extraction) salient observations on Islam and Jewry here and here

"Only The Khalifah Will Liberate Palestine"

Western Europe's "cultural enrichment"! What joy inevitably follows in its wake ...

In London yesterday, a big crowd of Islamists with signs proclaiming "Only The Khalifah Will Liberate Palestine" scream their blood-curdling hatred outside the Egyptian Embassy.

They were there in response to this deceptively mild-mannered call by Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the extremist group which is banned in many countries but not, curiously, in Britain and Australia. 

In Paris ...

And again ...

An Islamic cleric of Berlin:

"Oh Allah, Destroy the Zionist Jews .... Count them and kill them to the very last one .... They behave tytannically all over the world and spread corruption":

Obscene signs at a protest in The Hague:

Photo © AD/Jos van Leeuwen

"Facts Have Become Distorted, Truth Has Become Irrelevant ..." (video)

Prominent British Zionist Paul Charney has initiated the following e-petition to the UK's Department for International Development (DFID).  It is available for signing here:

 "The Palestinian Authority (PA) currently provides salaries to any Palestinian convicted of committing terrorism offences against Israel. These wages are directly pegged to the length of the sentence, so the more grievous the crime, the higher the salary. Since these wages are much larger than those earned by average Palestinians, they clearly reward violence, including murder, and undermine peace. Around 40 per cent of the PA’s budget is made up from donor aid; the UK government has promised £33 million of taxpayer’s money for the 2013/14 period alone. The Palestinian ministers responsible for this policy publicly deride international donors who express unhappiness with their money being used to pay terrorists; only a credible threat of this aid being removed will alter the situation. We are therefore calling on DFID to cease all direct funding to the Palestinian Authority until it agrees to no longer provide salaries for those convicted of committing violent acts against Israel."

Mr Charney can be seen on the following video, discussing the meaning of Zionism with two warm-hearted Christian supporters, and, in a country that is a prime hub of anti-Israel activity, answering the question "What can Christians do to fight against this delegitimisation of Israel?"

Although the programme aired in 2011, it is essentially as pertinent in 2014 as it was then, and worth a look.

It includes footage which demonstrates the humanity of the IDF and the sheer brutality of Hamas, with the latter's disregard for the human rights of those on both sides of the conflict.

As Charney stresses, in the struggle to defame and destroy Israel

"Facts have become distorted, truth has become irrelevant ....

 Delegitimisation has become another tool for Israel's enemies ... to get rid if Israel altogether ....

 The fundamentalist Islamic ideology is not just to wipe Israel off the map ... but it's to change the Western world as we know it .... If they succeed in getting rid of Israel ... Europe is next ... the USA is next ..."

As this report indicates, another prominent British Zionist, former MP Eric Moonman, now 84, is advocating a  US-style ADL in order to counteract antisemitism in the UK: "enemies of the Jews have got away with it for a long time".

And in future anti-Israel protesters who disrupt concerts and suchlike to vent their spleen may face the long arm of the law (report here)

"These Jews Are A Danger To The Jewish People": Steyn on those who avoid 'the "M" word'

London calling!

Nominations for the annual "Islamophobia" Awards are in, and include predictable  and not so predictable names.

Among the predictable nominees are Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Daniel Greenfield, Douglas Murray, and Daniel Pipes.

Among the less unpredictable are Barack Obama, Aussie Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and Aussie Senator Cory Bernardi, the latter "for claiming that Christianity is under siege from both the political Greens party and the religion of Islam"; (streuth! wherever did the senator get that idea?).

And again ...

The Awards event has received some warm and fuzzy messages of support from, among others, a non-Muslim female professor (how heart-warming it is that a high-powered woman can overlook the horrendous amount of sexual grooming by Muslim gangs preying on underage non-Muslim girls that's been occurring in Britain lately; if only the pesky tabloid press which insists on reporting the grooming would do the same!), from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, that druidic-looking bloke who once described as inevitable the adoption of aspects of sharia law by Britain (does Rowan Williams not realise that  his fellow-Christians are suffering persecution and death at the hands of Islamists in the Middle East?), and from an academic of Jewish birth who's been one of the official denouncers of Israel on "Al Quds Day" in Londonistan.

In New York City

The UK-based nominees include "Raheem Kasaam (Student Rights), for demonising Muslims on issue of gender segregation" (yep, don't let the rights of those uppity members of the inferior sex who demand the right to sit where they please in the public space of the secular academy get in the way of a good whinge) and MEP "Gerard Batten, for saying British muslims should sign charter rejecting violence" (bit rich that, eh?; I mean, doesn't Batten realise that Islam is a religion of peace?)

One man missing from the list of nominees is  Canadian columnist Mark Steyn, whose insightful articles on the danger posed by militant Islam to Jews, Israel, and to western democracy used to grace the London Daily Telegraph and, as I have remarked before, are much missed.

Mr Steyn may have made the list had his no-holds-barred attack on soon-to-retire long-serving ADL chief Abe Foxman not narrowly missed Friday's deadline for nominations (results will be announced from London on the 21st of this month).

California dreaming

What's infuriated Mr Steyn is Mr Foxman's Islam-free contention that  "nationalists, anti-government people, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis of anti-immigration and anti-government" are driving present-day antisemitism.

Writes Steyn, inter alia, of  Foxman and Jewish communal leaders like him, who fail to give Muslim judeophobes their due share of the blame:

"These Jews are a danger to the Jewish people.

Their denial is so thick and so amoral that it is difficult sometimes to find the words to express my utter disgust and contempt.

By fighting the last war against the German Nazis over and over in their heads, they endanger living Jews. But they will never learn...."

He continues:

'I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse, a city the size of Jacksonville, Florida, where in recent years one synagogue has been firebombed, another set alight when two burning cars were driven into it, a third burgled and "Dirty Jews" scrawled on the ark housing the Torah, where a kosher butcher's was strafed with gunfire, and a Jewish sports association attacked with Molotov cocktails, and three Jewish children murdered outside their grade school, I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse and tell any Jew he finds there (they are advised by their rabbis not to wear identifying marks of their faith) that it's all the work of "anti-government people".

I would like him to go to Malmö - once the first Christian city in Norway and soon to be the first Muslim city in Sweden - and tell such Jews as he can find (they are abandoning the city) that the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and the ugly reinforced steel doors at the Jewish kindergarten and the rocket-proof glass in the windows of the synagogue are all the fault of "neo-Nazis". Sweden is renowned for its neo-Nazis, isn't it? Doubtless they were the reason why a year or two back at the Davis Cup the Israeli tennis players had to play their match behind closed doors, in a Baltiska Hallen stadium without a single spectator. For had they opened the doors, the seats would have filled up with Swedish "nationalists" and Swedish "neo-fascists" and all hell would have broken loose.

I would like Abe Foxman to go to Tower Hamlets in London's East End, where on Holocaust Memorial Day a couple of years ago a visiting New Yorker had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel after a Jewish tour group was pelted with stones by a group jeering "If you go any further, you'll die." I would like Foxman to tell those Jews that their attackers were an "anti-immigration" group.

I would like him to go to Villiers-le-Bel, where a Jewish girl was brutally attacked by a gang shouting "Jews must die!", or to Odense, where the headmaster says his school can no longer take Jewish pupils for security reasons, and tell them it's the fault of Danish "nationalists" and French "neo-Nazis".

But I don't suppose Abe Foxman will go anywhere outside his bubble, will he? Is it really too much to expect him somewhere in that long laundry list of antiquated irrelevances to utter the "M" word? ...'

 Read Mark Steyn's entire screed here

What's The Difference Between A Radical Leftist & An Islamist?

Not a lot.

 To see more go to Edgar Davidson's blog here

Another nice one, Edgar! Keep up the brilliant work!

The Lies That Bind, The Lies That Blind

Alan Hart, ex-BBC and ex-ITN broadcaster and 9/11 truther, as quoted here :

"The conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel is the cancer at the heart of international affairs, and I know from long personal experience how costly and even

dangerous it can be to tell the truth about the making and sustaining of it when powerful vested interests do not want the truth to be told....

.... Most if not all the Jews who went to Palestine in response to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. The assertion that there are two peoples with an equal claim to the same land is nonsense.

....The assertion of Israel’s leaders that their state has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews, is Zionist propaganda nonsense.... As I document in detail in my book ...  Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force ..." [Emphasis added]

The Anglican vicar of Virginia Water last year to his Facebook followers: 

"Israel has attacked every one of its neighbours in its short history."

New Delhi journalist Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan in an article published this week (to which the

Reverend Sizer linked on Facebook):

"With the exception of the October (Ramadan) 1973 War, which was started by Egypt and Syria to liberate their lands occupied by the Zionist state since 1967, Israel has started every single war in the Middle East in order to expand at the expense of its neighbours...."

What is it with this revisionism, this assault on the facts of history?

The lies that bind the Israel-bashers, the lies that blind the ignorant and gullible, are of course weapons in the battle to delegitimise the world's only Jewish State, and see it replaced by what Khan describes as "a single democratic state in Palestine free of Zionist ideology":

"This is the only solution to allow the right of return of the Palestinian refugees... This practical, just and humanitarian solution will also contain Israel as an expansionist and threatening entity which has become a danger to the peace and stability of the whole region. The Middle East will have no security or stability without the effective "de-Zionisation" of Palestine....

Israel has been able to continue its occupation, oppression and continuous expansion as a result of the vicious exploitation of world sympathy arising from the obscene Nazi Holocaust and cultivating the false image of a small, defenceless country surrounded by powerful enemies." 

Dr Haidar Eid of the Department of English Literature, at Gaza's  Al-Aqsa University has declared:

"The one-state solution is the only solution through which the Palestinian rights called for by the BDS movement can be achieved. Moreover, it is a very generous compromise from the oppressed colonized to the settler colonialists, offering citizenship in a state with total equality, exactly like what happened in South Africa, where white settlers were offered the same generous compromise by the indigenous population...."

A pseudonymous Facebook user, ostensibly Arab, rather let the cat out of the bag by commenting the other day (on Sizer's wall, as it happens, though the vicar, of course, cannot be held responsible for the sentiments in the screed):

'One day soon, my friends, you will come to realize that just like the two states, the delusion of “one state” will also drop dead....

Friends who promote a binational “one state”, are not aware of the serious, nay catastrophic implications on Palestinians.

The major issue remains about OWNERSHIP RIGHTS of the STOLEN LANDS, as well as the APPARATUS of POWER which is, and will REMAIN in the hands of ideologically racist Jewish “israelis”

The ENTIRE LAND of PALESTINE was STOLEN....

The binational state means in plain language:

Inviting the Zionist entity to ANNEX and OCCUPY what is left of Palestine...

Blessing the invaders with the “right” to keep the LOOT of whatever they have captured through wars of conquest and aggression...

 Campaigning to upgrade the Palestinians’ status from “occupied” to “slaves”, living under the boot of Jewish supremacists who see Palestinians and other goyim as animals created only to serve Jews....

No alternative to the Algerian model of FULL LIBERATION.

So friends, THINK ALGERIA … It has only been few decades ago since Algeria gained its liberation from French SETTLER COLONIZATION, which lasted almost 150 years....

When I talk about the Algerian model I mean:

REVOKING ISRAEL’S UN MEMBERSHIP: The racist genocidal occupation entity, which was in breach of UN Charters, which has violated and defied more UN resolutions and charter principles than any other. This illegitimate entity has no moral or legal ground whatsoever to be a member of the UN. Its membership is a disgrace on the face of humanity and a mockery of International Law. Israel’s UN membership should have never happened in the first place.

FULL SOVEREIGNTY of the Palestinian Nation over their ancestral country: Palestine, with a constitution and a political system of their own independent choice. That is least that can be done to compensate for the a century of aggression, thievery, and unwarranted subjugation.

PROSECUTION OF WAR CRIMINALS: plans of which should start immediately without delay, A Palestinian JUDICIARY and IMMIGRATION System, will respectively prosecute former “Israeli” criminals and their associates, and/or grant or decline on an individual basis, a RIGHT TO REMAIN, based on criteria solely to be defined by said Immigration and Integration Services, which would take into consideration the history of the individuals and the level of their participation in maintaining the occupation.

NATIONALISATION AND PALESTINIAN CITIZENSHIP: anyone who can prove non-participation in the ex-Israeli occupation apparatus, and who has demonstrated ability and willingness to a respectable and law-abiding conduct, will probably obtain a chance to gain unrestricted Palestinian citizenship, with equal rights… Jewish “Israelis” also have the right to go back to wherever country they came from, the have the same right to return to their native countries.

RETURN, RESTITUTION AND COMPENSATIONS: Palestine and the Palestinian Nation at large, are entitled to full and unconditional Restitution of their land and property whenever possible, assorted with appropriate Compensation for more than seven decades of deprivation and slow genocide, Cultural destruction, and a whole array of atrocities and usurpation..

It is pretty obvious that the model I propose will not be welcomed by “israelis”, nor will it come about by the “return” to negotiation no matter how intense the rounds may become. It will not happen by “road maps” either, nor by sudden change of heart coupled with pure acts of kindness and generosity of “israelis”

RESISTANCE, is the keyword.... 

Moreover, “israel” cannot afford peace; it relies on wars, wars and more wars for its very internal survival.

“israel” cannot afford to live even for a moment of real permanent peace, simply because its INTERNAL SURVIVAL requires an ever present “EXTERNAL THREAT”, which allows that incohesive assortment of people to stick together and prevents that society from imploding from within.

That society is divided more than anyone could imagine. But its ills are concealed by an utterly exaggerated bordering mythical history of persecution, and an extremely terrifying future with a holocaust around every corner and a new Hitler popping his head in different country each time. Thus turning their present into a perpetual war-preparation and being in a permanent standby state.

....Furthermore, in such state of affairs, i.e with this need for wars to stay alive, there is another crucial component, “israel” cannot afford to lose any of its wars. Any loss for “israel” is an END GAME…. GAME OVER....

For them, it is simply a lose lose situation… For us, to gain liberation, it is only a matter of time and patience, and Palestinians have got plenty of both.'