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)
Ah, those earnest left-leaning bastions of a "liberal" education. Don't you just love 'em?
I've written before (see here and here) of the zeal for the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian cause that seems to have taken hold at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States.
And now here's a look at Swarthmore College's 2019 calendar, where alumni and others turning to the February page will be confronted by this image:
Was it really necessary to depict a student wearing a keffiyeh, that universal symbol of Israel-hate among wearers in the West, in a publication that should surely be non-political and inclusive?
Presumably the keffiyeh reflects the "change, and impact on the world" that the college is fostering, according to the accompanying blurb.
Earlier this week BBC Watch, that wonderfully expert and indefatigable recorder of the BBC's inaccuracies and sins of omission and commission in its reportage and "analysis" of Israel-related topics, turned its attention to "The Mediterranean", a four-part series presented by Simon Reeve.
From the post we learn that Reeve said, for example:
“I crossed one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders. So this is a long walk through a cage – a caged passageway that takes us from the very modern, pretty wealthy state of Israel to the much poorer and densely packed Gaza Strip. I’ve never been through a border quite like this. It is extraordinary in every possible sense and – my God – you look across here…look at the barrier that encircles Gaza. It’s a very forbidding, foreboding place to walk towards, quite frankly. There’s a…there’s a dehumanisation of the people who live here. The whole process makes you feel like you’re entering the cage of the wild animals.”
Furthermore, for instance:
'Simon Reeve ended his visit to the Gaza Strip by telling viewers of this film – categorised in the credits as a “current affairs production” – that:
Reeve: “The situation here is utterly shocking and maddening.”
Significantly, BBC Two audiences heard nothing whatsoever about Hamas’ agenda of destroying the Jewish state – or whether or not Reeve finds that and the terrorism against Israeli civilians which aims to bring that agenda about “utterly shocking and maddening”.
Clearly impartiality and accuracy were not at the forefront of priorities for the makers of this context-lite (especially in comparison to Reeve’s previous efforts to explain the Cyprus conflict) segment of Simon Reeve’s film.'
Reeve is one of those easy-mannered and visually appealing 30/40-something presenters nowadays ubiquitous on television documentaries.
He sports just enough stubble to appear cool, and not enough to seem slovenly.
Oh, and his favourite item of neckwear is the keffiyeh. Which is leftist Israel-hating circles makes him very cool indeed.
Here he is, presenting "The Greeks", broadcast a couple of years ago on BBC2.
More recent examples:
The Left, needless to say, since the garment suits its own purpose, does not accuse westerners wearing the keffiyeh of "cultural appropriation", one of its newish buzz phrases.
Here's the lowdown on this staple of many an Israel-demoniser's wardrobe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SUmXUcYwsE
And on this, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a fascinating lecture by the late Sir Martin Gilbert (the Irene and Hyman Kreitman Annual Memorial Lecture on May 30, 2011 during the 41st Annual Board of Governors Meeting at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev) entitled Sowing the Seeds of
Jewish Statehood: Britain and Palestine, 1909-1922
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kub6d-ik6w
Be warned: it's about 52 minutes long. Perhaps best listened to while pottering about.
Hat tip: JH
Meanwhile, in retaliation for the creation of Israel and its refusal to die, just three current social media displays of pique and antisemitism out of a vast number, the first by this funny chap:
They're a strange lot, aren't they, women (and men for that matter) who demonise Israel, yet ignore the true demonic regimes of this world, including those Islamic ones that persecute women, regard them as inherently inferior to men, and treat them like chattels.
Regimes such as Iran's, which stones or hangs women for sexual misconduct, and beats them for transgressing the draconian dress code, and societies such as Pakistan's where wife-beating is rampant, and routine for the "crime" of failing to give birth to male children. Wow! Is some basic instruction in human biology and genetics overdue in that benighted corner of the world!
Like this Iranian girl (the video's long, but you only need to see the first few minutes):
Are the West's anti-Israel women, who jump on the bandwagon of every anti-Zionist initiative going, the successors to all those giddy women who used to fantasise about seduction by Rudolf Valentino in the guise of a sheikh?
It's as bizarre as it is baffling.
Following the Itamar massacre and the Jerusalem bomb outrage will they still wear their keffiyehs, the chic left-liberal chicks of the Western world, including gilded youth and bourgeois elements, to express their solidarity with the perceived victims of the "Israel-Palestine Conflict".
Will they and their equally fixated menfolk continue to flaunt their partisanship, despite (dare I suggest in some cases "because of"?) the antisemitism that pervades much of Palestinian society.
Protesting Ahava in London: courtesy Richard Millett
What will it take to stop them being as side-blinded as a carthorse wearing blinkers on his eyes, owing to that willful refusal of theirs to direct their gaze anywhere but on Israel?
For, as the Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer has observed this week, in the aftermath of the Itamar atrocity:
'There is a widespread culture calling for death to the Jews – and official support for that culture – rampant in Palestinian society as evidenced by the following:.
• Abbas – in January – allowed a presentation of $2000 to be awarded to the relatives of a Palestinian terrorist – reported as follows in Al-Hayat Al Jadida on 25 January:
“The governor of the Jenin district, Kadura Musa, has awarded a presidential grant to the family of the Shahid (Martyr), Khaldoun Najib Samoudy, during a visit that took place yesterday in the village of Al-Yamoun. The governor noted that the grant is financial aid in the amount of $2000 that the President [Mahmoud Abbas] is awarding to the relatives of the Shahid, who was recently killed as a Martyr at the Hamra checkpoint by the Israeli occupation forces”
• Abbas was the President who did nothing to prevent the indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets, shells and mortars into Israeli civilian population centres from Gaza and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza prior to being deposed there by Hamas in 2007. Hamas continues to maintain its threat to rid the Middle East of Israel – ostensibly as the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people.
• Both Abbas and Hamas leader – Ismail Haniyeh – head organizations whose Charters call for the elimination of the Jewish State and the denial of any right of statehood for Jews under the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
• A Palestinian Authority TV tribute to “Martyrs” just three weeks ago included the terrorist who killed three Israelis in a 2002 terror attack in the same West Bank town of Itamar where the Fogel family was murdered.
The video was in honor of the anniversary of the founding of the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and was broadcast on PA TV several times daily for four days. It featured a collage with photographs labeled “Martyrs (Shahids) of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Nablus.” It included the picture of terrorist Habash Hanani, who in May 2002 entered Itamar and murdered three students in the local high school.
• Abbas sanctioned the inauguration of a square in el-Bireh in March 2010 named after Dalal Maghreb - the Fatah woman who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 37 Israeli civilians and an American photographer were killed, and 71 were wounded,
PSC activist in UK
Three days later the Palestinian Authority launched a four day seminar named after Maghreb – called the “Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Camp,” in Jericho under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority’s Military Science Academy. Its main goal was to discuss the legislative and local elections in the PA territories.'
Or, as that splendid journalist Khaled Abu Toameh asked recently, "Where is the Outcry against Arab Apartheid?"
He observed, inter alia, that in the last year alone 180,000 Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank sought medical attention in Israel, and that many could not afford treatment, yet received it anyway.
"In Israel,even a suicide bomber who is - only? - wounded while trying to kill Jews is entitled to the finest medical treatment. And there have been many instances where Palestinians who were injured in attacks on Israel later ended up in sme of Israel's best hospitals."
By contrast, Palestinians, including an 11-year-old boy denied treatment in Lebanon, are being turned away from Arab hospitals if unable to meet the bills.
"It is disgraceful that while Israel admits Palestinian patients to its hospitals, Arab hospitals are denying them medical treatment for various reasons, including money. But then one is reminded that Arab dictators do not care about their own people, so why should they pay attention to an 11-year-old boy who is dying at the entrance to a hospital because his father was not carrying $1,500?
But as the death took place in an Arab country – and as the victim is an Arab – why should anyone care about him? Where is the outcry against Arab Apartheid?"
Arsen Ostrovsky, at the start of this year's annual excrescence known as Israel Apartheid Week, posed the pertinent question "Why Not an Arab Apartheid Week?"
Keffiyeh cool, USA
He wrote, in part:
'The irony is that in Israel, despite problems in Israel as in any other country, Arabs enjoy more rights, freedoms and liberties than do their neighbours in any number of Middle East countries currently fighting for these very same privileges. As the Muslim Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh repeatedly says (http://www.frumforum.com/abu-toameh-what-the-western-media-misses):
"Israel is not an apartheid state...Israel is a free and open democratic country. I enjoy living here and I would rather live as a second class citizen in Israel, even though I'm not, than a first class citizen in any Arab country."
The real apartheid today is in places such as Saudi Arabia, where the government totally forbids the public practice of non-Muslim religions, the presence of a Bible there, officially labels both Christians and Jews "unbelievers," and cautions in the Qu'ran Muslims not to befriend Christians or Jews:
"O you who believe! do not take the Jews and Christians for friends: they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people." (Qu'ran 5:51)
"You will see many of them befriending those who disbelieve; certainly evil is that which their souls have sent before for , that Allah became displeased with them and in chastisement shall they abide [ie: Muslim who befriend unbelievers will abide in hell.] " (Qu'ran 5:80}
"Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah," (Qu'ran 3:28)
"O you who believe! do not take for intimate friends from among other than your own people… they love what distresses you…." {Qu'ran 3:18)
Keffiyeh kid, Irish PSC
"O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your bretheren for friends if they take take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith." [ie: Even family members should not be friend if they do not submit to Islam.} (Qu'ran 9:23) *
Also in the Qu'ran, Muhammed curses the Jews and turns them into pigs and monkeys. (Suras 2:62-65, 5:59-60, and 7:166)
Iran routinely executes, tortures and persecutes Baha'is, Sunnis and Kurdish minorities.
Turkey continues to harass and persecute its Alevis, Kurds, Zoroastrians and other minorities. How many Christians or Jews, for example, are in its government?
In both Saudi Arabia and Iran, women and homosexuals are stripped of their rights as the United Nations grants Saudi Arabia a seat on the UN Human Rights Council and Iran with a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
In Lebanon, Palestinians are banned from working in many professions.
Egypt continues to persecute its Coptic Christians and torch their churches.
Jordan last year revoked the citizenship of thousands of Jordanian Palestinians, and still denies citizenship to Jews.
Iraq continues to persecute and murder members of its Christian Assyrian population.
Yet Israel is the only country constantly to be singled out for opprobrium by groups such as the IAW. If its organizers were truly interested in human rights, going from worst to best, wouldn't a better starting point be to hold an Arab Apartheid Week?'
