In London, Israel-Haters Target a Literal Joo (video)

Outside the Jinjuu restaurant in London's Soho on 9 November, Israel-haters from the Islamic-founded BDS-pushing Inminds group target the head chief, Judy Joo, demanding that she join other chefs invited to take part in a culinary show in Tel Aviv by turning down the invitation.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cdrGqzIn9A

(Video by Alex Seymour, aka Seymour Alexander)

A hop over the North Sea to Copenhagen. This video shows about 150 to 200 totalitarian Leftists, rabid haters of Israel and champions of Islamofascism that they are, yelling "Nazi Pigs!" at a group of people (with an Israeli flag) mournfully commemorating the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikct54XayBQ

 More, by way of background, here.  Who, one is moved to ask, are the true "Nazi pigs"?

Stephen Sizer's Misadventures

"Truly, I have never known a man to find himself alongside antisemites so often and not realise until it is publicly pointed out to him. Someone ought to make a sitcom about his misadventures with the antisemites."

So observed Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman back in March when she reminded readers, inter alia, that "he defended the Rev Stephen Sizer, who was later banned by church authorities from social media for sharing antisemitic material blaming Israel for 9/11."

An editorial note at the end explained "Jeremy Corbyn defended the Rev Stephen Sizer before Sizer was banned by church authorities from social media for sharing antisemitic material blaming Israel for 9/11 " 

Look again at that sentence "Truly, I have never known a man to find himself alongside antisemites so often and not realise until it is publicly pointed out to him". 

 Does it not also bring to mind the ex-vicar of Virginia Water?

This chap, still going strong:

Earlier this week Sizer posted the following plea to his Facebook faithful regarding an article (by Dominic Kennedy) that appeared in The Times on 24 August:

And was duly obliged:

'Jeremy Corbyn claimed that Zionists in Britain “don’t understand English irony” in a speech that appeared to portray Jews as an alien culture. Luciana Berger, a Jewish Labour MP, said that the Labour leader’s comments, caught on camera at a pro-Palestinian event, were “inexcusable” and made her feel unwelcome in the party.  Mr Corbyn has been fighting claims of antisemitism in his party for most of the three years of his leadership. The latest disclosure is the most damaging blow yet to his claims that he opposes prejudice against Jews. Jamie Susskind, a former speechwriter for Ed Miliband, called on the Labour leader to resign.

In the 2013 speech Mr Corbyn referred to a speech by Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Authority representative in Britain. Mr Corbyn said that the envoy’s words had been “dutifully recorded by the thankfully silent Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he’d said. “So clearly two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either. Manuel does understand English irony and uses it very, very effectively so I think they need two lessons which we can help them with.”

.... Mr Corbyn faced a backlash after the video of his speech was published by Mail Online. MPs piled pressure on their leader. Ms Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, tweeted that the video of Mr Corbyn “making inexcusable comments — defended by a party spokesman — makes me as a proud British Jew feel unwelcome in my own party. I’ve lived in Britain all my life and I don’t need any lessons in history/irony.” She was supported by Labour colleagues. Catherine McKinnell, the Newcastle North MP, tweeted that she was “standing right with you”. Phil Wilson, the MP for Sedgefield, added: “Right beside you.”

Marcus Dysch, who works for the Jewish educational charity World ORT, said that it was clear that the remarks targeted Jews. Tweeting in a personal capacity he said: “Unambiguous antisemitic hate from Corbyn, a terrorist-sympathising, purge orchestrating, fear-mongering, unaccountable piece of work who should never have been allowed to lead a once-great party. Is it any wonder British Jews despair as this saga drags on?”

Mr Susskind, the former chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club, said: “Corbyn is not criticising Israel or supporting Palestinians. He is saying that Zionists (read Jews) who have lived in England their whole lives are somehow not fully English in their sensibilities. He has to go.” Jeremy Duns, the novelist, responded with a display of English irony: “Love the idea of the world’s most humourless man offering to teach Jews about irony. I mean, Zionists, sorry! He meant only Zionists, of course he did, silly me.”

Jennifer Gerber, director of Labour Friends of Israel, described Mr Corbyn’s comments as “despicable”.  John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: “I think this has all been taken out of context: whatever Jeremy has said throughout the years has always been about how to secure peace, particularly within the Middle East and also peace with justice for all concerned — both members of the Jewish community and also members of the Palestinian community. In that context Jeremy has devoted his life, so I think this would take expressions out of context in that way are not helping.”

Nick Griffin, former leader of the far-right British National Party, weighed in behind the Labour leader. He tweeted: “Go Jezza! I wonder how many Labour activists the hysterical Zionist media campaign against Corbyn is re-pilling?”

Mr Corbyn made his comments at Friends House in Euston during an event publicised on the propaganda website of the military wing of Hamas, Al-Qassam Brigades, which has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Home Office since 2001. A spokesman for Labour said that he was there to support peace. Among the speakers was Daud Abdullah, a former deputy general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, who has been accused of calling for violence against Israelis and condoning attacks on British troops. Stephen Sizer, a vicar who has suggested that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks, also spoke.  (Emphasis addded)

It has also emerged that Mr Corbyn accused Israel of genocide at a rally in 2014. The Daily Mail reported that he was recorded at a protest near the Israeli embassy in London, saying: “This is an occupation, this is a genocidal attack on Palestinian people.” ....'

As the pictured examples above indicate Sizer is rather fond of posting links to conspiracy theories regarding the Jews of Israel. 

And as left-leaning Zionist and London academic David Hirsh and the well-known Anglican blogger Archbishop Cranmer have both pointed out in recent days, Sizer posted this version of the antisemitic trope "the Jews control the media" on Facebook last week:

(Read Hirsh here and Cranmer here)

As I've observed countless times, it is curious that Sizer fails to defriend the many antisemites among his Facebook followers.

People like the notorious Tony Gratrex, long associated with the Reading PSC branch. 

In recent days:

Sizer posted this statement on Facebook a few days ago:

But he also posted this, and, hey presto, what do we find when following the link?

Why, an offering from a hate site about which we are reminded here:

 'If Americans Knew (IAK), a non-profit founded by activist Alison Weir, has the rare distinction of being condemned for furthering anti-Semitism by the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation.

Weir earned this remarkable wall-to-wall opprobrium by promoting anti-Semitic myths, working with white supremacists, and publishing anti-Jewish content on IAK’s web site.'

Not a good look, Stephen Sizer.

Speaking of the Campaign Against Antisemitism:

One of Sizer's Facebook faithful, the scurrilous clown who calls himself Harriet S Place,  has defended Sizer thus:

Ah, but would Harriet and other apologists be so understanding of a public figure on the right of politics who linked to propaganda material by David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan and claimed that they had no ulterior motive in doing so?  Would they not condemn such a person as a racist and a fascist?

Answers on a postcard, please.

"Israel Has Been Made an Alibi for a New Climate of anti-Semitism on the Left"

Time to re-read the late lamented Professor Norman Geras's post here on "Alibi Antisemitism".

Here's the merest taster:

"In Marx's essay On the Jewish Question, written in 1844, there are two contrasting sets of themes vis-à-vis the Jews. In Part II of the essay Marx deploys some well-known negative stereotypes, according to which: the mundane basis of Judaism is self-interest, egoism, or, as Marx also calls it, 'an anti-social element'; the worldly religion of the Jew is huckstering; and the Jew's jealous god – 'in face of which no other god may exist' – is money.

The emancipation of the Jews is said by him to be equivalent to the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. Part I, on the other hand, presents a version of secular democracy in which the Jews, like any religious or other particularistic grouping, may retain their religion and their separate identity consistently with the state itself rising above such particularisms, and rendering these politically irrelevant.

Though Marx himself regards this – political emancipation – as an incomplete form of emancipation, he nonetheless articulates a genuine type of moral universalism: different faiths, ethnicities, peoples, have a right to assert their specific identities and shared beliefs within the free secular order of the democratic state. The distinctions between such groups just cease to have a political bearing. Marx does not extend this argument beyond the single state to the global arena (that not being part of the discursive context), but the correlate at international level of what he argues in Part I of On the Jewish Question is today embodied in the notion of a right of nations to self-determination, as affirmed in Article 1.2 of the United Nations Charter.

The contrasting themes of Marx's essay may be taken as emblematic of the state of affairs obtaining today between Jews and the left. It is not difficult to understand the long affinity there has been between them. Common traditions of opposition to injustice, the commitment within liberal and socialist thought to ideals of equality (whether this is equality under the law or equality in substantive economic terms), opposition to racist and other similar types of prejudice – these things have long served to attract Jews to organizations and movements of the left, and they still do.

[Continues Prof Geras:]

At the same time, that affinity has now been compromised by the existence of a new climate of anti-Semitic opinion within the left. This climate of opinion affects a section of the left only, and not the whole of it. But it is a substantial section. Its convenient alibi is the state of Israel – by which I mean that Israel is standardly invoked to deflect the charge that there is anything of anti-Semitism at work. Israel, so the story goes, is a delinquent state and, for many of those who regard it so, a non-legitimate one – colonialist, imperialist, vehicle of oppression and what have you.

 Similarly, diaspora Jews who defend Israel within their home countries are not seen as the conduit of Jewish interests and/or opinion in the normal way of any other democratic articulation; they are treated, rather, as a dubious force – the notorious 'Jewish lobby' – as if their organized existence were somehow improper.

These themes pitch those who sponsor them out of a genuine, and into a spurious, type of universalism: one where the Jews are special amongst other groups in being obliged to settle for forms of political freedom in which their identity may not be asserted collectively; Jews must be satisfied, instead, merely with the rights available to them as individuals. I call this a spurious universalism because people's rights to live as they will (subject to the usual constraint of not harming others) is an incomplete right – a truncated and impaired right – if it does not include the freedom to associate with others of their own kind.

To repeat: Israel has been made an alibi for a new climate of anti-Semitism on the left." [Emphasis added]

 (All tweets pictured above are current ones.)  For Corbyn's eyeroll see here

The Left-Liberal Globalist War on the West

A rather complicated examination of globalist Left-Liberalism here.  From about 12:25 we hear Sargon Akkad regarding Jews, and declaring that "Jewish people have to stop the identity politics.  I'm sorry about the Holocaust but I don't give a shit."  A clip featuring Alan Dershowitz follows: "We have earned the right to be heard".

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=0TiAEHjM5ZM

"This is a Conflict About ...an Exterminatory Attempt to Destroy the Jewish Homeland" (video)

From Jerusalem, on 27 September, Marvellous Melanie talks to Australian journalists Rowan Dean (read his recent pro-Israel remarks here) and Ross Cameron on Sky TV.

The conversation runs from her take on the morally compromised Left through the destructive foolishness of American Jewry's universalistic outlook and thrust ("Jewish values are not universalistic, they are particularist ... they have universalist applications") to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I wish this 20-minute interview with a wise and courageous woman, a Jewish heroine of our time, could be mandatory viewing for the current crop of leaders of Progressive Judaism in Australia, who seem have hitched their wagon  to every leftist political position going, regardless of the end result. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=GuTQc9WrAkc

(The sound quality improves after the first few minutes.)

Roll of Shame

 

Whoops! Pardon me.  The roll I really have in mind is this one, which also belongs in the latrine:

'We are Jews in Britain who support UN Security Council Resolution 2334. This confirms that the establishment of settlements “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”. The resolution demands that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory”.

As President Trump takes over at the White House, it becomes ever more important for Jews around the world to stand up publicly on the side of international law, common sense and justice and to welcome this UN Resolution. We know that the great majority of American Jews supported former President Obama. His refusal to veto Resolution 2334 ensured that it would pass, with the unanimous supporting vote of the other fourteen Security Council members, including Britain. And we know that the great majority of American Jews oppose Donald Trump for his racism, sexism, promotion of hatred towards Muslims, and association with white supremacists and blatant antisemites. They will also be alarmed that Trump has appointed David Friedman, a strong supporter of the settlement movement, as the next US ambassador to Israel.

 Here in Britain we also know – from meticulous City University research, overseen by eminent Jewish academics – that the great majority of British Jews are opposed to the settlement project. When leaders of the Board of Deputies declared their opposition to Resolution 2334, they did not speak in our name.

Fifty years of Occupation represents a tragic failure: Israel’s denial of human and civil rights to millions of people; thousands of lives lost, most though not all Palestinian; many hundreds of thousands more, in both Palestinian and Israeli Jewish communities, traumatised by war, hatred and loss of hope.  We ask our fellow Jews in Britain to make our majority voice heard. We must welcome the opening of a door towards a better future for all Israelis and Palestinians by declaring:

No to continuing Occupation…….. No to settlements……… No to settlement expansion…….. No to buying settlement products……… Yes to a just peace.'

Yes, the names on the roll call are pretty well impossible to read on here, even with a magnifying glass. Trust me:   they are those of Jewish and Jew-ish  academics and fellow-travellers who can always be relied upon to malign Israel whenever the clarion call is sounded.   Some have a history of extreme activism against the little Jewish State including support for Ilan Pappe's appalling "One State Declaration". 

The three groups represented:  Jews for Justice for Palestinians (consisting of wet well-meaning dupes along with Jews for injustice for Israel), Independent Jewish Voices, and Jewish Socialists.

A member of the last-mentioned group, a London educator, tells of the ad's reception by the Jewish News, the giveaway paper in London that published my Stephen Sizer 9/11 screenshot, thus leaving the Jewish Chronicle, which had told me it was not interested, with egg on its face after that screenshot image went viral.  Seems that the Jewish Chronicle is all over the place these days:

Useful Idiots Fighting for Whom?

A prominent Aussie Israel-basher's credo

"Clamouring critics of multiculturalism are motivated by ignorance, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, fear and hatred of Muslim Australians.

They fear their beloved mythical Anglo-Saxon monocultural masterclass is threatened. The Nazis had similar values....

According to the racist opponents of multiculturalism, the Muslim agenda is that Australia must be a Muslim nation.

If you believe this, I can also sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge....

Ironically, we may be better off as a Muslim nation. Christianity has never been less popular and Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. It’s a religion of peace, love, family values and respect, and the only faith to give women equality in its holy book." 

So declared inveterate Israel-bashing ABC (Australia's answer to the BBC) journalist Peter Goers a few years ago.


What a comedian, eh?

Strange sort of mindset.

But one we are seeing all too frequently among the "anti-Zionist" crowd.

See what I mean?  (The Israel-basher quoted in the previous image happily poses with a book.)

More comedians, this time in France last month (note the keffiyehs):

Here's a look at how Europe's "cultural enrichers" respect women in France, with the "public space" closed to them in a shopping precinct in a district of Lyons, and how both Muslim-born and non-Muslim women are fighting back:

Here's a look at Merkeland, where youths from Muslim hellholes are demonstrating how much they respect women in authority (by abusing and threatening them):

Here's another look at "cultural enrichment" in the same country:

As British historian Niall Ferguson (husband of the articulate and courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali) observed recently:

'On the migration issue the European leadership got it disastrously wrong. On the question of radical Islam the European leadership has fundamentally got it wrong. One has to recognise that the European elite's performance over the last decade entirely justified the revolt of provincial England that was what we saw in Brexit.

If those of us who were part of the elite spent more time in pubs in provincial England and provincial Wales we would have heard what I just said.

This is not about GDP, it is principally about the complete loss of control of the EU's external border and what that implies for our country's future.

I have had a kind of awakening. Brexit woke me up and reminded me I needed to pay much more attention to what the non-elite majority of voters were thinking.'

Under its wet wet wet liberal CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL seems bent on turning that organisation into a one-stop shop for the promotion of every leftist bandwagon that rolls by, and demonising as bigots anyone outspokenly critical of Islam.

As Jonathan Bronitsky has written, at the end of a brilliant essay here :

'First, I hope this essay persuades the ADL, which is heavily invested in antibullying (e.g., “No Place For Hate” campaign), to consider that it itself has become a bully to conservatives who remain in its ranks. Shutting out right-leaning individuals through crowd intimidation and derision weakens coalitions, which are vital in advocacy work. This behavior also diminishes the organization’s values, which will turn stale and trite when left unchallenged.

Secondly, I want the ADL to revisit and clarify its mission. “The nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency,” asserts that it “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry”; not just “all forms of bigotry,” but “anti-Semitism” and then “all forms of bigotry.” Yet as murderous anti-Semitism around the globe has surged in recent years, the ADL has dedicated itself more and more to matters of social justice in America (e.g., immigration, women’s reproductive health, economic “privilege”) that are already being pursued by a plethora of lobbying outlets and activist foundations. This wouldn’t be problematic—or rather, duplicitous—per se. But the ADL loudly and incessantly bemoans the fact that Jews are living in an increasingly dangerous world. “Thirty or forty years ago,” I heard over and over again at the National Leadership Summit, “I couldn’t have imagined that Jews would be getting shot dead in the streets of Europe.”

Well, resources are limited. Is combatting anti-Semitism a “priority” for the ADL? If so, then the organization should put its money where its mouth is. Alas, this outcome seems ever more unlikely as it seeks to enforce group conformity and advance political agendas that have nothing to do with defending the Jewish people.'

And as Jonathan S. Tobin wrote a few days ago: 

'In the month since the presidential election, many in the American Jews have been in mourning over Donald Trump’s victory. For all too many Jews and the organizations that purport to represent Jewish interests, partisan disappointment has led to a great deal of loose and highly irresponsible comparisons of our present situation to Weimar Germany and the rise of Hitler. It is in that context that a new report from the Community Security Service (CSS) about terrorist incidents and attacks on Jews and Israelis in the United States since 1967 is critical reading for those who wish to re-focus the Jewish community on real rather than imagined threats to its security.

The report, which was written by Yehudit Barsky, one of the top experts on radical hate groups in the country, provides a comprehensive analysis of the recent history of anti-Semitism in the United States. She paints a frightening picture of the rising toll of violence against Jews from two distinct sources: white supremacists and radical Islamists....

This serves as a reminder that for all of the talk about Islamophobia, both before and after the election, Jews and Jewish institutions remain the main targets of religious-based hate crimes in this country. This is a fact borne out by the FBI’s annual reports on hate crimes. The latest available report is from 2014 and that one, like every other issued since the outset of such compilations confirms this fact. In that year, 58.1 percent of all religious hate crimes in this country were directed at Jews. Only 16.3  percent were anti-Islamic....

 Monitoring hotbeds of hate is key to stopping attacks, but, in the effort to avoid accusations of Islamophobia, efforts by law enforcement to keep tabs on radical mosques and other Islamist centers have been abandoned and wrongly branded as acts of prejudice. Without good intelligence, it’s only a matter of time before another major attack might be successful....'

 And as Melanie Phillips has so well expressed matters ('Mrs May's False Note'):

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism.

 Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.

Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.

The result of Mrs May’s lethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.

The result was the ludicrous exclusion from Britain of the anti-jihadists Geller and Spencer in 2013. Whatever one may think of their style or choice of allies, to suggest that people who fight against antisemitism and the jihadi threat to the world pose a threat similar to that presented by the terrorist godfathers Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada is just grotesque.

... Yet last July the government allowed into the country two extremist preachers from Pakistan, Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman, for a seven-week preaching tour of mosques. Both are supporters of Mumtaz Qadri who in 2011 murdered Salman Taseer, a Pakistani politician who spoke out against that country’s blasphemy laws....

To equate antisemitism with Islamophobia not only reveals a moral and intellectual muddle and a failure to understand what bigotry actually is. It also inescapably suggests a most alarming inability to grasp the full nature and extent of the Islamist threat to Britain and the free world.'

Meanwhile, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the extremist group banned in much of the Middle East but tolerated in Britain and Australia, has been making its view known, yet again, on the streets of London.

 Meanwhile, at an Austrian kindergarten's Christmas play ...

To say nothing of that German Christmas market in today's headlines.

Stephen Sizer Posts Early for Christmas (plus Hypocrites on Press TV)

To judge by the coy facetiousness below, our old friend the vicar seems to be taking both seriously and not so seriously the Bishop of Guildford's directive to him not to post anything about the Middle East on social media while he remains the incumbent of Christ Church, Virginia Water:

Someone asks where the camels can be purchased, and someone else replies, to which our old friend adds:

Speaking of our old friend leads to thoughts of Press TV, the Iranian government's propaganda satellite news channel on which he has not been averse to appearing, despite the regime of the ayatollahs' frightful record regarding human rights including those of Christians.

Happily wallowing in Israel-hatred are a bunch of European trades unionists spewing invective against the Zionist entity with no qualms about appearing on the odious Iranian regime's propaganda channel:

  

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wSQWOi4URE)

And by appearing on Press TV, blissfully turning a collective blind eye to the real, ongoing and worsening human rights violations committed by Iran:

CLICK HERE for article

I reckon that qualifies as antisemitism, as set out in an updated chart by Edgar Davidson here

Jeremy Corbyn's latest excrescence here 

In Australia, Schoolkids Study Palestinian Activist's Play

Two months before their upcoming conference at Sydney University (13-15 May), entitled "Socialism for the 21st century," Aussie far leftists, who include Green Left activists and members of the Socialist Alliance, have just announced the line-up for their inevitable session bashing Israel.

Meanwhile, another Israel-undermining initiative, altogether smarter and more subtle, which has infiltrated the school system in the Aussie state of Victoria, appears to have gone relatively unnoticed. 

I refer to the fact that the play City by the Sea, by poet, writer and activist Samah Sabawi, a Gaza-born (1967) Australian/Canadian, is now on the 2016 playlist for school students taking the Victorian Certificate of Education.  It means that students in years 11 and 12 will be attending performances of the play at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in May.

An official document listing the plays selected for study in 2016 states, inter alia:

'Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Drama written examination.

While the VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] considers all plays on this list suitable for study, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes that are explored may be challenging for students. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with the treatment of these issues and themes within the context and world of the play prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript. This might involve reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company, researching the playscript, the work of the playwright, director and/or company, attending a preview performance and/or discussing the matter with the school administration. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide only. In some plays, suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. This language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community' [Emphasis added]

Tailor-made, wouldn't you say, for teachers who may be left-wing anti-Zionists, and indeed any teacher who relies for information about the Middle East on such biased sources as the Fairfax Press (The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald), the ABC and SBS, wittingly or unwittingly to poison young minds?

The document continues:

"Tales of a City by the Sea explores life in Gaza through the lens of a generation who have grown up in a state under occupation. It tells a story of people who are experiencing very difficult life circumstances, but who are resisting being defined by their suffering. Before the play begins, the cast mingles with the audience and introduce themselves as actors who are there to share a story. There is no effort to create the illusion that they are their characters. The device of Brechtian alienation emotionally separates the audience from the story to allow them to take a critical view of the action. The actors are visible at all times, when onstage and offstage. Actors who play several characters transform in full view, through costume changes, gesture, and voice. While the story specifically takes place in 2008 during the siege of Gaza, the symbolic staging of the play does not include scenic elements that define place or time. The non-naturalistic set, composed of a set of white sheets on wires, has a makeshift sensibility. Time and place are indicated by transformations of lighting and set, which is operated by the actors as part of the action of the performance. A singer performs traditional songs a capella in Arabic throughout these changes, punctuating the action while connecting to the audience.The play combines scenes from life with conventions of epic theatre, including direct address, poetry, and breaking the fourth wall."

To quote the Sydney Morning Herald during 2014:

'The play tells the story of Jomana, a Palestinian woman living in the Shati' (beach) refugee camp in Gaza who falls in love with Rami, an American-Palestinian doctor who arrives on the Free Gaza boats in August 2008. Theirs is a relationship met with more challenges than most; at one point Rami makes the perilous journey through the underground tunnels that connect Gaza to Egypt.

The script – which was born out of poetry that Sabawi wrote during the first Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-2009 – is based on real events, with fictionalised characters, taking the audience through "a year in the life of Gaza"....

 Liz Jones, artistic director of La Mama, said she was struck by what she calls a "beautiful work" when she first heard the script at a public reading two years ago.

"It's essentially a love story, as I see it, as well as a very passionate plea for compassion, harmony and a peaceful solution to all the troubles in the Middle East – an area that is seen as quite 'other' in this country," she says.

"It deals with the people involved as deeply human – as loving, as suffering, as caring, as we all aspire to be - and I think that's very important because it's not the way people from the Middle East are usually presented."

A longtime vocal advocate for Palestinian rights, Sabawi recently made headlines when she was taken off the panel at an Israel-Palestine debate at the Wheeler Centre, only to be promptly reinstated four hours later. At the time, Sabawi said that she thought her ejection from the panel was due to pressure from those who object to her support for the BDS [Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions] movement against Israel.

Tales of the City and the Sea is undeniably political, but Sabawi stresses that its message is a universal one. "It's looking at how human beings – not just Palestinians – at how human beings react in extraordinary circumstances and at times of war," she says.

"It's the idea of connectivity, it's the idea of defying the fragmentation of the Palestinian nationals ... before the last attack on Gaza began I was in constant contact with artists in Gaza and the West Bank preparing for this and everyone was saying, 'We're all one people.'"

Not convinced of the play's power as propaganda?  Then read this:

'Tales of a City by the Sea is the story of two people who meet and fall in love in the besieged Gaza strip, woven together from the actual experiences of people living under occupation.

Jomana, a Palestinian woman living in a Gaza refugee camp, falls in love with Rami, an American-born Palestinian doctor and activist who has just arrived on one of the first Free Gaza boats in 2008. Their love is met with relentless string of challenges. Ultimately, Rami must decide between returning to his comfortable life in Texas and staying in Palestine with Jomana. Choosing to stay means leaving his family and career behind for a life ravaged by war, while leaving means not only losing Jomana but also ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.

The play premiered in November 2014, with simultaneous productions at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne and the AlRowwad Cultural and Theatre Society, in Aida Refugee Camp in Palestine. La Mama saw a sold out season and both productions received passionate responses from audiences and critics alike. Hundreds posted on social media, encouraging their friends to see it and asking for remounts in other places.

Starting in May 2016, we want to take Tales of a City by the Sea on tour!....

We believe that sharing Palestinian stories is a key step towards a just and peaceful resolution, and that a view into the realities of life under occupation has the power to change hearts and minds.

“This gripping play is an act of resistance that implores its audience to take heed.”

— The Age'  [Emphasis added]

 Not for nothing have those connected with the play expressed their delight in its exposure to school students:

Congratulations to all of us!   Palestinian play highlighting challenges of life in Gaza during the war of 2008-2009 has been selected for the 2016 Victorian Certificate of Education Drama list.   The play Tales of a City by the Sea by Palestinian Australian playwright Samah Sabawi was one of 16 of more than 50 submissions selected for the 3 VCE Playlists.   As a result, it will be seen and studied by hundreds of year 11 & 12 Theatre students in Victoria and it will be published by Currency Press and disseminated among these students.

 There's more delight now:

London Calling! (video)

Londoners calling Israel the worst human rights violator out of a given list! (Some others know better.)

This video  (posted originally on  www.thegatewaypundit.com/ ) will no doubt have already been viewed by many.  It was recommended to me by Reader P, and does yeoman service by going on to  expose the real situation in the real human rights-violating regimes around the world.

Not the kind of thing to watch while eating popcorn, though.

"What is it with the Left and Jews? What is it with the Left and pandering to Islamists?" (includes videos)

Aussie Leftist media cartoon demonisation

As  the popular Aussie conservative columnist Andrew Bolt writes  in his syndicated column today regarding the Australian Labor Party (ALP):

 "The modern Left seems to have a Jew problem. The obsession with Jews even within Labor is extraordinary - and ominous.

What is it with the Left and Jews? What is it with the Left and pandering to Islamists?" 

Mr Bolt quotes from a sobering piece on the subject by Sharri Markson in The Australian newspaper, showing the Left faction of the ALP is so saturated now in leftist/Islamist bias against Israel as to be aiding and abetting that old demon, slumbering since the Shoah and now belligerently wide awake: Jew-hatred.

Ms Markson wrote, inter alia:

'.... The NSW ALP international relations policy committee chairman Michael Forshaw told The Australian yesterday that 39 resolutions had been received concerning Israel and Palestine, compared with 17 resolutions dealing with other international issues, such as the Syrian war, the Myanmar junta, Paris terror bombings, China free trade and foreign aid.

There were none on Saudi Arabia or Iran.

There are moves to recognise Palestinian statehood and to boycott products from Israel that originate in settlement areas, and many concerning banning trips to Israel while Benjamin Netan­yahu is Prime Minister. The move by Labor is partly driven by political motivations to secure the vote from Muslim communities in marginal southwest Sydney seats.....'

 She cites the main offenders, and their thraldom to the Muslim vote.

She reminds the reader of the 'incendiary remarks' (Jewish advocacy groups are “cancerous” and “malicious” and try to “deny, misinform and scaremonger”) made by NSW Labor politician Shaoquett Moselmane, who felt comfortable enough broadcasting ... anti-semitic sentiment within the walls of the NSW Parliament' despite having ' ironically decried racism' in his maiden speech:

'He was not shouted-out of the high office he holds for racist commentary. On the contrary, Labor continues to support him and Moselmane is now a vocal advocate behind a push to ban Labor MPs from visiting Israel on trips funded by Jewish organisations…

The father of the anti-Israel movement is Bob Carr, whose speeches have on at least one occasion, in July last year, elicited anti-semitic commentary from the audience, with a remark made about “the Jews” and their “3000-year fundamentalist influence.”

And I remain deeply concerned by comments by [Tony] Burke ...  a Labor frontbencher which seemed to legitimise Islamist terrorism against Israel....'

In the videos below pro-Israel federal MP Michael Danby, from the ALP's right faction, which, happily, still includes supporters of Israel, is seen on Australia Day talking to The Shtick's Henry Greener about the menace of the ABC's Sophie McNeill and dishonest reporting about Israel.

This one (after a few opening bars of jazz) focuses more than the top one on Ms McNeill:

Joel's Palestine Visa

An average person, looking at this image posted on Facebook by Palestine News Network, would surely express sympathy for the poor desperate soul in Kovno granted the visa and hope he managed to avail himself of it and escape death in the Shoah.

 Not so the anti-Israel activists, composed of the usual array of suspects, who have rushed to embrace it for their own malodorous ends.

No curiosity about the person granted it or his fate.  Only the usual demonisation of Zionism and Israel, only the usual distortions. of the Mandatory period.

I suppose the only surprising thing is that any of us continue to be surprised.

As a click  here shows, Joel Blumencwajg was born in a shtetl in Volhynia in November 1924.

He reached Palestine in 1941.

Debunking Bunkum (video) (updated)

Thanks to a commenter on my latest Tuesday article for Elder of Ziyon for this one:

And hat tip to the same blog (well, that amazing resource Ian, actually) for linking to this by Professor Alan Johnson entitled "The Left and the Jews ...".

Regarding BBC bias, a magnificent piece here by a maestro, David Collier,  Beautifully written, compellingly argued.

"The Great Replacement":

A Quick Trip Across The Ditch

In other words, across the Tasman Sea, to New Zealand.

I've just stumbled across a Kiwi blog which, although Israel is not central to its content, is staunchly supportive of Israel and alive to the hypocrisy and foibles of Israel's leftist enemies.

I found this photo (which leaves us in no doubt regarding the aims of the Socialist Aotearoa gang) on that blog.  The post in question, dating to August last year and entitled "We're Not Anti-Semitic.  We have a Jew with us" is very much worth a look.

Meanwhile, in Auckland, where there seems to be quite a hub of anti-Israel leftist activism (remember past videos from the Global Peace and Justice [sic] gang?), Nadia Abu Shanab from the Palestine Solidarity Network shares some sentiments:

Putting The Knife In (video)

O, what a cutie!

Can we be surprised?

The Left puts the knife in (Hat tip: Ian on Elder of Ziyon)

Incidentally,  my latest Tuesday blog on Elder of Ziyon may be of interest: see here

Typecast Villains

Samuel (Sam) West is a British actor and director.  Unlike John Altman (aka "Nasty" Nick Cotton, whom we see slandering Israel on my previous post but one) he specialises in polished, posh-talking parts, befitting a member of theatrical royalty (his parents are the well-known thespians Prunella ("Sybil Fawlty") Scales and Timothy West, and his paternal grandfather was the actor Lockwood West, a distant cousin of film star Margaret ("The Lady Vanishes") Lockwood.

Despite his rather privileged background, the undeniably talented Mr West (as a naval history buff I enjoyed his billing, years ago, as a supercilious young military officer on horseback in the "Hornblower" miniseries) is a far leftist. 

While at Oxford University, he was, we're told, "a member of the Socialist Workers Party and later briefly the Socialist Alliance".  Moreover,  he "has been a left-wing activist for many years; he was a critic of Tony Blair's New Labour government.  On 26 March 2011 he spoke at the TUC March for the Alternative."

As far leftists tend to be, Mr West is also a vociferous critic of the only true democracy in the Middle East.  Here's footage of him some years ago rocking the anti-Israel crowd with a star turn:

Much more recently, he (and his parents) were among the stars and spear carriers who announced their intention to deprive Israel of the honour of their presence (well, words to that effect, anyway).

Now, a number of the theatre world's finest (super-finest in the Israel baiting stakes) have rounded upon the "Israel lobby" in the UK.

A couple of press release from Artists for Palestine UK,both dated 10 May, tell the story:

'(NB this original text differs slightly from the version published by the Daily Mail on May 8)

As theatre practitioners in Britain, we are alarmed that the Daily Mail is attacking the Arts Council and the British Council for supporting a UK tour by a Palestinian theatre company.

A scene from the play; photo credit Jewish Chronicle

Your piece, with its inflammatory title UK taxpayers fund ‘pro-terrorist’ play, cites “concerns” from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an organisation with a shocking record of acting to suppress both cultural and academic events which explore the bitter reality of Palestinian existence. Only last month the University of Southampton succumbed to demonisation and threats and banned an academic conference on the legal status of Israel. [Emphasis added here and below]

Neither the Daily Mail nor the Board of Deputies has seen Freedom Theatre’s play The Siege, yet both somehow feel qualified to suggest that it is “promoting terrorism”. Not for the first time, Palestinian voices are in danger of being drowned out by a vociferous pro-Israel lobby that smears all Palestinians as terrorists and antisemites. This lobby wants us to believe that theatre-goers in the UK cannot be trusted to hear these voices and make their own judgements.

The Palestinian West Bank, where the Freedom Theatre is based, has been under illegal Israeli military occupation since 1967. We endorse the words of British playwright Howard Brenton, an honorary director of the Freedom Theatre, who writes of the forthcoming tour:

“This is real political theatre, performed out of the both terrible and inspiring experience of a struggle for freedom and justice. [The Freedom Theatre] are living proof that telling stories and entertaining audiences are powerful acts of resistance to oppression. Do go and see them, they have news for us.”

[signed] Caryl Churchill, Dominic Cooke, April De Angelis, David Edgar, Lucy Kirkwood, David Lan, Miriam Margolyes, Paul Mayersberg, Maxine Peake, Mark Rylance,  Jennie Stoller, Mark Thomas, Samuel West

The other press release says in part:

'.... Leading theatre practitioners have leapt to the defence of the Palestinian Freedom Theatre, about to start its first tour of the UK, after an article in the Mail on Sunday accused supporting arts organisations of funding “a pro-terrorist play”.

The Mail on Sunday piece, written by Nick Craven, charged Arts Council England with giving £15,000 of taxpayers’ money “to producers of an unashamedly one-sided drama based on accounts from the gunmen and bombers of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.”

It cited “extreme concerns” from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and quoted the Israeli Foreign Ministry saying the play used testimony from “men with blood on their hands.”

Neither Craven nor the critics he quotes have seen the play – The Siege – based on dramatic events in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002. Its tour opens in Manchester on May 13.....'

It refers to the letter quoted above, and quotes one of the signatories, Mark Thomas, thus:

“Free speech for Palestinian artists is increasingly threatened, more often than not by supporters of Israel’s apartheid occupation. Palestinian voices not only have a right to be heard, we have duty to listen to them.”

And it gives the dates and ten locations of the performances of the play, which opens in Manchester and winds up in Glasgow in mid-June.

See more here and here

And note also that more likely demonisation of Israel is bound for the London stage:

"A Land Without People charts London’s political wrangling in the lead-up to the United Nations proposal to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories.

 Through meticulous research of contemporary documents, it tells the story behind the overthrow of British rule in Palestine at the hands of Zionist terrorists and the violent clearing of its Arab inhabitants that was to follow."

In The B[BC]eginning ...

British prime minister David Cameron is a slippery sort of character who nevertheless has made  the right noises when he observes:

 "....As well as the new threat of extremist Islamism, there has been an insidious, creeping attempt to delegitimize the state of Israel, which spills over often into anti-Semitism. We have to be very clear about the fact that there is a dangerous line that people keep crossing over. This is a state, a democracy that is recognized by the United Nations, and I don’t think we should be tolerant of this effort at delegitimization....

 .... People have every reason to be concerned because you’ve got several things happening at the same time. You’ve got the poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism, which is targeting Jews generally. You’ve got specific attacks in Europe. And you have the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses or in public life, including sadly in Britain in some cases. Plus, you’ve got the issue of delegitimization being pushed, the boycotts of the state of Israel by universities and the like, and soon you add all these things up and you can see why some in the Jewish community are very concerned...."

For a glimpse into how the forces of delegitimisation began to take root in Britain, not long after the Six Day War, with help from elements within the BBC, please see my latest article here for the Elder of Ziyon blog.