Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)
Showing posts with label Max Brenner (Parramatta). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Max Brenner (Parramatta). Show all posts

Monday, 19 August 2013

Max Brenner Boycott Flops In Sydney

Does the shade of Helen Thomas lurk in Sydney?

"And jews also have a homeland its called Germany" has commented someone on the Facebook page of the group that staged a rally in Parramatta on the weekend against Max Brenner.

Although the comment, made at the weekend, has attracted only one "Like" it is perhaps instructive that not one of the anti-Israel BDSers (leftists and Muslims) who've used and left comments on the page has (so far at least) seen fit to rebuke the apparently Muslim commenter for his obscene Thomas-like remark or to distance themselves from it.

(Better lift your game, guys and girls; you wouldn't want to leave the impression that you're Jew-haters. Would you?)

There were high hopes for the rally, to be addressed by, according to the Facebook page, Richard Green (indigenous speaker); Ahmad Qasem (Palestinian activist); Paul Mcaleer (Maritime union of Australia); Lutfi Zayed (Palestinian activist); Marlene Carrasco (University of Western Sydney student union organiser).

A media release proclaimed:
'Protest to go ahead. Parramatta Town Hall 1pm Saturday 17th August
The Palestine Action Group has decided to continue with a protest against Israeli Chocolateria chain, Max Brenner, in spite of threats by Parramatta Council of fines of over $2000. The demonstration, part of the global movement calling for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, was organised well in advance of the threat of fines being issued today. The Palestine Action Group has been coordinating with the NSW Police, who are facilitating the demonstration.
Lutfi Zayed, a Palestinian activist with PAG, was contacted today and threatened by Council staff to cancel the protest or be fined. “They say that we live in a free country” says Lutfi, “where our right to protest and express our beliefs are protected. But these threats scrap any notion of the right to free speech or freedom of assembly. We’ve had almost identical protests before without any trouble.”
Damian Ridgwell, one of the 19 activists charged and acquitted in relation to a protest against Max Brenner in Melbourne in 2011, says “the victimisation of Palestine solidarity activism must stop. This is not the first time that fundamental democratic rights have been suspended for those who oppose Israel’s crime of Apartheid.”
“This is nothing less than censorship. As well as banning our protest, a meeting hosting a Palestinian refugee in the Town Hall has also been banned, even thought the room was booked and paid for.”
Dale Mills, Lawyer and researcher at Sydney University in Law in the field of political protest, says “Never in living memory has a council issued fines against protests in these circumstances”. He describes this as an attack on democratic rights. “If this became established Council practice in NSW it would be the end of the right to protest”.'
Despite the bravado and the bluster, the rally itself is perceived to have been a dismal flop. Organisers seem reluctant to post photographs or footage of it.  That's thought to be because although the number of attendees was expected to be over 300 (plus some 120 possibles), only a fraction of that number (itself a fraction of the 2,664 invitees) turned up.

See photographs here, where, in her accompanying article, Shirlee Finn observes deliciously of an obvious irony:
"And last, and by no means least, as the third photo shows, whilst this was going on outside Max Brenner’s chocolate shop, three Muslim girls, complete with hijabs, were sitting there drinking their hot chocolate !!!"
 Update: here's that Great Graphic Moment In BDS History, made into a poster (hat tip: reader Ian):

 Nice one, IsreallyCool!

Sunday, 23 September 2012

"We Refuse To Outsource [Australian] Foreign Policy To The Lowy Institute" (video)

Here, eyes blazing and voice embittered, is veteran anti-South African apartheid activist Kolin Thumbadoo, who migrated to Australia in the 1980s, viciously maligning Israel, Sydney businessman Frank Lowy and the Lowy Institute, and H. V. "Doc" Evatt, at the Palestine Action Group Sydney's demo a couple of days ago against Max Brenner in Parramatta.  Hear the crowd whoop and call as they eagerly digest his rabble-rousing, ignorant invective.


Towards the end, to the approval of his listeners, he compares Israel with Nazi Germany, and makes the familiar-among-Israel-haters observation about "the children of the Holocaust" that was not long ago condemned so ably by non-Jewish pro-Israel blogger Chas Newkey-Burden:
'[T]here is still one anti-Israel argument that makes my jaw drop. And it is one that is made with unfortunate frequency. It is the "they-of-all-people" argument: the suggestion that the Jews, having faced extraordinary persecution, should know better than anyone not to be oppressors.
Put aside for a moment that the "oppression" which proponents of this argument are accusing Israel of committing is usually imaginary. When directed by gentiles towards Jews, the "they-of-all-people" argument is in its very essence so fundamentally ill-judged and unjust, and voiced with such a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, that my spirit flags when I hear it.
Where to begin in response? The heroic Howard Jacobson made a fine start when he proposed that "they of all people" is the natural successor of Holocaust denial. He wrote that the argument leaves the Jewish people doubly damned: to the Holocaust itself and to elevated moral scrutiny as a result of it.
I agree, and I would go further. I contend that, as a result of the Holocaust and what preceded it, it is we gentiles who should know better. The Holocaust followed centuries of slander, persecution, violence and murder committed by gentiles against Jews. So it is not you who have an increased responsibility to behave morally, but us.
For instance, something that we gentiles should know better than to do is lazily accuse Jewish people, or the Jewish state itself, of any misdemeanour. We have seen what centuries of slander against the Jewish people led to during the 1930s and ’40s. We see the hatred, heartbreak and bloodshed that such anti-Jewish libels continue to provoke, particularly in the Middle East....
Let us strip the "they-of-all-people" argument down to its very basics: gentiles telling Jews that we killed six million of your people and that as a result it is you, not us, who have lessons to learn; that it is you, not us, who need to clean up your act. It is an argument of atrocious, spiteful insanity. Do not accept it; turn it back on those who offer it. For it is us, not you, who should know better.'

Friday, 21 September 2012

Pizarro Presents Parramatta Protest On Press TV

More hatred against Max Brenner and "Apartheid Israel" by the usual bizarre alliance, with footage of the Sydney protest against a certain video, described by Press TV's Sydney reporter Daniel Pizarro:


Press TV is, of course, the notorious propaganda arm of the repellent human rights-denying Iranian regime.  It pimps conspiracy theories of an antisemitic kind.  Yet those facts, as we see here, doesn't prevent the western lefties whose aim is to bring Israel down giving interviews to it.

More pictorial views of the BDS protest, which I'm told "bombed," here (hat tip: reader Shirlee)

Sunday, 17 July 2011

"Prejudiced Fanatics Who Should Look Into Their Soul": Aussie MP On The BDS Brigade

Jewish politician Michael Danby, a well-known Labour member of the federal House of Representatives in Canberra, where he sits for Melbourne Ports, has been deeply and prominently involved in pro-Israel activism since his student days in Melbourne in  the 1970s.

"These people are prejudiced fanatics who should look into their soul," Mr Danby, who chairs Australia's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, has justifiably observed of the mob who (as videos I posted show) demonstrated raucously and bitterly outside the Max Brenner chocolate shop in central Melbourne on 1 July, when several policemen attempting to keep order were injured.
He continued: "While 1500 people are murdered in Syria, they launch their own sad little attack on a chocolate shop because it has stores in Israel.
 It’s a bit rich. Almost as rich as one of Max Brenner’s delicious Danish Toffee Hot Chocolates. I urge the good people of Melbourne to warm up over winter by savouring Max Brenner’s delicious delights.
 Boycotts of – and attacks on – Jewish commerce like this belong in the darkest chapters of our history books not in the shopping centres of Melbourne in 2011."
Noting that the BDS chanted "From the River to the Sea," Hamas’s taunting warcry for an Islamic state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, Danby rightly stated.
"These people are not in favour of a Two State Solution. Hatred motivates these calls for elimination of the Jewish State."
According to a report by the antipodean J-Wire news service, he added that in the coming weeks the Labor Party will display a series of pro-Israel manifestations in line with the views of mainstream Australians, "90% of whom were sickened by the fanatics attacking police and the Israeli franchise."

Disgusted by the conduct of the BDSers choc-a-bloc with hate, Kevin Rudd, Australia's Minister For Foreign Affairs, last week joined Michael Danby for something sweet at Max Brenner's in Melbourne (they are pictured  above at the entrance, Mr Danby on the left of the photo).

It seems that Mr Rudd was especially moved by an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by the well-known Australian public intellectual Dr Gerard Henderson, a conservative columnist and executive director of the Sydney Institute, who's a supporter of Israel: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/jews-know-acceptance-still-has-its-exceptions-20110711-1haka.html

According to J-Wire, Max Brenner’s management has pointed out that despite the antics of the BDSers 26 Max Brenner franchise stores operate in  Australia and there are queues of people waiting to enter some of the new stores in Queensland.

Talking of Queensland, here's a bunch of "prejudiced fanatics" marching a few days ago in central Brisbane against Israel's "apartheid wall" – the security barrier that's been rather effective at protecting Israelis against attacks by homicidal maniacs with bombs strapped to their bodies.  These BDSers are egged on by "Justice for Palestine" activist Kathy Newman, a Socialist Alliance candidate at several elections who's expressed solidarity with the arrested "Boycott Israel 19" of  Melbourne on 1 July and has foreshadowed a protest outside Max Brenner in Brisbane next month: http://boycottisrael19.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/solidarity-from-brisbane/


Hat tip for the video: reader Shirlee

Friday, 10 June 2011

And The Hate Goes On - Parramatta Chocolate Shop Targetted By BDS Mob Again (videos)

Here are three videos (hat tip: the wonderful reader Shirlee, who also found this, relating to the May protest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQMAjPjm2cY ) showing the protest on 9 June, when the anti-Israel haters ("Students for Palestine" and others) descended on the Sydney suburb of Parramatta again, to scream loathsome taunts at chocolate shop Max Brenner ...

The Max Brenner chain was founded by Israelis.

Things are really hotting up on the Israel-delegitimising front in the Land Down Under.

Is Australia still "The Lucky Country?"

You decide.

Here's the mob outside the shop:


Here they are, after their picket, marching whence they came, passions unspent:


Here they are, still full of foetid anger inside the station: