Israel: Rainbow Nation (video)

A perky little video (from the Israel Channel of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs) that is grist to the mill in giving the lie to that grotesque "Apartheid State" nonsense we hear so much of from the misinformed and the malevolent:

A Little Aussie (anti-Israel) Battler Messing About In Boats

Here's footage of Sydney man Michael Coleman (who appears to have a  predilection for sailing by boat to Hamastan-on-Sea and getting himself arrested by the Israeli authorities) and his supporters among the Greens and BDSers (those terms are fairly synonymous, of course) whingeing about Israel and Israeli policy.

And despite the excesses of the truly abominable Iranian regime, the people who are so quick to put the boot into democratic Israel seemingly have no qualms about doing so on Press TV.  That's the mouthpiece of a regime which permits outrages of this sort against women (funny, eh, how all those avowed feminists among the Greens/BDSers don't appear to condemn such atrocities against their own gender), which has condemned to death a Christian minister, and which has doubtless sanctioned the antisemitic film - hardcore Judeophobia, this -  that you can see an excerpt from here.

And here's a picket that took place on 10 November, following news of the intrepid sailor lad's release - castigating the Australian government for its inaction over the matter.  This footage is not by Press TV, but despite the odious nature of the Iranian regime one of the speakers has appeared on Press TV in the very recent past.

Bat Ye'or OnThe EU's Dangerous & Destructive Foreign Policy Of Dhimmitude

The Egyptian-born scholar Gisèle Littman, who under the nom de plume Bat Ye'or is the author of Eurabia: The Europe-Arab Axis (2005) and other books, has published a powerfully provocative new article entitled "The Palestinization of UNESCO," in which she indicts the foreign policy of the European Union and warns that in adopting the Palestinian narrative of history the EU is betraying not only Israel, the Judeo-Christian heritage, and Christians persecuted by Islamic regimes, but Europe itself.

'In January 1981 the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Summit meeting in Mecca declared that, "Palestine should be viewed as the paramount issue of Muslim nations." Since then Europe hastened to adopt this path as well and has provided for the Palestinization of the cultural, social and above all political life of Europe.For three decades, Europe obeyed the OIC in a servile manner. The EU has effectively created a major problem for itself that is eating away and destroying it,' she begins.

Messages in Londonistan

'The EU made Palestine the hub of its international policy, transforming it into a symbol of peace and universal harmony, in a world that would not know "justice" until its coming. The only obstacle to this paradise is the Machiavellian Israel, the oppressor and usurper of Palestine, whose purity as a peaceful victim is the harbinger of global justice.Europe does not yet dare use armed force against Israel, whose existence it claims to defend, while advising it to commit suicide. Europe fights Israel with the infamous Nazi weapons by delegitimizing its existence, robbing it of its history, defaming it by propaganda, hatred and attempts to destroy its economy through boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Toward this goal it encourages an international campaign of incitement to hatred by financing anti-Israel NGOs and lobbies. Europe claims that Jewish existence in its ancestral homeland, Judea and Samaria, is an "occupation" - a colonization. In this way, Israel has become a state that is occupying its own historical homeland....

 The appropriation of a travel poster from the Yishuv

Euro-jihadists invoke "Palestinian resistance" rather than the reality of their terrorism that has spread throughout the planet. The EU has used every stratagem to force Israel to self-destruct in the name of Palestine.... This political link between the OIC and the European Union did not only appear in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict but also in internal European politics concerning the massive Muslim immigration into Europe, which started in the years 1974-75.

The dhimmi-dressed Mrs William Hague

It was then that a joint Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC) was set up with the task of passing on the political demands from the Arab League countries to the European Community and to monitor their implementation within Europe.Transposing its anti-Israeli policy to Europe, the EU wants to create a tabula rasa of historical nationalisms and of the privileges of sovereign states, to transfer to the UN – dominated by the OIC – the world governance of human rights. The basic rights of Europeans to security, to their history and freedom of expression are disproved, rebutted, dismissed by the OIC under the guise of Islamophobia and its vehement request for European multiculturalism. Rooted in the civilization of jihad and dhimmitude, it imposes its own criteria through its European and UN go-betweens in its new Western empire. So while Europe prides itself on creating universal, humanitarian governance, on the international scene the OIC is implementing a Koranic order of Islamic human rights.With the repudiation of Israel, the EU is repudiating itself. It is putting the emphasis on the Greco-Roman heritage and eliminating that of Judeo-Christianity to please the OIC and Muslim migrants....

Head-covered, seated low:Britain's former envoy to Lebanon

It means adopting dhimmitude.Eurabia and Palestinianism come from the same rejection and the same policy applied to the destruction of the nation-state, the manifestation of the spirit and culture of peoples, condemned to extinction in a globalized, humanitarian utopia. Their points in common are (1) the war against Israel; (2) the de-Judaization of Christianity; (3) the de-Christianization of Europe; and (4) the joint EU-OIC policy to strengthen the UN's global governance that the OIC aims to monopolize. This suicidal approach is specific to Europe; it does not exist in China or in India, or even in Muslim countries....'
Read more here
Hat tip: BoL

Been Seen As Mean: Greens' Spleen Against Jewish Doctor in New South Wales

Some months ago, upset by the Marrickville Council's promotion of BDS against Israel, which among other things he feared might prevent his daughter, who attends school in that inner suburb, from participating in any exchange visit to Israel, medical specialist Dr John Nemesh distributed posters in Marrickville during the New South Wales election campaign.  These criticised the BDS policy implemented by the Greens-dominated Council under Mayor Fiona Byrne (pictured; who went on to narrowly lost her seat at that election).

Spotting that the posters failed to comply with the requirement that election material must bear the name and address of the printer, the Greens, stooping to the bottom of the barrel to extract vengeance, splenetically reported him to police for the trivial omission.  A Greens councillor, Max Phillips, evidently told police that in the early hours he'd seen a number of people distributing the "illegal" posters:

"People who were putting up the signs were leaving and heading back up towards Petersham. There were three younger people and an older guy in the car. They appeared to be well-dressed 20-somethings. It occurred to me that they might be Jewish university students."

Dr Nemesh told J-Wire:

"As far as the posters are concerned, Christine Milne, the deputy head of the Federal Greens Party made the same mistake as me and neither of us was charged by the electoral commission. Yet [Councillor Phillips and another Green, Colin Charlton] filed a complaint only against me. There seems to be one rule for the Greens and one for everyone else."

This week Margaret Quinn, a magistrate in the local court at Newtown, New South Wales, dismissed the charges against Dr Nemesh, describing them as trivial, Dr Nemesh as "a very well-regarded person," and the Greens' pursuit of BDS as "fairly disgraceful".

Reports the Australian newspaper:

'Outside court, Dr Nemesh said Ms Quinn had dismissed the matter, "due to the utter ridiculousness of the charge against me, initiated by the Greens". He added: "What was not ridiculous was the manner in which the Greens conducted themselves, with hypocrisy, bullying and even racial profiling...."

 Dr Nemesh has made a complaint to police against Ms Byrne for allegedly stealing his posters, some of which accused the Greens of hypocrisy for supporting gay causes while denouncing Israel, the only country in the Middle East where gay rights are enshrined in law.'

 In welcoming the acquittal of Dr Nemesh,.Luke Foley, leader of the Opposition in the New South Wales Parliament, adds:

'How then did Dr Nemesh’s matter ever make it to court?... The police brief of evidence revealed that the two complainants were both Greens activists. One of them is Max Phillips, a Greens councillor on Marrickville Council. In other words, a public office holder from the then ruling political party in the Marrickville municipality went to Marrickville police station and sought criminal charges to be laid against Dr Nemesh. How were Marrickville police constables to act when confronted by the local governing political party heavying them to lay charges against Dr Nemesh?

The Greens regularly rail against our law and order system, always deeming it heavy-handed and always condemning tough laws. Yet they throw the book at Dr Nemesh, the son of a Holocaust survivor, for daring to object to their Israel boycott. Councillor Phillips’ witness statement describes the pursuit of Dr Nemesh by Greens activists during the election campaign. Phillips states:

■There were three younger people and an older guy in the car. They appeared to be well dressed twenty somethings. It occurred to me that they might be Jewish university students.

The Greens activists proceeded to photograph and then follow them—because they looked like Jews. This is the very racial profiling that New South Wales Greens politicians, such as Lee Rhiannon, have railed against. If one substitutes the word "Jewish" in Councillor Phillips’ statement with "Arabic", imagine the howls of outrage that would come from Greens politicians. Yet here we have a Greens public office holder tendering a statement to the police volunteering that he and his colleagues pursued political opponents on the basis that they appeared to be Jews. The statement says that they were well dressed and then leaps to the conclusion that they must be Jews. The old stereotypes still fester among a few.

Boycotting Jewish commerce is, of course, Europe’s oldest political appeal. The international campaign to impose trade and cultural boycotts serves the purpose of delegitimising the State of Israel and in doing so feeds the eliminationist narrative of Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and all those who want Israel wiped off the map, aligning itself with the putrid racism of those groups—their Holocaust denial, their promotion of anti-Semitic stereotypes and their raw sewage Nazi ideology. Boycott, divestment and sanctions activists regularly demonise Israel as an apartheid State, even though the analogy between Israel, where Arabs exercise full citizenship rights, and apartheid South Africa is specious.

I commend my parliamentary colleague Jeremy Buckingham for courageously speaking out against the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign promoted so heavily by Senator Rhiannon and her supporters inside the New South Wales Greens. Unfortunately, some within the New South Wales Greens harbour an obsessive hatred of the Jewish State of Israel. A virulent strain of anti-Semitism exists within some sections of the New South Wales Greens. I call the leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, to intervene in his party’s New South Wales branch to purge this frantic extremism.'

Academically Playing Down Arab Antisemitism

In a typically impressive feature, the blog Point of No Return currently draws attention to the disabling legislation, worse than apartheid, which, in living memory, faced Jews in Arab lands, noting, for example:

Jews were not granted (or stripped of) citizenship in Arab states.
Jews had to carry special ID documents marked 'Jew'.
Jews had their communal institutions dissolved or nationalised
Jews were subject to restrictions and quotas.
Jews were sacked from public service jobs.
Jews were not allowed to travel or leave the country.
Jews were subject to arbitrary arrest for being 'Zionists'.
Dozens were executed on trumped-up charges.
Jews had their bank accounts frozen and property sequestrated.
Jews were forced into business partnerships with Muslims.

Such facts are still not as widely known as they ought to be.

Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene in an online article entitled "The Anti-Zionism of Fools," describes a lecture last month that Lebanese-born Gilbert Achcar, of the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), gave to a seemingly sympathetic audience at the University of California, Berkeley, relating to his book The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010).

The blogger Richard Millett described a similar event at the SOAS last year, at which (as in the Berkeley lecture) the Mufti's role in the Holocaust was apparently minimised.

Says the Stillwell and Greene article, inter alia:

'Achcar’s book, which according to the lecture description purports to “cover Arab attitudes to Zionism, anti-Semitism, Nazism and the Holocaust from the aftermath of the First World War​ to our time,” joins a growing body of scholarship that employs Holocaust studies to deny Israel’s legitimacy and downplay contemporary Islamic anti-Semitism. Such work enjoys significant legitimacy in academic circles, as it masks its outlandish conclusions with scholarly apparatus while confirming the biases of the left-leaning, anti-Israel Middle East studies establishment. In their critical review of Achcar’s book, atypical professors Matthias Kuntzel and Colin Meade conclude, “this is a book in which an author from the political left seeks to protect the dogmas of Western anti-Zionism from the reality of Arab anti-Semitism” (click here to access a debate between the reviewers and Achcar).'

According to the article, the Dr Achcar put his cards on the table straight away by declaring

"Don’t expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I’m an Arab."

Comment Stillwell and Greene:

"Those in the audience hoping for scholarly objectivity were thus informed that Achcar’s ethnicity trumped intellectual independence and that, despite evidence to the contrary (Nonie Darwish​, the founder of Arabs for Israel, comes to mind, as do the majority of Israel’s Arab citizenry), an Arab could not be pro-Israel. One had to give him credit for at least confirming his biases up front.'

Dr Ashcar reportedly said:

"Mine is a scholarly investigation fixed into a current frame aiming at revising the image in western scholarship. The lies of [historian] Bernard Lewis are extremely biased, which produced an image of Arabs being pro-Nazi, the locus of the new anti-Semitism.

The audience chuckled in agreement as Achcar extended his attack on Lewis. He claimed that a close reading of Arab newspapers of the 1930s and 40s found an overwhelming rejection of Nazism in the name of liberal values. He identified four predominant positions: liberal Westernizers, communists, nationalists, and fundamentalists. Only among the latter, he alleged, were there serious numbers of anti-Semites—the result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This tired argument of blaming anti-Semitism in the region on the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 is trotted out by apologists for Arab anti-Semitism despite ample historical evidence of its previous existence....

Achcar was determined to assign anti-Semitism’s origins to the West:

The discourse of conspiracy theories about Jews is very Western. The shift was with increasing tensions in Palestine; the discourse was imported from the West.

He briefly acknowledged a Koranic basis for anti-Semitism, but then pivoted to blame Christianity:

Yes, there is an anti-Judaic element in Islam, but it’s part of the three monotheistic religions, and certainly there’s more enmity to Jews in Christianity than Islam.

He addressed anti-Semitism in the modern-day Middle East, but, as with his treatment of Bernard Lewis, blamed the messenger by alluding to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a website that provides translations of regional media:

Today in Israel there’s a huge amount of literature which monitors anti-Semitic expression. There are websites devoted to this search and funded by the [U.S.] State Department; biased websites such as the one founded by a high ranking person in Israeli intel. Anti-Arab attitudes in Israel are not monitored.

The latter comparison is a red herring. Achcar didn’t acknowledge that, unlike its anti-Semitic counterpart, “anti-Arab attitudes in Israel” are neither widespread, promulgated through state-provided education and other official means, nor the primary reason for the continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict.'

Read the entire article here

"The Chosen People": A New Book That Goes Where Angels Fear To Tread

Yesterday, when I was visiting him at the local campus, an academic friend showed me a copy of a newly-published and hard-to-put-down book he's just acquired, which I imagine will raise eyebrows if not voices.

By Richard Lynn, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Ulster, it's called The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement, and is published by Washington Summit Publishers as "A National Policy Institute Book".

To quote part of the blurb:

"Calling upon history as well as the latest advances in genetic analysis and evolutionary theory, Lynn demonstrates that in the past 250 years, high IQ has been the foundation of Jewish influence, success, and power.  This study is integrated with concise narratives of the Jewish experience in various countries and regions, as well as a discussion of the cultural and genetic divisions within the Jewish ethnos. The Chosen People will be valued by historians, evolutionary scientists, and anyone who wants to understand more fully this remarkable people."

In his final chapter, the author makes a pessimistic prognosis for the longterm survival of Jewry, based on diminishing fertility levels and increasing intermarriage and assimilation. His gloomy predictions also encompass Israel, and to that end he cites an American  CIA report of March 2009:

'It predicted that Israel and Palestine would merge in a "one-state solution" and that the fertility of the Palestinians would be so much greater than that of Jews that they would inevitably become a majority of the population.  Jews would then find Israel uncomfortable, and large numbers would emigrate.  Even if this does not take place, increasing numbers of Jews will likely leave Israel.  Many Jews already foresee these alarming potential possibilities and are considering emigration.  The CIA report notes, "Over 500.000 Israelis have American passports and those who do not have American or Western passports, have already applied for them."  The study further predicts the return of over 1.5 million Israelis to Russia and other parts of Europe.  The report concluded that Israel may well not survive as a Jewish state beyond the next 20 years.  Even if this timescale is excessively short, it is difficult to be optimistic about the survival of Israel as a Jewish state over the longer term.'

I lamented Lynn's conclusions as I passed the book back to its owner, who has always held that the only solution to peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is for the former to seek out and cultivate the moderates on the other side, so that extremists in both camps will be isolated.

"All the more reason why Israel should get out of the West Bank," he replied.

My friend regards Mahmoud Abbas as a moderate, and  believes that Abbas deserves better in terms of concessions from the Israelis, so that he has something to show to his constituency for his commitment to peace.

This is a seductive viewpoint, and many share it.

However, Isi Leibler's latest stupendous article, entitled "Searching for one Palestinian moderate," clangs the alarm bell:

Of Abbas, he writes:

'We are repeatedly being told that President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are our genuine peace partners and that we are unlikely to find more moderate Palestinians with whom to negotiate.

 Yet Abbas, who obtained his “PhD” justifying holocaust denial:

   * refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, insists that the “occupation” dates  back to 1948 and even denies any Jewish link with the Holy Land.

    * sanctifies mass murderers of Israeli women and children by bestowing honor on the killers and granting state pensions to their families.

    * rules over an authority in which the controlled media, mosques and state educational system incite hatred against Jews and deny Israel’s right to exist.

    * endorses the execution of any Palestinian who sold land to a Jew.

    * assures his people that any future Palestinian state will be entirely cleansed of Jews.

    * is committed to reuniting with the genocidal Islamic Hamas whose charter calls for the murder of all Jews and the elimination of Israel.

Besides refusing to negotiate with Israel, Abbas effectively rejected offers made by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to cede 95% of the territories conquered in response to Jordan’s offensive against Israel.

Indeed, the more Israelis concede, the more Abbas demands. Today he has escalated the issue of so-called Arab right of return of refugees to Palestine as a non-negotiable demand, despite realizing that this would bring an end to Jewish sovereignty which no Israeli government could contemplate.

On the surface, the PA appears moderate compared to Hamas. But their objectives are identical. Abbas speaks with a forked tongue and is vague about his long-term goals when he addresses non-Arab audiences, whereas Hamas is completely honest and boasts that it will never negotiate and will continue to fight until the Jewish state is destroyed.'

Read Leibler's entire article here

Ahmadinejad's Armageddon: Iran, Israel, & The Bomb

There have been warnings a-plenty over the last few years about Ahmadinejad's nuclear ambitions, his apocalyptic belief in the coming of the Twelfth Imam, his determination to annihilate Israel ...

And now he seems to be on the very threshhold of nuclear capability.
 
 I found the following sobering, insightful video below on the Vlad Tepes blog.

 Vlad has more material on the theme here