"Hamas, We're Thinking Of You ..."

"... Keep fighting", she says

Wrote British journalist Daniel Finkelstein (now a life peer) in The Times (London) last Thursday:

'For most of my life, antisemitism was not an issue. Now it is....

 I know what this country is and I love it. I intend to live here all my life and die here ...And I am confident I will be left in peace to do that.

Yet just recently, things are a bit different. Almost every Jew feels it. I know I’m not alone....

Two things changed this. And the first was 9/11.

When baffling events happen, planes coming out of a clear blue New York sky, people look for an explanation, a wrong that can be righted, an appeal that can be made to reason. And very often in history, the answer involves doing something about the Jews. I’m just saying. It does.

So it was after the twin towers came down. I had just started writing for The Times and I began to get antisemitic correspondence....

[N]ow it would be unthinkable to organise a Jewish event of any kind without really quite strict security. My son goes to a Jewish primary school, as his brothers did before him. We have proper security there. My child goes to school behind several sets of very high, electronically controlled gates and bars, and a guard. None of the parents regards that as unnecessary.

The other thing that changed was the rise of electronic correspondence and social media. This enabled antisemites to get in touch with me and with each other....

All this has been going on for quite a while. Yet there is no question about it, Gaza has made things worse....

[M]uch anti-Zionism is entangled with antisemitism.... There is much that is antisemitic in intent and much that is antisemitic in effect.

It is antisemitic to suggest that the world is being dominated by the great pariah state of Israel, defending its own interests through money and power. It is antisemitic to suggest that the “Zionists” control the media. It is antisemitic to elevate the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians high above all the wrongs being done, not least to Palestinians, by neighbouring states.

Anyone who doesn’t appreciate that at least part of this is fuelled by doctrine that preaches hatred against Jews is as ignorant as someone who suggests that all of it is....

[The protesters] hold out the implicit threat that you can live here in peace — here, in Britain — but not if you want to support Israel....

And when Jews see young men giving reverse Nazi salutes in France and protesting outside synagogues and harassing Jews, it’s no wonder we feel uncomfortable. And I worry — for the first time in my life, I do, I worry — about walking to synagogue on the Jewish new year.

....[M]ost of us Jews, wherever we are in the world, have a niggling feeling that perhaps it might be a good idea to keep a suitcase packed, and many of us have had, at least once, a conversation about where we would go if we had to.

I don’t have such a suitcase. I won’t need it, I know I won’t. But If I told you that I didn’t understand it, I’d be lying.'

Watch this video (hat tip reader and resource extraordinaire Ian) to see the sheer venom and ignorance that drives the anti-Israel demonstrations connected with Operation Protective Edge:

And watch here for middle-aged women, including some in the video above, as well as the deluded fan pictured above with her hair hidden under a keffiyeh) sending messages of support to terror group Hamas, whose only concept of equal opportunity for women is as suicide bombers, mothers of suicide bombers, and human shields!

Be sure to see also  here

David Singer: Why The "Canberra Declaration On Gaza" Is A Dud

Signatory Sylvia Hale pickets the Israel Film Festival in Sydney yesterday

This, the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, is entitled "Gaza – Australian Politicians Duped By Dud Declaration".

He writes:

The Canberra Declaration on Gaza signed by 77 current and former Federal and State parliamentarians [including former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser] displays their total factual ignorance and political naiveté concerning the war raging between Hamas and Israel for the last six weeks.

The Declaration has been “Published courtesy of Kohram”.  Kohram is a 24/7 online Hindi and English News and Views website based in Delhi, India. It offers real information relating News Analysis, World Wide News, Politics, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Industry and Feature Articles on Education.

Another picketer

Australian politicians acknowledging assistance from an Indian media website seems a strange circumstance indeed. The Declaration was created by Maiy Azize, a Canberra-based health and social policy analyst. She is a parliamentary advisor in health and community services and campaigner for @GreensMPs. Twenty-one of the Declaration’s signatories are parliamentarians representing the Greens Party. The header image is attributed to Nakshab Khan and was featured in an article written by him for Kohram on 13 July headlined “Will Israeli Offensive Achieve Anything In Gaza?”

Khan wrote:

“Israel always justifies its aggression on the Gaza strip by blaming Hamas militants for firing crude rockets on the Jewish nation’s southern territories.”

Khan was apparently unaware that in the five weeks preceding 8 July 234 rockets had been launched from Gaza into Israel reaching as far as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Hadera – sending hundreds of thousands of civilians scurrying into air raid shelters and disrupting normal life in Israel as well as threatening its tourist industry in the peak summer season. Long range rockets such as the M-302 were employed – the same missiles confiscated from the KLOS-C weapons seizure.

Israel’s inherent entitlement to self-defence under article 51 of the United Nations Charter to prevent the indiscriminate firing of these rockets into Israeli population centres – each rocket an internationally acknowledged war crime – was not worth a mention in Khan’s article.

Australian politicians need to be very careful about their names being identified with a document whose origins are so murky – a Declaration that itself is deceptive and misleading in the following respects:

1. It claims to bear the signatures of members of Australian federal and state Parliaments – yet five of the 77 signatories are former members of those parliaments.

2. Although titled “Canberra Declaration on Gaza” and updated to 4 August it supports

“an immediate cessation of hostilities and a ceasefire deal which includes an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and to the blockade of Gaza”

The Declaration ignores any reference to Hamas having rejected a ceasefire deal proposed by Egypt on 16 July and accepted by Israel – and to a number of ceasefire agreements broken by Hamas since then. The Declaration ignored the findings of the 2011 United Nations Palmer Report which found that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza complied with the requirements of international law and recommended that Israel should continue with its efforts to ease its restrictions on movement of goods and persons to and from Gaza in accordance with Security Council resolution 1860 –  all aspects of which should be implemented.

3. The Declaration omitted to include the following underlined words :

“We call on all Australian politicians to also support the United Nations Human Rights Council's decision to launch an independent inquiry into purported violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014”

4. The Declaration alleged that the rockets fired into Israel were “imprecise” and “cannot be compared with the broad-scale bombing of Gaza by Israel”.

A grossly misleading allegation indeed – echoing Nakshab Khan’s spurious claim – considering Hamas rockets were landing all over Israel – whilst Israel’s response was limited to specific targeted areas within Gaza.

5. The Declaration asserted that:

“Collective punishment is not permitted under the Geneva conventions and is a war crime”.

Whilst not specifically accusing Israel of perpetrating this crime, it is clear that the entire civilian population of Israel was being targeted by the broad-scale Hamas barrage of rockets – whilst large parts of Gaza’s civilian population were not being affected by Israel’s actions.

6. The Declaration claimed that hospitals and places of worship were among the Israeli military's targets – but ignored mentioning that such places were used to conceal underground tunnels and weapons and their use as command centres by Hamas.

7. The Declaration concluded:

“The international community including Australia has a vital responsibility to put pressure on Israel to end its current military attack on Gaza and broker a solution of justice and peace.”

Why no pressure on Hamas – especially as Israel had agreed to end its military attack on Gaza three weeks previously and subsequently on a number of other occasions – only to see them broken by Hamas?

8. The Declaration – like Khan’s article - makes no mention of Israel’s inherent right of selfdefence.

Those parliamentarians who signed this Declaration have some explaining to do to their constituents.

I wrote to Senator Lee Rhiannon – one of two named parliamentarians to contact about signing this Declaration – requesting she comment on my criticisms of the Declaration.

Regrettably at the time of writing this article no response has been received.

Seventy-seven out of a possible 598 Federal and State politicians have signed – which attests to the savvy political acumen of those 521 who have refused to be duped by this dud Declaration.

"If We Abandon Israel Today Then One Day – Too Late – We Will Realise That ... What We Abandoned Was Ourselves"

"I love you Douglas Murray. You speak the truth no matter how unpopular that truth is."
Thus writes a lady of discernment, one Persephone Jones.

"Thank you Douglas and thank you the Daily Express. I am hopeful that the penny is finally dropping and that people will now start to join up the dots. The UK stands at the forefront of a tsunami of terror that is about to hit and that it is ill prepared for. This is 1939 all over again. No, I am not being dramatic. We, along with the rest of the Judeo/Christian world are in imminent and terrible danger. Just like 1939 we cannot face the blindingly obvious and are paralyzed by fear - because we refuse to

accept the ghastly truth that we have over 2 million Muslims living in this country and we don't know what they are really thinking. We know something doesn't feel right and we simply don't know what to do.

I do not fear for Israel - of all countries they know exactly who their enemy is and how to confront them. Maybe they will in the end save our civilization, despite their vilification at the hand of their so called friends. Maybe not.

Either way it is the UK that is in real trouble and the rise in Islamic inspired anti-semitism is the first sign of it."

Thus, quite understandably, writes somebody else.

They are among the commenters on a typically courageous and perspicacious article (on the menace posed to all of us by "the black flag of jihad") by the British pundit Douglas Murray that appears today's Daily Express.

In it, Murray, deploring the antisemitism that Operation Protective Edge has unleashed, observes inter alia:

'There are those who think that Israel is somehow the cause of the world’s problems, or that in defending themselves from Islamic extremists Israel is somehow causing Islamic extremism. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The extremists of Hamas are the ideological bedfellows of the extremists of ISIS who are rampaging through Syria and Iraq, crucifying and beheading as they go....

They also share the exact same ideology – if not yet the same means – as those people who were found in Birmingham earlier this year teaching British pupils to hate wider British society and cut themselves off from non-Muslims.

Hyde Park, London

 But it is this last part of the equation which many people seem so incapable of dealing with. They see the millions of Muslims who have come to our continent and see how many of them are radical. But it is a problem they fear they cannot deal with....

... The problem of anti-Semitism, and Islamic anti-Semitism in particular today, is undoubtedly a problem for Jewish people. But it is only a problem for them first. It is a problem for all of us next.What is it that lies behind this terrible Hamas-driven rage against Israel?  What lies behind the desire for Israel to disappear? Today the world is finding out.  

Wakefield, Yorkshire

Because behind the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah which have flown at anti-Israel demonstrations in recent weeks is another flag. The black flag of jihad – the black flag most recently being waved in Iraq and Syria by ISIS....

The ambition of the jihadists – from al-Qaeda to Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and more – is to subjugate the entire world. ...

 [I]f we abandon Israel today then one day – too late – we will realise that in fact what we abandoned was ourselves."

See all of Murray's compelling article here

"Hamas Is Isis, Isis Is Hamas"

 "They are branches of the same tree .... They are the enemies of the Palestinians themselves ...":

Bibi is right, of course.

Good article by Mark Steyn here
And another by Daniel Greenfield here

In Melbourne, Israel-Haters Erect A Poster

Courtesy of "Australians for Palestine", this poster, due to stay for a month, now stares out from a billboard at the corner of City Road and Queensbridge Street just before the Kingsway overpass.

So much for communal harmony in "the world's most liveable city".

So much for truth.

Below: the demonising message close up and personal

A Sizer Doesn't Change Its Spots

A friend said to me the other day:

"I suppose Stephen Sizer hasn't had much to say about the current Gaza business as you haven't blogged about him for a while ..."

Guffaw.

Ah, as if the vicar would waste an opportunity to demonise Israel or portray it in a bad light!

But in addition to posting frenetically against Israel on social media as is his custom our old mate has been putting the finishing touches to his latest tome:

Among the Facebook followers eager to oblige is another old friend of ours:

Seeing Is Believing (videos)

Something stirring down Pallywood way?

Here's brief footage of Israel's ambassador to the UN, slamming that body for trusting Hamas's casualty figures:

For Melanie Phillips on the current media demonisation of Israel see this video.  Nobody explains the reasons better.

Here's Colonel Richard Kemp speaking in Tel Aviv earlier this month.

A lady (with a broad Scots accent that may be hard for some listeners to follow) tells Jonathan Sacerdoti why Sainsbury's in Holborn removed kosher products from its shelves, yet seems not to comprehend his point regarding Halal products.

And, regarding the sometimes perfidious Albion and Israel, be sure to read this!