Daphne Anson

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)

Thursday, 9 June 2016

Ms Hodgins-May Not: More Aussie Greens' Israel hypocrisy

How's this for a double dose of hypocrisy?

A fortnight ago, the Australian Jewish News carried an article by Greens' candidate Steph Hodgins-May, who in the imminent federal General Election (2 July) is contesting the Victorian seat of Melbourne Ports currently held by staunchly pro-Israel Labor MP Michael Danby.

In that article the youthful Ms Hodgins-May criticised Mr Danby for raising concerns regarding Israel's security and about the Green Party's despicable attitude towards Israel, and wrote that it would be more appropriate for candidates to raise bread-and-butter concerns facing voters in the constituency, as she intends to do.

That was, of course, most ironic and hypocritical, in view of the fact that the Green Party, home to such notorious Israel-denigrators as Senator Lee Rhiannon, is itself obsessed with the issue of "Israel/Palestine" virtually to the exclusion of any other international issue.

It is even more ironic and hypocritical now.

According to the 2011 federal Census (another Census is due this year) there are 19,563 Jewish residents in Melbourne Ports. A debate between the three principal candidates for the constituency (Mr Danby, the Liberal Party's Owen Guest, and Ms Hodgins-May) was scheduled for 22 June, co-hosted by the AJN and Zionism Victoria at the Beth Weizmann Community Centre.

Chaired by AJN editor Zeddy Lawrence, it was arranged to enable Jewish voters to ascertain those three candidates' attitudes regarding a variety of issues, Israel, Iran, the terror threat, and peace in the Middle East among them.

But suddenly Ms Hodgins-May has announced she won't be attending. As the AJN, in breaking news, now reports, it was in the middle of last month that she agreed to attend the debate.

'On May 30 AJN editor Zeddy Lawrence told Hodgins-May during an email exchange that it would be co-hosted by Zionism Victoria.

However, this Tuesday when questioned about her appearance via Twitter she told a journalist that it was his tweet that alerted her to Zionism Victoria’s involvement.

That prompted her withdrawal from the debate.

Quizzed by The AJN today over the email notifying her on May 30, she claimed she had missed it.Hodgins-May’s comments and withdrawal came as a shock to The AJN and the community because Greens MP Adam Bandt is attending a forum hosted by APAN next week titled, Melbourne candidate forum: Palestine and Israel: adopting a just position.Hodgins-May said it is not “appropriate and right” to speak at an event hosted by a politically active organisation, but APAN calls for people to “spend just one minute to email candidates asking them to pledge to support Palestine” and recently held an event to “bring awareness to and influence Australia’s public policy regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

APAN also supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

After being informed that Bandt would be attending a function hosted by APAN Hodgins-May claimed she would not attend the forum because she didn’t like Zionism Victoria’s stance when it comes to the United Nations.

“I was unaware when I accepted that it was also being co-hosted by an organisation that holds strong political views, including in relation to the United Nations,” she said.

“As someone who worked at the UN and holds their work in high regard, I have chosen not to participate in the now co-hosted forum.”

The AJN has contacted Adam Bandt and Greens leader Richard Di Natale this morning for comment but has not received a reply.'

Time to play that song again, perhaps?

Wednesday, 8 June 2016

In Cardiff, Israel Haters Have A Knees-Up (video)

In Cardiff, the Welsh capital, a gaggle of mainly middle-aged and rather elderly women, accompanied by a few men and surrounded by Palestine Solidarity Campaign banners, join with gusto in singing the Arabic song Mawtini (dating to the time of the 1936 Arab Riots in Mandate Palestine and since adopted by the PA and Iraq as their anthems).

Watch the fervour with which some of these women trill out the lyrics (it's almost like some religious revival meeting in John and Charles Wesley's day).

The choir mistress, swathed in a large keffiyeh, has a spring in her step that belies her years.

What, I wonder, is it about the anti-Israel cause that makes their juices flow so? After all, many of them are old enough to remember when Arab armies almost wiped the tiny Jewish State off the map, as well as Palestinian Arab atrocities against Israel such as the Ma'alot massacre.

However, not so fervent, it appears, are passers-by, to judge by the forlorn look of that red bucket strategically placed to receive donations.

Tuesday, 7 June 2016

"Stop The Triumph of Barbarism ... Give Me Back My Old Germany": Lebanese German deplores islamification

He arrived in Germany in 1977 as a stranger, he explains, and Germany embraced him. Now, he laments, Germany has become a strange land to him. Young Arab men who arrived as leftists are now old men sporting big Islamic beards, their German wives discarded ... Dhimmitude lurks for Christians and Jews ...

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes blog

Sunday, 5 June 2016

"Europe is Becoming Palestinianised": (video) [updated]

Wow, this guy is as articulate as he is handsome!

I just couldn't resist posting this, his latest video (or should that be "vlog"?) here.

Yes, he's the wonderful Brian of London, who blogs at IsraellyCool, and whose devastating demolition of the lies that underpin a certain prizewinning speech has caused such a stir this past week.

Here he gives a little pep talk to the Jews of Europe. "Europe is adopting dhimmitude before needing to ... The numbers are unfortunately with the enemy ..."

A song he plays warns "There's a new strain of the old lethal virus..."

Last week, Brian of London gave an interview on that certain prizewinning speech to Israeli English language talk show host Mottle Wolfe. I deplore the title that Mr Wolfe gave to this video but I'm posting the video here because it shows yet again Brian of London's brilliance. Brian also reminds the audience to sign his petition against Hate Speech in UK Schools, which is available here.

Update: Brian knocks it out of the ballpark again, with this riposte to Labour MP Wes Streeting, who sits for Ilford North, has denounced antisemitism in the Labour Party, yet insists that the speech is not antisemitic.

Meanwhile, in Slough, a lone tool of "Palestinianism" helps to demonise the Zionist Entity:

Thursday, 2 June 2016

"Today You Can't Hate [Jews] For Their Race, So You Hate Them For Their Nation State": Lord Sacks on modern antisemitism (video)

This, unusually, is my third post of the day (please don't overlook the other two, the first of which is an article by David Singer on the European Union and the PLO).

In this excerpt from an interview with the BBC's Evan Davis, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth Lord Sacks, having noted why multiculturalism has failed to promote tolerance, maintains that today's anti-Zionism is antisemitism in disguise.

Islamic/Leftist Antisemitism, BDS, and the "Apartheid" slur : A British Muslim speaks out (video)

This 15-minute J-TV video comprises a wonderful tribute to Israel by the wonderful Dr Qanta Ahmed (in conversation with Dr Alan Mendoza), speaking from the heart and from experience about BDS (incidentally, there's a compelling new article here showing why BDS is antisemitic), the "Apartheid" slur, and Islamist/Leftist antisemitism.

A must-watch from a channel that has produced a number of excellent videos (check it out):

David Singer: The European Union Must End PLO Subjugation and Exploitation

Here is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The European Union (EU) possesses the financial levers to end 10 years of exploitative rule by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in not holding any elections in the West Bank during that period.

95 per cent of the West Bank Arab population live in Areas “A” and “B” under the total administrative control of the PLO. That population has been subjugated into silence by the PLO and given no opportunity to freely express their support or otherwise for the political and economic decisions taken by the PLO since 2006.

The EU in February 2015 released €130 million in direct financial support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and a further €82 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, commented at the time:

“The EU remains committed to the two-state solution and will therefore continue to support the Palestinian Authority in its state-building efforts and in delivering basic social services.”

Hahn’s statement ignored that the PA had:

1. frustrated state-building efforts to bring about the two-state solution during the previous twelve months by refusing to resume negotiations with Israel without preconditions.

2. ceased to exist as a legal entity after President Abbas had disbanded it by Presidential decree on 3 January 2013.

The stated purpose of EU funding – introduced in 2008 – included sustaining the now-defunct PA

“in its effort to pursue the fundamental values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”

The PLO spurns these values:

1. continuing to declare international law – the Mandate for Palestine and Article 80 of the UN Charter – null and void and

2. denying its own citizens the right to free speech and free elections.

Yet – despite another 12 months of no negotiations with Israel – the EU directly channelled another €170.5 million to the PA on 1 March 2016 and €82 million to UNRWA. High Representative/ Vice-President, Federica Mogherini, said:

"The European Union renews its concrete commitment to the Palestinians. Through this package, the EU supports the daily lives of Palestinians in the fields of education and health, protecting the poorest families and also providing the Palestinian refugees with access to essential services. These are tangible steps on the ground that can improve the lives of Palestinian people. But these steps are not enough; Palestinian institutions must continue to grow stronger, become more transparent, more accountable and more democratic. Viable and inclusive institutions, based on respect for the rule of law and human rights, are crucial in view of the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian State. Because what we want to achieve is the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian State living side by side, in peace and security, with the State of Israel and other neighbours."

Again we hear the same pious platitudes of democracy, respect for the rule of law and human rights uttered by the EU – but ignored by the PLO.

Surely it is time for the EU to demand that President Abbas:

1. Resign his office as president – an office he clings to seven years after his four year term expired – to end growing public perceptions of corruption now held by 81 per cent of the population and curb his escalating autocratic tendencies

2. Hold EU-supervised elections in the West Bank for the first time since 2006

3. End the radicalisation and Jew-hatred being taught in UNRWA schools beginning in Grade 1

4. Resume direct negotiations with Israel without preconditions

How long is the EU going to keep shelling out large sums of money – only to see the implementation of its noble objectives being continually subverted?

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'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.
[L]ethally 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.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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