"A Stain on Our Nation": Kiwi columnist slams anti-Israel obsession

Eight days ago the Sunday Star Times, a Kiwi newspaper owned by the antipodean Fairfax media stable (not known for its fairness to Israel: think The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and this despicable incident) published a blood libel of a cartoon by Sharon Murdoch concerning Bibi Netanyahu and New Zealand foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee, who called notorious UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which his country shamefully co-sponsored, as "premature".

As New Zealand's Jewish newspaper Shalom.Kiwi observes:

'Fairfax media outlet, Stuff, published fake news in January 2017, which led to a stream of anti-Semitic comments on social media. Now, the most recent edition of Fairfax’s Sunday Star Times has chosen to print a vile cartoon suggesting new New Zealand Foreign Minister, Gerry Brownlee, is being controlled by a bloodthirsty Israel. It is worthy of being included in the annual Iranian-sponsored Jew-bashing cartoon contest....

Neither funny, nor clever, the cartoon draws on lowest common denominator stereotypes and anti-Semitic tropes. The schoolboy pun (“Minister Brownnose”) expressing Brownlee’s supposed obsequience to Netanyahu, while pathetic, can be overlooked. However, the grotesque suggestion that Netanyahu would order the killing of a statesman whose policies and actions he disagrees with goes beyond reasonable and responsible boundaries of political satire...

 Just like the fanciful anti-Israel polemic written by the editor of the Dominion Post, another Fairfax outlet, Murdoch’s cartoon in the Sunday Star Times has resorted to simplistic interpretations and failed to engage with the issues, preferring instead to lean on classic anti-Semitism.'

Although it seems that Brownlee's encouraging stance regarding Israel may be faltering (see Shalom.Kiwi here) it's heartening to read an op-ed in the Sunday Star Times that champions Israel.  So well done, Damien Grant, for writing, inter alia, in that paper yesterday:

"...The world's obsession with Jews in general and Israel in particular is one of the many disheartening features of modern life.

Imagine... For over 1000 years your ancestors have endured periods of mild-but-tolerable persecution followed by irregular bouts of genocidal rage.

The one thing the last millennium should have taught us is it is never safe to be a Jew....

The United Nations Security Council has dealt with 226 resolutions concerning Israel. More than six percent of the total. The UN is obsessed with Israel....

Not all criticism of Israel is unwarranted but we forget it is a liberal democracy in a sea of tyranny, terror and hatred.

 The endless preoccupation over the 700,000 Arabs displaced when Israel was created ignores the equal number of Jews who fled Arab nations. No one calls for their right to return and equally overlooked are the 1.5 million Arabs living in relative peace in Israel today, not including the occupied territories....

It was a stain on our nation that we participated in the mass-hysteria over Israel...."

Read all of Damien Grant's piece here

Meanwhile, some of the usual suspects are desperately attempting to coach other usual suspects in countering dastardly Zionist facts.

Yep, it's that desperate old Palestine was an independent nation trope being trotted out again:

Well said, this commenter:

'Palestine is a geographic term that describes a place (not a people) that has belonged to Jews, Greeks, Romans, Mamaluks, Turks, and finally Jews again.

There are Arabs who live there, and Jews who lived there. The Jews never thought of themselves as Palestinians, and until roughly 1964, neither did Arabs.

For proof, look no further than this chart showing the frequency of words or phrases that appear in their massive collection of scanned books: https://books.google.com/ng... 

As it clearly shows, "Palestinian Jew" appeared more frequently than "Palestinian Arab" until roughly 1950 (by which time the term Israeli came into favor.)

And as the chart also clearly shows, the phrase "Palestinian Arab" started a rapid ascent around 1964.

Facts are stubborn things.'

Brats & Braves (videos)

For anyone who has not yet seen them in all their infantile shame, Israel-hating brats at the University of California at Irvine use bully boy tactics to disrupt a meeting and silence a speaker.  The totalitarian Left in action once again.

More here

In Toronto, a chanting kid on a grown-up's back leads the anti-Israel protest.  Pro-Israel demonstrators face the mob, with its obscene and very telling cries of "From the River to the Sea ..."

A brave Englishman's delicious satire on Islamofascism and its totalitarian leftists allies:

"Why is There So Much Politics in Arabic Class?"

I've been browsing the Spring 2017 issue of the Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin.  It's clear that along with all the other socio-political stances that comprise the often bizarre and contradictory (women's rights, Islamophilia) package deal of ideologies and attitudes of the Left, an anti-Israel default position is integral to that publication.

Regular readers of my blog may remember that not so very long ago I exposed the sympathetic publicity given by the Bulletin to visiting professor and alumnus (class of '06) Sa'ed Atshan, who deplores Israel's very existence.

The current Bulletin assures us that he has again

"completed his annual class trip with his Swarthmore students to Israel and Palestine.  He'll continue to inspire future generations as as assistant professor of peace and conflict studies." 

There's plenty regarding Atshan by Canary Mission here

Under the heading "Global Thinking" the current Bulletin has a feature article by staff writer Elizabeth Slocum about another anti-Israel activist, Missoula, Montana high school Arabic teacher Brendan Work ('10). 

Beneath the title "Speaking the Same Language: His immersion in Arabic became a lesson in empathy" Slocum tells us:

'Brendan Work '10 jokingly tells his students that they are learning "an enemy language."

“They sometimes ask, ‘Why is there so much politics in Arabic class?’” says Work ... “Well, when you’re learning Spanish or French, there just isn’t an international conflict with the U.S. that involves those speakers now.”

This is important context for his students, who must work through so much history and tension tied up in the study of the language through class discussions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq War, and Syrian refugees. He seeks to offer them a point of view beyond bias or preconceived notions that he honed as a reporter.  [Emphasis added here and below]

“I knew I wanted to find employment at the intersection of Arabic and journalism,” says Work, who studied the language at the College as a comparative literature major. “I was looking for the big story, so I bought a one-way ticket into the occupied territory,” at a time when Palestine was submitting its statehood bid to the U.N.

Work secured a job at a small press agency in Bethlehem where he improved his language skills ...before heading into the field as a reporter and photographer. As Work detailed the struggles of those in the conflict zone, he realized the Arab narrative was often told from a limited perspective.

For example, while covering a planned protest near the West Bank wall on the day of the statehood bid, a clash escalated and a Palestinian teen was struck by a tear-gas canister. (A Reuters photographer captured an image of Work aiding the boy moments after the violence.) Denied access to the nearest hospital because it was on the other side of the wall, the youth ultimately lost his eye. Later, out of concern, Work met with the teen’s parents...

“Their thinking was, ‘Resistance is our reality. In America, I thought, protests happened out of a sense – rather than a reality – of injustice.”

Work brought this empathy back to his Montana hometown, where an Arabic teaching position opened shortly after his return. In the classroom, he encourages students to see past stereotypes and to instead learn the cultures and customs of Arabic speakers...

Compassion, he teaches, is key...

“They [his students] enjoy the responsibility of being their family FAQ,” he says. “When their dad sees something about Iraq on the television, they love being in the room so they can say, ‘Here’s what I learned in Arabic today.’” 

What Slocum neglects to tell the Bulletin's readers is that Brendan Work is a hardened anti-Israel activist who has, for example, contributed Israel-demonising articles to the Electronic Intifada

Transparency on the Bulletin's part is needed.
 
And so is an attempt at balance regarding Israel in its feature columns.

David Singer: United Nations Web of Deceit snares International Court of Justice

Here's another of Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer's important exposures of the United Nations' duplicity and its dangerous, deleterious effects.

Writes David Singer

The United Nations publication The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988 (“Study”) has falsely misrepresented that the Mandate for Palestine was a class A Mandate – deceiving the International Court of Justice and many other reputable sources.

The Study has been published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The Study falsely asserts without substantiation: 

“All the mandates over Arab countries, including Palestine, were treated as class 'A' Mandates, applicable to territories whose independence had been provisionally recognized in the Covenant of the League of Nations”.

The Study then erroneously concludes:

“Only in the case of Palestine did the Mandate, with its inherent contradictions, lead not to the independence provisionally recognized in the Covenant, but towards conflict that was to continue six decades later.”

However the 1937 Peel Commission Report comprehensively debunks the Study’s concocted claims

“The Mandate [for Palestine] is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience “A” Mandates, accorded with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. Thus the Syrian Mandate provided that the government should be based on an organic law which should take into account the rights, interests and wishes of all the inhabitants, and that measures should be enacted ‘to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent States.’ The corresponding sentences of the draft Mandate for Iraq were the same. In compliance with them National Legislatures were established in due course on an elective basis. Article 1 of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests ‘full powers of legislation and of administration,’ within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory.”

The Study for reasons unknown completely ignores this detailed Peel Commission rebuttal.

The Study’s unchallenged statements  – seemingly authentic bearing United Nations imprimatur – appear on many websites including:

1. The Rights Forum – which claims to strive for a rights-based policy of the Netherlands and the European Union with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 10 December 2009, the International Day of Human Rights, The Rights Forum was launched by its Chairman former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt – assisted by an Advisory Council of former Ministers and Professors in International Law. 

2. The Global Education Project – which states it adheres to rigorous standards and strives for an impartial and comprehensive presentation of the most relevant information necessary for both accurate and adequate education.

3. ProCon.org – which asserts it is America’s leading source for non-partisan information and civic education - serving more than 25 million people each year including teachers and students in more than 9000 schools in all 50 states and 90 foreign countries. It claims that 34 US state governments,17 US state Departments of Education, 23 foreign governments and 22 US federal agencies have cited ProCon.org materials.

A large number of anti-Israel sites and books have also embraced these Study’s false claims.
However the biggest fish snared in the Study’s web of deceit is the United Nations own primary judicial branch – the International Court of Justice – which in paragraph 70 of its Advisory Opinion of July 9, 2004 stated: 

“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the First World War, a class ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant. ...” 

The Study’s fabricated narrative has certainly reaped – and continues to reap – huge dishonest dividends.

Egg on Their Faces

Whatever Palestinian  murderous terrorist Marwan Barghouti (Al Beeb's sanitised "profile" of him here) is eating in his Israeli prison cell, he's certainly got egg on his face with this candid camera gone-viral footage, since he's the purported leader of a hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli gaols.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TknOt_GSkQ

And that egg is now on the faces of all hoodwinked by him.

People like these, who in support of the hunger strikers (hardly the innocents they are represented to be) made the video below of a display of Palestinian art projected onto the outside of the Tate Modern art gallery in London (yes, Barghouti's image is there somewhere) in which at the outset the dirge-like tones of  the narrator talks of "Israeli occupation dungeons"!

 Does murderer Barghouti's cell look like a dungeon to you?

 More footage, by our old friend Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander:

 Following the revelation that convicted terrorist and supposed strike-leader Barghouti has been caught secretly eating, Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan stated: 

"As I said from the very beginning, this hunger strike was never about the conditions of the convicted terrorists, which meet international standards. It is about advancing Marwan Barghouti's political ambitions to replace Abu Mazen. Barghouti is a murderer and hypocrite who urged his fellow prisoners to strike and suffer while he ate behind their back. Just like he lied to the world when he wrote in the New York Times that he decided to strike in order to protest ill-treatment, he lied to the Palestinian public when he claimed to be striking. Israel will not give in to extortion and pressure from terrorists."

Good Reasons for Optimism: Daniel Taub Talks (video)

Here's former Israeli ambassador to the Court of St James Daniel Taub, in Australia last week, covering several issues including the "new look" Hamas Charter:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tTSLK58yJQ

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WCyrpI6RwE

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) videos.

A French Oleh on Israel's Miracle & What Europe Might Learn from it

Coincidentally yet not inappropriately on the day France goes to the polls, here's a guest blog by French oleh Jean Vercors.

I've added the emphasis (bold font), on his text and below.




Writes Jean Vercors:

'On the evening of Monday, May 1st, we celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut, the 69th anniversary of the State of Israel. The return of the Jewish people to its ancestral land is a real miracle; it regains its sovereignty in Israel on May 14, 1948, the 5th Iyar of the year 5708 of the Hebrew calendar.
 
Surprisingly, the month of Iyar is the only month that bears a Hebrew name, the other months being Aramaic.

The Book of Kings calls it ziv (1 Kings 6: 1 and 6:37), or "shine," for it is the moment when the trees shine with all their "splendor" (Rashi and Radaq).

According to Rabbi Yehoshua, the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob were born during the month of Nissan, which brought new light to the world (in Hebrew zohar, ziv in Aramaic). And it was the following month, that of iyar, which first benefited from this new era of light following their coming into the world (Rosh hashana 11a).
 
The miracle began with the Lovers of Zion (Hebrew: בבובבי ציון, Hovevei Tsion), a popular, social and national Jewish movement that was active between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and aimed at renewal from the people of Israel, through the return to Zion and the reconstruction of their homeland.

Then it was successive Aliyot (to ascend) that built the nation and made the new desert become the start-up nation, where 20 per cent of the foreign companies listed at the NASDAQ are Israelis. 

Another miracle.
 
According to the essence and faith, to the people, to the return of its natural state and to the definition of the Maharal of Prague, the normality of a people must meet three conditions:

1-He must live on his land, 
2-Free and independent,
3-Together in non-dispersed.
 
The prophet Ezekiel (chapter 28): 

"'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When I gather the people of Israel from the nations where they have been scattered, I will be proved holy through them in the sight of the nations. Then they will live in their own land, which I gave to my servant Jacob. They will live there in safety, they will build houses and plant vines."

 Indeed, there is a great mitzvah to inhabit the land of Israel. According to Rashi and Rambam, this is a mitzvah of the Torah, the Torah is Zionist, and Hashem is Zionist.

Since the end of the 19th century, it has been a series of miracles. Despite a hostile and chaotic neighborhood, Israel continues to grow. It's great to be a free and independent country for 69 years.
 
The Jewish national calendar of Israel is embellished with new festivals that Israel has placed at the center of its national Jewish consciousness and which define the most important moments of the year of Israeli society.
 
Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), Yom Hazikaron (Day of Remembrance of Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day) celebrate the celebrations in a single week.

Independence Day is a celebration of the renewal of the Jewish state on the land of Israel, the birthplace of the Jewish people.
 
In the land, the Jewish people began to develop its distinctive religion and culture some 4,000 years ago, and little is known about it, has retained an unbroken physical presence there, for centuries as a sovereign state, as formerly under domination Foreign exchange.

Throughout its long history, the desire to return to its land has been at the center of Jewish life. 

Theodor Herzl, leader and founder of the Zionist movement, kindled international recognition for the need for a Jewish state.
 
Since its creation, Israel continues to be a homeland for the thousands of people who come to live there each year. All its citizens enjoy the same democratic rights delimited by the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel.

Despite terrorist attacks and threats of war, Israel creates and innovates every day in every field, whether medical, scientific, or high-tech.
 
The small agricultural nation that declared its independence 69 years ago is today a superpower, the 8th largest in the world, a world leader in the fields of biotechnology, the environment, and very present in the field of culture And art.

On Yom Ha'atzmaut we express our political independence and our security.
 
As Rav Kook has stated, Jewish nationalism does not depend on the state; The basis of our nationality is our spiritual holiness.  He writes :

"There are righteous people, philosophers, and holy men in the world, but there is no nation whose inherent soul can be fulfilled only by the purpose of the divine plan in the world - other than Israel.

Individuals are everywhere, but an entire nation that represents G-d does not exist. It is our uniqueness.

Since the days of the Hasmoneans (Greek Domination, 32 to -142), for nearly 70 generations, until the liberation of part of the land of our ancestors in our war of independence and the restoration of a Jewish state within its borders, no new holiday  has been added to our annual cycle of joyful days. 

The return of Israel to the land of his ancestors is predicted in the Bible: 'Hashem Your Lord shall bring you into the land which your fathers have possessed, and ye shall possess it "(Deut. 30: 5).

In other words, on the day of Yom Ha'atzmaut, I must not only remember the past, but I must strengthen my present with the same energy that is renewed in the universe at this precise moment. 

That is, to strengthen my roots with my land, my people, my Torah and myself.
 
This is the true meaning of Yom Ha’atzmaut following Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron. He redefines Israel as a family that weeps together, and by remembering the price we paid to be free Jews, it redefines the meaning of Israel.
 
A people decimated by the Nazi Final Solution experienced a sovereign regeneration only three years after the Holocaust. A nation facing a war of extinction from the very first day of its creation - and relentlessly thereafter with more wars, waves of terrorism, economic boycotts, incitement to mortal frenzy, its legitimacy - and never gave up or surrendered. 

Despite the ever-present threats, the Israelis have embraced life to the fullest, have not succumbed to a siege mentality, nor lost the aspiration for lasting peace and normality.

When we turn to Yom Ha'atzmaout, we do it with a deep sense of responsibility. Our country was not given to us on a silver platter.
 
Israel must be the one who remembers, and through this memory he constantly commands himself to be worthy of the price we have paid. It is a memory that obliges us to embrace life and challenges us to live it to the fullest, to build lives individually and collectively. This is Israel's task. It is the legacy of our past and the challenge of our future.

Through courage, inspiration, sacrifice and innovation, and the challenge of every chance, the Israelis built a remarkable country in their ancestral home.
 
Again, the work is incomplete and the challenges are many.

But in 69 years, the Israelis proved strongly that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was right when he said: "In Israel, to be realistic, you have to believe in miracles."

Regardless of how you feel about Israel as a nation, or the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is not possible to deny that Europe has much to learn from our successes. 

By resisting the cultural Marxism and Islamization that have seized a large part of humanity, Israel has given itself a strong chance of survival. The very young Europe and its young people would do well to imitate what Israel and its very old people do if they hope to survive.
 
Their fate is in great danger while that of the Jewish people continues its way intact.'

I don't know Monsieur Vercors's views on the current French presidential contest, but I do know that if Emmanuel Macron truly believes in "Open Borders" then he is dooming his country to a bleak future, as indicated in my previous post.

Here's another searing indictment of Macron, in summary.

 France: Emmanuel Macron, Useful Idiot of Islamism by Yves Mamou  •  May 7, 2017 at 1:30 am

 Emmanuel Macron, a "Useful Infidel," is not a supporter of terrorism or Islamism. It is worse: he does not even see the threat.

 Louizi's article gave names and dates, explaining how Macron's political movement has largely been infiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood militants.

Is Macron an open promoter of Islamism in France? It is more politically correct to say that he is a "globalist" and an "open promoter of multiculturalism". As such, he does not consider Islamism a national threat because the French nation, or, as he has said, French culture, does not really exist.

Read the full article here

And here's an incisive analysis of what ails Europe's leaders today.  Not that it's fair to blame Europe's seemingly inexorable plunge into the destructive vortex solely on childless politicians.

There are plenty of childless people, including some of the best and most courageous political pundits (a number of whom are openly gay), who fear as much as any parent worried for their children's future the creeping islamisation of the European continent.

It's not necessary to have children to dread an Islamic future for one's country or continent. What is necessary is to recognise the superiority of Western civilisation and of Judeo-Christian values over benightedness and barbarity, and to see society as a social contract between past, present and future.

The enablers of population replacement and islamisation are not only betraying the next generation and those that come after it; they are betraying their ancestors and themselves.

 Europe's Childless Leaders Sleepwalking Us to Disaster by Giulio Meotti  •  May 6, 2017 at 5:00 am

As Europe's leaders have no children, they seem have no reason to worry about the future of their continent.

 "Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument". — Douglas Murray, The Times.

 "Finding ourselves' becomes more important than building a world." — Joshua Mitchell.

Read the full article here

Update: