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| Ms Sabawi spruiks BDSer Prof Stuart Rees's new book |
"On a warm Thursday night [7 April], four Year 11 Literature students, made our way into the city, full of curiosity about what the night would bring. -----, ----, ------ and myself met up with our teacher ------- ------- to attend a poetry reading called “Fightin Words: Poetry as a means of resistance” at the esteemed Wheeler Centre. Since we are currently studying the significance and beauty of migrant poetry, this lecture was the perfect opportunity to immerse ourselves in diverse journeys through spoken word. So, amidst a group of sophisticated intellectuals, we listened to 3 wonderful poets, each with their own extraordinary tales to tell. We had the privilege of being enlightened and inspired by the words of Karl Lokko, a former gang leader who has turned his life around; indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckerman who shared the story of her tragic childhood and touched our hearts, as well as Samah Sabawi an Australian Canadian poet, playwright and essayist, originally from Gaza, now residing in Australia. It was a truly engaging experience full of amazing poetry and insightful stories. We all feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to attend!"This is quite shocking.
'If you need to know the depth to which the British media has indoctrinated the public with anti-Israel feelings, then I can give no better example than the following:
My daughter, who goes to an orthodox Jewish school, tells me that, when the subject of Israel is discussed in their Jewish studies GCSE class, students routinely state things like "the Jews have no right to Israel because they stole the land from the Palestinians".
In making statements like that, those regular 15-16 year old Jewish kids, are simply repeating what they are told relentlessly in every part of the media (as I have regularly reported on this web). In the midst of the big story of revolution across the entire Arab world (funny how the media is suddenly realising that these Arab countries were abusing their citizens for decades - they have been telling us all along that Israel is the pariah state in the region) the BBC and Channel 4 has gone into overdrive ... to demonize Israel.' [Emphasis added here and above]Meanwhile, I notice that on the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) English Literature curriculum this year is book by a certain Megan Stack.
Can we now put the question "is BDS antisemitic?" to bed please. I've been to scores of events on campus, and yes, I have heard plenty of rabid antisemitism. But that was always just my experience, my opinion. Until yesterday. We have a few things to build on. We know that without the Palestinian and Islamic societies BDS wouldn't get any airtime at all. We know that standing for positions with the student unions is being used as a way of pushing the BDS cause. We know that on many campuses, especially in the south, events that BDS hold have a mainly Muslim audience. During Apartheid week, in the count for the events I attended, it was always above 70%.
So what do we know now. We know that many of these people in the BDS audience, supporting Apartheid week, think adultery is a crime worth stoning. We know that there is huge support for Sharia law implementation amongst them (rather than democracy), we know that they do not on the whole support freedom of speech, that they have a real problem with gays and of course, that there is a problem with antisemitism.
Which means that in the BDS room.... in the room that just coincidentally happens to have a problem with the Jewish state, there are gay hating, Jew hating, freedom hating, liberty hating people pretending to support a humanitarian cause, just so another one of their pet hates gets fed. And we also now know we are not talking about just a 'tiny minority of them'. It is done now, the argument is over. Whatever BDS inside a book (in theory) might be, we know that in practice much of the crowd is antisemitic. The university has to recognise this and end the practice on campus. BDS is a wagon of antisemitsm.. It is time to force the people off the bus.
'For at least twenty years, the British Jewish community has been out in front when it comes to interfaith work. As Britain’s Muslim population has grown, British Jews assumed that interfaith models that led to huge advances in relations with British Christians, could apply just as well to relations with British Muslims. Indeed building bridges with British Muslims has become the focus of outreach work by British Jews.
Today, our analysis of the ICM survey of British Muslims for Channel 4 and Juniper Television shows that the gradual buildup of understanding and friendship between Britain’s Jews and Muslims has been utterly eclipsed by growing antisemitism amongst British Muslims.
On every single count, British Muslims were more likely by far than the general British population to hold deeply antisemitic views. It is clear that many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for British Jews, rating Jews much less favourably than people of other religions or no religion, yet astonishingly British Muslims largely do not recognise antisemitism as a major problem.
It has long been suspected that sections of the British Muslim population harboured hatred towards British Jews. This survey goes some way to identifying pockets of prejudice, but it also shows that the prejudice is horrifyingly widespread.
From the ICM survey data made available by Channel 4 and Juniper Television, we have been able to identify some of the worst pockets of prejudice. Antisemitic British Muslims are more likely to be men, to be older than 35, to be social renters, to be in employment, to have been born outside Britain, to live south of the Midlands in England, or in Scotland, and they are overwhelmingly likely to sympathise with terrorism, violence and extremism.
The data is frustratingly limited in one [sic] some respects, and one in particular: it does not delve into the various political and religious movements that comprise the British Muslim population.This data shows that Jews remain the "canary in the coal mine", as they have been throughout history: those who harbour hatred of Jews also hate British society and sympathise with our most deadly enemies. Britain must confront rampant antisemitism within its Muslim population, but also amongst the general population, whose shocking views should be no less concerning simply because the views of British Muslims are worse.'See the results of the survey with analysis and full report here
1. Simply not posted my comments or
2. Deleted all published comments – including mine – when factual errors pointed out by me cannot be successfully challenged or denied - thereby exposing the unquestionable venom and hate being spewed out on these websitesThe latest novel attempt to blatantly silence me recently reared its ugly head when I attempted to respond to this reader’s offensive and unsubstantiated comment:
Wow — “smug” is the perfect word for this effing Zionist.
Great post — thank you!
Go BDS! Go every other effort to expose and dispose of the criminally psychotic ideology Zionism and its every adherent! Viva Palestine!
David Singer, I found your
RIP Palestine. All this nonsense could have been avoided had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan or created a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – between 1948 and 1967 after all the Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza had been driven out by six invading Arab armies.
The Arabs need to step up to the plate and accept the consequences of those decisions which have caused so much grief to Jews and Arabs since.
at my incoming e-mail site. Now, why should the already dispossessed, scattered Palestinian polity — you know the stats: at least 750,000 cleansed from their land, up to 500 villages razed by Zioterrorists by 1949 — have accepted an illegal move engineered by Zionist schemers (who bragged of “having it all” even then) and foisted on the fledgling UN (the GA at that) in November 1947? The Palestinians wanted justice and their own independent state then and they’ve steadfastly sought justice and fulfillment of their legitimate aspirations ever since. “nonsense,” bullshit!
Enough, already, of your “singing,” Singer.Well might you ask – how did my unpublished comment make its way into this crude reader’s email box without it being published on-line first?
You state:
"The Palestinians wanted justice and their own independent state then and they’ve steadfastly sought justice and fulfillment of their legitimate aspirations ever since"
The Palestinian Arabs could have had their own independent State in 1947 in a much larger share of former Palestine than is available to them now under any negotiated settlement in 2016 - if they had not rejected the UN Partition Plan.
Do you agree?
You are also silent on the fact that they could have also had their own independent State in all the West Bank and Gaza and even East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 when not one Jew lived there and Jordan and Egypt were the occupiers. That could have happened with the stroke of an Arab League pen.
Do you agree?
Those golden opportunities will not return.
The Palestinian Arabs and their Arab brethren in the Arab League have blown it well and truly.
They will have to settle for a lot less than 100 per cent of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem if they want to make peace with Israel.
Do you agree?
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| The usual suspects call on Cameron to resign ... |
"I deplore antisemitism. It should be crushed in all its forms and we should never seek to diminish its significance or downplay its impact on the Jewish community, particularly in the light of the worrying increase in anti-Semitism that we have seen recently across Europe"he the next day declared (unchallenged) in an interview on BBC Radio Four that
"...we all know that the United States is in hock to a very powerful financial lobby which dominates its politics..."As reported at the time, after the full speech to RUSI had become known:
'Jewish groups have reacted angrily to comments made by Sir Alan Duncan, the former Tory minister, who described settlement building in the Occupied West Bank as an “ever-deepening stain on the face of the globe”.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said that part of Sir Alan’s argument – that US thinking on the issue of settlements as being dominated by “a very powerful financial lobby” – was antisemitic.
The Board’s vice-president, Jonathan Arkush, said: “Former International Development minister Alan Duncan’s speech served to display his well-known hostility to Israel. It made not a single mention of Palestinian terrorism and incitement to violence and hate. By ignoring the facts behind a complex dispute, he is breathtakingly one-sided."
He added: “If this was not bad enough, Sir Alan made the extraordinary demand that anyone who ‘endorses settlements’ (whatever that may mean) cannot be considered ‘fit to stand for election, remain a member of a mainstream political party, or sit in a Parliament.’ We invite Sir Alan to reconsider the implications of those words.
“From that unsustainable foundation built on intolerance and ignorance, Alan Duncan attacked the British Jewish community for defending Israel. He characterises defending Israel as equivalent to accusing people of wanting Israel’s destruction or being anti-semitic. This is a blatantly false allegation against the leadership bodies of the British Jewish community. It is a poisonous slur which should be retracted immediately.”
"Shouldn't the prime minister's critics really just snap out of the synthetic indignation and admit that their real point is that they hate anyone who has got a hint of wealth in them?
May I support the prime minister in fending off those who are attacking him, particularly in thinking of this place, because if he doesn't, we risk seeing a House of Commons which is stuffed full of low-achievers who hate enterprise, hate people who look after their own family and know absolutely nothing about the outside world."
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| ... and more ... |
'Labor MP, Vicki Kirby, implied that there was a sinister reason why ISIS failed to attack “the real oppressors”, Israel, stated Adolf Hitler could be regarded as a “Zionist God” and that Jews have big noses;
Labour MP Gerry Downing was expelled from the party for the second time, but only after Prime Minister Cameron drew attention to his views, which included re-opening “the Jewish Question” and stating that terrorism was the legitimate response of the oppressed;
Former Labour mayor of Bradford, Khaddim Hussain condemned Holocaust education and accused Israel of arming ISIS;
A Labour councillor in Luton, Aysegul Gurbuz, last week referred to Hitler “as the greatest man in history” and expressed the hope that a nuclear Iran “would wipe Israel off the map.”'See Gurbuz's obscenities here
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| SBS ex-newsreader Mary Kostakidis retweets ... |
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| An early AFOPA initiative in Adelaide (2010) |
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| In 2013 AFOPA paid for billboards in Adelaide showing the misleading maps |
"Heywood-Smith is an unsteady captain of his ship and sometimes runs aground. His caveat emptor, that ambition might outstretch ability as an historian, is amply evidenced. Two egregious clangers are the naming of the social democrat Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky as a ‘Jewish Bolshevik’ (he was neither) and the claim that Sir Raphael Cilento, having merely ‘questioned’ ‘Zionist imperialism’, was drummed out of Australian diplomatic life. (Cilento was a Holocaust denier, big supporter and donor to the far-right League of Rights, in short, an anti-semitic ratbag).
Superficial, sophomoric judgements abound in this philippic....
Heywood-Smith raises the discredited claim that most Jews are actually not descendants from the land of Israel but Khazar converts, a possibility that discredits Zionism. He even manages to claim that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, the notorious Hitler supporter, hardly amounted to much: ‘There is no evidence, however, that Amin’s views translated into material support for Nazi Germany from the Palestinian people.’ All he ever did was raise a volunteer Muslim SS contingent in the Balkans. Almost harmless, really.
In a potted history of WWI, Heywood-Smith argues ‘Britain became desperate to bring the US into the conflict. This enabled Zionists to play a winning card’, implying that they bargained with Britain to support a Zionist state. All this shows is that Heywood-Smith cannot help finding a point and embellishing it. He claims all the problems with the Middle East stem from western imperialism and the creation of Israel. This is simple-mindedness writ large. He snidely questions whether Australian Labor MP Michael Danby, who is Jewish, is guilty of dual loyalties....
Bizarrely, Heywood-Smith claims that then Israeli PM Ehud Barak refused to meet with Yasser Arafat in 2000 at the Camp David Summit convened by Bill Clinton. (They met many times. This is where Barak offered the Palestinian Authority nearly 97 per cent of the West Bank, plus land swaps). Instead of transparency, as the Palestinians wanted, the Israelis traded in secrecy, Heywood-Smith claims.
He expresses sympathy for the BDS campaign and complains that the Palestinian Authority is complicit with doing deals with Israel and ‘so clearly does not represent the Palestinian people.’ Australian-born Martin Indyk, a consistent critic of Israeli PM Netanyahu and adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama, is dismissed as a Zionist.
Mother love is in the air
So, what are Heywood-Smith’s solutions? ‘The Jewish communities that thrived for centuries in Morocco, Tunisia, Baghdad, Damascus, Istanbul and Seville, to mention but a few sites, should be encouraged to restore themselves.’ Jews go home, in other words...."
