Al Beeb Defends Women's Rights & Western Values (video)

Um, not.

In some parts of the Muslim world women are severely beaten, even killed, by their male overlords for daring to throw off that abominable tent-like garment, the burqa.
 
In northern lands women who wear it deprive themselves of sufficient sunshine, thereby subjecting their offspring to the risk of rickets.

Western women who have worn this cloth prison as an experiment have reported how stifling and uncomfortable it is.

In several Middle Eastern countries Muslim women, when given the chance, and when not subject to reprisals from Islamic misogynists, have been glad to dispense with it.

In Saudi Arabia and in Iran brave female activists have rid themselves of surplus coverings in public, to strike a blow for female human rights.

In Turkey, women who appreciate the freedoms initiated by Ataturk have joined mass demonstrations against imposition of a conservative dress code.

Yet the BBC, which knows these things well enough, has seen fit to make the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUVWVBrPsTM

No wonder that BBCThree, which made it, is copping flak on Twitter.

Yet there are always the Leftist apologists for Islamic values that reflect the mindset of the BBC itself. 

What a weird lot of feminists these BBC types are.  

As with the ABC here in Australia:

Patriarchy rules  OK.  Just as long as Islamic, not western, patriarchs are doing the ruling.

David Singer: Australian Labor Party (ALP) Policy Change Boosts PLO Aim to Destroy Israel and Jordan

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

He writes:

The Resolution of the NSW Labor Party Conference urging the next Federal Labor Government to recognise “Palestine” (Resolution) has given a boost to the political objectives of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) whose Charter calls for the destruction of Israel and Jordan.

Prior to the Resolution being passed its prime mover and shaker – Bob Carr – former Australian Foreign Minister, NSW Premier, Chairman of Labor Friends of Israel turned Patron of Labor Friends of Palestine, tweeted:

Carr’s “no ifs or buts” echoed similar demands passed by the Arab Heads of State (including the PLO) at Khartoum on 1 September 1967 following the Six Day War:

“no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country”

No “conditions” for Carr maybe – but a few headaches for the Federal Australian Labor Party if it is stupid enough to swallow Carr’s poison pill.

1. The Resolution does not identify the location of “Palestine”.

Negotiations between Israel and the PLO extending over the last 23 years have failed to come up with an answer.

Recognising a phantom State is an exercise in futility.

The fact that 136 other member States of the United Nations have gone down this same road has only encouraged the PLO to adopt increasingly more intransigent and rejectionist positions opposing the peaceful resolution of a conflict which has raged for 100 years.

Australia should not get sucked into this mindless vortex.

2. When the Khartoum Conference was held – Article 24 of the PLO Charter then declared:

“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.”

An independent Arab State had already been established in 78 per cent of former Palestine in 1946 and called “the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan” (renamed “Jordan” in 1950).

A second Arab State in former Palestine had been proposed in the 1947 UN Partition Plan and rejected by the Arabs. It could have been created at any time between 1948 and 1967 with the stroke of an Arab League pen.

 What possible justification is there for the Australian Labor Party unconditionally recognising such a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan - when the proponent of that State – the PLO – was not even claiming sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967?

3. According to Carr recognition is needed to save the two-state solution being buried in settlements.

There already is an existing two-state solution in 95 per cent of former Palestine – Jewish Israel and Arab Jordan – underpinned by their 1994 peace treaty.

A PLO-governed State located in the remaining 5 per cent between Israel and Jordan represents a threat to both Jordan and Israel - since the PLO considers Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate to be an indivisible territorial unit.

There are no Jewish settlements in Gaza following Israel’s disengagement in 2005.

Jewish settlements built on no more than 5 per cent of the territory of the West Bank are legally sanctioned by article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

“Buried in settlements” is vintage Carr-overkill.

Hopefully sanity will prevail in the Federal Labor Party.

Two peoples – Jews and Arabs – need two States – not three.

Sophie, Israel & A Lyons Share of Spleen

Bet that makes her happy!

The ABC's overtly leftist and unashamedly biased-against-Israel Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill has found a champion in the form of The Australian newspaper's Israel-bashing John Lyons. 

To quote the Guardian Down Under , in "his Middle East memoir Balcony Over Jerusalem" Lyons claims  

'he was subjected to consistent pressure from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) while based in Jerusalem for the Australian for six years, as were the ABC’s Sophie McNeill and the veteran ABC correspondent Peter Cave....

In 2015, AIJAC sent a file on McNeill to Jewish members of the ABC board, including the then chairman James Spigelman, and this file claimed among other things that she was unsuitable because she had said “one of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza”.

The then ABC managing director Mark Scott ordered a detailed response from corporate affairs, which he took to the board.

“I will not cower to the AIJAC,” Scott said, according to Lyons.

Scott was also forced to defend McNeill from attacks at Senate estimates after the dossier was sent to key parliamentarians.

“Before this reporter set foot in the Middle East, there was a campaign against her personally taking up that role,” he said in response to a question from senator Eric Abetz.

“I am saying that she is a highly recognised and acclaimed reporter … she deserved that appointment and she needs to be judged on her work.”

In a letter to the board, Scott wrote: “The article [by AIJAC] demonstrates to Sophie McNeill and the ABC that her every word will be watched closely by AIJAC and she starts on the ground with this key interest group sceptical. We are all aware she will be under even closer scrutiny now. As they seek to influence our coverage, this is a pre-emptive ‘shot across the bows" .....'

Taking aim at Australia's steady pro-Israel foreign policy ("illogical and unhealthy") and at AIJAC and its director Dr Colin Rubenstein, Lyons asserts

“For more than 20 years, Australians have read and heard pro-Israel positions from journalists, editors, politicians, trade union leaders, academics and students who have returned from the all-expenses-paid Israel lobby trips. In my opinion, no editors, journalist or others should take those trips: they grotesquely distort the reality and are dangerous in the sense that they allow people with a very small amount of knowledge to pollute Australian public opinion.”

(What his opinion is of trips sponsored by APAN, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, is not reported.)

Inter alia, Dr Rubenstein has told the Guardian:

“We did put together a public document explaining why we thought Sophie McNeill … was an inappropriate choice for Middle East correspondent for the taxpayer funded ABC, with its statutory obligations of impartiality.

Everything we do – critiquing media stories; contacting editors, politicians and journalists and explaining our point of view to them; writing our our letters and op/eds; making complaints – are absolutely normal elements of deliberation and debate in a democratic society.

I would call on those who oppose our views, including Mr Lyons, to engage with different views in a democratic, tolerant and constructive spirit, rather than demand, as he appears to be doing, that those who disagree with him be silenced or suppressed.”

He's  absolutely right, of course.

The ABC is Australia's equivalent to the BBC: a national broadcaster upon which objective reporting is incombent in return for public funding, in the ABC's case not out of a licence fee but out of taxes.  But, again like the BBC, it is in the grip of the arrogant repulsive Left, and it promotes its leftwing agenda at will, thumbing its nose at critics and packing the panel and the audience to "flagship" programs such as Q&A (its version of the BBC's Question Time) with a surfeit of leftists.  In fact, if anything, its current affairs output and what it chooses to report and comment on is more brazenly leftist than the BBC's.

Sophie McNeill came to journalism and the ABC from a background of political activism and a determination to continue to pursue that activism.  This is how, six years ago,  she described her view of a journalist's role:

"If you just try to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are really suffering in a situation, be it in Lebanon, if you re hanging out in a Palestinian refugee camp, [or] in Gaza you re hanging out, you know, at the children’s cancer ward. One of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending some time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza. I just think if you just – if you look at a situation and you just – yeah, I guess just try to spend time with the people who are – who really don t have any power and it is hard, you know, for them to have a voice. Then that’s, yeah, that’s the kind of journalism I want to do.... Everyone knew what was happening in Gaza ... you saw all the horrific videos ... a lot of people died ... there are no excuses any more..."

 See here

Two years ago AIJAC's Ahron Shapiro observed:

"Any reporting by an ABC employee, including McNeill, is required to follow the following standards:

4.1 Gather and present news and information with due impartiality.

 4.2 Present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.

And also

 4.4 Do not misrepresent any perspective.

4.5 Do not unduly favour one perspective over another."

In a substantial article, he traced and analysed historic broadcasts by Ms McNeill that reveal her pattern of blatant partisanship in reportage concerning the Middle East.

He also drew attention to her pro-Palestinian activism.

For example:

'[I]n 2013, McNeill, along with prolific pro-Palestinian photographer Richard Wainwright were the only journalists presented to speak at the Human Rights in Palestine Conference at the ANU [Australian National University] ...

[W] hile living in Beirut in 2007, McNeill filed a story with the notorious anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada.

 Here, the content of the story she filed, which was about Lebanese mistreatment of Palestinians, was in itself not problematic. What is a problem, however, and what should have given ABC pause when choosing McNeill for her current job, is why McNeill chose to work with a website whose raison d’être is to increase popular support for the elimination of Israel and routinely publishes material justifying Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Finally, in 2009 ... and again in 2013, McNeill initiated online campaigns to raise money for her “dear friend” and Gaza fixer, Raed Al Athamneh. Raising money to help someone you work with through a crisis is not necessarily inappropriate. But for a journalist to adopt the Palestinian narrative in their pitch for donations most certainly is.

 For example, she wrote “most of Gaza’s residents are refugees who used to live inside Israel’s borders, but were forced out when the country was created in 1948″.

This revisionist historical narrative that Israel forced out all the refugees – language used by her mentor Pilger – represents an endorsement of the Palestinian narrative that Israel is entirely responsible for the refugee problem, ignores the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians fled and were not forced out and ignores the war that was launched against Israel by the Arab nations and Palestinians who rejected partition.

In this essay, she also made an allegation that Israel “collectively punished” the Palestinians of Gaza, describing the blockade of Gaza as a means of punishing the Strip’s residents who support Hamas. [Emphasis added]

She initiated a fundraising campaign for Raed again in 2013, according to her friend and Australian Gazan Patrick Abboud and an appeal she posted on ABC Triple J Hack’s Facebook page.'

He observed:

'Her reporting does not show a clear record of separating her media career from her activism..

 And there is little doubt that her activism continues and influences her reporting in terms of how she frames stories, particularly about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. ...

What makes this matter even more serious is the fact that the Jerusalem bureau is undergoing changes. While until now there were two ABC Middle East reporters (most recently Hayden Cooper and Matt Brown) as well as some support crew, the ABC says that it is making Jerusalem a Video Journalist bureau later this year. That move, it would appear, would give McNeill substantially more autonomy than previous Middle East correspondents have had.  

The onus now lies on O’Neill [sic] to demonstrate that ABC management was not irresponsible in making the appointment – given her self-described dedication to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are “really suffering” (in her lexicon, the Palestinians) – and whether she can possibly fulfil the statutory obligation of an ABC correspondent to present news with due impartiality and to be fair to all perspectives.'

 Is it any wonder, given her continuing partisanship, that advocates of fair and objective reporting were, and continue to be, dismayed by her appointment to the ABC?

"He Targeted My Sister Because She Was Jewish" (videos)

"He targeted my sister because she was Jewish" declares the brother of murdered Frenchwoman Sarah Halimi in this France24 report on the harrowing case, a report in which those convinced that her killer,  27-year-old Kobili Traoré, was motivated by raw antisemitism demand recognition of the murder in April as a hate crime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be7SSifX9Ok

A related new video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoy_hTI7chk

To quote the uploader, Rita L.:

'Mayer Habib, Member of the French Parlament asks: why were the police mere spectators to the torture and defenestration murder of Mme Sarah Halimi ? And why was the obvious anti-semitic character of the assassination not acknowledged by the Court ? The assassin, a Muslim of Malian origin, tortured the poor Jewish woman to the shouts of "Allah-u-akbar".'

Antisemitism: Stephen Sizer speaks out

See Jewish Chronicle: click HERE

As is clearly evident (see, for example, the Jewish Chronicle here and here) certain sections of the British Left, especially Corbynistas, are despicably opposed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Definition of Antisemitism.

To quote Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush:

"The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism is endorsed by the Jewish community in the UK and across Europe.

In the UK it is also supported by the government, the Labour Party and the National Union of Students – among many other bodies.

It beggars belief that anyone ... would want to dictate to Jews what constitutes antisemitic abuse against them."

A day or two ago on social media a follower of the Peacemaker Mediators' CEO asks him a question.  To which the ex-vicar, a Corbynista in case you didn't know, made an obtuse yet predictable reply:

Seems promising, this comment of Sizer's:

Until we reflect on the sting in the tail.  His ex-Reverence is one of the "Likers" of this comment in response:

And he's one of the four Likes for Hugh Walker's comment "... nobody likes exceptionalism":

The ex-vicar must surely feel it's reasonable to suspect of antisemitism someone who posts links to articles which claim that Israel was responsible for 9/11.

Nu, Mr Sizer?

How about those who, like Press TV  presenter Yvonne Ridley, talk of Israel's "dark arts" (an abominable phrase that conjures up medieval accusations that Jews poisoned wells and murdered Christian children at Passover) yet is apparently liked by Baroness Tonge, one of Sizer's Press TV and Peacemaker Mediators buddies.

 Anything you'd like to add in the way of enlightenment, Mr Sizer?

Nah. I guess not.

How about those who bear false witness against the aims of Zionism, like your friend Cozzens?  A contemptible bunch?

Silly me!  A redundant question on my part, as this old post of yours reveals:

And the economic cudgel against the Jewish State?

BDS is, in fact, as US Senator Chuck Schumer observed recently, just a repackaging of an old hatred:

'Antisemitism is a word that has been used throughout history when Jewish people are judged and measured by one standard and the rest by another.

When everyone else was allowed to farm and Jews could not; when anyone else could live in Moscow and Jews could not; when others could become academics or tradesmen and Jews could not,” he said. “The word to describe all of these acts is antisemitism. So it is with anti-Zionism; the idea that all other peoples can seek and defend their right to self-determination but Jews cannot; that other nations have a right to exist, but the Jewish state of Israel does not.

The global BDS movement is a deeply biased campaign that I would say, in similar words to Mr. [Emmanuel] Macron, is a "reinvented form of antisemitism" because it seeks to impose boycotts on Israel and not on any other nation.'

Stephen Sizer, this is not the first time you have advocated a single state to replace the legally constituted sovereign state of Israel.  Do not be surprised to find this extraordinary advocacy labelled antisemitism.  Once again, your lack of sympathy, of empathy, for the Jews of Israel, seems predicated on prejudice if not malice, and this blatant lack of objectivity gives the lie to any claim that your so-called Peacemaker Mediators as anything but a biased and mischievous body.

How can a body already blindly prejudiced against one side in a dispute "mediate" a just solution?

It is both a sad and a laughable presumption.

Finally, I draw to your attention, Mr Sizer, this article by Moshe Arens, in which Arens tells us baldly

"The leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, whose battle cry is 'Al-Aqsa is in danger,' is the one most responsible for the current spate of violence"

 It's none other that Raed Salah whom Arens characterises as "Israel's inciter-in-chief"

Another of your anti-Israel chums from way back, eh, ex-vicar?

Deep sigh.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Not a wonderful advertisement for the integrity of Peacemaker Mediators, is it?


Certainly it's not calculated to make Israel ever entrust your mob with negotiations for a "peace settlement"!

California Dreamin': "The last hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews"

His voice cracking with emotion towards the close of the video, this Californian imam, Egyptian-American Sheikh Ammar Shahin, inveighs in bloodthirsty fashion against the Jews.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XJH3NhO7Y

Not surprisingly, as Fox News reports, Jewish groups are asking Homeland Security, U.S. attorney's office to investigate him for his loathsome invective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CZtosJ5NpU

More, including the preacher's attempted excuses, on Breitbart here

An Equal Opportunity Palestinian Preacher (video)

"As a Palestinian, a Muslim, and Arab ... I say the time has come to sound the trumpet of Jihad .... initially in Palestine ... and eventually the whole world" thunders Sheikh Muhammad Nimr Zaghmout, head of the Palestinian Islamic Council in Lebanon. 

What's more, he says, it's “an individual duty” incumbent upon every Muslim man and woman.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmXMcfp12yk

To quote the uploader, Memri.org, he is seen here 'declaring Jihad for the “liberation” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque during a July 16 interview on Mayadeen TV'.