A REMINDER ABOUT WHAT THEY STAND FOR

This is a timely reminder from REFORM JUDAISM ONLINE for those apologists for the Hamas Movement and their supporters in Syria and Iran who want to wipe Israel and Jews off the map - including those fake Jews like Chomsky, Finklestein and the meshugganeh Neturei Carta (pictured in Tehran with infamous Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben) who enjoy snuggling up to these monsters.

PALESTINIAN SHOOTING SPREE

Last week Palestinian terrorists went on a shooting spree near the West Bank city of Ariel. The only newspaper in Australia which reported on the incident was the Australian Jewish News. The group responsible for the random shooting was not Hamas but Fatah whose leader Mahmoud Abbas will be sitting down with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert to discuss a peace deal in Annapolis Maryland next month. Some four years ago, Abbas committed the Palestine Authority in writing to an unconditional dismantlement and disarming of its terror groups, a commitment that was very quickly repudiated.

The Isranet photo above shows the burnt-out wreckage of the vehicle used by the terrorists found abandoned in a Palestinian village near Nablus. Abbas has threatened that there will be more scenes of a similar nature unless he can bring his people a deal on his terms from the meeting at Annapolis. I suppose that's what Middle East peace negotiations are all about which probably explains why very few end up in the successful basket.

THE AGE AND TUTU'S FUNNY INQUISITION AGAINST THE JEWS

Guide to the Perplexed tells of the hatred and incitement against Jews emanating from Boston's Old South Church, where speakers included Desmond Tutu and a Muslim Brotherhood front man Mahdi Bray who once claimed his cheers for Hamas and Hizbullah at a rally in Washington were just "jokes".

"One of the 200 protesters outside the church on Friday afternoon carried a poster with a photoshopped image of the church sign saying: Today’s Sermon: Blame the Jews. That turns out to have been pretty accurate ...

"Fraudulent accusations against the Jewish state, based on fabricated evidence. Religious endorsement of hatred, couched in the rhetoric of social justice. False caricatures and stereotypes of an entire people. The parading of token Jews to verify everything said from the stage. Sound familiar? They used to have a word for that. But you can’t use “antisemitism” anymore. So I’ll just call it a disgrace."

True to form, the Melbourne Age published a report on Tutu's shameful oratorial effort in which he cited texts from the Hebrew Bible "to argue that the God worshiped by Jews would champion the cause of Palestinians." Tutu was obviously trying his hardest to emulate Bray's ultra-sick brand of humour but in reality neither of these would-be clowns is funny at all and nor is the journalist who covered the story in the Boston Globe or the Age editor who deemed it an appropriate story to cover in his flagging newspaper. One wonders whether they see any humour in daily attacks by Palestinian terrorists on Jewish schools and homes or in these lines from the Hamas Covenant -

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

In typical Fairfax fashion, the Tutu article ends with a little footnote about how Israel is about to begin reducing fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip but without including a single word about the daily missile attacks on Israeli civilian targets from Gaza that have caused this measure to be taken. Just as Tutu might urge the Jews to turn the other cheek without offering any advice to the Palestinian terrorists about their own incitement, hatred and violence towards their neighbours, the Age seems to prefer presenting the news from the region without providing any context whatsoever other than one that covers the view from the Palestinian side.

Someone asked me today whether I thought anything would be done about claims that members of Fairfax staff have been modifying Wikipedia entries to whitewash Palestinian terrorism and vilify Israel. Surely, that was another joke!

MISSING STORIES

Here is a selection of stories that have appeared in recent days in Israeli newspapers Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post that have been missed by local newspapers in Melbourne:-

WOMAN, CHILD KILLED IN GAZA HOUSE BLAST

MINISTER MAJADELE: ISRAEL IS READY TO RETURN GOLAN FOR PEACE

PALESTINIANS SET FIRE TO WEST BANK SYNAGOGUE FOR SECOND TIME

EXPERTS: SYRIA CLEARED SITE HIT BY IAF, APPARENTLY TO HIDE EVIDENCE

That's not to mention the ongoing missile attacks by Palestinian terror groups on Israeli homes, schools and places of worship on the other side of its border with Gaza, the occupation of which it ended more than two years ago.

You might well ask where, for example is the Fairfax Jerusalem Bureau chief Ed O'Loughlin who has achieved fame for highlighting allegations of brutality by Israel against Palestinians and the excesses of its occupation of the West Bank and previously Gaza (although he writes as if Israel has special responsibilities to the Gazans even whilst its own citizens are under fire)? Why has he gone missing this week?

Surely, if one has been invested with the task of providing readers with a proper coverage of the news from the region, one would regularly mention the deeds of the terrorist groups that are devoted to Israel's destruction and the killing of Jews? Why is such news routinely airbrushed out of existence along with that of the obscenity that passes for an education system for Palestinian children or the xenophobia, anti-Semitism and the violence of the power struggles among the Palestinian factions and the death that they bring to their own people?

O'Loughlin's style is reminiscent of the vampire that only comes out when it wants to draw blood; in this case when there's some dark spin that can be put out about the Jewish State - when the myth of Israeli intransigence can be pushed alongside tall tales of Arab victimhood and Palestinian innocence.

Rest assured that the fangs will come out when the Israelis and Palestinians get together next month at Annapolis in a meeting set up for the purposes of establishing peace between these two neighbours. Although PA President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that the result of Annapolis should be predetermined, that all Palestinian demands should be met and, if not, he will "cause the US political difficulties and earthquakes not only in the Palestinian territories, but among US allies throughout the world as well," we all know who will be blamed if the talks fail.

HOW THE LOBBY OPERATES IN A DEMOCRACY

The Arab Lobby, that is [and more here]!

"KILL JEWS EVERYWHERE"

The Ma'an News Agency is a Palestinian on-line newsagency that publishes up-to-the-minute news in Arabic, English, and Hebrew.

This report from Ma'an covers a press conference given on Wednesday by Abu Al-Sa'id, a prominent leader of the Popular Resistance Committees in which he urged Palestinian resistance factions, particularly the Salah Addin Brigades of the PRC, to "kill Jews everywhere without waiting for permission".

Not "Zionists" or "Israelis" but "Jews everywhere".

And those Women for Palestine have the effrontery to suggest their proposed one state solution shows magnanimity towards the Israeli Jewish community. Adolph Hitler was just so magnanimous to the Jews of Germany.

AMNESTY

Amnesty International has issued a 58 page report harshly critical of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah for harming civilians in their deadly clashes - Amnesty slams Fatah, Hamas clashes.

"During the clashes, gunmen mounted attacks from civilian apartment buildings and hospitals and targeted rival patients in their hospital beds, the London-based organization said. Gunmen used crowded residential neighborhoods as war zones, firing mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and bullets from civilian buildings."

The behaviour described is standard operating procedure for armed Palestinian groups irrespective of whether they are fighting against their own factions or against the Israelis. The total disregard for the concern and welfare of their own people is appalling.

The difference in this case is that the Israelis can hardly be blamed for the resulting carnage and this also happens to be the reason why news of the report is likely to be confined to the blank pages.

PALESTINIAN HUMOUR

Marty Peretz writes in The New Republic about HOW PALESTINIANS BUILD CONFIDENCE.

He tells of a visit by Israeli PM Ehud Olmert to the West Bank town of Jericho to meet with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas in August. Israeli security had discovered that Fatah operatives attached to the Palestinian Authority had planned to target Olmert's party for assassination. They arrested some of the principals and handed them over to the PA which last week released them. This is Palestinian confidence building in the wake of an important peace summit.

Peretz calls the Palestinian response a "tragic joke", one that can cost lives, Jewish and Arab but the humour doesn't come blacker or lower than that of a group called "Women for Palestine" which has this vicious piece of hatemongering in the Melbourne Age on-line edition yesterday under the title "Peace without justice is no peace at all".

I should preface my remarks about this item by stating that what they really mean is that peace without justice is no peace at all but in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict the "justice" part is never meant to be applied to the Israelis at all.

The WFP are all for a single state solution which recognises neither the Jewish right to self-determination nor that of the Palestinian Arabs. Instead, they consider that both peoples will live together in one state and the fact that the Jews will ostensibly be given this privilege is regarded as a sign of "remarkable magnanimity" on the part of those who argue for this "solution".

There is absolutely no sign of anywhere of any guarantee about what might happen in such a state if any of the political groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad which are committed to the genocide against Jews everywhere might come into the ascendancy. The proponent of this wild scheme, Ghada Karmi, reportedly told an audience in Perth last week "that when her one-state solution is implemented, she expects most of the Jews to go back to Europe".

That's what these despicable women claim is a peaceful solution. In fact, it's not a peaceful solution at all but a prescription for genocide against the Jews - Palestinian humour at its best; the same sort of funny business that the PA is teaching its children on its television programmes. Unfortunately, most of us don't think it's such a joke!

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN PALESTINE OVER THE WEEKEND

While the cheerleader for the Palestinians was availing readers of the Melbourne Age with a one-sided rendition of Israel bashing propaganda about how its security is allegedly making it difficult for some Gazans to obtain urgent medical treatment in Israeli hospitals (and what other country in the world gives enemy citizens such life giving benefits?), here is a selection of the news about from the region which its Jerusalem bureau chief either didn't know about or chose to ignore (with thanks to Elder of Ziyon):-

An Islamic Jihad member was killed Sunday night by Hamas.

A man died from injuries inflicted by Hamas in September.

A six year old boy was kidnapped for ransom in the West Bank..

A second man in two days was found, tortured and shot, in Gaza. (Here are pictures of the first one, who looks like Hamas gouged his eye out.).

An 18-year old girl was abducted by Hamas.

Another body found of a 29-year old man east of Qalqiya.

This brings to 557 the number of Palestinian Arabs violently killed by each other in 2007 including 33 women and 40 children.

Are you shocked?

You would be if you read the Melbourne Age and followed its soon to depart Jerusalem bureau chief or read its letters section where an observer from Brunswick, who has swallowed his propaganda hook, line and sinker, writes today about the "persecution of Palestinians" but doesn't know or care that the persecution is largely self-inflicted. It's worth making a note about the above reports because you won't read a word about them in your local broadsheet unless you manage to find the blank pages.

THE ESSENTIAL ED O'LOUGHLIN COMPANION

The winds of change are about to blow through the Age Jerusalem bureau with the departure of the incumbent chief Ed O'Loughlin who has ensured that his reporting of events from the region will be remembered for his blatant pro-terrorist bias with today's offering - Tactics deny aid for Gaza ill.

The article raises some serious issues that must be dealt with by Israeli authorities. If the allegations made by Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division that "Israel is punishing sick civilians as a way to hurt Hamas," then they should be investigated and the appropriate action should be taken.

Of course, it's unfortunate that the Age rarely investigates the numerous abuses of the many Arab regimes in the region which do not have the protection of democratic processes in the way that Israel does. But that’s another story altogether!

What is equally disturbing about O'Loughlin's article is the reporter's own journalistic style and his total disregard of the human rights of the citizens of Israel which its own government are duty bound to protect.

In typical fashion, this reporter has left it to the ninth and final paragraph to provide his readers with the Israeli version, a brief statement of denial from an anonymous Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson that Hamas was "preventing Israel from opening its crossings with Gaza".

Naturally, O'Loughlin has done a good job of keeping his readers in the dark about Hamas attacks on those crossings including attacks on those bringing in humanitarian aid into Gaza.

And in the context of the coverage of Israeli security concerns about Palestinians crossing into Israel for treatment, the Age's ailing Middle East correspondent has not deigned to remind those readers about the chilling story of the horrors that Waffa Samir Ibrahim Bass could easily have perpetrated two years ago when she was granted permission to travel from Gaza to the southern Israeli city of Beersheba for medical treatment.

This NBC news item is therefore an essential companion item to O’Loughlin’s shameful reporting - PALESTINIAN PATIENT TRIED TO BLOW UP IN THE ISRAELI HOSPITAL WHERE SHE WAS TREATED.

WHAT YOU WON'T READ IN THE MELBOURNE AGE TODAY

TURKISH MAN SHOT ON EGYPT'S BORDER DIES.

The shots that killed the victim were fired by Egyptian border police and not by Israelis. Furthermore, the incident didn't occur at a checkpoint where Israeli security must search for hidden weapons that might be used by Palestinian terrorists who have in the past smuggled weaopons and human bombs into the country in order to indisciminately murder its citizens.

Incidentally, a by-product of the existence of these checkpoints is that they cause Palestinian farmers some difficulty in moving their produce around which to some media reporters is a much more important issue than the safety of innocent Jewish men, women and children.

And speaking of children, will the Melbourne Age ever reveal that the elected Palestinian leadership in Gaza is feeding its own children with propaganda aimed at perpetuating the ongoing war against Israel's citizens and thereby ensuring that the checkpoints will remain in place for a long, long time - NEW ANIMATED FILM ON HAMAS TV FOCUSES ON CHILD MARTYRDOM?

A REASONED RESPONSE

The Melbourne Age yesterday provided Op Ed space for Colin Rubenstein's reasoned response to an earlier article written by Palestinian bigot and hate monger Ghada Karmi . Read it here - THAT ROAD DOES NOT LEAD TO PEACE.

Karmi's view of "peace" is not unlike that of many others among the Palestinians who have gone before her and argued for the obliteration of any Jewish claim to any part of the former Palestinian Mandate which was partitioned into a Jewish and Arab State by a United Nations Resolution passed almost 60 years ago. That is precisely the cause of the tragedy of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Neither of the peoples need to endure more of the violence and horror which would result from Karmi's twisted vision.

UN DISCRIMINATION AGAINST JEWS

The United Nations, which was formed in the shadow of Hitler’s Holocaust against the Jews, has become a venue for blatant discrimination against the people of Israel, many of who were victims or are descendents of the victims of history's greatest crime against humanity.

Melanie Phillips reports that the UN human rights envoy for the Palestinian Territories, John Dugard (pictured above) has added to the venomous stream of poison emanating from his organisation against Israel by urging it to withdraw from the Quartet of Middle East mediators unless it addresses Palestinian human rights - The war against the Jews. He claims that the US, EU, UN and Russia are failing to protect the Palestinians. Dugard fails to mention that the protection is needed more because Palestinians are killing each other at an alarming rate this year - rather he puts the blame on Israel.

Shamefully, it is Dugard's own office that does little for the cause of the Palestinians or the prospects of reconciliation and peace between them and the Israelis that would ensure that the human rights of all peoples within the region would be properly upheld. Dugard's office is specifically designed to deal with the human rights of the Palestinian people. He has no brief to deal with the human rights of the Israeli people; particularly those living in the proximity of the border with Gaza whose homes, schools and places of work are under daily bombardment from missiles fired by terrorists on the Palestinian side.

The United Nations has no office created to afford these Israelis any human rights. They have no spokespeople other than their own at the United Nations.

Not only does Dugard therefore ignore the Israeli victims of this conflict but also the terrorists on the Palestinian side who are the true cause of the misery felt on both sides.

Perhaps Dugard is showing his frustration because he has by virtue of his organisation's shameful double standards become totally irrelevant.

Ed O'Loughlin of the Melbourne Age couldn't resist mentioning Dugard's rant as a footnote to his article on the prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon - Israeli prisoner swap raises hope. Naturally, he mentions only Dugard's view and resists any reference to the reasons why Israel is forced to take actions to protect its citizens. The daily attacks on Israel towns like Sderot are, as usual, ignored by O'Loughlin who is soon to depart the newspaper's Jerusalem Bureau.

POISON IN THEIR HEARTS

Melanie Phillip's Diary reports on the poison at the heart of the left and tells the shocking tale of how the more radical elements of the left shamefully use or rather, grossly misuse the Holocaust "to fuel its anti-Zionism."

According to Elder of Ziyon, the Israel-bashers who are guilty of this abhorrent behaviour "like to claim that Zionists use the term "anti-semitism" as a club to crush all criticism of Israel. The problem is, of course, that the same crowd uses the claim of Zionist use of anti-semitism as a means to avoid discussing real issues.

"The word misoziony can neatly solve that problem and can help re-focus the arguments back on their fundamentally untenable bases. Pointing out misoziony can help to sharpen the debate and point out the basic irrationality of the Israel-bashers.

It is also a much more convenient term when talking about the Jimmy Carters or Walt/Mearsheimers of the world. While they claim that they are not against the existence of Israel, there is no doubt that they suffer from misoziony, uniquely blaming Israel for a large number of world problems and simultaneously absolving everyone else. It is probably not accurate to call them anti-semites but they are firmly in the misozionist camp."

LAUGHING AT THE LOBBY

Today is Simchat Torah, a day when Jews make light of things and I couldn't think of anything better to laugh at than an anti-Semite. Ahmadinejad was done by all and sundry last week so my target on this particular day is the execrable John Mearsheimer who was a scholar once upon a time.

IS 'THE ISRAEL LOBBY' A LAUGHING MATTER?

FINAL STATUS AND PEACE

Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is demanding a joint Israeli-Palestinian final status declaration to be presented to a peace conference in the United States next month.

Ami Isseroff of the Progressive Zionism and Israel Web Log has an interesting proposal for the wording of such a declaration here.

THE FIRST BLOOD LIBEL OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Seven years have passed since the Palestinians launched their violent attacks on Israel and caused thousands of deaths on both sides, and now the truth is finally coming out. The death of the young Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Dura, during an exchange of fire between IDF troops and Palestinian gunmen at the Netzarim Junction, Gaza in 2000 was a fabrication.

The blood libel was used to demonise Israel in the media and to justify the intensification of attacks on Jews during the second Palestinian intifada. The Israelis clumsily accepted responsibility initially but it has now investigated the matter fully. The story has been the subject of countless articles and some documentary films which have questioned the motives of the filmmakers from France 2 television who claimed that al-Dura was killed by IDF fire.

Several French and US journalists who have subsequently seen raw footage of the incident have indicated the shooting might have been staged by Palestinians. The footage is regarded as key evidence in a slander case in France against Philippe Karsenty, director of the media watchdog group Media-Ratings, who called the video of the incident "a hoax." Karsteny inexplicably lost the case in a lower court hearing but that decision is currently under appeal. The latest IDF investigation supports the case against France 2 and its Arab cameraman.

One awaits with interest to see how the local media will deal with this story.