The Age still treats its readers like idiots

In an earlier post I mentioned that the Age had surprised with the inclusion of an opinion piece from Fania Oz-Salzberger about the weekend's Israeli air strikes at Hamas.

There was of course, another surprise on the front page - a story attributed to the Guardian about the tragic deaths of a family of Palestinians caught in an Israeli attack on the Hamas infrastructure 'I didn't see any of my girls ...'. The online edition doesn't name the author but his name does appear on the front page of the print edition. It's Hazem Balousha reporting from Jabaliya.

Look at the names of the victims, then look again at the name of the "journalist" who wrote the report.

No doubt, the Age wants its readers to get a totally objective picture*.

Or perhaps not - here's an interesting viewpoint from Romeo Mike's blog that might help us understand the pathology behind this sort of journalistic bastardry.

STILL WAITING FOR THE FULL PICTURE

Mike points out how effective Hamas has been in frightening away all of the decent journalists from Gaza through the use of murder, kidnapping, torture and intimidation.

"Over the past two years Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been subjected to a systematic campaign of intimidation that has resulted in the death of some and the detention of others.The campaign, which is being waged by both Hamas and Fatah, has received almost no attention from human rights groups and advocates of the freedom of expression throughout the world.

By contrast, when a Palestinian journalist is accidentally wounded by Israeli gunfire during clashes with Palestinians, the incident makes headlines in major media outlets in the US and EU."

And all that's left are those who push Hamas propaganda through its willing accomplices in media channels throughout the world.

* Of course, it may be a co-incidence and there may be no family relationship whatsoever between reporter and subject matter. There could well be thousands of Baloushas in Jabaliya. However, in such a situation it is incumbent on the media outlet to produce some sort of disclaimer or explanation. The Age failed to do this and the fact that its on line edition referenced only "GUARDIAN" and kept the Balousha connection in its blank pages, makes it sound all the more an unprofessional and seemingly deceptive piece of journalism, if indeed, "journalism" is how you can describe what Al Age is doing in this instance.

Surprise

The Age has pulled off surprise ending to the year by actually publishing a sensible article on the current situation in Israel and Palestine by Fania Oz-Salzberger - THE TRAGEDY WHEN A REGIME USES ITS CITIZENS AS TOOLS OF WAR.

Ironically, Oz-Salzberger's excellent summation of the events behind the Israeli strikes reflects poorly on the Age's own shameful coverage over the years of (or rather its suppression of news about) many of the activities of the depraved thuggish Hamas regime in Gaza, its primary objectives and its history of cross border attacks on Israeli civilain populations.

Yesterday, the Age published an article from the elder statesman of Israel's peace camp, Uri Avnery - I DREAM OF ANOTHER ISRAEL - in which Avnery said that Israel must talk to Hamas. Avnery is a courageous man so perhaps, he might want to volunteer for the task and might start off by asking Hamas what it thinks about the two state solution (which Avnery says he supports) and whether it might one day soon consider altering its charter which calls for Israel's destruction and the killing of Jews (presumably Avnery is included in that group).

Avnery was far more sensible when it came to discussing Israel's leadership - "we must prepare the ground for an Israeli Obama."

Now, that's an idea!

As an Age reader pointed out today in its letters section, Obama himself said in July of this year while visiting Israel:

"Any country would find it difficult to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens. If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Death to all Juice

A pro Hamas demonstrator in Manhattan. Nothing more really needs to be said.

No peace until Israel leave Gaza

If you think this photograph was taken before August 2005 when Israel did indeed leave Gaza then you're wrong. It's recent but the intelligensia behind the banner think the place is still crawling with Israelis (as it might very soon).

PEACE PRIZE WINNER EXPOSES HERSELF

It was Sunday morning at 2.00am Melbourne time and Palestinian Legislator Hanan Ashrawi was being interviewed by Rosemary Church on CNN about the Israeli air strikes on Gaza. Ashrawi, as usual, was in automatic pilot playing the blame game and droning on about the occupation, the cycle of violence and excusing the rocket attacks on innocent Israeli civilians that preceded the strike.

Then this question was asked:

Rosemary Church: If Israel was not complying with the terms of the ceasefire, is the firing of rockets the way for Hamas to deal with that? Can they not use alternative channels?

Hanan Ashrawi: Well they certainly tried many different ways. I think the Palestine Authority has been trying through negotiation, through peaceful means but this has produced nothing. And at the same time even though many Palestinians including myself do not condone the use of rocket fire or violence sort of hold the victim accountable while the occupying power is constantly above the law and is not accountable.

Now, Ashrawi was there as a mouthpiece for the Palestinians but certainly not for Hamas. However, she deftly attempted to sidestep the question she was being asked i.e. whether Hamas could use alternative channels to the use of Qassams and answered an entirely different question telling the interviewer what the PA has done and by saying that negotiation had produced nothing forgetting the very real concessions the PA gained from Israel since the Oslo Agreement in 1993 (which Ashrawi incidentally, opposed).

Then she continued in a manner that distinctly sounded like excusing Hamas for violating international humanitarian law. As Bradley Burston points out today in Haaretz (Wartime in Gaza: The worst anti-Israel charges you'll hear):

"The Human Rights Watch organization has been unequivocal in condemning the use of Qassam rockets as a direct violation of international humanitarian law and the laws of war. The firing of Qassams and mortars against civilian populations also constitutes collective punishment against hundreds of thousands of innocent Israeli men, women and children."

This is Hanan Ashrawi who five years ago and among great controversy was awarded the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize. Her failure to condemn criminal acts of war by Hamas and indeed to attempt to explain or to excuse them is reprehensible and yet another reason why she is not a fit person to hold any worthwhile peace prize other than a Mickey Mouse (make that Farfur) Peace Prize.

BEHIND GAZA

Israel's attack on Gaza: Hamas itself has admitted that most of the dead are their own people i.e. terrorists dedicated to Israel's destruction (a fact that will quickly be suppressed by apologists for Hamas everywhere) Caption: My Own. Photo: NY Times

Israel's attack on Gaza did not come out of the blue. If we follow the serious news outlets which provide a full coverage of events, we have the opportunity to view the entire picture.

Here's the New York Times coverage over the past ten days:-

Israel: Palestinian Militants Fire Rockets From Gaza - December 17

As Truce Ends, Israeli Airstrike Kills One in Gaza - December 20

Israel: 3 Militants Killed in Gaza - December 24

Gaza Rocket Fire Intensifies - December 25

Israel Issues an Appeal to Palestinians in Gaza - December 26

Israeli Gaza Strike Kills More Than 200 - December 27

"Most of those killed were Hamas police officers and security men, including two senior commanders, according to Palestinian officials."

A reminder that it was Hamas police officers and security men who flung their Fatah opponents off the roofs of high rise buildings and performed other horrors on their felow Palestinians when the radical Islamist group took control of Gaza in 2007. This is what happens inside a Hamas meeting and this is how Hamas looks after its children.

Meanwhile, here in Australia, the coverage has been far from satisfactory. One of our newspapers even ran a story about the prospects for peace a few days ago and Hamas didn't rate a mention. They must think their readers, like mushrooms, should be kept in the dark.

FOOTNOTE: The Sunday Age story this morning (Scores killed as Israel pounds Gaza) confirms that Israel had only hit Hamas targets, including command structures and rocket-manufacturing installations and that "the majority of the victims appeared to be members of Hamas, branded a terror group by Israel and the West." Israel's Channel 2 also reported that the strikes were aimed at the Hamas leadership, infrastructure, and logistics and that much of the deaths resulted from secondary explosions due to many of the targets (including those near civilian areas) having been stocked with ammunition and rockets most of which was recently smuggled into Gaza, often in tunnels which news reports were suggesting were also being used to bring food into Gaza.

I predict here and now that, in the coming days, the letters editors of certain newspapers in this country will permit the publication of blood libels suggesting that Israel deliberately targetted innocent women and children.

Palestinians: At least 140 dead, over 200 hurt in IAF Gaza strikes

Palestinians: At least 140 dead, over 200 hurt in IAF Gaza strikes

First reports indicate that the Israeli operation successfully targeted Hamas security compounds throughout Gaza. One television report says that every target was a security target and that the operation was meticulously planned and that most of the dead were Hamas security personnel. No doubt, by the time some news media and letter writers to newspapers get their teeth into this story it will be alleged that 98% of the dead were civilians mainly children (notwithstanding the visual evidence to the effect that many of the black clad dead wore some sort of military and had three day growths).

PALESTINIAN MISSILES CLAIM TWO MORE PALESTINIAN VICTIMS

Palestinian terrorists in Gaza prepare to fire at Israeli civilian tragets. Now, they're giving new meaning to the term "suicide bombers" - NY Times photo.

The world should know that Palestinian terrorists have killed two more Palestinian children as a result of a rocket aimed at Israeli civilians on the other side of its border with Gaza - Palestinian rocket accidentally kills 2 young Gaza girls.

"A projectile fired by Palestinians fell short of its target in Israel on Friday, striking a house in northern Gaza and killing two schoolgirls.

"The attack came as Israel sent mixed signals regarding its plans for Gaza.

"A rocket apparently fired by Palestinians on Friday killed the two Palestinians aged five and 13, Palestinian medics said.

"None of Gaza's militant factions claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the house in Beit Lahiya. Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moiaya Hassanain identified the two victims as 5-year-old Hanin Abu Khoussa and her 12-year-old cousin, Sabah Abu Khoussa. Three other young people were wounded, Hassanain said.

"Hamas police said they were investigating the cause of the blast in Beit Lahiya village in northern Gaza, which medics said seemed to be due to a rocket aimed at Israel that had misfired.

"Gaza militants frequently fire rockets at Israel from the same area."

CHRISTMAS 2008 - HITLER RULES IN BRITAIN AND GAZA

When Britain's Channel 4 decided it wanted someone to deliver an “alternative” Christmas message then who else but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the racist who wants to annihilate the only Jewish State on earth?

Iran's Ahmadinejad to give alternative Christmas message.

"If Christ were on Earth today, undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over."

Well actually, if Christ were on Earth today, he would be a target of this anti Semitic, Holocaust denying monster who has threatened to annihilate his country.

The Melbourne Age is hardly any better in its coverage of the news from the Middle East today. In a report taken from "AFP and Agencies - Bethlehem peace plea as violence again rocks Gaza we are told of the violence that "escalated again on Christmas Eve". This violence is cunningly described as "tit for tat" with the responsibility pointing to the Israelis:-

"Gaza militants showered southern Israeli towns with an estimated 30 rockets and at least 20 mortar shells on Wednesday.

"The military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement, which governs Gaza, issued a statement claiming the barrage was in retaliation for the killing of three Hamas gunmen by Israeli
soldiers on Tuesday.

"A subsequent Israeli air raid killed a Hamas militant and wounded four other Palestinians."

Thanks to Elder of Ziyon who sources a Palestinian News Agency we know something more about the "tit for tat" lie often promulgated by those whose sympathies lie with the thugs controlling Gaza.

Firstly, it's a lie that that firing by Palestinians of rockets into Israeli towns and at civilian targets commenced as a result of the Israeli operation on the eve of Christmas. Despite a lull in the violence and the operation of a so called truce, rockets have been fired on Israeli targets on every day this month apart for 11 December, one of the days upon which Israel sent humanitarian aid to Gaza ( a fact routinely ignored by much of the western media and certainly downplayed in Age reports).

Secondly, this is what really happened on Christmas Eve courtesy of Palestinian Newsagency Ma'an (which, despite being an organ of Palestinian propaganda pushing the same flim flam tale of "retaliation", is a more reliable source of news than the Age):-

"Three Palestinians were killed during a military operation near the Israeli-Gaza border in the north of Gaza and another two during a separate mission in the south-central region.

"A statement from Hamas confirmed the death of three activists from their Al-Qassam Brigades.A statement from the group said the three were on a mission near the Israeli town of Netiv Ha’asara on the northern border with the Gaza Strip. They were identified as Muhammad Ma’ruf, Ahmad Abu Al-Ma’azza and Raed Al-Masri.

"The statement also detailed the death of two other Al-Qassam activists, who were performing a 'mission of Jihad' east of Al-Qarara in the southern Gaza Strip. The two slain activists were named as Islam Jadallah and Muhammad Al-Halabi."

The "two other Al-Qassam activists" were almost certainly victims of another phenomenon rarely reported in the Western media - the Palestinian work place accident.

Also thanks to Elder of Ziyon, here's another story from a Palestinian source that routinely gets suppressed in places like the Age news and is ignored by those who are supposedly concerned with human rights and the welfare of Palestinian children:-

"According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 16:15 on Monday, 22 December, 2008, 3-year-old Myassar Mousa Wahdan, was injured in the abdomen and chest and her 5-year-old brother, Mohammed, was injured in the head by shrapnel from a locally produced rocket that was fired by members of the Palestinian resistance. The rocket fell on agricultural land near Beit Hanoun Agriculture College in the north to Beit Hanoun town in the northern Gaza Strip. The two children were immediately transferred to Beit Hanoun Hospital for treatment. Medical sources described the wounds of Myassar as serious and reported that she was admitted into the intensive care unit. The wounds of Mohammed were described as moderate.

"In another incident, at approximately 17:30 on Sunday, 21 December, 2008, Hanan Sohwail, 32, was lightly wounded by shrapnel to the right hand when a locally produced rocket exploded near her house in al-Zaytoun quarter in the west of Beit Hanoun Town. She was immediately taken to Beit Hanoon Hospital for treatment

"At approximately 14:40 on Saturday, 20 December, 2008, a locally produced rocket fired by members of the Palestinian resistance fell near a group of children who were playing in a bystreet to the east of the industrial zone, west to Beit Hanoon town. Shrapnel from the rocket wounded two children. The two children were taken to Beit Hanoun Hospital for treatment and then transferred to the intensive care unit at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, since their wounds
were serious. The two children were identified as Sari Mana’a al-Sama’ana, 9, and Safi 'Eid al-Sama’ana, 8."

One likely reason for the suppression of this news is the fact that the harm to the children was not caused by those defending their own children from the same sinister source of violence in the region.

Yesterday, more than 80 rockets and mortar shells were fired from Gaza into Israel causing substantial damage and physical and emotional damage to men, women and children in the communities that were attacked. I'm sure that some day soon, the Age will send its Jerusalem Bureau chief, Jason Koutsoukis, to cover the story of these civilians under siege in as much detail as he has covered the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza who unbeknown to its readers (Hamas and the Oppression of the Palestinians) are living their lives under the jackboot of Hamas.

And just to prove that the blank pages are no myth, Koutsoukis mars an otherwise passable analysis of the current situation in the region - Lack of leadership makes peace an elusive recipe by failing to make any mention whatsoever of who?

That's right Hamas!

HAMAS AND THE OPPRESSION OF THE PALESTINIANS

The truth about Hamas is something you won't read about in many Western media outlets. The Melbourne Age, which publishes the grossest apologies for the thuggish Palestinian regime that rules in Gaza and prints letters suggesting that these people are the next best thing to a boy scout troupe, won't tell its readers following story - Hamas pushes for Sharia punishments.

"The Hamas parliament in the Gaza Strip voted in favor of a law allowing courts to mete out sentences in the spirit of Islam, the London-based Arab daily Al Hayat reported Wednesday.

"According to the bill, approved in its second reading and awaiting a third reading before the approval of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as the Palestinian constitution demands, courts will be able to condemn offenders to a plethora of violent punitive measures in line with Sharia Law.

"Such punishments include whipping, severing hands, crucifixion and hanging. The bill reserves death sentences to people who negotiate with a foreign government "against Palestinian interests" and engage in any activity that can 'hurt Palestinian morale.'"

Yes, even crucifixion and at this time of year too!

But what more can you expect from a bunch of hoodlums that likes blaming it all on the Jews?

CHRISTMAS 2008 - THE HAMAS STORY

Now that Ed O'Loughlin is off the scene at the Age, we aren't reading those pithy tales about poor Palestinian Christians living under Israeli occupation any more. Still, we're not getting any closer to the truth about the rapidling diminishing Christian population in the region (it's diminishing everywhere in the Middle East but in Israel - go figure?).

Whilst it's refreshing that we're being fed less of the usual drivel blaming Israel for the plight of Christians in the Middle East, the truth is still suppressed in our own media as this Jerusalem Post analysis indicates - Analysis: Cruelty and silence in Gaza.

The silence of the Age continues with its interminable articles on the plight of the Gazans that provide little understanding as to how their economy has been shattered by the policies of Hamas which is intent upon the destruction of Israel. The Age letters section gives voice to mouthpieces of Hamas to promote an image which suggests that the viscious criminals who rule Gaza are nothing other than a group of friendly boy scouts. Like this ripper from Fay Waddington of Wooloowin, Queensland -

Imprisoned in the open air

THANK you to The Age for the article on the situation in Gaza (20/12). For too long the media has been blind or biased or both on this topic. Biased by constantly referring to Hamas as a radical Islamist group instead of a democratically elected party. Blind to the collective punishment imposed on 1.5 million predominantly innocent people because of that election result.

Biased in using the benign words "Israeli incursion" for brutal disproportionate responses to rockets fired by a small group of militants over which the overall population has little control.

Those benign incursions in March alone caused the death of more than 60 people, many of whom were children. The illegal settlements may have gone but the vice-like control by Israel over every aspect of life for those in Gaza remains. No fuel, no medicine, no fishing, no water, no hope.

Gaza is an open-air prison and Israel's actions constitute a war crime.

The letter published in the Age (which employed Ed O'Loughlin for 5½ years!) suggests there is media bias against the Palestinians, that Hamas is not a radical Islamist group and that, as a democratically elected party, it has no responsibility to rein in the so-called "small group of militants" who fire missiles at its civilains and that Israel is not entitled to defend itself against these "militants". No mention either of humanitarian aid brought in from Israel on a regular basis (except when those missiles are raining down on Israeli population centres).

This is Hamas whose aim is to destroy the Jewish state and kill its Jewish inhabitants and Waddington of Wooloowin, Queensland thinks Hamas is blameless. She's obviously been spending a lot of her time reading news reports from the Age and very little time searching for the full truth.

Thanks to Fay, the Age and the tooth fairy, we're all well educated on the subject as Christmas 2008 approaches.

IRAN THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Lewis Carroll would have been very good at describing the insanity of the Iran idiocracy. Thanks to MEMRI TV here's an example of what the inmates of the asylum at the Islamic Republic have been saying lately -

IRANIAN TV: U.S. AND ZIONISTS RESPONSIBLE FOR MUMBAI ATTACKS

Sadly and tragically for the world, the Western media ignores this lunacy and there is some approval for it among fringe elements in the West (mainly from the extreme right and extreme left of the political spectrum). This world view even gains some support from Jews like the Neturei Carta meshugganehs and the likes of screwed up would be journalist Anthony Loewenstein and his few remaining friends.

O'BAMA'S MESSAGE TO THE ARABS

An insightful opinion piece from veteran Israeli journalist Amotz El Asa in the Jerusalem Post - Middle Israel: Obama's real message to the Arabs.

And so, even while Obama makes the post-crude era a tangible prospect, the Middle East's petro-crats still have no plan for its arrival; no plan, that is, other than to say that their location deep in history's dustbin was the plotting of Israel, America and their free lunches.

LETTER OF THE WEEK

This letter in today's Australian just about sums it all up. Very concise and an excellent response to a serial obfuscator:

DORA McPhee (Letters, 11/12) defends Palestinian terrorism as the “right to resist occupation”. In fact, Palestinian terrorism not only predates the occupation, it predates the re-establishment of Israel. Arab terrorism has been waged against Jews in the area continuously since the 1920s. Terrorism is not caused by the occupation; it is a deliberate strategy of sections of the Palestinian leadership, chosen in preference to negotiation.

Israel is committed to a two-state solution living in peace alongside a state of Palestine. It has been since day one of its existence.

The impediment to achieving that goal is the refusal of sections of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel’s right to exist.

Vic Alhadeff

CEO, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies

The thing that is truly laughable about Ms. McPhee is that she is involved with Palestine Lobby groups such as as Australians for Palestine and Women for Palestine which purport to favour peace but constantly seek to excuse the behaviour of terrorists who are committed to maintaining the violence, destroying Israel and killing Jews.

In any logical view, they are really the enemies of peace and of co-existence between Arabs and Jews in the region.

BLOW UP

The following quote is one of a number from Islamic leaders expressing solidarity with Gaza and aired on Al-Manar and Al-Aqsa TV, December 3 and 5, 2008 - Arab Islamist Clerics to Palestinians: Slaughter the Jews Like You Did in 1929; Blow Yourselves Up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Oh noble Gaza, raise your head high. You have made the Muslims raise their heads high. And you, people of Hebron – you are now waging a war against the Jews. You are well-versed in this. We saw how, on a day in 1929, you slaughtered the Jews in Hebron. Today, slaughter them on the land of Hebron. Kill them in Palestine.

Arise, oh people of Palestine, all the people of Palestine – arise in defense ofyour Al-Aqsa Mosque, arise in defense of Nablus and Hebron. Arise and face the [PA] Preventive Security forces. Fear them not, for they are rabbits. They are wolves, so fear them not, oh lions.

- Sheik Himam Sa'id, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.

I'll bet you won't be reading about this in tomorrow morning's paper, nor of the slaughter by Arabs of the Jews of Hebron in 1929, long before the State of Israel was born, long before the Six Day War and long before any security barriers had to be erected to provide security for Jews.

GROTESQUE AND ORWELLIAN

The United Nations and those who grovel at the feet of the Muslim bloc has morphed into an agent of racism and hatred. Jeff Jacoby puts it so well in the Jewish World Review - UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian.

Make no mistake: In likening Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, the UN is engaged not in anti-racism but in anti-Semitism. In the 1930s, the world's foremost anti-Semites demanded a boycott of Jewish businesses. Today they demand a boycott of the Jewish state.


"No good German is still buying from a Jew," announced Hitler's Nazi Party in March 1933. "The boycott must be a universal one . . . and must hit Jewry where it is most vulnerable." Seventy-five years later, the president of the General Assembly urges the world to throttle Israel's 6 million Jews with "boycott, divestment, and sanctions." There is no significant difference between the two cases — or the animus underlying them.


When the UN adopted its odious "Zionism is racism resolution" in 1975, US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan minced no words. "The United States," he declared, "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act." Where is such a voice of moral outrage today?

PICTURE NOT WORTH A SINGLE WORD

Remember that deplorable and factually flawed piece of scribbling from Matt Golding in last week's Sunday Age?

Age reader Alan Freedman tells the Age what's wrong with Golding's drivel in its letters section:

Picture not worth 1000 words

YOUR cartoon in last week's Sunday Age equating the growth of Islamism with the entry of the "coalition of the willing" into Iraq only demonstrates that its author, Matt Golding, has been well and truly conned by the fanatical Islamists. In case he hadn't noticed, 9/11 occurred before the invasion of Iraq.

Keen observers of modern-day Islamist terrorism are well aware that the primary motive of these terrorists is their zealous desire for Islam to be the dominant religion in the world, with adherents of all other religions either removed or subjugated.

And by linking their activities to a range of international grievances, they have managed to successfully divert attention away from this overarching aim and presented themselves as saviours of the world's oppressed and dispossessed.

It's a pity Golding is not more familiar with world affairs.

ALAN FREEDMAN, East St Kilda

The Age letters section editor obviously didn't take much notice of Freedman's words because he/she saw fit to publish an even more despicable item than the cartoon itself in the form of an attempt by a member of our own idiocracy Bill Mathew to connect the problem of Mumbai with the conflict between Jews and Arabs half a continent away, despite everything that the sole surviving Islamist thug had to say about the atrrocities his group visited upon the Indian people:

Mumbai just part of a bigger problem

FROM your reports on the Mumbai terror (30/11) and from various other reports in the Australian media over the past week, there is increasing evidence now that the terrorist attack on Mumbai is a spill-over of the Middle-East wars, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The US and the UK, the major players in the Middle-East wars, have a duty not only to prevent further escalation by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to eradicate the primary causes and so achieve peace.

Israel's would-be defence minister, General Moshe Ya'alon, has flagged a possible air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities (The Australian, 24/11). This is a clarion call for further expansion of the Middle-East wars; it will have unforeseen consequences. Israel's invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and the inhuman treatment of its indigenous inhabitants spawned the Middle-East wars and numerous oil crises. The unquestioning support of the US for Israel has exacerbated the situation over the past four decades. If Iran is working on nuclear bombs, then the existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal is the prime reason for it. If we want a nuclear-free Middle East, the disarmament must start with Israel. If we want a peaceful Middle East, Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories and compensate the refugees. The world has paid a heavy price for Israel's continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This situation must not be allowed to continue

BILL MATHEW, Parkville

Really Mr. Mathew?

A bunch of crazed Islamicist hoodlums arrives in town to avenge some grievance they have over the conflict in Kashmir, murder more than 170 people in their attacks on a number of buildings including a Jewish centre where they torture and kill among others a rabbi and his young wife and we blame it on who?

The Jews.

Why? Because they're defending themselves from other aggressive warmongering Islamicists like Hamaz, Hizbullah and the Iranian mullahs who are working overtime to develop a nuclear weapon with which to destroy the Jewish State.

How convenient for you Mr. Mathew and how pathetic for the Melbourne Age to allow such racist tripe into its pages when so many other more logical views don't ever see the light of day there.

Kristallnacht + 70 years

Seventy years ago today William Cooper, an Aboriginal rights activist, marched from his home in Footscray, a suburb in Melbourne's west, to the German consulate in South Melbourne to deliver a formal protest against Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) when hordes of Nazi thugs burned and looted between 250 and 500 synagogues, as well as 7,000 Jewish shops and 800 homes taking thousands of Jewish men to concentration camps.

Cooper did this in a faraway land and as a member of an oppressed community that had its own problems with persecution. No-one else, not the League of Nations, not the United States or Great Britain uttered a word.

Only William Cooper and his people.

And despite all that, it would be almost thirty years before his own people would be legally recognised as citizens in their own land and almost seventy years before an official apology was given to them by the government of this country.

Cooper's was a unique act of enormous courage in a world that was indifferent to the suffering of others. He is one of the truly heroic figures of this nation.

Speech by Israeli Ambassador Yuval Rotem

HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS

Cartoonist Jacob Kirchen of dry bones blog highlights the hysterical blindness of apologists all over the world over the venal acts of thuggery prepetrated last week in Mumbai.

One such apologist is a Mr. Sol Salbe of Maidstone, Victoria who didn't have to be restrained to make apologies for the failure of Muslim community leaders to condemn the atrocities perpetrated in India (some of them were too busy justifying these acts to do that). Salbe penned this letter to the Age on Wednesday:

Staying silent where others have before

TIME and time again, we are told that Muslim Australians are failing to integrate into our society. But it seems that it is a case of damned if they don't and damned if they do.

Letter writers berate Australian Islamic organisations for remaining silent. But the standard practice in this country is for members of specific communities to say nothing when people in their country of origin commit atrocities.

Such atrocities have been committed in the name of nationalism, democracy and other ideologies, as well as protecting dozens of "sacred homelands". But a search of newspaper files will not find too many letters from organisations representing American-Australians, Israeli-Australians or Serbian-Australians (and the list is far from exhaustive).

I personally think that condemning the Mumbai attacks would have been wise move for the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. But it should not be damned for doing something where no one else has shown it the lead.

Sol Salbe, Maidstone

Salbe has it so very wrong when excusing silence on the basis of the silence of others. Apart from his moral blindness, he gets it factually wrong as well. In the wake of the murder of the deranged madman Baruch Goldstein of 29 Arabs in Hebron in 1994, the then president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria, the late Rabbi Chaim Gutnick wrote this letter which was published in the Melbourne Age:

Whatever the provocation, the murder of the Arabs praying in their mosque was a heinous and dastardly crime and it stands condemned in the eyes of those who belong to the Jewish faith.

Sadly Mr. Salbe, a reprentative of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society, has by resorting to a twisted form of explanetics, chosen to join the hysterically blind. But that seems to be the way of Jewish anti Zionists. As Yossi Klein Halevi points out in The New Republic when discussing why Israelis love Chabad:-

Contrast Chabad's embrace of the Israeli ethos with ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists--one of whom, Leibish Teitelbaum, a member of the Satmar hasidic sect, was killed in Mumbai. Teitelbaum's family demanded that his coffin not be draped in the Israeli flag, even though his body had been retrieved and flown home by the Israeli government--a reminder that Jewish anti-Zionism is less an ideology than a character flaw, a lack of capacity for gratitude. Chabad defines itself by its love for every Jew; the anti-Zionists define themselves by the Jews they despise.

What is terrorism?

One of the things that struck me about the presentation of the news of the atrocity at Mumbai was the way the po faced newsreaders at the BBC and some of their guest commentators as well as certain newspaper outlets around the world strained to identify the murderers as "miltants" when clearly they were perpetrating acts of unrestrained terror on their victims. Tom Gross asks - If this Isn't Terrorism, What Is?

Australia's own village idiot John Pilger has a different view of terrorism. The real terrorists are the British as he points out in the Guardian -

STORED in the great British libraries, unclassified official files tell the truth about British policy and human rights, from officially condoned atrocities in the concentration camps of colonial Kenya to the supply of biological weapons to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. As we hear the moralising drone of ex-British military "security experts" telling us what to think about current events in Mumbai, we might recall Britain's historic role as midwife to violent extremism in modern Islam, from the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950s through the overthrow of Iran's liberal democratic government to MI6's arming of the Afghan mujaheddin, the Taliban in waiting.

Thanks to the Australian we know that the apologetic Pilger, wrote on 13 September 2001 in Britain's New Statesman:

FAR from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims; that is, the victims of American fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of terrorism on earth.

A more logical voice is that of Melanie Phillips who writes in The Daily Mail:

IT is not "our" fault; it has nothing to do with Muslim poverty, oppression or discrimination. The Islamic fundamentalist fanatics use specific grievances - Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya - merely as recruiting sergeants for their worldwide holy war against all "unbelievers". The Mumbai attackers targeted British, American and Indian citizens simply because they wanted to kill as many British, American and Indian unbelievers as possible. Where they found Muslims, they spared them. They also singled out for slaughter the occupants of the Chabad House, a pious Jewish outreach organisation with no Israeli or political agenda, underscoring the point that at the core of the Islamists' hatred of Israel festers their hatred of the Jews.

WHY KILL THE RABBI?

Thank you to the Australian newspaper for today publishing Killing defies pathetic explanations by David Aaronovitch.

SO, why kill the rabbi? There is a branch of apologetics - which I take crudely to be the belief that the crime is the fault of the victim - that assumes a milder form, and which I'll call explanetics. So the explanatists' view of the Mumbai massacres last week is that the cause lies in what concretely has been done to, or in the vicinity of, the young, cool-looking men with the grenades and the machineguns.

We live in a democracy so it's possible for some of those who have the mindset to produce what the writer calls "explanetics" to justify cold blooded murder (one of the victims was an anti zionist Jew which makes the exercise even more problematic) to have their say in the section immediately below the article. Someone should tell these blithering idiots that they have strayed away from the Age and should immediately go back there.

Here's an example of what an apologetic ranter can come up with if he tries really hard -

THE brutalising of Muslims in Kashmir may no longer be understood as a problem that begins and ends with India. It may be constructed as part of a broader conspiracy, spearheaded by the US. In this connection, Kashmir becomes a symptom of a more general disease that also explains the plight of Muslims in places as disparate as the Palestinian territories, Chechnya, Somalia, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines, all of which may be generalised in the one struggle: the globalisation of terrorism.

That's Walid Ali in the Age and now we know exactly why these barbarians walked into a Jewish religious facility and murdered the rabbi's wife in front of her poor husband and then finished the young rabbi off along with others including, of all people, an anti-Zionist rabbi. Thanks Walid. You're an absolute genius!

SHEER AND UTTER FILTH

From this week's Sunday Age.

The cartoonist is an unknown but the editor should have known better and had more respect for the victims than to publish this error swathed piece of sheer filth and drivel.

AGGRESSION IN MUMBAI

It's too early to say but already the fingers are being pointed at the aggressive usual suspects for the atrocities committed in Mumbai and I suspect that the usual defences will be raised for these horrible actions including the turning of facts on their head.

There's no doubt however, that the victims and the targets are all innocent human beings, mostly locals in the wrong place at the wrong time or people from western countries, some of them tourists. Among them, the small Jewish population of Mumbai - hostages held by terrorists at the city's Chabad headquarters.

What's the root cause of these attacks?

It's the same root cause that applies everywhere such aggression and violence occurs - hatred. Hatred that is allowed to fester, is tolerated by many, excused and justified by many. That hatred becomes aggression and the result is violence, misery and death.

SOME IRANIANS HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR

I've been a watcher of Iranian politics for some time and found their ayatollahs and political leaders to be both humourless and emotionless (well ... the good emotions at least). It was therefore refreshing to read this satirical piece piece on the reformist Iranian website www.khandaniha.com. The site's editor, Manouchehr Honarmand, is responding to the letter sent by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to U.S. president-elect Barack Obama with an imaginary reply from Obama to Ahmadinejad. One can only hope that he manages to stay out of jail because I don't think Mahmoud and his backers will see anything funny in this:

Dear Mr. Ahmadinejad,

I learnt of your letter to me when my chief of staff Emanuel Rahm informed me that we had to send three dollars to the post office to cover the postage [due]. Next time, please put enough stamps on the letters you send me. I had a hard time with my wife, Michelle, over this. She asked why we had to pay postage due on a letter from someone who calls us 'the Great Satan' and collaborates with the likes of Hugo Chavez. You know that in the States, it's the wives who have the last word. It's not like in your country, where one can shut them up by giving them a sharp whack over the head.

Dear Mahmoud, I hate to tell you that your letter caused us quite a bother. The White House translators couldn't or wouldn't translate it, saying it was a job for the department of religious propaganda. Eventually we had to ask for the help of our friends the Israelis who know Persian better than us and even maintain trade relations with you guys on the quiet.

In your letter, you congratulated me on 'taking' the majority of the votes in the election, which I found quite puzzling. You should know that, in the U.S., presidential candidates do not 'take' votes but receive them from the public. People here do not go to bed on the night [of the election] and then wake up in the morning to find out who has seized the presidency... I have been told that, in one of your elections, a candidate took an afternoon nap, only to discover that, [while he was sleeping,] he had been eliminated from the running and someone else had won the election. Is that a true story?

Mahmoud, darling, in another part of your letter you asked my country to pursue a policy based on 'justice, respect for the rights of human beings and nations, friendship and non-intervention in the affairs of others.' Frankly, this surprised me, because if you are alluding to executions, you guys execute as many people as we do. However, in this country, a capital case is debated for 17 years on average, while in your country, 17 is the age of some of those who are executed... As for intervention in the affairs of others, [you have a point:] We Americans do invest considerable funds [in Afghanistan] in order to enable the children there to attend school. [We also invest funds] in order to prevent Russia from imposing its will on Georgia, and so on. But you guys also intervene in the affairs of others – only instead of sending children to school you strap explosive belts around their waists. A few days ago, the media reported that a three-month-old baby had joined an [Iranian] suicide squad.

Dear Mahmoud, I have no patience to read nonsense and respond to it, so next time you feel like talking to me, please call me on the phone – only please don't make it collect.

- excerpts from www.khandaniha.com, November 11, 2008.

HOSTAGES TO FEAR

They say that the views of The Australian newpaper columnist Janet Albrechtsen are extreme and that they should be discounted because she is from the right. However, in HOSTAGES TO FEAR she absolutely nails down the very crux of the probelms underlying the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

... no one imagines Israel is free from fault. But its Government is not creating civil institutions that preach hatred and violence.

By contrast, an entire generation of Palestinian children is being raised on a full diet of hate education, on jihad and anti-Semitism. This is the long-term hurdle to peace in this generation, and the next.

We don't need activists on boats, psychologists lecturing politics or news commentators with jaundiced bent to prove the truth of her words. The fact that most of the western media suppresses the news of what the Palestinians have been doing to their children tells us that every word that Albrechtsen has written in her weekly column is the solid truth. If only she could tell us why the others prefer to hide that truth in the blank pages!

THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER

More stupidity from the United Nations.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had "followed the lead of her predecessors" by unfairly putting the onus on Israel for humanitarian conditions in Gaza, while giving the Palestinian terrorist group that controls the territory a pass.

In a statement issued today, U.N. High Commissioner Navi Pillay called for an immediate end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, saying that "…Palestinian men, women and children have been forcibly deprived of their most basic human rights for months." The commissioner's statement concluded with a brief sentence calling for an end to "Israeli incursions into Gaza and Palestinian rocket fire into Israel."

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Unfairly Blames Israel, Gives Hamas A Pass

I'm personally stunned by the statement. I didn't think that Palestinian rocket fire into Israel came into his brief or that a U.N. official was permitted to conced that such things even existed (especially during the time of a ceasefire/truce/lull or whatever).

Rocket Science

The Israeli newsaper Yediot Aharonot notes that "approximately 25 residents of Gaza are hospitalized at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon," and reminds its readers that last Friday, "a Kassam rocket hit Ashkelon and shook the hospital." The author says, "Outside, there is a war to sow destruction and death, while inside, behind the walls of the hospital, we fight for patients' lives, regardless of their national origin."

The rest of the world's media talks about the suffering of the Palestinians brought about by the conduct of Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist groups which behaviour is routinely ignored by them.

Don't forget Palestine

The delusional muppets at Australians for Palestine had their "Wall Day" in Melbourne on Friday, 14 November, 2008 and by all accounts, it was an absolute fizzer.

And rightly so because a protest against a security barrier that has saved thousands of lives from Palestinian terrorists deserves to be treated with utmost contempt. It's true that the existence of the barrier has caused some discomfort to the Palestinian people but in the absence of any significant attempt by their leadership to stop the terrorism, the Israelis were left with no choice. And if the Palestinians have friends like the folk down at Australians for Palestine, then based on the gibberish they produce on their website, a peaceful resolution to the conflict and an end to the need for a security barrier are a long, long way off.

It's ironical that the AFP website is currently carrying a fawning tribute to the architect of Israel's security barrier - YASIR ARAFAT d. 11 November 2008 (sic) written by Sonja Karkar.

"Don't forget Palestine
Arafat never did, and he never let others forget"

One would imagine that among those who won't forget the man who died of a mysterious ailment four years ago (and not a week ago as the current AFP home page suggests) would be his beneficiaries who share the $3billion he looted from his own people.

THIS IS RESISTANCE!

This is an example of what resistance to Israel means to some in the Arab world. It's part of a radically different good neighbour policy that rarely gets highlighted in this country. I often ask myself the question why such things are suppressed in our media?

THIS IS RESISTANCE!

WHO'S THE BUNNY?

A man sifts through rubble after Israel's overnight operation and finds the lure that went missing from the Rafah Greyhound Track last week.

Remember the use of emotive photos by the international media showing bombed out building with images of pristine children's toys found in the rubble. The photo opportunities were so widespread and ridiculous that there's little doubt that they were placed there by Hezbollah operatives or even photo journalists in order to draw an emotional response. Here's one that accompanied this jaundiced Guardian article Hamas fires rockets after Israel kills six in Gaza about the destruction of a tunnel by the IDF near the Gaza border that was to be used by Hamas to kidnap Israeli soldiers. A man sifts through rubble after Israel's overnight operation.

Honest Reporting's Backspin is in no doubt and sadly, we're going to see more of this from a willingly gullible western media that doesn't mind having its leg pulled if it's at the expense of the Jewish State.

DIGITAL FAKERY

This is going to come as a shock to the world but today's Melbourne Age has revealed that shonky totalitarian rogue regimes may be using photoshop technology to spread false information - Photos of healthy Kim Jong-il 'faked'. Apparently, "digital sleuths" have uncovered evidence that recently released photographs of North Korean President, Kim Jong-il, were faked to cover up his possible illness.

The folks at Hizbullah and Hamas have been taking advantage of this technology for some time to assist in their propaganda war against Israel. During the Second Lebanon War of 2006, photographers sympathetic to Hassan Nasrallah's terrorist movement (including one whose work was given prominence by news agency Reuters) were caught red handed faking images that were designed to show Israel in a bad light. Despite ample evidence, most of the mainstream media simply ignored the phonies and allowed the anti-Israel propaganda machine to rumble on unchallenged.

Go figure!

POGROM A BLUEPRINT FOR TERROR

During the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis unleashed the greatest pogrom against the Jews of Germany and Austria since the Middle Ages.

So begins the article POGROM A BLUEPRINT FOR TERROR by Michael Abrahams-Sprod in today's Australian Newspaper.

The writer points out that this pogrom "revealed to the world the savagery and barbarism of the Nazi regime, yet that fateful night also lays bare the hollowness of the world's indignation."

Seventy years after the event, the world still does not understand the depth of the horror that was visited on the Jewish people over the seven years that followed "The Night of Broken Glass" - Kristallnacht. We witness attempts by those who wish ill for the Jewish people today to suppress the viciousness of the savagery and the barbarism, to hide it and to make it meaningless.

The world should know what the Nazis did to the Jews - in full and with no excuses and no sickening false comparisons. To the extent that it does not know and does not seek to learn the horrors of the Holocaust, humanity is put to shame.

Tunnel Vision

Jason Koutsoukis recently misinformed Age readers about the 800 tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that he was told to say are being used to smuggle vital supplies like food and petrol for the poor suffering Gazans - Blockade forces Gazans underground to survive.

Well Jason, this might come as a surprise but the primary purpose of the tunnels is not to supply food and other supplies for needy Gazans - they are being supplied regularly through the normal channels and they wouldn't be needed at all if the Hamas junta agreed to abide by the reasonable requirements of a civilized government and stopped advocating genocide against its neighbour. The main purpose of the tunnels is like everything else that pre-occupies Hames: the destruction of the Jewish State and the killing of Jews. This is done through smuggling Iranian and Syrian weaponry and, once in a blue moon, by kidnapping or attempting to kidnap Israeli soldiers operating on the Israeli side of the border.

After being fooled into providing support for the Hamas PR machine with his 1 November article, Koutsoukis followed it in describing a 4 November IDF operation in Ceasefire in danger of collapse. The story is also about tunnels but these couldn't possibly be used for smuggling food and supplies into Gaza. These point in the direction of Israel and were going to be used for terrorist purposes so the IDF took the tunnelers out of the equation.

There should be no problem about that if the journalist covering the story wasn't such a stupid ass and couldn't see that Hamas has taken him to the cleaners over his stories about the poor, starving people of Gaza.

Wake up and realise that it's Hamas that's the problem Jason and they've played you on a break this time!

WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT HAMAS

While Palestine advocates like Dr. Sarah Roy, a child of holocaust survivors, takes the opportunity to bash Israel on the holiest night of the year for Jews, the Hamas party which was elected to lead the Palestinians and runs Gaza with an iron fist, continues to unequivocally seek the annihilation of the Jewish people - Hamas Cleric Muhsen Abu 'Ita: The Annihilation of the Jews in Palestine One of the Most Splendid Blessings for Palestine

It's not pleasant to witness the suffering of those Palestinians or those Israelis who are caught in this violent conflict but it is very clear that their suffering arises from attitudes such as those espoused by the likes of Muhsen Abu whose views are endorsed at the very top of the Hamas tree.

However, Roy's talking tour of this country ignored those annihilationist views and focuses solely on blaming the Israelis. One can only wonder therefore at the sad pathology of people like Roy and her fellow traveller Geoffrey Binder who seek to use this connection with the holocaust to perpetrate their attacks on Israel which has to defend itself against a philosophy and a culture that aims to to repeat the horrors of the Third Reich.

The Muhsen Abu sermon will of course, never see the light of day in our mainstream media and will, in the main, stay on the blank pages.

RELIGIOUS CLEANSING IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The LA Times reports on what it calls "religious cleansing in the Middle East" in its editorial - A Christian exodus.

"The religious cleansing of Christians in Iraq is part of a larger pattern in which a faith with origins in the Middle East is being driven out of its native region. From Iraq to Lebanon, which once claimed a Christian majority, to Bethlehem, the West Bank town revered as the birthplace of Jesus, intra-Muslim violence and the Arab-Israeli struggle have combined to persuade (and in some cases force) Christians to relocate to Europe or North America."

The intolerance of Muslim regimes should not come as a surprise. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands were "cleansed" from their host countries in the wake of Israel's independance in 1948 and prominent Palestinian political groups continue to call for the cleansing of Jews from the Middle East landscape, often with the open support of the so-called intelligensia in the West, some of who even call themselves "Jews" and attend Israel-bashing meetings on Judaism's holiest night.

WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT SUDAN

Eric Reeves reports in The New Republic that "...[I]ncredibly, the regime committing genocide in Darfur is now meant to be in charge of a critical U.N. poverty and disease eradication program." - Millennium Development Grotesquery

He refers to the Sudanese government which has been selected to chair the UN programme overseeing the eradication of disease and poverty.

"Since it was the African countries' turn to pick the chair of the organization, and since the selection of Sudan was supported by China, the outcome - however outrageous--is hardly surprising. Strong support from the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference helped ensured Khartoum's diplomatic victory. The selection of the National Islamic Front regime as chair is no mere symbolic exercise, though the symbolism of the choice is intensely dispiriting. For it comes at a time when the head of the regime faces a likely arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court - for crimes against humanity and for genocide in Darfur."

The inmates are well and truly in charge of the asylum.

Martin Whacks Fairfax

Matthew Ricketson of the Melbourne Age reports that "veteran broadcaster Ray Martin has accused commercial television networks and Fairfax Media, owner of The Age, of abandoning serious journalism - Martin hits out at TV networks and Fairfax cut-backs.

"Would the last journo out please turn off the studio lights?" he quipped to the audience at the annual Andrew Olle address in Sydney.

Too late Ray. The decline at Fairfax began long ago. It gathered momentum in 2002 with the appointment of a Middle East correspondent whose partisan views gave readers a highly slanted picture of the war between Israel and the Palestinians and precious little of the deadly conflicts brewing within Palestinian society during the past six or seven years. Things only got worse when Andrew Jaspan was given the gig as editor.

Abandoning serious journalism?

With O'Loughlin and Jaspan as the clown princes, Fairfax in Melbourne at least, was hardly an exponent of serious journalism, was it Ray?

RACISM AND HYPOCRISY

Detractors of Israel often accuse it of being many things which it is not. During a recent debate on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, one of the speakers offered his opinion that Israel was a "grubby little racist state" but when challenged, he failed miserably to provide any justification for this claim (which probably explains why his organisation has so few friends).

It's a pity therefore that news such as this story from Haaretz - Israel grants rare entry to cancer-stricken Iranian boy hasn't hit the media in our country. Israel welcomes a 12-year-old cancer-stricken Iranian boy for emergency treatment on his brain tumor while the leader of his country President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israel "wiped off the map" and vows that Iran will support the anti Semitic Hamas movement which rules Gaza until the "collapse of Israel".

What a shame that neither of these stories are covered in our local press.

TAKING INDEPENDENCE TOO FAR

The Independent Australian Jewish Voices is advertising a series of public lectures to be given around the country by Dr. Sara Roy who many would say is an apologist for radical Islam and Hamas which has among its aims, the destruction of the State of Israel and the killing of Jews everywhere.

The Melbourne public lecture will be held at the University of Melbourne tomorrow night 8 October 2008. The timing is impeccable for these independent "Jews" - most of those who aren't so independent will, in some way or another, be taking part in the observance of Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement.

In their defence I guess the people at the IAJV can say that the speaker is something of a nobody so there's nothing really to atone for on their part.

O'LOUGHLIN MAKES NICE ABOUT ISRAEL

I couldn't believe my eyes this morning when I noticed this article published in the Sunday Age - Revealed: diary of a man who lived and died in space.

An O'Loughlin reporting in the Age from Jerusalem and not a single word of disdain and contempt for Israel or its people.

Thank you Toni O'Loughlin for covering this story about the late Israeli astronaut and hero of the Jewish people with the compassion and honesty that has been so long missing from in your own newspaper, the Guardian, and in Australia's Fairfax media. It was like a breath of fresh air.

SHANA TOVA - HAPPY NEW YEAR

SHIMON PERES - UN SPEECH

Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen ...

Over Sixty years have passed since the United Nations General Assembly voted on the historic resolution that would have put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Resolution 181 called for the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state. Its title was: "Plan of Partition with Economic Union". It envisioned two states for two peoples, each fulfilling a distinct national aspiration.

The Jewish people adopted the resolution and established the State of Israel. The Arabs rejected it and led to war.

What happened in the ensuing years is much different from the resolution's original intent. While much has changed, the ironies of history summon similar circumstances today.

Today, again, we are the middle of the lake. There is no sense in rowing back. Continuing forward will show how near we are to the shore of peace.

Mr. President,

A year prior to Israel's declaration of statehood, its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, called me, a young man from a Kibbutz, to serve in our national defense.

Since then, I participated in Israel's dynamic realities: the building of security, striving for peace. So, I need no book to learn the history. I witnessed its miraculous unfolding.

We went through seven wars. All have paid heavily. Tears still flow down the faces of bereaving mothers.

Remembrance Days fill the air with silent prayers of widowed families who lost young boys and girls in battle. They are, today, at the same age, but lifeless.

Israel turned military victories to a peace process, knowing that the cost of life renders imperfect peace superior to perfect victories.

We have also achieved two peace agreements. The first with the largest Arab country, Egypt. The second with the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.

All the land, water, and natural resources that fell in our hands through war, were repatriated after peace was signed. Our countries can now offer remedies to other disputed areas.

But for peace, the call in our region is to repair the damaged environment and wounded land leading to poverty.

If we shall not overcome the desert, the thirst, the pollution - they will overcome us.

Joint ventures can meet this call. Nature does not carry a national passport.

With the Palestinians, we negotiate full peace. Both parties agreed to building a Palestinian State side by side with Israel, living in peace, security and respect.

We tried to conclude the negotiations this year. It will take longer. But, I believe it can be accomplished within the next year.

We agreed to progress in spite of possible changes that may take place in the leadership.

Gaps have been narrowed through negotiations. Particularly the territorial ones. But, peace is not just a matter of territorial compromise.

Rogue politics reject peace even where territorial dispute was resolved.

In Lebanon, we implemented resolution 425. Yet Hizbullah paralyzed the country and cut the road to peace.

From Gaza, we withdrew completely and dismantled our settlements. Hamas responded with a bloody takeover and turned the strip into a basis of rocket fire.

These militants carry no positive alternative - but the agonies of Job.

They added kidnapping to bombings, bringing strife for innocent families. From this important stage, I call for the immediate release of Gilad Schalit. The son of Aviva and Noam. A peace-loving family.

This honored assembly should make his release top of its agenda. Holding a hostage in Gaza determines its isolation and further deterioration.

Mr. President,

At the center of this violence and fanaticism stands Iran.

It built a danger to the entire world. Its quest for religious hegemony and regional dominance divides the Middle East and holds back chances for peace, while undermining human rights.

Iranian support for Hizbullah divided Lebanon. Its support for Hamas split the Palestinians and postpones the establishment of the Palestinian State.

Yesterday, on this very stage, the Iranian leader renewed the darkest anti-Semitic libel - the protocols of the elders of Zion. An attempt to bring to life one of the ugliest plots of history.

Their despicable denial of the Holocaust is a mockery of indisputable evidence, a cynical offense to survivors of the horror. Contradictory to the resolutions adopted by this assembly.

Iran continues to develop enriched uranium and long range missiles.

They introduce a religion of fear, opposing the call of the lord in respect of life.

The Iranian people are not our enemies. Their fanatic leadership is their problem and the world's concern.

Their leader is a danger to his people, the region and the world.

He is a disgrace to the ancient Iranian people.

He is a disgrace to the values of Islam.

He is a disgrace to this very house, the United Nations, its basic principles and values.

His appearance here is already shame.

The Jewish People have known, throughout history, to stand firm at the face of evil.

Alongside the enlightened humanity we shall know to enable good and freedom to prevail.

Tehran combines long-range missiles and short-range minds. It is pregnant with tragedies.

The General assembly and the Security Council bear responsibility to prevent agonies before they take place.

Israel has shown that democracies can defend themselves. We do not intend to change.
Terrorism did not solve a single problem. It never has, and never will.

They will make the world ungovernable. If small groups of violent killers are allowed to threaten innocent masses, the world will be without order or security. A hopeless battleground.

The free world must unite to combat it.

Israel, on its part, shall continue to seek peace. We suggest immediate peace with Lebanon.

Israeli prime ministers indicated to Syria that for peace, we are ready to explore a comprehensive compromise.

In order to gain trust, and save time, we have suggested face-to-face meetings with President Assad: "Follow the successful example set by President Sadat and King Hussein".

We still await an answer.

I know there is a growing concern that peace is far away. My life-long experience provides me with a different point of view.

True, I have seen stagnation and regression in our journey. But, today, I can identify a road leading to the right direction.

In addition to the peace agreements, a series of summits took place - Madrid, Oslo, Wye, Camp David, Sharm and Annapolis. Their accumulated sum encourages a clear direction. In fact, Israelis and Arabs are marching towards peace.

After a long internal debate, Israel accepted the two state solution.

The Arabs replaced the three NOs of Khartoum (no peace, no negotiation, no recognition) with a peace initiative, inaugurated by King Abdullah Abdul Aziz Al Saud.

I call upon the king to further his initiative; it may become an invitation for comprehensive peace, one to convert battlegrounds to common grounds.

I invite, respectfully, all leaders to come and discuss peace in Jerusalem, which is holy all of us. Where we all pray to the same lord, as offspring of the same father.

Israel shall gladly accept an Arab invitation at a designated venue where a meaningful dialogue may take place.

Mr. President,

We are facing a serious economic crisis. Maybe it has happened because we are rich and light with funds and poor and heavy with ideas. While we live in an era where science, not land, is the basis of economy.

Science does not stop at borders. Is not disturbed by distance.

Wisdom is not conquerable by armies. Knowledge diminishes discrimination because it operates through good will and transcends race, nationality and gender.

The Global dangers unite and divide us at the same time.

The dangers are the deterioration of environment. The shortage of water. The lack of renewable energy. The spread of terrorism and the increased poverty.

Divisions of the free world will increase them.

Unity offers the potential of alternatives. It will direct global investments to new areas and demanding challenges like health, security, education and environment.

The future is not in the hands of oil or gold. Intellectual assets, new inventions and superior education hold the key to our future.

In our region, border areas can become open economic zones. Enabling free movement of people, commodities and ideas. They may encourage tourism and build High Tech incubators. They will cultivate advanced agriculture.

Economic zones will provide a million jobs and produce billions of cubic meters of desalinated water. We started to do so. The first steps are promising.

The 21st century calls for pioneers. It is an opportunity to provide our children with peace and knowledge. Strength and friendship. It is their right. It is our moral obligation.

Mr. President,

The Jewish people are celebrating a new year. I would like to end with a quote from Rabbi Nachman of Breslav:

"May it be thy will to remove war and bloodshed from the world and perpetuate the wonders and greatness of peace.

All the inhabitants of the world shall recognize and know the truth: that we have not been placed on this earth to wage war and not for hatred or bloodshed."

Amen.
Shana Tova.
Thank you, Mr. President

DOCTORS WITH BORDERS

Elder of Ziyon presents vision from Israel's Channel 2 news of Hamas humiliating doctors in a Gaza mosque and reports that "the Doctors Without Borders website still has no condemnations of the arrests, torture and humiliation that Gaza doctors, nurses, pharmacists and lab techs have been forced to undergo for the past month."

FEASTING IN GAZA

In today's Melbourne Age Jason Koutsoukis continues to cover the political situation in Israel following Tzipi Livni's dramatic victory in the contest for leadership of the Kadima party - 40 days for Livni, wilderness for Olmert.

Strangely enough, the killings of 20 Palestinians by fellow Palestinians in the wilderness of Gaza rates no mention. As I've said many times before, Palestinian lives only have a meaning to most of the world's media if they are lost in fighting with Israelis and even when the latter are defending themselves against terrorists bent on wiping out Jews, the blame is mostly sheeted home to the Jews.

So the Jason Koutsoukis article ends with a little speculation on a future timeline:-

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

■Ehud Olmert formally resigns as Prime Minister and his cabinet resigns with him.

■President Shimon Peres consults parties to choose a Knesset member to form a new cabinet — expected to be Kadima leader Tzipi Livni.

■The prime minister-designate has 42 days to form a coalition acceptable to the Knesset.

■If no coalition is formed, a general election must be held in 90 days.

So permit me to add some speculation of my own -

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

■Palestinians continue to kill Palestinians and the world continues to yawn and take no notice.

■Palestinians continue to intermitently breach the ceasefire recently reached with the Israelis by attacking Israeli civilians and nobody apart from the victims will really care.

■So called "peace activists" will continue to lie with their allegations comparing conditions in blockaded Gaza to concentration camps and Darfur while well fed Gazans are photographed in their feasting [hat tip: Elder of Ziyon], not a soul has died of starvation there and there's plenty of pictorial evidence of fat mammas in residence there.

■Anti Jewish crusader and ignoramus Antony Loewenstein suddenly wakes up to the fact that Tzipi Livni is a "she" and not a "he".

Lost in the mail

Alan M. Dershowitz makes the point in his jpost blog Double Standard Watch the "Democratic Party, and its leaders, made a deliberate decision not to invite Jimmy Carter precisely because they so fundamentally disagree with the bigotry toward Israel and its Jewish supporters that he displayed both in his mendacious book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and in his subsequent television appearances."

Poor old demented Jimmy thinks it was he who made the decision not to speak at the convention and that the invitation was lost in the mail.

Pigs fly!

More Human Wrongs

It seems that whenever Jews commit any violent acts in the Middle East it makes the news, even when the violence is in self-defence or in reaction to violence instituted by Arabs against Jews.

Hence, Melbourne Age reporter Jason Koutsoukis was on the ball with his article "Stabbing ignites Jewish rampage" about Jewish settlers who went on a rampage through the West Bank at the weekend after a nine-year-old Jewish boy was stabbed by a Palestinian intruder. The behaviour of the settlers was reprehensible but it was newsworthy even if the slant was heavily against the Jews by the way in which the "Jewish rampage" was highlighted.

Personally, I've never seen a Jewish rampage anywhere and would be curious to know what differentiates Jewish rampages from say, Mongolian rampages.

It seems however, that when the violence is Arab on Arab violence the blank pages rule comes into vogue and the Age goes shtumm. News like this piece is obviously of no interest to Age readers - 11 killed as Hamas forces battle armed clan in Gaza. The lives of the victims of this sort of violence seem to be worth even less than the Israeli victims of ongoing Palestinian violence even during the time of the alleged cease fire between Israel and the thugs running Gaza.

Then again, there's no such thing as a "Palestinian rampage" is there?

DEAR PROFESSOR

I've come across this brilliant piece from Ann Bayefsky who is Director, Touro Center for Human / Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute / Professor, York University. Rights and the Holocaust.

In Lethal Politics: Antisemitism as Human Rights she tells how human rights have become "a potent force for denunciation and defeat – not in the hands of the abused, but in the hands of the abusers".

It's a damning look at how the United Nations human rights organs in particular have been bastardised and overrun by barbarians and human rights abusers who use the U.N. as a force against the civilised world and of course, the Jewish people.

MICKEY MOUSE AGAIN & AGAIN

We all know about the callous use by Hamas of animal cartoon characters to indoctrinate Palestinian children into hating Jews - all of us bar those who only read the Melbourne Age during Ed O'Loughlin's term as Jerusalem correspondent when such stuff was apparently not deemed newsworthy.

Now Israel's peace partner, the Fatah controlled Palestine Authority is getting in on the act according to Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook of Palestine Media Watch.

Fatah TV, controlled by the office of PA head Mahmoud Abbas, is airing a children's show that glorifies a mass murderer of children while trying to create a Mickey Mouse Club atmosphere.

Last week the program taught children to deny the existence of Israel.

Check it out - it's absolutely appalling!

So you want to boycott Israel?

BRAVO HONDA

DEATH OF A "MARTYR"

The folk down at Hamas whose raison d'etre is to kill Jews are mourning the recent passing of one of their comrades who died a martyr, from cancer - Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades Information Office. To make matters worse, those nasty Jews get the blame because Mohammed Rawhi Mahmoud Hassouna "didn’t manage to travel for medical treatment, because of the Zionist siege on Gaza strip."

Aw, shuchs!

The communique doesn't mention whether our boy Mohammed was wearing his suicide belt when the request was made for him to obtain treatment.

[Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon]

One battling team not giving up on peace

Full marks to the Israeli-based Peres Peace Centre and the Palestinian al-Quds Association for Democracy and Dialogue for their efforts to get together the team of twenty-six footballers (13 Israelis and 13 Palestinians) taking part in the 2008 Australian Football International Cup.

The team which wore yellow guernseys with a peace motif (see above) was part of a 16 team international competition, that took place in Melbourne, Geelong and Warrnambool over the past fortnight. The Peace Team displayed great spirit in its first few matches in which they were outplayed by stronger teams including the eventual winners Papua New Guinea but it came back at the end to record two victories against China and Finland.

The players would most certainly been singing their theme song - the John Lennon version of "All we are Saying is Give Peace a Chance" - with great gusto at the end of their last game playoff for 13th and 14th at the Western Oval against the Finns which they won by a whopping 75 points.

For the record the scores for that game were:

Peace Team 15.5.89 defeated Finland 2.2.14

Peace Team

Goal Kickers: R. Nadir 2, K. Abualthom 2, Y. Belik 2, N. Almanasra 2, F. Rumman 2, D. Haim, A. Abu Haduan, K. Kol, N. Koke

Best Players: R. Nadir, A. Suissa, D. Haim, U. Kandel, D. Tamimi, K. Abualthom

Finland

Goal Kickers: T. Heiskanen, T. Oksanen

Best Players: V. Koivunen, J. Loven, K. Byrne, K. Heikkila, F. Romar, S. Doherty

And for the record, congratulations to the Melbourne Age's Martin Flanagan for his absorbing story about the team - One battling team not giving up on peace

Flanagan understands that it's the people and not the politics that is the only hope the troubled region has for true peace - a message lost on so many others over the ages.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER BLOOD LIBEL

Islamic and Arab leaders in Australia are fast developing a penchant for making the most horrendously racist statements about Jews and Israel.

And they are getting away with it - both in the broader community and within their own constituencies.

Last month, it was Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour who was quoted in Melbourne Age in support of Hizbullah's Al Manar television channel which broadcasts programmes that describes Jews as "the offspring of apes and pigs" and advocates their annihilation. He told Barney Zwartz of the Age [Jam 'terror TV' broadcasts, says group] that "he would not call Jews the offspring of apes and pigs, but that in the context of 'the crimes of the state of Israel' it was reasonable for al-Manar to do so and to portray Israeli rabbis as killing Christian children to use their blood in Passover meals."

Jabbour made a pathetic and unconvincing attempt to back track on his comments but kept his foot firmly planted in his mouth as an outraged Jewish community group's Anti-Defamation Commission sought sympathetic ears throughout the wider community and among Islamic, Arab and Palestinian groups.

It got very little response from them - not even a critical op ed from supposed moderates like Waleed Aly and Maher Mughrabi who usually have something to say about racism and intolerance in the coverage of issues relevant to the people from this region.

Now joining Jabour and the widely discredited Sheik Hilaly whose racist and misogynist views are now well known (and fortunately condemned by most in this country) is Australian Federation of Islamic Councils President Ikebal Patel who couldn't resist the temptation to draw on Israel as the cause for the problems in far away Afghanistan when asked to comment on the Special Forces Australian soldier who was critically injured in an ambush by the Taliban - Wounded soldier flown to Europe:

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel issued a statement expressing sympathy for the wounded soldiers and their families. He said he was concerned about developments in Afghanistan and the increasing numbers of military and civilian deaths.

And he questioned the continuation of the war and linked the Taliban campaign to the situation in Israel and Palestine.

"There must be a better way to deal with terrorism than by means of war," Mr Patel said. "We must address the many underlying causes of terrorism and violence, such as the 60-year-old injustices and suffering of Palestinian people at the hands of a brutal Israeli regime."

Right.

Apart from the fact that this statement fairly drips with insincerity (Patel's point was to vilify Israel and there's absolutely not a skerrick of sympathy in him for the wounded Aussie soldier), the claim inverts the historical truth of this conflict so that the terrorist becomes the victim and not the instigator and aggressor of violence in the region.

Apologists like Patel simply ignore the fact that the violence and the terror in Israel/Palestine historically stems from attacks on Jews in the 1920's and '30's starting with the horrific massacre of the Jews of Hebron in 1929.

Further, to suggest that the motivation for the Taliban's terrorism in Afghanistan is related at all to the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs ignores the history of the current jihadist campaign. Is Patel really suggesting that Hamas and Hizbullah are no different to Al Qaeda, Iraq's Baath Party, and the Iranian regime?

Meanwhile, the silence of the so-called moderate Arabs in the face of these overt racist comments remains deafening.

It has been a major disappointment that the Arab community has generally failed to embrace the concept of the Peace Team - a group of 13 Palestinians and 13 Israelis competing in the AFL's International Football Championships that end today in Melbourne. The rabid opposition by some of the local Palestinian groups to the concept of Israelis and Palestinians - Jews, Muslims and Christians - playing together in one sporting team to promote peace and reconciliation is not only a tragedy but an indication of how hopeless a task it is to achieve peace in the region.

The silence of Australian Arabs in the face of these developments is another source of despair for the prospects of peace because that silence also seems to be reflected among most Arabs and Palestinians everywhere.