QUOTATION MARKS

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything. - Fidel Castro

THE UNITED NATIONS GETS REALLY SERIOUS ...

Hats and heads off to the United Nations which has, for once, done something truly remarkable for mankind. This is not the usual United Nations Human Rights Council silly stuff but something important for the billions of citizens of this planet.

They've appointed a Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), to act as Earth's first contact for any aliens that may come visiting - United Nations to appoint Earth contact for aliens.

The problem is that for some reason Malaysia has no relations with Israel so in the event that the aliens land in Jerusalem, who will be on hand to greet the little green men?

HEAD BUTT

I have a feeling that England Test Cricket captain Andrew Strauss was more than a little frsutrated and angry at the haughty manner in which Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ijaz Butt's claim that England players might have lost the third NatWest Series match on purpose in return for "enormous amounts of money".

There was no basis for the claim and a furious Strauss raised the possibility of legal action against Butt and, indeed, I recommend that he backs up the threat by issuing proceedings (unless his case is likely to be heard by someone named "Goldstone").

So imagine how those who expect fair treatment for Israel in the face of constant slurs from the bash Israel lobby feel. There are thousands of Ijaz Butts running around, not only in the Arab world but in Europe, America and even in Australia.

Henceforth, any reckless, unsubstantiated slur will be known around here as a "head butt".

FRACTURED NARRATIVES

The Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Beirut. According to the Age this synagogue was "all but razed by Israeli shelling." They call this "razed"?

The unrelenting campaign among Palestinians and their sympathisers to reinvent history continues.

Recently, Melanie Phillips reported in The airbrushing of Middle East history on a London Guardian article about a Christian theme park in Mallorca which referred to "a cast of extras in the costumes of Romans and early Palestinians". This is more than somewhat problematic because there were no early Palestinians around in Roman times but one supposes that the fact that the area was mainly populated by Jews living in the Jewish homeland at that time is somewhat, er ... inconvenient to The Guardian and its fellow travellers.

The Melbourne Age is one of the Guardian's bedfellows and, true to form, it's Saturday Travel supplement article on Lebanon - Middle East Meets West (at page 12) included, inter alia, the following two comments:-

... construction has paused intermittently, including in 2006 when neighbouring Israel started dropping bombs on southern Beirut.

The city's main Jewish synagogue, Maghen Abraham, is slowly being restored... Built in the early 1900s by the then sizeable Jewish community, it was reportedly protected by the PLO during the 1975-76 fighting, and then, according to the Associated Press, all but razed by Israeli shelling.

Get that?

Not a mention about Hizbullah terrorists crossing the border and shelling Israeli towns at the start of the conflict. Those pesky Jews just "started dropping bombs on southern Beirut."

Then there’s the matter of who really did destroy Beirut's only (not main) Jewish synagogue, Maghen Abraham and whether it really was “protected” by the PLO during the 1975-76 fighting. For that matter, whether it was really "all but razed by Israeli shelling" given the photographic evidence above.

(visual evidence is always a difficult matter for the propandists - see the vision of the peaceful thugs who travelled on the Mavi Marmara and you'll know why)

It turns out that the reports that the synagogue was protected by the PLO and then damaged by Israeli shelling came from reporters from the Lebanese side during the civil war. The main story came from one Robert Fisk but anyone who knows Fisk will tell you that even Yasser Arafat would have provided more objective coverage.

So was the synagogue damaged by Israelis?

According to Israel’s left wing Haaretz newspaper, often quoted by The Guardian and sometimes Age reporters, the story is somewhat different - Renovation work underway at Beirut's main synagogue:

The synagogue was seriously damaged during the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, when looters took its Torah ark and prayer benches, and even gutted its electrical system.

There is a truthful aspect to this part of the Age story but it sits way in the background and refers to the most often ignored aspect of the narrative of the region.

It's true that, like many Arab countries, Lebanon once had a sizeable Jewish community and now it has very few Jews. It's strange however, that we only discover a small scrap of information about the dispossession and the exile of the Jews from Arab lands as an incidental part of a story on how Lebanon is being rebuilt after the war that Hizbullah started against the Jews in 2006.

Never mind what caused 800,000 Jews to become refugees from various Arab lands and never mind the story of how many of them rebuilt their lives in the Jewish homeland. And, as is usual with the Age, it seems that stories about buildings in Arab lands are far more important than are those about Jewish lives.

MATE!

No comment required for this one - Yemeni Chess Team Fired For Playing Israel - other than that the Palestinian people have long been pawns in the Arab world's hateful vendetta against Israel and now they're joined by a few Yemeni chess players.

No news there.

The British and Flotillas

Next time you read a lecture from one of the finest from the Independent or the London Guardian on Israel and flotillas it might be worth reminding them of this piece of information:- 'UK spies blew up ships to keep Jews from Palestine'

The stories describe the agency's exploits in World War I and World War II, and contain some sensitive revelations. They include an account of Operation Embarrass, in which British agents blew up ships to deter postwar Jewish refugees from sailing to Palestine, then under British control.

Nice people indeed.

Socceroo Blue

Former Socceroos captain Craig Moore will be prosecuted for consuming alcohol in Dubai according to The Gulf News - Dubai prosecutor says Craig Moore will be prosecuted for drinking in Dubai.

According the article Moore has surrendered his passport and is out on bail.

I hope for his sake that the passport's kosher.

For once I agree ...

The United Nations Human Rights Council has predictably issued a report saying that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, killing nine activists, earlier this year. UN Human Rights Council: Israel flotilla raid broke international law.

I would not have expected this body to come to any different finding given its bias and the corrupt manner in which such investigations are organised and carried out.

Arab Israeli MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad), who was on board the Mavi Marmara, praised the UN Human Rights Council's report. He wants "the criminals" behind the deaths brought to justice.

I agree with him. They should arrest the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the IHH thugs involved in the violent attack against the IDF members who boarded the Marvi Marmara but were clearly not armed or prepared for what took place on the day.

And if you don't believe me then there's this book written by a Turkish journalist Şefik Dinç who took part in the Mavi Marmara flotilla and who describes the preparations made by the IHH for confrontation with the IDF and the violence exercised by that organization’s operatives as photographed and documented in the book.

Does anyone know if Paul McGeough is conversant in the Turkish language?

I'm thinking of sending him a copy of Dinç's book as a belated April Fool's Day gift. For those who can't read Turkish, the narrative under the photograph above reads:-

Several exercises were held on board the ship to prepare in advance for a possible attack. In one exercise, the passengers were instructed on how to put on gas masks and lifebelts, and how to resist the Israeli attack. The photograph shows one of the passengers practicing with a slingshot he had brought along.

TWO STATES, TWO PEOPLES?

Fayad

One wonders exactly what the Palestinians want - No peace in NY: Fayyad-Ayalon meeting ends on sour note.

If it's not two states for two peoples, does he want a Palestinian State that's Judenrein (cleaned out of Jews) and another state that's bi-national?

Let us not forget that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is one of the moderates. The other Palestinians represented by Hamas want one state for one people (the Palestinians) that's also Judenrein.

Now where are those BDS people?

PALESTINE APARTHEID - DEATH TO THOSE WHO SELL LAND TO ISRAELIS

This report from the Jerusalem Post - Arab land dealer who sold to Israelis: 'I fear for my life'.

Imagine if the Israelis enacted laws preventing the sale of property to Arabs?

Some Peace Partner

While some in the media ramble on ad nauseum about Israel's peace intentions (notwithstanding that its PM Benjamin Netanyahu was calling for direct talks for months while PA leader Mahmoud Abbas dithered and refused to take part), here's an interesting piece from Palestine Media Watch - PLO ambassador in Lebanon: Peace talks are stage in delegitimizing "rebellious, racist" Israel

The Palestinian Authority official daily reported that the Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah described the peace talks as part of a broader process to isolate Israel, "threaten its legitimacy" and present it as a "rebellious, racist state."

Meanwhile this truth about the Palestinian leadership and the way it is letting down its own people continues more or less unreported.

Except in the Blank Pages of the Age.

ABOUT TIME

Here's a great story on the Soccer Dad Blog - Mysterious decision at Time Magazine changed focus of issue from Palestinians to Israel with the equally great cover above designed by elderofziyon.

RENT-A-JEW

RENT-A-JEW is pleased to announce that it can supply a self loathing Jew for functions even (correction "especially") if they take place during the Jewish High Holydays. We are supplying a number of our most loathesome models for the BDS Conference taking place on Yom Kippur (when else?) so please get your order in early.

Hat Tip: Australian Christians Supporting Israel

TOMORROW'S AGE

This Ha'aretz photograph is of a Quassam rocket fired from Beit Hanoun is Gaza in 2008. I have no idea whether it contained phosphorus but if it hit my kids, I'd be pretty pissed!

Look out for a report in tomorrow's Age together with analysis on the use by Palestinian terrorists operating out of Gaza of phosphorous bombs - IDF confirms Gaza militants fired phosphorous bombs at Israel

Human rights organisations should be up in arms and the United Nations is expected to call an investigation into these war crimes perpetrates to derail direct peace talks between Israel and its peace partner, the Palestine Authority.

However, while the story will shock most of the civilised world, the news of the phosporus bombs is expected to be censored by the PA's own television networks which are still hammering on about Jews being descendants of pigs and monkeys.

NEVER IN THE AGE

This is what Israel's peace partner is distributing on its own television:

PA TV: Jews praying at Western Wall are "sin and filth"

Don't bother buying tomorrow's Age to ascertain whether Mr. Koutsoukis and Mr. McGeough have brought this to the attention of their dwindling band of readers.

You would be wasting your time.

Rhymes With Fagin

Writing ion the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens spells out much of what is not only wrong but evil with much of what passes for comment about the conflict between Israel and her neighbours - 'Rhymes With Fagin' Time magazine adds its voice to the chorus of those attempting to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Yet when it comes to scoring cheap shots against the Jewish state, Time is not the sort of magazine to allow the obvious to disturb a prejudiced hypothesis. Can the magazine point to equally pointed cover stories about internal Palestinian affairs and what, perchance, they mean for the peace process?

He concludes with this piece of writing that paints a vid picture of Israel's detractors, whether they be Age "journalists" sailing in flotillas or Jewish Chomsky wannabees:

Last week, a man named Karel de Gucht told a radio station in Belgium that the current round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were certain to founder upon the stubbornness of Jews. "There is indeed a belief—it's difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right," he explained. "So it's not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is happening in the Middle East."

Mr. de Gucht sounds like a neo-Nazi; in fact, he is the trade commissioner of the European Union. How does a paladin like him come to say something like that? Because it's really not that far from the sorts of things that already are being written; that are, as they say, "in the air." Like the cover of a magazine that will someday cause a future editor of Time (assuming there is one) to hang her head in shame.

Boycotters Drowned Out

Richard Millet's blog tells of how boycott freaks in London were drowned out by their opposition - here.

The boycotters are down and out ignorant of the truth if the claim that Ahava Products are "stolen". Indeed, the racist BDS movement is based on lies about Israel's conflict with its Palestinian neighbours and many of these falsehoods and libels will be revealed here over the coming weeks and months.

Documentaries should be truthful

The anti Israel lobby group Australians for Palestine want people to protest to the ABC over the recent showing of the BBC's documentary on the Mavi Marmara - BBC Bias: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

"Documentaries should be truthful and informative and expand our understanding of situations ..."

Quite.

Australians for Palestine has done very little to expand anyone's understanding of anything to do with the Israelis and the Palestinians. Check out its website and tell me whether you have any greater understanding of the history, traditions and culture of the Palestinians or of any way that peace between them and the Israelis can ever be achieved?

You won't find any of that because the organisation and its site does little else but lobby against Israel and its people. The group is repugnant and does more damage to the people it purports to support and to the prospects of a meaningful peace in the region.

I'm organising a flotilla!

Pakistan is the world's second most populous Muslim nation and it has been wracked by flooding which has killed many and left homeless countless of thousands in one of the earth's greatest humanitarian disasters. It's nice to see that many Jewish groups were forthcoming to offer aid for the victims Jewish groups to help Pakistan flood victims but the aid was already being refused as it was offered - Pakistan refuses relief work visas for Indians and Israelis

However, that shouldn't deter anybody. I'm sure that there are many who would willingly be part of a flotilla bringing aid to these stricken people. If you're interested, leave a message here.

I'm thinking of naming the lead ship in the flotilla the "Mavi McGeough" in honour of one of the more famous flotilla travellers of this century.

The GREAT SCHLEP

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Palestinian Apartheid - Part One

This is for the BDS racists - Enforced Misery: The PA and the Balata ‘Refugee’ Camp.

The harsh conditions imposed by the nasty Zionists in Gaza: Exclusive

Photograph: Inmates of the Gaza Concentration Camp suffer under the harsh Zionist Occupation

SICK LETTER OF THE WEEK

In today's Australian:

Colin Rubenstein's arguments ("Creativity and realism required for success in Middle East talks", 3/9) are baseless. The myopic view that Israel equals right and Palestine equals wrong is demonstrated when he refers to Mahmoud Abbas as on the "negative side" and Benjamin Netanyahu on the "Israeli side".

Moammar Mashni, Australians for Palestine, Melbourne, Vic

Despite Mr. Mashni's posturing, a quick glance through the pages of the very edition of the Weekend Australian in which the Rubenstein article appeared the Iranian leader was quoted as saying Israel must be annihilated and there are photographs of armed Hamas terrorists who are ready to hit "the Zionist enemy in any place at any time" and that "all options are open". Meanwhile, PA leaders were doing their level best to criticise Israel before the talks even opened.

If that's the "positive" side according to Mashni, then we live in a sick old world!

Creativity and realism required for success in Middle East talks

This excellent article from Colin Rubenstein of AIJA appeared in yesterday's Australian

Creativity and realism required for success in Middle East talks

Listen to This

A very smart young lady demolished the Israel bashers on Melbourne radio last week.

Please click here to listen.

FROM THE HOUSE

There are some nasty and bigoted utterings coming out of Great Britain these days so it was refereshing to read this:

Speech to the Friends of Israel Initiative
Committee Room 14, The House of Commons

Monday 19 July 2010

by Andrew Roberts

I would like to speak to you today as an historian, because it seems to me that the State of Israel has packed more history into her 62 years on the planet than many other nations have in six hundred. There are many surprising things about this tiny, feisty, brave nation the size of Wales, but the most astonishing is that she has survived at all. The very day after the new state was established, she was invaded by the armies of no fewer than five Arab countries, and she has been struggling for her right to life ever since. And that is what we are here for today, to reiterate Israel’s right to self-defence, inherent in all legitimate countries.

From Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to Aden, the 5.25 million square miles of territory belonging to members of the Arab League is home to over 330 million people, whereas Israel covers only eight thousand square miles, and is home to seven million citizens, one-fifth of whom are Arabs. The Jews of the Holy Land are thus surrounded by hostile states 650 times their size in territory and sixty times their population, yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution – the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Medal for bravery: today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.

Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected by King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything that makes a nation state legitimate – blood shed, soil tilled, two millennia of continuous residence, international agreements – argues for Israel’s right to exist, yet that is still denied by the Arab League. For many of their governments, which are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago, it is useful to have Israel as a scapegoat to divert attention from the tyranny, failure and corruption of their own regimes.


The tragic truth is that it suits Arab states very well to have the Palestinians endure permanent refugee status, and whenever Israel puts forward workable solutions they have been stymied by those who interests put the destruction of Israel before the genuine well-being of the Palestinians. Both King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were assassinated when they attempted to come to some kind of
accommodation with a country that most sane people now accept is not going away.

"We owe to the Jews," wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, "a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together.’ The Jewish contribution to finance, science, the arts, academia, commerce and industry, literature, philanthropy and politics has been astonishing relative to their tiny numbers. Although they make up less than half of one per-cent of the world’s population, between 1901 and 1950 Jews won 14% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for Literature and Science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32% of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, 32% for Physics, 39% for Economics and 29% for Science. This, despite so many of their greatest intellects dying in the gas chambers. Civilization owes Judaism a debt it can never repay, and support for the right of a Jewish homeland to exist is the bare minimum we can provide. Yet we tend to treat Israel like a leper on the international scene, merely for defending herself, and threatening her with academic boycotts if she builds a separation wall that has so far reduced suicide bombings by 95% over three years. It is a disgrace that no senior member of the Royal Family has ever undertaken and official visit to Israel, as though the country is still in quarantine after more than six decades.

Her Majesty the Queen has been on the throne for 57 years and in that time has undertaken 250 official visits to 129 countries, yet has not yet set foot in Israel. She has visited 14 Arab countries, so it cannot have been that she wasn’t in the region. Although Prince Philip’s mother Princess Alice is buried on the Mount of Olives because of her status as Righteous Among Gentiles, the Foreign Office
ordained that his visit to his mother’s grave in 1994 had to be in a private capacity only. Royal visits are one of the ways legitimacy is conferred on nations, and the Coalition Government should end the Foreign Office’s de facto boycott.

After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognised that they must have their own state, a homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors. Putting their trust in Western Civilisation was never again going to be enough. Since then, Israel has had to fight no fewer than five major wars for her very existence.

She has been on the front line in the War against Terror and has been fighting the West’s battles for it, decades before 9/11 or 7/7 ever happened. Radical Islam is never going to accept the concept of an Israeli State, so the struggle is likely to continue for another sixty years, but the Jews know that that is less dangerous than entrusting their security to anyone else.

Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would have done placed in their position? The population of the United Kingdom of 63 million is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example at
random, Hisbollah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed eight patrolmen and kidnapped two others, and that summer fired four thousand Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further forty-three civilians.

Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what we would do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire thirty-six thousand rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing seventy-two British servicemen in an ambush and capturing eighteen.

There is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. Why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?

In the course of researching my latest book on the Second World War, I recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. Walking along a line of huts and the railway siding where their forebears had been worked and starved and beaten and frozen and gassed to death, were a group of Jewish schoolchildren, one of whom was carrying over his shoulder the Israeli flag, a blue star of David on white background. It was a
profoundly moving sight, for it was the sovereign independence represented by that flag which guarantees that the obscenity of genocide – which killed six million people in Auschwitz and camps like it - will never again befall the Jewish people, to whom the rest of Civilisation owes so much.

I said at the start that I was speaking to you as an historian, and so I say: No people in History have needed the right to self-defence and legitimacy more than the Jews of Israel, and that is what we in the Friends of Israel Initiative demand here
today.

FACILE PALESTINIAN COMMENTARY

The murder in cold blood of four Israelis by Palestinian terrorists on the West Bank (4 Israelis killed in shooting attack shattering years of relative West Bank calm) proves the facile nature of the commentary in yesterday's Australian by Australians for Palestine mouthpiece Alex Whisson wherein he sought to blame the Israeli side in advance for the breakdown of the talks before they've even started.

We all know the truth now. As Vic Alhadeff, CEO, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies wrote in a letter published in today's Oz.

As ALEX Whisson's article ("Actions speak louder than talks for Israel", World Commentary, 31/8) is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst.

The evidence is irrefutable that Israel has put on the table a string of peace offers in recent years, each of which has been consistently knocked back by the Palestinian leadership.

The latest talks have the potential to usher in peace. The major obstacle to that happening is that the Palestinians are at war with themselves: while Fatah claims to talk peace, Hamas, which rules Gaza with a brutal fist, is committed to Israel's destruction. That's the reason for the stalemate. Everything else is secondary.

Palestinian terror organisations have stepped in to show their true colours. What a pity it is that their cause is given succor by the BDS terrorists and other fools and liars.