THE OUTRAGE

According to the PA and its acolytes, this is a picture of a Palestinian "militant" doing his bit for international peace and harmony at Munich 1972

Nothing could be more outrageous and yet disappointing than the insistence on the part of the Palestinian leadership and their various lobby groups on revising totally the history of the Middle East.

The latest outrage came last week when the Palestine Authority gave its thanks to the IOC for refusing a memorial to the victimes of the Munich massacre even describing Israel's move as "racist". This is disgraceful given particularly that the PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is said to have been behind the financing of the massacre and his organisation's continued celebration of suicide bombers and mass murderers of Israelis whilst claiming to be committed to the peace process which he shuns at every opportunity.

The left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz debunks this lie here.

FAIRFAX GIVES TERRORISM A VICTORY

The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood wrote an otherwise compelling article about the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972 - A massacre to be remembered. The article appeared last week in the Age.

While Sherwood wrote of the eleven athletes as having been "killed in a terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics", to her everlasting shame she could not avoid calling the perpetrators "militants" in obedience to the masters of the Guardian who dictate what can and cannot be written or said and who live in a parallel universe to our own.

In calling the callous Munich murderers anything other than terrorists is a terrible affront to the millions of victims around the world who would attest if they only could to the fact that Sherwood's horrendous misuse of the term "militant" is a bald faced lie.

IT'S ON ... TERRORISM WINS THE FIRST GOLD MEDAL, RACISM GETS SILVER

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reports that the Lebanese judo team forced International Olympic Committee officials to erect a barrier between themselves and the Israeli judo squad, Friday afternoon in London, just hours before the Games’ opening ceremony.

If the IOC was about upholding the Olympic spirit it would have thrown these bigots out of the games.

At least we know why they wouldn't commemorate the murder of Jews by terrorists at Munich.

First gold medal of the 2012 Olympic Games goes to terrorism and racism gets the silver.

A MINUTE FOR THE VICTIMS

Shot during the initial break-in

Moshe Weinberg (wrestling coach)

Yossef Romano (weightlifter)

Shot and killed by grenade in helicopter D-HAQO (D-HAQO was the eastern helicopter. According to the order in which they were seated, from left to right)

Ze'ev Friedman (weightlifter)

David Berger (weightlifter)

Yakov Springer (weightlifting judge)

Eliezer Halfin (wrestler)

Shot in helicopter D-HAQU (D-HAQU was the western helicopter. According to the order in which they were seated, from left to right)

Yossef Gutfreund (wrestling referee)

Kehat Shorr (shooting coach)

Mark Slavin (wrestler)

Andre Spitzer (fencing coach)

Amitzur Shapira (track coach)

Shot on airstrip

Anton Fliegerbauer (German police officer)

A MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR THE MUNICH ELEVEN

PALESTINIAN POVERTY

A report commissioned for the World Bank Entitled "Towards economic sustainability of a future Palestinian State: Promoting Private Sector-Led Growth paints a sad picture for the people of the region."

Among other things, its says that the Palestinian Authority has "made less progress in developing a sustainable economic base", it has become increasingly dependent upon this donor assistance to fund its basic operations and it is unlikely that even with significant growth that it will be able to support administration of current size.

On the other side, the Hamas controlled Gazan economy, whilst nowhere near the open air prison suffering as a result of the alleged Israeli blockade (the Egyptians are now opening their border), is heavily dependent upon hand outs from the UN and the support of UNRWA.

The dependency upon others has inevitably led to widespread corruption and misuse of donated funds whilst a significant amount of money and effort is being put into arming terrorist groups committed to the destruction of their neighbour, Israel.

This is yet another scandal that is unlikely to be exposed in the world's media and certainly not those who routinely sweep such bad news about the Palestinians under the carpet.

CRUDE ANTISEMITISM AT THE UN

U.N.’s Richard Falk accuses “the organized Jewish community” of crimes against Palestinians.

This sick, hideous little man keeps debasing the UN brand - as if it wasn't sinking in the mud anyway.

The Ongoing War

I recently commented on article in the Australian newspaper on prepartions by Israel for a fresh wave of terror in the wake of the massacre in Bulgaria.

One of the Israelis quoted in the John Lyons article is Arnold Roth, originally from Melbourne whose daughter Malki, 15, was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Sbarro pizza restaurant bombing in Jerusalem. He and his wife Frimet now run a foundation in Malki's name that raises money for disabled children so they can be cared for at home. It gives help to both Jewish and Arab children. They also run a blog This Ongoing War that documents well the reign of terror against Jews in Israel which many in the media simply refuse to recognise as existing at all.

Here, he asks not only how involved in terror against Israelis and Jews are the Iranians but he answers it very clearly in yet another indictment on those who routinely ignore the racism and the threats against the Jewish people emanating from the Iranian leadership and transmitted throughout the Middle East by their terrorist proxies in Hizbullah and Hamas.

A goodwill gesture that will be ignored

This news from the Jerusalem Post sounds like the sort of news that the media should be reporting on - Israel advances PA NIS 180m. to ease financial crisis.

But don't hold your breath.

BOB COSTAS - CLASS ACT

Those who have been following the matter of the International Olympic Committee's shameful decision not to commemorate the memory of the Munich Eleven - the Israeli Olympians murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics - would be impressed by Bob Costas - a truly class act.

The IOC won't say it but there is only one reason why it won't allow one minute of silence to commemorate the massacre. Fear of recriminations from the lobby that supports the cause of the terrorism that was responsible for the massacre in the first place.

In this case, the silence of the IOC is shameful.

POSTSCRIPT: In case anyone's interested in who the perpetrators of the massacre were in bed with back in those days read how German right-wing activist Willi Voss, in an interview to Haaretz, describes his involvement in the killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972 here. It goes without saying that extremists on both the left and the right continue that relationship to this very day.

Israelis resigned to fresh wave of terror

The comparisons between decent journalism and the agenda stuff we read only too often in today's media is highlighted by John Lyons in today's Australian - Israelis resigned to fresh wave of terror after Bulgarian attack.

The report tells it as it is without the necessity of having to resort to the tasteless rubbish we received from Ruth Pollard in the Age last when when the dead had yet been buried and she couldn't resist the temptation to bury her fangs into Israel's Prime Minister for his "bellicose" attacks on the holocaust denying, anti-Semitic Iranian regime which supports Hizbullah and the Syrian butcher who has no qualms about murdering his own people.

Pollard forgot to tell the whole truth about why Netanyahu was "bellicose". Lyons doesn't have to do anything other than cover the facts in a fair and honest manner.

That's what we expect from a journalist.

Slaughter in the News Room

Question: Where does today's media draw the line at telling stories about the plight of the Palestinians?

Answer: When you can't blame the Jews.

This story from Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh is about the massacre of Palestinians in Syria - Now They Are Slaughtering Palestinians.

Last week, the bodies were discovered of 16 Palestinians who had been kidnapped while on their way by bus to their refugee camp. Their throats had been slit.

To no-one's surprise, this grisly massacre has received scant attention in the international media or even in the Arab world. According to Toameh,

Most of the Arab countries, as well, which treat Palestinians as second-class citizens and subject them to apartheid systems, do not seem to care about the ongoing massacres against Palestinians in particular and Syrians in general.

Palestinian refugees have been placed in ghettos and Toameh says that "Palestinians living in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon now fear another 'Black September' - a reference to the massacres carried out by the Jordanians in the early 1970s."

Where is the so-called progressive media like Al Age and the Guardian while all this is going on?

Possibly sitting with their eyes shut and their ears blocked because there's no story here that can be used to condemn or blame the Jewish State such as those about an Israel that makes life hard for hunger striking convicted terrorists about which they seem to have become obsessed of late.

It's of little wonder these once respected newspapers are floundering, as this article from Harry's Place about the ailments of the Guardian describes - The Canary In The Guardian’s Coal Mine.

But far worse than fiscal bankruptcy is the moral bankruptcy highlighted by this (non) story and the failure to report the massacre of Palestinians in Syria.

If anyone believes that Fairfax would have ignored it if Israel could be blamed, I have a bridge in Sydney Harbour for sale cheap.

Israelis Die and Israel is "bellicose"

The headline says "Six dead in attack on Israelis in Bulgaria" but the Age's Ruth Pollard couldn't resist the opportunity to refer to Israel's allegedly "increasingly bellicose rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear program" in her article on the murderous attack on civilians.

Never mind that so much of the bellicose rhetoric that has emanated in the past year from Iran's Islamic dictators, its puppets in Hizbullah and other acolytes in the Middle East with their anti-Semitic incitement and warmongering have gone unreported by the newspaper's "Middle East Bureau Chief".

The disrespect for the dead is palpable and sickening but no less than sickening than the Fairfax disrespect for Palestinians persecuted within the Arab world, about which I will have more to say tomorrow.

The Australian again

Another great little letter in The Australian from earlier in the week (I wouldn't expect Al Ahe to publish something like this on which appeared in the Oz on July 16):-

The Greens' lip-service on human rights is a front. Another massacre in Syria and still not one word, no flotilla and no boycotts, divestment or sanctions. Just silence.

Gerald Simenson, Coolbinia, WA

We must remember Munich

I've already cited an excellent Op Ed from yesterday's Australian but it would be remiss to fail to mention its editorial in the same edition -

We must remember Munich.

THE International Olympic Committee's rejection of a proposal to mark the 40th anniversary of the Munich Olympic massacre with a minute's silence in London's opening ceremony is misjudged. The killing by Palestinian terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Olympics was an attack not just on one member of the Olympic family but on all who believe that the Games is an institution that builds harmony and trust among nations.

It's unfortunate that we don't have unanimity in our media on this issue but that is all that can be expected when a media outlet is replete with anti-Israel acolytes. Their resultant silence is shameful.

Welfare Dependency

Another interesting Op Ed in The Australian on welfare dependency and its effect on the Palestinians - Welfare dependency harms the Palestinian people.

UNRWA and the attemp to deligitimise the rights of the Jewish people is doing more damage to its neighbours and the prospect of peace in the region.

The result of this over a 60-year-long process is that incentives for the refugees to resettle in Arab countries and elsewhere are minimal, as are those for UNRWA itself to ever end its operations.

UNRWA states that despite the creation of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians remain refugees. It has financial and political interests in maintaining this fiction: as long as the Palestinians are refugees, UNRWA is in business.

Of the 30,000 people UNRWA employs, the vast majority are Palestinian: UNRWA is the largest single employer of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Contrast this to the UN High Commission for Refugees, which employs only 5000 to 6000 people worldwide and which focuses far more clearly on resettlement and rehabilitation of refugees and building new lives, and not on maintaining services that prop up the status quo.

Synonymous with Palestinian national identity is the collective belief in a right of return to "Palestine". Palestinian identity is rooted in three parts. One is that resistance to Israel is permanent and holy. Another is that Palestinians are, individually and communally, refugees, made so at the hands of Israel. The third part is that the world, specifically the UN and Western countries, must support these refugees until they can return to a future Palestine and to homes in what is now Israel.

GO FIGURE 2

Further to my post about the counterterrorism conference that excluded Israel to appease the Arabs - GO FIGURE here's cartoonist Yaakov Kerschen's brilliant take on the farcical situation:-

GO FIGURE!!!

How is it possible that Israel, of all countries, is excluded from a forum on counter terrorism?

Israel’s Plight Ignored

Counterterrorism forum excludes Israel despite state’s record of suffering terrorist attacks

LETTER OF THE WEEK

This one's from a little further afield than usual - Ireland:-

No ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs

Thursday, July 12, 2012

The accusation that the state of Israel was founded on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs is thrown about with great abandon, most recently in letters from two of your correspondents, Charles Murphy and Kevin Squires (Jul 10), despite there being little historical evidence to substantiate it.

The displacement of 650,000-700,000 Arabs took place, according to the best historical sources, in four stages. In the first, the UN General Assembly resolution of Nov 1947 to divide Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state was immediately followed by an upsurge of Arab violence against Jews accompanied by Jewish self-defence and retaliation. In this phase, which lasted until late Mar 1948, the Arab upper and middle classes, numbering about 75,000, fled the country to avoid the violence.

In the second phase, lasting from Apr to Jun 1948, the Jewish armed forces began to win the upper hand over the Arab irregulars and, from May 15 onwards, had to face also the invading armies of five Arab neighbours. About 300,000 of the Arab population fled due to fear and at the urging of the Arab regimes’ radio stations. None were expelled by Jewish forces in either of these phases, nor was there any Zionist policy aimed at doing so.

The third phase took place during the fighting of Jul 1948. About 100,000 of the Arab population fled, of whom about 50,000 were expelled by Israeli forces for military reasons from towns along the fiercely contested Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. Yet no general expulsion directive was given, and the Israeli military was ordered to treat the Arab population with dignity.

The fourth phase involved the flight of another 200,000 Arabs during the fighting of Oct-Nov 1948, of whom a minority were expelled, the rest as before fleeing to avoid the violence. Large numbers of Arabs stayed on.

The real ethnic cleansing was that of the Jewish civilians driven out of east Jerusalem, where there had been a Jewish majority as far back as 1863. That is not even to mention the 900,000 Jews forced to leave the Arab states from 1948.

Dermot Meleady
Clontarf
Dublin 3

Palestinian can of worms

Haaretz Newspaper provides the most insightful approach to the who killed Arafat story - Probe into Arafat's death could open a bigger Palestinian can of worms.

A week after the Al-Jazeera’s sensational scoop on Yasser Arafat’s death, it seems as if the network’s investigation leaves more questions than answers. While Al-Jazeera succeeded in returning the late terrorist to the headlines, and with it, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its new conspiracy theory – that Arafat was poisoned in 2004 with radioactive polonium (with heavy hints that Israel was responsible) – is very unconvincing.

Even the rabidly conspiratorial Australian for Palestine have the article on their website.

It's a pity however, that Al Age can't be convinced that the who matter is total lunacy.

Shelling into Lebanon hits and kills civilians

No worries. No demos. No damning articles.

After all, the shelling is coming from Syria so who cares?

PA TV honours suicide bombers - not newsworthy

PA TV: Suicide bombers
who killed 19 civilians on buses
are "more honored than all of us"

Suicide bombers are a "candle
that lights the tunnel of liberty"

... and Al Age is asleep again

Now that's news!!!

A senior member of Hamas dies a natural death.

Hamas lawmaker dies of stroke in Gaza

Hat Tip: ChallahHuAkbar

How Democracy Works in (most of) the Middle East

During a heated television debate, Jordanian MP Mohammed Shawabka threw his shoe at his activist opponent, Mansour Sayf al-Din Murad, before pulling his pistol out and pointing it at him.

This is how democracy works in the Middle East

Jordanian MP pulls out a gun during live TV debate

Except in Israel

The Arafat Death Obsession

We know there are some media outlets that are willing accomplices when it comes to spreading anti-Israel propaganda and the ridiculous claims arising this week out of the six year old Arafat was killed by Plutonium story is a case in point. The Melbourne Age was at the forefront with two stories on the subject late in the week while it continues to ignore any contemporary stuff that shows Palestinian terrorism in a bad light.

Barry Rubin of the Gloria Centre has it right in this insightful article.

Yasir Arafat Is Still Dead and We Know Who Really Did Him In

The effort now by various Palestinian factions to imply Israel killed him is the funniest thing in the Middle East since the U.S. director of national intelligence’s congressional briefing when he said the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular democratic organization. What’s dismaying is how much play Western media are giving this charge as if it should be taken seriously. When the West behaves in this way it signals at the least a dangerously naive credulousness and at worst a profound anti-Jewish and anti-Israel complex. The New York Times and Washington Post take this nonsense seriously.

But there’s something else in this story, something very chilling indeed. Revolutionary Islamists especially, but many Muslims otherwise, believe that Jews tried to murder Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and even if they failed that the poison shortened his life. The accusation that Jews are the murderer of prophets — with Muslims throwing in the founder of Christianity also — is a phrase that derives from this story. It is frequently heard from Hamas and others. This is a blood libel, an alleged crime that then leads to the view that Jews are absolutely evil and should be wiped out. In short, it is a rationale for genocide. When Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood say that Israel should be wiped off the map and Jews generally should be murdered that incitement is the inevitable consequence of this line of thinking.

LETTER OF THE WEEK

Some perspective on the Arafat poisoning sham being pushed around in the media and initiated by Al Jazeera to destabilise the West Bank and to scapegoat Israel about the death of an 75 year old sick man whose most likely cause of death was associated with AIDS. After all, why would his wife have gone to such great lengths to hide the cause of his death in the first place?

Arafat call echoes Munich massacre (Australian Financial Review)

Isn't it ironic that pressure is mounting on the Palestinian Authority to dig up the body of Yasser Arafat at the same time the International Olympics Committee is seeking to bury the memory of one of the greatest atrocities perpetrated by Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organisation's offshoot Black September - the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

Justin Said
Coogee NSW

Well said!