SEPARATED BUT NOT AT BIRTH

Despite the startling resemblance between Farfur (left), the star of the Al Aqsa TV children’s show "Tomorrow’s Pioneers" and Ed O'Loughlin (top), Jerusalem bureau person for Fairfax Newspapers, they were not separated at birth and in fact they have never met.

It appears that they don't even know a thing about each other which probably explains why virtually every media outlet that covers the news from the Middle East has given time and space in recent days to the horrendous story of how Hamas manipulates and poisons the minds of Palestinian children and teaches them hatred towards Jews and the concept of Islamic domination. The conspicuous absentee is the Melbourne Age.

Surely, this glaring omission is not for lack of the availability of a means whereby he can put his usual spin on a bad news story about Palestinian behaviour? After all, AFP managed to do that with this story entitled "Defiant Hamas TV airs resistance Mickey again" about the decision to ignore PA Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti's request to axe the programme. CNN has tried much the same and You Tube banned the original Mickey video.

What are all the apologists for this form of blatant child abuse worried about?

It's clear that this Mickey is not about "resistance" - he's about teaching children that it's nice to hate and to kill Jews and that Islam is going to take over the whole world. This is the narrative of the party elected to govern the Palestinians and it explains why peacemaking in the region is proving so elusive. And journalists with sympathy for their cause have been working overtime to cover up the narrative. The Mickey story is so powerful because it resonates with parents of children around the world. It's not normal for kids' heroes to advocate genocide and murder they way Farfur is doing it on Hamas TV.

O'Loughlin is, in fact, still assisting the Palestinians in covering up the story by not reporting on it - just as he doesn't report on many other stories of self-inflicted pain that form part of the Palestinian tragedy.

You can get the real story on what Hamas and the other armed thugs are doing to their people on Palestinian Media Watch.

Elder of Ziyon has news of another grim milestone:-

"PCHR’s preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 9:00 on Thursday, 10 May 2007, the child Shayma Jaser Jarghoun, 7-year old girl from Khan Yunis, was admitted to the European Hospital in the city. She was suffering from moderate shrapnel wounds in the feet sustained when a homemade grenade was thrown during an armed intra-clan clash involving members of her family.

"At approximately 8:20 on the same day, Musallam Mustafa El-Sha’er (47) from El-Bureij refugee camp was injured by a bullet in the right thigh, fired by one of his relatives over a financial dispute. El-Sha’er was taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir El-Balah for treatment, where his injury was listed as moderate.At approximately 23:00 on Tuesday, 8 May 2007, Salim Abdel Fattah El-Sharabi (35) from Nablus was killed in Ras El-Ein Quarter in Nablus. Gunmen killed El-Sharabi in a crime motivated by a clan dispute. He was killed by multiple bullets to the upper body."

Missing also are reports about the Muslim fundamentalist gunmen who attacked an UNRWA-run school in Rafah killing one and wounding six others, how Palestinian security is setting up oppressive checkpoints in Gaza as a security measure and that a Palestinian couple were arrested for selling their daughters, aged 12 and 13.

None of these stories are of interest to the Fairfax Jerusalem bureau person and one reason could be contained in the words of his own newspaper's description of their mouse/man which describes him as "lazy of character and intemperate of habit". No, it has has to be something more than mere laziness that keeps this news on the blank pages.

THE PAST IS ANOTHER COUNTRY

You have to ask how it is that Britain could become a country that is home to unions of teachers and unions that pander to reactionary groups like Hamas and Hizbullah, how an ogre like Ken Livingstone could become and remain Mayor of London, a city which has "become home to people wanted for terrorist crimes as far afield as Cairo and Karachi?

Britain is sinking fast. It was humiliated by the Iranians last month. Yesterday Tony Blair announced the end of his Prime Ministership with his tail between his legs. The Empire is fading and the Britain of the past is another country.

Christopher Hitchens returns to Finsbury Park, a shabby area of North London, and the home of his lost youth to look into the face of his new country. Londonistan Calling makes interesting but chilling reading.

PA EXPOSED - GOODBYE MICKEY MOUSE

Palestine's Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti has removed for "review" an outrageous television programme that uses Farfour, a Mickey Mouse-like character, to urge Palestinian children to fight Israel and the West and work for world Islamic domination. According to Barghouti, the show has been removed because the use of the cartoon character in such a role represented a "mistaken" approach to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.

Nice work Mustafa but I smell a rat. You're lying!

The truth is that Barghouti is in damage control mode because, for once, this example of extreme incitement in the official Palestinian media came under scrutiny in the media. As you can see from the Associated Press headline, Farfour wasn't talking about a struggle against Israeli occupation - his message was about the destruction of Israel and "Islamic dominion" as well (no doubt under pressure from the Arab lobby, AP later changed its headline to "Hamas 'Mickey Mouse' preaches resistance" but the cartoon's message remains crystal clear).

Israel has long been complaining about the incitement that fills the Palestinian airwaves. A short visit to the Memri or Palestinian Media Watch sites provides numerous examples of how the Palestinian media is poisoning the minds of its own population with vile race hatred. This is, of course, in wilful breach of the PA's international commitments to end such incitement.

Naturally, the Palestinians will always find a way to blame the Israelis for their own malfeasance. According to Samir Zakkout of the Gaza Community Health Programme, it's "the fault of both (Israel and the Palestinians). If Palestinians had peace, children wouldn’t learn violence."

That is indeed the case but if the PA honoured its international commitments to end violence and incitement then both sides could get down to talking peace as set out in their written down agreements. That is the way to end the occupation and achieve palestinian statehood and peace.

As for our own media, you can rely on The Age's Ed O'Loughlin to ignore the media controversy about Farfour. Instead he continues his pre-occupation with attacking Israel by regurgitating condemnation of Isreali road-blocks and other security measures in the West Bank, this time by the World Bank. The article takes its time explaining the reasons for the Israeli measures (I think O'Loughlin knows deep down that very few readers can remain awake for the duration of his articles anyway) and doesn't mention the numerous errors contained in the World Bank's report.

As for Farfour, O'Loughlin shows us again that he's a mouse and not a man and ignores Hamas' favourite rodent.

The two other daily newspapers available in Melbourne, the Australian and the Herald Sun ran with Mickey Mouse today and the Age did not.

You can draw your own conclusions as to why.

RAINING DEATH ... AGAIN

Arnold & Frimet Roth's excellent blog from Israel, THIS ONGOING WAR, asks whether Palestinian children can survive the terrorists who are driving their society into the mud.

Here's an excerpt from It's raining death again:-

"Unfortunately for Israelis living on undisputed Israeli land in proximity to the cesspools of the emerging Pal-Arab polity in Gaza, whenever the fratricidal Fatah -v- Hamas blood-letting reaches fever pitch, as it is this week, the rockets start to fly into the cottages, shops, factories and schools on our side of the border. (The ever-reliable Khaled Abu Toameh offers his againstthe-stream analysis today under the headline 'Boycott fueled Fatah-Hamas tensions'.)"

The Roths' article describes some of the really interesting things being done by Hamas lately - especially on its own television programmes for children.

Strangely enough, there's one Jewish voice around these parts (and away from the firing line) who doesn't have a problem endorsing the Hamas crowd's right to travel the world and to spread its hatred (and that of Hizbullah and its supporters to do the same thing).

Of course, he wouldn't have much of a voice left if his mates at Hamas invoked the Hamas Covenant's Seventh Article in his presence but that's another story.

SALUTE TO ISRAEL PARADE

Hundreds of thousands rallied over the weekend in New York's Israel Parade as shown in this photograph from Urban Infidel. The parade brought out a small number of losers including representatives from one facet of the ugly face of Judaism - the Neturei Karta - as well as few anti-Zionist demonstrators but they were overshadowed by the overwhelming numbers wishing Israel well as it enters its 60th year.

DANGEROUS FOOLS

How many of you cringed when you read that extraordinarily fluffy piece produced by the Sydney Morning Herald's Ben Cubby on Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, the mufti we all love to hate? This unashamed PR exercise went so badly for the Fairfax group newspaper that even its sister publication, the Melbourne Age wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Now, Brendan Shanahan of the rival Telegraph newspaper saw through Cubby and has eaten him and his newspaper alive for its blatant promotion of this charlatan in Fools give racism a real Sheik.

Shanahan exposes the warm and fuzzy slant taken on Hilaly and hits the nail right on the head by pointing out that the mufti was painted by Cubby as a warm and cosy Aussie loving soul "until the subject of the Holocaust came up and the Hilaly of old came shining through.

'I, like many researchers in the world,' he was quoted as saying, 'shy off the number of innocent victims that had been estimated at six million.'

Researchers? Oh, right: he's talking about neo-Nazis.

It is staggering that The Sydney Morning Herald would allow nonsense like this to be printed, qualified only with the observation that Hilaly 'still treads a fine line that many may continue to see as racist'.

'Racist' is saying that Jews are cheap and have big noses. Hilaly isn't walking a fine line; he's goose-stepping down the pavement."

Shanahan makes the point that "when Hilaly's views are presented, unchallenged, as simply a matter of opinion it paves a dangerous road in which historical fact counts for nothing."

It may be staggering to some that the SMH allows this sort of nonsense but I'm not staggered at all that it allowed a reporter to involved it in this foolish attempt to whitewash such a vile and abhorrent character as Hilaly at a time when even his fellow Muslims have had enough. More and more Fairfax reporters are walking that dangerous road with each day.

BOWLING FOR PALESTINE

The Columbine High School massacre, highlighted by Mike Moore in his award winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine", has just fallen to third place in the list of the deadliest school shootings in the history of the United States behind last month's Virginia Tech massacre and the 1966 University of Texas massacre.

At 11.10am on Tuesday, 20 April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold arrived at Columbine High School in separate cars and commenced their killing spree. Harris carried a 12 gauge Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun and a Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9 mm semi-automatic rifle with thirteen 10 round magazines which he fired 96 times. His primary weapon was the shotgun, which was fired a total of 25 times before he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with the shotgun. Klebold was carrying a 9 mm Intratec Tec-9 Semi-automatic handgun with one 52, one 32, and one 28 round magazine as well as a 12 gauge Stevens 311D double barrelled sawed-off shotgun. He fired the handgun 55 times before committing suicide.

When it was all over, the pair had murdered twelve students and one teacher and twenty-four other students were injured directly as a result of the massacre with three others injured attempting to escape.

The massacre provoked debate on a range of issues including gun control laws, the availability of firearms and school bullying but the public outrage about the murders did not prevent the National Rifle Association from holding its annual convention just fifteen miles away in the Colorado state capital of Denver a little over a week later.

Tom Mauser’s son Daniel was one of the victims of the Columbine High School massacre. Mauser attended a protest rally against the violence at the Denver State Capitol clutching a sign that read on one side: "Don't let my son Daniel's death be in vain. Reduce the violence", and on the other, "My son Daniel died at Columbine. He'd expect me to be here today."

With tears welling in his eyes, Muser uttered these words to the 3,000 strong crowd:

"Something is wrong in this country when a child can grab a gun so easily and shoot a bullet into the middle of a child's face, as my son experienced. The time has come to realize that a TEC-9 semiautomatic assault weapon with a 30-bullet magazine, like the one that was used to kill my son, is not used to kill deer."

Harris and Klebold were mentioned by the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-hui who called them "martyrs". Cho exceeded them when he murdered thirty-two.

And the world looked on in horror.

As I write, children are being murdered and maimed in Gaza at an alarming rate. Israeli security forces defending their own citizens from terrorism are not involved. These deaths are as a result of internal violence. Palestinian killing Palestinian. Since the beginning of the year, the toll of dead as a result of such violence far exceeds the accepted norm of any other society. Elder of Ziyon has the current number of deaths at close to 200 with a large number of them children. Hundreds more have been injured.

While the United Nation's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict recently criticised the IDF’s security polices (which have resulted in far fewer Palestinian deaths and most of those were of terrorists or those put in harm's way by them) she – and the rest of the world – have remained silent on the subject of the ongoing endemic violence taking place in the West Bank and Gaza.

Avi Issacharoff describes some of the violence in Gaza in this Haaretz article. With the ruling parties of Hamas and Fatah busily fight each other, there is no semblance of civil society and gangs with guns roam free to terrorise the population.

This is Palestine under the rule of a so-called "Unity Government" dominated by a Hamas that exists with a clear purpose of destroying its neighbour. When the leadership issues schoolbooks teaching children to kill Jews and when it permits them to sell guns in market places then the children have no hope for a normal, happy and free life. All they have left for them is to go out Bowling for Palestine.

The world doesn't look on at this in horror because it doesn't know about such things. The information is there, but for the most part, it is kept away from the public eye and can only be found in the blank pages.

THE GOOD AND BAD OF JOURNALISM

There's an excellent opinion piece from Greg Sheridan in today's Australian entitled Rare support for democracy in a sea of misunderstanding. His views are timely coming on the heels of this week's Winograd Report on the failings of the Olmert Government in the conduct of the Second Lebanon War.

Sheridan argues that Israel is a legitimate nation and should not be treated as a pariah. Indeed, the fact that the existing institutions of this embattled nation can produce a report highlighting the mistakes of its own government is a tribute to its democratic nature.

" ... the bigger story is what a vibrant, genuine, problem-solving democracy Israel is to commission such a report and let its findings go where they may. Moreover, the question is not whether Israel is perfect, but are its actions reasonable for a democracy under such constant threat and attack. How would we react in circumstances similar to those Israel faces?

"Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are all different, yet they are all intimately related. They draw from diverse sources, yet they are all, in their virulent forms, fundamentally irrational and evidence of psychological and ideological dysfunction rather than genuine analysis."

Sheridan finishes on this note:-

"Yet the UN, and the Left internationally, focuses with obsessive zeal on Israel. I once interviewed Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia and a great Muslim leader, and asked him about the Middle East. Israel, he told me, "is a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding.

"Commentators should write about Israel the same as they write about any other nation, with a desire to tell the truth, know the facts and make judgments based on civilised values. I agree with Wahid. Israel is a democracy - that fact speaks for itself."

These opinions reflect the reality of Israel's conflict with it neighbours. By way of comparison I note that one of the banner headlines in today's Jerusalem Post is telling readers that an ex MP in Jordan has been arrested for criticising the government. And if you try that sort of thing in the West Bank or Gaza, you might end up sharing your lodgings with a certain British journalist.

Sadly, it remains a fact of life that the standards sought by Sheridan are not emulated by others in our media. One needs only to read the one-sided reporting of Ed O'Loughlin of the Melbourne Age to understand how journalists with an agenda can work the system. Writing in this week's Australian Jewish News, Tzvi Fleischer describes how O'Loughlin "brilliantly distorts facts and substitutes opinions for news". Unfortunately, the article is not yet available on the internet and I am unable to provide a link to clearly demonstrate why it is that Fleischer describes O'Loughlin as "a perfect illustration of what is wrong with much of contemporary journalism," so I'll leave you with this example.

DOUBLE DUTCH STANDARDS

Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi for the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. Here is a selection of excerpts:

SOCIALIST AND PALESTINIAN CORRUPTION

"I have visited the Palestinian quarters in Jerusalem as well. Their side is dilapidated, for which they blame the Israelis. In private, however, I met a young Palestinian who spoke excellent English. There were no cameras and no notebooks. He said the situation was partly their own fault, with much of the money sent from abroad to build Palestine being stolen by corrupt leaders.

"When I start to speak in the Netherlands about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the role of Arafat in the tragedy of Palestine, I do not get a large audience. Often one is talking to a wall. Many people reply that Israel first has to withdraw from the territories, and then all will be well with Palestine.

"Before I joined the VVD liberal party, I was a member of the Labor party. They have forgotten the positive role they played in the creation of Israel. Their great model thinker is the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit, who promotes solidarity with those who are weak. In socialist eyes whoever isn't white or Western is a victim, and this includes Muslims, Palestinians, and immigrants. My position is that I am not a victim. I am responsible for my acts like anybody else and so are all people."

DUTCH DOUBLE STANDARDS

"There are many other cases of minority racism. For instance, a nephew and a niece may have to get married because the family wants to keep its blood pure. Marrying someone from another race, of course, is completely out of the question. If, however, a native Dutch woman says, ‘I'm not interested in a Moroccan man,' then it makes all the headlines. The Dutch think this manifests the decline of their society.

"If a Dutchman says he doesn't want a Moroccan or a Turk as a neighbor, he is a racist. If a Moroccan says, ‘I want to live next to other Moroccans,' that is viewed as a sign of group attachment, because he has been isolated by immigrating. So that is not considered racism. If a right-wing skinhead draws swastikas on a Jewish cemetery, that is Nazism and he will be punished. If a Moroccan immigrant does the same, it is an expression of his displeasure with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

DOUBLE MORAL STANDARDS TOWARD ISRAEL

"The crisis of Dutch socialism can be sized up in its attitudes toward both Islam and Israel. It holds Israel to exceptionally high moral standards. The Israelis, however, will always do well, because they themselves set high standards for their actions.

"The standards for judging the Palestinians, however, are very low. Most outsiders remain silent on all the problems in their territories. That helps the Palestinians become even more corrupt than they already are. Those who live in the territories are not allowed to say anything about this, because they risk being murdered by their own people."

When asked whether the moral standards to which many Dutch hold Israel are often also far higher than those they apply to the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali replies: "The VVD and parts of the CDA Christian Democrats do not apply double standards to Israel, nor do the smaller Christian parties. Many other politicians do, however.

"This also has to be seen in a wider context. Not only the Netherlands, but many other European countries have changed their minds after more than fifty years of commemorations of the Holocaust. They are happy to free themselves of its history and of Israel's history. Thus they apply these very unequal criteria. They also think they are entitled to have their double standards, whereas the Israelis are not."

Read the entire interview here.

DISENGAGING FROM ANTIQUITY

"In the shadow of this week’s visit to Geneva by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a controversy has arisen about an expo of ancient artifacts from Gaza. Abbas officially opened the 'Gaza at the crossroads of civilizations' exhibition at the art and history museum on Thursday. More than 500 artifacts from archeological digs in the Palestinian territory are on display, including Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Muslim works of art." [Controversy simmers over Gaza expo]

What's the controversy?

The exposition does not include any Jewish objects despite there being a wealth of objects available. According to a report in the Tribune de Genève "none of the artefacts are Jewish, because those found in Gaza were ordered shipped to Israel."

Go figure?

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE ARAB LOBBY

It has become commonplace for Israel's opponents to raise the spectre of the so-called Jewish/Israel Lobby, a not so shadowy group of activists who advocate for Israel in the ongoing conflict with its neighbours. Last year, two American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt produced a working paper claiming that "the United States has been willing to set aside its own security in to advance the interests of another state" and that American Middle East policy is driven primarily by the "Israel Lobby", a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction," and whose core is "American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel's interests." The claim that such a lobby exists and has wide ranging power has been parroted by anti-Israel activists in other parts of the world including in Australia.

A close examination of Mearsheimer and Walt's work disclosed numerous factual errors [click here and here for examples] and sloppy scholarship in general. Alan Dershowitz even challenged them to a debate on their paper - a challenge that was politely declined.

The noted Israeli historian Benny Morris, who was cited by Mearsheimer and Walt, completed the demolition of their study in an article published in the New Republic THE IGNORANCE AT THE HEART OF AN INNUENDO. And Now For Some Facts. Of course, the Jewish/Israel Lobby card continues to be played out vigorously to this very day and it's worth asking why is this so?

There is a myriad of interest groups with a multitude of agendas and varying shapes and sizes operating to influence government in the U.S and elsewhere. If there is any substance to the allegation that certain citizens subordinate the security of their own state to that of a foreign power, then the singling out of one group is problematic. Eitan Bornstein asked the question in the Michigan Israel Observer article referred to above, that "if 'The Israel Lobby' itself is overly influential, shouldn't the authors also be criticizing the lobbying industry as a whole?" If not, what does it say about the motives of people like Mearsheimer and Walt and their counterparts around the world?

The most influential player of the Jewish/Israel Lobby card in recent times is former United States President and a one time Yasser Arafat lobbyist, Jimmy Carter who has produced an appalling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Again, it was left to Dershowitz to expose Carter as being heavily in the pay of the Saudi Arabians in Ex-President for Sale. These revelations are nothing new; Carter has been lobbying for the Arab and Palestinian causes for a long time. Strangely enough, he only considers it wrong for people to advocate for Israel and has no problem advocating for the Palestinians even though they are governed by a party which the U.S has labelled a "terrorist organisation", which has a genocidal aims against Jews and seeks to bring down the American people. Like those other anti-Jewish/Israel lobbyists, Carter declined the opportunity for an open and fair public debate with Dershowitz. Why is it that so many of those who complain loudly about the stifling of debate, run scared when faced with the challenge to do exactly that?

In Carter's case, is it perhaps that he knows his book is based largely on a lie? After all, he freely admits in the book itself that Israel doesn't really practice apartheid although that fact didn't prevent him from using such its outrageously inappropriate title.

Carter turned up at the University of Iowa last week, well and truly on the campaign trail. "The main reason I came to Iowa is to make sure you knew you could shape an outcome in the 2008 presidential election … As long as American politicians are seen as 'knee-jerk supporters' of Israel, the country’s role as the principal Mideast peace broker will be endangered."

There's proof of the fact that not only are the millions of dollars being poured into Carter's foundation by the Saudis proving the worth of their weight in oil but that Carter himself is one of the most shameful hypocrites walking on the face of this earth today.

The Simon Weisenthal Centre has recently published a response setting out how Carter attacked his subject in a reckless manner without any apparent regard for the truth. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Major Fabrications and Distortions reveals the depth to which the former U.S President has fallen under the spell of the Arab Lobby and how his work reflects the naked bigotry of his attempt not only to undermine the Jewish State but also to influence the politics of his own country.

PARDON MY FRENCH

Just as Melanie Phillips was writing to point out that French Jews are at the crossroads and citing a most powerful and disturbing piece by Professor Shmuel Trigano on the parlous state of French Jewry, another severe anti-Semitic attack took place in the French city of Marseille.

The head of the Jewish Agency delegation in France, David Roche, described the assault on the 22-year-old Jewish woman by two men of Middle Eastern appearance as "the most severe anti-Semitic attack in France since the murder of the young Jewish male Ilan Halimi by a gang of Muslim youths in February 2006."

Such attacks are occurring all too frequently throughout Europe and if we accept Professor Trigano's thesis, the days of many of the remnants of the continent's Jewish communties are numbered. And the Jews are not the only ones in trouble.

HIZBULLAH'S MEDIA PARTNERS

Frida Ghitis reports in World Politics Watch on Marvin Kalb's analysis published by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government of how the media transformed from being an "objective observer to fiery advocate" for Hizbullah [click here]. "Kalb painstakingly details how Hezbollah exercised absolute control over how journalists portrayed its side of the conflict, while Israel became 'victimized by its own openness'."

Readers of THE BLANK PAGES OF THE AGE will already be familiar about the ways in which some of our local media and journalist perform this valuable task for the terror groups arrayed against Israel and its population.

THE PALESTINE AUTHORITY'S NOT SO SILENT PLAN FOR GENOCIDE

The following is the text of an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour on the Palestine Authority's ongoing "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" (1948 Genocide Convention: Article IIIc) issued by the WORLD UNION FOR PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM ASSOCIATION FOR WORLD EDUCATION [Palais des Nations, Geneva] on Monday, 23 April 2007.

On 13 April 2007, at a mosque in Sudan, the Acting Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Sheikh Ahmad Bahr of Hamas brought greetings: "Our jihad-fighting Palestinian people salutes its brother, Sudan."

He ended his sermon to a packed mosque audience with a "direct and public incitement to commit genocide":

"Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one [sic]. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book [The Koran], the mover of the clouds who defeated the enemies of the Prophet - defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them."

On 16 April we sent an Appeal to the HCHR for a reaction to Hamas Spokesman Dr. Ismail Radwan's "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." He ended his sermon to a attentive mosque audience, broadcast on Palestinian Authority TV (30 March), with genocidal "prayers to Allah" (from a hadith):

"The Hour [Day of Judgment] will not come until the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!' "

He concluded with a call for "victory for the Jihad-fighting worshippers, in Palestine and elsewhere." PMWatch - [click here].

The following are excerpts from the sermon delivered on 13 April 2007 by Ahmad Bahr of Hamas - Acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council that was aired on TV in Sudan; the translation is by MEMRI.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP: [click here].

TO READ THIS TEXT: [click here].

Ahmad Bahr:

[...] "The Palestinian woman bids her son farewell, and says to him: 'Son, go and don't be a coward. Go, and fight the Jews.' He bids her farewell and carries out a martyrdom operation. What did this Palestinian woman say when she was asked for her opinion, after the martyrdom of her son? She said: 'My son is my own flesh and blood. I love my son, but my love for Allah and His Messenger is greater than my love for my son.' Yes, this is the message of the Palestinian woman, who was over 70 years old - Fatima Al-Najjar. She was over 70 years old, but she blew herself up for the sake of Allah, bringing down many criminal Zionists." [...]

"America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain. The Muslims 'will be victorious, if you are believers.' Oh Muslims, I guarantee you that the power of Allah is greater than America, by whom many are blinded today. Some people are blinded by the power of America. We say to them that with the might of Allah, with the might of His Messenger, and with the power of Allah, we are stronger than America and Israel." [...]

"'You will be victorious on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet.' Yes, [the Koran says] 'you will be victorious,' but only 'if you are believers.' Allah willing, 'you will be victorious,' while America and Israel will be annihilated, Allah willing. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They [the Jews] are cowards, as is said in the Book of Allah: 'You shall find them the people most eager to protect their lives.' [Koran 2:96] They are cowards, who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah..."

We call on you Sir the UN Secretary-General, and to you Madam the High Commissioner of Human Rights, to remind the Palestinian Authority Government of the Principles of the UN Charter (Chapter I, Article 2:4); and that the 1948 Genocide Convention states: "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" (Article III c) by "public officials or private individuals"..."shall be punished" (Art. IV)

Respectfully,
David G. Littman and René V.L. Wadlow (Representatives to the UN Office in Geneva)

NGO doc. [click here].

INDEPENDENCE

Photo: Fred Reifenberg

ZERO

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade comments on the Virginia Tech massacre in A HIERARCHY OF DEATH.

"Thirty-two die in American university shooting. Result? Huge media coverage in the US and Britain. In Iraq, almost 200 die, arguably the worst day of carnage in that beleaguered country since the coalition invasion. Result? Coverage so restrained as to be, in many cases, totally negligible."

Greenslade tells us why this is so but first puts forward his theory that the media operate according to a hierarchy of death. The closer to home the victims, the more interest there is in a story. Further, deaths in ongoing conflicts receive less coverage than unexpected deaths elsewhere because they are unpredictable in nature and rate more highly in their newsworthiness.

But wait, there's more to this theory.

"The deaths of non-of non-white people in foreign parts - and, I would contend, often at home - are never accorded equal status by the white, western media. The deaths of Arabs and Muslims (and, in many media eyes, there is no difference) are overlooked because they are, variously, anti-western, anti-Christian or anti-capitalist, or all three, and are therefore undeserving of sympathy. By virtue of their religion and their ethnicity they cannot expect the same treatment as the people in the west (who, of course, are also more civilised, better educated and altogether more wholesome). In other words, it's racist."

An interesting theory, and I wonder if it can be adapted to explain some of the contradictions in the media's treatment of the victims of Arab violence? Was racism inherent in the boycott imposed by the British National Union of Journalists against Israel? Was that why the union ignored the threats and violence of Hamas and Hizbullah and condemned only the Israelis in its recent resolutions? Does it also explain why Israel alone was censured and not other nations like Sudan which sponsors murderous Arab militias? I guess that's why we read so little about the abduction of Alan Johnston and even less about the lawlessness in Gaza and the West Bank which has seen Palestinian killing Palestinian on an ongoing basis but with almost zero publicity?

[ADDENDUM: Ed O'Loughlin's reporting on events in the Middle East always seems to set the example. In this morning's Melbourne Age, O'Loughlin covers the weekend's violence which saw the deaths of eight Palestinians, mostly "armed militants" (including a so-called "policeman" killed in a raid on a village near Jenin), in various operations in the West Bank and Gaza. He concludes with a now obligatory (for O'Loughlin) reference to alleged Israeli brutality by reminding readers that this was the "highest one day death toll since January, when four Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops who opened fire in a food market in the centre of the West Bank town of Ramallah." No mention however of the hundreds of Palestinians, many of them civilians, killed by fellow civilians in violence between their own "militant" groups or the deaths of Israelis at the hands of such "militants" during that time.]

HERO

In the course of Cho Seung-Hui's killing spree at Virginia Tech this week, Professor Liviu Librescu held the door of his classroom shut delaying the disturbed gunman's attempts to gain entry. The Professor was shot through the door but prevented the killer from entering the classroom until all of his students had escaped through the windows.

It was in this way that the 77 year old survivor of the Holocaust died on 16 April, 2007 - Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Israeli Professor, a husband, father, grandfather and teacher died protecting the lives of others and thereby his last deed in life was an act of healing the world - tikkun olam. That he did so on this of all days is one of the great ironies of life and death; his selflessness and heroism epitomises all that is good about the universal values of Jewish existence.

Liviu Librescu was buried this morning in Ra'anana, Israel. At the funeral, his son Arie said that "the courses in aerodynamics have ended. On the 16th of the month, you started a new career, teaching a new subject - heroism - [which] millions of students are learning."

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PALESTINE - PART 2

Many observers of the conflict between Israel and Palestine see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who heads Fatah as the "good guy" on the Palestinian side and Hamas and Islamic Jihad as the "bad guys". Of course, it's not as simple as that because Abbas is a weak and ineffectual leader and it's this weakness that raises the very real question of with whom does Israel deal if it is to make peace with its Palestinian neighbours.

An example of the President's impotence was a report yesterday from Reuters whereby an aide claimed Abbas had reached an agreement with all "militant groups" operating in the Gaza Strip that they would stop rocket attacks into Israel - DEAL STRUCK TO HALT ATTACKS ON ISRAEL: ABBAS AIDE. The cessation of these rocket attacks is vital to progress the cause of peace which is dependent largely upon the Palestinians honouring commitments made to the international community to end violence against the citizens of Israel.

Apart from being weak, Abbas has a serious credibility problem with his constituency of "militants" because as soon as the announcement was made one group of serial rocketeers from Islamic Jihad, which advocates the Jewish state's destruction, denied that it had agreed to stop firing rockets. Spokesperson Abu Ahmed said that "there is no decision to stop firing. It increases and decreases according to security conditions on ground." He added in his statement that "the Zionist media claims are untrue".

While it's comforting to know that Reuters is now officially part of the "Zionist media" (and this presumably includes any of the schizophrenic British journalists who also happen to work for Reuters but are currently involved in a boycott of the Jewish State), the confusion establishes a couple of things:-

(a) You can't trust statements made by Mahmoud Abbas or his representatives about any negotiations for a cease fire, and

(b) Palestinians continue to fire rockets at Israeli civilians, a fact about which many commentators - not just the British journalists who voted for the boycott - remain in a state of denial.

The same can be said of the conflicting statements from Gaza "militants" who lay claim to having kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston. The other day they boasted that they had already executed him while today they demand $5 million for his release. It's hard to believe much of what comes out of Gaza these days.

One thing you can believe is Hamas' clear intention that it will not withdraw from its platform of destroying Israel and killing Jews. You can talk to these people but in the end you can't really negotiate peace with those whose aim is to slit your throat!

So what do we make make of all this?

There is a level of groupthink coming from those in "denial" about this conflict which reduces any discussion on the ongoing war between the two peoples to ridiculous levels in order ensure that Israel gets the blame for all that happens to these "oppressed Palestinians" despite the intransigence of these so-called "victims". In turn, the Palestinian leadership has no responsibility for its own people, nor for the guests and visitors within their midst - people like Johnston who was only doing his job when abducted. Then there are those in absolute denial - the likes of this idiot, who thinks Israel is behind everything including Johnston's abduction because it had the most to gain from his removal from the scene (presumably because Johnstone is like those other British journos who simply can't remain objective about any story they tell in relation to the conflict).

This is all part of the tragedy of Palestine. Nobody really wants to do anything that can really help the Palestinians out of the mire - especially not those who claim to be friends because the fact is that, in many ways, it's not about them at all. If it were all about victims, you would have bodies like the Human Rights Council sanctioning Sudan for the slaughter in Darfur, British journalists would be boycotting at least a dozen regimes before picking on democratic Israel for defending itself against those who fire rockets at its civilians on a daily basis and reports like that recently published by the United Nations for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs which highlights the fact that Palestinians are killing each other at an ever-increasing rate would never be lost in the blank pages. No, it's not about the Palestinians and that is why nobody really wants to talk about them or what they do very much - it's just the Jews!

HAT TIPS TO: ELDER OF ZIYON

WHICH ONE IS REALLY LOST?

Is it Ben from the television series "Lost" or is it the fellow who critics allege produced a book about Israel that had the first print recalled because one of its maps placed Lebanon somewhere between Haifa and Tel Aviv?

FAIRFAX ANTI ISRAEL LOBBY AT WORK TODAY

Just a day or two after the news broke (but not in the Age) of the disgraceful assault on Israel by boycotting British journalists, The Melbourne Age today brought out its big guns in its own war on Israel.

In the first instance, it published an article by a Reuters journalist on billionaire George Soros' attack on the American Jewish lobby in the New York Review of Books (Soros takes Israeli lobby in Washington to task). Apart from this story being old hat (it broke in the U.S.A more than three weeks ago so why is it news here now?), it fails to mention that the basis of Soros' attack (some shoddy work by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt entitled "The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy") was demolished utterly by respected Israeli historian Benny Morris in a piece published in The New Republic THE IGNORANCE AT THE HEART OF AN INNUENDO. And Now For Some Facts. Morris' article was published almost a year ago but the Age still hasn't caught up with it; nor should we expect it to do so in the near future.

Secondly, Ed O'Loughlin is back doing what he knows best. Turning a bad news story about the behaviour of some Palestinians into a not so subtle attack on Israelis. His story, Journalist death unconfirmed in Gaza, about kidnapped British journalist Alan Johnston is full of his usual syrup about the work of Palestinian security forces and those nice Palestinian journalists searching for the missing journo and isolates them from the nasties who claim to have kidnapped and killed him.

And just to make a point about who O'Loughlin believes the real bad guys in this whole scenario are, he throws in this line:-

"No foreign journalist or aid worker has been harmed by Palestinian militants since the uprising against Israel that began in October 2000, although several have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces."

Well, we won't mention that since October 2000 O'Loughlin's "Palestinian militants" have killed over 1,000 civilians inside Israel including overseas visitors and workers in cold blood by various methods ranging from suicide bomings, shootings and stabbing attacks including the disembowelling of pregnant mothers in front of their children.

We won't mention that most of the "several" O'Loughlin refers to were not deliberately killed or wounded by Israeli soldiers but died while putting themselves in harm's way and were caught in the line of fire while the Israeli soldiers were defending their own citizens from attacks by Ed's "militants".

And we certainly won't mention that among the aid workers that O'Loughlin writes about were people like Rachael Corrie who went to the region after being recruited by the Palestinian Solidarity Movement and its cover group the International Solidarity Movement to act as "human shields" for Palestinian terrorism. The ISM claims to be working for "peace" but it also openly boasts that it supports Palestinian armed struggle against Israel - which means it supports the ongoing war against Israel's civilian population and the Jewish State.

Just like certain journalists we know.

And that's a day's work for Ed O'Loughlin and the folks at the Melbourne Age.

THE PIMPLE ON THE FACE OF BRITISH JOURNALISM

The National Union of Journalists in Britain has this week removed any doubt we might have had about the integrity of their profession and its capacity to deliver truthful reporting of news to its readership with a vote to boycott Israel.

Throwing the full book of accusations at Israel the British journalists' annual delegates meeting not only called for a boycott and sanctions but showed gross ignorance of the facts on the ground by condemning what they described as last year's "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel" (never mind that Hizbullah captured, killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers and fired missiles at Israeli towns beforehand) the "slaughter of civilians by Israeli troops in Gaza and the IDF’s continued attacks inside Lebanon following the defeat of its army by Hezbollah" (they sound more like a bunch of juvenile and demented cheerleaders than serious writers to me) and called for the end of Israeli aggression in Gaza and other occupied territories.

The absurdity of these allegations is enough to tell us how little the journalists who put forward the motion and the 66 who voted in favour really know what is happening in the Middle East and it follows that their writing simply cannot be trusted.

Let us not forget that it was the British media that told the "Jenin massacre" lie and has been in the business of distorting the news from this region since Yasser Arafat launched his war on Israel in 2000. As I said in my introduction, this motion has simply put beyond doubt what we already knew about them and the very partisan agenda they have in relation to this conflict.

The only slaughter of Palestinians that is taking place at the moment is self-inflicted – at the time of writing 174 Palestinians have been killed this year by fellow Palestinians in warfare between various armed factions and clans, most of it in Gaza where Israel ended its occupation almost two years ago.

The delegates who voted in favour of these motions have brought dishnour on themselves and are no doubt being sneered at by the kidnappers of the only British journalist who had the guts to continue living in Gaza - BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. His kidnappers are among the very terrorists who these British journalists are defending and supporting with their shameful motions.

So let them carry out their pitiful and useless boycott of Israeli goods. Let them switch off their mobile phones, turn off their computers, stop taking their medication and their acne creams (all invented or perfected by Israeli ingenuity). Let them dim their light globes and walk around in darkness because the events of the past few weeks have proven once and for all that the sun has well and truly set on their empire.

WHY WOULD A JEW WANT TO PLAY FOR WEST HAM?

I've always wondered about this question and now the Guardian has answered it in this article.

"West Ham United yesterday denied claims of mistreating their two Israeli players, Yossi Benayoun and Yaniv Katan, who did not take part in the team's training camp in Dubai last week."

Imagine the outcry if two Arab players from Arsenal were left out of a touring party to Israel for the same reason.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT LEBANON, HIZBULLAH, SYRIA AND IRAN

There was a time when people in Israel spoke of Lebanon as a potential peace partner. They used to say that as soon as one Arab country made peace then Lebanon would follow suit.

However, that was before the country was poisoned by its own internal hatreds, by the presence of the PLO and later by Hizbullah. Today, Lebanon is a nation ravaged by civil wars and external wars, the occupation by foreign forces particularly those of Syria and through Hizbullah by by foreign forces particularly those of Syria and through Hizbullah by Iran.

Syria's hand has been behind so much of the decay experienced by Lebanon's civil society - the assassinations, the threats and blackmail of a beleagured government and the arming of Hizbullah along with the Iranians. Of couse the Syrians have destabilised much more of the Middle East than just Lebanon in the same way that Iran which fights proxy wars on Lebanese soil against Israel through Hizbullah has done throughout the region and beyond.

The world has allowed Syria and Iran to get away unchalleneged with far too much for so long that it's reached the point of no return with these two rogue states. The icing on the cake came this week when both Syria and Iran were elected to the U.N. Disarmament Commission in a move that must surely soon see the ringing of the death knell for the entire United Nations Organization.

This is the reward you get in a corrupt world for what you do to your co-religionists and to your neighbours. For these two to be entrusted with disarmament is only to encourage further the damage that both Syria and Iran are inflicting on the people of their region. They threaten Israel with their bombs real and imagined but they have been responsible for killing the people of Lebanon and trampling on their rights for a long period of time.

Last year, journalist Noah Pollak toured war ravaged Lebanon. He has given a fascinating insight into this country in an Azure magazine article as to how the country has been split. Writing about Lebanon, he says,

"For thirty years it was a nation in name only, existing unhappily as a Syrian vassal. In March 2005, the pressures unleashed by the Cedar Revolution drove out official Syrian dominance and inspired a new era of liberal democratic dreams. During my visit this past December, as in the months before and after, Lebanon was roiled by this new political reality–and by the old Lebanese reality, of a nation without a majority religion or ethnicity, a focal point of foreign patronage, a place where Christians, Sunni, Shia, Druze, and the various ethno-religious factions contained within them, perpetually assemble themselves, atomize, and reform in a turbulent competition for supremacy."

Pollack adds that "… there is a Lebanon that exists in the distance, too far away to see from Israel's northern border, and too difficult to discern through the opaque and fevered people camped in the South. It is the Lebanon of the Christians, the moderate Sunnis, and the Druze, the Lebanon that earned Beirut the moniker of the Paris of the Middle East. This Lebanon looks West for inspiration and support, not East, and sustains a loathing for Hezbollah (and the Palestinians) that rivals Israel's. This is the Lebanon of East and West Beirut, of outstanding restaurants, nightlife, beaches, tourism, and Mediterranean joie de vivre. These Lebanese share two vital things with Israel: An aspiration to live in a liberal, democratic society, and a fervent wish to rid their nation of the Islamic extremists who are the perpetual cause of bloodshed, instability, and warfare. Israel and Lebanon, in this regard, are more similar to each other than either of them is to any other nation in the region. In the 1980s, a Lebanese Christian leader declared that 'the Western world should either defend us, or change its name.' Israel is a member in high standing of the Western world, and should not exempt itself from sympathizing with such pleas."

Pollack proceeds to lay bare many of the myths that the Hizbullah propaganda machine successfully established through its sucessful wartime public relations campaign aided by sympathetic lackeys in the Western media.

"Southern Lebanon is not uniformly Shia. It is scattered with a few enduring Christian villages, one of which, named Ain Ebel, sits near Bint Jbeil, and is a Hezbollah-free zone. This town is spread across the northern-facing slope of one of the area’s many smooth, undulating hillsides, and from the top of this hill, where a few houses stand, the Israeli border is easily visible in the distance below. Many of the houses in the town, especially the ones closest to the hilltop, were badly damaged by Israeli bombardment during the war, seemingly confirming the charge that Israel had targeted civilians, or at least that the Israel Defense Forces attacked Lebanon indiscriminately. But that is not the reality of Ain Ebel: Israel did not lay siege to the town–Hezbollah did, and the manner in which it went about doing so should clarify the true cynical brilliance of Hezbollah's asymmetric tactics.

"The residents of Ain Ebel, in several different interviews, explained to us that at the outset of the war, Hezbollah transported a number of rocket launchers into the village and set them up for use as close to civilian houses as possible. Meanwhile, Israel was dropping leaflets over most of southern Lebanon urging civilians to evacuate (many of these leaflets were still visible, blown into countryside ditches and brambles). When the air campaign started, Hezbollah blocked the roads leading out of Ain Ebel, preventing civilians from fleeing, and on one occasion even opened fire on a caravan of evacuees, forcing them to return to their homes. With many of its residents trapped in the town, Hezbollah ignored the abundant open spaces in Ain Ebel, and fired rockets instead from within meters of civilian houses, drawing Israeli fire onto the village. As we surveyed Ain Ebel’s houses, many in varying states of reconstruction, I had to grudgingly admire this clever way of waging war against modern Western armies, when the combination of our precision munitions, a media that treats Western militaries with skepticism, and the expectation of morally perfect warfare have made civilian casualties one of the most dominant points of contention in warfare.

"From Hezbollah's perspective, premeditating the creation of civilian casualties makes perfect sense: It ensures the highest possible rate of return for the Katyusha rocket, insofar as it is turned into a weapon that can be used to kill both Lebanese and Israelis. More importantly, I realized, it accomplished something stunning in that it allowed an inferior power to use its adversary's superior weaponry to carry out its own battlefield strategy. In Ain Ebel and elsewhere, Hezbollah was in effect aiming Israeli firepower, directing its missiles and artillery onto Hezbollah’s preferred targets–houses, hospitals, apartment buildings, anywhere civilians could be found–knowing that Israel would be punished by the ensuing international outrage. Scenes of civilian death and destruction are irresistible for the Western image media, and the course of the summer war was affected perhaps like none before it by the manner in which the spectacle of dead Lebanese galvanized anti-Israel actors. Many people refer to Hezbollah's tactic as the use of 'human shields,' but this gets it exactly backward: It implies that Hezbollah was trying to protect its assets by using civilians to deter an Israeli attack. In fact, Hezbollah was trying to provoke Israeli bombardment so that both human lives and infrastructure would be destroyed, and the Party of God could enjoy the resulting moral absolution. In this way, Hezbollah achieved its greatest victory in the war, which was its ability to transform the narrative of the conflict from one in which Israel was defending itself from attack by a terrorist organization to one in which Israel was barbarically laying waste to civilian Lebanon."

I wonder from where Hizbullah got this tactic?

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PALESTINE - PART 1

ABC radio has now released the transcript to the segment on Hamas from Monday's edition of FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. However, I'm somewhat perplexed about the ABC's use of terminology.

The item is entitled, "HAMAS URGED TO RENOUNCE TERRORISM" but presenter Elizabeth Jackson describes Hamas as a "Palestinian militant group".

Doesn't Hamas use terror like suicide bombings, rocket attacks on civilian areas and other cold-blooded methods of killing like suicide bombings, rocket attacks on civilian areas and other cold-blooded methods of killing as a tactic to terrorise the Israelis (not to mention the atricites it commits against its own people)? Here's a recent example of Hamas' modus operandi -ISRAEL SAYS HAMAS PLANNED TEL AVIV TRUCK BOMBING.

The article from Agence France Presse gives us a pointer that might help Ms. Jackson and the ABC out of the militant/terrorist bind.

"Although the Islamist movement - the main party in a Palestinian unity government - has largely abided by a November ceasefire agreement with Israel, its armed wing has been involved in a growing number of attacks against Israeli targets in recent weeks, including the shooting of a civilian along the Gaza Strip border." (note: there's no mention here of the continued use of quassam rockets fired across the border into Israeli towns and villages aimed at its civilians)

Get that?

According to the AFP, the political wing of Hamas, which was elected to govern the Palestinians a year ago, has "largely abided" by the so called November ceasefire. They're not the terrorists and they don't break cease fire agreements - its the armed wing of the organisation that does that. Hamas takes no responsibility - they're just militants - not terrorists!

Thanks to the ABC's David Hardaker the FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT report tells us a little more about Hamas and the way it exploits Palestinian children - some as young in age as four - for its sinister and obscene terrorist ends. His story tells of how the Hamas television station in Gaza featured the young children of a female suicide bomber apparently glorifying their mother's deadly attack on Israeli soldiers. Jackson says in her introduction that this "broadcast comes as Hamas ministers in the Palestinian Government face international pressure to explicitly renounce the use of terror against Israel."

Hamas, of course, routinely refuses to renounce the use of terror and its apologists routinely continue to obfuscate about the reasons.

"HARDAKER: The international community will demand from Hamas that they condemn suicide bombing, that when you see something like that on the television, Hamas television, it's not condemning it. Do you condemn this kind of action?

"WASFI KABAHA: Well, we are against terrorism. Palestinian people, all Palestinian people, are against terrorism. But never ask the Palestinian people not to defend themselves.Why you are asking us to do something that asking the Israeli side actually to explain their activities against the Palestinian people? "

The truth is something different altogether to Kabaha's pathetic explanation. It can be found in the Hamas Charter Article 7.

We need to talk about that further, don't we?

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS

Bradley Burston wrote in Ha'aretz recently about the silence among many on the left of politics when it comes to Muslim atrocities and Muslim victims.

"We were taught to sniff out, publicize, and condemn every instance of racism, violence, injustice, and humiliation practiced by Israeli Jews against Palestinian Muslims. And that was as it should be.

"But we were also taught that it was racist to impose our Western values on the acts of Muslims, even, or especially, when it came to the most extreme of Muslims.

"We can, with facility, therefore, comprehend all Muslim atrocities against Muslims in Iraq as the direct, understandable, and legitimate response to the American-British occupation.

"We were taught wrong.

"We can understand terrorism in Bali, in London, in the Twin Towers, as an outgrowth of anger over American expansionism and Israeli military repression.

"We were taught wrong.

"There are, of course, many Jews whose selective blindness works in the other direction, condemning Muslims at every opportunity, as though that made wrongdoing by Jews eminently forgivable and forgettable. As though we are somehow made moral by the moral failings of our neighbors.

"This is what we should have been taught: Violations of human rights are violations of human rights, regardless of the cultural background of the perpetrator, regardless of the background of the victim.

"This is what we should have retained: One way to demonstrate compassion for victims is to stop showing sensitivity to their tormentors. Even if both are Muslims. Because it's our business to cry out. Because the victims are human beings. Because villains deserve to be denounced."

KIDNAPPED

The BBC's Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston is the only Western news correspondent based in Gaza and he's missing, abducted four weeks ago and feared kidnapped.

Today's Australian Newspaper editorialises that the "kidnapping of journalists is an abhorrent practice, representing a war against free speech."

Although the editorial is entitled "KIDNAPPING HOPE", I see nothing in it to bring hope to anyone, let alone Alan Johnston. It opines that this kidnapping and the PA government’s "lack of authority only go to highlight the disintegration of order in the Palestinian territory, where more than 100 people have been killed since last year's elections. The state has slumped into a shambolic hotbed of lawlessness, where armed gangs feud over family, factional and territorial disputes. The fight between Fatah and Hamas, with its various militias and assassinations and targeted killings, has created a civil war as brutal as anything outside Baghdad. Johnston's kidnapping has only raised the stakes further for the Hamas-led Government's legitimacy."

That isn't even half of the story of life today under a Hamas-led government.

Yesterday, on CORRESPONDENTS REPORT, our own ABC radio highlighted the extent to which Hamas abuses its own children, some as young as 4 years, by encouraging them to view suicide bombers as "martyrs". The glorification of cold-blooded murderers in this fashion is just another version of kidnapping Palestinian style.

When the minds of young children are stolen and the party elected to govern the Palestinians is the agency that is sowing the seeds of hatred in its people even at a young age, then what chance is there for peace and reconciliation between Jew and Arab in the region?

It is time to talk about Palestine!

[FOOTNOTE: The Australian editorial refers to more than 100 people killed since last year's elections. I have been reminded that the figure is well in excess of that. According to Elder of Ziyon who keeps a tally of such things, the number is 163 just this calendar year - a number far in excess of the number of Palestinians killed in IDF operations against Palestinian terrorists (or "militants" if you like).]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT EGYPT

Last week the Australian Newspaper published a piece by Lynne Segal, an Australian academic based in the U.K. Segal is also a member of the Independent Jewish Voices and her piece, entitled "WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT ISRAEL", is typical of the IAV/IAJV mould - written as if nobody has ever previously discussed Israel critically either within or without mainstream Jewish communities.

There are as many holes in Ms. Segal's argument as you can find in a reasonably sized piece of Swiss cheese and most of them would be fairly obvious to readers of the Blank Pages. Here's a little taste of her of her logic:-

"We also know that Israel has been responsible for the most continual and extreme elimination of human rights in its occupied territories for the past 40 years." (How do we know that?)

"This includes not only brutal policies of collective punishment, arbitrary arrests and accidental shootings, but also routinely undermining Palestinians' right to free movement, water, education or even access to sources of livelihood within what are their own their own territories."

So even accidental shootings form part of Israel's deliberate policies designed to punish the Palestinian people. I've now heard everything! (Reminder: Please carry out some research into whether Ms. Segal's ancestors came from Chelm)

True to form, Segal's highly selective presentation condemning alleged Israeli human rights violations, almost completely omits to mention that the Palestinians themselves might have been routinely responsible for violating the rights of their Israeli neighbours as well as of their own kind for many years.

Segal does condemn in a general way some unmentioned Palestinian "atrocities" (thankfully she doesn't attempt to do an Yvonne Ridley by attempting to rationalise and justify suicide bombings) but she ignores the rather obvious connection between those atrocities and the necessity on Israel's part to defend itself which has resulted in the setting up of those nasty checkpoints and has caused it to construct the security barrier which has been so successful in reducing attacks on Israeli citizens.

The Israeli side of the story is ignored not only by Segal but also by virtually all of the other IAV's whether British, Australian or from Kazakhstan for that matter (to be fair however, Borat himself prefers to concentrate on the "Jews as wood lice" theory).

By all means then, we need to talk about Israel, but it's clear that we need to talk about Palestine as well - and indeed, that's exactly what I will be doing very soon.

In the meantime and in view of the season of the year, I'd like to set the tone for my forthcoming discussion on the narratives of Israel and her neighbours by going back a little in time to look at another people's narrative - that of the Egyptians - in this piece about some long standing Israeli human rights violations. (I swear this story was not written by Lynne Segal)

HOME TRUTHS ABOUT HIZBULLAH

It’s not my usual practice to quote Lebanon’s Daily Star but staff writer Michael Young got a few things right in WHEN A DILETTANTE TAKES ON HIZBULLAH.

Responding to the visit to Syria of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Young berates the Democrat for her comment that "the road to solving Lebanon's problems passes through Damascus." He reminds her that her statement will only harm efforts to ensure that Syria ends its meddling in Lebanese affairs and will thereby strengthen Hizbullah's position in that beleagured country.

Young adds that in 2000 Hizbullah "lost much of its reason to exist as a military force when the Israelis withdrew from Southern Lebanon. The manufacturing of the Shebaa Farms pretext, thanks to the diligent efforts of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, bought Hizbullah an extension, a handy fig leaf allowing it to keep its weapons. Last summer, however, the party's initiation of a war devastating to Lebanon, followed by its efforts to lead a coup against the majority, demolished any lingering cross-sectarian support that Hizbullah had enjoyed.

"Hizbullah's weapons are no longer regarded as weapons of resistance by most Lebanese, but as weapons of sectarian discord."

Young concludes:-

"For years, pundits and analysts have spoken of Hizbullah's 'integration into Lebanese society. ' Their underlying premise was that the party somehow desired this. Optimists pointed to Hizbullah's participation in successive parliamentary elections as an example of its willingness to 'assimilate.' The naivete deployed was remarkable. It rarely occurred to the experts that Hizbullah did not start as, nor truly is, a social services organization. It is an Iranian-financed military and security enterprise overseeing a vast and competent patronage system designed to win Shiite backing, allowing Hizbullah to retain its weapons. It never occurred to the experts that Hizbullah's objective in participating in the political system was not to jettison its military identity, but rather to safeguard it within the confines of Lebanese institutions it could thereafter influence."

INDEPENDENT MUSLIM VOICES

Yvonne Ridley, an unrepentant anti-Semite and apologist for Islamist terrorism around the world, will be a speaker at the first annual Australian Islamic Conference in Melbourne this weekend.

This is the conference to which controversial figure, Sheik Bilal Philips, was headed before immigration officials barred his entry into Australia. Philips has been linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. A second sheik from Saudia Arabia was also banned fom entering Australia because he failed to provide sufficient information as to why he should be allowed into the country. In their absence, Ridley now takes star billing at the conference.

According to Wikipedia Ridley, a convert to Islam after being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan, holds a view on the Palestine/Israel conflict, which is "pretty much in line with that of Hamas." According to Ridley, Israel is "that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East".

Ridley is a member of the Respect Party, an unbelievably misnamed British political party headed by George Galloway. She claims that the Respect Party "is a Zionist-free party… if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists", while both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are "riddled with Zionists."

Of course, this begs the question as to why any self-respecting Zionist would want to be a member of a party that harbours such racist ratbags.

Ridley once defended Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's campaign of violence in Iraq and Jordan and described the victims of the November 2005 Amman bombings (60 dead and 115 injured - many of them guests at a wedding party) in Jordan as "Iraqi collaborators."

Meanwhile, at home, she urged Muslims in Britain to refuse to co-operate with the police investigating terrorist activities.

To really understand how loathsome an individual Ridley has become since her conversion to Islam, here’s more from Wikipedia: -

"After the Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev (architect of the Moscow theater hostage crisis and the Beslan school massacre) was killed, Ridley wrote a column stating that Basayev had become a 'shaheed', that is, a martyr whose place in Paradise is assured. She went on to refer to Basayev as leader of 'an admirable struggle to bring independence to Chechnya'. In response to objections that Basayev's actions killed many civilians, Ridley stated that he 'resorted to targeting Russian civilians in the latter years of his struggle to try and bring the plight of the Chechen struggle to the wider world,' and blamed the majority of civilian casualties on Russian troops sent in to rescue the hostages, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

So, speaking the truth is not Ridley's strongest suit.

Australian Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke has asked how a person who praised Basayev as a martyr and urged Muslims in Britain not to co-operate with police, and who has described suicide bombings as "martyrdom operations", could pass the character test required for a visa into the country. He urges the government to kick her out of the country.

I agree Australia could easily do without Ridley but to throw her out of the country would be to turn her into a cause celebre among certain groups here. She would almost certainly be regarded as "a martyr" while the focus would be taken away from the objectionable views she espouses. The intolerance, hatred and lack of respect for others inherent in her message would be whitewashed in the controversy, thereby severely limiting the prospects of any debate on her offensive ideas.

Rather than deport her, Ridley and her extremist views should be exposed to critical scrutiny for only in this way can we understand not only their inherent danger to our society but how counterproductive they are to the very people she claims to support. An example of the latter proposition is that she sings from the same song book as the Islamists who control the Palestine Authority and whose stated aims are to destroy the Jewish State and kill Jews - which is one of the main reasons why the attainment of peace between Israel and Palestine is proving so elusive.

Such positions are well documented and widely understood in the Middle East but they are all too easily brushed aside in general discussions on this subject while in the Jewish community, the tiny minority of so-called "independent voices" who speak out against Israel would rather leave them tidily brushed under the carpet out of sight and out of mind.

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

Noam Schalit, father of kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit, spoke out on Friday at a rally held to show empathy for the three kidnapped IDF soldiers held by Hamas and and Hizbullah.

Mr. Schalit, who is standing up bravely under the pressure of his son's kidnapping, is critical "of a system that failed to internalize lessons of the past," "UDI, ELDAD & GILAD ARE NOT FREE MEN" and he makes a valid point; perhaps the system hasn't done enough or has proved inadequate in securing Gilad's release.

One wonders however, whether the lessons of the past are of much use when dealing with Hamas and Hizbullah and their friends. What we have here are ruthless kidnappers representing organisations that show disdain for the norms of human decency. International laws and standards relating to captured prisoners do not apply with Hamas and Hizbullah; there are no visits from the Red Cross and not even a sign as to whether any of the three are alive.

The international community is virtually of no help despite a U.N resolution which called for their release; you won't find articles in your local newspaper about the plight of the captives and their families or even any criticism of the methods of their captors. There are very few voices of support and comfort out there to help guide them home.

Recent negotiations have brought a ray of hope for Gilad's release but these appear to have stalled as a result of internal divisions within Hamas. Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper revealed yesterday that the group holding him "are hard-liners who oppose the Mecca agreement, which formed the basis for the Palestinian national unity government."

Incidentally, to understand the depths of the Hamas pathology one need go no further than the Ha'aretz article quoted above which concludes with the revelation that "the 7-year-old son of a Hamas operative was killed yesterday in the Gaza Strip when a hand grenade went off inside the family home." The frustration continues for all men and women of decency who dream that one day all of the people of the region can live in freedom and in peace.

The Jewish Agency and the Keren Maor Foundation, also known as Amutat Habanim, which represents the families of the abducted soldiers have had prepared a special Seder prayer to be recited tomorrow night for those who celebrate the Jewish Festival of Pessach.

"He who redeems prisoners shall save them from captivity and take them out of slavery to freedom, and from oppression to redemption, and from darkness to light, and He shall heal them fully in soul and body, and grant them strength, happiness and joy, so they shall be strong, healthy and content."

There are other captives in the region who are also suffering at this very time. We should add to our prayers BBC reporter Alan Johnston, missing in Gaza, and the 15 British sailors languishing in Tehran. May they also be freed and brought to safety and back soon to their family and friends.