BAD MEDICINE

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert (pictured above) recently arrived in Gaza ostensibly to support the humanitarian aid effort at Al Shifa Hospital. According to Wikipedia he is also "solidarity worker and politician" with "broad range international experiences, in particular from locations that merge medical and political issues."

If we cut the bullshit out of that description, we're left with the fact that he's out there to act as a propaganda mouth piece for the Hamas regime. Gilbert is not simply the medicine man who arrived out of the blue but a partisan observer who has long been active in pro Palestinian organizations in Norway, a member of a revolutionary socialist party and an apologist for the 9/11 mass murderers: -

"I am upset over the terrorist attack, but is equally upset over the suffering which the United States has created. It is in this context 5,000 dead people must be seen. If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, they have also suppressed a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians is the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis."

I highlighted the word "but" because apologists for war criminals almost always have a "but" with which to justify criminal acts. "Suicide bombings are terrible but the bombers are under occupation". Get the picture?

It's also ironic that the doctor also seems to promote the cycle of violence theory which can be used to justify any futher violence after the initial act. For some reason however, this doesn’t give Israel the right to defend its own citizens from Hamas rocket attacks.

These days, although Gilbert is supposed to be operating on patients at Al Shifa Hospital (where Hamas leaders have been in hiding disguised as doctors and nurses), the peripatetic Doctor Mads is becoming quite a media celebrity as the front man for the Hamas media road show. He is not only in contact with Norwegian media but is fast becoming a regular on CNN, BBC, ABC and Al Jazeera and is appearing daily accusing the Israel of murder and making a diverse range of other unsubstatiated and fanciful claims including that the Israeli’s are using "fuel air explosives and depleted uranium" in missions against Hamas - Attacks condemned as supplies dwindle and deaths rise.

Gilbert is playing games with his readers here because there is no evidence to support his statements. Nor is there any record of Israeli use of depleted uranium which is used only for anti-tank kinetic energy penetrators. Since Hamas does not have a single tank, the Israelis certainly have no use for depleted uranuim in Gaza.

Further, the claim that Israel has a depleted uranium tipped bomb is a fiction – no such weapon exists except in the fertile imaginations of pro-Hizbullah propagandists from back in the Second Lebanon War days. And now, it seems in the mind of Dr. Gilbert who made his mind up about these imaginary weapons within days of arriving in Gaza and without any apparent scientific analysis of anything to support his nonsensical conclusions.

I have no problem with Gilbert, the international humanitarian aid worker, but he is also a propagandist who has shown with his fantasising about depleted uranium and other wild accusations levelled at Israel that he can't be trusted. As such, should not be given the credibility associated with appearances on international news services.

While Gilbert is in the spotlight ranting about a shortage of medicine available to Gazans, perhaps the media might deign to investigate reports that Hamas has set up an independent hospital in the Gaza Strip to treat operatives wounded in fighting with the IDF. According to this report in the Jerusalem Post, Hamas "is pilfering a significant portion of the medicine allowed into the strip."

Sadly for the people of Gaza, I somehow doubt that the thought of Hamas stealing medicine from them is going to make this doctor mad at all.

DATELINE: 1944

Meet The Old Dross - Same As The New Dross...

STOP THIS VICIOUS SLAUGHTER! ENGLAND MUST STOP WAGING WAR ON THE NAZIS! - so says Martin Lewis writing in the Huffinton Post

To be honest - if more English women and children were dying - we wouldn't feel quite so bad about the number of Germans dying. But it's just so UNFAIR that more Germans are dying...

Bottom lines:

"I will carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony have been obliterated." Adolf Hitler - 28th November 1941 to Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (The Grand Mufti) - seen in the photo at the top of this page saluting his SS buddies in 1941. Oh the ties that bind...

We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity" - Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza - January 2nd 2009

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." - Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant

"F**k 'em" Martin Lewis - January 2009

H*A*M*A*S*H

A Jerusalem Post report quotes Israeli defence officials who said yesterday that "it was likely that a number of senior Hamas operatives and terror chiefs were hiding and conducting their operations from within Shifa Hospital in Gaza City" - IDF cuts Gaza Strip in two as it readies expanded ground operation.

Thanks to blogger Yid With Lid who provided the above identikit photo of a suspected Hamas leader in the organisation's new uniform.

YWL is quite right in also pointing out that it is "easy for these cowards to fan the flames of hate, and kill Jewish and Palestinian children, while they hide out."

Meanwhile, a little more than 100 "Jewish" opponents of Israel's strike into Gaza, led by athiest Aussie anti-Zionist pinhead Antony Loewenstein, made a statement in today's Melbourne Age which, to me, reads very much like a declaration of support for Hamas from the desperate and ever dwindling IAJV movement.

And given Hamas' genocidal intention towards Jews (even useful tools like these idiots), this is an even stranger phenomenon than the sight of the Hamas leadership nursing patients at Gaza's Al Shifa hospital (for more snapshots see Camera Snapshots).

THE TRUTH ABOUT GAZA

Two articles from The Jerusalem Post help give clarity to the events in Gaza. One is by veteran journalist Amotz Asa El entitled The Truth About Gaza:

"... no military surprise, commando infiltration, aerial bombardment, armored flanking or infantry outflanking will make Gaza fade or its wrath vanish. Only the constant sight of the Jews across the border building, planting, multiplying and fending off enemies will eventually make them realize that the civilization with which they have chosen to clash also knows a thing or two about stubbornness, and that the nation with whom they picked a fight is the one that God Himself called stiff-necked."

And veteran jurist Alan M Dershowitz in Israel's actions are lawful and commendable not only explains the legality of what Israel is doing in Gaza but exposes the double standards of many commentators who misuse terms such as "proportionality" in attacking the manner in which it is defending its citizens against a regime that is bent on genocide.

Another discernible double standard in the manner of reporting of the conflict is the use of Palestinian sources to establish the number of so-called "civilian" casualties in the conflict. A report filed late last night in one newspaper's on line edition claimed that 17 of the 21 Palestinian dead were civilians (according to Palestinian sources). The report has since been changed and rightly so in view of the fact that most media sources were aware that most of the casualties were indeed, aremd Hamas gunmen. In the fog of war, it's hard for the truth to get out.

HAMAS GETS PROPORTIONAL

Khaled Abu Toameh reports in the Jerusalem Post that "sources close to Hamas revealed over the weekend that the movement had 'executed' more than 35 Palestinians who were suspected of collaborating with Israel and were being held in various Hamas security installations" - Hamas moves on Fatah 'collaborators'.

"Fahmi Za'arir, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, accused Hamas of 'executing' a number of Fatah detainees. He said the Fatah leadership knew of at least two Fatah men who were shot dead by Hamas after being released from prison. He named them as Nasser Muhana and Saher al-Silawi.

"Za'arir said that several Fatah members who attended funerals of victims of the IAF strikes were severely beaten by Hamas militiamen who accused them of collaboration with Israel.

"It was 'shameful' that Hamas was directing its weapons and energies against its own people instead of fighting against Israel, the spokesman said."

Now, let me see.

This means the current death toll in the Hamas war on Palestinians is:

Hamas 0

Rest 35

I'll leave it to the mathematicians to work out the score in terms of proportionality as well as the odds that this massacre will make it into the mainstream media by tomorrow.

WE NEED TO TALK MORE ABOUT HAMAS

As the Israeli ground offensive begins in Gaza, it is inevitable that the death toll on both sides will continue to grow and it’s worth reflecting on the reasons why Israel has had to enter territory, which it left more than three years ago in the hope that the Palestinians would grasp the opportunity to show the world and their neighbours that they could turn this no longer occupied territory into an example of a well-conducted peaceful society.

Surely, such a course would have convinced all and sundry that it was time for the Israelis to also leave the West Bank and, in this way an independent Palestinian state could be established alongside Israel bringing an end to "the cycle of violence", to the "occupation" and to Hanan Ashrawi's repeated ranting on the subject?

We’ll never know the answer to that because Hamas, Islamic Jihad and various others used the opportunity to fire rockets at Israel even as the last Jewish settlements in Gaza were being dismantled. Ultimately, Hamas took control of Gaza and turned it into a terrorist base. Recently, it imposed Sharia Law on its population.

In June 2008, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian brokered truce, which it never honoured from the very beginning. There was a lull in the number of missiles fired at Israeli populated centres but they never stopped and Hamas took no steps to prevent them from being fired. Contrary to the requirements of the truce, Hamas used the lull period to re-arm through tunnels from Egypt.

I’ve been alerted by ICJS research into an interesting article in the International Herald Tribune by Steven Erlanger In Egyptian border town, commerce via tunnel halts. The article is by no means sympathetic to Israel but it clearly demonstrates how the Israelis are focussed on attacking military targets i.e. the tunnels used for smuggling weaponry and not the commercial targets.

"Hamas, the residents said, controls other tunnels, conduits for guns, cement, explosives and fertilizers for explosives."

"Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. 'If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.,' he said. 'When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.'"

It’s clear that much of the sophisticated missiles used to attack Israeli civilian centres came into Gaza in this way and why the setting up of a legitimate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been complicated by Hamas duplicity and lies.

This duplicity also goes far beyond the thugs in Hamas and extends to some in the media. Fairfax correspondent Paul McGeough was shilling yesetrday for Hamas in an opinion piece Incursion in November was the last straw blaming Israel's November 2008 attack on terrorists for the collapse of the truce and sneeringly suggesting that the country's "global PR machine" (that's right - the international conspiracy again!) was behind its claim that "the objective was to destroy a tunnel which they feared Hamas might use to abduct an Israeli soldier - as they had done in the past."

This simplistic view defies logic when you consider that the tunnel really existed and it was being dug from Gaza into Israel and there was no other possible use for such tunnel apart from the entry into Israel for sinister, terrorist purposes. Certainly, neither McGeough nor any other military expert, commentator or journalist can come up with any other explanation. Further, in these circumstances, any sovereign state would be entitled to prevent that activity although there are some who would have you believe that "any sovereign state" does not include the Jewish State.

That's one of the many reasons why the current ground offensive, as undesirable as that might seem to many, has had to be undertaken. For the safety of Israel's citizens and ultimately, for the safety of the Palestinians and the rest of the world.

Finally, if you think McGeough is a nasty piece of work then, for its sheer bastardry, it's worth contemplating this fairy floss obituary of a would-be mass murderer from the Guardian.

THE TRUTH ABOUT GAZA

Marty Peretz in The New Republic writes about the lies being disseminated about Gaza. In the Arab world, the word "genocide" is used freely to describe what is happening in the Gaza Strip but, of course, there is no genocide in Sudan - The Truth About Gaza:

"This lying also extends to details that can be quickly checked by reporters who don't.

Would you not think that, with the hysteria about starvation, you'd see some bloated bellies on the TV? Instead, you see healthy children and strong young men in the rituals of resistance.

And sneakers. You have to look closely at the sneakers, seemingly new and, of course, costly.

In the midst of all this catastrophe propaganda there are some facts. These were provided to me by Jacob Dallal, an old and trusted friend who happens to work for the spokesman's unit of the I.D.F. He has been my informant in several comparable situations: he has never told me a lie or even a fib.

• Today (Wed.), 93 truckloads with 2,500 tons of food and medical supplies were transferred to Gaza.

• Since the beginning of the operation in Gaza Saturday, 6,500 tons of food and medicine were transferred to Gaza.

• The World Food Program has informed Israel that they will not be resuming shipment of food into Gaza because their warehouses are at full capacity, with enough supplies for at least 2 weeks.

• 12 Palestinians from Gaza entered Israel today (Wed.) for medical treatment."

So while UNWRA tells us there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of Israel's so-called "siege" of Gaza (which is in fact part of a much wider initiative against the thugs of Hamas) and parts of the media and handwringing letter writers drone on ad infinitim about "stavation" and even "genocide" and crazed cartoonists hateful and deceptive images about the Israelis who are the only people on earth willing to feed citizens of its enemies, the World Food Program (which should know better) has plenty of supplies of food and doesn't want more shipped in at this stage.

What more do you need to prove that UNWRA is a totally corrupt and shameful tool for the Hamas propaganda machine and that the deception being perpetrated by its lies and repeated endlessly in the media constitutes a danger to the Palestinian people.

THE CHAOS THEORY - A CIVILIAN IN GAZA DIES

Several months ago, a butterfly flapped its wings in the Amazon and overnight a civilian died in Gaza.

The above is a photograph of the late Sheikh Nizar Rayyan who passed on from this mortal coil yesterday after an Israeli air force attack on his home. Those friends of his in the casual snapshot are top blokes - typical of Gaza's civilian population. Several members of Rayyan's family were also killed. The dead included two of the Sheikh's four wives (presumably there's 18 times that much waiting for him where he's going) and several of his children. The IDF warned of the attack but the Sheik decided to stay along with his family of human shields. In other words, this animal forced his wives and kids to die with him - Palestinian Maan Newsagency.

Those in the mainstream media who are looking after the Hamas interests are falling over themselves to paint this nasty piece of work as a political leader of Hamas rather than a military leader.

BBC claims Hamas considered Rayyan "to be a political leader, but he often wore a military uniform and was close to the group's armed wing," and added that "until now, political leaders have not been killed." - Hamas leader killed in air strike

Reuters says the 49-year-old cleric was "regarded as one of Hamas's most hardline political leaders" in Sights and sounds of Israel's Gaza offensive. The Melbourne Age describes Rayyan as "a hardliner within the Islamist group".

Judge for yourself whether you think the Sheik, who advocated the reintroduction of suicide bombing, is a civilian or otherwise. If you believe he was a civilian who bore no responsibility for the deaths of his family, then you probably also believe that the assorted weaponry in the photo above is available from your local Toyworld store (hat tip: Israellycool)

The media campaign to disinfect and cleanse Hamas and to demonise Israel in the eyes of the world continues unabated notwithstanding the Islamic organisation's campaign of genocide against the Jewish State and notwithstanding its policy of indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians. Thanks to the eagle eye of blogger Elder of Ziyon we know that Hamas tells a lot of fibs (no surprise there). The Elder has come upon a question and answer section on a Hamas message board site called http://www.almoltaqa.ps/ containing this interesting Q&A:

What is the justification behind the martyrdom operations against the " Israeli" civilians? There is no justification for targeting civilians. It is against Islam to deliberately kill unarmed civilians during jihad. In addition, our doctrine is to target the enemies army, security services, and support apparatus. But it is known that Zionist society is a militarized society. Service in the army is mandatory; and reserve duty continues past the age of 40. Our determined stance is that unarmed persons on both sides of the conflict should be left out of the fighting. However, we will not accept giving the enemy a free hand against our civilians.

Pigs can fly too!

There's no shortage of those in the media making excuses for Hamas and suggesting that Israel should talk to them despite their avowed intention to slit as many Jewish throats as they can find. The Age's David Bernstein got into the act today with this piece - Inadvertent martyrs to the cause of Hamas. Unfortunately, the writer is so mixed up and confused in his attempt to be even handed that he loses the plot half way through to the point where he's making as much sense as the newspaper's cartoonist Leunig whose work is highly regarded by the Iranian regime as the leading edge in anti Semitic daubing.

And while there is no shortage of Arabs who criticise Hamas for starting the fray, some of our nastiest letter writers froth at the mouth in disgusting displays of ignorance and racism. Frothing at the mouth, Elizabeth Attard of North Fitzroy wrote to the Herald Sun that "Israel is now the new Hitler" for acting in self defence against the Hamas fascistas. In the same newspaper a few days ago, the thankfully long forgotten former far left ALP person Joan Coxedge and a family member named Cedric also weighed in with similar attacks on the Jewish State. Does anyone know when she changed her political allegiances to where she now obviously stands well to the right of Atilla the Hun?

So what next?

Over at the Augean Stables they're predicting that a big Pallywood production is about to be unleashed by Hamas to rival Kafr Qana. It would not surprise if some of Gaza's remaining "journalists" are writing their first draft as we speak for publication in the usual places. Canada's National Post is right onto this with Why Israel can't afford to hold back.

"In other recent “massacres” — Jenin, Bethlehem and Qana, for instance — Palestinian and Hezbollah estimates of the number of dead turned out to be grossly exaggerated. Israel’s opponents have mastered such techniques as digging up graves and stealing bodies from morgues to inflate the carnage on the ground, and much of the Western media has reported casualty figures uncritically."

And in a late news flash we can reveal that the man with the green helmet is on his way to Gaza to add to the chaos.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE AGE

Tragedy was averted when authorities closed this Beersheba school subsequently hit by an Iranian made Grad missile fired by Hamas. It appears in the Blank Pages of the Age but you won't find it in the newspaper. Why?

The Melbourne Age continues to wage the battle for Hamas and against the Israeli and Palestinian people with its jaundiced coverage of the news from the embattled region.

The headline from today's story by Jason Koutsoukis is "Israeli PM rejects ceasefire proposal" as if the onus of stopping the shooting lies with Israel rather than Hamas which deliberately provoked the current conflagration when it declared the so-called June 2008 truce dead and buried on 19 December 2008 and then initiated a barrage of missile file at Israeli civilian areas. As usual the emphasis is solely on the hurt felt by the Gazans as a result of Israel's targeting of Hamas terrorist operations and the Israeli civilians under fire are completely ignored.

There's no mention of the fact that Israel's largest cities in the nearby Negev have been targeted by Hamas or that Hamas has increased the range of its weapons during the period of that so-called "truce". Unreported was the story of the Iranian built Grad missile which hit a school in Beersheba and the fact that disaster was averted by a decision to close the school that day.

The message of these attacks is an inconvenience for anyone who wants to portray the war as one of Israel as an oppressor breaching all norms of behaviour against the oppressed Gazans because it demonstrates clearly the murderous motives of a Hamas that never intended to honour the "truce", that deliberately provoked the Israelis into their action and that, in all likelihood, will not honour any similarly negotiated truce in the future.

Backing up the Age's slanted reporting is an Op Ed from the appalling Michael Shaik, a mouthpiece for Australians for Palestine, better known for embarrassing itself while hounding Jewish ALP candidates at the 2007 Federal election. The writer is on decidedly shaky ground factually in his piece- The deadly consequences of the games that Israel plays.

Shaik starts off well enough by quoting Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard's statement:

"Hamas has broken the ceasefire and engaged in an act of aggression against Israel. Israel has responded."— Julia Gillard

However, after that, he finds himself challenged by the truth. He claims the Gaza Strip is the most densely populated part of the world today which is rubbish. Tel Aviv is slightly more densely populated as are many other cities across the world. Hong Kong is 50% more densely populated than Gaza.

However, Shaik's big lie (if any one of them can be said to be bigger than any other in this encyclopaedia of drivel) is this one:-

"On November 4, the ceasefire was shattered by the Israeli Army when it crossed into Gaza to destroy a tunnel and kill six Palestinian militants ..."

Shaik's nose must have been growing longer by the second when he wrote that piece of nonsense but even there he was aided by the Age in his ability to try to pull off the deception.

Back on 1 November 2008, Jason Koutsoukis produced this puff piece on how the 800 tunnels between Gaza and Egypt were being used to smuggle vital supplies like food and petrol for the poor suffering Gazans - Blockade forces Gazans underground to survive. The tunnels might well serve this purpose but Koutsoukis was being hoodwinked by his subjects because, in fact, their primary use is for smuggling lethal rocketry into Gaza. These missiles are now being poured onto the heads of Israel's civilian populations and are indiscriminately killing Arab and Jew alike.

But what of the operation of 4 November? Koutsoukis described the operation in Ceasefire in danger of collapse (notice, it's the Israelis who he claims are endangering the ceasefire). The story is about the IDF uncovering the construction of a cross-border tunnel between Gaza and Israel and given that this happened only three days after his 1 November story about tunnels appared in the same newspaper, wasn't it just a little strange that no mention was made of the sinister nature of this particular tunnel?

This tunnel was heading into Israel, not Egypt. This tunnel could only have been used for the dangerous purposes which the IDF claimed it was being used for and accordingly, the IDF was acting quite properly in attacking the terrorists involved.

All this went completely over the heads of Koustouskis, the Age and naturally Mr. Shaik but the truth is that the very existence of this tunnel is proof of a breach from the Palestinian side of the "truce/ceasefire/lull/whatever" and the full story of the tunnels (including their use for arms smuggling) is proof that Hamas never intended to honour that "whatever". Further, it demonstrates how newspapers and journalists can be used by evil forces to further their nasty designs.

Apart from their dishonesty, Shaik and his AFP group are apologists for the fascistic policies of Hamas. Little wonder therefore that they don't see eye to eye with Julia Gillard and her government's principled stand on the subject.

An excellent aid to understanding how some within the media of the West are working to do further damage to the prospect of peace and the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, is Melanie Phillips' Groundhog day for the fifth column of malice. She explains how some in the media are playing a role in defending the terrorism of Hamas in Gaza and I agree fully with her conclusion in which she asks:-

"Isn’t there a case for legal action against these media outlets on account of their blood libels, for indirectly aiding the perpetrators of attempted genocide?"

[See also: Tunnel Vision]

Quisling writes for the Times

Writing in the Times, William Sieghart snuggles up close to Hamas - We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas.

Wonder if the boys at Hamas would be so accommodating to this buffoon if his name was "Cohen" and didn't sound so much like "Sieg Heil"?

The Age still treats its readers like idiots

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

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

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

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

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

STILL WAITING FOR THE FULL PICTURE

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

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

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

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

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

Surprise

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

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

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

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

Now, that's an idea!

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

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

Death to all Juice

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

No peace until Israel leave Gaza

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

PEACE PRIZE WINNER EXPOSES HERSELF

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

Then this question was asked:

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEHIND GAZA

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

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

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

Israel: Palestinian Militants Fire Rockets From Gaza - December 17

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

Israel: 3 Militants Killed in Gaza - December 24

Gaza Rocket Fire Intensifies - December 25

Israel Issues an Appeal to Palestinians in Gaza - December 26

Israeli Gaza Strike Kills More Than 200 - December 27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PALESTINIAN MISSILES CLAIM TWO MORE PALESTINIAN VICTIMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHRISTMAS 2008 - HITLER RULES IN BRITAIN AND GAZA

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

Iran's Ahmadinejad to give alternative Christmas message.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's right Hamas!

HAMAS AND THE OPPRESSION OF THE PALESTINIANS

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHRISTMAS 2008 - THE HAMAS STORY

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

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

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

Imprisoned in the open air

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IRAN THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

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

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

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

O'BAMA'S MESSAGE TO THE ARABS

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

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

LETTER OF THE WEEK

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

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

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

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

Vic Alhadeff

CEO, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies

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

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

BLOW UP

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

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

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

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

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

GROTESQUE AND ORWELLIAN

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

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


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


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

PICTURE NOT WORTH A SINGLE WORD

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

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

Picture not worth 1000 words

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

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

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

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

ALAN FREEDMAN, East St Kilda

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

Mumbai just part of a bigger problem

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

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

BILL MATHEW, Parkville

Really Mr. Mathew?

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

The Jews.

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

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

Kristallnacht + 70 years

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

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

Only William Cooper and his people.

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

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

Speech by Israeli Ambassador Yuval Rotem

HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS

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

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

Staying silent where others have before

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

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

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

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

Sol Salbe, Maidstone

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

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

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

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

What is terrorism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY KILL THE RABBI?

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHEER AND UTTER FILTH

From this week's Sunday Age.

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

AGGRESSION IN MUMBAI

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

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

What's the root cause of these attacks?

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

SOME IRANIANS HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR

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

Dear Mr. Ahmadinejad,

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOSTAGES TO FEAR

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

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

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

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

THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER

More stupidity from the United Nations.

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

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

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

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

Rocket Science

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

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

Don't forget Palestine

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

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

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

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

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

THIS IS RESISTANCE!

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

THIS IS RESISTANCE!

WHO'S THE BUNNY?

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

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

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

DIGITAL FAKERY

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

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

Go figure!

POGROM A BLUEPRINT FOR TERROR

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

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

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

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

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

Tunnel Vision

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

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

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

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

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