Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Toulouse killer is a Muslim terrorist so the media narrative changes again

While all the media continued yesterday to assume (and indeed hope) that the Toulouse killer was a 'white racist' I questioned the rationality of the assumption, because it was clear to me that the attacks seemed more in keeping with Islamic terrorism. This morning we hear - surprise, surprise -  that the killer is Mohammed Merah, an Islamic terrorist of Algerian origin, who claimed that the killings were in revenge for 'Israel killing Palestinian children and for French military involvement in the Middle East. 

Many media outlets carried this image from a multi-cultural rally in France yesterday. The banner reads "In France we kill blacks, Jews, and Arabs".  When we will be seeing the more accurate banner "In France Muslims killJews and soldiers"?
But no sooner was this announced than the media was already spinning the story in a way to suit its own narrative again. I just watched Sky News coverage and they were stressing that the killer and his family lived in a very poor housing block surrounded by wealthier neighbours, and that clearly social deprivation and poverty were a key factor. To emphasize this narrative they then interviewed a French female journalist living in London who claimed that what was terrible about the attack was that the killer was 'French' and that it was therefore 'an attack against diversity'. She said that it was all down to the racist climate in France which had been made worse by Nikolas Sarkozy in the last five years and she picked out, as an example of racist lack of tolerance, the burka ban he had introduced.

So there you have it in a nutshell. When a terrorist grabs tiny Jewish children by the hair and shoots them through the head this can only be the work of a white racist who actually hates Muslims as much as Jews (Tuesday's media headlines). But when on Wednesday we discover he is a Muslim terrorist then suddenly his actions are justified by poverty and are a natural reaction both to anti-Muslim attitudes in France and the actions of Israel against Palestinians. And of course the real victims in all of this are Muslims.

Finally, I wonder where Mohammed Merah got the idea into his head that Israel deliberately kills Palestinian children? It couldn't, by chance, have been from the western media who have been peddling these Arab lies and blood libels unquestioningly for many years now?

11.40 update: The headlines of all the usual media news suspects (BBC, Haaretz and bizarrely even the Jerusalem Post) - all of which yesterday headlined the fact that the killer was a suspected "white racist/Nazi'  - are all concealing the identify of the killer (although of course they are forced to reveal it in the actual story). In the UK today's budget will ensure that the story fails to even get much of a mention from now on, so many UK residents will forever assume that the killer was indeed a white Nazi with a hatred for Muslims.


Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The media response to the Toulouse killings

Today's Sun
The main stream media – which after every Islamic terrorist attack warns us not to assume that the killers were Muslims or had any connection to Islam – has been very quick to identify the Toulouse killer as a ‘right wing racist’. BBC News analyst Christian Fraser asserts:
" it is an inescapable fact that all the victims have been Jewish, black or of north African descent."
The problems with this is that it is also an inescapable fact that all the victims have been Jewish civilians or French soldiers. And all Jews and all NATO forces (which includes the French) are considered ”fair game” for every Muslim terrorist group in the world.  

See my full article on this at my new Times of Israel blog.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Arrested in the UK for criticising Iran

Following on from my story about the UK man imprisoned for 12 months for displaying posters that could cause offence to Muslims, comes the story of two Israeli men arrested at Heathrow after a stewardess overheard them making "inappropriate and potentially threatening comments regarding Iran" while on a BA flight from Las Vegas. News reports on the story are pretty skimpy (the few sites interested in the story seem to be anti-semitic and Jihadist sites and blogs who are typically using it to 'expose' the evil intents of Israel vis a vis Iran).   However, contrary to what was stated in the few early reports (such as the JC on and also this one in the Mail) Rod Liddle in today's Sun claims that the men were not disruptive in any way and no passengers reported any concerns about them (perhaps Sky News will get round to apologising some time for the tickertape headline "Israelis arrested on BA flight in terrorist alert" they put out when the story first broke). So it appears that a single stewardess took offence at two guys for criticising a terrorist regime that daily threatens the existence of their own country - and on this basis they were arrested and accused of being terrorists.

The UK's political leaders are continually telling Israel that the country has no right to defend itself from Iran - several have hinted that any strike on Iran would be 'illegal'. But now it appears that it is also illegal for Israeli citizens even to discuss the threat posed by Iran.

Coming soon to the UK:

  • Man imprisoned for expressing support for Israel - deemed offensive to all Muslims
  • Jews imprisoned for attending Holocause memorial event - deemed offensive to all Nazis. 
  • Man imprisoned after telling his psychiatrist that he once had a negative though about Muslims
  • Man imprisoned for displaying posters that could offend Muslims (oops already had that...)


Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Imprisoned in the UK for criticising Islam

The national UK media has had almost nothing to say about the astonishing case of Darren Conway who on March 6 was sentenced to a year in prison for posting 'anti-Islamic materials' in the window of his ground-floor apartment in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.  There is a very good piece by Bruce Bawer about the case in which he wonders why no information about the actual posters has been provided in any news reports. He suspects that the material is simply standard factual information about Islam and Mohammed (including the fact that, by having sex with the  9-year old Aisha, Muhammad would be classified as a pedophile in any Western society).

In order to find out exactly what the posters were I have just filed a Freedom of Information Request to the Crown Prosection Service -anyone else can do this by completing the form here (you can send it by email). The details needed for the form are no more than provided above.

Obviously I will post the response here when I get it.

Update: The Crown Prosecution Service has its own report about the case on its website here. However, it also provides no concrete details about the posters beyond the quotes of Prosecutor Judith Walker who tells us that "Although they were targeted at Muslims, they would cause offence to virtually anyone that saw them." Sounds a very grand claim.

Update 15 March 2012: Arrested in the UK for criticising Iran  


Monday, March 12, 2012

London Evening Standard blood libels Israel - but gives Syrian regime murderers benefit of doubt

Blood libel - and classic Pali photo stunt
One of my previous posts about Western media reporting on Israel is typically pertinent in the way the media have handled the latest rocket barrage (nearly 200 since Friday) against Israel from Gaza  (Elder of Ziyon has been doing a great job both reporting the truth and also the media lies). But the worst example is surely in tonight's London Evening Standard - a free mass circulation paper. Despite the catastrophic impact on Israeli daily life, every one of the 21 Palestinians killed in Israel's response have been Islamic Jihad and PRC terrorists (confirmed by the terrorist organisations themselves).Yet the Standard is leading with a story - which turns out to be false - that Israel has killed a 16-year-old boy in 'school uniform'.  As Elder reports even the notoriously anti-Israel biased AFP asserts that:
acording to an AFP correspondent at the scene, there were no signs of any impact on the ground which could have been caused by a missile, with the most likely cause of his death being some kind of explosive device he was carrying
What is also fascinating is that this is by far the most extensively reported foreign news story, despite it being on a day when: an American soldier killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, there were multiple suicide bombings by Islamists killings dozens of Christians in Nigeria, a massive suicide bombing by Islamists killing 19 mourners at a funeral in Pakistan, not to mention other suicide bombings by Islamists in Pakistan and Iraq. Moreover, today in Homs Syria 45 bodies - all women and children brutually massacred have been discovered and very graphically shown elsewhere. Note that the Standard does partly 'cover' this story in a very small article underneath the large Israel blood libel article. But note two things: 1) the Standard reports 12 deaths even though the Syrian resistence claimed 45, i.e. unlike the claims of the Palestinan terrorists, it does not automatically accept whatever they say as being true; 2) the word 'murdered' is in inverted commas in the title, in stark contrast to Israel kills schoolboy in the other headline.

Is it any wonder that my daughter - who goes to a Jewish School asks me why Twitter is trending with "Israel is a terrorist nation"? (update: this is also partly due to a fraudulant UN worker tweet).

Update 14 March: This morning several major media outlets were reporting that an 8-year old Palestinian boy had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli air strike (incredibly the Jerusalem Post had this as its top story this morning). It turns out - as reported by even the notoriously anti-Israel AP - that contrary to the previous Palestinian claim lapped up without question by all news agencies: 
The boy’s relatives and witnesses later said the boy was marching in a funeral procession for a Gaza militant when he was struck in the head by an errant bullet. At the time, gunmen were firing in the air, they said.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

The Jewish Naqba and how its story is suppressed

There is a great article by Michelle Huberman "Where are the Ashkenazim?" that describes how the Ashkenazi liberal elite in Israel have continually downplayed the catastrophe that befell the Jews living in Arab lands after 1948. While the whole world has been brainwashed into accepting the narrative of the Palestinain 'naqba' - where about 600,000 Arabs fled Israel at the request of the invading Arab armies - few people are aware of the far greater number of Jews who were forcibly expelled from their homes in Arab countries.  
The article struck a special chord with me because this subject came up last September in a talk by Dr Noam Leshem who is the archetypal Israeli liberal that Michelle refers to. Leshem, who is apparently employed by BICOM to 'promote Israel' and also 'advises senior Israeli politicians',  actually presents only the standard Palestinian anti-Zionist narrative. A member of the audience asked him specifically about why the Israeli government did not make more political capital from the Jewish naqba. His response was abrupt and rude. He said something like 'that is a dead subject - there is absolutely nothing to be gained from raising it'. The problem for people like him, of course, is that it does not fit in with his narrative, so in the traditional leftist way he simply refuses to acknowledge it.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

The benefits of being married to a Taliban

From today's Times' article "Burka brigade: wives take up arms for the Taleban" we have this classic:
As with nearly all Afghan women, Mahmuda's movement is severely restricted by her husband. But she says that being the wife of an insurgent has its benefits.
"They are fighters and when they come home they are tired and don't beat us".


Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Is Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain an anti-Semite?

For a moment imagine the following unlikely scenario:
A terrorist organisation in Sweden (that is known to include Jewish members) announces that it intends to kill as many Muslims as it can in Sweden by blowings up every mosque during Friday prayers.  The Swedish Police subsequently find the stockpile of  bombs the terrorists were planning to use and state that they intend to remotely detonate them in such a way that nobody is harmed. Although they know who the terrorists are the Police say they will not take any further action against them (after all, the Swedes are pretty tolerant like that).

Next suppose that, on hearing this news, the Israeli ambassador to the UK requests an interview with the political editor of the Sun to make his country's views about the matter clear. He says that if the Swedish authorities carry out their threat to destroy the terrorists' bombs then he will consider it as an act of war against Israel. The reason, he says, is "because it will have an impact on Israel. Israel has to safeguard its interests since it has many Jewish citizens and they would not take it lying down".
If that really happened you can be sure that the Ambassador would be univerally condemned as an anti-Muslim hatemonger and would be booted out of the country for promoting 'hate-crime'.

Well, if you replace the terrorist organisation in the story with the Iranian political elite, Muslims in Sweden for Jews in Israel, and finally the Israeli Ambassador with the Pakistani equivalent, then the story turns out to be not made up at all as you can see from today's interview in the Sun with Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan. Although the interview covers more than just his concerns about Israel and Iran, here is the relevant part:

Tough-talking Mr Hasan also declared Pakistan would have no choice but to support Iran if "aggressive" Israel attacks it. ... Mr Hasan said: "We would not like Israel to attack any country, irrespective of whether it's Iran or any nuclear country. We wouldn't like to be seen as part of Israel's campaign against any country. If Israel attacks Iran, it will have an impact on Pakistan as well. "We will have to safeguard our own interests. We also have a Shia population in Pakistan who will not take it lying down.
Since, in my hypothetical example, the Ambassador would be univerally condemned as an anti-Muslim hatemonger, can anybody explain why Wajid Shamsul Hasan has not been expelled from the UK as an anti-Semite? He has offered no reason for siding with Iran against Israel
other than a purely racial one.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Times fails to notice anti-semitism of Syrian demonstrators

One of the universally consistent features of the 'Arab spring' (be it in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria) has been that the so-called freedom fighters have dubbed the leaders they were overthrowing as Jewist/Zionist stooges. And of course the leaders they were overthrowing have called the demonstrators Jewish/Zionist stooges. The main stream media have, despite the overwhelming evidence, chosen to ignore this phenomenum completely since it does not fit easily into their pre-conceived world view.

It is now clear that similar irrational anti-semitism is also fueling the Syrian revolt. While Assad has claimed repeatedly that Zionists in league with Al Quaeda are behind the demonstrations against his regime, the demonstrators themselves have dubbed Assad as a Jewish/Zionist stooge. But the bizarre anti-semitism has been taken a step further by the Syrian demonstrators. Take a close look at the photo here from yesterday's Times. The caption says that "demonstrators show their contempt for President Assad.." because it is a large image of his face they are trampling on. But at the bottom right (enlarged) you can see part of another face they are trampling on. It is actually that of Hassan Nasrallah - head of Hezbollah - who is Assad's client in Lebanon. Since the demonstrators have drawn a Star of David on Nasrallah's head they clearly believe that he too is a Jewish/Zionist stooge. And of the course the Times makes no comment at all about this.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Colonel Kemp in Chigwell

I went to see Colonel Richard Kemp - the former Commander of the British forces in Afghanistan and now staunch supporter of Israel - speak at a synagogue in Chigwell this evening. Kemp is every bit as impressive in person as indicated by his BBC interview during Operation Cast Lead and his famous UN speech. He spoke for about 45 minutes and then answered questions for about an hour. There were plenty of new insights for me, including the extent to which Israel has provided security, military and intelligence support to the UK (but which cannot be admitted publicly by the Government because of what he sees as their blatant appeasement of Islamic extremists). When asked why he supported Israel so passionately he said (after joking about being paid by Mossad) because it was the right thing to do because his extensive professional dealings with the Israel Defence Forces - and his knowledge of similar threats faced by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - meant he KNEW that the accusations against them were false; when he heard the libellous accusations made against the IDF during Cast Lead he said that he felt compelled to counter the lies just as he would if the same lies had been made against the British Army.

Other interesting nuggets:
  • When he was asked by the BBC for the interview above he said they were assuming he was going to do the standard 'blame Israel for everything' expert analysis. As you can see the airhead interviewer was completely flummoxed and taken by surprise that anybody would actually defend Israel. He has never been invited back by the BBC.
  • He has been in Israel discussing a PR campaign in which he plans to help enroll military experts from around the world to share their (similar) experiences about working with the IDF and their similar opinions on the way they deal with the threats they encounter.
  • With Liam Fox now forced out, the Government has lost one of the only members of the  Cabinet who understands the threat Israel faces. Indeed the rest are adopting a policy of appeasement against the Islamic threat that he compared to the 1930s appeasement of the Nazis.
  • Israel has the capability to pull off a conventional military strike to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions, but that unless there was a regime change in Iran that country would never cease its ambition to obtain nucelar weapons.
  • In response to my (loaded) question about his thoughts on the most incompetent politician in Israel's history (Ehud Barak) being Defence Minsiter at such a critical time, he declined to answer on 'diplomatic grounds' but it was clear that he shared my views and concerns. 
  • He has been the victim of anti-semitic abuse - despite of course not being Jewish. 
  • In speaking about the discredited UN Golstone Report on the Gaza war he ridiculed Col. Desmond Travers - a former senior officer in the Irish army - who was the only military expert among the four members of the Goldstone Commission. He said he found it hard to understand why the UN chose as its military expert somebody from an army that had never fought a war. Travers - whose contempt for Israel was already on the record after he had falsely accused them of killing Irish UN troops in Lebanon, apparently stated in his report that Hamas had never used mosques to store weapons. When he was asked what his evidence was for this claim he said "well I wouldn't"

Monday, January 02, 2012

Muslim Hitler worship in London

I was not actually going to post about my visit to Madame Tussaud's in London yesterday (1 Jan 2012) because I wasn't sure how much could be extrapolated from a single visit, but by a remarkable coincidence, Daphne Anson reports today on a very similar recent experience written by American Ben Shapiro.

What I saw were several different groups of Muslims (women with hijabs and men) queuing to have their photo taken with the Hitler waxwork and two of the men actually gave the Nazi salue. As it was a bank holiday (and raining heavily) it was incredibly crowded in there and I did not want to stay long. I looked at the scene around Hitler for about 3 minutes. I also saw two other European looking men have their photo taken while giving the Nazi salue, so it would be wrong to say this was a uniquely Muslim phenomenum, although these two guys seem to be doing it as a joke. In contrast the Muslims, as similarly observed by Ben Shapiro, seemed to regard Hitler is a genuinely admired leader.

Unlike Ben Shapiro I did not witness any anti-semitic scenes around the Einstein waxwork. Perhaps not many people know he was Jewish.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Balanced reporting as usual

Today Turkish airplanes killed 35 Kurdish villagers on the border with Iraq.

There have been no spontaneously arranged anti-Turk demos sympathising the plight of the stateless Kurds outside the Turkish embassy in the UK. There have been no mass demonstrations of any sort and not a word from Clinton, Obama, Hague or Cameron. There has been not one word of condemnation from the UN. In fact the story has barely been mentioned in the UK News. On Sky News it got a whole 10 seconds right at the end of the main 30-minute news, which managed to convey an impression of sympathy with Turkey for making an honest mistake.

Yet when Israel's airplanes kill three terrorists in the act of carrying out an attack against civilians, all other news is put on hold while the world unites in its condemnation of Israel. In fact, the world no longer needs incidents of Israel defending itself or even building a house in Jerusalem in order to unite in condemnation. It now has the artifically created phenomenum of 'sexism' with which to bash Israel while the rest of the Middle East burns without any concern from the West. While staying silent on the massacres in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, Hillary Clinton  has actually issued a statement of condemnation of Israel for the fact that some ultra-orthodox man refused to sit next to a woman in a bus in Jerusalem.

Isn't it nice to know that Israel is treated with the same degree of fairness and balance as all other countries.

Monday, December 12, 2011

One more for the "You couldn't make it up" list

The Arab world is 'electing' Islamic fundmentalist governments everywhere, Syria is burning in a civil war with over 5000 now dead, Hamas and its allies in Gaza are launching rockets now every day against Israel without fear of retribution and Hezbollah has started to do the same from Lebanon while also attacking UNIFIL troops there. Iran is threatening to close the straits of Hormuz and in addition to threatening Israel with annihiliation is also threatening its other neighbours; Egpyt, where mobs with government approval destroyed the Israeli embassy, is now allowing Hamas and Al Quaeda to operate in the Sinai (meaning that the road in Israel to Eilat is effectively closed); and of course the Palestinian Authority - which has refused all offers to return to negotations and is honouring terrorist murderers with all kinds of money and prizes while ratcheting up its hateful Israel deligitimization campaign throughout the UN and UNESCO.

None of that is an 'onstacle to peace'.  But Israel planning to build 40 new homes? This has brought world outrage and official UN condemnation:

UN: 40 new Efrat homes prejudice the peace process

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Hatred for Israel reaches new levels

So now it is official.
Sarkozy to Obama talking about Israel's elected Prime Minister (not realising the microphones were still on):

"I can't bear to see him any more, he's a liar,"
Obama's response:
"You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day."

Sarkozy and Obama might try to cover their tracks by claiming that their comments show frustration with just one man, but this is actually about contempt for Israel. They would not have dreamed of making such comments about an Arab leader, let alone a supposed ally; indeed, even yesterday Obama was STILL talking about appeasing Ahmedinejad with new concessions. There is something particularly ironic about the liar claim; not just that Sarkozy and Obama are two of the biggest liars in political history - but that (as I pointed out here) Arab lies are at the root of the whole Middle East narrative, but nobody has called them to account for it. It is certainly true that Netanyahu has lied - most notably every time recently when he has stated that Obama is a friend of Israel he has lied through his teeth to cover up for Obama and he has also lied when he states publicly that France and the other EU countries can be a force for good in the Middle East.

What is also incredible about this story is a) how it was first covered up willingly by the journalists present at the request of Sarkozy and Obama. Elder of Ziyon covers this aspect well; and b) how it has been barely mentioned in the left-wing dominated Israeli press (presumably because their hatred for Netanyahu is trumped only by their love for Obama, and even they realise this story is more damaging to Obama than it is to Netanyahu).

And of course Cameron the stooge, in attempting to distance himself from the faux-pas manages to make things worse, as the report states:
David Cameron's spokesman said Mr Netanyahu was "an important partner" in Middle East issues but that Britain did not agree with him on everything. "We think Israel needs to stop settlement building and return to talks," he said. 
Nice even-handed comment that, ignoring the fact that Israel ceased all 'settlement' activity for a year but it was the Palestinians who were the ones who refused to 'return to talks'.

Perhaps we are approaching the end game now. Israel never had any real friends but at least under Bush and Blair the US and the UK were not enemies (France after 1967 always was). That has now clearly changed. None of the 'major powers' will accept a 'peace deal' that is anything less than a full Israeli surrender to every Palestinian demands, so the peace process is dead.  And Israel will certainly have to deal with Iran alone.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

What the pro-Israel lobby should be telling people

The various pro-Israel groups in the UK are desperate to tell the world how the Israelis are really decent people who understand the legitimate demands of the Palestinians, who want to have a two-state solution living in peace with their neighbours blah, blah. They even run courses now in how to argue with people who say Israel is an apartheid state (the essence being that you have to ream off all kinds of facts which attempt to disprove the claim).  But why should you give credibility to a lie by even responding to it?  If a stranger told you that he wanted to kill your mother because he had heard she was actually an alien from the planet Zog, would you attempt to list off to this stranger all of the many qualities of your mother that proved she was human rather than alien? I don't think so. What you should be doing is exposing the person who made the accusation as an ignorant bigoted nutjob. It is about time that the pro-Israel groups (and the Israeli government for that matter) started to tell the narrative as it is. And that is exactly how Pat Condell tells it here.


Thursday, November 03, 2011

Why is a Palestinian Muslim so much more worthy than any other Muslim?

I have written before about how the Palestinians receive more international aid (and by a VERY long way) than any other people in the world despite being far wealthier per capita than many other countries (including almost all of Africa and several Arab countries). I have discovered a definitive - and indisputable - measure of the relative value of Muslims around the world as rated by the Muslims in the UK. Take a look at the table here sent to donors of the charity "Muslim Hands" (reg 1105056, Head Office 148 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham). It very clearly puts a financial 'value' on Muslims in some 70 countries around the world. Although almost every country listed there has more Muslims than 'Palestine', the mandatory charity donation for 'Palestine' is £795 - three times more than the next most 'valued' country Algeria. Black Muslims in African countries - far poorer and more desperate than the Palestinians, are especially lowly valued. Malawi, which actually has nearly twice as many Muslims as 'Palestine' is worth just £35, meaning that each Palestinian Muslim is worth over 44 times more.

What is especially interesting about this is that the Charity clearly has some qualms about its Palestine 'valuation' because, unlike any other country listed, it breaks 'Palestine' into three 'sub countries', namely Palestine (Hebron), Palestine (Jersusalem), and Palestine (Gaza). Despite this the three Palestines still manage to comfortably get 1st, 2nd and 4th places in the value table. And quite why the Palestinians of Jerusalem are in there at all is especially puzzling. There are only 140,000 of them yet they are valued at a whopping £285. Although the average per capita income of a Jerusalem Muslim is about 30 times that of a Pakistani, the 174 million Pakistani Muslims are only valued at £55. Taking account of population size and per capita income that means a Palestinian in Jerusalem is valued nearly two hundred thousand times more than a Pakistani Muslim.

And to think that so many anti-Israel critics in the UK damned the 1000 to 1 Schalit deal as 'proof' that Israel valued Jewish lives so much more than Muslims.

I wonder why the Muslim world values Palestinian Muslims so far above all others?

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Arab lies: the elephant in the room

I've just written the following self-explanatory letter to the Times:
Libya's acting PM Mahmoud Jibril  has continued to insist that Gaddafi was 'killed in crossfire'. The Libyans are saying the same about the death of Gaddafi's son Muatassim. Yet he was filmed after his capture in perfect health smoking a cigarette. Shortly after that, videos emerged of his slaughtered body.

No sane person mourns the murderous thug Gaddafi (although the Western leader now rejoicing his demise- Cameron, Blair, Obama, the Clintons and Sarkozi- were the very ones who for 6 years prior to the revolution told us he was fully rehabilitated and that people like me were bigoted for thinking he had not changed).

But what is interesting is that the top man in the 'new' Libya is clearly seen to be telling blatant lies and even some of the main stream media is raising eyebrows about it. What nobody is allowed to say - because they would be accused of being racists - is that telling lies is what Arabs do when they speak to the West. And this is the ultimate 'elephant in the room' of Middle East politics. When Arab leaders speak (and I am not just thinking of Assad and Ahmedinejad but they are especially good examples) almost every word they say is a lie. The entire Palestinian narrative, for example, is a lie and almost every claim ever made by Palestinian leaders against Israel is a lie. Yet the western media always accepts what they say at face value. In the light of the blatant lies now told by our 'allies' in Libya, perhaps the media will in future question what Arabs, and especially Palestinians, claim?


Friday, October 21, 2011

Hypocrisy all round

Spot the difference:

Exhibit A: 80 families - whose culture demands that they do not stay in one place for long  - live illegally on rich land for 8 years paying no taxes, doing no work, and are widely accused of harassing and stealing from their neighbours.

Exhibit B: 2000 families living legally -  indeed with the full encouragement of their government - for 35 years, on previously barren land that they developed from scratch themselves, paying taxes, working - indeed building farms, factories, greenhouses and generating work and wealth for their neighbours.

Both of these communities are forcibly removed from their homes by their own government. The United Nations, Amnesty International, and every left-wing group imaginable campaigns against these forced evictions in one case only, arguing that it is a breach of human rights.

Of course Exhibit A - the eviction of Gypsy families from Dale Farm, Essex - is the community which received the international support.
Exhibit B - the Jews of Gaza in 2005 - got none. Indeed those very same groups arguing for the 'human rights' of the Gypsies were the very ones who were demanding the eviction of the Jews.

And if you want further confirmation of the lack of irony of the Left here is a quote from Minty Challis, one of the left-wing demonstrators who went to Dale Form to support the Gypsies: "The travellers' suffering was the same as that of the Palestinians in Gaza".

It would be hard to make this stuff up, and I'm surprised nobody has picked up on both the irony and hypocrisy of the situation. But just looking through today's newspapers there are plenty more examples of the same type:
  • Turkey - the country which was most opposed to Israel's attacks on Hamas to stop the rockets and terrorism from Gaza is today brutally massacring the Kurds in its own territory and across the border in neighbouring Iraq following an attack by Kurdish rebels against a Turkish army base.  The same Turks who stated that Israel had no right of self-defence when its civilians were attacked every day, is now saying it will use unprecedented force against the Kurds. And whereas the whole world - including the US - was outraged by Israel's 'disproportionate' self defence, the whole world has either stayed silent about the Turks or - as in the case of the US and UK government - has actually issued statements of support for the Turks' actions.
  • Spain - the most vociferous of all the European countries in demanding that Israel make concessions to Hamas (whose charter demands the killing of every Jew in the world)  - has today announced it will refuse to negototiate with the ETA organisation even though ETA has said it has now renounced violence.
  • The US, Britain, and France who all fiercely condemned the targeted killing by Israel of Hamas's arch terrorist in chief Sheikh Yassin and his successor Rantisi a few years ago, are all today congratulating themselves over the death of Gaddafi - following a targetted attack by their own forces that was followed up by a public lynching by the NATO-led 'rebels'. And remember this is the same Gadaffi who the US, Britain and France told us was completely rehabilitated (until his people rebelled) and was a person we had to respect fully. 
  • Another day another massacre of peacefully demonstrating civilians by the Syrian government. And as usual not a peep from all those governments in the world who immediately condemn Israel if a single Palestinian is harmed in any way even while committing a terrorist act.
The next time Israel is dragged before the UN for censure, instead of apologising it may wish to refer to some of the above.

See also this for a different spin on this story.

Monday, October 17, 2011

The Deal

Among a number of fine articles exposing problems with the Gilad Shalit deal Sultan Knish's is the best I have read on this subject.

What the deal really means is revolving door terrorism is back. Kill Israelis and you stay in prison only long enough for other terrorists to kidnap an Israeli and win their release. Those 25 year sentences mean nothing. A life sentence doesn't mean life, it means however many years it takes the Israeli government to give in to blackmail.
Elder of Ziyon has details here and here of examples of some of  the ruthless, remorseless child killers being released. And remember these terrorists will all receive a hero's welcome. 


As more details are released the deal looks even worse than first feared. For example,the Jerusalem Post reports that while Israel agreed to refrain from ever targeting any of the released terrorists, Hamas did not agree to refrain from future kidnappings.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

What hope for Israel if this is one of its ‘advocates’?

I went to the first in a series of what are billed ‘Israel Advocacy’ meetings at a Jewish community centre this evening. I understand the meeting was sponsored by BICOM (who I am sending a copy of this report). Indeed the speaker Dr Noam Leshem said at the start of his presentation that he was responsible for writing much of BICOM’s advocacy material. That is deeply troubling, because what we heard from Dr Leshem would not have been out of place at a Palestine Solidarity Committee meeting. The whole point of BICOM is that it is supposed to challenge the anti-Israel narrative that dominates the main stream media. If I had wanted to hear yet another hour about Palestinian victimhood I could have turned on the BBC or Al Jazeera. And while I consider myself knowledgeable enough  to have seen through the propaganda, there were many in the audience, who came there expecting to learn how to speak up for Israel, who would have gone away actually thinking there was no point.

Dr Leshem teaches Geography at Royal Holloway College and has a PhD about the conflicting histories of the Israel/Palestine conflict. He was born in Israel, but has presumably spent most of his academic life in the USA and the UK. He is typical of many left-wing Israelis who sees Israel as being the source of all problems in the Middle East, while Arabs have nothing to answer for.

So we certainly did not get any Israel advocacy but we did get plenty of revisionist history in which he essentially presented the Palestinian narrative of it, and he claimed that the conflict could be resolved if only the Israelis were more aware of Arab sensitivities. His central thesis (and he reminded us arrogantly several times that he had researched this for six years) was that the ‘conflict’ was simply a ‘labour’ struggle in which the Jews forced out Arab labourers from working the scarce agricultural land that was available. He even argued that land bought legally by Jews from Arab owners really belonged to the other Arabs (i.e. the non-owners) who lived on that land.

He claimed that the conflict officially started with the Arab revolt in 1935 (he conveniently ignored the many previous pogroms committed by Arabs against Jews in the 1920s including the massacre of most of the Jewish population of Hebron in 1929, but in his view of the world there was no such thing as Arab terrorism). He claimed the 1935 Arab revolt was evidence that the Arabs – and not the Jews – were the first to assert a national Palestinian identify. To support his argument he actually quoted a claim by Rashid Khalidi that the Palestinian Arabs asserted their national Palestinian identity in the early nineteenth century (failing to inform the audience that Khalidi is an extreme Palestinian propagandist who funded the Gaza flotilla ship that sailed from America). Even more outrageously (and ignoring all the evidence that the British gave the Arabs free reign to murder Jews) he claimed that the British crushed the 1935 Arab revolt with such force that it wiped out the entire (Arab) Palestinian leadership as well as all their infrastucture and funding; and that it was this act by the British which enabled the Jews to establish themselves more effectively and was the reason why the Jews were able to win the War on Independence in 1948.

According to Noam Leshem the Arabs and not the Jews were the first to assert a Palestinian identity. So how would he explain these posters from the 1940s?


In response to a question about why he failed to mention the religious aspect of the conflict (such as Muslim intolerance of Jews) his response was that there were fanatics in every religion and that the biggest threat to Israel came from the Jewish West Bank settlers (he gave the example of his car being petrol bombed in the West Bank while on Army reserve duty).

Most worrying of all is that, if he is telling the truth about his current activities, he has the ear of Israeli and Arab politicians at the highest level and appears to be discussing with them the forthcoming UN vote.

Whoever he is advising it should certainly not be BICOM, but it is indicative of the spinelessness of British Jewry that they can use a guy like this as one of their prominent spokesman on behalf of Israel.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

World Gone Mad

The madness in the world surely cannot be better summed up than today's headlines and the reporting behind them.

The big story is that thousands of Egyptian 'democrats' have stormed and partially destroyed the Israeli embassy in Cairo. All the Israeli staff managed to get our before being killed but it is unlikely that any shall ever return to Egypt. Yet, according to BBC Radio London (the only news I listened to today) the rioters are only 'demonstrating because Israel killed 5 Egyptian policemen last month' (a complete lie and totally irrelevant but so long as it enables the BBC to create the impression that riots in Cairo directed against Jews is the fault of Israel then that is OK).

And what does the world say about it? Nothing - not one single condemnation. We know that Obama has 'spoken with Netanyahu' (probably to warn him not to do anything about it). But Obama has issued a damning condemnation of ... Israel for some kids writing graffiti on a West Bank mosque in revenge for the army destroying a Jewish outpost of three houses at Migron. The US State Departments says "Israel must arrest culprits".

And the madness is completed with this headline: G8 to extend Arab Spring financing pledge to $38 billion.

So we will can all look forward to financing the increasing Islamisation of Egypt and Tunisia (a country where anti-Semitism is also about to get a whole lot worse).

Friday, September 09, 2011

Comparing the response to 9/11 with the response to Pearl Harbour

If aliens came down to earth this week and watched the plethora of 9/11 documentaries that have been showing in the UK (and I believe also in the US), then they would believe that it was some kind of a terrible natural disaster in which the primary victims were Muslims. A brilliant analysis by Sultan Knish explains in full how the important historical lessons have been whitewashed out, primarily so as to not upset Muslim sentiment. As he says this leads to the following kind of ramifactions:

The Pew polls show a steady growth in the number those who believe that American wrongdoing led to the attacks-- from a third after the attacks, to 43 percent today. Give the enemy another decade to do its work and those numbers will be in the sixties. And their game is simple enough, remove the actual history and the images of the massacres-- and replace it with an emphasis on foreign policy. Mix in news stories about Islamophobia, stir the pot a little and you're done.
It is especially interesting to compare the 9/11 documentaries with the documentaries about the Pearl Harbour attack. Whereas the level of destruction and cost of human life were very similar, the latter documentaries focus almost entirely on the Japanese attackers and their motives and strategy. For 9/11 there apparently were no attackers with motives. The attacks simply 'happened'.

But the documentaries alse reflect the very different responses to the two events. If the response to Pearl Harbour had been the same as that of 9/11, the US would have declared a 'war against fighter aircraft that have the potential to attack ships' with a clear statement that 'this in no way linked to the great nation of Japan which, like Nazi Germany, is a nation of peace'. This might  have been followed by a few sorties against Japanese fighter aircraft (and, as a token to prove there was no bias against the Japanese people, some British spitfires would also have been attacked). This would have been followed by years of appeasement of Japan and Germany, plus massive funding of 'moderate' Japanese and Nazi institutions. The media would have devoted most of its time on identifying what the US had done to invite the attacks. For example, it would no doubt have focused on the US refusal to help Germany invade Britain, thus stopping the natural hegemony of Nazi control of the whole of Europe. Indeed Britain (and Singapore) would have become the focus of hatred for provoking the Nazis (Japs) and daring to protect their right to exist. By 1945 America would have been a Japanese colony, and to this day Europe would still be under Nazi rule.

Conversely, if the response to 9/11 had been similar to the actual response to Pearl Harbour then the US would have declared war on Islamic fundamentalism and would not have stopped until it was totally eradicated throughout the world as a supremisist belief. The first targets would have been Iran and Saudi Arabia. The war would only have finished with a prolonged programme of 'de-Islamification' (the de-Nazification  programme for Germany took many years to work even though the people had only been indoctrinated for 10 years. Islamists have been indoctrinating Muslims for 1300 years).

Anyway, on the subject of anniversaries of terrible events, the Jersualem Post reminds us today of an event I knew nothing about (in fact, I find it shocking that this event has simply been forgotten). In 1941  the Italian Air Force launched a bombing campaign against central Tel Aviv resulting in 137 deaths and widespread damage. Although Palestine, as it then was, was under British control and Britain was at war with Italy, there was no possible military purposes whatsoever for the attack; at the time Tel Aviv had not a single military installation and no air defences at all. There were other parts of Palestine that had British military bases, but of course what Tel Aviv had was a lot Jews trying to build their city and live their lives in peace. So I cannot imagine why that, of all places, would have been specially targeted for death and destruction .....

And finally here is a reminder of what I wrote on a previous anniversay of 9/11. As each year passes the satire looks increasingly like reality.

Postscript: Elder of Ziyon reminds us of the Palestinian celebrations that followed the 9/11 attacks  You will never see these videos again in the UK. This has been officially written out of media history. Instead, the documentaries focus on the handful of Muslim victims of 9/11 or the completely fabricated notion that there was a widespread 'anti-Muslim' reaction; and in the Hollywood films about 9/11 you see scenes of Muslims and Arabs around the world stunned, crying and praying. And Elder also has an article with an eye witness account of the celebrations in Lebanon.

Postscript 2: Although Sultan Knish's analysis suggests a kind of a universal Western strategy of deliberately downplaying the horror of terrorist attacks and ignoring the attackers and their motives this is, of course, only true when the attackers are Muslims (which admittedly they are in 99% of cases). So, for example, in the Norway attacks, the media were completely obsessed in exposing the 'far right' motives of the killer and you can be sure that in years to come the many documentaries about the Norway attack will focus entirely on the killer and not (as in 9/11) on the killer's 'right-wing' victims (who actually include notable anti-Jihadists like Robert Spencer, who the media outrageously accused of inspiring the killer).

Postscript 3: Anybody who doubts that David Cameron is the most dangerously anti-Israel Prime Minister in Britain's history should look at the speech he made today to commemorate the 9/11 attacks. As reported by the Evening Standard
The Prime Minister accepted that America, Britain and other European nations had to address Muslim grievances, including solving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since we know he believes that Israeli 'intransgence' is the only reason for lack of Arab-Israeli peace, it follows that he sees Israel as a primary cause of 9/11.  As Melanie Phillips discusses today
The problem lies at the political level. While many Tory backbenchers support Israel, the government - with some very honourable exceptions -- is hostile.

So much so that a group of Tory MPs and others in the party who are well-disposed to Israel have reportedly formed an informal group to prevent David Cameron from throwing Israel under the bus altogether.

This group has become very alarmed by the government's repeated sniping against Israel, such as Cameron's calculated gesture of hostility in stepping down as patron of the JNF.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

The Times uses anti-Israel terrorist supporter as Israel's spokesperson

When the Turkel report into the Mavi Marmura incident cleared Israel of any wrongdoing and put the blame firmly on Turkey (which sponsored the terrorists on board who attacked the Israelis) the world either took no notice or, if they did, called it a whitewash. The usual Israel haters demanded a UN enquiry since they know that anything sponsored by the UN has a built-in anti-Israel bias. Well, the UN's own Palmer enquiry has reached almost the same conclusions as Turkel. The Palmer report also backed Israel's legal right to impose a naval blockade on Gaza.  Yet the main-stream media has managed to ignore all of that and has chosen to focus on the one, relatively small, part of the Palmer report which is critical of Israel (it said Israeli commandos used "excessive and unacceptable force"). For example, Sky News which did not spend one second covering the recent barrage of rocket attacks against Israel or the terrorist attack last week in Tel Aviv, suddenly found room on Friday evening to focus as a main item every hour exclusively on this one negative aspect of the Palmer report.  Elder of Ziyon has highlighted that this is also exactly the stance of Amnesty International.

But, by far the worst example of this is the Times on 3 September. Ignoring completely the ongoing massacres in Syria and the current massacres of Kurds being carried out by both Turkey and Iran (which in a sane world would be the focus of international anger) the Times has chosen to dedicate the entire front page of its World News section to an article by James Hider - in Turkey of course - which castigates Israel and casts Turkey as the honourable country for expelling the Israel ambassador. But it is the last paragraph of the report which is the piece de resistance and prompted me to write the following self-explanatory letter to the Times:


Dear Sirs

James Hider's full page article "Israel isolation grows as ambassador thrown out over blockade ship raid" is one of the most ignorant and biased reports ever written in the Times.

The main findings of the Palmer report, which the article is supposed to be about, were that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was legal and that Turkey had colluded with a terrorist organisation - the IHH - to breach this legal blockade. Yet the article focuses on the one, relatively small, part of the Palmer report which is critical of Israel (it said Israeli commandos used "excessive and unacceptable force"). Having failed to either present the Israeli case or quote a single Israeli source anywhere else in the article, Hider ends with the following:
The report's finding that the blockade is legitimate was rejected by Hanin Zoabi of the Israeli parliament, who called for "those who sent the army to stop the flotilla [to] be brought before international tribunals"
What Hider fails to inform his readers is that Zoabi is an Arab member of Parliament who is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and who was actually on the Mavi Mamura with the Turkish IHH terrorists - an act which rightly got her suspended from Parliament.

Such malicious and deliberately misleading reporting is unbecoming of the Times. In fact, the article seems to be nothing more than a propaganda piece for the Turkish government.  Hider would be advised to inform readers about what is really going on in Turkey at the moment. I strongly recommend he looks at the writing of a real expert such as Barry Rubin here.

Yours Edgar Davidson
It is also interesting to note that the same edition of the Times has a lead article (page 2) about the disruption of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. The article is promisingly tagged "Disruption of a concert by Israeli musicians was not legitimate protest but bigotry". However, the main argument of the article is that the concert should not have been disrupted because the IPO is not representative of the Israeli Government - it even makes the irrelevant point that it 'was founded in 1936' , i.e. before the State of Israel was born (so we can only assume that Times would support the disruptors if, for example, the members of the IPO declared themselves to be happy with the State of Israel). Moreover, the article ploughs in with the usual caveats like "The Times has criticised Israeli policies on security and the settlements" and it bizarrely reminds readers that the Times "exposed the use of white phosphorus by the Israel Defence Force despite official denials in Gaza in 2009".  Using the white phosphorus issue to demonize Israel with is something that should have been nailed long ago. For a start white phosphorus is not an illegal weapon - it is used to create smoke or illuminate a target and has been used by American and other NATO forces; Israel did not deny its use in Gaza. So the Times is, as usual talking rubbish. But it turns out that only today the claims that had been made by Hamas (and believed by the West) that white phosphorus had caused injuries in Gaza have been proved false in the latest wikileaks material.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Israel being pounded to the delight of the Palestinians - but it's all her fault

The rocket barrage against Southern Israel continues relentlessly - another 15 rockets today causing widespread damage and also injuring a 9 month old child. Elder of Ziyon reports on how the Palestinians are rejoicing in the terror they are causing. And Israel is afraid to hit back not just because of 'world opinion' but now also for fear of upsetting the Egyptians. Yet look at what the top 'World News' headline is at this very moment on Google News:


The Palestinians have now manipulated the western media to the extent that they simply cannot lose. No amount of rockets or terrorism they commit will even be reported any more, while even if Israel, does not respond (or restricts itself as it has done the last week to targeting only terrorists in the act of firing rockets) the media will say they are causing the problems.

The time has surely come for Israel to defend its citizens once and for all. Forget 'world opinion' which will damn Israel whether it acts or does not.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Dealing with anti-semitic hatred

A powerful piece by David Keyes at Israel Hayom highlights the inevitable consequences of Israel's decision to allow Hamas to thrive on its doorstep. Nothing comparable would be allowed by any other nation on earth.

FresnoZionism provides the details of how it was Egyptian soldiers who were guilty of murdering Israeli Officer Pascal Avrahami last week, providing further proof of how logic was turned upside down by Israel's bizarre apology. As he says:
Egypt should apologize and compensate Israel for the death of Avrahami. Of course this won’t happen. The rules in the Middle East say that Israel is always wrong, that Arabs are allowed to kill Jews with impunity, and that Israel should apologize for existing.
Barry Rubin talks about the anti-semitic conspiracy theories that dominate the Arab narrative.  He writes:

Then yesterday a correspondent wrote me asking if what an Arab professor told him was true: that most Arab leaders, including Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and also Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were secretly Jewish.
Whenever a large number of Muslims feel animosity to any particular leader there is inevitably a widely-held conspiracy theory that the leader is either Jewish or funded by Israel. This is not restricted to Arabs in the Middle East. I know many supposedly intelligent Asian Muslims in the UK who, for example, are now convinced that Ghadaffi is a Jew. Three years ago I was shocked to see a documentary in which every student in the top private school in Kabul believed that George Bush was evil because he was a Jew. Yet I have since discovered that many Muslims in the UK are also convinced that Bush is a Jew.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Multicultural London 2011

Richard Millett reports on the demonstration that took place in London yesterday. It is clear that in 'multicultural' Britain the sensitivities of everyone are considered except those of Jews.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The casual anti-Israel, anti-semitism tsunami continues

While Israel is being bombarded by terrorists,  the casual world-wide anti-Israel tsunami continues, from boycotting Jewish owned chocolate shops in Australia to demonstrations in London against any attempt by Israel to stop terrorism. And you certainly cannot avoid it even if you stick to show business news. The Sunday Telegraph Magazine (that's the same Telegraph today which could not find space in its 500-odd pages for any mention of the unprecedented attacks against Israel) has a feature today on the actress Kirsten Dunst and look what is in the very first paragraph:

"The actress's latest film, Melancholia, was a favourite to win the Palme d'Or until its director Lars von Trier, joked during a press conference that he 'understood Hitler', adding, 'Israel is a pain in the ass'.
This actually happened in May (although I never read anything about it). After some google searching I discovered that von Trier was ejected from the festival, but only on account of his Hitler comments, not the fact that he had demonized an entire country.  And Dunst provides the following 'understanding' of von Trier:
"It came from a very dark and twisted sense of humour,..., obviously it is not something he actually believed".
In fact von Trier has stood by his 'Israel is a pain in the ass' comment but has half-heartedly apologised for describing himself as a Nazi. So that's all right then. And of course, the incident did not stop the Festival glorifying von Trier anyway - his film still picked up awards (including best actress for Dunst).

On a brighter note: there are a couple of showbiz people prepared to stand up for Israel (and have, of course, been accused of being loony right-wingers for doing so) in its time of need. Take a bow Glenn Beck and John Voight.

The media (and the Israeli government) have gone mad

When I reported Thursday that the media was adopting its usual anti-Israel bias in the reporting of the unprecedented terrorist attacks and subsequent rocket barrage (over 150 attacks on Southern Israel in the last 3 days  - live coverage of the continuing rocket bombardment in Israeli is here) even I did not expect the extent of how bad things would be. Take a look at today's Telegraph - the only serious newspaper in the UK that is supposedly 'sympathetic' to Israel (in fact, like the Sun, it has not been 'sympathetic' to Israel for several years now). Despite the fact that terrorists under the control of Iran are mounting an unprovoked war against Israel, the ONLY mention of Israel in its massive Sunday edition is a brief paragraph stating that Israel's 'killing of Egyptian security guards' has led to the Egyptian ambassador from Israel being recalled. No mention of the terrorist attacks; no mention of the death in Beersheba yesterday, no mention of the school destroyed or the fact that 20% of the entire Israeli population are in shelters unable to move. Nor does any of this information appear anywhere else in any Western media outlet at all (although, of course you will find plenty of mentions of Israel 'pounding Gaza', even though they are not this time - more of that below).

The incident with the Egyptians is well covered here and here. What is especially bizarre about this is that Ehud Barak - the worst politician in Israel's history - actually apologized to Egypt. Remember Barak is also the person who, before looking at the evidence, apologized for the  'killing' of Muhammed Al-dura in September 2000; although this was subsequently proved to be a hoax it directly led to a thousand Israeli civilians being murdered in the subsequent intifada and the entire Muslim world has been indoctrinated about the Al-dura myth. Barak's motives this time were the same as in 2000. He feels that apologising for something the Israelis were not responsible for is worth doing if it can 'help calm things down'.

But the ineptitude of the Israeli government extends beyond Barak. Now that it is clear the war launched last Thursday is being directed by Iran and its proxies Islamic Jihad (as opposed to Hamas) the government has decided to do nothing (presumably for fear of offending President Obama), and has abdicated from its responsibility to defend its citizens from attack. Even worse, it is actually relying on the Egyptian military to do its job for it in the Sinai now -  a move that is monumentally stupid on two accounts: 1) The Egyptians will not halt the terrorists, but will actually provide direct support to them and 2) It allows an Egyptian military presence in the Sinai, even though this breaches the conditions of the 1979 peace agreement, and hence ensures that within a short number of years Israel will be facing a Sinai war with Egypt.

These are very worrying times indeed, all the more so for the fact that Barak is in charge of Israel's defence.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Multiple terrorist attacks against Israel produce the usual media response

The multiple terrorist attacks against Southern Israel today have resulted so far in at least 8 dead Israelis, including an entire family in a car hit by an anti-tank missile. Although this is an enormous story, both because of the scale of the attacks and the fact that the terrorists came through (the now terrorist supporting) Egypt as well as Gaza, it is already clear that the Western media will be following the standard guidelines for reporting it (if they do at at all). So, for example, at 3.00pm (4 hours after the story broke) it did not appear at all on the BBC News website homepage, which listed the following items:
  • A-level passes rise for 29th year
  • Man arrested over phone hacking
  • Man Utd to sell off stake in club
  • Stock markets see further falls
  • Funerals due for riot death men
  • Libya rebels 'take' key refinery
Nor did the the story feature at all at that stage in Google News 'top stories'. Most revealing (albeit no longer surprising) is the fact that Haaretz (the idiotic left-wing Israel newspaper) was trying to convince readers in its first reports of the attacks (which it has now removed) that these were not terrorist attacks at all.

But at 5.45pm when Israel responded by killing the leader of the group in Gaza who  organized today's attacks, guess what news headline suddenly appeared on the BBC news home page? "Israel pounds Gaza after attacks". And Google news now had the headline (via the Guardian) "Israel launches Gaza air strikes in retaliation for Eilat attacks".

And of course, in stark contrast to the coverage of the Norway attack last month, you will certainly not be seeing in any of tomorrow's newspapers the names, let alone the life stories, of the Israeli victims.  Nor will there be either widespread condemnation of the perpetrators or of the Islamic indoctrination of anti-Semitic hatred which inspired the attacks. But no doubt there will be plenty of voices condemning Israel for daring to defend itself.

19 August update: The death toll is up to 9 from yesterday's attacks and the whole of Southern Israel is under rocket bombardment at the moment - 10 injured, for example, by rockets reaching as far north as Ashdod. Yet, true to form, the entire Western media is totally ignoring these acts of war. Not a word about yesterday's - or today's attacks - on ANY of the major TV and radio news channels this morning (I checked BBC, Sky News, LBC).