Tel Aviv blocks anti-Jihad websites

Tel Aviv beach 31 October 2013

Anyone who spends a lot of time in Israel or with Israelis living in Europe or the USA will know that a very sizable number (especially those under 40) have been indoctrinated with left-wing (and at times extremely anti-Zionist) views that would put most Guardian readers to shame. It can also be surprising to discover, given that they are effectively 'living in the eye of the storm', how little those same Israelis know of the extent to which Islamists hate them and want them destroyed. This is especially true of many in Tel Aviv. The main stream Israeli newspapers and TV channels are not much different to those in the UK both in their left-wing bias and in covering up Jihadist activities around the world (e.g. still no main stream comment anywhere on the Jihadist suicide bombing in Beijing which the BBC -when it mentioned it -  tried to convince viewers was down to 'democracy dissidents').

Religion of Peace website:blocked as "Discrimination"

I discovered today an example of the above, which confirms that those in power in the Jewish State are determined to show that they are the biggest 'dhimmis' of all.  On LaLa beach in Tel Aviv today I noticed that the Municipality was now providing a free wifi service (FREE_TLV). I'm not sure how new this is because I normally go to Bograshov beach and I have never noticed this service before. After checking my emails I decided to catch up on some real  news only to discover that websites like Robert Spencer's excellent jihadwatch and thereligionofpeace (which simply documents jihadist attacks and news stories) were blocked as either "Discrimination" or (strangely) "Advocacy Organisation" (curiously one of the only anti-Jihad sites not blocked was Pamela Geller's). I did a quick check of some well known antisemitic and anti-Israel websites and not one of those was blocked.

Jihad Watch website blocked

Isn't is great to imagine that you can avoid a problem simply by trying to make sure nobody knows about it?  And is it any wonder therefore that the Israeli Government can actually get away with releasing convicted terrorist murderers (like the latest bunch freed yesterday to appease Obama and the PLO) without there being mass demonstrations?

June 2014 Update

The new 'moderate' Iran: 16 Baluchi political prisoners hanged in act of vengeance - West ignores it

Obama, the EU - and of course the entire main stream Western media - are so desperate to maintain the nonsensical narrative of a new 'moderate' Iran that there has been barely a mention of this story that can be found at the bottom of  page 32 of today's Telegraph.

The story reveals more than just the fact that 16 political prisoners from the Baluchi minority community were hanged in revenge for an attack by Baluchi rebels on an Iranian border post. We also discover that the Iranians use the threat of killing prisoners to deter any rebel actions, and that it in 2010 the Iranians committed an act of international air piracy to force a civilian aircraft flying from Dubai to Kysyzstan to land in Iran so that they could arrest the leader or the Baluchi rebel group. The leader was subsequently forced to make a TV confession saying:

“They [the Americans] promised to help us and they said that they would co-operate with us, free our prisoners and would give us military equipment - bombs, machine guns - and they would give us a base.” 

They hanged him anyway three months later. Did this story make the news in the West? Not that I recall. Can you imagine how the West would have reacted if Israel had done anything like that even to a mass murderer? You don't need to, because you only have to compare the West's silence on Iran to their hysterical reaction when Israel killed mass-murdering Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in pinpoint targeted assassinations that involved no civilian loss of life.

Note also that the Sistan-Baluchistan province is occupied by Iran against the wishes of the Baluchis. While every Western political 'activist' is obsessed about 'Palestinian independence' did you ever hear a single one of these anti-Israel goons highlight the plight of the Baluchis? On the contrary, 99% of Western activists insist that Iran is peaceful nation against whom sanctions should be dropped. And that is the same narrative now being pushed by Obama and Western governments - which is why there will be no official reaction to this kind of story and why only Israel can stop Iran getting their nuclear bomb.

Israel's Save a Child's Heart Charity: combatting UN, EU and UK anti-Israel bias

Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) is an incredible Israeli-based international humanitarian project, whose mission is to improve the quality of paediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries who suffer from heart disease and to create centers of competence in these countries. SACH is a team of  surgeons and support staff at Wolfson Hospital near Tel Aviv (including Jews, Muslims and Christians) who are world leaders in paediatric cardiology. SACH has saved the lives of thousands of children from all over the world by performing complex and dangerous cardiac operations. In most cases the charity brings the children to Israel for the operations but members of the team also travel abroad to perform the operations, and increasingly the team is training doctors from the developing countries to perform the surgery themselves.

Many of the children saved by SACH are from countries that are hostile to Israel including Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. But far and away the most children whose lives are saved (over 50%) are from the Palestinian Authority (both Gaza and the West Bank) - more on that below.

Walter Felman
(Chairman, SACH UK)

Hannah Shabathai
(President, SACH Switzerland)

This evening  Hannah Shabathai and Walter Felman from SACH (pictured here) spoke at Woodford Liberal Synagogue in East London. Both Hannah and Walter are among the key volunteers who help make SACH  function as it does. In addition to speaking about what SACH does, Hannah focused on the story of how SACH became one of the very few non-political Israeli organisations to gain recognition as an NGO (non-government organisation) at the UN.  SACH's eventual recognition only came about as a result of an extraordinary level of planning and lobbying. Eventually, despite their impeccable application they, unlike other applicants were called back for further questioning. During this latter session the Syrians - who were not even on the committee but were there as an observer - tried to spike the application (despite the fact that SACH is saving Syrian children).

SACH is an incredible and heart-warming example of how Israeli skill and selfless humanitarianism benefits the world. But it is also an incredible example of how much more Israel could do for the world if it was not singled out for such hostility by the very nations who would benefit most from an Israel unburdened by the threats and torments it faces in every aspect of its existence. And it is not just the UN, of course, that creates such problems. While the EU provides some financial support for SACH, this is conditioned on it being spent only on children from the Palestinian Authority. This partly explains the disproportionate numbers mentioned above. But the irony of this is that the EU's stance is inconsistent with SACH's mission statement (that "every child deserves the best medical treatment available, regardless of the child's nationality, religion, color, gender or financial situation"). It also exposes the political racism at the heart of the EU agenda - the notion that Palestinian children are somehow inherently more deserving of life than children from far more deprived countries in Africa for example. But this is something I have reported on many times before (see, e.g., here and here for how the Palestinians receive many more times per capita foreign aid support than any other people in the world despite many countries being far poorer).

The final important point made was that there is a portable exhibition about SACH that is suitable for display in public places. However, unlike many similar exhibitions provided by other oganisations (including anti-Israel groups) which have no trouble finding public places to exhibit, such is the hostility to anything associated with Israel that nowhere in London has agreed to allow SACH to exhibit. So any old Israel demonization will be welcomed in many places in London (as I have blogged about many times) but London is a no go area for anything showing Israel in a positive light.  

Update 24/10/2103: More about SACH at Elder of Ziyon

What the UK media will and will not tell you

Following on from my post about the Muslim victimhood narrative, it is interesting to note that in the last 48 hours alone (see here for more details) the following major events have happened, but have been almost totally ignored by the British media:

• A Muslim woman in Volgograd, Russia detonated an explosives-laden suicide vest on a bus, killing six strangers. 
• A group of Muslim terrorists opened fire at Church wedding in Cairo, Egypt murdering the pastor, two woman and an 8-year-old girl.
• Sixty civilians were murdered at a packed cafe in Baghdad, Iraq when first one Muslim suicide bomber detonated and then another detonated when people rushed to help.
• Over forty motorists were obliterated by a Muslim suicide truck bomber at an agricultural exchange in Hama, Syria. 
• A Palestinian Muslim - whose brother had previously used a bulldozer to attack civilians and motorists in the centre of Jerusalem, used a bulldozer to attack soldiers on an army base near Jerusalem
• Muslim terrorists in Nigeria shot, burned and hacked to death 19 civilians in Nigeria.

Despite 24-hour news channels like BBC News, Sky News and CNN, none of those channels found the time to report on any of the above events in any of their prime time spots. Yet last night and this morning BBC News and Sky News led with the story of  a Ukrainian in the UK who pleaded guilty of murdering a Muslim man and of attacking mosques. This was, of course, a terrible crime. But the wall-to-wall coverage this story has received - with the major focus being on this man's hatred of Muslims and hence pushing the 'Islamaphobia' narrative - should be contrasted not just to the refusal of the main stream media to report on much more serious atrocities by Muslims, but also to their under-reporting of Muslim terrorism and gang crimes in the UK. Thus, the multiple cases of Muslim terrorist cells and Muslim sex-slave gangs are covered up in the sense that the ethnicity of the gangs (if reported at all) is said to be "Asian".

None of the above is coincidental. As reported here today CNN are actually paid by supremacist Islamic regimes to not to report what they consider are 'damaging' stories. The BBC's leftist editors need no external payment to dictate their news agenda since any story of Muslim terrorism simply does not fit well with their "Muslims as victim narrative" and so needs to be obfuscated or not reported at all. As for Sky, ever since Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bought 10% of News Corporation (which owns Sky news) their news coverage has had a biased agenda easily on a par with the BBC (just search "Sky" on this blog for an indication of the extent of this bias in the last 3 years). For the same reason, Britain's most popular newspaper - the Sun (owned by News Corp) - has gone the same way (again just search "Sun" on this blog). That's why NONE of the stories at the start of this article were reported at all in the Sun, but the Ukrainian murderer was given a full page of coverage today.

The incredible irony of what is happening in the UK (and the rest of the Western world) is that if you still rely on the main stream media for your news, then the only way you will get to hear of the regular Muslim terrorist atrocities taking place every day in every part of the world is if you tune in to Al Jazeera.

The ultimate in Muslim victimhood mythology: 'they were victims of the Nazis, just like Jews were'

Another day, another cultural event in London, and (as is standard) another opportunity to demonize Israel. But, for me, the most astonishing exhibit at the "Other Art Fair" in London's Brick Lane was this print by "anonymous guerrilla artist and painter" who goes under the pseudonym Ego Leonard.

Jews, gays, and .... Muslims in concentration camp uniforms - equal victims of the Nazis

There can be no ambiguity in what the artist is claiming here: Jews, gays, and ... Muslims (dressed in concentration camp outfits) were equal victims of the Nazi holocaust. The myth of Muslim victimhood and 'Islamaphobia' is one that is now constantly pushed not just by the Muslim Brotherhood, but even more so by their useful idiot leftist allies, like the 'guerilla artist' here. To cast Muslims as equal victims, when they were actually among the most enthusiastic participants in the Nazi persecution of Jews, takes the myth of Muslim victimhood to a whole new level; and  as with most Muslim propaganda it is a perfect inversion of reality.

Hitler was actually inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood's antisemitism and the Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al Husseini was a key ally of Hitler who helped set up Hitler's Muslim SS division, who were active in murdering Jews in Eastern Europe.  Hitler promised al Husseini that he would be allowed to carry out the murder of every Jew in Palestine once the Nazis advanced there, and al Husseini had drawn up detailed plans of the execution programme. And, of course, Arab countries such as Iraq were formally allies of Nazi Germany.

Anyway, just to makes sure that nobody can be in any doubt where the 'guerilla artist' Ego Leonard's true sympathies lie he was also exhibiting a print showing that the Arabs - with the ubiquitous large key - have been the true owners of the land of Palestine 'since the time of Jesus' (a good quality image of this print can be seen on the artist's website here).

Arab with ubiquitous key to Palestine

For an alternative view of this story see here. 

p.s. Unlike Muslims, many gays were persecuted by the Nazis (it is estimated that up to 100,000 were arrested between 1933 and 1945 and that up to 10,000 of these died in concentration camps) . But suggesting that this persecution was equal to that of the Jews could also be considered offensive when you consider that over 33,000 Jews were killed in just 36 hours at Babi Yar, while at Auschwitz 20,000 were killed per day for prolonged periods.

p.p.s (20 October 2013 update). A highly relevant story here today that the Egyptian family of the only Arab to have been honored by Yad Vashem for saving Jews during the holocaust has rejected the honour. And today the Palestinians are proudly flying a Nazi flag over an Israeli throughfare.

Demonization of Israel by left-wing Israelis

I have blogged many times about how extreme leftist Israelis play a major role in the international demonization of Israel (see, e.g. here and here as examples). Often, (as in this example) they do so with the unwitting support of local diaspora communities who assume that "an Israeli speaker" is somebody who will be putting forward a positive, objective view of Israel. Often it is cultural forums (plays, films and even music events) where leftist Israelis are given a platform - again often by unwitting Jewish organisations - to promote their anti-Zionist propaganda.  So, for example, the annual UK Jewish Film Festival is currently taking place with, as in previous years, films by Israeli directors dominated by those with an anti-Zionist narrative.

Particularly depressing is when friends who are pro-Israel, but not particularly well-informed, go to one of these events not even realising that they have been subjected to two hours of anti-Israel propaganda. For example, friends were chuffed to tell us recently they had been to see an Israeli production "Ballard for the Burning Star" at the Edinburgh Festival in August. It turns out that this play is based on the writer's work with the extreme leftist NGO "Breaking the Silence", which was set up to exploit the 'experiences' of anti-Zionist Israelis who had been in the IDF and use it for propaganda to accuse Israel of war crimes. Most of the 'personal stories' have turned out to be either completely made up or grossly exaggerated (see here, here and here).

Sometimes, when confronted with the extremes of anti-Israel bigotry in the West even extreme leftist Israelis finally take a reality check. A very important example of this is the story being told by Hen Mazzig. Daniel Greenfield has a brilliant overview of his story here. This is a must read, not only for its exposure of the depths of anti-Semitism among the supposed Western intelligentsia, but also for Greenfield's exposure of the extent to which some anti-Zionist Israelis (in this case the unhinged Tal Nitzan) have contributed to this anti-Semitism.

18 Oct update: Caroline Glick has posted an especially relevant story about an anti-Israel play by an Israeli here.