The Jihad threat against the West and Israel

Colonel Kemp in Chigwell

2012-01-24T01:32:00.002Z

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"

Muslim Hitler worship in London

2012-01-02T17:32:00.002Z

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.

Balanced reporting as usual

2011-12-29T22:45:00.001Z

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.

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

2011-12-12T21:12:00.001Z

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

Hatred for Israel reaches new levels

2011-11-08T23:36:00.001Z

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.

What the pro-Israel lobby should be telling people

2011-11-05T21:57:00.002Z

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.

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

2011-11-03T23:19:00.000Z

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?

Arab lies: the elephant in the room

2011-10-22T16:38:00.000+01:00

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?

Hypocrisy all round

2011-10-21T23:51:00.003+01:00

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.

The Deal

2011-10-17T22:30:00.000+01:00

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.

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

2011-09-15T23:40:00.002+01:00

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.

World Gone Mad

2011-09-10T15:09:00.001+01:00

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).

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

2011-09-09T13:35:00.006+01:00

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.

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

2011-09-04T18:29:00.002+01:00

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.

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

2011-08-25T23:59:00.000+01:00

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.

Dealing with anti-semitic hatred

2011-08-24T23:33:00.000+01:00

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.

Multicultural London 2011

2011-08-22T17:57:00.000+01:00

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.

The casual anti-Israel, anti-semitism tsunami continues

2011-08-21T22:44:00.002+01:00

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

2011-08-21T22:38:00.002+01:00

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.

Multiple terrorist attacks against Israel produce the usual media response

2011-08-18T15:08:00.006+01:00

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).

Demonsrations

2011-08-09T09:08:00.000+01:00

Been in Israel for the past couple of weeks (hence lack of postings). Have been mingling with the demonstrators here (will post pictures etc when I return) and even joined the very big march on Saturday night (despite my severe misgivings about how this has all been controlled by hardline leftists). Very interesting to compare the peaceful nature of the demonsrators here (many of whom have genuine social grievances) with the violence now in the UK.

Norwegian hypocrisy

2011-07-25T20:38:00.004+01:00

My sympathy at the terrible loss of life in Norway does not extend to their left-wing politicians who dominate the country's political narrative. I have just heard one of their senior government members on the BBC news claim that, with the 'possible exception of the Beslan massacre', the Norway attack was 'unprecedented because it was the only terrorist attack in history in which children were specifically targeted'.

Of course, according to most Norwegians, when Palestinians massacre Israeli children in their dozens in schools (as they did in Maalot in 1974) in their hundreds on buses (as they did during the second intifada and numerous previous occasions) at a disco, and even when they decapitate Israeli toddlers and babies as they did this year in Itamar, none of that counts as terrorism. The Norwegians are usually the first to 'explain' that the attackers had 'justified grievances'.

And let's also demolish the myth that our media and the Norwegians have been pushing, that the victims at Utoya Island were schoolchildren at a summer holiday camp. They were, in fact, mostly young adults who were all part of the Young Socialist League at a political indoctrination event. None of these people deserved to be harmed in any way, but take a look at the photo above (courtesy of the Blaze, where you can read the full story) to see the kind of 'harmless' activity they were involved with the very day before the attack. The Israeli kids who were killed in real schools, buses and discos, certainly weren't calling for the boycott and even destruction of a democratic state that they knew nothing about.

In a Europe where countries fight with themselves to be seen as the leaders in anti-Israel activism Norway reigns supreme by a long distance. And, for all its supposed tolerance of minorities, it also leads the way in classic anti-Semitism.

My thoughts go out to the Norwegian victims and their families and friends. But the Norwegian politicians can take a running jump (even more so when you see this from the Norwegian Ambassador to Israel).

NOTE: Have a look at the above story presented with a slightly different twist on my "Free Palestine Now" blog. Thanks to some timely comments on left-wing blogs my postings there have received some incredible hit statistics.

Something new

2011-07-24T15:07:00.000+01:00

One of the problems with a blog like this is that, because of its name and description, it is inevitably going to be restricted to readers who are already pre-disposed to its narrative, i.e. it is 'preaching to the converted'.

So I am trying out something different. I have created a new blog called "Free Palestine Now" where I plan to put some of my key postings, but under a different title and description.

Responses from Lush about its Death to Israel campaign

2011-07-20T18:05:00.003+01:00

Updated 20 July: Below is the correspondence with Lush about their Death to Israel campaign that I previously reported on their website. Interestingly, as Richard Millett points out, Lush have now opened a shop in Brent Cross (a shopping centre in a Jewish area of London). Hopefully shoppers will get informed about what Lush stands for. What I am sure of is that shoppers who object to Lush's promotion of terrorism will not behave in the same appalling way as anti-Israel activists have behaved against another London cosmetics shop - Ahava - for no reason other than that it sells Israeli products.

Dear Edgar,

Thank you for your email. I'm sorry to hear you're disappointed with Lush's support for the OneWorld project.

The history between Israel and Palestine is long, complicated and often under dispute. However, what is very clear is the level of suffering occurring today, in part due to the construction of the wall which is cutting Palestinian people off from vital health services and has dramatically increased poverty in the area. History does not excuse such suffering. It will take both sides to come to a solution, but what is also clear is that this is not a conflict of two equal sides and thus the onus must be on the dominating force, Israel. The OneWorld project is supported by both Palestinian and Israeli organisations and aims to help create peace for both sides.

We support organisations fighting for human rights all around the world on a variety of issues, from the freedom of West Papua and Tibet to labour rights of workers in India, women's rights in Africa and environmental rights of indigenous people in Latin America. Whilst there are many other issues we have not supported, there are sadly limitations as to how much we can do.
Throughout the course of the year we support many humanitarian, animal and environmental causes, many of which are nominated by our own customers. We welcome and value all feedback, so thank you for getting in touch with us. I will be sure to pass your comments on to our Campaigns team for future consideration.

Kind regards,

Vicky Jansson
Customer Care Manager
Lush Ltd.

And here is my response to this letter:

*****************************************

Dear Vicky,

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply.

I am obliged to respond to the following points you made:

The history between Israel and Palestine is long, complicated and often under dispute.

Yes and it is clear that the people at Lush have absolutely no understanding about it, because they have accepted the narrative of political activists whose objective is nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish State. Have you ever thought about the possibility that almost every piece of information being promoted by those people is a lie? Have you, or any of your Lush colleagues ever been to Israel (and I don’t include trips to the ‘West Bank’ under the protection of anti-Israel groups) and spent time with Israelis? Clearly not, because if any of them had they will know that the narrative presented on the Lush website is a total lie.

However, what is very clear is the level of suffering occurring today, in part due to the construction of the wall which is cutting Palestinian people off from vital health services and has dramatically increased poverty in the area.

The “Wall” is actually a security fence that was constructed as a last resort measure to stop the almost daily suicide bombings that claimed the lives of some 2,000 Israeli civilians between 2000-2004. The security fence has drastically reduced the number of terrorist attacks from the West Bank and means, for example, that some parents no longer have to insist on their children travelling on different buses to school (during 2000-2004 most Israeli parents had to take this decision on the assumption that if one bus was attacked at least one child would survive). Many Palestinians are very upset that their right to kill Jews at will has been restricted by the security fence, and other Palestinians have no doubt been inconvenienced by the additional security measures when travelling into Israel, but wouldn’t you think that is a price worth paying to stop your child being blown to bits on a bus or in a café (and please note, that the various Palestinian terrorist groups who are supported directly by the War on Want Charity you are promoting are very open about their desire to target Israeli children).

As for health and poverty of the Palestinians: are you not aware that the life expectancy in the Palestinian territories is the highest in the entire Arab world? Indeed, the life expectancy in Gaza is significantly higher than in Glasgow, so perhaps you should be redirecting you charitable attention there. As for poverty, why not take a look at the Palestinians own pictures of Gaza here

You say

The OneWorld project is supported by both Palestinian and Israeli organisations and aims to help create peace for both sides.

Well there are certainly Israelis and Israeli organisations who campaign ferociously for the destruction of the State of Israel as a Jewish State, but they are no more representative of Israeli society than George Galloway or Abu Hamza are of the UK. Can you point to a single reputable Israeli organisation that supports the statement on your website (as opposed to the benign aims of OneWorld)?

The more I read the website article the more ludicrous are the claims. For example, in addition to the nonsense about 'sub-Saharan poverty levels we have this:

“life for most Palestinians living under the illegal Israeli occupation is at least as bad as that endured by black South Africans in the bad old days of apartheid.”

The West Bank is officially “disputed territory” not “illegally occupied” and the “apartheid” analogy is bizarre in this context. It would be just as meaningful to say that poverty levels in Glasgow are at apartheid levels. Clearly the statement was intended to promote, indirectly, the false notion of Israel as an apartheid state. There are certainly several apartheid states in the area but Israel is not one of them. The Apartheid states are all Arab: a total of 0 Jews live in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority areas, 0 Jews live in Jordan and Saudi Arabia (where in both countries it is illegal to be a citizen if you are a Jew) and less than a handful of Jews live in all of the other Arab countries combined. Less than 60 years ago those Arab countries had thriving communities of Jews totally some 1,000,000. They have all been driven out. But, of course you never heard their narrative did you?

We also have the nonsense about 'Israeli crimes' and the claim that "the US, UK and other governments have consistently rewarded Israeli aggression with economic benefits and closer political ties." Can you provide a single example of any country in the world who would not commit the 'crime' of defending its people from continued terrorist and rocket attacks from neighbours dedicated to its destruction (in this case those 'peace loving' Palestinians you refer to). I think Israel has more of a right to defend itslef against Hamas agrression than the British have in bombing Libyan cities, but I don't see anything on your website about the 'crime' of the British bombing campaign. As for the 'rewards', please provide a single example of that also.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, exactly why does a parochial UK cosmetics shop feel it is its duty is to deligitimize the only free democracy in the entire Middle East?

Yours

Edgar Davidson

*************************************

Response from Vicky Jansson on 14 June:

**************************************

Dear Edgar,

Thank you for getting back to us, though we are sorry that we have not been able to assure you of the intentions of our campaign.

Our products are fun and effective, we have a great time making them and hope that our customers feel the same when they are using them. We are also lucky enough to be in a position to donate proceeds and profits from many of our products to causes that are important to us, though we can understand how disappointing it is when a company you buy from does not share all your views.

We will carry on making fresh and effective cosmetics which will continue to benefit people, animals and the environment, and we'll always be glad to serve you as a customer should you choose to come into any of our shops.

Thank you for contacting us again and we appreciate your feedback.

Kind regards

Vicky Jansson
Customer Care
Lush Retail Ltd.

The Sun website now addresses my complaints

2011-07-19T11:29:00.002+01:00

My letter about the Sun's anti-Israel coverage of recent stories now also appears in bold immediately underneath their web versions of the articles. You can see it under the 16 May article here and under the 6 June article here (on that one you need to scroll to the second story). A summary of the case will shortly appear on the Press Complaints Commission website.

Deligitimization of Israel: widespread academic ignorance?

2011-07-17T23:44:00.003+01:00

The anti-Israel obsession throughout academia has been tackled widely elsewhere. What intrigues me is how much of this is due to pure anti-semitism and how much is due to just latent anti-semitism mixed with ignorant 'group think', driven by the relentless anti-Israel narrative in the main stream media. A very interesting example of the latter casual anti-Israel demonisation is reported at the end of the full report found here from a recent academic legal conference (which actually featured Lord Justice Leveson who is the judge appointed to head the phone tapping enquiry). The Professor reports:

On a less positive note, there was one part of the conference that I found uncomfortable.The last thing I would expect to have to contend with at a conference like this is ignorant deligitimisation of Israel (as a Jew with family ties to Israel I am particular sensitive to this and attuned to the extent to which it is perpetrated). Yet this is what happened during a session on “Picturing the truth? Drawing, seeing evidence”. Jill Gibbon (Open University) gave a talk entitled “Unveiling the arms trade: satire, seeing and evidence” in which she described her experiences of making drawings at arms fairs. I was not exactly sure how the talk fitted into the conference theme, but that was not what concerned me. What concerned and upset me was that Dr Gibbon took the opportunity to make political statements condemning Israel that were not only completely out of context from her own talk, but were completely false. Specifically, following on from comments and drawings ridiculing Israeli representatives at the Paris arms fair (which at least fell within the context of the talk) Dr Gibbon stated that “only 6 months after this fair Israel attacked Gaza and killed over 1000 civilians on the pretext of stopping arms smuggling tunnels”.I was forced to point out, at the end of her talk that a) Israel’s actions in Gaza were not as stated, but in response to over 5000 rockets fired at civilian targets in Israel; and b) it has now been definitively proven that over 800 of the people killed in Gaza were Hamas members – with the proportion of civilians killed far less than in any other comparable war in history, showing the extraordinary lengths Israel went to avoid civilian deaths. To be fair, Dr Gibb did apologise afterwards and said that she should have checked the facts better. What we both agreed on was that she was simply repeating the kind of standard anti-Israel narrative that dominates the British media.

Note how, even though the speaker admitted to having no real knowledge or understanding of the conflict, she felt entirely comfortable and natural in selecting Israel as the country to demonise. It is inconceivable that she would have singled out any other country in the world without thinking more carefully about the facts and who she might possibly offend.

Letter in the Sun, Friday 1 July 2011

2011-07-01T09:44:00.002+01:00

As you can see here, finally as result of my battle with the Sun a letter by me appeared in today's issue (and they even made it look like I'm George Clooney!). There will also be some kind of apology/statement added to the Sun's web pages of the orginal articles in question. I have found the 16 May article online (this was the least offensive of the two) but not the other and as yet can see no kind of statement (although they have possibly changed some of the text). But I can still see plenty of hate-filled comments posted there. Anyway, here is the text of my letter:

Two items (16 May, 6 June) stating Israel had killed dozens of Palestinian Arab demonstrators were based on false claims provided by Arab terrorist organisations and the tyrannical regime of Syria. The Sun failed to state the source of the claims or present Israel’s version of events, which proved to be true. Israel was defending its borders from attack; no deaths were corroborated. Israel is a tiny state smaller than Wales surrounded by terrorist enemies sworn to its destruction. These enemies launch constant rocket and terrorist attacks (normally unreported) targeted at Israeli civilians. Occasionally, after overwhelming provocation (such as above) Israel defends itself. The media should not automatically accept the false narrative of Arabs as victims and Israel as the villain. Israel is the only democracy in the region.

As I have said many times before: People concerned about Israel worry too much about the anti-Israel agenda of the Guardian. Their tiny readership is going to be (mostly) obsessively anti-Israel no matter how the paper covers the Middle East. But the Sun - with its massive readership (25 times more than the Guardian) - has far more influence on the average Brit. Sun readers, like most Brits, are not inherently political. False negative reporting in the Sun has the potential to cause far more damage against Israel than anything in the Guardian. Conversely simply telling the truth about Israel in the Sun has the potential to do more good than any number of other pro-Israel activities.

Now for the BBC......

Lush pushing the Death to Israel narrative

2011-06-12T01:23:00.001+01:00

Daphne Anson has flagged an incredible piece of anti-Israel propaganda on the website of the cosmetics company Lush. It prompted me to write the following to their Customer Care team at customercare@lush.co.uk:

Dear Lush customer care

We have enjoyed buying your products over the years at your London stores. Our friends in Israel are especially keen on your skin products. However, having seen this announcement on your web page we certainly will not be going to your store again until you withdraw this page, and issue an apology.

This article is anti-Israel propaganda, spewing out Hamas-inspired hatred and lies that are easily dismissed. There has been no Israeli occupation of Gaza since 2005, but this has not stopped them firing 10,000 rockets at Israel since then. The statement that there are "levels of poverty more commonly associated with sub-Saharan Africa" is total nonsense that is easily disproved from UN figures. Any poverty in Gaza is due to the Hamas government, since the Palestinians there receive more per capita in aid than any other people in the world. I suggest your read the evidence here. And I don't think the pictures of Gaza you will find on the web pages here and here exactly lend support to your narrative.

As for supporting the Charity War on Want, this charity has been spending money on anti-semitic material for many years and is almost entirely dedicated to deligitimisation of Israel. In the last three years their 'charity' has been given directly to the terrorists of Hamas. They have no interest in helping the Palestinians - they simply want to destroy Israel - just like the people behind your campaign. After all, what do you think the headline "Freedom for Palestine" means? Hamas and the Palestine Authority make it very clear that it means death to Israel.

That is why this web page is so offensive to Jews and any intelligent person.

Yours

Edgar Davidson

p.s. It appears that your own researchers have been using my Rules and Guidelines for Middle East reporting without my permission and I shall therefore be contacting my lawyers about that.

Following up on the Rules for Media Reporting on the Middle East

2011-06-09T22:19:00.001+01:00

Having posted my Rules and Guidelines for reporting on the Middle East I realised that it creates plenty of interesting opportunities. Whenever I see examples of writing that conforms to the Guidelines I can simply post a message congratulating the writer for following my guidelines (and provide the link). I just tried out this strategy. First I looked at the BBC website. There were several recent articles that clearly conformed to the guidelines, but sadly there is no facility for posting comments. Next I tried the Guardian and there was a classic article, but sadly again comments were closed as it was more than 24 hours after the posting. So I ended up at the Huffington Post and found the following article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharmine-narwani/israels-faux-golan-border_b_872212.html

After signing up I posted the following comment:

Sharmine

Thanks for this very insightful analysis of what happened on the Golan border. I can see that you are committed to the following guildlines:

http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/2011/06/rules-and-guidelines-for-westerners.html

I strongly recommend this to all Huffington Post readers as it provides some very easy guidelines on how to counter classic Zionist arguments in the media.

Edgar

I also noticed that the author of the article - Sharmine Narwani - is a Senior Associate at St Anthony's College Oxford. So I posted the following email to the Warden of St Anthony's College:

Dear Prof MacMillan

I came across an article on the Huffington Post by one of St Anthony's Senior Associates Sharmine Narwani.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharmine-narwani/israels-faux-golan-border_b_872212.html

I am not sure if you pay Sharmine as a Senior Associate or if Sharmine teaches any of your students. Whatever the case it seems you could get exactly the same service free of charge by simply applying the following guidelines, which Sharmine has simply learnt off by heart:

http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/2011/06/rules-and-guidelines-for-westerners.html

Yours sincerely

Edgar Davidson

I look forward to the response.

Rules and Guidelines for Westerners reporting on the Middle East

2011-06-08T20:47:00.007+01:00

Following recent media reporting about Israel I am pleased to reveal the following rule book issued to all members of the Western media corps:

Rule 1 (Incidents involving possible loss of Arab lives)

If there is any incident either in Israel or near its borders in which there are claims of Arab losses you should write a report with the following headline:

“Israeli troops kill X Arab civilians including Y children”

For the numbers X and Y simply choose the highest figures from the following sources:

Syrian State Television
Hamas
Hezbollah
The Palestinian Authority
Al Jazeera
Any person within 20 miles of the incident who is wearing a kaffiya or a Burka.

You do not need to state the source of your claim. In the unlikely event that an Israeli spokesman claims either a different figure or that the incident simply did not happen you may end your report with the following:

“An Israeli spokesman claimed, without evidence, that they ‘acted in self-defence’.

Note that there are certain circumstances where Arab deaths from violence should not be reported at all. This is when Arabs themselves openly claim to be the killers. This applies, for example, in the following cases:

Mass slaughter in fighting between different rival groups (Hamas vs PA, Hamas vs Al Qaeda, PA vs Islamic Jihad etc)
Where the victims are accused of being Israeli collaborators

If news of these killings does leak out into the Western media then simply write a brief statement including the words:

“The underlying cause of the violence was the oppressive Israeli occupation”

Any claims of deaths of Israelis during such incidents can be assumed to be false and hence ignored.

Rule 2: Incidents involving loss of Israeli lives

If Israelis are killed in a terrorist attack, then treat this as an opportunity to take a vacation from reporting.

However, you should immediately return from your vacation if it is discovered that an Israeli family in Jerusalem is planning to build an extra bedroom to accommodate their new baby. In that case you should write a story with the headline

Israelis destroy chance of peace by announcing new West Bank settlement plans.

At the end of the article you can use the following statement:

An Israeli government spokesman claimed that the settlement plans were in response to what they claimed was a ‘terrorist attack’.

The only exceptions to this rule are as follows:

In the event of a suicide bombing you may interview the suicide bomber’s family and write a sympathetic piece stating how the bomber was a loving family person driven to his/her actions by the Israeli occupation. Be careful to refer to the actual suicide bombing only in vague abstract terms, never mentioning the victims or their families.
In the event of a particularly brutal terrorist attack, such as the slaughter of an entire family in their home in which a baby is decapitated, you can, if news of the attack reaches outside Israel, write a brief report with the following words:

“Although the Israelis claim that a terrorist attack occurred at X, it is more likely to have been the result of a disgruntled Thai worker, Jewish militants intent on sparking anti-Arab violence, or simply a family dispute. ”

Make sure you never mention the widepsread celebrations that take place throughout the Palestinian territories. Instead you should quote a Palestinian Authority spokesman, who having just led the celebrations with proclamations such as "This will be the fate of all Jews" in Arabic tells you in English that the Palestinian Authority do not approve of the attack as it damages their cause, and that in any case such actions are the natural response to the Israeli occupation.

Rule 3: Demographics

Remember the following important demographics in any report:

Any Palestinian under the age of 24 is a child.
Any Palestinian under the age of 12 is a baby.
Any Palestinian over the age of 33 is a grandfather/grandmother.
There are no Israeli ‘civilians’ and certainly no Israeli ‘children’. They are just soldiers or settlers.
Every Palestinian is a civilian. Those who produce suicide videos armed with machine guns vowing to kill as many Jews as possible are simply civilians forced by the Israeli occupation into becoming ‘militants’.
Palestinian cities and towns are refugees camps.
Israeli cities and towns are settlements.

Rule 4: Speaking to the natives

Never interview an Israeli. Although this is especially important after an incident such as the above, it applies equally to any aspect of life in Israel or the Middle East. The only exceptions to this rule are:

Haaretz reporters
Members of the Islamic Movement
Amos Oz
Any recent American Jewish immigrant living in the West Bank who uses Biblical quotations every other sentence.

To ensure this rule is adhered to it is safest to simply never speak to any Israeli Jew. Hence, make sure that whenever your are in Israel you either stay in the (Arab) American Colony Hotel Jersusalem or are hosted by a member of the Palestinian Authority or a person with a Haaretz press pass.

Rule 5 (Terminology)

The word ‘terrorist’ must never be used except when referring to Jewish residents of the West Bank accused of acting provocatively in the presence of an Arab.
Any Arab in a combat zone is unarmed if they are not carrying a mobile missile launcher. Any kind of guns, knives, swords, rocks, sticks or heavy metal items are, as a matter of course carried by unarmed Arabs since it is part of their cultural heritage.
In any report you must insert the word “settler” after the word “Israeli”, unless it is known that they live outside of Central Tel Aviv, in which case you must add the word “fanatical” before “Israeli”.
When mentioning the name of any Israeli city or town (i.e. settlement) you must also include the words occupied terroritory.
When mentioning any Israeli politician you must insert the word “hardline”, “extremist”, or “right-wing” before their name (if in doubt it is best to insert all three words).
In any report about Palestinians use the following words: “authentic”, “welcoming”, “poor”.
When mentioning any Palestinian politician you must insert the word “moderate” before their name, even if they are a leader of Hamas.

Rule 6 (Peace activists)

Any non-Arab in the region who is involved in violent anti-Israel activities is a peace activist. If such a person dies under any circumstances then you must state before any evidence is produced that this person “was killed by Israeli troops”. You must also put out an urgent call to all journalists in the world to write about nothing else for the next 7 days. Also contact every playwrite to request a play dedicated to this martyr of the Palestinian cause.

Rule 7 (Arabic speeches)

Never use the services of an Arabic translator to find out what Arab leaders and clerics are telling their own people, as in “We will not rest until every Jew is dead”. This will ensure you do not have to waste time telling readers that they have directly contradicted what they told you in English (as in “We want peace with Israel”). It will also save you having to explain (or even report) that wild anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are believed by 99.999% of all Arabs. A simple rule of thumb is the following:

Any statement X made to you by an Arab in English is to be treated as unimpeachable truth. Any statement Y made by an Arab in Arabic that contradicts X, can be treated as false and hence ignored.

In the unlikely event that news of the translation gets into the main stream media you simply have to report that the translation is the work of MEMRI – a Zionist organisation dedicated to mis-translation to make Arabs look like anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic psychopaths. If, even after that, the translation is proved to be accurate then you can simply say that the statement was "theatrical rhetoric which was never supposed to be meant literally".

Rule 8 (Israeli evidence)

Be aware that in most major stories where you are able to cast Israel as the devil incarnate, the Israelis subsequently produce hard evidence (videos, documents etc) that prove they were not guilty of the claims that had been made. In such cases there is no need to report on the new evidence. However, if you wish to remind readers of the original story you can include the following words at the end:

“Israel has claimed that some of these accusations are not true, but sources cast doubt on the authenticity of the Israeli evidence”.

Rule 9 (Rocket attacks against Israel)

The rule here is simple: Never report on any rocket attacks against Israel (also note: there is no Israeli town called Sderot). The only exception to this rule is if Israel eventually retaliates. In that case you can lead with a major story reporting that Israel has attacked civilians and you can include the following statement at the end of your 26 page report:

“The Israelis claim that their attack was in response to home made rocket attacks from Gaza/Lebanon.”

Rule 10 (Geography and Religion)

Never look at a map of the whole Middle East. That way you will never have to reveal that Israel is less than the size of Wales surrounded by Muslim countries with a land mass several thousand times as large.
Although you can refer to the fact that 20% of Israel's population are Arabs you should only do so if you include the words "oppressed minority", "abused", "underclass", "impoverished".
Never ask why over 50% of Israel’s Jewish population appears to have dark or even black skin. This might otherwise force you to reveal that, contrary to your assumption that they are all of European/American origin they are actually native Middle Eastern and Ethiopian.
Never ask why there are 0 Jews living in Gaza, 0 Jews living in the PA occupied part of the West Bank, 0 Jews living in Jordan, less than 50 Jews living in Egypt, less than 20 Jews living in Syria, and less than 30 Jews living in Lebanon. Do, however, say that Israel's policies make it an apartheid state committed to ethinic cleansing of all Arabs.
Never ask why Israel is the only country in the Middle East whose Christian population is expanding.
Never ask why Jersusalem is mentioned 800 times in the Old Testament and 0 times in the Koran. Do, however, refer at least once in every report to the fact that Jerusalem is sacred to Muslims.

Rule 11 (Tactics of War)

Targetted assassinations of terrorists carried out by Israelis are, under all circumstances, heineous war crimes. When reporting such crimes always use the words widespread international condemnation and invoke the spectre of a UN Security Council resolution. Never mention that the assassination was carried out with such careful planning and skill that no civilian was harmed during the operation. Also never mention the direct threat the terrorist posed to Israel, nor the Israelis previously killed by the terrorist.
Targetted assassinations of terrorists carried out by any country other than Israelis are, under all circumstances, causes for jubiliation. When reporting such crimes always use the words widespread international support although you can include the words "concern expressed by some Muslim militants". Never mention the fact that, unlike assassinations carried out by Israelis, dozens of innocent civilians were also killed. Also never mention the fact that the terrorist did not pose a direct threat to the country carrying out the attack.
Never mention the fact that in Palestinian suicide terrorist attacks, children are always specifically targetted. Just stress that such attacks are the inevitable result of the 'occupation' and 'poverty'.
The total blockading of a country's borders and carpet bombing of its cities by nations from the other side of the world (as in, e.g. Libya) is a highly comendable tactic even though the country poses no threat to its neighbours. Stress the tyrannical nature of the regime being bombed (and do not remind readers that 6 months earlier you were telling them what a wonderful reformer their leader was) and never remind readers about the civilians living there (who mostly hate the regime)
The blockading of Gaza's sea border to stop weapons deliveries, and the targeted bombing of its terror facilities by its neighbour (Israel) who the Gazans have shelled indiscriminately, is a heineous war crime, that must be the subject of multiple UN resolutions, enquiries, and 'peace' flotillas. Never mention the tyrannical nature of the Hamas regime but focus only on the civilians living there (without mentioning that they support the regime and all rejoice in the deaths of Israeli citizens). You should also point out the 'hypocrisy of the West' in not imposing a no-fly zone on Israel.

Rule 12 (Peace Partners)

Under no circumstances ever mention that the Hamas Charter calls for the death of all Jews and cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for its inspiration. Similarly, never mention that, even after the Oslo accords, the Palestinian Authority has never renounced its own charter calling for the destruction of Israel.

Rule 13 - The Final Option

If you have any doubt about the content of a story, or if you simply cannot be bothered to write anything yourself, then simply copy and paste whatever Al Jazeera is saying on its website.

Media mugs

2011-06-07T00:03:00.000+01:00

If you need any proof of the craven, stupid, and instinctively pro-Arab bias of the British media it is worth noting that, until just a few weeks ago, they were still insisting that Syria was a country intent on reform and goodness, with the glamorous young Assads at the helm.

So, for example, whereas the Sun now finds any opportunity to demonize Israel (see yet another example today), the only previous mentions of Syria were in articles like the one here. It's over a year old, but fortunately for us, the Sun has not yet been embarrased enough to remove it from their website (in case they do as a result of this posting I have kept my own copy). The article includes such biting analysis as the following:

Yesterday she (Mrs Assad) was seen in a Sky TV interview in jeans and tight top extending an olive branch to the West.

She spoke of reforms in Syria, adding: "What we are trying to do is make sure the progress we are making across the country is inclusive to everybody or as many people as possible, whether it is economic, political or social."

In doing so, this former London schoolgirl could bring some much-needed stability to this troubled region.

The first comment by by 'talanizam' is also truly accurate and prophetic:

am from Syria , i live in Damascus and am asking every one to come and see how amazing country we have. every thing u hear about Syria is not true ...... it is peaceful here with sweet and friendly people we have a great leader Mr president and his wife who are working day and night for our country and every day there is big improvement and i can tell that they are doing great job. we syrians are proud of them coz they represent syria in a great and right image
they are a beautiful couple exactly same as Syria

Who needs Al Jazeera when we have the Sun heh? While Syria burns in a brutual civil war they can continue to focus their anger on Israel.

p.s. There are plenty of so-called intelligent people in the UK (including many Jews) who don't actually read the Sun but who parrot the line that 'the Sun is pro Israel' (because it was 4 years ago).

Now Sky News piles in with blood libel against Israel

2011-06-06T09:17:00.001+01:00

UPDATED: The Sun's coverage even more outrageous (see below) than Sky News - but both are part of the News Corp, which under the leadership of James Murdoch, has morphed into having an anti-Israel propaganda agenda.

Self-explanatory letter of complaint sent to Ofcom and Sky News:

Sky News yesterday and today has been leading with a story "Israeli Forces Kill 23 Protesters On Border". Although the online version of the story did eventually state that the claim of these deaths was 'made by Syrian state television' this point was not made on yesterday's TV headlines and the importance of the point would have been lost on most viewers. Syrian State television is the propaganda mouthpiece for one of the most evil and secretive regimes in the world - a regime that is currently massacring its own citizens on a daily basis (over 1200 dead since March). According to Syrian State television none of that has been happening. The fact that Syria has banned all foreign journalists should be sufficient grounds for any respectable news outlet to have doubted their claims. So why is Sky News using an information source that is so obviously wrong?

There were dozens of journalists witnessing the events from the Israeli side of the border yesterday and not one of them corroborates a single death or serious injury. The Sky story fails to explain that the entire event - which was an attempt to breach Israel's border - was organised by the Syrian regime that is desperate to divert attention from the daily massacres it is carrying out against its own people. Indeed while Sky news fall for the lies of the Syrian regime it ignores the more reliable information coming from the Syrian Reform Party that has issued a statement here that that states that the regime paid hundreds of impoverished farmers $1,000 each to show-up at the border and $10,000 to their families should any of them succumb to Israeli fire.

Should there be any doubt about the impact of this Sky News blood libel against Israel I draw your attention to the comments that have been posted on Yahoo News' link to Sky's story:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/israeli-forces-kill-23-protesters-border-024551641.html

Here is just a sample of the hatred being spewed there:

It's just the Jewish version of ethnic cleansing

How come no NATO military presence of some sort in order to protect civilians has ever been considered? Possibly because the Jews hold the West by the balls. They control most banks and financial institutions, their covert presence and control of the media and large corporations is widespread, and they also are amongst the largest donors of political parties (left and right) in most countries. In the UK and the US they are amongst the largest donors in fact.

No other nation could ever get away with occupying another whilst over the years conducting a systematic massacre of the local population.

How long are we going to put up with Israel's bully-boy tactics???

We will put up with Israel while they own and run the USA.

This is just plain murder.

Where are the nazis, israel has just forgotten what happened to them in europe? now they are doing the same to otherr people and the americans don't see anything wrong with it??, once again they are digging their grave slowly.. it will soon backfire

Finally, what makes the Sky coverage especially shameful is that, while it leads with its blood libel against Israel, there is no mention at all of the many dozens of genuine civilian protesters who were shot dead in various cities in Syria yesterday. Perhaps your reporters should look at some real evidence of this like here:

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/gruesome-video-of-syrian-soldiers.html

Update:
The Sun does not even bother to quote Syrian TV as the source of the 'killings'. It simply presents the Syrian claims as fact in its article which leads with the statement "Israeli troops killed at least 20 protesters on the Syrian boder yesterday". There is no source quoted other than "one onlooker'" who said "it was like a turkey shoot".
I have filed off another complaint to them.

The Sun ratchets up its anti-Israel assault (UPDATED)

2011-05-17T08:48:00.003+01:00

The following, which I have submitted to the Press Complaints Commission, is self-explanatory.

This article (see left) is factually wrong, misleading in several ways and shows a blatant anti-Israel bias. Specifically:

It states that 14 people were killed “as Israeli troops fired on Palestinian protesters”. But 10 of the fatalities, as stated later in the report, were in the Lebanese town of Maarun ar-Rus. The report fails to mention that it was the Lebanese army who were shooting at these protesters.
It fails to report the crucial part of the Israeli claim about the incidents. While it says that the Israelis claimed ‘troops had fired warning shots’ it misses out the crucial information that the fatalities were the result of shooting from the Lebanese army who have a UN-binding commitment to prevent their citizens from breaching the border.
It fails to mention the crucial fact that violent protesters from Lebanon and Syria – who numbered in their hundreds actually breached the Israel border in an unprovoked attack, entered Israel and were stoning the handful of Israeli soldiers stationed there.
It quotes the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian claims and condemnation as if these were reliable sources. To quote the Syrian government, which has banned all foreign journalists from its country and is currently engaged in massacres of its own population, as if it were a reliable source is contemptible.
It fails to mention that this attack against Israel’s northern borders was coordinated by the terrorist organisation Hezbollah, with the support of Syria’s president Al Assad who saw it an opportunity to deflect attention away from his country’s own revolution against him.
It fails to mention the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv the same morning that resulted in a civilian being killed and 17 injured. This terrorist attack, and the attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, were part of a coordinated strategy by Israel’s enemies to ‘celebrate’ what they call ‘Naqba’ day – the day of Israel’s independence 63 years ago.
The numbers reported are wrong. Every other report cites at most 11 people killed, of whom 10 were almost certainly killed by the Lebanese army as explained above.

I have written many times recently on this blog about the Sun's increasing hostility to Israel and the reasons behind it. Trevor Kavanagh, the Editor who is genuinely somewhat sympathetic to Israel, ludicrously claimed in last week's Jewish Chronicle that the Sun is ‘pro-Israel’. Other than the very occasional mention by Kavanagh himself in his own pieces, the Sun has not had a single article sympathetic to Israel since Richard Littlejohn left several years ago. More importantly, while the Sun has failed to report ANY of the thousands of rocket and terrorist attacks against Israel in the last three years it now invariably reports ANY story, like yesterday’s, where it can cast Israel in a purely negative light. Perhaps Kavanagh thinks he can say this in the JC because no Jews actually read the Sun? The Sun may not be as relentlessy vicious in its anti-Israel reporting as the Guardian or the Independent, but its influence is in many ways far greater and is contributing to the casual anti-Israel attitude among people in the UK who would otherwise have no such bias or even interest.

UPDATE, 19 May 2011. I received the following response from the Press Complaints Commission:

Thank you for your complaint.

I note your position that The Sun coverage is inaccurate as it fails to make clear that the fatalities on the Lebanese border were the result of shots fired from the Lebanese army rather than Israeli troops.

I have attached the BBC report on this matter, which – as you will see – refers to Israeli forces firing on groups of protesters, including those at the Lebanese border. It later refers to Lebanese soldiers firing warning shots, but Israeli troops firing as demonstrators vandalised the fence. The Guardian article makes similar claims (although it refers to four casualties) and states that Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai said that soldiers fired when demonstrators began vandalising the fence. Finally, I attach the Daily Mail article, which also refers to Israeli troops opening fire, although it indicates that defence officials suggested that the Lebanese army might have been responsible for some of the deaths.

It would therefore appear to have been widely reported that Israeli troops were responsible for firing shots that killed protestors, despite the suggestion in the Daily Mail article that the Lebanese army was responsible for some of the deaths. In order for the Commission to gain a full understanding of this matter, it would be most helpful if you were able to explain where you obtained the information that Israeli troops were responsible. I look forward to your response, within the next seven days if possible.

And here is the reply I just sent:

Thanks you for your response. I am well aware that the BBC and Guardian provided similar incorrect anti-Israel reports of the incidents but I fail to see how that is in any way relevant to my complaint against the Sun's coverage. The BBC and the Guardian are intrinsically anti-Israel. You may as well have quoted to Syrian and Hamas positions (actually that is exactly what the Sun, the BBC and the Guardian did).

>>It would therefore appear to have been widely reported that Israeli troops were responsible for firing shots that killed protestors, despite the suggestion in the Daily Mail article that the Lebanese army was responsible for some of the deaths. In order for the Commission to gain a full understanding of this matter, it would be most helpful if you were able to explain where you obtained the information that Israeli troops were responsible.

I assume that there was a typo in that last sentence, and that you meant Lebanese not Israeli troops?

Even with that assumption your request is somewhat bizarre since you already cited one source for the claim that the deaths were caused by Lebanese troops. Moreover, in my complaint I told you another source - namely the Israeli Government spokesman. And that is the whole point of the complaint. The Sun article ONLY provided the claims of the Syrian government - a police state seeking to deflect attention away from its internal revolution. Neverthess, the following information about the incidents were available on 15 May - BEFORE the Sun article (there has been further evidence since 16 May that the Lebanese were responsible for deaths, but that is not relevant to the complaint)

http://idfspokesperson.com/2011/05/15/updates-regarding-todays-west-bank-riots/
(the above link is especially important so it was on the widely available website of the Israel Defence Forces. You cannot get more of an official claim than that, so there is no justification for the Sun having 'missed it'.

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=220641

It is also important to note that even within Lebanon, where the official position was to claim the Israelis were responsible for the deaths, there are senior MPs who recognise that the real blame lies with UNIFIL and the Lebanese army. See here:

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2011/May-17/LF-MP-blames-UNIFIL-Lebanese-Army-for-border-violence.ashx#axzz1Mo1YjpXu

Pro and anti-Israel demonstrations London 16 May 2011

2011-05-16T13:01:00.000+01:00

Hearing at the last minute that a pro-Israel counter demonstration to the 'Naqba' demo outside the Israeli embassy was being planned, we felt it was important to attend, especially as most pro-Israel activists were at a conference in London). Approaching from Kensington Gardens it was nice to see the Israel flags in the main road, and even better to discover that the anti-semites (and that is what they are) were forced into a side-road.

Richard Millett has already posted his report and pictures. Other points to note:

A lot of the anti-semites were carrying badges/signs talking about a '63 year occupation'. They no longer hide the fact that they consider every part of Israel to be 'occupied'.
The anti-semites were frequently - normally in pairs - walking behind and in front of the pro-Israel demonstrators to intimidate us (the police were not stopping them doing this). The especially hateful ones were English rather Arabs. It is difficult to understand how regular looking middle-class 25 yearold English women can be so consumed with hatred based on a cause for which they have absolutely no understanding. That's why anybody who thinks this is not pure anti-semitism is deluded.

After returning home I discovered that Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon had been breached and it was SO predictable how the media - almost totally silent on the Syrian massacres - spun into action to focus all the blame on Israel. Melanie Phillips has some comments on this, but the best piece is by Mordechai Keder - which highlights how patheticly unprepared and weak the Israelis have been. Trusting the defence of Israel to Ehud Barak - the worst politican in Israel's history - is a catastrophe. This is a man who simply does not understand that Israelis are hated by Arabs who want to destroy them.

A childhood remembered on Yom Hatzmaut

2011-05-12T16:18:00.000+01:00

The following speech was delivered by my Israeli niece to the Toronto Community (where she is based as part of a programme to promote better understanding of Israel). She recalls her childhood in Jerusalem during the second Intifada - a time when suicide bombings were almost a daily occurrence and when parents often insisted on their children travelling on different buses to school so that if one bus was attacked at least one child would survive.

My name is Talia and I am from Jerusalem. During the second Intifada I was 10 years old.

I never though that it was a different type of childhood than my friends that lived in small and more protected towns, than my family friends that are 10 years older, or than my cousins that lived in London

You probably wonder way? How come?

And the answer to that is very simple: my parents

My parents did what any other parent would have done - protecting me and my brother and sister us much us they could.

So I didn’t go out to the mall with my friends and I never got to see the news even if I really wanted. The first time that I got on a bus was when I was 14 years old.

But of course there are a few memories that I will never be able to forget and no matter how much my parents tried to protect me, some things were just out of their control.

I want to share with you one of them.

It was my 11th birthday and I wanted to invite all of my class so my parents rented a space in French Hill, which is just near to my neighborhood Pizgat Ze'ev in Jerusalem

It was a fun day…all of my friends were there and we played lots of sports and one of them was soccer. It was the penalties, and I, as the Birthday girl, got to take the last one.

And as I was kicking the ball there was a BIG boom and the first thought among my friends and I was "wow what an amazing kick" but it didn’t take more then one minute to start hearing the Ambulances.

At that moment we understood that it wasn’t my kick, it was an explosion. It was on bus number 6, the bus that I take to get home.

All of that was 20 minutes before the end of the party so all of my friend's parents were on the way to pick them up. My parents’ phones started to ring. It was other parents calling to say that there was traffic and they were going to be late.

So we stayed until all the parents got there but there was one Mom that didn’t come. She was one car behind the bus and she was rushed to the Hospital and was diagnosed with shock damage.

I remember my friend’s face when she got the message.

Her Mom was ok but even those few hours were just unbearable.

Every person has a story, an experience that they will never forget and this one is mine

Despite all of this, Israel is my home, and I don't regret growing up in Jerusalem, and I think that it has made me who I am today. I'm proud to go next year to defend my country in the IDF.

Footnote: There were three suicide bombings of No. 6 buses duirng the second Intifada:

May 18, 2003 - Eight people were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide bombing on Egged bus no. 6 near French Hill in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. A second suicide bomber detonated his bomb when intercepted by police in northern Jerusalem.
June 19, 2002 - Seven people were killed and 50 injured - three of them in critical condition - when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded bus stop and hitchhiking post at the French Hill intersection in northern Jerusalem. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mar 27, 2001 - 28 people were injured, two seriously, in a suicide bombing directed against a northbound No. 6 bus at the French Hill junction in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

For a comprehensive listing of bus bombings see here. For details of all suicide attacks in the second Intifada see here.

The little Bin Laden in the mind of David Cameron

2011-05-05T13:05:00.000+01:00

The day after the genocidal Hamas formally merged with the Palestinian Authority, its leader Ismail Haniyeh condemned the killing of Osma Bin Laden, saying:

"We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior"

And what has been Britain's response to this turn of events, which exposes the Palestinian Authority as a corrupt terrorist organisation with no intention of ever achieving peace with Israel? The government has welcomed the Hamas merger and David Cameron has threatened that unless Israel makes concessions to them he will reward the terrorists by formally accepting the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

Althoogh he does not explicilty refer to David Cameron, the incomparable Sultan Knish has captured Cameron's attitude perfectly in his article today:

"The little Bin Laden sits inside the mind of Western civilizations and issues its list of demands. What speech must be suppressed, what customs must be followed, how Islam must be praised and which of Islam's enemies must be weakened or destroyed."

You should read the whole thing.
The little Bin Laden in the mind of Cameron has made him decide that his main defence against Islam is to try to sacrifice Israel. His £700 million gift to Pakistan to train the next generation of suicide bombers was just the side dish.

Britain's reaction to bin Laden's assassination: surely some mistake?

2011-05-02T16:09:00.002+01:00

William Hague and David Cameron have lavishly praised the Americans for assassinating bin Laden. Yet when the Israelis were suspected (but never proved) to have assassinated Hamas front-man Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, Hague and Cameron were so apoplectic with rage that they expelled an Israeli diplomat from London in protest.

This was despite the fact that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was the person responsible for shipping Iranian weapons to Hamas in Gaza. His work posed a direct threat to Israel's survival. In contrast, bin Laden no longer represented any kind of analogous threat to the USA.

And here are some other differences worth thinking about:

in the bin Laden assassination several civilians were also killed
in the al-Mabhouh assassination no other person was harmed

the bin Laden assassination took place in a country that is supposed to be America's 'ally'
the al-Mabhouh assassination took place in a country that is a sworn enemy of Israel.

al-Mabhouh was personally responsible for the slaughter of several Israeli hostages.
as despicable as bin Laden was he had never personally murdered any Americans.

And while on the subject of British hypocrisy has anybody noticed the deafening silence when NATO airstrikes kill children in Libya? Funny how the argument about 'despots using civilians as human shields' is used as a valid defence in this case but is never allowed to be a valid defence by Israel.

Finally, while the news on bin Laden is obviously welcome, it has two extremely worrying long-term implications.

It will enable Obama to claim a personal military victory that could propel him to a second term in the White House (notice his consant use of the first person in his speech today). Such a term will go a long way to achieving bin Laden's objectives anyway.
The media blackout of all other stories will enable Assad in Syria to crush the rebellion there with even greater brutality and speed, thereby possibly ensuring the survival of the Syria/Iran axis which poses the greatest threat to the world.

Update: Guess who has condemned the bin Laden assassination decrying "the killing of an Arab holy warrior"? Cameron and Hague's new best friend Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. What's the betting you won't hear about that in the British media?

If a story - no matter how big - does not fit the anti-Israel narrative then ignore it or just blame Israel anyway

2011-04-15T13:13:00.000+01:00

Over the years I have provided many examples of the main stream media ignoring stories, no matter how big, which do not fit the "Israel bad, Palestinians good" narrative.

There is a very big story of this sort out of Gaza today. The fanatical anti-Israel Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni has been brutally murdered by an Islamist Al Quaeda affiliated group after he was abducted in an attempt by that group to have one of their leaders released by Hamas. Elder of Ziyon has a very good report about the context of the story here.

But, as usual in these cases, the 'other story' is the failure of the entire main stream media either to report the story at all or to report it properly. So, for example, as of 12.00 today the story was not covered at all on ANY of the major web news outlets (yahoo, google news, BBC news, sky news). The left-wing Israeli rag Haaretz buried the story well away from its 'front page' (after all their idiotic editors probably found it too hard to parse). But, as soon as Hamas made the bizarre claim that Israel committed the killing, you can guess what happened. Suddenly the media, such as google news (at 1.00pm) was reporting:

Hamas claims Israel killed Italian to stop Gaza flotilla

In fairness, google news was pointing to this Jerusalem Post story but, of course, that headline and story has a different context in Israel.

Insanity all round

2011-04-10T18:26:00.001+01:00

With Hamas now launching 70 rockets a day into Southern Israel, resulting in a million civilians confined to bomb shelters, the world ignores this crime against humanity, and only reports on Israeli responses, which have been limited to a small number of clinical strikes on terrorists in Gaza. Even the remarkable and unprecedented successes of Israel's new Iron Dome system in intercepting a number of Grad missiles has gone completely unreported for the simple reason that to report it would mean having to report that the terrorist government of Gaza is launching missiles against Israel. And we can't have the public in the West knowing that can we?

Yet, while the Arab league has now gone to the UN to try to enforce a no-fly zone over Gaza to ensure Israel has no means of defending itself, Israel announces one of the dumbest things imaginable. Influenced by its own insane leftists, Israel's army has announced new maps of Gaza that highlight 3,000 buildings and various infrastructure sites that should not be attacked in any conflict like UN facilities, schools, homes, etc. In other words the exact types of sites that Hamas uses both to store its missiles and to launch them from. And when will the Israelis learn that the world will condemn them no matter what targets they strike in Gaza? If the entire Al Quaeda leadership was standing in Gaza by a set of missile launchers about to send nuclear weapons, the world would be united in its condemnation of Israel if Israel struck them down. Is it any wonder that Hamas, with its new ally in Egypt egging it on and enabling ever more sophisticated weapons to get into Gaza, is getting stronger and more confident?

Last week Netanyahu said that the Hamas attack on a school bus 'crossed a red line' - meaning presumably that 70 rockets a day and the total paralysis of Southern Israel was fine by him. If only Netanyahu would read and understanding this article by Sultan Knish things might start to improve.

David Cameron: the worst PM in Britian's history

2011-04-05T23:08:00.000+01:00

Cameron and Obama - the perfect storm of dhimittude, stupidity and hypocrisy at a time when we are in critical need of real leadership.

Britain is in the process of the most savage set of cuts to its basic services - and what does Cameron do? He triples aid to Pakistan - the corrupt country which is at the forefront of the Jihad against the West. And while Pakistan is spending billions on arming the Taliban and building more nuclear weapons, it is worth remembering that Pakistan's school system is dominated by the Madrassas, which indoctrinate the next generation of Jihadists:

David Cameron has disclosed plans to almost triple British aid for schools in Pakistan, even as its government spent billions on military equipment.

And as if to prove just what a prat he is, while in Pakistan Cameron has 'done an Obama' by claiming that 'Britain caused many of the world's problems'. Yes, and of course the world is SO much better because of Pakistan.....

It has also been revealed that Britain was not just selling arms to Gadaffi, but was actually sending senior MOD commanders to Tripoli to drum up business. In fact in recent years Britain has been selling billions in arms to all of the most repressive Arab regimes including even Syria. But the one country against which Britain has applied an unofficial arms embargo is ... Israel. This embargo was initiated by David Milliband in 2009 but has been rigorously enforced by Cameron and Hague, even while they are falling over themselves to sell to the Arabs.

This is the thanks Israelis get when they help Palestinians

2011-04-04T16:58:00.000+01:00

Breaking news:

Israeli actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, 53, was shot dead on Monday in a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayyim said Mer-Khamis was shot five times by masked Palestinian militants.

Mer-Khamis' mother, Arna Mer, was an Israeli Jewish activist for Palestinian rights. His father, Saliba Khamis, was a Christian Palestinian. Mer-Khamis was born and raised in Nazareth.

Mer-Khamis was well-known as an actor for his film and theater roles, both in Israel and abroad, and had made a name for himself as a director and a political activist, as well.

Based in Israel, Mer-Khamis was affiliated with the local theater in Jenin, established by his mother in the 1980s. In 2006, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theater in Jenin, along with Zakariya Zubeidi, the former military leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades in that West Bank city.

Israeli leftists = useful idiots.
This is the thanks they get and is what would be in store for all of them under Palestinian rule.

Muslims massacre and behead UN staff sent to help them - but it's really not their fault

2011-04-03T00:57:00.001+01:00

The western media response to the massacre and beheadings of UN staff in Afghanistan yesterday is astonishing. Where it has been covered at all (today's Times had the story on page 39), the media has suggested that the attacks were a justified response to a Koran being 'burnt' in America and so the media has been keen to suggest that the real instigator of this violence is Terry Jones the US pastor involved. Jones is villified for daring to suggest that Islam is not a religion of peace, despite the fact that the response from Muslims yet again proves his point perfectly. And we are not talking about a 'small minority' here. Videos showed it was clearly part of a popular outbreak of violence across the whole of Afghanistan (and apparently it continued today). The mob of thousands yesterday - whipped into a frenzy by mullahs during Friday prayers - were looking for any symbol of the 'west' to attack. The Afghan police - trained and equipped by the US and the UK - made no attempt to stop them storming the UN building and tearing it apart; in many cases the police helped them.

Especially interesting was the Sun today. The Sun has to square a few circles over this one. On the one hand it supports 'our boys' in Afghanistan and has tried to convince us that our boys are dying for a good cause because 'the Afghans really appreciate us bringing them democracy and stability'. Since the riots clearly show the majority of the Afghan population simply want to kill us and remain in the stone age, the Sun had a problem. So its solution was to present the story as the work of 'the Taliban' (even though not even Al-Jazeera dared make such a nonsensical and blatantly false claim). And since 'fighting the Taliban to save the Afghan people' is one of the things 'our boys' are doing then it can be turned into the exact opposite of what it really was: a story to support the continued sacrifice of our troops rather than one which proves that not a single drop of British blood should be shed for these savages. By pinning it all on the 'Taliban' the Sun also manages to maintain its general cover-up of any Muslim atrocity, which has been a feature of the paper since James Murdoch took over control of NewsCorp.

After the Itamar massacre and this (not to mention the 17,000 other Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11) I wonder just how bad an atrocity Muslims have to carry out before the western media start to realise there might be a problem with Islam itself? What is clear is that no matter how bad any future atrocity is, the western media will continue to find reasons to justify it. So, if word of this article reaches some Mullah in Afghanistan or Pakistan and if, as a result, a mob beheads say 1000 westerners, it will all be my fault.

Demonisation of Israel propaganda reaches new heights: popular TV series V has Israeli behind world-wide suicide bomb attacks against civilians.

2011-04-01T16:21:00.001+01:00

Living in London, anti-Israel propaganda is now almost impossible to avoid. Whether it is the surprising inclusion of anti-Israel material in an art gallery exhibition or West End play you are seeing, or the ignorant hate mob outside Marks and Spencer and Ahava when you go shopping in the West End, or just walking along Piccadilly where you can see people selling t-shirts and posters with the most vicious messages, it has become all pervasive. So, given all of that plus the relentless demonisation of Israel on TV news and current affairs programmes, it is nice to know that occasionally you can indulge in some light entertainment that is guaranteed not to get you agitated with any political (let alone anti-Israel) message. Until yesterday there was one TV programme that, for me, provided such a piece of indulgance: The Sci-fi series V (showing on the Syfy channel).

But in last night’s episode we ‘discover’ that simultaneous suicide bombings against civilian targets in New York and every major city of the world were coordinated out by …. Israelis. The plot even claims that only Israelis have the ‘technology’ for this sort of destruction. The ‘international world-wide conspiracy’ (yes that very expression was used) is traced to Mossad agent ‘Eli Cohen’ (if you are going to go with the standard ludicrous lies and stereotypes then, hey, why not go the full way). Cohen has a warehouse full of suicide bomb vests waiting to be used in the next round of attacks.

Now, if you want to go for real stereotypes, I seem to recall that it is Muslim terrorists (never once Israelis) who are the ones who are rather keen on simultaneous suicide bomb attacks against civilian targets. Even Obama has not been scared to call Al Quaeda terrorists (although he has ignored the fact that every Islamist organisation in the world uses this tactic). So you would have thought that the V producers might at least have had Al Quaeda as the ones behind the bombing rather than Israelis. But no. It appears that this would have been offensive to Muslims. Far better to demonise the Israelis/Jews as they don’t have a right to get offended.

What is really galling about this is the casual way that Israelis are now used in drama/fiction as the ‘evil, vicious, guys’. I doubt if the V producer/writer even stopped to think that they might be causing offence with their choice of inverted reality. But the masses now believe that this inverted version of reality is genuinely representative of reality.That is the result of the continual barrage of demonisation over the last few years. And it really does seem now that nowhere is safe from this demonisation of Israel.

p.s. Yes I admit that this posting provided a gratuitous opportunity for posting a photo of the lovely 'alien known as Lisa' who stars in V.

A story that perfectly captures everything you need to know about the Islamic problem in the UK

2011-03-31T16:14:00.000+01:00

A very interesting story in today's Sun perfectly captures many aspects about the Islamic threat in the UK and how the politically correct establishment deals with it. The local council (which is so short of cash it is closing nurseries and day centres) pays known Islamic thugs to go on a holiday in order to stop them violently disrupting a peacful demonstration. Then when the thugs violently assault a white man in an unprovoked racial attack on that holiday, they try to fabricate evidence that they were acting in self-defence (this part of the story is not included in the online version - what the paper says is that Hussain got one of his mates to bruise him to pretend he had been attacked first). Despite all of this the Race Equality boss claims the whole thing was a success. Oh .. and finally not once in the reporting of this does the Sun actually state that the thugs are Muslims:

FIVE thugs sent on a £2,000 trip to keep them out of trouble ended up attacking a man during the jaunt. They were among 19 known troublemakers taken away to avoid clashes with English Defence League marchers near their homes.

Town hall bosses spent more than £2,100 on the day trip, which was supervised by a cop and five council staff, a court heard. The group, aged 17 to 19, were taken to Blackpool Pleasure Beach amid fears they could become embroiled in the EDL march in Dudley, West Midlands.

But soon after arriving at the Lancashire resort, the Asian yobs began aiming racist chants at dad-of-two Derek Brownhill, 30. Then Riad Hussain, 19, punched him so hard both his "feet left the ground" and he was knocked unconscious, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard. Prosecutor David Swinnerton said Sandwell Council organised the trip to "distract the 19 from anti-social behaviour" during the march against plans for a mosque in Dudley. Hussain was locked up for ten months. Raja Rashid and Fahad Atiq, who were on bail at the time over a separate hammer attack, were given 21 months and 16 months. Wasim Telhat and Mazahar Taheir received community orders. All five admitted assault.

Last night Race Equality Sandwell boss Derrick Campbell said: "I would not say the trip had failed. Its purpose was to keep them away from the march."

Jewish Chronicle still sinking lower

2011-03-29T23:55:00.000+01:00

I've posted several times before about the Jewish Chronicle's increasingly ambivalent attitude toward Israel. Gina in Golders Green has an interesting post about the Chairman of the JC (Anthony Julius) defending free ads posted by the Palestine Solidarity Committe on the JC website. Julius spews out the usual 'freedom of speech' mantra (pretty bizarre in this case) which, together with the words 'need for balance' has been used by numerous JC editorial staff in my own dealings with them to justify, for example, the frequent articles posted by writers who are openly hostile to Israel. I have never understood the notion of 'need for balance' in this context. The analogy I like to use for this is to imagine that a shop sells dozens of different Arsenal football club calenders but never stocks a single Spurs calender. Finally, someone produces a Spurs calender but is told they cannot sell it unless - in the interest of 'balance' - at least 3 out of the 12 pictures are of Arsenal players. Insane of course, but that is exactly the game the JC is playing. The fact that anti-Israel articles dominate every other main stream newspaper and magazine does not seem to have registered in the minds of JC editors.

Ihave also noticed that almost every article about Israel in the JC is now written by Anschel Pfeffer who is not only a typical left-wing Haaretz hack, always desparate to see things from the 'other side', but is actually remarkably ill-informed about everything he writes. On last week's front-page article "Bombing back, but not as we know it" which carried over to page 2, Pfeffer insultingly claimed the recent spate of Palestinian terrorist attacks were really nothing to worry about and nothing to do with Hamas (compare his plodding lack of incite about this with real experts such as Barry Rubin, Sultan Knish or Caroline Glick). Pfeffer has two other massive articles in the same edition - the titles of which tell you everything you need to know about his attitude: "IDF braces for Arab Spring" on page 18 and "Nakba law prevents free expression" on page 23.

At a time when Israel is under unprecedented assault physically and spiritually, and when not a single national UK newpaper or TV News programme is prepared even to let somebody tell Israel's side of the story, UK Jews expect the Jewish Chronicle at least to make a stand. Instead, in the shop of 100 Arsenal calenders the Jewish Chronicle is offering the one Spurs calender, but with Arsenal pictures on 7 of the 12 pages 'for balance' and 'free speech'.

Sky News declares war on Israel

2011-03-22T11:05:00.000Z

I just sent the following self-explanatory complaint to Sky News:

Dear Sirs

When Palestinian terrorists committed one of the worst atrocities in recent history on 11 March - slaughtering a family of five Israelis in their home including a baby aged three months who was decapitated, Sky News TV - a 24-hour news channel - chose not to inform its viewers of the story. Not even in ticker tape form. And not even when the terrorist attack was claimed by the Palestine Authority's own 'military wing', and with celebrations of the attack taking place throughout the Palestinian territories. Any claim that the story could not be covered due to the Japan earthquake were destroyed two days later when Sky News did find time to post a story criticising Israel for announcing plans to build 400 news homes. Sky News was also completely silent last week after Israel's discovery of a major Iranian arms shipment to Hamas on the ship 'Victoria'. This shipment was an act of war by Iran and was one of the most dangerous international incidents of recent years. But it will never be known to Sky viewers. Then on 19 March Hamas launched a major attack against Israel - over 50 rockets fired including Iranian grad rockets into the city of Ashkelon. Again Sky News chose not to cover this story in any way at all.

Yet this morning - while Britain is involved in its new war against Libya - Sky News TV has somehow found the space, time and incentive to provide not one but two 'breaking news' stories about Israel. In fact, as of 9.00am, these were two of only three stories running on the ticker tape of Sky News TV. One of these stories, headlined "17 Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza" fails, of course, not only fails to mention the attacks against Israel which preceded this, but also fails to mention the accuracy of the Israelis in pinpointing terrorists arms smuggling tunnels and terrorist arms caches. The second story headlined "Former Israeli President Katzav imprisoned for 7 years for rape", is certainly an important story in Israel, but it is not exactly of great interest to any viewers outside Israel.

It seems clear that Sky News has effectively declared war against Israel. A 'war' whose rules of engagement are that: only stories that cast Israel in a purely negative light can be presented. And any story, no matter how big, which demonstrates that Israel - and not the Palestinians - are the true victims must be ignored.

Sky News used to be considered as fair and objective in its coverage of the Middle East. It is sad that it has now degenerated into a propaganda tool of the Hamas terrorists. How exactly does Sky News expect its viewers to make informed decisions when it is so selective and biased in its coverage?

"Nothing must be done to 'burnish' the image of Israel"

2011-03-18T19:09:00.000Z

In 2007 Prince Charles's senior aide sent a memo explaining why neither Prince Charles nor the Queen would make a state visit to Israel. The memo famously stated that Prince Charles would not want "to help burnish [Israel's] international image."

I've been thinking about that statement, and the attitude behind it, in connection with the media's refusal to cover the two big stories from Israel in the last week. The massacre at Itamar and the discovery of the major Iranian arms shipment to Hamas, demonstrate unequivocably the twin threats Israel faces.

The Itamar attack, and subsequent Palestinian celebrations of it, demonstrated the nature of the enemy that Israel is expected to negotiate and ultimately surrender to. An enemy unparalled in the world in its depravity, which glories in chopping the head off a 3-month old baby and which will never be satisfied until every Jew has been slaughtered.
The Iranian arms shipment, which happened as a direct result of the Egyptians allowing Iranian warships through the Suez Canal for the first time in 30 years, included state-of-the-art missiles and demonstrated not just the extent to which Iran contiunually lies about its ambitions and the extent to which it is prepared to go to destroy Israel through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, but also the unique threat posed by the new Eyptian regime.

In a normal world these two stories alone should have been sufficient to put an end to the entire anti-Israel narrative that dominates Western society and media. I genuinely believe that if these two stories had simply been given the coverage that they deserved, most people would immediately have seen the 'Israel problem' from a very different perspective. But of course they were not covered at all by the Western media. And that has nothing to do with the Japanese earthquake or the Libyan crisis; the media did, after all, find plenty of time to condemn Israel for planning to build some houses two days after the Itamar attack. And each of these stories was FAR more important than the Gaza flotilla incident which totally dominated every news media for four days because, despite the video evidence in that case, the media decided it fitted their anti-Israel narrative.

But it is precisely because these two stories were obvious 'game-changers' that they were ignored.

And the attitude from which this results is perfectly captured by the Prince Charles memo. Never mind about real evils committed by the dozens of countries that the Queen and Prince Charles visit every year. And just as the Queen must not be allowed to visit Israel in case there is a chance it might show the country in something less than the purely negative light in which it is otherwise portrayed by the media narrative, so it is important to suppress any story - no matter how big - which demonstrates that Israel - and not the Palestinians - are the true victims.

Would they stage a play about it?

2011-03-15T22:54:00.000Z

Following on from my previous correspondence with Sam Walters, the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre which staged the anti-Israel play "Reading Hebron" I thought it was worth following up with another letter in the light of the Itamar massacre:

Dear Sam

We were in correspondence recently about the play "Reading Hebron" staged in your theatre about the 1994 Hebron massacre.

You are probably not aware of it, since the main stream media in this country has chosen to cover it up, but last Sabbath Palestinian terrorists massacred a family of 5 Israelis (the Fogels) in their home, including a 3-month old baby and a 3-year-old whose throats were slashed. The attack was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade who are the 'military wing' of Israel's supposed 'peace partners' - the Palestinian Authority. You can see the pictures of the slaughter released by the grandparents here:

Whereas the 1994 Hebron massacre was one of the only ever documented deliberate killings by a Jew of Arab civilians - and was carried out by a single deranged individual - deliberate massacres of Jewish civilians (especially children) by Arabs have been carried out in their thousands since the original massacre of all the Jews of Hebron in 1929. Moreover, whereas the 1994 massacre was condemned by all Israelis, the massacres of Jews have not only been organised by the Palestinian authorities, but have been celebrated by their masses. These celebrations happened again after the latest massacre.

In the light of this I'd be interested to know if you would stage a play about the Fogel massacre if one was written, especially as your vigourous support for an anti-Israel narrative in the theatre ultimately gives the Palestinians exactly the kind of support and encouragement to continue their massacres of Jews.

Yours

I will post any response I get.
Some powerful pieces about the Itamar massacre are here and here.

A warning for anybody flying with EasyJet to Tel Aviv

2011-03-13T22:23:00.002Z

(29 March 2011: there is an update to this story at the end)

We flew EasyJet to Tel Aviv a few weeks ago without any problems, but after our experience last week I strongly advise against people flying with them on this route. What happened to people on our flight might be typical of EasyJet's evil money grabbing activities, but I have a suspicion that there was a large dose of anti-semitism involved.

Here is what happened: As we were going for just 4 nights this time we checked in one suitcase between the two of us, paying £18 in advance for the privilege. We each had a small piece of hand luggage (much smaller than the maximum dimensions specified on the EasyJet website). These were exactly the same hand luggage pieces we used last time with no problem. I was surprised when at checkin they asked me to put my hand luggage in the sizer, but there was no problem as it fiitted easily. So they confirmed it was OK.

However, as we were about to board the plane we could see all hell was breaking loose. First of all, it was clear that unlike last time (when we were travelling on a Friday so there were no orthodox Jews on the flight) most of the people on this flight were orthodox Jews. The EasyJet staff were basically carrying out their own version of a Nazi concentration camp inspection process. Everybody who was carrying any kind of hand luggage case was stopped and told to put it in the sizer again. But, in typical Nazi style, this was a just a game. Because everybody who had got to that point had already put their case through the sizer and knew that it fitted. The 'game' was that the EasyJet staff now declared a reason why the bag was 'too big'. In my case they first said that the wheels were 'outside the cage'. When I said I was taking photos to prove that the wheels came nowhere close to being ouside, they changed the story to 'the bag did not go in easily enough' - presumably because they felt this could not be automatically disproved by the photos here. Anyway the point is that they were forcing everybody not only to leave their hand luggage, but to pay £30 for the privilege. Bearing in mind that before getting to this point you are only allowed a single piece of hand luggage, this meant that we had nowhere else to put our valuables etc. To add insult to injury when I took out my laptop and asked if they had a bag I could put in to take with me on the plane, they not only said no but said I was not allowed to take it without a bag!

The sight of Jews - including elderly people and mothers with babies - desparately scrambling on the floor frantically trying to work out what stuff they had to take with them on the plane - and being charged for no reason was clearly giving the four EasyJet members of staff great pleasure. When a couple of people not unreasonably became verbally aggressive the EasyJet staff told them that unless they made a grovelling apology they would be refused entry on the flight.

We later discovered that some people had left important medication in their bags and one mother was unable to feed her baby for the entire flight as she had left the formula milk.

Obviously I shall be writing to EasyJet to demand a refund of the £30. But in my view they behaved so appallingly that they deserve to be run out of business.

29 March 2010 update: Easyjet have today apologised and refunded the £30

Another massacre of Jews that the world will never know about

2011-03-12T22:55:00.003Z

:
I'm in Israel at the moment and was going to write a story warning people never to fly Easyjet to Tel Aviv - but that will have to wait as all that seems so trivial after waking today to hear of the appalling terrorist attack that took place here in Itamar overnight. A young family of five, including a 3-month old baby, children aged 3 and 11, and both parents were killed by having their throats cut in their own home by two Palestinian terrorists. Pamela Geller has posted pictures here.

Although the Japanese tsunami is obvously still dominating the news I checked today to find that Sky News and CNN were carrying plenty of other stories from around the world, but a massacre of Jewish chldren apparently does not count as news. If they had got planning permission to build an extension on their home, then being in 'theWest Bank' that would certainly have made the news. If any Arab child was murdered by an Israeli in this way then the Japanse tsunami would immediately have been demoted to second place, while the world lined up to condemn Israel and a generation of writers would have started working on plays to explain why all Jews are ultimately responsible for the act. Even if a guard had shot and killed the terrorists before committing this atrocity Sky News and CNN would have been all over the story posting claims of Israel murdering innocent Palestinian 'farmers'. So what you will never find out is that the attack has been claimed by none other than the Al Aqsa Martyr's brigade who are the 'military wing' of Fatah - Israel's 'peace partners'. Hamas has hailed the attack as 'heroic' and there have been the usual celebrations and fireworks in Palestinian towns. And, perhaps most importantly, the attack is likely the direct result of Israel being forced to drop certain security checks at the insistance of the Americans and British. Remember that the next time you are lectured about the poor Palestinians having to go through Israeli security checks.

Palestinian terrorists have a long history of murdering Jewish children in cold blood. There is no recorded incident in history of an Israeli deliberately killing an Arab child, let alone in an act organised by official representatives. Yet placards calling Israelis 'baby killers' are more common place on UK campusus and high streets than prostitute calling cards in Soho. If the Nazi Holocaust were taking place today then the main stream media and the UN would be citing only the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto as a crime against humanity - calling it a bloody massacre of innocent Germans.

UPDATE: As if they are trying to self-parody, the main stream meda has this morning triggered into life .... to report for example:

Note the tone of the AFP report. Israeli children massacred - no story (and note also no perpetrators). But claims by Palestinians that Jews threw stones at them - that is headline news.

BBC covering up Islamist violence in Egypt

2011-03-09T11:51:00.002Z

I have just sent the following self-explanatory letter to the BBC.

During the recent Egyptian uprising the BBC decided to censor the many stories and images that did not support its own narrative (that the demonstrators were universally peaceful democracy seekers). Thus, for example, the BBC failed to show the many blood curdling anti-Semitic images and interviews (widely available on the internet) prominent among the demonstrators; they failed to cover the story of reporter Lara Logan’s rape by dozens of ‘celebrating’ demonstrators chanting “Jew, Jew” at her, and most of all they covered up the significance and extremism of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the speech made by their fanatical anti-Semitic spiritual leader Al Qaradawi on his ‘victorious’ return from exile.

Now it seems the BBC is covering up the wave of Islamist violence targeted at Coptic Christians and secular Egyptians that have exploded in the last few days. For example, I would have thought that the story of a Muslim mob burning down a church in Helwan would have been prominent on the BBC News, especially as there was widely available and compelling film of it happening. Moreover, the fact that today 10 Christians protesting the church burning were murdered by another Muslim mob also strikes me as being a story of major significance that should be leading the BBC News (rather then being buried deeply in the BBC website and ignored elsewhere). Nor did the story yesterday of the attack by Islamists on secular women in Cairo, who were marching for International Women’s Day, make the BBC News. If even remotely similar violence occurred, let us say in Israel, the BBC News would cover nothing else for several days. So why the double standards?

The country where Israel is regarded most positively.....

2011-03-07T22:27:00.000Z

By a VERY long way it is Russia, as you can see here.

More than twice as many people in Russia view Israel as having a positive influence compared with those viewing it negatively (35% to 17%).

The only other countries where the positives even outscore the negatives are India (21% to 18%) which, like Russia has its own problems with Islamic terrorism, Ghana (32% to 27%) and the USA. But the USA results are extremely concerning as it appears to be the most polarised - 43% positive but an incredible 41% of Americans regard Israel negatively. That is what years of main stream media lies can achieve.

The UK of course is one of the most anti-Israel countries in the world now - almost as anti-Israel as Turkey.

A reminder to avoid buying a red nose

2011-03-04T20:31:00.002Z

It's that 'red nose' time of year again in the UK when cast-off celebrities and the BBC offer their services 'for free' to promote Comic Relief. This 'charity' raises millions for 'good causes'. So what's wrong with that? The fact that people giving their hard earned cash are not aware that in recent years the four biggest beneficiaries by far just happen to be the four charities (War on Want, Christian Aid, Save the Children, and Oxfam) who spend the most significant amounts of money funding anti-Israel political propaganda, and funding projects in Gaza that invariably end up under the control of Hamas. War on Want in particular is a 'charity' that, since it was led by George Galloway, has become almost exclusively dedicated to the deligitimization of Israel.

For some previous articles giving the details of this see the following:

The usual BBC and society elitists are using the generosity of the British public to hoodwink them into giving hard-earned cash in order to divert a substantial proportion of the funding to projects that support their own politically motived agenda. And it also comes at a heavy price to other genuinely worthy charities who suffer reduced donations because of the free publicity the BBC gets for its farcical jamboree.

He's gone

2011-03-04T11:11:00.000Z

Sir Howard Davies, who told me "Your comments are not worthy of reply" in response to my complaints about the impact of Arab funding on LSE politics has resigned. The only shame is that the official reason for resignation seems to be focused solely on the Libyan money. The scandal surrounding the LSE's anti-Israel Middle East Centre, and the much greater funding from the United Arab Emirates for this, has been ignored in his resignation letter. The irony is that - as far as Libya is concerned - the LSE was only doing exactly what the British Government was doing in recent years. And while the £300K from Libya effectively 'bought' Gadaffi's son a PhD, the many millions from the UAR has bought far worse: long term damage to the academic credibility of the LSE through a 'research centre' whose primary agenda is to deligitimize Israel and boycott its academics; and anti-semitic fear on the campus through the promotion of anti-Israel activity that would even shame Hamas.

Yet another update to the LSE story

2011-02-28T17:45:00.000Z

After I first raised the alarm about the new Middle East Centre at the LSE (I discovered that its publicity material featured a map that eradicated the State of Israel) I followed up with details of my correspondence with Sir Howard Davies (the LSE Director) here and here.

The last article contained Davies's helpful response to my last letter. His response (29 Jan 2011) was:

"Your comments are not worthy of reply."

Since my correspondence the whole issue of LSE's funding by Arab tyrants (which was the focus of my complaints) has become a big story (mainly because of the Gadaffy money given to LSE, but also because reporters started looking into the Middle East Centre and its funding as I had). Dominic Kennedy had a big article about it in the Times on Saturday (you can see Melanie Phillips's comments about that here). Apparently Dominic Kennedy has followed up with an interview with Howard Davies in the Times today (see Harry's Place piece here, as the Times costs to read online) which includes the following:

'Sir Howard defended the LSE’s new Middle East Centre, half of whose board support an academic boycott of Israel. “The biggest donor to the School in the past year is George Soros, who of course is of Jewish origin. We operate, I believe, a very balanced view.”’

Apart from the hilarious 'some of my best friends are Jewish' angle to this, what make Davies's' response all the more incredible is that he is unaware that Soros has been so comprehensively exposed as the key player in international attempts to deligitimize Israel with his funding of a whole range of anti-Israel organisations.

I'd say it is time for Davies to resign.

The hypocrisy of the British media

2011-02-25T23:15:00.002Z

You can see here the banner headline in tonight's Evening Standard (full story is here if you are really interested).

Isn't it incredible that an anti-semitic comment by a drunken C-list British designer in Paris who nobody has heard of makes front-page news (and it also made a big splash on tonight's BBC News and Sky News) yet the truly vicious anti-semitism that has united pro and anti 'democracy' protesters across the entire Arab world (as I have reported here, here, here and here) - the implications of which will be truly cataclysmic for the entire world - continue to be completely ignored by all the Western media.

You won't see a play about these hebron massacres in London

2011-02-25T11:37:00.000Z

Following on from my post about the anti-Israel play about Hebron currently being shown in Richmond, Daphne Anson has a graphic account of the massacre of Jews by Arabs in Hebron in 1929 (that's when according to the standard media narrative Jews and Arabs lived together in peace and harmony before the State of Israel was declared).

The 1929 massacre was not the only Arab terrorist attack against Jews in Hebron. Here are some others since the six-day war that won't be featuring any time soon in a London Theatre.

09.10.68 A 17 year-old Arab youth threw a grenade at Jews praying on the steps of the Tomb's main gate. 47 Jews, including an eight month-old baby, were injured.
05.11.68 A Jewish man and his son, an elderly Arab man, and three Arab children were injured by an explosive charge near the Tomb.
29.12.68 Terrorists attack a security post near the Tomb. One terrorist was killed; the others fled. No Israeli soldiers were injured.
07.08.76 Two Jews were wounded when terrorists shot at a tour bus in the city.
03.10.76 On the eve of Yom Kippur, a mob of Arab youths burst into the Tomb and desecrated several Torah scrolls. Three soldiers fired in the air in an attempt to prevent their entry. 61 rioters were arrested in the Tomb.
02.05.80 Arab terrorists ambushed a group of Jews returning from the Tomb to Beit Hadassah. Six Jews were murdered and 20 wounded.
25.10.92 Three Arab terrorists shot at soldiers guarding the Tomb's generator. One reserve soldier was murdered; two were wounded.
28.05.93 Yeshiva student Erez Shmuel was stabbed to death approximately 500 meters from from the Tomb, while on his way to Friday evening prayers at the Tomb.
06.12.93 Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom were shot to death near Glass Junction in Hebron. Hamas claimed responsibility.
07.07.94 Sarit Prigal (17) was shot to death in a drive-by shooting, when terrorists opened fire from a passing car near the entrance to Kiryat Arba.
19.03.95 Nahum Hoss (31) of Hebron, and Yehuda Partus (34) of Kiryat Arba, were murdered by shots fired at their bus from a terrorist ambush near Glass Junction in Hebron. Six others were injured.
November 15 2002: Twelve Israelis were killed and 15 others wounded in Hebron when Palestinian terrorists opened fire and threw grenades at a group of Jewish worshippers and their guards as they were walking home from Sabbath prayers at the Cave of the Patriarchs. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attacks.
December 27, 2002 : Terrorists broke into a dining hall at a yeshiva in Otneil, south of Hebron, and killed 4 students who were working in the yeshiva kitchen, and injured ten others. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
May 17, 2003: A pregnant Israeli woman and her husband were killed when a suicide bomber detonated himself next to them in a public square in Hebron. Hamas claimed responsibility.
September 26, 2003: Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, and 7-month old infant Shaked Avraham were shot dead by a Palestinian terrorist who knocked on the door of a home in Negohot, south of Hebron, during a celebratory Jewish New Year holiday dinner. Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the attack.
June 24, 2005: Two teenagers were killed and three others wounded in a drive-by shooting near Hebron. The Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack.
October 16, 2005: Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded as least 5 others in two separate drive-by shootings in the West Bank. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for both attacks.
December 28, 2007: Two Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists while hiking outside of Hebron. A third hiker managed to escape.
14 Jun 2010 1 soldier killed, 3 police officers wounded in gun attack on vehicle at Al Fawar Junction, south of Hebron
August 31, 2010: Four Israelis, including a pregnant woman, were murdered when terrorists ambushed their car as they were driving near Kiryat Arba in the West Bank. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, which coincided with the restarting of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington, D.C.

But what is featuring in a London Theatre is yet another anti-Israel play:
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/62809/productions/the-holy-rosenbergs.html

Anti-semitism is so natural and oh so hip ...

2011-02-23T22:36:00.000Z

When I did a google search for images of Egyptian protesters yesterday plenty came up portraying Mubarak as a 'Jew-devil'. The same thing applies now to Libya.

Apart from the concept of Ghadaffi being part of the world Jewish conspiracy, what is especially bizarre here is the bottom picture of the attractive girl, specially made up for the photo-shoot. The message that is supposed to be portrayed here is that Libya is a country of attractive young, freedom-loving people. Not for one second do these 'freedom loving' demonstrators feel that there could be the remotest thing wrong with the images they have drawn. To them it is not only perfectly acceptable and natural to regard Jews as worse than the devil, but they even feel that doing this will curry favour with those in the west. And the worst thing is that they are right - and not one single liberal western reporter will make any negative comment about this kind of thing.

More on jihad watch.

No anti-semitism to worry about there then .....

2011-02-22T19:14:00.000Z

The 'experts' have been assuring us that anti-semitism has played no role in the 'pro-democracy' revolutions across the Arab world. William Hague publicly scolded Israel for even voicing concerns about their own security after Mubarek's deposal, while Jews are specifically admonished in the Guardian for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about what happens after Mubarek.

Clearly if we are worried about such trivia as the fact that Egypt's very own Hitler, Al Qaradawi, has returned from exile to a tumultuous welcome, and that for the first time in more than 30 years the Egyptians have allowed Iranian warships to enter the Suez canal to directly threaten Israel, then we are really just being paranoid. But what I do find slightly ironic is that Sky News, which has been especially obsessed about covering up the anti-semitism angle (still waiting for them to mention the Lara Logan anti-semitic rape story) has been unable to show any images of 'pro-democracy' banners that do not portray Mubarek as a Jewish stooge. And I am still waiting for any Sky presenter or pundit to even notice it.

Anti-Israel indoctrination in the UK

2011-02-20T21:13:00.002Z

If you need to know the depth to which the British media has indoctrinated the public with anti-Israel feelings, then I can give no better example than the following:

My daughter, who goes to an orthodox Jewish school, tells me that, when the subject of Israel is discussed in their Jewish studies GCSE class, students routinely state things like "the Jews have no right to Israel because they stole the land from the Palestinians".

In making statements like that, those regular 15-16 year old Jewish kids, are simply repeating what they are told relentlessly in every part of the media (as I have regularly reported on this web). In the midst of the big story of revolution across the entire Arab world (funny how the media is suddenly realising that these Arab countries were abusing their citizens for decades - they have been telling us all along that Israel is the pariah state in the region) the BBC and Channel 4 has gone into overdrive ... to demonize Israel. Just a few examples of the anti-Israel tsunami engulfing British TV, in the last few days alone we have had:

Scandalous BBC 'documentary' attacking Geert Wilders that also promoted the view that anybody supporting the State of Israel in any way was a criminal
The Promise, on Channel 4, which Richard Millett sums up as ‘rich European Jews came to Palestine after the Holocaust, stole the Palestinians’ land and murdered British soldiers’.
A film War Child, on Channel 4, about ‘Jews killing innocent Palestinians'
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC Tuesday 15th Feb 2011 about 'the rights of children' given by the author Richard Morpurgo which included a very strong political anti-Israel message plus the completely unsubstantiated and ridiculous claim that Israeli soldiers were shooting at Arab children in Gaza like in a computer game (yeah, like Arabs never lie about these things - just like they claimed a demonstrator was recently killed by tear gas).

The relentless propaganda seems to be affecting just about everybody I know. It has got to the stage where even strongly pro-Israeli friends are unwittingly accepting anti-Israel bias as perfectly acceptable. I'd like to recount a very good example of this. The Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond is currently showing a play called 'Reading Hebron' about the massacre carried out in 1994 by a Jew. The Artistic Director of this theatre, Sam Walters, clearly has a problem with Israel because in his own words (I have the email) two of the three 'political' plays he has put on in the last year have been about Israel and both were highly critical (the other was about the Balfour declaration). For these 'political' plays Walters arranges a public workshop to discuss the political content. For 'Reading Hebron' this workshop was, sensitively, arranged for a Saturday when no orthodox Jews can attend. However, Walters has arranged for discussions to take place after some of the showings during the week. That brings me to my pro-Israeli friend Joe. He went along to the play and after-show discussion and sent an email about it. I have taken the liberty of reproducing below exactly what Joe wrote because, although he feels very satisfied with the outcome there are aspects of what he says that deeply disturb me:

I went yesterday. Was delighted, as were most of the Jews in the audience, that the discussion afterwards did not become an Arab/Israeli debate. One person did speak out (pro-Palestinian) and tried to make it political...and the audience (vast vast vast majority being non-Jewish Richmondites - retirees who enjoy theatre) were annoyed by his trying to turn a theatrical performance into a political debate. So it actually worked against him...and, to a limited extent, for Israel! The Director - rightly in my view - said that the post-show discussion was to discuss the play NOT the politics (which will be discussed on the Sat "workshop" - which is the only thing I have real issue with). Of the Jews present, most were from Wimbledon Reform - primarily as one of their members was one of the key characters.

Most of the discussion - as it should have been - was about the play itself, its staging and the characters portrayed.

I did find much of the content disturbing - although relieved that (albeit in short supply) the counter-arguments were also made within the text - and certain scenes I was slightly offended by (then again, I suppose the author has the right to write what he wants). Viewed as a piece of theatre...it did its job well. It was thought provoking. My guess is that it would only be the real "self-hating Jews" (those who can see nothing good in what Israel does) and the "blind Jews" (those who can only see the good in Israel and are not prepared to consider the other side) that would have any major issue with the production...in part because it revolves around one character who is obviously a troubled individual (in his personal life) and his political stance is obviously fuelled by other life issues rather than being a rational political stance.

It's not enjoyable theatre...but it is good theatre. I didn't emerge invigorated. I wasn't pushed to the left or the right as a result. I was intrigued by the simplicity of the post-show discussion. I was proud that there were no counter-productive rants. I was thrilled that the one radical view expressed was from the other side (and the mutterings I overheard as people left the theatre were all about the show and that one "idiot")...

Here are the things that disturb me about what he wrote

He completely misses the whole context of what is going on here. Terrible massacres have been carried out on a daily basis by Muslim terrorists - often supported by governments - for decades. Take a look here at a log of all terrorist attacks in recent decades; for example, since 9/11 alone there have been 16,839 deadly attacks by Muslims. Terrible massacres are also carried out routinely in many countries of the world. Israel has especially been the victim of terrorist attacks (indeed there were several massacres against Israelis in the days immediately prior to what happened in Hebron). Hebron itself was the scene of one of the worst massacres of Jews by Arabs in 1929 (that was 19 years before the State of Israel).
None of those massacres was ever used as the basis for a play, let alone a play to criticise Muslims or Arabs. Yet the one and only terrorist act committed by a Jew in Israel in recent decades merits a play. And it is not just this play. Of all the 'political' plays that have been staged in the UK in the last 5 years that are focused on criticism of a foreign country I would bet that at least 90% of them have been about Israel. This is despite the fact that, as recent events demonstrate, Israel is the only country in the Middle East which provides its citizens with freedom and democracy. When did you last see a play critical of: Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, Morroco, Algeria (or any one of the world's 58 Muslim countries), not to mention the tyrannies that still exist in Eastern Europe, as well as China, Burma etc?
Nobody is questioning the right of the playwrite to produce and say whatever they want, but we have every right to question why playwrites and theatre directors are ONLY interested in political plays that are anti-Israel. That should be the context for any debate about this play.
Given that Jews were effectively barred from the 'political' debate at the Saturday workshop, I am concerned at Joe's cowering acceptance that he had no right to raise any political objections to the play. How the hell do you discuss, for a political play like this, "the play itself, its staging and the characters portrayed" without the political context?
I am concered at Joe's casual and quite offensive suggestion of moral equivalence between anti-Israel fanatics (whose greatest wish in life is to see the violent destruction of the State of Israel) and people who simply love Israel and don't feel the need to have to swallow all of the lies and proganda told against it.
I am concerned that pro-Israel supporters are giving this kind of play far more prominence and support than it deserves.

Update on this post.

Our friends the Jordanians

2011-02-14T22:17:00.001Z

Second only to the Egyptians in their level of anti-semitism, and with the prospects of their own Islamists similarly toppling a 'pro-Western' regime, the Jordanians are really starting to flex their ant-semitic muscles at the highest level. Today Jordan's justice minister no less described a Jordanian soldier serving a life sentence for killing 7 Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 and wounding many others in an unprovoked machine gun attack, as a "hero," and joined a sit-in to demand his release.

And there is an interesting angle in the reporting of this story. Al Arabyia provides very detailed quotes from the Minister's written demands to release the soldier including these gems:

"I support the demonstrators' demand to free Ahmad Dakamseh. He's a hero. He does not deserve prison,"

"We cannot imagine that a great fighter like Dakamseh is in jail instead of reaping the rewards of his achievement,"

"If a Jewish person killed Arabs, his country would have built a statue for him instead of imprisonment."

Yet the Jerusalem Post, which has on its books many reporters who refuse to believe that their Arab neighbours hate them so much, is typically downplaying the story by not mentioning what the Minister actually said. Again the Israeli press is doing exactly what the media in the rest of the western world is doing - censoring news of the Jihad against them. Hear no evil see no evil....

Imagine if the Egyptian revolution really is what the Western media is telling you

2011-02-13T14:58:00.000Z

Western liberal analysts - who have totally dominated the narrative about the 'revolution' in Egypt - have typically been projecting their own values on the situation. That is why, for example, they are simply 'wishing away' the Muslim Brotherhood or suggesting that they are just a bunch of cuddly religious old men.

But just imagine if the revolution is really going to deliver the kind of democracy, freedom and peace the liberals assume. Then the very first thing that must happen is that anti-semitism, which is the core unifying feature of Egyptians, must be curbed. The reason 98% of Egyptians hate Jews is because antisemitism is bred into them from the day they are born. Anti-semitism is not just pumped out of state-run media and - with full government encouragement - from every mosque and imam in the country. It also dominates the beliefs and actions of supposedly enlightened lawyers, writers, musicians and trade unionists (who call for the killing of the rare fellow lawyers, writers musicians and trade unionists for daring to speak to Israelis for example).

Curbing anti-semitism (and, of course, its 'acceptable face' dressed as anti-Israel and anti-Americanism) is essential if there is to be any hope of genuine freedom, domocracy and peace.

When the western media starts mentioning this I will start to believe there is such hope.

The Western main stream media is censoring what it shows from Egypt

2011-02-07T22:46:00.002Z

Numerous bloggers have pointed out the fact that the Western media is deliberately censoring/ignoring the widespread anti-semitism prominent in banners and feelings at the 'pro democracy' camp in Cairo. Here is a good example. But there is another aspect being censored because it simply does not fit in with the ‘narrative’ that the anti-Mubarek demonstrators are peace-loving democrats. This is the violence.

Where Al Jazeera is different from the Western coverage is that Al Jazeera has been showing very graphic videos of horrific violence by both pro and anti- Mubarek supporters including several actual killings and lynchings. The most appalling examples are clearly being committed by the anti-Mubarek supporters (check out Al jazeer'as coverage tonight). The Western media are simply not showing these. Can you imagine how they would be falling over themselves to show those videos if that kind of violence happened in Israel? In fact, given the amount of time they are spending on Egyypt regurtitating the same material wouldn't you have thought they would be interested in showing something new?

What we can look forward to from Egypt.

2011-02-05T12:57:00.002Z

As usual Sultan Knish gets the Egyptian 'revolution' right and there is a good analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood from Daphne Anson. For anybody who believes the universal media message that nothing but good is going to come out of the 'pro-democracy' revolution in Egypt watch all 90 seconds of this video.

And it has started already. Since the 'revolution' we have already seen:

Hamas, emboldened by the prospects of their parent organisation the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, fired a grad rocket at a wedding reception in Israel
All Hamas prisoners in Egypt were broken out of jail (and have returned to Gaza to plot the next wave of terrorist attacks)
The entire Hezbollah network who were recently convicted of plotting terrorist attacks against Israeli tourists in Sanai were broken out of jail.
Today terrorists blew up the gas pipeline in Norther Sinai that provides gas supplied to Israel and Jordan.

Also, isn't it funny how the same liberal-lefties who set the media agenda don't support pro-democracy movements in Islamist countries that wish to destroy Israel (Iran and Syria being obvious examples).

Another update to the LSE Middle East Centre saga

2011-01-29T17:48:00.002Z

When I raised the issue of the Middle East Centre's manager Dr Chalcraft proposing a motion for an academic boycott of Israel I got the following response from Sir Howard Davies, the LSE Director:

I am replying to your email to me of 15th January. You refer to the debate at the School on an academic boycott of Israel. The debate was a joint event organised by the Israeli and Palestine societies here, who both agreed that issues ought to be debated in public. As you note, Dr Chalcraft proposed the motion and a professor from UCL opposed it. The motion failed.

You suggest that Dr Chalcraft’s view cannot be consistent with our claim that the Middle East Centre will provide balanced and informed analysis of the region. I do not agree. Professor Fawaz Gerges, director of the centre, has said: “The Middle East Centre is committed to rigorous research and scholarship with the scrupulous preservation of its academic independence. There is a distinction between the policy of an institution and the views of individual academics, who retain their freedom of opinion and hold diverse views on many subjects. This variety can help provide collective strength and balance in dealing with controversial matters. More than 20 academics are involved in the Middle East Centre (through its research group and management group) and all of them are outstanding scholars of the region”.

You go on to say that you “can no longer believe the claim that the Middle East Centre was in no way to blame for the map” in our magazine which you have complained about before. I find this a remarkable assertion. Effectively you are accusing me and Claire Sanders of lying to you. We have explained clearly the circumstances in which the map was chosen and have explained that it is unfortunate. But it was not a matter for the centre itself.

Howard Davies

Here is my self-explanatory response:

Dear Sir Howard

Thank you for your response.

>I am replying to your email to me of 15th January. You refer to the debate at the School on an academic boycott of Israel. The debate was a joint event organised by the Israeli and Palestine societies here, who both agreed that issues ought to be debated in public.

I look forward then to future debates proposing an academic boycott of Pakistan (or indeed virtually any of the world's 58 Muslim states which have anti-Chrisitian and anti-semitic policies and laws, not to mention numerous occupations and violations of human rights), an academic boycott of America (for conducting 'imperialist wars' in the Middle East), an academic boycott of China (for its occupation of Tibet and violation of human rights) , an academic boycott of the UK (see America), an academic boycott of Switzerland (for its banning of Muslim minarets), etc.

Can you please let me know when each of these debates is taking place at LSE in the near future. If they are not, or if you believe that any of those are issues should NOT be debated in public, then am I allowed to call you an anti-semite? Because I am afraid that is the only valid conclusion to draw.

>As you note, Dr Chalcraft proposed the motion and a professor from UCL opposed it. The motion failed.; You suggest that Dr Chalcraft’s view cannot be consistent with our claim that the Middle East Centre will provide balanced and informed analysis of the region. I do not agree.

Since Dr Chalcraft is listed on the LSE website as a manager of the Middle East Centre I think any rational person would tend to agree with me and not you. Oh and by the way independent attendees of the debate (I was not there) felt that Dr Chalcroft destroys the credibility not just of the Middle East Centre but of LSE as a a whole.

> You go on to say that you “can no longer believe the claim that the Middle East Centre was in no way to blame for the map” in our magazine which you have complained about before. I find this a remarkable assertion. Effectively you are accusing me and Claire Sanders of lying to you. We have explained clearly the circumstances in which the map was chosen and have explained that it is unfortunate. But it was not a matter for the centre itself.

I do not know if you are lying or if this was an incredible coincidence. If it was the latter then I apologise. But when I hear yet again that LSE this week supported further outrageous behaviour by anti-Israel fanatics of the PalSoc (brandishing fake guns and blood and intimidating Jewish students) then perphaps you will apologise for allowing, under your Directorship, a fine institution to have become a place where irrational anti-Israel activities dominate the campus and Jewish students no longer feel comfortable or safe.

Finally, here is Sir Howard Davies's helpful response (received 29 Jan 2011) to the above:

Your comments are not worthy of reply.

It is no wonder that LSE has become the number one Israel hatefest centre under his directorship. He is a complete asshole.

Yet another update to this story here.

LSE's anti-Israel Middle East Centre: Update

2011-01-15T16:03:00.000Z

In response to the discovery here that LSE was advertising its new Middle East Centre with a map of the Middle East that eradicated Israel, the LSE's Vice-Chancellor Sir Howard Davies replied (on 13 January 2011) as follows:

"Thank you for your e-mail concerning the map which was used to illustrate a story about our new Middle East Centre in LSE Connect. This was an error on our part which you are quite right to point out.

I have spoken to Claire Sanders, the editor of LSE Connect, who has just returned from sick leave. She will be e-mailing you separately, but has assured me that the use of this particular map was entirely unintentional.

The map was chosen at the design stage simply to brighten and illustrate a page of text - unfortunately we didn't look closely enough at the image (as we should have) to see that it was entirely inappropriate. The map in question came from a collection of stock images held by an external agency - and I have been assured that we will not use this agency again. It has already been removed from the online version of the magazine and an apology for this mistake will be printed in the next edition of LSE Connect.

Above all, I would like to stress that the Middle East Centre was entirely uninvolved in the error. The centre is determined to provide balanced and informed analysis of the region, to include Arab states, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan."

So, a very hopeful response. Except that on 11 January 2011 a debate took place at the LSE in which Senior Lecturer Dr. John Chalcraft proposed the motion: "This House Believes in an Academic Boycott of Israel". It turns out that this is the very same Dr. John Chalcraft who is listed as part of the management team of the Middle East Centre on the LSE's website. This is not exactly with Howard's claim that "The centre is determined to provide balanced and informed analysis of the region...."

In this light of this simply incredible revelation it is difficult to believe the claim that The Middle East Centre was blameless for the map that eliminated Israel in LSE Connect.

The futility of Israel's new rules of engagement

2011-01-10T18:04:00.003Z

A typically brilliant article by Michael Totten describes in detail the extent to which the Israeli army will go to minimise civilian casualties in any future war.

The problem with the strategy is that it guarantees that Israel will be incapable of decisive victory. It also guarantees excessive and unnecessary losses of Israeli forces. For example, although it is known for certain that Hezbollah (and of course Hamas) is using mosques and clinics as both command centres and weapons storage facilities, the IDF will not be allowed to attack them.

Israel took excessive care in both the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2009 Gaza war to minimise civilian casualties - more than any other military force in history - and yet the world still condemned her. In response to pressure from the left-wing judiciary in Israel, the IDF announced in 2010 that it was instigating even tighter rules of engagement for future conflicts. Some of the fruits of this change are evidenced in Totten's report. But none of that will make an iota of difference to world reaction, which will still condemn Israel no matter what. The very act of self-defence by Israel is illegitimate in the eyes of most of the world.

The terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas must be laughing their heads off at the extent Israel will go to appease world opinion. And they will be futher stockpiling weapons in mosques, schools and hospitals.

Frankie Boyle: The hypocrisy

2010-12-24T01:36:00.003Z

The 'comedian' Frankie Boyle is all over the news today. The media are outraged at his 'racist' remarks in his latest Channel 4 show. This is the same media of course who were totally indifferent to his several previous barrages of vicious anti-semitism dressed up as hatred of Israel.

So why the outrage this time? They are outraged that he used the "P-word" (the media are not even allowed to spell out 'Paki') and the "N-word". But if you actually read what he said, you can see that by P's and N's he was clearly referring to Arabs/Muslims and, in contrast to his open hatred for Jewish Israelis, he was actually expressing genuine sympathy with them (and especially the Taliban); this was not an anti-P or anti-N attack but a typically ignorant attack against the British armed forces and Defence establishment:

He said: “Basically we are murdering a load of shepherds. What gets me is our callousness as a society when we read out our dead on the news first, because our lives are more important. Other people’s aren’t worth as much.”
Adopting a newsreader’s tone, he added: “A bomb went off in Kandahar today, killing two British servicemen, three UN relief workers and a whole bunch of P****.”
Later he said: “The Ministry of Defence? At least in the old days we were honest, it was The Ministry of War.”
In a posh phone voice he added: “Hello Ministry of War, department of n*****-bombing, how can I help?”

So Boyle genuinely thinks the Taliban and Al Quaeda are just a bunch of innocent shepherds who deserve our sympathy, while the British armed forces are racist murderers. But not one media report focused on this aspect of Boyle's show. They were only concerned about the offense cause to Ps and Ns.

Now, isn't there something wrong here? When Boyle issues blood libels against Jewish Israelis, Jews have no right to feel offended. And when Boyle slanders British troops at the same time as showing his sympathy with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the outrage is not against these disgusting views promoted without response to millions of (mainly) politically ignorant and easily influenced teenagers. No, the only outrage allowed is his use of the P and N-words (in a context where he was actually expressing sympathy with all P's and N's, but most of all sympathy with all Muslims).

Frankie Boyle has proved himself a racist that's for sure. But his racism is against loyal Englishmen, Jewish Israelis and any Jew who does not believe the State of Israel should be wiped out. And in the eyes of the media those people have no right to be offended no matter how viciously they are slandered.

The JC sinks lower and lower

2010-12-24T00:51:00.002Z

Daphne Anson has another very good article exposing the transformation of the Jewish Chronicle that I have also blogged about recently. Rapidly the JC is morphing into a Guardian look-alike, with its increasingly central contributions from anti-Zionists.

Daphne's article highlights the fact that Nicholas Saphir, the Chair of the anti-Zionist New Israel Fund (UK), is a trustee of the Kessler Foundation, which owns the Jewish Chronicle. Last week the New Israel Fund had a 4-page pullout in the JC, and rarely a week goes by nowadays without some major positive focus/article about the NIF.

Today's JC confirms the trend towards the JC's antipathy/indifference toward Israel. Forget the week's barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza or the many stories this week confirming the existential threats against Israel (not a mention anywhere in the paper). Forget even the incredible revelation this week that Henry Kissinger, when he was Sectretary of State in the US in 1973, stated that he could not care less if the Russians gassed all the Jews left in Russia (and that he would certainly not allow the US to intervene if they did so). That fails to get a mention either. No, the big front page story is a rather sympathetic account of a senior editor of the Board of Deputies urging the Board to invite PA envoy Manuel Hassassian to address the Board. What the story of course fails to tell readers is that Hassassian is nothing other than a terrorist supporting liar as revealed clearly by Elder of Zyon.

Digging deeper into the paper things do not get any better. There is a near full page article by Orlando Radice arguing that the real extremists we have to worry about are the Jewish ones. And the letters page has two letters responding to the comments of Isi Liebler (who had had the audacity to criticise 'we must speak out against Israel' UJIA boss Mick Davis). Naturally, both letters are indignant at Isi trying to crush Davis's right to free speech. The only pro-Israel piece in the paper is the regular column by Geoffrey Alderman, but even he is forced on the defensive and no doubt will take the usual flak in next week's letters page.

Imagine if the London student riots had taken place in Israel

2010-12-14T20:33:00.005Z

Whatever the rights and wrongs of last week's riots in London over student fee increases, there is no doubt that there was violence on both sides, with the police responding to appalling provocation by hardcore anarchists/leftists who infiltrate all such protests.

Quite reasonably, the media response to these incidents has been unanimous condemnation of the protesters and sympathy with the police having to deal with a volatile situation. Although some minor concerns have been expressed about the police 'kettling' tactics, the concept that there could be any mainstream media anger directed at the police is fanciful and the notion that any foreign country might express an opinion of any kind - let alone one which openly criticises the British police and/or government, it simply too bizarre to consider.

So how would you feel – as a typical law-abiding Brit or even as a member of the British government – if Barak Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and the leaders of every other Western government issued statements expressing their deep concern about the UK’s disproportionate police actions and referred the matter to an emergency session of the UN Security Council? And what about if the leaders of every Muslim government, including such beacons of liberty as Gaddafy, Ahmedinejad and Assad, while chairing UN Human Rights committees issuing condemnations of the UK and calls for a worldwide boycott against, also called on British students to rise up and kill every British policeman? And how would you feel about worldwide street protests, whipped into a frenzy by the media, in which thousands march in every capital of the world demanding the total destruction of the UK as a just penalty for its anti-student actions? And finally, I'd imagine you would not be too impressed if every major international charity (led by Oxfam, Christian Aid and War on Want) launched massive appeals, which although initially focused on funding students who were physically or psychologically 'harmed' by the riots, would ultimately be handed to the anarchists so that they could organise new, and more vicious riots.

All pretty bizarre? Not if you further imagine that these riots – with exactly the same level of protester provocation and police response -- had taken place in Israel and if the protesters were mainly Arabs. Actually, it is not hard to imagine because even the most minor skirmish in Israel involving Arab protesters is treated as an international crisis. And for this level of violence all of the above worldwide reactions would have taken place. With absolute certainty.

Perhaps Bibi Netanyahu should start the ball rolling by issuing his own condemnation of the British police in the Knesset, with a direct appeal to David Cameron and William Hague to ‘stop the British police violence immediately’. Then if, in response, Cameron told the Israelis to mind their own business, perhaps Netanyahu might also know how to respond the next time the British and others feel compelled to publicly condemn the Israelis for far less 'crimes'.

LSE 's New Middle East Centre eradicates Israel

2010-12-13T15:45:00.007Z

In recent years the prestigious LSE (London School of Economics) has seen an increasing number of anti-Israel incidents, including an occupation of the Old Theatre in 2009 that was ended only after the School's craven capitulation to the demands of the anti-Israel extremists. Only last week the LSE hosted rabid hate merchant Abdul Bari Atwan, which is especially ironic since last year it banned the brilliant Douglas Murray, on 'security grounds' simply because he was prepared to speak in defence of Israel.

It still comes as a great shock, however, that the LSE has inaugurated a new Middle East Centre, funded by £9.2 million from the United Arab Emirates, which appears to not recognise the state of Israel. In the map accompanying the article (see left) about the new Centre in the latest copy of the LSE Connect Magazine, Israel - and all of its cities - has been completely eradicated. It certainly cannot be for reasons of space since Gaza, Lebanon and Beirut are all clearly marked in the space where Israel should be.

It is difficult to understand why an outstanding scholarly institute like the LSE would wish to be associated with a Centre like this. But clearly the LSE is taking money from wealthy Arab regimes to further delegitimize the only true democracy in the Middle East and promote the cause of Islamic fundamentalism.

See important update to this post (15 January 2011)

Israeli tragedy: Arabs rejoice, rest of world yawns

2010-12-02T23:53:00.004Z

By any measure the tragedy that occured in Israel today, with fires engulfing the North and a busload of cadets killed in a fireball (40 dead) while on their way to help evacuate inmates of a prison, was a major international news story especially as the disaster is ongoing. 40 dead Israelis is equivalent in relative population terms to 2400 Amercians - similar to the number killed on 9/11. The fact that there are claims this may have been a terrorist act (see e.g. here, here and here) compound the importance of the story.

But, as usual, dead Israelis elicit a very different response compared to victims from any other country.

The West ignores it (not a single mention on the main bulletins tonight on Sky News or even Fox News - not even on the ticker-tape).
The Arabs rejoice in it. So it is a major story on Al Jazeera while Arabs in Israel are actually celebrating.

Whether or not this was a natural disaster or a terrorist act is not the issue. It is the world reaction to it, which will be no different no matter the scale of disaster that hits Israel. Which is exactly what Ahmedinejad, Hamas and Hezbollah understand very well.

Update, 5 Dec: Three days on and the story failed to get a single mention in the UK's most popular newspapers (the Sun and the News of the World). Althought the story got a very brief mention on some of the UK TV news programmes, there was no mention of the special tragedy of the young firefighters in the bus and of course no mention of the further blood curdling Arab rejoicing and gloating over burnt Israeli bodies (and these were all young people going to help evacuate Palestinian TERRORISTS).

The day that world football died

2010-12-02T20:17:00.004Z

So, in its quest for outreach and multiculturalism FIFA (one of the world's most corrupt organisations) has awarded the 2022 World Cup to one of the most anti-Semitic, corrupt nations in the world - Qatar. As proof of how surreal a decision this was it even led to the first ever statement made by Obama that I agreed with (he said simply that “FIFA made a mistake”, but no doubt if the USA had not been one of the other bidders he would have been cheering another instance of ‘Muslim outreach’). This story is also well covered here.

Anyway, I've just sent the following self-explanatory letter to the FIFA President:

Dear Mr Blatter

If FIFA is prepared to countenance the idea that the World Cup could be awarded to a country that has never qualified for the world cup (nor any record of footballing achievement), no prospects for football development, no suitable football stadiums nor even football supporters, then we can certainly at least expect any such a country to be one which abides by laws of basic human decency. For example, one which allows entry to visitors irrespective of race or nationality. And we certainly would expect such a country to be free from institutional racism, homophobia and sexism. Since the World Cup is the greatest sporting celebration on earth, it would also surely be expected that in such a country alcohol would not be banned, and it would help if it was physically possible to be outside in such a country in the summer for more than 5 minutes without suffering sunstroke in temperatures guaranteed to be above 45 degrees centigrade. And we would certainly expect such a country NOT to be the major financier of Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organisations.

Indeed, the latest version of FIFA statutes document states prominently (in its own section, page 7):

Discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of ethnic origin, gender, language, religion, politics or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.

Can you please therefore explain the rationale for awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar - a country which not only breaches FIFA’s statutes, but which somehow fails to satisfy a single one of the above-mentioned very modest criteria of basic respectability. Qatar, the country:

that does not allow entry to nationals from another of FIFA’s own countries, Israel. In fact, not only does it not allow entry to Israeli nationals, nor does it allow entry to nationals of any country who have their passport stamped from a visit to Israel.
where homosexuality is punishable by death and where even an American citizen was sentenced to six months imprisonment and 90 lashes for homosexual activity.
which, through its international Al Jazeera propaganda news network, is the world’s major exporter of anti-semitism and anti—Western jihadism.
which through its newspapers and TV programmes, that are exported to the Muslim world, not only perpetuate consistent holocaust-denial but provide continually novel anti-Semitism. Indeed, a country which, despite being considered by the USA as an ‘ally’ was identified by the White House in 2003 as being a persistent and unacceptable source of vicious anti-Semitism .
which hosts ‘the world’s leading Islamic Sunni scholar’ Yusuf al-Qaradawi who, apart from his open hatred of fellow Shiite Muslims, is best known for issuing the fatwas that a) formally allowed Islamic suicide bombers to target women and children and b) formally allowed women not only to become suicide bombers but also to wear western clothing in the act of their suicide bombing in order to deceive their victims (in fact this is the sum total of his contribution to advancing the rights of women in Islam).
where even taking photographs of ‘local people’ is illegal.

Given FIFA’s statutes stated above, I know that Qatar’s discrimination against Israeli and Jews are especially problematic for you (and I know this because I have seen some of the documentation of the bid). For the first time in World Cup history there will be a host country that does not allow entry to nationals from another of FIFA’s own countries, Israel. I understand that the Qataris have explicitly assured FIFA that they will allow entry to Israelis for ‘the duration of the tournament’. I have even heard that FIFA regards this as an indication of its own “positive influence” ; but that is a bit like saying it would have been a good thing to award the Olympic Games to Nazi Germany in 1936 if the Nazis agreed to postpone their pograms against the Jews for the duration of the tournament... Oh wait a minute ... that is exactly what did happen (so it seems the ethical choices of international sports committees have not changed much over the years).

I understand that the Qataris have also assured FIFA members by noting that Israeli sports participants have previously been allowed into the country and that they have even hosted Israeli trade delegations. What they would not have told you is how exceptional these events were and how bitterly they were received by the country’s small but indoctrinated population. The fact that Qatar has refused to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will not do so by 2022, is all that you really need to know.

What is certain is that many football supporters who would love to attend the 2022 World Cup – homosexuals, Jews, women, Israelis, or just supporters who also like to drink beer or take photographs – will effectively be denied the opportunity to attend.

If it is not too late for FIFA to reconsider its decision then you simply must do so.

If it is then today was the day that world football died. In either case I would like some explanation of your decision.

UK is going mad

2010-11-07T23:23:00.005Z

The way the media has handled the case of Labour MP Phil Woolas being kicked out as an MP for 'lying during the election campaign' confirms that there is now complete self-censorship when it comes to stories with an Islamist angle. From the news reports I first saw and read I actually had no idea that the case had anything to do with Islam. But it turns out it centred on Woolas accusing his LibDem opponent of pandering to Islamic fundamentalists. From what I have read since, Woolas's claim seems pretty reasonable - let's face it a LibDem candidate pandering to Islamists seem pretty much like a tautology - and in this case there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to back it up. But even if it was completely false, that would still make him no more guilty than 99% of all other MPs when you consider the lies they tell during an election campaign. Yet here we have the incredible step of the courts intervening and throwing an MP out of Parliament. With any criticism of Islam now deemed a 'hate crime' we are moving to a situation where the media is simply censoring any mention of Islam or Muslims if that casts them in a negative light. This presumably explains why the entire UK media was almost completely silent last week on:

the massacre by Muslims of 58 Christians in a Church in Baghdad (take a look at the pictures here)
the 113 Shia Muslims who were slaughtered by Sunni Muslims the next day in Baghdad
the continued mass slaughter of Muslim worhippers by more devout Muslim worshippers taking place on a daily basisin Pakistan.
the other UPS cargo bomb plot which actually succeeded - Al Quaeda always did claim that they bombed the UPS cargo plane that crashed in Dubai in September and this now seems certain, yet the UK media is censoring this story while talking endlessly about the failed plot.

It also explains why the media continues to downplay the role of Islamism in so many other stories. For example, it was only because of the guilty verdict and the words of the defendant herself that the British public were allowed to find out that Islamism was the reason why Roshonara Choudhry tried to kill her MP.

What is especially worrying for British Jews - apart from the rapidly escalating hatred being whipped up against Israel from every angle now - is that its own newpapers have increasingly bought into the same main stream "Islam is the Religion of Peace" and "Israel is the root of all problems" narrative. I've reported many times on the Jewish Chronicle's disgraceful decline in this respect, but now even the Jewish News appears to have succumbed. So this week's single Opinion piece titled "The unravelling of Rabin's legacy" places the entire blame for lack of Middle East Peace on "right wing settlers", while its Letters page leads with a full column letter titled "Israel has earned apartheid analogy" which contains such gems as "Israel seems determined to avoid having foreign journalists and courts examine its war efforts in detail, including many illustrated crimes such as phosphorous bombs, physical violence, internal sanctions and blockades". The Jewish Chronicle is now a complete joke; this week its bizarre leading story headlined "Hague offers Israel hand of friendship" (about William Hague's visit to Israel) tried to spin a viewpoint that is contradicted by every other source (see, e.g here and here). The JC actually avoids telling readers that a) Hague made a point of visiting - and expressing support for - the violent anti-Israel demonstrators who protest weekly against Israel's security barrier; and b) Hague made it pretty clear that he is not going to do anything to change the law on use of universal jurisdiction (and hence Israeli politicians will continue to be stopped from coming to the UK). But - wait a minute - didn't Hague and many other Tories promise during the election campaign that they would change this law as soon as they got into power? So why aren't they - like Phil Woolas being thrown out of Parliament?

And finally, here is a frightening story from Jerusalem of how our Arab friends would routinely kill every Jew they find if given the opportunity. Bet this story won't make it into next week's JC.

When it comes to the Middle East. why does the 'quality' media ignore quality writers?

2010-10-20T00:18:00.003+01:00

In responding to a typically ignorant attack on her by a prominent writer, pro-Israel, anti-Jihadist blogger Pamela Geller says:

"Who gives these people jobs? Who put these people in positions of influence? We are thirsting, and they're giving us seawater to drink."

Every time I see an article, a news item, or a documentary about the Jihad threat or about Middle East politics this is the question I ask about the writer/presenter. And I'm not just talking about the leftist bigots. Last week's (London) Times on Saturday, for example - the so-called creme de la creme of high-brow reporting - had a massive article dominating its world news section about the Middle East peace talks. The entire article (and headline) blamed Israel's decision to re-start building in Jerusalem (wrongly called "the West Bank") for the breakdown in talks. What was pathetic about the article was not so much its bias (which has been a feature of the Times for several years now) but the sheer ignorance and laziness of the writer. It would not have been hard, for example, to find out and mention the crucial role of the PA in refusing Netanyahu's request to recognise Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for a continued freeze on building, or to mention the clumsy role of Obama in unnecessarily making the building issue so prominent when even the Palestinians had never previously made it a condition for talks. But the writer simply did not bother. Instead the writer simply parroted out the standard Palestinian narrative without any attempt to check the facts. The writer also repeated the libel about the the 'settler' who 'ran over Palestinian children' as being a factor in the breakdown of talks, ignoring the fact that this had been comprehensively debunked with video evidence over a week before.

I'm increasingly coming to the opinion that most writers in the main stream media are not necessarily inherantly biased against Israel. They are simply ignorant, and above all lazy. They simply repeat what other 'writers' in the main stream media are saying and so it just becomes a self-perpetuating torrent of anti-Israel narrative. The tragedy is that these totally useless writers have all the key positions in the main stream media, while truly talented writers are marginalised in the blogosphere. Why. for example, are writers like Michael Totten (who really researches and understands the middle east), Daniel Greenfield (Sultan Knish, who is able to provide deep analysis) and Barry Rubin (who has access to a wide range of inside experts), not given the opportunity to be seen in the main stream media, while truly lazy and ignorant ones dominate it?

Israelis who seek to deligitimize and destroy Israel

2010-10-19T23:05:00.002+01:00

I've written several times before about Israeli academics who spend their lives attempting to deligitimize and destroy Israel.

Prominent among these in the UK are Avi Shlaim (Oxford) and Ilan Pappe (Exeter). Although their revisionist work has been widely discredited by genuine experts, they continue to be idolised by leftists and all anti-Zionists. Moroever, because they are keen to emphasize their "Israeli" backgrounds the main stream media often uses them, bizarrely, to "put the Israeli viewpoint" across in a debate (this gives you a feel of just how ignorant/biased the producers/editors are). This explains why you often see a "debate" involving an Arab and an "Israeli" in which the only actual disagreement is about whether Israel is a Nazi state or a fascist state.

Typically, Avi Shlaim is in the news today for playing a prominent role in the scandalous decision to 'disinvite' Jewish academic Professor Geoffrey Alderman from a panel debate at Queens University Belfast about ‘Conflict in the Middle East’. Heaven fordbid that an academic on the panel would not be a Hamas supporter.

But, more concerning to me, is the following example: A few weeks ago I came across a children's textbook in our local library, which I think was called "The Arab Israeli Conflict" (I think it is this one by Debra Miller). Flicking through it was clear that the book provided (exclusively) the Palestinian narrative in which, for example, the only 'terrorists' in the history of the conflict were Jews at Deir Yassin etc. When I looked at the back cover I discovered that the "Israeli consultant" on the book was none other than Avi Shlaim. It may well be that the author was a perfectly reasonable person who felt that by getting Shlaim's input she was getting a 'balance' against the "Arab consultant". The effect was that a standard textbook for 12-15 year-olds is indoctrinating a new generation to believe that Israel - and only Israel - is the root of all evil in the Middle East.

It would be nice if the likes of Shlaim and Pappe could simply be just laughed at or, even better, ignored. In many ways the publicity about Shlaim's role in the Belfast panel fiasco makes it more likely for him to be laughed at. But while this enables a handful of Israel supporters who follow the story to take the moral high ground, it is nothing compared to the real damage he continues to reap on thousands of school children (not to mention his students at Oxford and everybody else fed the lie that he somehow represents Israeli opinion).

p.s. How about this for another example: while searching on Amazon for the above book I was presented - by Amazon - with a list called "The best books about the Middle East" - you can see the list and the heading here. And guess which books are numbers 1 and 2 on this list? The first is by Avi Shlaim (The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World) and the second is by Ilan Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples). For good measure the rest of the list is filled almost entirely with anti-Israel writers too (Edward Said, Robert Fisk, David Hirst, Greg Philo, Charles Smith and two by Baruch Kimmerling). The 'exception' is Benny Morris, but the book listed is one written before he rejected his (until then) revisionist views.

Who is going to defend Pamela Geller from defamatory claims - not defamed Melanie Phillips

2010-10-13T23:04:00.005+01:00

Bear with me for a minute as this is a little complicated (about an article refering to another article referring to a third article) but this is important.

Melanie Phllips has posted an interesting article here.

In it she praises an article at Harry's Place written by "Alan A" .

The Harry's Place article defends Melanie against the inference that she is as an anti-Muslim bigot that was made in an article about her (at Left Foot Forward) titled "Melanie Phillips is inspiration behind Tea Party anti-Muslim leader" (the "anti-Muslim leader" referred to is Pamela Geller).

Melanie's own article praises the Harry's Place article for defending her. However, there is a very strong irony about what Melanie has written, in that she is praising an article which actually defames Pamela Geller in the same way (only more openly and viciously) than the original article defamed both Melanie and Pamela. In fact Alan A states that Pamela Geller is a "lunatic bigot".

So:

The first article infers (rather than states openly) that both Melanie and Pamela are anti-Muslim bigots, without offering a shred of evidence against either.
The second article claims Melanie is not an anti-Muslim bigot but states openly that Pamela is an anti-Muslim bigot, without offering a shred of evidence against her.
The third article (Melanie's) praises the second article for coming to her defence, while ignoring the fact that the second article had made a far more openly offensive claim.

So who is going to defend Pamela Geller against the cumulative claims against her? The irony, sadly, is that it is not going to be Melanie Phillips.

The problem is that the stock response of any 'liberal' to people who are prepared to stand up to the threat of Islamism (as opposed to Muslims) is that they are 'bigots' or 'racists'. Just as there is no evidence that Melanie is a bigot or racist, nor is there any evidence that Pamela Geller is. In fact, the demonising of Pamela Geller by the main stream media is no different from its demonising of Israel. It all boils down to a combination of anti-semitism and dhimittude.

The other irony about Alan A's article on Harry's Place is that it begins with the words "I expect that Left Foot Forward will get into trouble for this [referring to the original] article." So the entire thrust of Alan A's article is that even implying that somebody is an anti-Muslim bigot without providing evidence is a serious offense. Yet, his own article explicitly calls somebody a lunatic bigot without providing evidence. You just could not make this stuff up.

Another media scandal

2010-10-10T21:59:00.005+01:00

So we now have another classic example of the Media's insatiable obsession to find any tiny negative story about Israel and explode it into an international incident.

Every TV news channel (and all the major newspapers) has been running the story of an "Israeli West Bank settler running over Palestinian children". Even the one news channel that is supposed to be "not hostile" to Israel - Fox News - went big on this one presenting it as an outrage. But take a look here for the full video which as far as I know no western TV channel has screened.

The full video speaks for itself and the question that needs to be asked is why would editorial staff in the UK and the USA not use the full version rather than a version which so clearly presents a lie? I've been racking my brains over that one and can only come up with the answer: anti-semitism. And incidentally this was not in the "West Bank" as every news outlet reported. It was in East Jerusalem (Silwan) where the dispute is about properties that have not only been bought legally but were actually were owned by Jews before the Jordanian occupation of 1948-67. Even the notoriously left-wing Israel judiciary accepts that.

Update: It seems that youtube has censored the above full video - you can now only watch it if you are registered as over 18. Elder of Ziyon has more on the original story and an update on further attacks against Jewish drivers in Silwan.

Gerald Kaufman loves Hamas

2010-10-03T18:49:00.003+01:00

The Jewish Chronicle, which as I have been saying for a while is increasingly aligning itself with those who are hostile to Israel, carried a sympathetic article last week about Gerald Kaufman being "verbally assaulted" by two members of his synagogue on Yom Kippur.

Now we find out in this must read Harrys Place article that the depth of Kaufman's depravity in cosying up to Hamas is much greater than we had feared. What's the betting the Jewish Chronicle gives rather less prominence to this story about their friend Kaufman?

Could it get any worse?

2010-09-28T13:33:00.002+01:00

With the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats competing among themselves for the claim to be the most virulently anti-Israel party, we can now add the Labour Party. Its new leader, Ed Milliband - a classic "as a Jew" in name only - has firmly laid his cards on the table. Look which organisation he chose for his very first speech as Party Leader.

But it is not really a surprise when you consider that his mother is a prominent member of 'Jews for Justice for Palestinians' and is backing the anti-Israel boatload of 'Jews' on their way to support Hamas in Gaza.

How 9/11 would be reported today

2010-09-10T16:17:00.003+01:00

On a previous anniversary of 9/11 I wrote an article about how that day’s events might have been reported by the BBC, CNN or the Guardian if they used the same approach as they used to reporting terrorist attacks against Israel. Considering how the main stream media in the USA has presented stories about Islamic terrorism against the USA since 9/11 (e.g. the Fort Hood massacre, the undiebomber, the Beltway sniper killings) by trying to cover up the Islamic angle, I think it is now the case that this is not much different to how the 9/11 story would actually be presented by the main stream media in the USA today:

Headline to story: “Thousands of Arabs and Americans killed in day of tit-for-tat violence on east coast of America”

The cycle of violence in America reached a new crescendo today when a series of violent incidents left thousands dead. The dead are believed to include many Arab civilians and a number of American military personnel. Al Jaziera has revealed that many of the Arabs killed were refugee children who had fled from oppression. Although an American spokesman claimed that they too suffered “many civilian deaths”, this has been denied by the Al Quaeda organisation.

The violence started when a member of a group of five unarmed Arab civilians, who boarded a 767 aircraft in Boston, was refused permission to fly the plane, despite having a valid flying licence. The American authorities have been imposing increasingly tight restrictions on the freedom of movement of Arab civilians within the US. This humiliation to their dignity has created, not unsurprisingly, deep anger and resentment among even moderate Arabs. When the fully qualified pilot was denied the opportunity to work in his chosen profession, he became angry. It is reported that the outnumbered Arab men engaged in fighting with members of the crew, but what really happened next may never be known. What is certain is that all of the five Arabs were killed, along with the plane’s other occupants (believed to be primarily military and intelligence personnel) when the plane crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center. Al Jaziera quickly confirmed that the building housed many Arab refugee children, who were all killed in the attack along with a number of Muslim workers. A number of illegal American immigrants dressed as businessmen may also have perished.

As news of the Arab civilian deaths became known, it is believed that Arab civilians on another aircraft reacted with understandable passion, battling with military and security personnel. This plane soon crashed into the south tower of the Word trade center. After this second crash the US military ordered an unprecedented grounding of all civilian flights over US airspace, thus denying all Arabs living in the US the right to travel. On hearing news of this attack on their livelihood a group of Arab militants mounted a daring tit-for-tat strike. With nothing else to lose, and in sheer desperation, the militants crashed the plane they were travelling in into the very heart of the US military machine – the Pentagon, killing scores of soldiers. In an escalation of the violence the US military responded by threatening to shoot down any airplane still flying that was piloted by Arabs. This led to the final, and most outrageous act of violence of the day, committed by a group of self-styled American vigilantes aboard flight 93 to San Francisco. On learning that their airplane was being flown by Arab pilots, the Americans took it upon themselves to massacre all the Arabs on board. In the ensuing struggle the Arab pilot was savagely killed and the plane crashed into a field, killing all the occupants, many of whom are believed to have been Arab refugee children. The US military is likely to have to accept full responsibility for the final massacre, since they had given messages to the passengers on board flight 93 that the Arab pilots were planning to crash the plane into the White House, even though no proof of such a wild claim had been presented to the United Nations. The French and German leaders have already demanded a UN enquiry into the massacre.

It's now official: Obama administration has really lost it

2010-08-31T20:58:00.004+01:00

The Obama adminstration's response to today's appalling massacre of Israeli civilians (including two women one of whom was pregant) is confirmation, if any more were needed, of its total failure to understand the nature or Arab terrorism, and its total indifference to Jewish lives and security. This was a terrorist attack against civilians driving a car near their home. The attack has been proudly claimed by Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida. The Jerusalem Post quotes paramedic Guy Ronen saying "When we arrived on the scene, all four doors of the car were open and four bodies were strewn on the road. We saw that the vital organs had been struck by a very large number of bullets, and that there was no chance of saving their lives". YNet reports that speeches from loudspeakers at a mosque in the northern Gaza Strip celebrated news of the attack, while Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said "This is a natural response by the Palestinian resistance to the enemy's crimes, and is proof that despite the resistance's persecution by the security services and despite Israel's crimes, the Palestinians are capable of responding to these crimes. This is proof that the Palestinian resistance is living, breathing, and kicking".

So what was Obama's response? Much like his response to every other Islamic terror attack - obfuscation and an attempt to portray the attack as some kind of tragic random event unconnected with Islamic terrorism despite the incontravertable evidence to the contrary. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley labeled the deadly shooting Tuesday “a tragedy” while urging both sides not to take steps that would jeopardize direct peace negotiations set to be launched Thursday. He said “Any time one human being takes out a weapon and fires and kills other human beings it’s a tragedy,” adding that the US still didn’t know the circumstances surrounding the incident. Pathetic.

The insanity of the Israeli left

2010-08-30T11:12:00.005+01:00

While bloggers like myself spend a lot of effort criticising the Western media for their systematic anti-Israel agenda, it is easy to forget that the most consistent and hysterical attempts to deligitimize Israel come from Israelis themselves - namely left-wing academics and journalists (notably from Haaretz). For example, Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy was this week in the UK demonizing Israel as guest speaker at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign meeting in which 'Zionists' were told to leave. What many Jews in the UK are totally unaware of is that Levy is not an exception; he represents the mainstream opinion of the Haaretz newspaper. Just look at today's three opinion pieces on the front page of Haaretz online (this is just screenshot from it):

Gov't trying to blur borders with West Bank theater shows. This piece, about Israeli actors note, starts with "The refusal by actors to perform in occupied territory is not delegitimization of the state, as the prime minister claims, but the expression of a legitimate and worthy position.
Does the IDF consider Jewish teenagers a security risk. This piece starts with "Two weeks ago, a group of teenagers marched between Nablus and Jericho, absorbing the beauty of the land and the ugliness of the soldiers they encountered."
Israel's corrupt capitalism isn't going anywhere

People in the West assume that if an Israeli deligitimizes Israel then somehow that 'proves the point'. But that would be the same as accepting that Britan is a racist, anti-Islamic imperialistic state because that is what George Galloway says when he goes on his speaking tours of Syria.
The problem is that Israel has plenty of its own George Galloways. Like most leftists anywhere in the world they make a disproportionate amount of noise (because of their dominance of the media), they hate their own country and are keen to tell the world how much they do so. But that does not make them representative of the majority (note to the Jewish Chronicle: can you please stop publishing full page opinion pieces by these Israeli George Galloways, which you now seem to do now every week).

One area where Israel is especially damaged is in the almost exclusively anti-Zionist agenda of its film industry, most of which is generously subsidized by the Israeli government (Debbie Schlussel has written consistently this). To give a feel for the depths to which Israeli film-makers will go to demonizing their own country, I found an incredible example in the May 24, 2010 issue of the Jerusalem Report (which itself is increasingly dominated by anti-Zionist articles). The article (page 36) talks (in glowing terms) about the film "My Name is Ahlam" by Israeli filmmaker Rima Essa which 'follows over a two-year period the life of Ahlam, a young (Palestinian) girl living in the Hebron area, who is battling leukemia". Since Ahlam lives in the Palestinian Authority area she is treated at the El Hussein Hospital in Beit Jala (which has an oncology ward) but the hospital cannot provide the chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant she needs. The article talks about the terrible bureacracy of the Palestinian Authority that Um Amad (Ahlam's mother) faces and the fact that Um Amad's husband is "angry with her for devoting time to Ahlam at the expense of their other five children and himself". But, and you can guess what is coming, the filmmaker's real anger focuses exclusively on those wicked Zionists. And why do you think she is so angered? Is it because Ahlam is denied medical treatment by the Israelis (who actually have no moral or legal obligation to provide it to citizens of the PA)? No, we find out that Ahlam is indeed treated in an Israeli hospital. So what is the cause of the anger? It turns out that the Israelis insist that Um Amad's husband (and not her) must accompany Ahlam to the hospital. Ah those wicked Israelis again. So what is the minor reason why Um Amad is not allowed in to Israel? She just happens to be the sister of a notorious suicide bomber who murdered Israelis. Nothing serious then (and of course Palestinian suicide bombers would never dream of targetting hospitals or killing Israelis who have cured them). The filmmaker says she:

"wanted to voice criticism about several subjects, starting with the Israeli military occupation. Punishing Um Amad because her brother was a shaheed [martyr] is a form of collective punishment that is unacceptable."

And remember: all of that is funded by the Israeli government.

Fanatical anti-Israel bias today

2010-08-17T17:34:00.005+01:00

If ever you needed definitive proof of the fanatical anti-Israel bias of the main stream media then today is surely the day. Let's look at some examples of real stories from Israel and the Middle East today today:

There were two separate terrorist attacks against Southern Israel from Gaza.
There was a terrorist attack against the Israeli embassy in Turkey (this is ongoing right now so details are unclear).
There is the fallout from the last night's Panorama programme where even the BBC finally admits that the entire media coverage of the flotilla incident was a nothing less than a blood libel against Israel
There was a massive suicide bombing in Baghdad which killed at least 61 people.
There is the news of Iran's first nuclear reactor going live on Sunday.
...and many more.

So what story - and yes it is about Israel - do you think is the very top story on almost every news outlet right now (on the internet, I haven't yet seen the TV). It is a story about an ex-Israeli soldier posting pictures of herself with Palestinian prisoners. The story's real context is provided here, but all the news outlets are crying out with the usual indignation (e.g. yahoo.com leads its entire news coverage with "Ex-Israeli soldier's controversial Facebook pics", google news leads its international news section with "Israel in new storm over Facebook images", and there is massive front page coverage at Sky News online and BBC news online).

If you are not convinced with that then how about the incredible story here of how the main stream western media refused to run a real story (given to them by Palestinian journalists) about the Palestinian Authority arresting several university lecturers but, when the same journalists offered a fake story about a Palestinian lecturer being refused entry to Israel, the very same media were eager to run the story.

It is clear that the western media have made a decision to ignore even major stories about Arab terror against Israel and anything that casts the Palestinaians in a 'bad light', but are prepared to work themselves into a frenzy over even the slightest Israeli indiscretion. See Rubin's article here for further examples of this bias.

Finally, and nothing to do with the above, everybody should read Sultan Knish's latest article here about the Ground Zero mosque. Read it and weep when you think that brilliant writing like that never appears in the main stream media.

More world anti-Israel insanity

2010-08-04T10:29:00.005+01:00

It is now clear that yesterday's skirmish on the Lebanese border was a terrorist attack on the Israeli soldiers with Hezbollah having been tipped off by the 'neutral' UN 'peace keeping force' (who happen to be from Islamist Malyasia). Elder of Ziyon has a comprehensive report from an independent source and Barry Rubin has a good analysis of how yet again the Western media got it all completely wrong.

Another article that caught my eye was here by Debbie Schlussel - it perfectly sums up the latent anti-semitism of the FBI (which obviously has got a lot worse under Obama but is by no means new) as well as the world's hypocrisy about the vile regime in Dubai (about which I have written many times before). It indicates that Obama now thinks Israel, not Hamas, are the terrorists.

Tom Jones and Pink Floyd: their role in the next Middle East war

2010-08-02T21:11:00.005+01:00

As usual the world is disinterested in the latest series of rocket attacks against Israel, but the world will be very interested soon because when Israel mounts the necessary counter-attacks they are going to need to be substantial. In case anybody has missed the details (and you certainly will not see them in the UK media) the last few days have seen the Grad missile attack against Ashkelon, a wave of Kassams against Sderot, and today's rocket attacks against Eilat. One of the attacks against Sderot completely destroyed a hydrotherapy centre for disabled children (there is a very good eye witness account here and video here).

Only idiots fail to realise that Hamas is bolstered to mount these attacks because it is being increasingly supported by the Western media who in turn have brainwashed the public about the 'Palestinian cause'. I've written many times about the disproportionate amount of money provided by Western governments and charities to the Palestinians of Gaza. There is a great video here about the sheer scale and immorality of money going to Palestinians. Hamas are even complaining that there are too many goods coming freely into the Gaza from Israel. Given that information and the fact that Hamas wants to goad Israel into a full-blown war (with some pushing of course from Iran), is there anything more nauseating than the story that a host of top celebrities in the UK staged an event to raise money for the people of Gaza? This story was actually reported (very approvingly of course as showing great belevolence by the celebrities) in the Sun a couple of weeks ago and I kept meaning to blog about it but did not have the time. But I found a good report about it here. The event was hosted by the half-Jewish dimwit Jemima Goldsmith and her former Taliban loving husband husband Imran Khan. Depressingly, celebrities who performed included Tom Jones, Pink Floyd and Kate Moss (go figure the latter). The event raised £400,000. In future they could make things easier for themselves by just handing over the rockets.

New Head of Foreign Office is married to PLO official

2010-08-01T12:56:00.003+01:00

Just to confirm that Cameron and Hague cannot do enough to bolster their anti-Israel credentials, the Sunday Telegraph is reporting today that Cameron has appointed Simon Fraser as the new head of the Foreign Office. The Telegraph reminds us that Fraser was sacked from his job in the last Conservative Government under John Major for cohabiting with an official of the PLO (which at the time was still officially designated as a terrorist organisation).

Despite the PLO no longer being classified as a terrorist organisation, there has never been any change in the goal of any of its officials. Indeed, the PLO charter still officially advocates the destruction of Israel. It is very comforting therefore to know that the most senior person responsible for Britain's Middle East policy is married to one of its officials.

David Cameron: an ignorant bigot

2010-07-27T16:22:00.006+01:00

Following on from his embarassingly ignorant press conference in the USA last week (when he stated that Britain was the junior partner against the Nazis in 1940 even though the USA did not join the war until the end of 1941) Cameron has now aligned himself firmly with the Turkish Islamists and Hamas in his speech in Turkey. Ignoring all the evidence to the contrary (about both the flotilla incident and the siutation in Gaza) he announced to his beaming Islamist hosts:

"The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told PM Netanyahu, we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

It's bad enough to spout that nonsense at home in the UK, but to parrot the Islamist line in Turkey (and hence bolster the Islamist AKP while their secular opposition are campaigning against them) is pure incitement. And all this in the context of Cameron's stupid campaigning for Turkey to join the EU. The hypocrisy, given Turkey's continued occupation of North Cyprus, its brutal suppression of the Kurds and continued denial of its own holocaust against the Armenians, is breathtaking.

Good coverage of this here, here and here (the latter piece in particular highlights Cameron's total ignorance of Islam). Also very good analysis by Robin Shepherd here.

Cameron is fast becoming the worst PM in UK history. A classic upper-middle class twit, with all the usal prejudices. Shame on all those Jews who were convinced he was some kind of a philo-semite and friend of Israel. I warned all of my friends and family before the last election that a conservative government with Cameron as PM and Hague as foreign secretary would be the most anti-Israel government in UK history. For example, here is what I wrote the day before polling:

http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/2010/05/conservatives-and-israel.html

And all of that was before anybody considered the possibility of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. To me the give-away with Cameron was when he was interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle shortly after becoming Party leader. The most positive thing he could bring himself to say about Israel was “I believe Israel has a right to exist”. As far as I’m concerned anybody who makes that statement is already revealing anti-semitism because they would not make the same statement about any other country in the world including the very many which were created during the twentieth century with far less obvious legitimacy than Israel (think Pakistan as an obvious example, but also virtually every single Arab country was a purely artifical creation). If anybody ever says that to me I always thank them and respond by saying “that’s very kind because I think you also have a right to exist”.

NASA's new main mission: reach out to the Muslim world

2010-07-06T22:40:00.003+01:00

This incredible story - which on its own ought to be enough to get Obama removed from Office - is confirmed in the following interview with the Obama's new NASA Administrator Charles Bolden:

http://yesbuthowever.com/nasa-chief-819050/

Bolden really does say of Obama's objectives for NASA "..foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." This follows on from Obama's recent announcements of the scrapping of the shuttle programme and all future manned spaceflight. So, it appears that NASA's mission is no longer (as stated on its website) "to pioneer the future in space exploration" but rather to "appease Muslims". And, having done a little bit of digging, this article in the Orlanda Sentinel from February 2010 confirms that NASA is already well entrenched in its new mission by handing out money to the largest Muslim nation Indonesia for "an educational program that examines global climate change".

I wonder what the Bruce Willis character in Armageddon (with all that "for all mankind" stuff) would have made of this revised mission statement .

There a very good satire on it here at Sultan Knish.

But, of course, as far as I can tell not a single main stream newspaper has picked up on this incredible story.

Palestine belongs to whom?

2010-07-04T13:30:00.003+01:00

One of the most important facts about 'Palestine' (that many people are still unaware of) is that prior to 1948 it was ONLY the Jews who considered themselves to be Palestinians. Hence, the "United Palestine Appeal" of the 1940's (as shown in the poster here photographed at Ben Gurion airport) was to support the Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Arabs of Palestine who, if they considered themselves as belonging to any country at all, mostly believed themselves to be Syrian. This largely explains why there was never any Arab desire to accept the 1947 US partition plan that would have created an indendent Arab state in Palestine. In fact the notion of an Arab 'Palestine' did not arise until the birth of the PLO in 1965. That is why, for example, even as recently as the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the UK Jews in the diaspora were still collecting money for Israel under the "United Palestine Appeal". It was only after that war that the name was changed to the United Israel Appeal.

Jewish Chronicle gets it all wrong

2010-06-27T12:46:00.005+01:00

The Jewish Chronicle seems to be doing its best recently to match the rest of the main stream media in the political bias and inaccuracy of its reporting. The article here (click it to enlarge) titled "EDL? This is what you get" takes the biscuit as one of the most ill-informed and ludicrous I have seen.

The article blames the English Defence League for violence that erupted in the East End on 20 June after a march/demonstration by UAF (United Against Fashion) even though the EDL was not even present. The UAF is the ultimate "Red-Brown" alliance being a front for the Socialist Workers Party but with strong support from the Muslim Association of Britain (which is part of the Muslim Brotherhood). To give you an indication of where the UAF really stands on racism, Weyman Bennett of its central committee has been accused of stating that Israeli Jews “should go back to where they came from … New York or wherever” (a claim he has never denied). This is the very same Weyman Bennett who is quoted at the end of the Jewish Chronicle article to support the JC's version of events.

I already wrote about the background to this story here. Basically, the EDL had planned to demonstrate against an Islamist hatefest conference due to take place at the Troxy in Tower Hamlets on 20 June featuring some of the vilest, most racist anti-semitic Islamists around. Fortunately, the event was cancelled under pressure from the local council and so the EDL demonstration was also cancelled. However, the UAF's planned massive march to confront the EDL still went ahead. Among the standard blood curdling speeches, was this this speech by George Galloway that includes the statement "If you dare touch the beard of a Muslim man in Tower Hamlets you will have to fight your way through 10,000 dead bodies first". Not suprisingly, the march ended with hundreds of duly incited Muslim men rampaging through the East End attacking Police and passers-by. Not that you would realise that from reading the JC article, which tries to cover up the Islamist violence. However, the East London advertiser reports:

Despite no EDL presence, the protesters became agitated and ‘surged up and down’ the Whitechapel Road. According to the police statement, there were ‘concerted efforts by the crowd to attack people at random.' Police officers themselves were also attacked by the crowd ‘at points throughout the afternoon.’

Compare all the above with the Jewish Chronicle version of events. Also, while the Jewish Chronicle has run several articles demonising the EDL, it has never investigated or even questioned the agenda of the UAF who (unlike the EDL) pose a genuine threat to the Jewish community. Also the JC's failure to check out the background of the UAF spokeman it quoted is an example of extremely poor journalism.

But what I found most worrying of all was that, coupled with the CST quote in the article, was the message to Jews that essentially says: Do not try to to defend yourself against Islamic extremism. Any violence committed by the Islamists that occurs as a result of you trying to defend yourself - even if you are not actually involved in that violence - is your fault and we will hold you to blame for it. The irony is that this is exactly the message the world has been sending to Israel (a message the JC has, rightly, been condemning).

p.s. The JC has been giving prominent space to a range of anti-Zionists to vent their spleen recently, and has also allowed many ridiculous claims to go unchallenged. One of these persistent claims is the notion that the American organisation JStreet is somehow 'pro-Israel' (a claim which is stated yet again by the increasingly unhinged Jonathan Freedland on page 35 this week). I think the JC should take the trouble to find out about what JStreet really stands for by reading respected commentators like Noah Pollack here, or find out about the extent of Islamic/Arab funding of JStreet here.

The Sun is now censoring out news items that cast Islam in a bad light

2010-06-22T12:55:00.003+01:00

The Sun has long been accused by Muslims and leftists of whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment. The fact that, on the contrary, the Sun has recently adopted both an anti-Israel stance and a whitewashing of Muslim extremism is something I raised here.

Well today comes the story about the trial of Faisal Shahzad who pleaded guilty to the attempt to detonate a car in Times Square New York (one of the foiled terrorist attacks in the US that people like Obama say have nothing to do with Muslims or Islam). Not only did he plead guilty but he stated in court that he was a Muslim warrior and that he would do it 100 times over because of US interference in Muslim lands. He also threatened that further Islamist attacks on the US were coming.

Despite this the Sun has decided to 'censor out' completely the Islamist angle from the story today. The report in the Sun says that Shazad pleaded guilty and that he would do it '100 times over' but completely leaves out any mention of his faith and any mention of his statement about his motives and threats he made. In fact, Sun readers would be completely unaware that this attempted mass murder attack had anything to do with Muslims/Islam.

I also listend to LBC this morning (the main London news station) and although the 7.00am bulletin mentioned the Islamist motivation, all subsequent bulletins (I listened at 7.15, 7.30, 7.45, 8.00 and 8.15) also censored out the Islamist angle.

The world's hypocrisy

2010-06-17T22:48:00.002+01:00

On 6 May 2010 - just three weeks before Israel's storming of the Turkish boat that had been, effectively, hijacked by IHH terrorists, Russian special forces stormed a ship that had been hijacked by a group of about 15 Somali pirates. The Russians rounded up the pirates, confiscated their weapons, and put them back in the boat they had come on. They then simply blew up the boat killing every one of the Somalis. The full video of this incident can be seen here.

The only matter of dispute about the incident is whether or not the Russians shot and killed all the pirates before blowing up the boat (the Somalis seem to be claiming they were all shot first).

Did you hear any fanatical public outrcy about this incident? No. You almost certainly never even heard of it, despite the existence of the very graphic video. A bit of a contrast to Israel's action.

As far as I can tell, with the exception of the Somalis (who don't constitute a functioning government anyway) not one single country condemned this action. As justified as it might have been to people like me (I wish every country dealt with Somali pirates like the Russians do - I bet they won't be hijacking many Russian ships again) the Russian action is - on a scale of callousness - an order of magnitude greater than what Israel did. Unlike the Israelis the Russian soldiers were never in any danger when they killed their victims, and unlike the Turks against the Israelis, the Somalis were not attempting in any way to destabilise Russia and/or support terrorist movements fighting Russia. In the 'Guardian' sense of the word this really was a cold-blooded massacre. But I could not find a single mention of this incident in the UK media or TV. On the contrary, the only reference I could find was a brief story - in the Guardian on the 7 May that was actually headlined "Russia frees captured Somali pirates" (despite the subsequent video evidence I could find no later correction to the Guardian story).

This type of hypocrisy is addressed in a great (but sobering) article by Sultan Knish that explains the futility of Israel continually offering concessions to an enemy dedicated to its annihilation. The article highlights the world's hypocrisy in singling out Israel for hysterical condemnation for behaviour that is far less offensive and aggressive than a large number of other countries in the world (including most of those shouting loudest against Israel). His article highlights some of the actions of Iran, China, North Korea, Turkey, Dubai, and Venzuela.

In addition to Knish's example and the especially relevant Russian example above he could have added the following:

Syria for its renewed rape of Lebanon and brutal suppression of dissent
Morocco for its continued occupation of Western Sahara and brutal violations of human rights there
Saudi Arabia for its invasion of northern Yemen and the resulting massacre of Houthi rebels
Egypt for the suppression and massacres against the Coptic minority
Pakistan whose state-sponsored persecution of the Ahmadiyya minority led directly to a number of massacres notably the coordinated attacks on their mosques earlier this month. Also whose security service the ISI is both funding and advising the Taleban.
Indonesia for the continued state sponsored persecution of Christians and Bhuddhists leading to frequent massacres.
Malaysia for its official state policy of suppression and persecution of Christians leading, for example, to coordinated attacks on 9 churches in Jan 2010
Iraq for its brutal oppression of Christians and murder of political opponents
Yemen for forcing out the last handful of Jews who were in the country after a Rabbi was murdered by a Jihadist (who has not even been charged).

...basically you can add just about every Muslim country.

But, and this is the really interesting point, a number of Western countries have committed 'crimes against Muslims' that far exceed anything that Israel has done, but receive barely a murmour of criticism:

US and its allies in Afghanistan have killed many times more civilians from bombing and drone attacks than were killed in Gaza in 2009. Although this occasionally raises the concerns of Muslim and leftist protesters the scale of fury is a tiny fraction of that directed at Israel for lesser "offences".
Switzerland's ban on Mosque minarets brought minor condemnation from Muslims and some leftists but if Israel had brought in a similar law then we would certainly have seen mass worldwide hysteria and UN resolutions against its 'apartheid'.
In many Western countries (notably Holland and Austria) elections have brought stunning advances by political parties fighting almost exlusively on an anti-Islamism agenda. Again, similar gains by such a party in Israel would have seen mass worldwide hyteria and UN resolutions against its 'apartheid'.

Funding the 'poor' Palestinians

2010-06-16T16:50:00.006+01:00

There is a very good article here comparing the amount of aid that the US is giving this year to Gaza (meaning explicitly Hamas) compared to a country in far more desperate (and deserving) need, namely Haiti. The article shows that, based on the population size, Gazans will get 7.5 times more than Haitians.

In fact, charitable funding for Palestinians (most of which ultimately is paid for by taxpayers in the US and Western Europe and not by oil-rich Arab nations) is, by a huge margin, pro-rata more than is given in aid to any other nation or people in the world. No people in the history of the world have been so lavishly showered with charity as the Palestinians. The main reason for this is that, unlike any other people or refugees in history, the Palestinians have their own dedicated UN agency - UNRWA. The official web page of UNRWA states that it has an annual budget of $1.23 billion mainly from money donated by the governments of the USA and Western Europe. But the UNRWA funding does not include the many other regular charitable donations the Palestinians receive from charities and NGOs such as Oxfam, War on Want and Christian Aid as well as the regular 'special appeals' such as the DEC appeal in January 2009 (it is difficult to get the exact figures from these organisations but, for example, the Christian Aid 2009 annual report gives a figure of £17.5 million spent in the Middle East and it is almost certain that over 50% of this was to the Palestinians, while War on Want focues almost entirely on the Palestinians). Nor does the UNRWA budget include the frequent one-off payments such as that made last weekend by the British Government (£19 million on top of the annual £200 million at a time when we are told the Government has no money and plans massive cuts everywhere) and the US government ($400 million). Both of these special payments were, effectively, one-off rewards to Hamas for engineering the flotilla incident. In 2007 an international conference in Paris saw a pledge of an additional $7.4 billion over the following 3 years to the Palestinian Authority.

When you add in the Iranian government's direct support of Hamas (believed to be a billion dollars over the last two years) and the unspecified funding of Hamas that comes from the Gulf states, it is likely that charitable foreign donations/aid to the Palestinians in Gaza amounts currently to at least $3 billion dollars per year. That works out - per person - at some 60 times greater than aid received by Haiti and several hundreds times per person more than most African countries.

If even a small proportion of this aid was spent on genuine humanitarian needs and nation building then it might be partially justified. But most of the foreign aid cash given to the Palestinians is unaccounted for (possibly as much as 90%) and hence goes direct to Hamas or (in the West Bank) into the Swiss banking accounts of PA officials (this is how Yasser Arafat accumulated several billions of dollars in his own private accounts). The massive, disproportionate charitable donations to Palestinians not only ensures a culture of total dependence (hence stopping any real economic development) but is also the primary enabler of their continued terrorism. You would have thought that Western governments would have twigged by now just how counter-productive it is, but the liberal elite in charge simply cannot resist the lure of Palestinian victimhood.

If you want to do something about it then one small thing you can do is tell anybody you know never to give to the charities that are most agressively and politically 'pro-Palestinian' (or, more correctly 'anti-Israel' like the ones I've listed above. In particular, these are the charities that most benefit from "Comic Relief" - if you support Israel make sure you never again buy a red nose. See the report here for details:

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/03/07/a-nose-job/

Since that report was written things have got a whole lot worse, especially with the charity "War on Want":

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/war_on_want_wages_war_on_israel_update_
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/07/10/ben-white-at-war-on-want/

Terrorist attack on Israelis - totally ignored by every media outlet

2010-06-14T22:55:00.004+01:00

What a surprise. A terrorist attack today killed one Israeli and critically injured two others - and has been claimed by the 'moderate' Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who are formally part of Abbas's Fatah organisation NOT Hamas - received precisely zero coverage in any UK news outlet. Not a word either on google news or yahoo.

But, while the BBC news website did not consider this terrorist attack newsworthy, it has quite a big splash on its front page criticising Israel's probe into the flotilla incident. Under the front page headline "Israel raid probe 'not impartial'" we find the article here with the more informative headline "Israel Gaza probe criticised by Turkey and Palestinians" . Of course, Turkey and the Palestinians are the objective people we need to be listening to here. I don't remember the BBC running a headline "Nuremburg trials criticised by Nazi leaders" in 1946 but it would have made just as much sense.

Who are the racists here?

2010-06-10T23:37:00.003+01:00

There has been a massive campaign by Unions, leftist and Muslim organisations in Tower Hamlets East London to confront a demo by the EDL (English Defence League) planned for 20 June.

Here is the UAF's web page about it (the UAF is a front for the Socialist Workers Party):

http://uaf.org.uk/2010/06/unions-and-mosques-back-east-london-demo-against-edl/

The accompanying leaflet on the webpage talks about the EDL being a bunch of violent Nazis. The EDL actually has nothing about the demo on their webpage but there are details of a recent EDL march in Newcastle. In complete contradiction to the narrative presented by the UAF, it is clear that the EDL is intent on peaceful, legal - and specifically non-racist - demonstration as is clear from the following statement:

"Thank you all for your patience in waiting for this information, as you all know this Saturday the English Defence League will be holding a peaceful demonstration to oppose militant Islam in Newcastle upon Tyne....Our stewards and Northumbria police will be working side by side to make sure that anyone that is trying to disrupt our march will be ejected from it, racist chants and slurs will not be accepted ..."

In fact all violence at previous EDL demos appreas to have come from the UAF who have confronted them.

But here is the really interesting thing. What the UAF is not telling anybody is that the REAL event planned in Tower Hamlets on 20 June has nothing to do with the EDL but is an Islamist hatefest at the Troxy. This event - featuring some of the vilest, most racist anti-semitic Islamfascists around - was exposed here for example:

http://hurryupharry.org/2010/05/17/poxy-preachers-at-the-troxy-bilal-philips-and-hussein-yee/

The EDL demo was, I understand, simply a planned protest against this event. So, to say that the UAF has spun a different narrative on what is going on is an incredible understatement. They are deliberately covering up/ignoring an event where the speakers would genuinely be stirring racial violence (in their distorted view Muslims can never be racists or offensive of course). But a group of people demonstrating peacefully against them - well that is something to get very angry about. They must be the racists. It is a classic case of reason turned on its head.

But in the last few hours there has been a major development. As a result of the Council issuing a statement yesterday requiring the 'no hate pledge' for events at the Troxy, the Troxy has decided to cancel the conference as they felt that they could not meet the pledge:

http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED10%20Jun%202010%2012%3A11%3A44%3A280

Frankie Boyle: ignorant anti-semitic idiot

2010-06-10T20:40:00.004+01:00

Above is the full article by Frankie Boyle on 4 June in the Sun (click to enlarge it) that was cited in my complaint to the Press Complaints Commission yesterday as an example of their biased and inaccurate anti-Israel coverage of the flotilla incident.

I decided to file a special complaint about this article today as follows:

*******************************************

The main article on the Frankie Boyle page (page 17) titled “Comic Relief must be bloody in Israel” contains a number of blatantly false and offensive anti-Israel claims that collectively constitute a blood libel. The worst examples were:

“Israel attacked and killed a numbe of charity workers who were peacefully arriving on a boat”. This claim was proven to be false by the afternoon of 31 May through extensive video evidence.
“Some of the protesters on board were teachers – presumably not teachers from England, as they tend to side with Israel on the policy of beating children to death”. This is an especially offensive slur which cannot be simply dismissed as a joke.
“The Israeli forces abseiled from helicopters carrying machine guns”. The Israeli weapons that had been originally claimed to be 'machine guns' by the anti-Israel activists were proven to be paintball guns on 31 May (4 days before the article was published).

*************************************************************

Frankie Boyle, of course, has form with regards his vicious anti-Israel hatred - as you can see here:

http://www.israellycool.com/2010/05/01/off-the-boyle/

I have no doubt that he would claim to be very offended by being called anti-semitic. But, as is explained very well in the following articles, the unique obsessive hatred with Israel is always confirmation of anti-semitism:

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2010/06/defending-yourself-only-makes-us-hate.html

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/06/israel-human-decency-common-humanity-by-eve-garrard.html

http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=177768

Forget the Guardian - it's the Sun we really have to worry about now

2010-06-09T23:01:00.011+01:00

Until recently the Sun was the only British newspaper that could be relied on to be sympathetic to Israel's cause - in its news coverage, editorials and guest columns. That started changing when James Murdoch's son (known to have none of his father Rupert's sympathies with Israel) took over the reins of News Corp Europe and Asia, and the Saudis (in the form of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal) and other Arabs bought a significant share of the company. As a result, instead of great friends of Israel like Richard Littlejohn, regular columnists now include left-wing Israel haters Ken Livingstone, Frankie Boyle (more of him below), and Islamist apologist Anila Baig.

Nevertheless, while I fully expected the irrational blood libel against Israel to pour out of the Guardian, Times, Independent, and Mirror over last week's flotilla incident, I never for one minute expected the Sun to follow suit. Yet, not only did it do just that, but its coverage was in many ways far more damaging - as explained in detail below - because almost uniquely among the British media it completely ignored the mass of evidence to support Israel's case day after day. Given the Sun's previous pro-Israel stance and the fact that it commands by far the largest readership in the UK, this is an exceptionally damaging development. It means that most people in the UK are completely unaware of Israel's side of the story.

I therefore felt moved to make a formal complaint to the Press Commission today as follows (note especially the details at the end of the complaint concerning the Frankie Boyle column).

************************************************************

To the Press Complaints Commission

My complaint is against the Sun newspaper for its coverage (over a number of days) of the anti-Israel flotilla incident that took place in the early hours of 31 May. The coverage breached two clauses of the Code Of Conduct, namely clause 1 (accuracy) and clause 2 (Opportunity to reply). By way of example I cite three specific articles during the period 1-7 June) that clearly breach Clause 1. One of these (on 4 June) is especially serious since it contains a sequence of blatant lies that amount to a blood libel. The Sun breached clause 2 by not offering the opportunity for any reply to the unfounded allegations against Israel.

The general complaint

For the entire duration (1 to 7 June) the coverage presented a narrative about the Israeli raid that was based purely on the perspective of the anti-Israel demonstrators on board the flotilla. This narrative – that the passengers on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmura were peace-loving activists massacred in cold blood by Israeli commandos illegally boarding the ship in international waters, was proven to be false by the afternoon of 31 May. The proof, in the form of extensive video and audio evidence, showed that:

The Israeli commandos entered the ship legally (see below) and were armed with paintball guns, not machine guns, as they had been told by the Turkish authorities that there would not be any violent resistance.
In a well prepared and planned attack, an organised gang of some 100 Turks from the terrorist organisation IHH, armed with knives, metal poles, slings (and possibly also guns) viciously attacked and stabbed the Israeli commandos as they landed one by one. Only when a number of Israeli commandos were critically injured during the lynching (including at least two of whom were shot by handguns either stolen from the commandos or already on board) did the Israelis get permission to use their handguns to save their men.
The Israeli commandos had entered the ship as a last resort when the ship’s commander refused repeated requests to steer the ship to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Given the legal blockade of Gaza from the sea (to stop the import of weapons to the Hamas regime) this request, and the subsequent boarding when refused, were normal legal actions of the kind carried out routinely by governments all over the world to prevent hostile cargo and personnel reaching their shores.
Before leaving Turkey hundreds of flotilla members had chanted slogans glorifying the historic slaughter of Jews by Muslims, while several had made ‘martyrdom’ videos. Moreover, during a radio conversation with the Israeli coastguard, the commander of the Mavi Marmura told the Israelis to ‘go back to Auschwitz’ and ‘remember 9/11’.

The relevant videos, which were widely available from the afternoon of 31 May can be found, for example, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjkLUcbJWo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU12KW-XyZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9p5QT91QYs
http://idfspokesperson.com/2010/06/01/recording-idf-soldiers-report-attacks-from-the-flotilla-activists-on-board-the-marmara-1-june-2010/

Many other pictures and videos are available here:

http://idfspokesperson.com/

Yet, despite this overwhelming evidence, the Sun chose to ignore it all for the entire duration of its coverage of the story (which ran each day from 1 to 7 June). Indeed, the Sun continued to rely totally on ‘eye witness’ accounts from anti-Israel demonstrators, some of whom were not even on the Mavi Marmura. In all cases these accounts were clearly proven to be false from the video evidence.

The specific complaints

1 June: The coverage was on page 1, continued on pages 8-9. The page 1 headline was “19 Killed in Israel attack” while on pages 8-9 the headlines spoke of “Israel ship massacre” and “Bloody Disastrous”.
The article was inaccurate in all aspects (as discussed above). Also, the figure of “19 killed” was an exaggerated figure provided by the anti-Israel demonstrators immediately after the incident and was known to be false long before the Sun went to press on 1 June. The actual figure was 9 dead. No mention at all was made of the Israeli casualties.

4 June: The main article on the Frankie Boyle page (page 17) titled “Comic Relief must be bloody in Israel”. This article (update: see here for the full version) is nothing less than a blood libel containing a string of total fabrications from start to finish. The examples include:

“Israel attacked and killed a number of charity workers who were peacefully arriving on a boat”.
“Some of the protesters on board were teachers – presumably not teachers from England, as they tend to side with Israel on the policy of beating children to death”
“The Israeli forces abseiled from helicopters carrying machine guns” (That this false accusation could be repeated on 4 June when the Israeli weapons were proven to be paintball guns on 31 May is especially revealing)

7 June: On page 2 in an article titled “Israel’s bloodied troops” the Sun is guilty of showing two photographs which were proven to be cropped versions of photos that had appeared in a Turkish newspaper. The original versions showed the full context: bloodied Israeli soldiers being dragged by Turkish attackers holding knives. The cropped version removes the knives and most of the key context. The cropping has been admitted – and subsequently corrected – by Reuters in what has become known as the Reuters photo cropping scandal. Details (including the full pictures) can be found here:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/08/reuters-fake-photos-ihh-gaza-blockade-commandos/

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/06/reuters-tries-to-minimize-photo.html

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/36489_Another_Cropped_Reuters_Photo_Deletes_Another_Knife_-_And_a_Pool_of_Blood

Yet, although Reuters had corrected the ‘error’ on 6 June, the Sun still chose to display the incorrect versions on 7 June. Moreover, the emphasis of the story accompanying the photos was support for a narrative that was demonstrably false, namely (quoting directly from the article): “the pictures show activists tending wounded commandos”.

Israeli art at the Tate Modern

2010-05-16T20:52:00.005+01:00

A number of independent Israeli artists were among many avant-garde artists presenting their work at the Tate Modern "No Soul for Sale" exhibition today. Fortunately (perhaps due to the low key nature of the event) there were none of the usual anti-Israel demonstrations that now accompany almost any such cultural activities.

But ironically, just as one of the Israeli exhibitors was telling us how there had been no trouble at all and everybody had been very nice, a stereotypical moonbat woman started haranguing us with the usual "the Zionists have stolen Palestinian land" rubbish. My partner tried to argue with her - always a mistake in my view - to which the woman's trump card response was to say "You are just Zionists" like we had no right to live let alone have an opinion that should be listened to. My response to these kind of people is to say something completely distracting (I remember Maureen Lipman writing about how she does this) so I told the woman that there was some paint dripping down the back of her jumper. Any suggestions for better ways of handling such situations are welcome.

Election: the bad and the good

2010-05-07T12:12:00.005+01:00

Bad news

By far the most depressing and alarming result was the election of the Green Party leader Caroline Lucas in Brighton. If you had to make up a fictional moonbat character endowed with every irrational anti-Israel prejudice then you would end up with someone like her. But she is beyond fiction, as evidenced by her infamous appreance on Any Questions when she blamed Israel for the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (also see the analysis here). Even putting aside her anti-Israel obsession, if the Government has to rely on her as being a member of a coalition, then any concessions to her insane Green party policies spells disaster for the whole country.

Good news:

George Galloway is finally out of Parliament after his spectacular failure in Poplar & Limehouse. His odious Islamafascist (oops I mean Respect Party) colleague Salma Yaqoob (so loved by the BBC) also failed to get elected.
Jacqui Smith - who never responded to my letter to her asking why she was banning Israelis from coming to the UK while welcoming Islamic hate preachers - has been booted out. The worst Home Secretary ever, she was also responsible for the most sickening pandering to Islamists when she banned Geert Wilders from the UK and even banned American Jewish radio host Michael Savage (who had never intended to even come to the UK but was considered a threat to the country because he had criticised Islamic terrorists).
Government Minister Shahid Malik - who dreamed of the day when the whole of the British Parliament would be filled with Muslims and praised charities raising money for Hamas (as well claiming money for a massage chair, plasma screen television, and cost of insuring his wife’s £8,000 diamond engagement ring) is out.