The insanity of the Israeli left

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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 listened 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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.
  

Conservatives and Israel

I've reported previously my concerns about the future relationship between Britain and Israel if Cameron is elected Prime Minister. Labour under Brown has been no friend of Israel with its backtracking on the lawfare issue and its expulsion of an Israeli diplomat after the Dubai affair. And there are plenty of ferocioulsy anti-Israel MPs in the Labour Party. However, at least Brown himself has said nothing to disprove his previously stated heartfelt admiration for Israel. In contrast, Cameron made the one of most (ignorant) anti-Israel statements ever made by a British party leader when he recently boasted about how he would take a strong stand against Israel's 'occupation':

• ‘Unlike a lot of politicians from Britain who visit Israel, when I went I did stand in occupied East Jerusalem and actually referred to it as ‘occupied East Jerusalem,’ he says. ‘The Foreign Office bod who was with me said most ministers don’t dare say [that].’

Moreover, the foreign minister in a Cameron cabinet would be Wlliam Hague who was infamously one of the biggest critics of Israel during both the Lebanon and Gaza wars with his obsession about Israel's 'disproportionate response'.

But what is truly shocking (and is reported in, of all places, the Guardian) is the contents of a leaflet that the Conservative candidate in Jack Straw's Blackburn constituency has put out:

• The leaflet urged voters not to fall for Labour's "hollow claims" about what it had done for Muslims. "We have in front of us a whole saga of atrocities committed in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine and as if this was not enough, the Labour government allowed the Israeli government to create havoc in Lebanon and Gaza in Palestine, destroying their infrastructure and killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians," it said. "The Labour government did nothing, absolutely nothing, for a number of days while Israelis carried on their inhuman killing of innocent men, women and children."
• The leaflet also claimed Straw's criticisms of Muslim women for wearing the veil "shows he does not care" for his Muslim voters. "Today they are criticising our women's veil, tomorrow it will be our caps and our beards they will attack."
• The leaflet suggested: "If you want to see an end to unnecessary and very expensive wars, shedding of innocent blood and save Britain from bankruptcy, vote for your Conservative candidate."

Although the leaflet has since been withdrawn Cameron has refused to condemn it.

Because of his disgusting role in blocking attempts to reform the lawfare legislation used against Israelis I was previously hoping that Straw would be booted out of Parliament. But, clearly, compared to the Conservative candidate he is positively a friend of Israel!

What the media is not telling you

The relentless campaign to deligitimize Israel is massively helped by the refusal of the main stream media to publish any stories that cast Palestinians and their supporters in a negative light. The classic case of this was the massive self-censorship in Jan 2009 which suppressed almost all the news of the riots by anti-Israel demonstrators on the streets of London. Those stories do not fit with the media's prevailing 'vision' of the demonstrators being 'anti-war' luvvies who simply feel the 'pain of an oppressed people'. The results of such sensorship is that, without any irony at all, the handful of violent demonstrators who were actually jailed recently at Isleworth Crown Court, have become cause-celebres among the Leftist-Islamist alliance, who proclaim that they are political prisoners jailed merely because they are Muslims.

One of the continuing stories ignored by the main stream media is the campaign (often accompanied by violence) to stop any speakers who are not anti-Israel from speaking at public events. Hence not one British media outlet felt it newsworthy that an Israeli female diplomat was attacked at Manchester University this week. Nor was it newsworthy that the event (which had previously been cancelled because of threats of violence) was only able to go ahead at all because of a complete lockdown of the building, a high-level security presence, ID checks at the door and ticket-only arrangements.

And here is another story which, mysteriously, did not get a mention anywhere:

Hamas claims Egyptians kill 4 Palestinians by gassing them in a tunnel.

If Hamas had accused Israel of doing that, the story would have been blasted all over the UK media, even ahead of the election coverage.

Ahava protest (24 April 2010) and the ISM link

Richard Millett has reported previously on the bi-weekly protests against the Ahava store in Covent Garden. Some photos of yesterday's protest, including a counter-protest are here.

It is important to note that one of the main organisations involved in this protest is the International Solidarity Movement, which supports the destruction of Israel but claims it wishes to achieve this by 'non-violent' means. It is difficult to find a more hypocritical organisation than this. There is overwhelming evidence that the organisation supports terrorism against Israel (see here, here, here, here for example). Moreover, the organisation played a significant role in the suicide bombing of Mike's Place in Tel Aviv in 2003 by the British terrorists Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif. Israel's General Security Service (GSS) reported "The two terrorists were careful to base their presence in Judea and Samaria by forging links with members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) ".

So while the ISM tells unsuspecting British shoppers in Covent Garden about mythically disposessed Palestinian farmers, it is worth remembering REAL victims and the role ISM played in their deaths. Three young talented people Dominique Hass, 29, Ran Baron, 23, and Yanai Weiss, 46, were killed in the Mikes Place bombing and over 50 more were seriously injured.

Update 2015:Confessions of an ISM member

Hypocrites: The ASA and its ban on Israel advertising its holiest sites (it's worse than what you may have read elsewhere)

In one of the most bizarre anti-Israel moves yet in the UK, the Government's Advertising Standards Authority (the ASA) has banned the Israel Government Tourist Office from advertising sites in East Jersualem including, of course, the holiest sites in Judaism such as the Wailing Wall and Temple Mount. A good report and analysis of this story is here and also here.

Some people are talking about a Facebook campaign to protest this ruling and about writing to the ASA and their MPs etc. But what I discovered when looking at the ASA website was something truly unbelievable and which may be easier to get some action on than a whole reverse of the ban. Basically, I believe the ASA has clearly breached its own (i.e. the ASA) guidelines in the way it is promoting the story. It is guilty of the very behaviour it was set up to protect the British public from, namely misleading and offensive promotion. To see what I mean I have done a screen capture of one of the rolling headlines promoting "ASA in the media" from the ASA home page (click to enlarge):

As you can see the gloating banner for "ASA in the media" says:

"Israel under fire for advertising dream holidays ... to Palestine"

Although these headlines are feeds from external News agencies, it is still the ASA's responsibility to ensure that any such material conforms to its own guidelines (since they are using only those that promote the ASA itself). So what I have done is submit an advertising complaint to ASA using its own online procedure for complaining about adverts. That's OK because you can select the category which includes "Internet" then the subcategory "Promotions & Offers" (since the ASA is using the banner headlines to promote its own work). Once you have done that there is a text field where you fill in the details of your complaint. Here is what I submitted:


The claim saying "Israel under fire for advertising dream holidays ... to Palestine" is itself grossly misleading and should never have appeared on the ASA website.

This claim presumably relates to the ASA's decision to ban the Israel Government Tourist Office from advertising sites in Jersusalem such as the holiest site in the Jewish world (the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall). Notwithstanding the idiocy of that decision (which will be the subject of a separate complaint) the specific complaint here is that the headline implies that these sites in the old city of Jerusalem are not part of Israel but are part of 'Palestine'. There are a number of reasons why this is incorrect:

1. Most obviously, there is no country called Palestine.
2. Even prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, the old city of Jerusalem was never envisaged as being part of a future (Arab) state of Palestine (the UN plan was for the old city to be under 'international' jurisdiction).
3. The old city has only ever been under Arab control during the period 1948-1967 when Jordan illegally annexed it after its army drove out or killed every single Jew. During that period not a single Jew was allowed into the old city to visit their holiest sites. Moreover the Jordanians destroyed every synagogue (numbering hundreds ) and all the Jewish cemetries.
4. Irrespective of the legal claims to the city, the city itself and all access to it, is controlled completely by Israel (and has been for the last 43 years) and only Israel can therefore meaningfully advertise tourism to the old city.

For a compehensive summary of the necessary historical context of Jerusalem see: http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/Jerusalem_history.htm

The Difference Between Israelis and Palestinians

Came across the following great quote

"In Israeli fairy tales the story ends with peace between natural enemies while in Palestinian fairy tales the story ends with the death of the Jews and Israel wiped off the map."

Worth reading the whole article.

Israel alone

In case anybody was thinking that Israel's isolation in the world (and the world's irrational hostility toward it) is anything new the following article (forwarded by a friend) was published a year after the six-day war by German-American writer Eric Hoffer. Replace Nasser with Ahmedinejhad and everything rings just as true now (even the disgusting behaviour of Sweden).


ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION...by Eric Hoffer –Los Angeles Times May 26, 1968.

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel , the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations, when they are defeated, survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June [1967], he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia. But, when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one demonstrated against him. The Swedes, who were ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we did in Vietnam , did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troops in Norway. The Jews are alone in the world.
If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment, Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally.
We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war, to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us all.

The man who Obama should be talking to

If you only read one article in the next week I recommend it should be Michael Totten's interview with a man who knows the Iranian regime better than anybody in Obama's White House (he worked inside the regime for many years). This man explains not only why the Iranians cannot be allowed to go nuclear but also how surprisingly easily (and with little bloodshed) the regime could be stopped if America showed even the smallest resolve. The tragedy is that Obama has now made it very clear that he will not lift a finger. This means it will be left to Israel sooner rather than later and that is going to be a whole lot messier (as the Iranian clearly explains).

Expansionist Israel?

Following on from my post yesterday about the Art exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery and the infamous maps showing 'Israel's expansionist occupation' I decided that the best way to counter these maps is to show the following alternatives (I could not find anything like the first on the web so I developed it myself - the second is a a variant of maps that do exist out there). The first demonstrates, in contrast to the Arab propagandists, the extent to which Israel is shrinking - as well as the extent to which Israel will go for peace (click to enlarge):

The next shows Israel in context with its Muslim neighbours:

When I have time I also plan to do one that shows the uprooting of Jews from Arab lands.

I plan to get some of these printed to hand out at the Serpentine Gallery.

Anti-Israel propaganda portraying as art and funded by us (the UK taxpayer)

When I first started writing this blog in the summer of 2005 it was as a result of going to see a play which, instead of the pleasant evening out I was expecting, turned out to be a barely disguised piece of anti-Israel propaganda.
I have lost count of the number of times since when trips to the centre of London have been spoilt by either anti-Israel demonstrators trying to stop cultural events with Israeli connections or anti-Israel propaganda disguised as art. I have blogged about this on numerous occasions such as an exhibition at the Saatchi gallery last year. The extent to which the demonisation and deligitimisation of Israel has infiltrated British consciousness has now reached epidemic proportions and I was confonted by an especially pernicious example today at the Serpentine Gallery, a small gallery in the centre of Hyde Park.
First of all it is important to note that entrance to the Serpentine Gallery is free because it is funded by you and me the UK taxpayer. Indeed, the Arts Council Website confirms the following information about funding:
Serpentine Gallery will receive £904,499 in 2008/2009, £928,920 in 2009/2010 and £954,001 in 2010/2011.
The current exhibition at the gallery is the work of the veteren British artist Richard Hamilton. To give you an idea of what it contained, here is the centre-piece:

Yes, that's a map (more on this later) that is intended to highlight 'Israeli occupation'; and to give a feel for the extent to which routine anti-Israel sentiment is accepted and promulgated by the intellectual elite, here is the glowing description of the work in The Times:

As if to prove how pertinent he remains, the new works at the beginning are concerned with the outrageous behaviour of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. In 1986, Mossad kidnapped the Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu in Rome, after he had revealed in this newspaper that Israel had developed an independent nuclear deterrent and was sitting on a stockpile of 100 nuclear warheads. Tried by a secret Israeli court, Vanunu managed to write the details of his kidnapping on the palm of his hand and thrust it against a car window in front of passing photographers. This is the image that Hamilton, for some weirdly prescient reason, has chosen to repeat, just as we Brits are feverishly checking our passports to see if we too have been to Dubai.

Hamilton doesn’t lecture or rant or orate. Instead, he identifies a telling image, then lets it ripple through your thoughts of its own accord. The fuzzy picture of Vanunu is accompanied by a pair of maps, one showing the boundaries of the state of Israel as fixed by the UN partition of 1947, the other showing them as they are today. Stan Laurel has turned into Oliver Hardy.

For those of you who have witnessed any of the Hamas/Hezbollah love fests masquerading as 'pro-Palestinian' demonstrations in the last few years you will see straight away that the above 'artwork' is in fact simply the map used by these groups to deligitimize Israel. Here it is as advertised on one of many anti-Israel websites:

The map is a lie and/or misleading in several respects, which are laid out in the appendix below.
To present it as 'art' demands some answers from the Serpentine Gallery and the Arts Council, especially as we the taxpayers are paying for it and visitors at the gallery are not given either relevant information about the context or reasons why the map is wrong/misleading.
In the broader context I'd like to know why, with everything going on in the world, only tiny Israel's existence seems to inspire the rage of the artistic and cultural elite. Islamists are massacring Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews but most of all fellow Muslims, on a daily basis all over the world but especially in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria, India, Somalia, Yemen, Thailand, Indonesia, Philipines, Lebanon, Egypt, Kenya, Russia - to date over 15,000 deadly terrorist attacks by Islamists just since September 11, 2001 (see Religion of Peace website for a complete listing of them all). Countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran have ruthlessly used massive force to crush internal rebellions and external enemies usually killing more people in a single operation than Israel has killed defending itself in all its wars put together. All of those countries (along with the rest of the Muslim world) also indoctrinate their population with anti-semitic hatred and practice openly apartheid policies (even in Jordan, which actually has a peace treaty with Israel, it is illegal for a Jew to be a citizen). Only last week the President of Turkey threatened to expel the entire Armenian population as a reprisal for the Americans finally recognising the Turkish (i.e. Islamist) massacre of Armenians in 1915. None of that stirs the feelings of the artistic elite. Only Israel's attempts to do defend itself from relentless terrorist bombardments and threats to its existence inspire their anger.
To give another flavour of this same argument, I found something very illuminating in the latest issue of the Jewish Chronicle magazine. There is an interview there with the Jewish comedian David Baddiel about his new film "The Infidel" (about a Muslim who discovers that he is Jewish). One question asks:

What can the film teach audiences?

Baddiel answers: "The main Muslim characters in the film are not suicide bombers or fundamentalists, they are just ordinary people and the film tries to show them as such".
OK, but the very next question is:

What does being Jewish mean to you religiously and culturally?

Baddiel answers: "Probably the key speech in the film is when the rabbi, played by Matt Lucas, doesn't let Mahmud in to see his father, who is dying, because he can't say the Shema. That is the definition of Judaism."
Obviously Baddiel does not see the irony of his determination to portray Muslims as 'just like us', but to portray Jews as religious fanatics. In his own naive way he is no better than Richard Hamilton.

Appendix: Why the map is a lie and/or misleading

• Above all the map suggests that, prior to 1947 there was an Arab state of Palestine. There was not. In fact the Palestine that was promised to the Jews as part of the Balfour declaration was the British mandate territory that includes what later become the state of Jordan:

The most accurate sequence of maps showing Israel's changing size is not the one in the Hamilton/Hamas propaganda but rather the following that shows a somewhat different narrative:

(see more here about this map)

• Only the Jews of Palestine considered themselves Palestinian before 1948. The Arabs - most of whom had come to Palestine from Egypt and Syria because of the economic opportunities opened up by the Jews - considered themselves to be Syrian.
• Despite the fact that 80% of mandate Palestine (not shown at all on the exhibition map) had already been granted to the Arabs exclusively to become the new state of Jordan, the Jews of Palestine accepted the UN partition plan of 1947. The surrounding Arabs states did not accept it and launched a war of annihilation against the Jews (during and after which some 1 million Jews from Arab countries were forced to leave - most of them came to Israel).
• The result of the war that was intended to murder every single Jew in Palestine was that the invading Arab armies were defeated and the Jews controlled slightly more territory overall than was part of the 1947 plan; however, they also lost some territory such as the Jewish quarter of East Jerusalem (including Judaisms's holiest sites such as the Wailing Wall) and Gush Etzion that even the 1947 plan had not considered to be under Arab control.
• The UN accepted the 1949 armistice line as defining the borders of Israel, while calling for East Jerusalem (now under Jordanian occupation) to be 'internationalised'.
• The Arab states refused to recognise the State of Israel and have continued to this day to try to destroy it. The Jordanians who occupied East Jerusalem in 1948 expelled every Jew and destroyed every synagogue in the old city. Not a single Jew was allowed to enter Judaism's holiest sites until 1967 when, after the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians launched another attempted war of annhiliation, Israel regained control over the old city and other areas.
• Israel offered to withdraw from all the newly gained territories in return for peace but the offer was rejected by the Arab countries. With the exception of Jewish East Jerusalem Israel has essentially made the same offer over and again ever since but it has always been rejected. Despite this Israel has returned the whole of Gaza and most of the West Bank to Palestinian control. But the Arabs continue to demand the destruction of all of Israel.
• The map that would have truly shown the context necessary is the one that shows Israel in the context of the Arab and Muslim world (click to enlarge):

• The tiny strip of land that is Israel is less than the size of Wales; just counting the 22 Arab Muslim countries that surround it (i.e. ignoring the 36 other Muslim countries in the world) the land mass of the Arab countries is about 700 times as great.

Roundup

• A useful summary of how Obama's radical Marxist background was covered up. And here's information about him cosying up to Hamas. When is the media going to wake up to what this guy is about?
• The sheer hypocrisy of Israel's supposed insult to the US over housing in Jerusalem.
• The stupidity of US engagement with Syria.
  
• A frightening insight into the thinking of supposedly 'ultra moderate' Muslim MP Shahid Malik (a Government Minister even). Watch the video (to a Muslim audience) - it's very short; he praises charities which have now been linked to Hamas and he boasts of over billion pounds of Government money given to (failed) Muslim countries (including £250 million to 'Palestine') which we known inevitably ends up in the hnads of the Islamists. But he also talks about a day when the whole of the British Parliament will be filled with Muslims. Imagine if this was a Jewish MP (the cries of 'dual loyalty' would be deafening).