Something new

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

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

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?

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

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

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 to receive your products as presents. 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

Update:  Response from Lush

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

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Media mugs

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 '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

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)

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

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

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

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?

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.

1. 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.
2. 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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.