Letter from Israel

The following is from a friend in Jerusalem


Everyone keeps asking what life is like here for us now, what our experience is, so I decided to write this.

It is indeed an extremely distressing time for our country, one that we have been thrust into with no notice. Yes, admittedly, we saw the Hizbollah's gradual arms and outpost accumulation in southern Lebanon across our northern border, but we were unprepared for the bold border crossings and kidnappings of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were abducted by Hizbollah in the north, and of Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Palestinian militants on Israel's border with Gaza. These soldiers are not POWs who fell into enemy hands while invading others' territories – they were audaciously kidnapped from our own land where they were guarding our internationally-recognized borders!

We had no time to prepare for this war, like we did before the Gulf War. The civilian population is still reeling from the shock of the rocket attacks' very existence, shock at the jarring interruption of our seemingly routine lives, shock at the casualties that will undoubtedly intensify as this continues. I say "seemingly routine lives," because the threat of attack from the terrorists around us is always lurking underneath the surface, as you know.

Perhaps what is hardest to accept is that no one the world over has adequate solutions for the threat of terrorism, not in Lebanon or Gaza, not in Afghanistan or Iraq, not in western countries where covert terrorist movements thrive underground. The only way to wipe out Hizbollah in Lebanon is to harm countless innocent Lebanese citizens who have been infiltrated and victimized by the terrorist organization for years. We could not live with our conscience if we caused such massive bloodshed to our Arab neighbors; although the Hizbollah has no compunction doing so. If the Hizbollah cared for its Moslem "brothers" as much as they say, then the organization would not put blameless children and families in jeopardy by launching rockets from their homes and hiding in bunkers underneath them. Of course, we ourselves are also not willing to pay the high price of losing countless soldiers in this war.

Another difficult aspect of the current conflict is the involvement of areas of Israel that have not been directly hit since the Yom Kippur War or beforehand. That means that many parents of young children have never experienced anything like this, although seasoned grandparents are pulling their old war stories out of the dust.

Faced yet again with another war we did not seek, Israelis are buckling down for an unknown period of hostilities simultaneously on four fronts – the thunderous northern border with Lebanon that is now at the focus of international media, but also the ongoing turbulent border with the Gaza Strip in the southwest, and the quieter but still volatile West Bank, and, finally, the long-term battle against suicide bombers in our cities.

Millions of citizens in northern Israel, like their counterparts in Sderot, are now experiencing daily bombardments of haphazard rocket shelling into their cities, kibbutzim, and neighborhoods. They sit, cramped, in long-unused, stifling air raid shelters, for those who have them. Or in specially-constructed "safety rooms" if their homes were built more recently. Or in basements away from windows and doors, if neither of the other options are available. They have been told to lie prone, to minimize injury from shrapnel. They await the sirens, they await the deafening "boom," up to 100 each day, and they pray that the katyusha rockets will fall into open areas and not directly hit their homes. They await fate.

So, life is mostly at a standstill for millions of regular citizens as they remain close to, or inside, shelter. No work, no summer camp, no shopping malls, no amusements for children on summer holiday. They only make fearful sprints to the local grocer (mandated to stay open by the homefront security agency) for minimal provisions. A friend of mine in Haifa hazarded a shopping excursion on a relatively "quiet" day after a week of ransacking her cupboards, but found herself standing helplessly with other shoppers as three rockets fell close by. She returned home safely, but stunned and shaken.

In the rest of Israel, however, we are, surrealistically, living our lives almost as usual! Except for ardently keeping an ear to the media, and carrying our heavy hearts, we continue to work, our children attend camps and go to movies, we meet with friends, we go out. Metropolitan Tel Aviv was put on rocket alert a few days ago, under the assumption that, when desperate, Hizbollah leader Nasrallah will unleash his long-range missiles of destruction for one last stand. But, for now, in typical Israeli "sabra" style, all of us in central and southern Israel are moving about in our regular routines, living our lives, motivated by the desire to show all terrorists that they cannot succeed in diminishing our morale and cannot bring us to an economic and social standstill.

Yet, despite the stark contrast between the hard-hit areas being shelled and the rest of Israel, an amazing thing has happened. For the first time that I can remember in all my 25 years in this country, people from all walks of life and political orientations, including those who are now being exposed to the relentless threat of violent attacks on their pastoral countryside up north, are today united in their support of the government's and the IDF's actions, both military and diplomatic. We even see injured Israelis climbing out of rubble from rocket attacks on their homes, who, despite their personal losses, immediately cry out their support of the current IDF airstrikes on Hizbollah nerve centers and operation bases in Lebanon.
Israelis generally have a very positive attitude toward the Lebanese people and their beautiful country. We have no ill will toward her citizens, unless they collaborate with the Hizbollah guerrillas trying to attack us. We are grateful to the many Lebanese who helped us for years to combat terrorism in southern Lebanon (many of whom received sanctuary here in 2000). But now, across the board, we are all committed to the notion of eliminating the terrorist threat that has been constantly looming over our northern border since we pulled out of Lebanon six years ago. We all want the Lebanese government to stand up for itself against Hizbollah's Iran- and Syria-based infiltration of its land. We want the Lebanese government to take control and evict the terrorists from their midst, like they ejected the Syrian army last year. Unfortunately for the Lebanese, many are frightened of the fanatic Hizbollah and cannot refuse the terrorists' demands to use their homes and workplaces as launching pads for their rockets. They are in danger of harm from our air strikes then, yes. But to protect innocent citizens as much as possible, Israel announces its attacks beforehand (via the electronic media and dropping flyers from the sky) to warn residents to evacuate, and provides humanitarian aid to Lebanese victims. (Unfortunately, our public relations experts are not sufficiently getting this point across over the media.) For comparison, you should know that the rockets being launched into Israeli residential areas are loaded with tiny steel balls, nuts, bolts, bearings, etc., which aim to exacerbate the deadly effect of the explosions – to kill and maim more civilians, much like the suicide bombs.

Israel is sick and tired of being attacked without provocation on our northern border and on our border with Gaza. How would U.S. citizens feel if rockets were being launched into Texas from Mexico and into Montana or North Dakota from Canada? Or if Mexican or Canadian terrorists crossed over into the U.S. and kidnapped soldiers on border patrol? The U.S. would surely act to try to eliminate this threat once and for all. And for once, during the current conflict, George W. Bush has shown real backbone in supporting our operations in Lebanon. As have so many other world leaders, especially the powerful G8. We've been surprised but very pleased to gain the world's overwhelming support of (or at least quiet acquiescence with) our fight against Hizbollah and Hamas terrorism. Especially encouraging have been the voices of moderate Arab nations like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia criticizing Hizbollah and calling for a return of our kidnapped soldiers.

It seems that, as many newspapers have been commenting over this past fortnight, the world is realizing that our fight is the free world's fight, against totalitarian regimes who want to destroy the western way of life. Iranian president Ahmadinejad has made it unmistakably clear that he wants to annihilate Israel. The world agrees that he and his associates are behind this entire conflict, trying to distract the world from Iran's nuclear proliferation, with the ultimate goal of eradicating Jews and Christians alike in the name of "Allah's holy war" against heretics.
I hope that you have been attending the rallies in your cities in support of Israel, and doing your part over the web, in online polls, and in private or public conversations, to prevent supportive world opinion from eroding, as it inevitably will. The pictures from Lebanon are heartwrenching, and our own citizens' suffering looks minute in comparison. Without knowing the whole context, the world will not understand why we do what we do.

I don't know what the consequences will be of the battles raging around us. The Hizbollah has prepared well for this day and is deeply entrenched in a labyrinth of bunkers and underground tunnel systems for their arsenals and militants. It's hard to say how effective the IDF will be at disarming the Hizbollah or how successful the diplomatic channels will be at finding a feasible peaceful solution for southern Lebanon. But I do know that we have to try.

And in the meantime, the Israeli people's conduct during this 10-day-old war has strengthened and inspired me to no end. Homes all over the country have been opened up to displaced families from the north. Volunteers are slipping up north to entertain bored children, confined for days in crowded public shelters. Recreational parks have offered discounts and free activities to northern children. Psychological agencies, welfare organizations, charities, non-profit organizations, and the like have coordinated efforts to provide hotlines, treatment, support as well as food and other staples to families cut off from normalcy.

A friend of mine, a professor at Haifa University, described to me the funeral she attended of one of the soldiers killed in the tank ambush on that first day of fighting (his mother is an educator who works with my friend). She told me that she didn't expect anyone to venture outdoors to the military cemetery, but she found that hundreds of people braved the air raid sirens and possible rocket strikes to attend. They must have all felt that the family who had suffered this ultimate tragedy needed their caring and support, and they were all willing to put themselves at personal risk to grant the family that support. Indeed, just as the rabbi was singing the soulful "El male rachamim" (Merciful God) traditional prayer over the fresh grave, sirens started to wail, and the soldiers broke out of ceremonial position to try to move the mourners under cover, but no one would budge. They wanted to give that family, and that soldier who died for his country, the last respects he so deserved. Fortunately, that time, the rockets landed at a distance. But this story touched my heart because it epitomizes the strength of our community and of our people. In day to day life, we may each be preoccupied with personal concerns, but at times of need, the true underlying strength of the Israeli people emerges.

Take care, everyone.
Love and kisses from Jerusalem

What hope of understanding with reporting like this?

This morning I saw Andrew Marr the supposedly intelligent political analyst on BBC1 interview the Palestinian 'spokeswoman' Hanan Ashrawi. He allowed her to state a string of complete lies like "Israel still occupies part of Lebanon" without challenging her once. I'd like to think it was through timidity, but I think it was more ignorance and bias; he probably agreed with everything she said. Wherever you turn to in the media in this country there is no respite in the ignorance and ingrained anti-Israel agenda. Especially worrying is today's Sunday Telegraph (one of the only papers supposedly sympathetic to Israel's position . The following is a letter I've just written to them that is self-explanatory.

"Having got fed up with the Sunday Times's ill-informed coverage of the Middle East I decided to try the Sunday Telegraph today. I was disappointed to find that the newspaper, while more balanced in its reporting, still contained several blatant factual errors whose impact is to try to create the impression that Israel had overreacted in launching its attacks in Lebanon. The article by Con Coughlin (the "Defence and Security Editor") contains some quite stunning errors. For example, he talks about the "abduction of their soldiers in Gaza and Southern Lebanon" whereas the abductions both took place inside Israel and in both cases several other Israeli soldiers were killed. In the case of the unprovoked attack by Hezbullah last week the invasion by Hezbullah was also preceeded by an unprecedented barrage of rockets fired into Israeli towns as a diversionary tactic. This is what Coughlin refers to as a 'minor incident'. He also talks about the Israelis "destroying the country's international airport" whereas in fact they only destroyed the runways to stop further supplies of Iranian missiles coming in and to stop the hostages being transported to Iran.

The article by Niall Ferguson is simply ridiculous on many levels. It states that "Hezbollah responded ..by firing yet more of its home-made rockets into Israel." I am not sure if the reference to home-made is supposed to infer that they are harmless. The fact that most are neither home-made (being made in Iran) nor harmless (as the example of the rocket which killed 8 people in Haifa this morning as well as those that killed 5 Israelis in the previous three days) should warrent an apology. But I guess I should have expected nothing different in Ferguson's article; his bizarre explanation for the fact that across the world we are witnessing unprecedented terrorism is simply that, in the countries where it is happening the weather is very hot and the mostly young male population is poor and unemployed. It seems to have escaped his attention that politically motivated Islamic fundamantalism is a slightly more significant common factor among the perpetrators of these atrocities."

Sunday Times obsessive anti-Israel bias

In recent weeks the Sunday Times has been trying to outdo the Guardian and Observer in its obsessive anti-Israel bias. Every week now there is usually at least one anti-Israel article in the News section (today there are two) and two weeks running recently there were anti-Israel articles in the magazine. I fired off the letter below which is self-explanatory.

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

Dear Sirs

The article by Marie Colvin "Girl killed as Israel tightens grip on Gaza" is not only brazenly anti-Israel but is factually incorrect. The photograph caption states "A Palestinian man carries the body of Rawan Hajaj after she was hit by an Israeli missile". The article itself actually says about the explosion: "witnesseses said was caused by Israeli tank shells". Of course the 'witnesses' were Palestinians and there is no Israeli view of what happened. In fact initial investigation by the Israel Defence Force today has revealed that the explosion could not have been caused by an Israeli tank shell (the Sunday Times made the same mistake two weeks ago by leading with the 'fact' that an Israeli tank shell killed a family on the beach in Northern Gaza, whereas subsequent investigations revealed that this was not possible).

The article then goes on to focus on examples of Palestinian women and youth under 18, all of whom the Hamas government wants released in exchange for the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Again, ignoring the fact that almost all of these prisoners have been involved in terrorist acts (including many who were caught before carrying out suicide bombings) the article chooses to give only the Palestinian family's story of two such women. We are expected, for example, to feel sympathy for Sheikh Kalil who "has written in letters home of how the mice and cockroaches terrify her". Yet no such expected sympathy (nor mention of) the Israeli who was kidnapped and slaughtered by the gang she was part of.

The article is, above all, simply shoddy journalism because it fails yet again to put into context the Israeli actions in Gaza. The attack inside Israel on 25 June by Hamas, which is after all the elected government of the Palestinian Authority, was effectively a declaration of war. This is coupled with more than 1000 missile attacks launched from Gaza into Israel since the Israelis withdrew last August (including in the last week an attack that struck a school in Ashkelon with a twin-engined Qassam missile). None of this provocation ever gets mentioned in the Sunday Times, which continues with its obsessive anti-Israel agenda week in week out.

Edgar Davidson

Bizarre BBC response to today's terrorist attack against Israel

The BBC has surpassed itself in breathtaking anti-Israel bias in its report of the Hamas-led terrorist attack today. The following a self-explanatory letter of complaint I have just written to the BBC:

The report on the10.00pm News this evening regarding the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel was extremely biased against Israel and contained a major factual error. The report claimed that the attack was revenge for Israel "killing 13 Palestinian civilians" in the last week. In fact most of those civilian deaths were a result of an explosion at a Gaza beach, which was originally claimed to be from a stray Israeli shell, but has since proved to be almost certainly from a mine (probably planted by the Palestinians themselves). The other civilian deaths resulted from an Israeli air strike that targetted terrorists in the act of travelling with Qassam rockets to fire at the Israeli town of Sderot. The fact that Palestinian have been firing these rockets (at the rate of dozens every day) from densely populated areas suggests that they, not the Israelis, are to blame for such civilian deaths.

It was extremely unbalanced and unprofessional of the BBC to present the news in this way, especially as the BBC has been silent in its news broadcasts about the continued indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israeli towns.

Yours

Edgar Davidson

Demonisation of Israel

The following is a self-explanatory letter I sent to Metro (the freebie daily London newspaper):

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Metro on 26 May contained a theatre review (by Claire Allfree) of a play called "The Daughter". According to the review the play looks at how an 'ordinary young Palestinian woman' is driven to 'suddenly turn to martyrdom' (meaning she decides to become a suicide bomber). The review goes on to say: "Horrified, her drunken father decides to go instead, only to get caught at the border. The Israeli police demand his daughter's virginity in exchange for his life..." The review then states that the Director "deliberately refuses to give .. much of a political or religirous argument".

If your reviewer genuinely believes that a play that portrays Palestinian suicide bombers as heroes and Israeli police as rapists and blackmailers is "non political" then she has clearly been fooled by the casual, but incessant, demonisation of Israel that has been promoted by the media over the last few years. The notion that Palestinians are suddenly, out of sheer desparation, driven to become suicide bombers is a media myth. No Palestinian suicide bombing has ever been anything other than intensely well planned and financed, with willing recruits always available because of the long-term indoctrination of hatred practiced by all Palestinian political organisations. Your reviewer (and the Director) also appears to be unaware that, rather than expressing "horror" the parents of Palestinian suicide bombers inevitably rejoice publicy in their child's 'martyrdom' and the Palestinian Authority has always bestowed the highest respect on both the 'martyrs' and their parents. It is also worth pointing out that there has never been a single recorded instance of an Israeli policeman raping a Palestinian woman. In contrast, here is a recent example of the kind of brutal act perpetrated regularly by Palestinians: on 4 May 2006 a Palestinian (Anwar Ahdush) working illegally in Israel raped and murdered an 8-year-old Israeli girl Lipaz Himi from Beit Shemesh. Not surprisingly, like most terrorist acts against Israel incuding the daily rocket attacks from the Gaza strip and more recently from Lebanon) this news item was never reported in the Metro.

Sending our money to the terrorists

So the EU is again pouring money (that's yours and my money) into the Palestinian Authority despite the supposed ban from funding the terrorist organisation Hamas. It is now clear that the Palestinian Authority, even when run by the 'non-terrorist' Fatah, spent almost all of its foreign aid on weapons and that it did this in collaboration with Iran and Hizbollah. And the Palestinians, remember, receive more foreign aid per capita than any other people in the world. When are the idots of the EU going to stop funding terrorism in this way. And when will the Palestinians ever have any incentive to actually build a country and do some work, while they can simply continue to plead poverty and have money poured at them.

Media idiocy

There is little worse in the media than presenters whose notion of 'even-handedness' is to believe that any two sides of any story must always be treated as absolutely equal. The epitomy of this idiocy is Nick Ferrari - the voice of LBC. So, for example, in a discussion about the July 7 bombings enquiry last week he cut short a very eloquent caller who was citing some statements made by members of the Muslim Parliament glorifying suicide bombers. The pompous idiot Ferrari said he was not going to allow Muslims to be defamed without similar defamations being made about other religious groups. If you can work out the logic of that good luck to you, but the implications are that he will not allow valid criticisms of Muslims unless there are equal criticisms made of members of other religions. So, until Jews and Christians start blowing people up in London I guess that's goodbye to any rational arguments. And just think this was the day after Nick Ferrari's show was voted the best radio phone-in in the UK.

So it's hard to think that UK media is much better than this classic example (courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch) of a popular Egyptian music video. You must see it.

Funding the fanatics

The anti-Zionist (and supposedly ultra-orthodox) Jewish Group Neturai Karta have been much in the news recently. For example, on Purim they burnt Israeli flags outside the (Jewish) Simon Marks Primary School in Hackney and they recently went to Iran to praise that country's attempts to wipe Israel off the map and deny the Holocaust. The fact that it turns out that the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations has recently given grants worth some £60,000 to this group is a bit hard to stomach. Especially as the most recent grant was given this March, about the same time as their visit to Iran. Courtesy of MEMRI here are two of the Rabbis interviewed in Iran. This is a video you must watch. Nice to know that we are funding these guys.

Iran at the UN

Iran, not content with trying to build a nuclear weapon for the sole intention of destroying Israel, are masterminding Islamic Jihad who carried out the murderous attack in Tel Aviv. They have also apparently recruited 40,000 suicide bombers to unleash on the West if their nuclear facilities are attacked and they recently recruited several hundred British Muslims to volunteers as suicide bombers in Israel. And, of course, they are formenting and funding much of the violence in Iraq.

So guess who the UN have elected to be the vice chair of the UN's disarmament commission? Yes you have guessed it the Iranian ambassador to the UN Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi.

Getting tough with the bombers

As the rocket attacks against Israel intensify (ignored of course by the entire UK media) Israel has been striking back in the last two days with targetted strikes against terrorists who had just launched rockets or who had been training to do so. In one of the attacks senior bombmaker Iyad Abu Aynayn was killed with his seven-year-old son and four other armed men as they actually left a terrorist training camp. Of course you can guess how the BBC teletext ran this story - focus on the child killed without any mention of who he was with or why he was there. In fact it appears that, apart from this terrorist's son, every single death has been of a terrorist. Sounds like something the West should be applauding, not criticising in the usual way.

And there is a classic video clip from Al Jaziera TV of an Arab/Danish student conference dialogue here. Especially amazing is the bit at the end where the Sudan representative says "I would like to say that tomorrow America will pass a resolution in the U.N. Security Council calling for international military intervention in Sudan. Among these forces, obviously, there will be Danish forces. I would like to inform you that because the Sudanese people are so angry over this affront, they will kill the Danish soldiers before they kill the others.". The Arab Students Union Chairman then says: "Don't translate that word for word. Just say that the Sudanese will put up resistance against them." Sums up everything about the Arabs (and these are the most intelligent among them) - lying, bloodthirsty fanatics.

More on Dubai

Yet another reminder of the kind of regime the Brits are pouring all their holiday money (and money for second homes now) in Dubai. Here is a recent sample of the kind of anti-semitism that dominates their mainstream media.

Another massacre of Jews - another silence

Four Israelis -- an elderly couple Rafi and Ilana Levy (pictured left) of Kedumim and and two teenagers -- killed in yesterday's suicide bombing sponsored by the mainstream Fatah movement of Abbas. You would have thought that might have been big news? Not a word about it on any of the news channels or newspapers in the UK. Yet every Muslim interviewed, no matter what the subject, can still casually assert (without ever being challenged) that Palestinians are being massacred daily by Israelis.

The Left and Guardian readers

Anybody who doubts the ferocious anti-semitism (disguised as anti-Zionism) that is typical of the new left in its alliance with the Islamafascists should check out some of the following:

• A report with photographs of a rally in San Franciso last week. It contains, the 'smash the Jewish state' guy again who cropped up last year here.
• The responses to Oliver Kamm's article in the Guardian in support of the Iraq war, like this and this. And to think I used to read the Guardian a few years ago.

For a sensible left view of Tony Blair's speech today see this article at Harry Place. Personally I thought it was a decent speech, but as usual, he was still not entirely spelling out the true nature of the Islamafascist threat and its basis in the Koran.

World gone mad

I was going to write something about the ludicrous reporting of the Israeli jail storming, but Melanie Philips has already done it.

Also well worth a read is Alan Johnson's fantastic analysis of the threat of political Islam and how it can be defeated.

Finally check out this article about the Palestinians honouring two of the most brutal child killers of all time. This relates to an attack in 1979 the Washington Post called a "murder of unimaginable cruelty." Smadar Haran, wife and mother of the victims, described the attack as follows:

"It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband Danny and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach. Around midnight … the terrorists burst into our building. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat I will never forget the joy and the hatred in the terrorists voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. ... The terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Quntar."

And that terrorist, along with fellow Jordanian Sultan Al-Ajaluni involved in the attack have been awarded honorory citizenship by the Palestinian Authority.

Again: Jewish victims of terrorism don't count

The following is a self-explanatory letter I wrote to the Sun today:

Dear Sun

Your otherwise excellent lead article today about Brits killed in terrorist attacks abroad since Sept 11 has one glaring omission. There is no mention of Brits killed in suicide bombings by Palestinians in Israel. On 19 Sept 2002, for example, 18 year old student Yonni Jesner of Glasgow was killed along with 6 other passengers in a bus in Tel Aviv. I'd like to think that this was just a simple error on behalf of your editorial and reporting team rather than a conscious decision to regard Jewish victims of terrorist attacks as less deserving of sympathy.

Yours

Edgar Davidson

Galloway rewarded with show on TalkSport

TalkSport radio have given scumbag George Galloway a talk show (every Saturday and Sunday night) and have the following nausiating headline on their web page "George Galloway, Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green & Bow is arguably the greatest debater alive - and talkSPORT have bagged him!..."

I have emailed the following comment to TalkSport (I encourage others to do the same here):

I have always enjoyed listening to TalkSport but I am at a loss to know why you have appointed George Galloway. Perhaps your programming team felt that Galloway was a harmless piece of fun who spends his time impersonating a cat and wearing a leotard. In fact he actually spends most of his time whipping up hatred against this country in his travels to the most reactionary Arab regimes. Many of his speeches, such as this one where he praises Islamic suicide bombers and encourages more attacks against our troops in Iraq, are on the record -- so it's not as if this should come as a surprise to you:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/05/wgall05.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/05/ixnewstop.html
I look forward to TalkSport's apology for its mistake.

Edgar Davidson

British anti-semitism

An interesting report here and a good article by Melanie Philips on a similar theme discuss the way that the ferocious campaign to deligitmise Israel has led to increased anti-semitism in the UK. The Livingstones and Galloways, as well as the Islamists know that if you repeat a lie often enough then it will be believed. They all routinely mention the 'barbarity' or even 'genocide' committed against 'Palestine' as the single most important reason for 'Muslim anger at the West'. Yet I have never once heard a commentator question such assertions. Hence people who have no knowledge of the Middle East at all simply accept that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinians. One small example this week is typically shocking. The Jewish Chronicle reports that a British-based Dance magazine called Dance Europe refused to publish a piece about the Dance Drama Company in Tel Aviv unless "the company in Israel co-operates with us by adding a disclaimer saying it is opposed to the occupation, settlements, and everything else". It would be interesting to know just what the 'everything else' includes but I imagine it would be not much short of any Jew living in Israel. What makes the story even more astonishing is that it turns out there is a link on the magazine website to a Palestinian Dance company. When asked why the magazine required no disclaimer against suicide bombings the editor said "There's a reason for people to become suicide bombers. Their land is occupied".
That's the way a LOT of apparently intelligent people in the UK think nowadays.

Who are the real Iranians?

While there is no doubt that Iran under the mad mullahs and Ahmandinejad pose the biggest threat to world peace (and are dedicted to the destruction of Israel) there are definitely conflicting views about what the Iranian people genuinely believe. Michael Totten's report suggests there is room for cautious optimisim. But this report from MEMRI suggests otherwise. The problem seems to be that, even if the educated the Iranians despise their regime, they have no means to stop it (democratically or otherwise) - and in any case the educated Iranians are a minority.

Mother sad daughter did not kill Israelis who saved her life

The excellent Religion of Peace site has this story about a mother of a failed suicide bomber who was sad that her daughter did not fulfill her wish to kill 30-50 Israelis in the hospital that had saved her life.

Open house for Jew baiters

The Irving and Livingstone cases have provided an open house for all kinds of Jew baiters. General theme of the attacks from the usual left and Islamist front have been "this is all evidence of a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy, no other race is protected in this way etc". The media and phone-ins have been full of them. But particularly bizarre was last Thursday's BBC Question Time when (after a question about the Irving affair) a young lady claiming to be an Oxford History student stated that her "history studies had shown clearly that the Holocaust was minor compared with thousands of other atrocities in history". Cue much clapping from the audience and not a single panelist responding with the obvious question: 'name one'.

Lots of other excellent blog articles relating to this like this one and this one at normblog while if you want to be truly disgusted take a look at the Latest Galloway rant posted at Harry's Place.

Also, while on the subject of Jew-baiters, I've previously posted articles like this, and this about Dubai (the United Arab Emirates) partly in amazement that anybody (let alone Jews) would want to support this country of bin-Laden supporters and funders. Well, now that the USA have incredibly agreed to allow a UAE-owned company to run their ports it turns out that the company actually illegally involved in the boycott of Israeli goods - Michelle Malkin has a report on this. Please remember this stuff when you hear people tell you how wonderful their holiday in Dubai was.

Danish Apology

I don't normally approve of this kind of thing but this is rather good.

Abdel Bari Atwan (aka Abd al-Bari Atwan)

Abdel Bari Atwan is the London-based editor of an Arab Magazine who is wheeled out by every UK media outlet when they want to get some 'true insight' into what is happening anywhere in the Arab world (he is especially loved by Sky News). Today the Sunday Times has his article reflecting on his (ten-year-old) interview with Bin Laden. Interesting stuff, but it is worth remembering that Atwan is ALWAYS completely wrong in just about every analysis, statement, or prediction he ever makes. Immediately after both the Madrid and London bombings he proclaimed that these were NOT the work of Al Quaeda or its sympathisers. Completely typical was his interview on the day Saddam Hussain was captured. He told Sky News that "this was definitely not the real Saddam Hussain because Saddam would not allow himself to be taken prisoner alive." In fact he has been talking complete crap ever since he has been on TV. It was he who, way back in the FIRST Gulf War in 1990, predicted that the allies would not dare to mount a ground attack in Kuwait because the Iraqi Imperial Guard would be able to resist for many months and inflict unbelievable casualties. In the event there was of course a ground attack and it took a whole 4 days to annihilite the Iraqi army. Why the UK media continues to use this idiot is a complete mystery to me.

UPDATE 16 March 2008
In his lead article in the London based Al-Quds Al-Arabi,  Atwan  glorified the terrorist killing of eight teenage students in Israel, and said the celebrations in Gaza that followed symbolized the "courage of the Palestinian nation." He added that the recent violence in Gaza might "mark the countdown to Israel's destruction." Atwan has already been banned from Australia as a result of his declaration, last year, on Lebanese TV that "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight.”

UPDATE 2010
Atwan brought shame to LSE in 2010 when he made an antisemitic speech there that was captured on video.

More 'peaceful' demonstrations

The excellent Jihad Watch has this interesting photo from a cartoon rally in Pakistan. It also has a frightening story (missed in all other media outlets) about the torture and murder of a young Jew in Paris by Islamists.

Also, I notice that all today and yesterday's media outlets are praising the 'peaceful' demonstration by 'moderate Muslims' that took place yesterday in Trafalgar Square. Yet, watching last night's news, I saw that in the very front was a large anti-semitic banner showing a Star of David behind the pen that was drawing the Mohammed cartoons (you see it's the world Jewish conspiracy again). And, I noticed that most of the banners said simply "War on terrorism is war against Islam" - this lot really don't like if we restrict their freedom to kill people. Finally, all the media are very quiet about the massacre of Christians in Nigeria by Muslims protesting against the cartoons.

What Hamas is telling its own people

Further to my previous reports (such as this) here is more information on what Hamas is saying in Arabic rather than to the European appeasement merchants (courtesy Palestinian Media Watch). Basically it is their intention to kidnap Israelis in exchange for their own terrorist prisoners in Israel. And these prisoners include those involved in the massacre of 30 Israelis celebrating the Passover feast in 2002 - prisoners who not only show no remorse but who regard what they did with the greatest of pride, and vow to repeat their actions when they are set free.

What the Iranians are showing on kids TV

This is quite long, but stay with it to the end.

http://www.geenstijl.nl/paginas/iraansetelekids.html

Now Google caves into Islamists

It appears that as a result of complaints by Islamists Google has censored the blogspot website "The Study of Revenge". When you click on the site you get a warning message from Google, about the offensive nature of the site, which you have to agree to understand before being allowed in. As the Jawa Report website reveals:

"I've contacted Google (which owns Blogger and .blogspot) about dozens of terrorist websites run from .blogspot accounts. They have NEVER taken down those largely Arabic websites advocating the murder of Jews and Christians, yet, if you go to The Study of Revenge website which lampoons Islam they feel it necessary to warn you of offensive material. So, first Google caves to the Chinese and then they cave to thin-skinned Muslims."

Russian insanity (West sure to follow)

The very same Hamas leader Marsh'al who vowed the destruction not just of Israel but also the Western civilisation with nuclear bombs and chemical weapons (see recent posting) has now been invited to meet President Putin in Moscow. Putin said that "Russia did not consider Hamas a terrorist organization". So that's alright then.

What we are seeing in this third world war is exactly what happened in the second. The stage of appeasement of the Islamafascists. These appeasers have already accepted Israel as the Czechoslovakia of this war.

Palestinians destroy livelihood given to them

When the Israelis evacuated Gaza they left behind the hugely impressive and profitable greenhouses in Gush Katif, which had been lovingly developed over many years. In fact (Jewish) international donors bought them from evacuated settlers for the benefit of the Palestinians. Guess what? Haaretz reports today that the very people who were assigned by the Palestinian Authority to guard the greenhouses have in fact ransacked them. Full story here.

Let the Hamas appeasers read this

Read the following translation from an address by Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al at a Mosque in Damascus (also aired on Al-Jazeera TV) on February 3, 2006. Note the threat of a nuclear and chemical attack. I'll send a copy of this to Jack Straw and ask him if he expects Israel to make concessions with these people (as they have already been asked to do):

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD108706

Some snippets:

"I say to the [European countries]: Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it.

"Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good. Our nation is moving forwards, and it is in your interest to respect a victorious nation.

"Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day.

"Their (Israel's) weapons will be of no avail to them. Their nuclear weapons will be of no use to them. They thought that they had hegemony over the region with their nuclear weapons, but suddenly Pakistan popped up with Islamic nuclear weapons, and they are afraid of Iran and several Arab countries have some chemical weapons.

"Hamas has a vision. Hamas has a plan. Hamas can manage the political battle, just like it managed the military battle, but in a different language, with different tools, and recognizing Israel is not one of them. Nor is giving up the rights, giving up the right to resistance, and nor is giving up the weapons of the resistance.

Israeli player banned from Dubai

From today's News of the World: "Bolton defender Tal Ben Haim will be home alone when his team fly to Dubai today because he is BANNED from the country. Wanderers are jetting out to escape the big freeze but, as an Israeli, Ben Haim is barred from entering the UAE".

Call me old-fashioned, but out of respect for one of its most important employees (Ben Haim has probably been Bolton's best player this season) you would have thought that the club would have the decency to pick a civilised place where ALL its employees could go for its mid-winter 'jolly'.

And a simple reminder to the 95% of Brits who actually do not know the following fact: Dubai is in the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES. Yes, that IS an Arab country, and most of its citizens are especially big fans of Osama Bin Laden, so just remember that when they welcome you into their 7-star hotels. And when you are paying your bills there also remember that some of that money is going straight into the coffers of Al Quaeda as 'protection' to ensure Dubai is not targetted by the terrorists.

Islam is revolting

Real pictures from the demonstrations here.

The Cartoon Jihad

For those of you who don't know about the latest Jihad, I suggest you look here or here. It never ceases to amaze me what makes the Islamists outraged. Suicide bombings? nagh. Genocide in Darfur? nagh. Beheading journalists? Nagh. Mildly satyrical cartoons mocking Islamic rejection of free speech - YES - let's mount a jihad for that. And the disgusting hypocrisy of it all, from the very same people who mass produce virulent anti-semitic cartoons expressly intended to whip up racial hatred.

Western delusions about Hamas increasing all the time

The popular view among many Western analysts is that Hamas in government will moderate their views about destroying Israel. Much of this is based on suggestions by certain Hamas spokesmen that they might consider a 'long-term' truce 'even up to 15 years'. The (fortunately now deceased) 'spiritual leader' of Hamas Sheikh Yassin actually spoke about the possibiliy of such a truce a few years ago, so there is nothing new here. In fact, what Western analysts never ask is what happens at the end of the truce and why Israel should be bullied into being a partner to it. In fact such a truce is part of the explicitly stated long-term strategy of Hamas to destroy the state of Israel. He actually said that the year 2027 (plus or minus 5) was when Israel would be destroyed (see his quote here). It makes perfect sense for Hamas to want to live in peaceful coexistence for 15 years. That way they can build up the state of Hamistan, with full recognition by the world community. This will also enable them to build up their army and weapons because Israel would not be allowed even by the Americans to do anything about it while there was 'peace'. Then, without notice or provocation Hamas will, with Iranian nuclear suport, strike to destroy Israel.

Of course it is comforting to know that once Hamas and Iran achieve their aim of destroying Israel, nations such as Belgium and Denmark would be prepared to 'rebuke' Hamas and Iran and even call in their ambassadors to express their disapproval. They might even threaten to refer them to the UN Secuity Council if they did it again - but of course such a move would be blocked by Russia and China in order not to inflame Islamic nations (which will probably include France by then anyway).

Reply from Sky News about anti-Israel complaint

On 29 Dec I posted a letter I sent to Sky News about a particularly nasty anti-Israel news bulletin. Peter Lowe (Assistant Editor) sent me a detailed response (which I appreciate because more often than not I either get no response or a standard response). But the problem is that the response confirms that there really is an ingrained anti-Israel bias among the newer editorial staff at Sky News. This is very worrying given Sky News's previous balanced approach. It is a strong indication of something we have been worrying about for a while now. That the new generation of opinion formers (those who graduated in the last few years) have become so conditioned by the "Israel = oppressor, bad, military state blah blah / Palestinians = victims" equation that they, like the Palestinians, now see every Israeli as a valid military target. Anyway, here is my self-explanatory response (if anybody expresses an interest I will scan the Sky letter).


Peter Lowe
Assistant Editor, Sky News
British Sky Broadcasting
Grant Way
Middlesex TW7 5QD

18 Jan 2006

Dear Mr Lowe,

Misleading anti-Israel reporting on Sky News (29 Dec 05)
Your ref: PL/KA

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply in depth to my letter. I do not agree with many of the points that you made in your response to my letter and there is one in particular that is seriously flawed. Specifically, in response to my complaint about the news item not mentioning the suicide bombing in Israel you said: “I assume you mean the one against a military target on the West Bank, which I can assure you we DID report…”

I watched the entire main bulletin from 09.00 until 09.30 and I can confirm that the suicide attack was NOT mentioned despite it having occurred just 3 hours earlier and despite its most obvious relevance to the lead story you ran. Sky may well at some other time have mentioned the suicide bombing but this is irrelevant to the point I was making.

But of far more concern is your factual error concerning the suicide attack itself. The attack was intended to be a double suicide bombing at a Chanukah celebration party in Tel Aviv. The heroic actions of a soldier, Uri Binamo who stopped the bombers at a checkpoint, averted a massacre but cost him his own life. The reputable Haaretz newspaper website provides the following details (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/671559.html):

A suicide bombing that killed an Israel Defense Forces officer and three
Palestinians south of Tul Karm on December 29 had been planned as a double suicide bombing in a city in the center of the country, security forces said Tuesday.
The IDF said Tuesday that officials realized only in retrospect the scope of the thwarted terror attack: The Islamic Jihad bombings were supposed to take place simultaneously, during Hanukkah vacation.
IDF officials had at first thought that only one suicide bomber was in the taxi, but security forces discovered in the course of their investigation that one of the Palestinians killed in the blast had also intended to carry out a suicide bombing.
Neither the third passenger killed in the explosion nor the taxi driver was involved in the attack, security forces said, but the Shin Bet security service captured a fourth Palestinian passenger who was meant to guide the two bombers.

To describe this as “against a military target on the West Bank” is offensive and betrays the exact anti-Israel perspective I complaind about.

Yours sincerely,

Edgar Davidson

Curious reaction to Haj disaster

There was very little coverage in the media of the disaster at the Haj in Mecca yesterday when 345 pilgrims were crushed to death during the traditional stoning ceremony. I would have thought this would be a mega-news item, but I guess it's not, partly because such disasters happen with frightening regularity at the Haj (1500 killed in a similar stampede a few years ago and 65 already killed last week when one of the hostels collapsed). You would have thought that the media would be interested in the Saudi authorities' perennial incompetence in handling the crowds - it's not as if they are not expected. It is interesting to compare it with the media's hyterical reaction to American incompetence in handling the natural disaster at New Orleans. It's not as if Saudi is a poor country is it? And can you imagine the villification that Israel would receive if a single Chrisitian or Muslim pilgrim died in Jerusalem as a result of negligent crowd control and infrastructure?

But what is even more curious than all of that is the Muslim reaction to the disaster. I heard an interview on LBC News with a Muslim cleric from a London mosque (did not catch the details) and what he was saying was that it was actually a wonderful way for these people to die because they were performing Haj and they were martyrs. He was positively beaming about the whole thing. This reminded me of seeing senior Muslims being interviewed after previous Haj disasters and they too were beaming about it making the same comments about martyrdom. No doubt somebody like Al Qaradawi will soon be pronouncing that the only form of martyrdom greater than being crushed to death at the Haj is that of a suicide bomber killing Israeli civilians.

I then heard today that senior Imams in Mecca were actually telling pilgrims (against their Government's advice because they feared an inevitable crush) that they all had to attend the stoning at a particular time. The fact that within less than an hour of the disaster the stoning carried on as normal also seems to confirm just what an incredible death cult Islam is. And when you couple it with things like this it is truly chilling that the West still doesn't take the Islamic jihad threat seriously.

Palestinians - corrupt murderous fascists

Of all the stories of corruption, lawlessness and violence coming out of the Palestinian Authority the one below (reported from the Jerusalem Post) is particularly depressing because it confirms that there is simply no hope of ever living in peace with these thugs. Basically, the mainstream Fatah movement is threatening to close down an Arab TV station in Gaza and the West Bank because it dared to screen a programme about female suicide bombers that did not glorify them 100%.

Fatah gunmen on Saturday threatened to shut the offices of the pan-Arab Al-Arabiyah satellite TV station in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after accusing it of "defaming" Palestinian female suicide bombers and their families.

Leaflets distributed by Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, demanded that the Dubai-based station apologize to the families in particular and the Palestinians in general within 24 hours or else its offices would be closed.

"At a time when the Muslims and Islam are facing a political, intellectual, economic and social offensive by all the forces of evil in the world, Al-Arabiya has aired a scandalous and despicable film that is completely biased in favor of the executioner at the expense of the victims of occupation," the leaflets charged.

"This film depicts female suicide bombers as a group of women suffering from psychological problems and who are under pressure from males. It claims that in order to rid themselves of these problems, these women are prepared to kill themselves. They also claimed that these women were ill- behaved."

The group hailed female suicide bombers for their role in "defending the people and the land," saying they had brought honor to Islam and Muslims worldwide.

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades strongly condemned the documentary and demanded an investigation to find out who had financed it and who was behind it. "If Al-Arabiya does not apologize within 24 hours, we will have to close down their offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," the group warned.

Journalists working for Al-Arabiya expressed deep concern over the threats made by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades. "We were not involved in the film," one of them told The Jerusalem Post. "The film was produced by a foreign company and purchased by Al-Arabiya."

Saif Eddin Shaheen, a correspondent in the Gaza Strip for Al- Arabiya, was attacked in 2004 by Fatah gunmen for reporting on the power struggle in Fatah.

Five masked gunmen attacked Shaheen as he was driving to his Gaza City office. During the attack, which lasted about 10 minutes, he was beaten and his assailants fired shots in the air. One of his attackers, who identified himself as a Fatah member, said he would "teach him a lesson in journalism."

Four months earlier, on September 13, 2003 a group of armed men ransacked the offices of the same television station in Ramallah. The Palestinian Authority publicly condemned the incidents and announced the opening of an investigation, but no one was arrested.

Demo at Iranian Embassy

Attended the demonstration last night protesting against Iranian Holocaust denial and existential threats against Israel. It was freezing cold and there were about 120 people there. Didn't see anybody from the Embassy so it's not obvious that they even got the message, but I guess we might have informed some of the people in the passing cars.

With hindsight I think it would have been much better if all the people at the demo had gone instead to stand outside the Big Brother studios to make our feeling aginst scumbag George Galloway known when he entered the 'house'. After his recent appearances in Damascus I still do not understand why he has not been arrested under the anti-terrorist legislation. Instead he has been turned into a national hero by the collection of useful idiots in the media. The frightening thing is that most people do not know what he really stands for. For some of his recent performances check out this, this and this.

Another story you wont hear about in the British media

On Jan 4 Palestinian 'militants' bulldozed through the Egyptian-Palestinian border then shot and killed two Egyptian security guards and wounded 30 others in a shoot out. They also fired another barrage of missiles into Israel. What a wonderful set of peace-loving people they are, these Palestinians who get the sympathy of the whole world.

Useful idiots

Idiot Kate Burton and her idiotic family sum up everything that is wrong with the British attitude to Israel. She seems to be have been genuinely happy to be kidnapped by terrorists with whom she identifies completely, and is no doubt delighted that the media coverage of her release presented the usual opportunity for unfounded Israel-bashing. No doubt also that some kind of ransom was paid to the terrorists and no doubt also that there will be dead Israelis at some time in the near future as a direct result of this. Melanie Philips and Media backspin present more on this story.

Sky News and its new found anti-Israel bias

After watching Sky News this morning to try to find out about today's suicide attack in Israel I felt compelled to write the following self-explanatory letter. There has clearly been a recent change for the worse in editorial attitude at Sky, because they used to be reasonably fair and honest in their reporting. Today's report would have embarrassed even Al-Jazeera.

Sky News Editorial
British Sky Broadcasting
Grant Way
Middlesex TW7 5QD

Dear Sir/Madam,

Misleading anti-Israel reporting on today’s news

The lead story on Sky News today reported on the kidnapping of the Britons in Gaza by Palestinian gunmen. The reporter listed a number of possible reasons for the kidnapping, one of which was “Israel’s declaration of a security zone inside Northern Gaza which Israel was now shelling despite having supposedly withdrawn from there in October”. This report was misleading and sloppy on two accounts:

1. Not even the most fanatical anti-Israeli Palestinian would argue that these kidnappings were in any way connected to Israel. These, and similar kidnappings which have taken place since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, are the work of local Fatah gangs for political and financial extortion from the ruling Palestinian Authority.
2. Israel’s declaration of a security zone was reluctantly imposed only after weeks of unprovoked missile shelling by Palestinians from the area into Israeli towns.

This sloppy anti-Israel reporting is closely related to Sky News’ reluctance to report on the brutal and sustained terrorism being suffered by Israelis at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. If Sky had, for example, been reporting on the daily rocket attacks on Israeli towns, there might at least have been some context for the story about the security zone. But Sky has not been reporting these attacks. What is even more concerning is that Sky seems to have a policy now not to report even major suicide bombing attacks against Israelis, such as the one this morning, which killed at least three people. Any rational and honest news reporting agency would have reported that attack alongside the story from Gaza, but Sky News chose to ignore it completely. For a 24-hour news channel this seems strange to say the least, and can surely only be attributed to an anti-Israel agenda by your editorial staff.

update: Since the British media never show the faces or mention the names of Israelis killed by terrorists here is something you will not see in tomorrow's newspapers: below is Uri Binamo, 21, from Nesher who was killed in today's suicide bombing. His actions in stopping the bomber almost certainly saved dozens of lives.

Response from LBC re Hizb ut Tahrir

I have received the following response to my letter (posted here 10 Dec 05)

***********************************************************************
Dear Mr Davidson

Thank you for your letter of 10/12/05 regarding Hizb ut Tahrir.

You made some interesting and valid points which I have noted. Obviously I do not accept LBC is a 'propaganda platform' for the organisation, but any point of view which we air should be challenged and balanced with a counter argument. I will remind my team about the importance of this.

Thank you for listening to LBC News 1152, it is a unique format which I am very proud to be a part of.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Richards
Eitorial Director
Chrysalis News - LBC, Heart & Galaxy.

Muslims are protesting

Isn't it incredible that, despite the terror reaped on civilians by their co-religionists, there has NEVER been any kind of public demonstration by Muslims in the UK to protest against terrorism. Yet on Saturday they were out en masse to protest against laws (already massively watered down because of their objections) intended to protect us from terrorists. And isn't it even more incredible that, in all the hours and pages of media exposure about this event not one commentator raised a question about the irony of this.

LBC: a platform for the propaganda of Hizb ut Tahrir

Here is a self-explanatory letter I have just written to Jonathan Richards, Editorial Director, News LBC Radio Ltd

Dear Mr Richards,

I am an occasional listener of LBC News and have been shocked to hear two lengthy ‘interviews’ in the last month (13 November and today) with spokesmen from the Islamic terrorist supporting organisation Hizb ut Tahrir. I say ‘interviews’ in inverted commas because these were actually unchallenged publicity pieces by the organisation and the spokesmen were in both cases treated as if they were revered diplomats presenting well accepted viewpoints.

Maybe your editorial staff and presenters are simply unaware that Hizb ut Tahrir is banned throughout much of the rest of the world, that it disseminates racist material, is pledged to establish a Caliphate, in which non-Muslims would be politically disenfranchised, in which women would be constitutionally prevented from holding senior political office, and in which apostates and homosexuals would be executed. They are dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel and support suicide bombings against civilians not only in Israel but also in Iraq, Kashmir and Chechnya.

If LBC is going to continue to provide a platform for this organisation I would like to know why your reporters do not at least challenge the vile propaganda and lies presented and probe their views on issues such as those listed above?

What makes this kind of lengthy Jihadist propaganda even more unacceptable is that, for a supposed 24-hour news channel, LBC News spends scant time reporting on real news that could better inform people to be wary of the likes of Hizb ut Tahrir. For example, people would be less likely to accept their standard clichés about “the occupation of Palestine” if LBC actually reported about the brutal and sustained terrorism being suffered by Israelis at the hands of the Jihadists. Only this week, for example, LBC chose to either ignore completely or report in the most minimalist way a number of terrorists attacks inside Israel including the massacre carried out by a suicide bomber at a shopping mall in Netanya, relentless rocket attacks from Gaza into Southern Israel and fatal stabbings at checkpoints. When I have asked before why these events go unreported the answer is always that there is insufficient time to cover such stories. It is strange how you always find the time for Jihadist propaganda that is not news at all.

The next time you hear a wishy washy liberal criticising Israeli checkpoints..

We now know that the suicide bomber in Netanya this week was identified as he approached the shopping mall as suspicious and was actually stopped by police. Although the police had the opportunity to kill him before he exploded they did not since they could not rule out 100% that he was deaf and in any case were prepared to take the risk of arresting rather than killing him. With hindsight this was negligent but it confirms the extreme lengths taken by Israelis to avoid any unnecessary deaths (and is only the latest in a long line of cases where individual Israelis lost their own lives by showing compassion to the bombers). This destroys the myth perpetuated in the UK media about the Israeli shoot first and ask questions later policy.

And the next time you hear a wishy washy liberal criticising Israeli checkpoints, think about the following that happened today (from the Jerusalem Post - another story you wont hear about anywhere in the UK media):

An Israeli soldier was stabbed to death Thursday by a Palestinian attacker at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem, police said. The soldier was identified as Sgt. Nir Kahane, 20, of Kiryat Tivon. The Palestinian approached the checkpoint at around 3:45 p.m. and suddenly pulled out a knife, which was hidden in his clothes, and slit the soldier's throat. The al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the deadly attack. The checkpoint where the attack took place is the point of entry for thousands of West Bank Palestinians from the Ramallah area into Jerusalem on a daily basis.

The local IDF commander said that Israel would be forced to further increase security checks at the checkpoint, which has been the scene of previous attacks in the past, as a result of the latest attack.

"This incident hurts all our attempts to improve the quality of life of the Palestinians and we will have to decrease it in order to provide the greatest security to our forces," Col. Miki Edelstein told Israel Radio.

EU taxpayers funding families of Palestinian suicide bombers

Here is a letter I sent to the Sun newsdesk today:

On December 5, 2005 Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas approved financial aid to the families of every Palestinian suicide bomber and terrorist killed 'in action'. The order was signed on the very day a Palestinian Arab blew himself up at a shopping mall in central Israel, slaughtering five people and wounding more than 50. The bomber's family, along with those of every other deceased killer, will now receive at least $250 a month in direct government aid (which is significantly more than the average wage), according to the new law.

And guess where the bulk of the money the PA is dishing out comes from? The EU taxpayers as you can see from the EU's own website: www.eufunding.org/

Full details of this story can be found here:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20445

The Sun did not even mention the suicide bombing today. Perhaps you think its readers are not interested. Well I think they would be interested in the above story.

Unbelievable Islamic indoctrination of children

Check out this clip on Saudi TV (thanks to Harry's Place for finding this on the excellent MEMRI site - I understand that the clip is not new). What hope is there for the future when Muslims indoctrinate their children with such hatred?

The Western ignorance of Palestinian terrorism

Palestinians continue their murderous terrorist campaign (5 Israelis killed and dozens critically injured in yesterday's suicide bombing at a shopping mall in Netanya) and the Western media continues to ignore it. The latest terrorist attack was barely covered on any TV news channel and was completely missing in most of the newspapers. Yet the barrage of anti-Israel propaganda continues (see for example Honest Reporting's story about this) . How can intelligent, uninformed observers make a rational judgement about, for example, Israel's security fence, if they are not given the information about the context for it?

And the news at the moment is truly depressing. It turns out that at about exactly the same time as the terrorist attack yesterday the Palestinian PM Abbas announced that the families of suicide bombers would recieve a monthly income of $250 from the PA (see my letter to the Sun above. Meanwhile, despite Abbas's pathetic 'condemnation' of the terrorist attack (he says it is 'not in the interests of the Palestinian people' but note he never actually condemns it as immoral) the glorification of suicide bombers and indoctrination of children continues to be official PA policy (see HonestReporting update on this).

And just to complete the depressing news we are now finding out about what went on at the so-called 'Islam Global Unity Conference' on 4 Dec in London. Carol Gould reorts "It was shocking and terrifying. It had been advertised as a celebration of the MiddleEastern/Asian community in music and culture, but was a disgraceful Jihadists' rally. 25,000 angry young Muslims were whipped up to cries of 'Allahu Akhbar' by the likes of Yvonne Ridley, Imran Khan, various crazed Israel-loathing sheikhs and, of course, George Galloway."

How Western Democracies are inviting their own destruction

Robert Spencer (of the excellent Jihad Watch website) has written a report of the speech by Oriana Fallaci in New York this week. As usual Fallaci provides a brilliant analysis of the Jihad threat and the way the Western democracies are succumbing to it. Fallaci, a veteren ant-fascist campaigner, has been vilified by both the right and left, and has also of course been subject to the usual death threats from muslims. Here is an extract from the report about the threat to Europe:

“I do not see Islamic terrorism as the main weapon of the war that the sons of Allah have unleashed upon us. It is the bloodiest, but not the most pernicious or catastrophic aspect of this war.” Far more dangerous to the West in the long run is unrestricted Muslim immigration, which already has brought at least 25 million Muslims to Europe (not counting, Fallaci said, the huge numbers of illegal aliens). That number will double by 2016 and, as Bernard Lewis and others have predicted, almost certainly create a Muslim Europe by 2100.

Yet all this immigration has not been accompanied by integration and assimilation – not because of European racism, but by the Muslims’ own choice. Fallaci noted that many other groups have assimilated into European societies, but Muslims have not. “They dont even care to learn our language. They only obey the rules and laws of Sharia.” They do not want to learn European ways; rather, “they want to impose on us their own habits and way of life. They have no intention of integrating with us. On the contrary, they demand that we integrate with them.” Today’s Islamic expansionism, therefore, does not need the armies and fleets with which the Ottoman Empire once terrorized Europe. It only needs the immigrants, whom short-sighted politicians and befuddled multiculturalists continue to welcome. Fallaci said that Europeans – French, Dutch, Germans, English, Italians – are about to reach the status of the Comanches, Cherokees, and Sioux: “We will end up on their reservation.” She noted that some Muslim spokesmen, confident of their imminent supremacy, already refer to non-Muslim Europeans as “indigenous people” or “aboriginals.”

What to do about all this? Establish dialogue with Muslim leaders? Try to strengthen moderate Islam? Fallaci was dismissive of both options. Muslims have no intention of entering into genuine dialogue with non-Muslims, she said, and “I do not believe in moderate Islam. What moderate Islam? Is it enough not to cut heads off? Moderate Islam is another invention of ours.” Adopting Western dress, she said, was easy; adopting Western values was not.

Then Fallaci threw down the gauntlet to the multicultural, politically correct, and fearful. “There is not,” she asserted, “good Islam or bad Islam. There is just Islam. And Islam is the Qur’an. And the Qur’an is the Mein Kampf of this movement. The Qur’an demands the annihilation or subjugation of the other, and wants to substitute totalitarianism for democracy. Read it over, that Mein Kampf. In whatever version, you will find that all the evil that the sons of Allah commit against themselves and against others is in it.” As jarring as such language is to contemporary sensibilities, Fallaci here made a statement of fact that can be verified or disproved. And indeed: Islamic terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi, and others have never hesitated to quote the Qur’an copiously to justify their actions. It remains for those who identify themselves as moderate Muslims to convince violent Muslims that they are misusing the Qur’an – if indeed they are – and should lay down their arms. They have had no notable success in this so far.

Dead Israelis don't count (letter to the Sun)

I sent the following self-explanatory letter to the Sun today:

• Your story today about the acquittal of Parveen Sharif on charges of withholding information about her brother's imminent suicide bombing mission in Israel was interesting, but contained a glaring omission. There was no mention at all that 3 civilians were killed and 65 were injured in the suicide bombing at Mike's Bar in Tel Aviv. In fact, the impression from your report is that the suicide bombing never took place, since the report concludes with the words "Omar — who posed clutching an AK47 rifle with another British bomber — failed to detonate his device in 2003. He killed himself in shame." In fact this was a joint mission with fellow Brit Asif Hanif who did blow himself up. Moreover, contrary to what was written, there is no definitive evidence about how Omar Sharif died, but most informed commentators accept that he was killed by a Hamas operative who had organized the attack.

The problem is that the Sun is actually the only pro-Israeli newspaper, yet even it does not think that dead Israelis really count.
Incidentally the Sun story was genuinely interesting because it revealed that Parveen Sharif (who incredibly is a teacher) told pupils after 9/11: “I am on Osama Bin Laden’s team.” Those following the case will also know that she sent email messages to her brother telling him he "must be strong in his mission" and that she recieved email messages from her brother telling her that she would "have to look after the family from now on". But, of course, the jury found her not guilty of failing to inform the authorities about an imminent terrorist act on the grounds that she "could not have known about it". The question I'd like to have asked is "What exactly did she think her Jihadist brother was doing when he told her he was going to Israel?" Maybe she thought he was going to visit the Wailing Wall or swim with the dolphins in Eilat.

When Islamaphobia is wrong but anti-semitism is OK

The sports pages were full of indignation and disgust at the racist chanting of West Ham supporters against Spurs' Egyptian striker Mido during the Spurs-West Ham match on 20 November. The West Ham fans chanted"Your Mum's a terrorist" and "Shoe Bomber" at Mido. The Football Association were so concerned about it that they have launched an investigation. All very admirable, for sure. There should be no place for such racism in football.

Yet at the very same match the West Ham fans were (as they have been doing for the past 30 years) singing much more virulently anti-semitic songs like "Gas the Jews" accompanied by the hissing sounds. Funny how the footballing authorities have never shown any concern about that isn't it.

Naive Americans pay homage to Hizbullah

The excellent MEMRI site has posted a very worrying article about The US Presbyterian Church and familes of 9/11 victims visiting, of all people, Hizbullah in Lebanon. Just what is it about "Death to America, terrorism as martydom" that these naive imbeciles do not understand?

Israel under attack from Hizbullah

Apparently Hizbullah from Lebanon is mounting a massive artillery bombardment against Northern Israel and terrorists have also crossed the border in an attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Of course nothing about this on any UK news channel yet (and I doubt if there will be). Given that this is, of course, being sponsored by Iran it looks like the Iranians are determined to bring a direct confrontation as fast as possible. This is extremely serious.

The ridiculous UK attitude to the extradition of a terrorist

The Home Secretary has finally agreed to extradite Jihad fanatic Babar Ahmad to the USA for various terrorist offenses. Based in London he used his computer skills to recruit and fund Islamic terrorism around the world (including attempting to set up a terrorist training campl in the USA) and is quite unrepentant about his views, which include seeking to replace Britain's democracy with an Islamic state. You would have thought that, after the London bombings, people in the UK would have twigged by now about the Islamic threat and the way that people like Ahmad are central to it. But no, people still don't get it. This scumbag, who rejects every idea of democracy and human rights for any non-Muslims, is now the hero of the British left and liberals (see, for example, the way the Guardian reports the story here including the usual rubbish from people like Vanessa Redgrave) and of course the Muslim Council of Britain said that "the ruling could contribute to further alienation among Muslim youths". Listening to the news and discussion programmes all day, you would have thought this guy was some kind of modern-day Martin Luther King. The concept that he is guilty of the crimes he is charged with is simply not even discussed let alone believed by the media. To them he is simply a martyr being sacrificied to those beastly Americans.

Daniel Pipes on the Palestinian attitude to terrorism

A great article by Daniel Pipes about the Palestinian reaction to the Amman suicide bombing that claimed a number of Palestinian lives. But I'm afraid it's optimistic. Judging from everything I've heard since the bombing even the so-called moderate Islamists have not changed their view that suicide bombings against Israeli civilians are always justified. In fact the Islamists (as well as the whole liberal media) get mad if you even suggest that there are similarities between a suicide bombing in Israel and one in Jordan.

BBC reporting on Israel

The BBC is inviting statements from members of the public about its impartiality on the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here is what I sent to them:

Dear BBC

On several occasions during the last few years I have had cause to complain to the BBC about its coverage of the Israel-Palestine issue, especially its various news programmes.

My concerns have invariably been about the anti-Israel bias in reporting, which is endemic across all aspects of the organisation including even its teletext service. The BBC's coverage of Palestinian suicide bombings has been particularly biased since inevitably the reporting focuses on Israel's response to these savage attacks and usually focuses solely on Palestinian victims. Bizarrely, BBC reports after suicide bombings have often focused on the families of the suicide bombers but rarely on the Israeli victims' families. Other examples of the systematic anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias include:

• failure to report on the widespread corruption and internal fighting within the Palestinian Authority;
• failure to report on the systematic anti-semitic indoctrination practiced by the Palesinian Authority, which includes the deliberate indoctrination of children (leading for example, to the stated desire of 80% of all Palestinian children to become suicide bombers);
• failure to report on the widescale, brutal slaughter and torture of so-called Palestinian 'collaborators' by the Palestinian authority, while at the same time exagerrating relatively minor instances of brutality on the Israeli side;
• failure to distnguish between the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists on the one hand and the much rarer accidental killings of Palestinian civilians during Israel's targeted raids on terrorists;
• failure to report on the wild celebrations that take place on Palestinian streets following suicicide bombings, focusing instead on the words of 'condemnation' from the official PA officials who are known to say the exact opposite in Arabic of what they tell the Western media in English;
• failure to report on the widespread fanaticism of terrorist groups that completely dominate Palestinian society, while at the same time exaggerating the role and impact of the miniscule extremist minority of Israelis.
• general obsession with showing Palestinians as victims and Israelis as aggressors irrespective of the evidence in any situation
• failure to show the normal Israeli perspective at any time; thus, for example, the only Israeli civilians ever interviewed are usually the more extreme settlers who represent a tiny minority viewpoint;
• failure to acknowledge the unique vulnerability of Israel, which is the only country in the world that is existentially threatened. In particular, failure to acknowledge that the majority of Palestinians (as well as overwhelming majoirty of all Arabs) are committed to the destruction of Israel and this is also now the stated nuclear objective of another state (Iran).
  

Hizb al-Tahrir welcomed to LBC

On LBC News this morning they were doing an item on the public response to the anti-terrorism laws and in particular the defeat of the 90-day rule. Guess which representative member of the British public was the (only) person invited in for their views? None other than a spokeman from Hizb al-Tahrir, the fanatical Islamic group that is banned throughout the rest of the world but who are still, despite recent attempts byt the government, legal in Britain of course. The interview was surreal with the interviewer treating the Islamist as if he was some kind of diplomat. At no time before, during, or after the interview was there any statement about who or what Hizb al-Tahrir represented, so normal uninformed listerners would have been unaware of the irony of asking this guy about a decision made by the British Parliament when the group reject the legitimacy not just of that Palriament but of all democray.

BBC Question Time: how do they get these audiences?

I Just caught a few glimpses of Question Time tonight. Despite all the credible evidence that over 80% of the public supported the 90-day detention of terrorist suspects it seems that as usual the BBC has managed to find an audience of 90% against. This includes the usual anti-War lefties who think they are being really incisive when they bring up the usual rubbish about weapons of mass destruction. To these morons the fact the WMD were not found is actually proof that we do not face a realistic terrorist threat. Also, why were there 5 people on the panel and only one, Geoff Hoon, who supported the 90-day proposal?

The Tory woman on the panel was particularly obnoxious. How the 'party of law and order' voted against the proposal is beyond belief; their nauseating and hypocritical rationale about the overriding importance of civil liberties is simply a joke. They never deserve to be taken seriously again. What a complete bunch of bastards.

It's beginning to feel like Tony Blair is the only politician in the country who truly understands the nature of the threat we face.

10 minutes after writing the above I watched the end of the program and it was immediately followed by Andrew Neil's programme about the week's news and guess who his two guests were? Claire Short (who led the Labour rebellion against Blair) and Kenneth Clarke (Tory terrorist-appeaser-in-chief). So nice to see the BBC keeping up its lack of bias! Is there anything more sickening than this alliance between the extreme left and the right? - surprised they didn't invite Ken Livingstone's terrorist supporting cleric Qawadarwi and they could have all had a real love-in telling us how Islam is a religion of peace while Blair and Bush are the root of all evil in the world.

Hiding the nature of Islamic fanaticism

Strange isn't it how the British media (especially the BBC) will go to extreme lengths to cover up or ignore major stories that reveal the true nature of the global Islamic threat. After last month's suicide bombing in Hadera (which claimed its 6th fatality when another inured Israeli woman died yesterday) all the news outlets mentioned Mahmoud Abbas's condemnation of the attack, but none covered the story of how the bombing was wildly celebrated throughout the Palestinian Authority. The Jerusalem Post, noted that:

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Kabatiya, south of Jenin, Wednesday night to celebrate the suicide bombing in Hadera, which was carried out by local resident Hassan Abu Zeid.

Chanting Allahu Akbar (God is great), some 3,000 people, including Fatah and Islamic Jihad gunmen, converged on Abu Zeid's home to "congratulate" his family on the success of the attack, which killed five people and wounded more than 30.

They also called for more suicide attacks in Israel.

"With blood, with soul, we redeem Hassan," the crowd chanted. "Oh Jihad, Jihad, give us more [suicide] bombings. Oh [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, prepare more coffins."

Also notice how the British media is covering up the fact that the French riots are being conducted by Muslims (maybe they are scared it will happen here too). The excellent website jihad watch carries the following well written piece by Hugh Fitzgerald in relation to the riots:

From 1830 to 1962 the French ruled in Algeria. They introduced modern agriculture. They allowed the humiliated and degraded Jews, through the loi Cremieux, to become French citizens and hence free from Muslim laws, humiliation, and degradation. There were universities -- real universities. Some of the best French Orientalists lived in Algeria, and published their works in Algeria -- Emile Fagnan comes to mind.

What is Algeria like today? The last Christian religious, a group of Italian and French monks exercising their vocation of charity and never attempting to be missionaries, all had their throats slit.

When Chirac visited Algeria, mobs besieged him chanting: "Visa, visa." It seems ironic now that the world has decided that the French have been beastly to their Muslim immigrants, but it’s true. Who, in his right mind, would if he could, not live in France rather than Algeria? Algeria is no longer Algerie française, as the car horns of its defenders used to toot in French cities during the days of General Salan, and that assassination attempt in Clamart, and the harkis, and Pontecorvo's absurd movie (a favorite of campuses) about the wonderful fight of the FLN against the bad bad French. See, if you can find, what the eminent anthropologist of Mexico, who worked for the French government in France, Jacques Soustelle, has written of that period.

Well, the "winds of change" blew through Algeria all right. The line of succession, from FLN to corrupt army leaders, continues to rule. And as always, the vehicle for extreme protest in any Muslim country will always be -- Islam. Nothing but Islam.

If Algeria did not have gas and oil deposits, it would sink into nothing. For even as one of the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth in human history (8-10 trillion dollars to the Muslim oil states since 1973), Algeria, like Iran, like Saudi Arabia, like the sheikhdoms, is amazing not for what it has achieved with all that money, the result of no effort on the part of its people, but how little it has achieved.

It took a kind of genius in reverse to make a mess with all that money. But the Muslim states proved equal to the task. If you seek Islam's monument, look at Iran, look at "Saudi" Arabia, look especially at the once-civilized place that is now called Algeria.

More reaction to Iran

The Sun seems to be the only British newspaper that recognises the seriousness of Iran's threat to Israel and the West -- it covered the initial story on page 2, and followed today with another news item, an editorial and a 2-page spread about Ahmadinejad on pages 32-33 with the heading "The most evil man in the world".

Unfortunately, plenty of the British public (who've been brainwashed by the BBC in the last few years into believing that Israel and the USA are the real threats to world peace) seem to think this is all an American-Zionist plot to create a pretext for military action against peace-loving Iran. Have a look at the following sample of posts on the BBC website highlighted by Melanie Philips today:


• It is also somewhat in poor taste for us Brits to condemn Ahmadinejad's fiery wording when our government has stood by an American President who is even more guilty of such charges. Bush and Blair led an illegal war where thousands of innocent people have died and for us to now turn around and comment from afar on a situation in the Middle East that we have made far worse is beyond belief...
• Is this story true? The current American regime is expert at creating faked excuses for military and political action. The WMD scam in Iraq for example. The Americans who operate in concert with Israel have made almost daily unsubstantiated threats against Iran, Syria, and any country that opposes a domineering foreign policy. Maybe Iran is just sick of Americans...
• Israel continues its brutal human rights abuses against Palestinians ...and the rest of the middle east therefore continue to hate Israel. In a nutshell. When will we see justice for the innocent people killed? America provides billions of dollars annually to Israel, which is used on advanced military hardware mercilessly against palestinian people. Only when the killing stops will ties be mended.
• OK, his remarks were a bit strong, and personally I do find them offensive. But I'm not sure it's any worse than what Bush said about Iraq, and at least Ahmedinejad is using only words, not bombs.

Suicide bombing in Hadera

Another 5 Israelis killed and 30 seriously injured by an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber in Hadera during a 'truce'. Funny how this seems to have escaped the attention of almost the entire British media.

Our wonderful Iranian friends

The following comes from a report on a conference hosted by Iran entitled 'The World without Zionism' (and remember this is the country that most liberal scholars keep telling us poses no threat to world peace, and that both Ken Livinstone and CND feel has every right to pursue its nuclear power programme):

Iran's hard-line president called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.

"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad told students Wednesdays during a Tehran conference called "The World without Zionism."

"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury (while) any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad said.

Ahmadinejad also repeated the words of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called for the destruction of Israel.

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, who came to power in August and replaced Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who advocated inter-civilization dialogue and tried to improve Iran's relations with the West

Ahmadinejad referred to Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a "trick," saying Gaza is part of the Palestinian territories and the withdrawal was meant to make Islamic states acknowledge Israel.

So it's OK to kill civilians not against the war?

Interesting quote from Dr Azzam Tamimi, of the Muslim Association of Britain on the release of the video showing 7/7 suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. Tamimi says "He seems totally convinced that he ought to punish the British people indiscriminately because of their contribution to electing the Government. He doesn't take into consideration that the majority of people were against the war."

So would the suicide bombing have been OK in the eyes of Tamimi if a majority of people were in favour of the war? Also, presumably Tamimi would have found it acceptable if the suicide bombing had targetted civilians who supported the war in Iraq.

Just what is it with these Muslim leaders that stops them from unequivocably condeming terrorism?