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

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

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

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

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

To the Press Complaints Commission

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

The general complaint

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

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

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

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

Many other pictures and videos are available here:

http://idfspokesperson.com/

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

The specific complaints

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/36489_Another_Cropped_Reuters_Photo_Deletes_Another_Knife_-_And_a_Pool_of_Blood
Yet, although Reuters had corrected the ‘error’ on 6 June, the Sun still chose to display the incorrect versions on 7 June. Moreover, the emphasis of the story accompanying the photos was support for a narrative that was demonstrably false, namely (quoting directly from the article): “the pictures show activists tending wounded commandos”.

Israeli art at the Tate Modern

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

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

Election: the bad and the good

Bad news

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

Good news:

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

Conservatives and Israel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the media is not telling you

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

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

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

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

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

Ahava protest (24 April 2010) and the ISM link

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

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

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

Update 2015:Confessions of an ISM member

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

The Difference Between Israelis and Palestinians

Came across the following great quote

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

Worth reading the whole article.

Israel alone

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


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

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

The man who Obama should be talking to

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

Expansionist Israel?

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

The next shows Israel in context with its Muslim neighbours:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can the film teach audiences?

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

What does being Jewish mean to you religiously and culturally?

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

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

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

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

(see more here about this map)

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

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

Roundup

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

The 'Religion of Peace' in Nigeria

Iif you read and watch only the main stream media you would be totally ignorant of the fact that on 7 March 2010 some 500 Christians (mainly women and children) were slaughtered by Muslims in Jos, Nigeria. What you might vaguely have heard was that there was some kind of 'sectarian violence'. While the media hyperventilates at the concept of a Jew building an extension to his own house in Jerusalem and calls for UN resultions against Israel when a ruthless Hamas terrorist is killed, they are censor any story which shows the true nature of radical Islam.

The pictures here are gruesome but give an indication of the scale of the slaughter. You will not see these in the UK media for sure. But the same media will be certain to publish any picture of an injured or dead Palestinian child no matter what the circumstances or who was to blame.

Israelis now being killed as a direct result of Obama rhetoric

What is especially significant about today's attack by Palestinians that resulted in two Israeli soldiers being killed and several seriously injured, was that it was proudly claimed by Hamas. It is significant because, despite many other attacks from Gaza in the last year (all of which were almost certain to have been supported, if not carried out, by Hamas) Hamas has been careful to distance themselves from claims fo responsibility. This has enabled Hamas to maintain steady support from the craven Western dhimmi governments who continue to pour millions of dollars into Gaza.

But Obama's manufactured rage at Israel for daring to build homes in its own capital city, followed by his public humiliation of Netanyahu has led Hamas - and all the other Palestinian factions - to believe that they now have the green light to attack Israelis, comfortable in the knowledge that only Israel will be blamed. In fact, a new intifada has been brewing ever since Obama began his vicious anti-Israel onslaught.

What is especially ironic is that Obama has prompted his generals and military spokemen to claim that perceived Amercian support for Israel is costing American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. While that is, of course, nonsense what is clear is that Obama's anti-Israel rhetoric really is costing Israeli lives.

And the other irony about the whole "Jews stealing Arab land" agenda promoted by Obama is that the REAL land stealing going on inside Israel is actually the other way round. The full extent of illegal Arab land grabbing in Israel is explained by Caroline Glick. You should read it all. It's a shame Obama won't.

p.s. Whereas every UK media outlet led with stories earlier in the week about Israel building houses and the Israeli passports in Dubai, you can be sure you won't hear about the Hamas attack and Israeli deaths today until Israel retaliates.

Muslim threats in East London

A friend of mine was handed this leaflet (click to enlarge) by a young man in traditional Muslim dress outside a mosque in the Mile End Road near Stepney Green station.

The leaflet states that the crime of “Shirk” (when Muslims dishonour Allah) is “the worst crime that anybody can commit” … and states that it is worse than “rape and murder”.

Hence, what makes this leaflet so threatening is the text printed in bold near the bottom, which warns Muslims against voting in the forthcoming elections; it says

“voting in the elections (manmade law system) is a form of shirk and will negate ones islam”.

Since the Koran mandates that the crime of Shirk is punishable by death according to the most eminent Muslim scholars this is clearly a death threat against Muslims who dare vote.

My friend has passed the leaflet on to the local Police. Since it contains a telephone number and email address there is not really much excuse for them not to follow up on this. But then again, since the Police have been infiltrated by an Islamist/Khomaneist grouping I would not hold out too much hope.

Important things you will not know by following the News

The most important Middle East news story for a long time - Israel's seizure of a ship containing hundreds of tons of weapons including 3000 rockets bound for Hezbollah from Iran - has been completely ignored by the media. Not a word on the main news channels and not a mention on the news pages of google news or yahoo news (even though the latter manages to find space for a news item of Gaza shops selling Goldstone headscarves). The BBC website grudgingly covers the story but only as a 'claim' by Israel with the ludicrous headline:

Israelis 'seize Iran arms ship'

And here is another incredible story that you will not here about in the main stream media. Remember the Washington sniper who shot and killed 10 people over a number of days in 2002? Turns out that these were Jihad inspired terrorist attacks. Read it all here and especially look at the drawings produced by the Muslim killer.

A brilliant analysis of the Palestinian and Arab mentality is Rubin's The Middle east: can you handle the truth

The extent of appeasement to Islamists by the UK and the US

The extent to which the UK and US governments are appeasing Islamic fundamentalists is now confirmed as greater than even my worst fears.

In the UK the revelations of Foreign and Commonwealth Office whistleblower Derek Pasquill confirm that the Government's entire strategy to counter the threat of Islamic terrorism is to ingratiate itself totally with the Muslim Brotherhood at all levels in the bizarre belief that making friends with these Islamic fundamentalists will ensure that they protect us from the 'even worse' Islamic fundamentalists of Al Quaeda. The idiots at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are not even aware that Al Quaeda (like Hamas) is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. Read the full interview with Derek Pasquill.

Meanwhile in the US Obama signed off the new defence budget yesterday. Some of the budget, while despicable, was known in advance. For example, on the pretext that Pakistan needs money to defeat their own Taliban, there is $2.3 billion to the Pakistani military, much of which (based on previous experience) will end up going straight to the Pakistani Taliban via the Pakistani Security Service, and the rest will be used for Pakistan's Jihadist war against Western friend India. There is also an incredible $7.8 billion to help train and supply the Afghan Police and Army - again even though previous experience suggests that much of this money will end up with the Taliban themselves (or corrupt tribal leaders sympathetic to them). But what is truly incredible is that this year the US has decided to cut out the middle man. It has set aside $1.3 billion to give directly to Taliban fighters to 'stop fighting'. And while a massive chunk of the US defence budget is therefore going to end up directly funding the Islamist enemies the US Army is fighting, for the first time ever the budget contains a chunk dedicated to 'fighting hate crimes' - which means prosecuting Americans who dare to speak up against Islamists.

If the BBC wanted examples of racist ideology in practice ...

Given the furore created over the appearance of Nick Griffin on Newsnight and the almost uniform media anger at 'giving a platform to racists' I am surprised this same media routinely ignores the brutal anti-semitic outpourings from Middle Eastern governments and their state-run media. There are, of course, a number of websites (just check the links on the right) that report on such material on a daily basis. But, every so often, an item catches my eye especially. I'm not talking about the antisemitic preachings of endless Jihadists or Imams or even the routine "let's teach 4-year-olds how to kill Jews" television programmes produced by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. I'm not even talking about the popular Turkish series depicting Jews as child killers. No, what catches my eye are those examples of supposedly 'liberal' and 'moderate' countries like Kuwait and Dubai. Hence, I was interested in an article in the Arab Times Kuwaiti newspaper yesterday, which not only reports uncritically on the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry's warning against employing Jewish maids (apparently there are 1800 such black maids of Ethiopian descent in Kuwait) but also warns of the dangers involved to children since such maids "practice black magic" and "may have an allegiance to Israel". Goebbels would have been proud of such racism. Anyway I have grabbed a screenshot of the page (click it to enlarge), just in case it gets removed:

Mia Farrow's insane anti-Israel rant

I have seen some pretty insane anti-Israel rants recently but the Mia Farrow CNN interview I saw yesterday probably takes the biscuit. I tried to find the interview to link to - but it is not on either the CNN site or youtube yet. I didn't catch the start of the interview but my understanding is that the rationale for the interview was that Mia Farrow had visited Gaza as part of her role as 'UNICEF Ambassador'. I heard her say something like the suffering of the Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank was 'the worst ever seen in the world', but that was nothing compared to what she said in response to the interviewer Rosemary Church's question about whether her role had led her to see the suffering of Israeli children from Qassam rocket attacks. Her response was that the Qassam rockets fired at them

"were only filled with mud".

I'm suprised that comment alone has not been picked up anywhere in the media. She seemed to imply that they were some kind of a 'fun' thing to be enjoyed by those lucky Israeli kids. She followed this up by saying - incorrectly - that

"only 3 Israelis civilians have ever been killed" by Qassam rockets

and she contrasted this with a statement saying something like thousands of Gaza children had been killed by Israeli rockets.

Nice to know, as ever, that UNICEF is bringing an unbiased perspective to the problem.

p.s. The excellent Sultan Knish also analyses similar comments by Mia Farrow here

Something that was not in the UK media

Outside Westminster yesterday, the home of British democracy, Islamists were not only calling for Sharia law and freedom 'go to hell', but were also calling for the murder of Geert Wilders (the courageous Dutch politician who has warned of the threat of Islamism in Europe).

Take a good look at the video here and watch it through to the end (it is 5 minutes).

For good measure they also called for death to Israel of course. The guys issuing the death threats are doing so openly and individually to the TV interviewer. Don't expect any police action against them.

Yet, of course, there was not a word of this in the UK media. The only coverage of the story simply referred to the 'extremist right wing anti-Muslim' Geert Wilders and gave space to Muslim spokesmen to criticise him. Even the Sun newspaper presented the story in this way.

More details here.

BBC News today: more instinctively anti-Israel even than Hezbollah

The following complaint, which I have sent today to the BBC, relates to its reporting of the news today of an explosion in Lebanon at the house of a Hezbollah member. It is self-explanatory:

The report of an explosion inside the garage of a leading Hezbollah member in Lebanon states: "Reports are conflicting about the cause of the blast. Some sources said it happened when an Israeli shell left over from the 2006 war was dismantled.
Other reports say a Hezbollah rocket exploded by accident. "

In fact not even Hezbollah themselves are claiming that it was an Israeli shell. Yahoo News says "Hezbollah said in a statement on the Web site of its Al-Manar TV station that an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the blast, which it said took place in the garage of a home belonging to one of its members." Moreover, the news outlet Press TV (run by the Iranian Government who are Hezbollah's sponsors) says that "Security forces had earlier announced that an ammunitions explosion in the house of the local Hezbollah official on Monday had killed five people, including the official and his son." The Press TV article is here:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=108516&sectionid=351020203

In fact every informed source acknowledges that the house (like many others in South Lebanon) was most likely being used as a Hezbollah weapons storage cache in direct contravention of UN resolution 1701 (just as was proven in a similar explosion in July 2009).

So why on earth, other than instinctive anti-Israel bias, would the BBC News seek to give the impression that this explosion was somehow the fault of Israel?

Edgar

Update: The IDF now has video evidence that the house was being used as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility

Routine anti-semitism taught in 'liberal' United Arab Emirates

A friend of mine is a Spurs supporter who subscribes to the Spurs-list forum (which is apparently the largest forum for Spurs supporters). He has sent me a posting (and subsequent comments) from a student who lives in the United Arab Emirates. This guy is worried that, since Spurs have a large Jewish following, no rich Arab benefactor would ever invest money in the club. While such a hypothesis may or may not be true, what is interesting about his posting is the ingrained anti-semitism he has been taught (highlighted in bold) and which he accepts unquestioningly as true even though he is not a Muslim and is not anti-semitic either.

"ok i think outta all the listees i live in an arab country (one of the most liberal ones though) and thus will hv the best idea on this subject. Im indian and hindu btw and live in the United Arab emirates which is a muslim country. Of course we all want an awesomely rich arab benefactor to buy the club and make it a super club by buying the best players available, but the thing is that tottenham has a very big jewish history, we're called the yids for goodness sake. Now like some fifteen hundred years bak (im not really sure, cuz i dont pay much attention in skool, and YES IM IN SKOOL), the muslims and jews had a huuuge fight, and the jews tried to kill the muslim's prophet, which caused a dislike for jews which is still existant (u can see the way iran hates israel). Liberal as they are, the rulers r still very pious amongst themselves and live by the ancient rules, and i dont think the wuld like to buy into a club with a deep jewish roots, but lets keep our fingers crossed.
IM NOT BEING DISCRIMINATIVE IN ANYWAY. IM PROUD OF AND LOVE TOTTENHAM FOREVER. IM JUST STATEING MY VIEW ON THIS WHOLE TOPIC. (IM NEITHER MUSLIM OR JEW BTW) COYS ! "

That schools in the United Arab Emirates are routinely teaching such anti-semitic nonsense even to non-muslim kids like this guy tells you everything you need to know about how 'liberal' (as he calls it) the UAE is.

What is also interesting is that, despite the forum's stated policy to keep all discussion focused solely on Spurs football club, of the dozen people who commented on his posting only one raised a concern about the irrelevant and incorrect 'history lesson' and this poster actually suggested the student should read the works of the late anti-Israel Palestinian writer Edward Said for "an excellent history of the Arab peoples".

p.s. Of course, it isn't just 'liberal' Arabs who brainwash their children into hating Jews and Israelis. Tony Blair's 8-year old neice gets the same brainwashing as you can see here.

Terrorist supporters marching through London

The annual Iranian Government sponsored anti-Israel "Al Quds" demonstration took place in London yesterday. The Guardian has a short video here. Unlike two years ago when I attended (see my own eyewitness report of that) when a counter demonstration included a wide range of groups opposed to the Iranian islamafascists, the only organised counter-demonstration yesterday was by the English Defence League (although there do appear to be some Iranian dissidents and Israel supporters there too).

The Guardian presentation is most interesting in that it characterises the demonstrators as "pro-Palestinian" and the counter-demonstrators as "Far right". But note that the demonstrators are primarily holding pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini along with Hezbollah and Hamas flags. Since the latter two are proscribed terrorist organisations I am not sure why the police allowed this and I am certainly not sure why the Guardian can characterise such people as "pro-Palestinian". I would have thought "anti-Western terrorist supporters" would have been more accurate. And, since the 'official' Palestinian government is still the PLO who have been at war with Hamas why exactly is it that only Hamas flags are used by these "pro-Palestinians"?

In a similar vein here is a video of the demonstrators who the entire mainstream media referred to as "anti-fascists" at last week's demonstration in Harrow.

An incredible story that is being ignored by most of the media

The terrorists who were convicted of the planned airplanes liquid bomb plot were known to be planning to take children with them as an additional method of getting through the Heathrow security. This is sick even for Islamists. But it now turns out apparently that they were not planning to take their OWN children. The plot leader, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, actually had fostered a child from Haringey council and the child was found in Ali's house at the time of his arrest (with a book written by Osama Bin Laden's mentor in the cot). The story appears on the front page of today's Sun but has been completely ignored by the rest of the main stream media, which feels that it is far more important to pump up stories that try to portray Muslims as victims.

Beyond belief: the BBC goes all out to explain why Islamic airline plot was justified

Today the Islamists who planned to massacre thousands of civilians by blowing up airplanes were finally convicted in London.

But look at the following text for how the BBC is reporting this and trying to justify that what the terrorists were trying to do was somehow a perfectly natural reaction to world events (if the link is no longer there when you click it then I presume that even the BBC may have realised they had overstepped their love for terrorists, but this was the main link on Google to the story when it broke):

• "But the story of what the police came to call Operation Overt began in the aftermath of al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on America. As US forces poured into Afghanistan, the decades-old refugee crisis worsened. The Islamic Medical Association, a charity shop in Clapton, east London, raised money and collected equipment to send to refugee camps on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Ali and Sarwar went to deliver aid to the refugee camps - and their experiences radically altered their world view. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, the ringleader of the group, was shocked by the appalling conditions. His anger was compounded by the failure of the 2003 mass protest against the Iraq war. The anger felt by men like Ahmed Ali turned him against the UK and America and he turned to radical Islamists who were increasingly calling for attacks on Britain."

Note, in particular, the blind acceptance of the terrorists' version of events as 'facts' here and the whole sympathetic tone.

How the western media lied over the 'Religion of Peace' in China

When the news of bloody race riots in China were first reported in the western media last week the initial reports were all essentially based around the same headline: 'Chinese massacre 156 minority Uigar Muslims'. It turned out to be exactly the opposite to what was claimed. Muslim gangs (typically fired up by a false rumour - spread from the mosques - of killing and rapes of Muslims by the Han chinese) went on a wild rampage with axes and knives killing every Han chinese civilian they could get their hands on. They killed 137 civilians and it was only after this that the Han retaliated killing a small number of Muslims. When the real story became known to the media outlets the word Muslim was eradicated from almost every news report. So all that people would know is that some 'sectarian riots' took place somewhere in China. In fact if you do a google search of "Muslims massacre Chinese" what you get is site after site reporting Muslim anger that THEIR people were massacred by Chinese.

For more pictures of this typical piece of "Religion of Peace" savagery see here.

Hypocrisy

When Jews are brutally murdered in places like France and Yemen for no reason other than they are Jews, the (non-Jewish) media totally ignores it. Yet yesterday the media (including CNN, BBC, Fox news) was saturated with news of the story of a Muslim woman who was murdered in a German courtroom. "The Headscarf Martyr" had sued her neighbour for calling her a 'terrorist' and it was the accused who knifed her to death in court. News bulletins last night showed, for example, mass demonstrations in Egypt calling for revenge against the German government for allowing such an anti-Muslim crime to happen.

Now, notwithstanding the curious issue of why the act of insulting a Muslim in Germany should have resulted in a major court action (you can imagine that the neighbour might have been pretty riled by that) this was clearly a terrible crime. But was it less horrific and racist a crime than one that was announced on the same day and which received precisely zero coverage in the non-Israeli media. I refer to the story of a cab driver (Grigory Rabinovich) in Israel brutally murdered by two Palestinians who claimed "We killed cabbie because he was a Jew" They reportedly got into Rabinovich's cab in Ashdod and asked to be taken to a desolate spot.
The Palestinians told investigators that they punched Rabinovich in the face and head at which point they put him in the trunk of his taxi. They said that when he regained consciousness they decided to kill him, and strangled and beat him to death. The police described the injuries as truly horrific.

Of course what might have made it onto the BBC news would have been if the cab driver had refused to give a lift to two Arabs to a desolate spot for fear of what they might do to him. That, of course, would have been a real case of racism and anti-Muslim stereotyping. Al-Jezeera would have dedicarted a 2-hour documentary to that.

Similarly, can you imagine how the world's media would react if Israel refused entry to a Muslim on the basis that they are wearing a veil? Well don't hold your breath expecting to hear in the UK about the story of Jordan denying entry to Israeli with Jewish prayer items. This is the same Jordan which supposedly has a peace treaty with Israel, yet is responible as much as any country for promulgating the myth of Israel as an apartheid state, while it actually has enshrined in its constitution a law that no Jew can be a citizen of the state.

Dramatic new announcement by Obama

Following his re-opening of diplomatic relations with Syria, his engagement with Hamas, and of course his willingness to continue to engage with the Armadinejad-Khameni regime in Iran despite its brutal massacre and suppression of its own people who rejected it at the ballot box, President Obama has now announced that his rapprochement policy is going to be extended beyond just Middle Eastern anti-semitic clerical fascists. In a speech today Obama opened his hand to the Nazi party of Germany stating that

• "There are many law-abiding Germans still living today who never accepted the legitimacy of the democracy imposed by the Allied forces after World War 2. This includes respected SS officers and highly decorated concentration camp guards, not to mention the many hundreds of thousands of members of the modern German National Socialist Party. We have no right to meddle in the internal affairs of Germany and to engage soley with the regime of Chancellor Merkel. I am therefore setting up a special embassy in Berlin to improve our previosuly badly damaged relations with the Nazi party. This will ensure that we can continue to work together peacefully with Germany when the Nazi party inevitably returns to power."

In the same speech Obama also announced similar rapprochements with the Communist Party of Russia and the Imperialist movement of Japan. For Britain there was a very welcome announcement of new initiatives to support both the Islamist anti-democracy organisation Hizb al Tahir and the BNP, hence demonstrating the extent to which Obama will reach out his hand of friendship. As Obama stressed when making this announcement:

• "it is certainly not for us in the USA to pass judgement on people with different, but equally valid, ideologies."

At the end of his speech Obama stressed the core philosophy driving his exciting plans to unite the whole world: "Everything is driven by our respect for different ideologies and faiths, and above all the committment to never again meddle in the internal affairs of any other country". In a separate policy announcement Obama made it clear that, in order to ensure that no Jewish household in Israel could build an extension, he will be banning any future Jewish births there. Pregnant Jewish women will be required to attend a new American funded Hamas clinic in Gaza city for an abortion.

The Two State Solution is a Victory for the Proxy War against Israel

Some of the best writing I have seen on the Middle East conflict is by Sultan Knish. All of his articles are good, but this one on the implications of the two-state solution is one of the best I have seen.

Iran and the bogus 'Palestine' analogy

There are many important aspects to the continually developing Iran situation beyond simply the horrific brutality being perpetrated by this Islamafascist regime on its own people (if you have not seen the video here you should summon up the courage to do so). We have the scenario of the the leftists either supporting the Ahmedinejad regime or simply ignoring the story altogether, because it does not quite fit into their world view. We have the total failure of Obama (and our own government for that matter) to come out in strong support of the protesters. We have the UK media relegating the story to a minor footnote in stark contrast to its hysterical and obsessive coverage of Israel's war in Gaza (Muslim terrorists killed by Israelis in self-defence is a 'war crime' but unarmed peaceful Muslim demonstrators murdered by Islamists is not even worth reporting) even though a successful popular revolution could lead to a regime change that would solve many of the world's worst problems (the Iranian regime is instrumental in sustaining every Middle East conflict - not just Israel/Palestine via its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah but also Lebanon, Syria, iraq and Afghanistan).

But what I found very curious and rather troubling was reading and listening to many of the Iranian demonstrators making a direct analogy between their own situation and the Palestinians. One after another I have heard comments along the lines of 'they are treating us just like the Israelis treat the Palestinians' and a very common statement today along the lines that the murder of Neda Agha Soltani (pictured here) has the symobolic equivalent of the Israeli 'murder of Mohammed al Dura' that triggered the intifadah of 2000 (even though it has now been proved to be a pure fabrication). Now these demonstrators understand very clearly that their government has lied to them for 30 years and controls every aspect of the media. Yet one of the lies perpetrated - that they are happy to accept without question - is that of the myth of Israel's brutality against the Palestinians.

Palestinians sink to new low

As if the Palestinian Authority response to Netanyahu's speech was not sickening enough already their 'moderate' leader Mahmoud Abbas has now decided to free hundreds of Hamas terrorists being held in its prisons in order to punish Israel and the USA. The Palestinian Authority was quoted as saying:

"the move was also meant as a message to the US and Israel to the effect that the PA leadership was deeply disappointed by Washington's failure to force the Israeli government to stop construction in the settlements and accept the two-state solution unconditionally."

So Abbas is letting free his pack of wild dogs to attack Israel, conveniently ignoring that these wild dogs slaughtered hundreds of his own Fatah members in the last two years. Wouldn't it be a terrible irony if these wild dogs came back to slaughter more of his own cronies.

Before any peace is possible...

Netanyahu's speech was good, but it missed out the most crucial requirement on the Palestinians for there to be any chance of peace. I'm talking about the requirement to stop the anti-semitic incitement and indoctrination that permeates every aspect of Arab education and media. Until that happens we will continue to see stories like that of how a 15 year-old Palestinian boy (Raed Sawalha of Kalkilya) was tortured and then hanged by members of his own family last week for the terrible crime of waving at an Israeli border policeman. The full story is here. I bet you never saw that story anywhere in the UK media. Perhaps the Palestinians might begin to realise that this kind of behaviour is not normal if at least the Western media actually carried these stories. Imagine the coverage such a story would have received on the BBC and in the Guardian if that had been an Israeli family murdering a child for waving at a Palestinian.

Who practices apartheid?

The next time you see the Islamists and their useful idiots of the left accuse Israel of apartheid (like, for example the trade union UNISON which has banned the Trade Union Friends of Israel stall from its conference) it might be worth referring them to this story from Pakistan of a Christian murdered for daring to drink tea from a cup designated only for Muslims.

Another story that went unreported in the mainstream media was that of Barack Obama's spiritual advisor Rev. Jeremiah Wright saying that President Obama hasn't spoken to him since they parted ways last year, because "them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me." He has since issued his own joking statement after his tantrum was revealed. He said "Let me say like Hillary, I misspoke. Let me just say: Zionists." Remember that this guy was not only Obama's spiritual advisor for 20 years - he also conducted his wedding.

A fine choice to lead UNESCO

If any further proof of the engrained anti-semitic bias of the United Nations was needed how about this. A leading candidate to head UNESCO is none other than Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni. As described in a report here, Hosni told a member of parliament who had confronted him about the presence of Israeli books in Egyptian libraries last May that if he could, he "would burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries. Let's burn these books; if there are any, I will burn them myself before you".

For the record the stated purpose of UNESCO, which is funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by people like you and me, is:

"to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN Charter."

A powerful speech by Elena Bonner

Elena Bonner, wife of the late Andrei Sakharov, made a very powerful speech in Oslo. Coming from somebody with such impeccable liberal credentials it ought to be compulsory reading for all the Israel-hating lefties. Especially interesting is her comparison of the world reaction to Gilad Shalit's continued incarceration and that of the Guantanamo prisoners. The full text of the speech is at the Jerusalen Post. Here is what she says about Israel:


THROUGHOUT THE YEARS of Israel's existence there has been war. Victorious wars, and also wars which Israel was not allowed to win. Each and every day - literally every day - there is the expectation of a terrorist act or a new war. We have seen the Oslo peace initiatives and the Camp David handshake and the road map and land for peace (there is not much land - from one side of Israel on a clear day you can see the other side with your naked eye).

Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it's an old one): "Two states for two peoples." It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peacemaking Quartet, made up of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia (some great peacemaker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed.

According to the UN's official definition, refugees are considered those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number - about 700,000-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency's report, the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.

The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another 5 million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians - while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew already.

The result is both strange and terrifying, because Israel will essentially be destroyed. It is terrifying to see the short memory of the august peacemaking Quartet, their leaders and their citizens if they let this happen. Because the plan "two states for two peoples" is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same. A Judenfrei Holy Land - the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?

AND ANOTHER question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It's a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn't the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit trouble you in the same way as does the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?

You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners' everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House. And although he, just like president Bush before him, does not know what to do with the Guantanamo prisoners, there is hope that the new administration will think up something.

But during the two years Schalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Schalit's rights. The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Schalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?

And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Schalit. Release, and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.

Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Schalit is an Israeli soldier, Schalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism.

THIRTY-FOUR YEARS have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee).

Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov's ethical credo: "In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice."

What Arabs are taught to believe

A very disturbing piece by DaveM (who studied Arabic in Syria) about the extent to which anti-Semitism dominates Arab TV. He describes a 25-part series that was recently screened which, in addition to all the usual Protocols of Zion fantasies, claims that the Jews pressured the USA into using the atom bomb agains Japan. He translates Rothschild saying : “I’ve got a group in America to pressurize President Truman, for the first time ever, to use atomic bombs against the Japanese.” He concludes:

• What’s really frightening and depressing is that this, in one form or another, is what most people in the Arab world actually believe. This is the prism in which they view every war with Israel. After all who’s going to spend all the time, effort and money to make a 25-part series knowing nobody’s going to watch it? Where’s the sense in that?

Crude anti-Israel propaganda at the Saatchi gallery London

When I first started writing this blog in the summer of 2005 it was as a result of going to see a play called “Arab-Israeli Cookbook”. Instead of the pleasant evening out I was looking forward to I was subject to a barely disguised piece of brutal anti-Israel propaganda. The Israeli characters were all based on the classic stereotypes of militaristic or heartless immigrants from New York, with no culture of their own; in contrast every Palestinian character was warm, sympathetic and with rich culture deeply ingrained in the land now ‘usurped’ by the Jews.

Last Sunday I experienced the further extent to which the demonisation and deligitimisation of Israel has infiltrated British consciousness. I was at the Saatchi gallery in London to see the special exhibition of new art from the Middle East. A very fine exhibition and overall experience was totally spoiled by a vicious, nasty and unsubtle piece of anti-Israel propaganda posing as art called ‘Qalandia 2067’ by the artist Wafa Hourani. The piece is a very large model. As you approach it from the normal direction you see an intricate and impressively realistic reconstruction of a chaotic Arab village, full of life, diverse culture and even music coming from the houses. But at the end of the village is a very large wall of mirror with a soldier standing on top of it pointing a gun. As you walk round this wall you realise that it is supposed to be the Israeli security fence. But, there is no attempt to leave any doubt about what lies on the other side. In contrast to the vibrancy and ‘authentic’ life of the Arab village this is cold militaristic Israel whose only culture is American imports. Unlike the Arab village, the Israeli side is abstract and unscaled. Just in case anybody fails to notice the Israeli flags and large El Al sign, the artist has helpfully placed an enormous Star of David on a stand ‘protected’ by a soldier (who is of course much larger than any of the Arab figures) and tanks pointed at the Arab side. The only other objects on the Israeli side are an airfield with warplanes (all helpfully emblazoned with the Star of David) and a large abstract reconstruction of an eerily cold restaurant (with the obligatory Israeli flag on top) made from what appears to be coloured sweets - to laboriously emphasize that Israeli presence is alien in this land. A large ‘menu’ pinned to the model helpfully lists only American imports on offer.

The model manages to encapsulate just about every anti-Israel stereotype currently permeating our media, even to the extent of ignoring the context in which Israel’s security fence was built (Qalandia has been a notorious breeding ground for terrorists who have committed dozens of suicide attacks and shootings against Israeli civilians; only since the construction of the security fence have fatal attacks from Qalandia been largely avoided). It also portrays Israelis not just as lacking in humanity, but actually being not human at all. This is much like the way the Nazis portrayed the Jews in order to create the mindset necessary for their annihilation. Make no mistake, the anti-Israel propagandists now have the same end game in mind and they clearly feel they are winning with prominent exhibits like this (I understand that art critics have praised this piece as the outstanding work in the exhibition).

But what I cannot understand at all is why the Saatchi gallery – opened, named and presumably at least part-financed by the well-known Jewish philanthropist Charles Saatchi - should allow this piece to be displayed. Is he aware of the offence this causes to (the still large number of) people who are sympathetic to the State of Israel and the Israeli people? The large Star of David in this context is especially disturbing wince it borders on pure anti-Semitism.

It is also curious that an exhibition of new art from the Middle East fails to feature a single Israeli artist. Perhaps the owners of the gallery know that, if an Israeli artist exhibited a piece that was in any way politically sympathetic to Israel, the usual anti-Israel renta-crowd would have been protesting not just outside the gallery but would have destroyed the work itself as part of their openly stated campaign to boycott all Israeli culture. So why is the Saatchi gallery supporting those kind of people and their propaganda?