Daily Telegraph declares the Galilee Judenfrei....

The following letter I just wrote to the Daily Telegraph is self-explanatory:

The full page article on Syria (by Richard Spencer) that appears on page 25 of the Telegraph (20 July 2012) contains the following statement in the opening paragraph about Syria's neighbours:

...sweeping down towards Lake Galilee and the surrounding plain, beloved of the religious, of tourists and of its Israeli Arab occupants.

I  think we are entitled to an explanation as to why Richard Spencer wants his readers to believe that either there are no Israeli Jews in the Galilee region of Israel or, the ones that are there do not love their homeland like the Arab citizens. In fact, while the population of the Galilee region as a whole is about 50% Jewish according to most recent census figures, the region around Lake Galilee is almost 100% Jewish.

I do not believe that Richard Spencer is an anti-Semite, but it is clear he has fallen casually into the trap of deligitimization of Israel which is being ruthlessly pursued by people who are pure anti-Semites.  A core part of the agenda of these anti-Semites is to construct a narrative in which Jews never had any physical attachment to the land of Israel and that only Arabs are the 'true' citizens. 

On a related note, Daniel Greenfield has an outstanding article deconstructing the myth of Israeli 'settlements'.

Writing Jews out of history

It is commonly (and accurately) stated that for the Jews of Europe during the holocaust the world was divided into two:

The places they could not stay and the places they could not go.  

Post-1948 the Jews of Arab lands were similarly forced from their homes, but at least they had a place to go, with some one million eventually going to Israel. These Jewish communities had in most cases long pre-dated their Muslim Arab hosts; some - like the Jewish community of Baghdad - numbered in the hundreds of thousands. With the exception of tiny surviving communities in Morroco (2000), Tunisia (1500)  and Yemen (where three out of the remaining 110 have been murdered in the last two years) there are barely a handful of Jews remaining in the whole of the Arab world.

The story of the destruction of Arab Jewry is almost unknown in the West because it does not fit the standard pro-Palestinian narrative. That is why anti-Israel commentators perpetuate the myth that all Israelis are 'European colonists'.  Increasingly the Arabs themselves are trying to rewrite history not just to deny the ancient link of Jews to Israel, but even to deny the history of Jews in Arab lands. 
The culmination of this is now that the Jordanians (see Elder of Ziyon's report here) are claiming that there was never such a thing as 'Jewish refugees from Arab countries'.  As Elder comments "If no Jews were forced out of Arab countries in the 1940s through 1960s, I guess they must all have been indigenous to Israel, right?" In fact, we now have the situation whereby for Jews from Arab lands living in Israel, the Arab narrative divides the world into two:

The place they cannot stay and the places they never came from.  

Indeed, why bother to dehumanize people when you can simply argue that they do not even exist.

How the news is spun (and the BBC fails to learn any lessons)

A young British female journalist Natasha Smith was brutally raped in Cairo last week. You should read her gruesome account here. There have been many such attacks on Western women in Cairo since the 'Arab spring' all of which were either ignored or under-reported in the Western media. Even when the victim was high profile reporter Lara Logan of CBS News her own organisation CBS tried to cover up the story completely.

Hence, it is no great surprise that, as startling and newsworthy as the story is (especially considering it involves a young attractive British journalist), the British media has been almost completely silent on it. A search of both BBC News and Sky News draws a blank.  However, there is a CNN video on the web (presumably the Americans are only prepared to report cases like this when it is not an American victim).  But compare the CNN report with what Smith actually says herself. The CNN report plays up the role of 'heroic bystanders' and completely plays down the scale of the attack and ignores completely the crucial cultural angle such as the refusal of Egyptian doctors to treat her and the demands of others to know whether or not she was a Virgin.

This story is not just about the extent to which Western media will cover up violent Islamic attitudes and crimes. It also provides a very good example of the extent to which people like Smith are useful idiots to the cause of Islam. Just read the beginning of her account and wonder how she could be so naive given the stream of previous attacks against Western women like her in that very place. And read her comments which show the disconnect between her positive perception of Islam and Egypt and the reality that she herself went through (Sultan Knish has a typically incisive view on her attitude). I also found it rather interesting to note that the book that she was shown reading at the end of the CNN report. is by Jon Snow, the anti-Israel, pro-Jihadist bigot from Channel 4. 

Put simply the story does not fit the mainstream (especially BBC and Sky News) narrative about the wonderful 'liberal' Egyptian revolution and the inherently peaceful nature of Islam. That is why this story will receive minimal coverage.  In many respects there is a close analogy here with the BBC's refusal to cover the Fogel family massacre by Palestinian terrorists in Israel last year. Interestingly the BBC has just issued an apology to MP Louise Mensch about their failure to report on the story. But what they have not done is right the wrong. Nobody outside the Jewish blogasphere will ever hear about the BBC apology. And the BBC will continue to refuse to inform the public about the massacre.  The BBC will not learn from their mistakes and they clearly do not want to. For how else to explain the complete failure of the BBC - at the very time they were issuing their 'apology' to Louise Mensch - to report on the terrorist attack against Israel from Egypt on 19 June (resulting in the death of an Israeli civilian) and the subsequent 180 rockets fired from both Egypt and Gaza that followed Israel's targetted killing of two of the terrorist attackers.  While the BBC and other British media outlets continue to refuse to report on those stories the British public remains ignorant of the the real news, and as a result is guided to cast the blame on Israel for any unrest in the Middle East.

Honouring and helping Jewish child killers

No deed in the Arab-Muslim world achieves greater respect than the cold-blooded killing of Jewish children. That is why Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who engineered the 2001 massacre of so many children in Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant, was the most 'honoured' of all the terrorists released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. She is now a major celebrity in the Arab world, presenting a weekly TV programme where she encourages millions of viewers to emulate her crimes.

One of Tamimi's victims was 15-year-old Malki Roth. Whereas the views and feelings of the terrorist murderer Tamimi are heard by millions, the views and feelings of Malki's parents are rarely heard or respected. It is especially important therefore to read this article by Malki's parents (thanks to Israel Matzav for this link). It shows that it is not only the Arabs, but also the spineless Israeli Government that is providing help to Tamimi while ignoring the feelings of the Roths.

Imprisoned for criticizing Islam - and we not allowed to know why

In March I blogged about the astonishing case of Darren Conway who was sentenced to a year in prison for posting 'anti-Islamic materials' in the window of his ground-floor apartment in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.  No information about the actual posters was provided in any news reports. There were concerns that the material was simply standard factual information about Islam and Mohammed (including the fact that, by having sex with the  9-year old Aisha, Muhammad would be classified as a pedophile in any Western society).

In order to find out exactly what the posters were I filed a Freedom of Information Request to the Crown Prosection Service.

I have now had a response from The Crown Prosecution Service. They have refused the request for information about the posters on the grounds that it is 'not in the public interest'.  Here is their justification:

There is a substantial public interest in many circumstances in protecting from disclosure information gathered for the purposes of a criminal case. The defendant in this case was prosecuted as he publically displayed the offensive posters referred to in your request. As displaying this material was proven to be a criminal offence in a criminal court, and the graphic and violent images depicted in these posters caused offence in the neighbourhood in which they were displayed, there is a very strong public interest in these articles not being distributed any further.

This is truly Kafkaesque. Because it was deemed to be criminal we are not allowed to know why even though that was the very reason for my request. I was not even asking for a copy of the posters. All I asked for was information about their content. If we are not allowed to know precisely what was 'illegal' about them, then how is that possibly in the 'public interest'?

Surely it is in the public interest to know what we are now not allowed to say about Islam. Is it or is it not now a criminal offence to suggest that Mohammed was a pedophile, and if it is then is it also a criminal offence to suggest that Jesus or Moses was a pedophile? Is it now a criminal offence to display an image of the aftermath of an Islamic terrorist attack and state that this was an Islamic terrorist attack? Is it now a criminal offence to simply point out that Islam is a supremicist ideology? Is it a criminal offence simply to report on, say, incidents of Muslim anti-semitism?  At what point does it now become a criminal offence to say or display something that one person finds  'offensive' - and who exactly determines whether it is reasonable or not to be offended? The CPS have consistently decided that Jews being offended is never sufficient grounds for criminal proceedings, so what exaclty is different when Muslims are 'offended'? And why is it perfectly OK to perpetuate the myth that Jews are 'baby killers' (which you can see in posters at every anti-Israel demonstration and in posters, tea-shirts and badges sold openly throughout the West End of London) but possibly criminal to say that Muslims have committed acts of terrorism? Am I now committing a criminal offence by writing this blog?

Since the CPS are not even prepared to describe the posters, I suspect that what they really fear is that people may be angry to find out that you can now be imprisoned in the UK for expressing an opinion about Islam based on truth.

Evening Standard: Double standards and total ignorance on Israel

On 12 March 2012 the London Evening Standard published a story with the headline “Israel strike on Gaza militants kills schoolboy”.

My original blog posting about the story is here:
http://edgar1981.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/london-evening-standard-blood-libels.html

The story was false, but the Standard did not respond to an email complaint I sent the same day and nor did it print my letter submitted to the Letters page.

Hence on 15 March 2012 I made a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about the article.

The full (lengthy) correspondence on the case is here. The correspondence confirms my view that the Evening Standard is institutionally anti-Israel. The Standard admits it relies on a proven liar (Adham Abu Salmia) employed by the terrorist organisation Hamas, for its ‘information’.  The PCC ultimately rejected my complaint but welcomed the Evening Standard’s offer to put a footnote on the web version of the story stating that Israel had denied that such air strikes had taken place.

Here we go again

Next week we have the elections for the Mayor of London and local councils. This means we will get the usual nonsense from the sycophantic and useless Jewish community leaders in the UK (as represented by the Board of Deputies and Jewish Chronicle) telling us we must go out to vote 'for a mainstream party' so as 'not to let the extremists in through the back door'. They actually pay for adverts and print thousands of leaflets to tell us this.

By main stream ('non-extremist') party they of course include Labour - whose mayoral candidate is none other than the country's best known anti-Semite, anti-Israel, pro-Jihad Ken Livingstone. But they also include the Respect party (led by George Galloway) whose only three objectives are sharia law, socialism, and the destruction of Israel,  and of course the Lib Dems and Greens most of whose candidates openly advocate the destruction of Israel and whose official policies are to boycott Israel. Not to mention the ruling Conservative party, who in their two years of office have become the most anti-Israel British government in history.

So, while the Board of Deputies not only gives its permission, but actually mandates Jews to vote for one of those parties (and in Scotland you can also vote for the SNP - who also have a policy to boycott Israel)  who exactly are the bogeymen they mean by 'extremist'? Well, for a long time it has only  meant the BNP;  but increasingly they now also include UKIP (UK Independence Party) who are the only party not openly anti-Israel, but whose crime in the eyes of the Board of Deputies is to not want to be part of  the EU (that makes them anti-immigrant Islamaphobic fascists, you see).

Apart from the fact that they are dominated by wishy-washy liberals, the Board of Deputies' problem is they still think they are living in the 1970s where the primary objective is to combat the National Front (which no longer even exists). They do not accept that there is a combined Socialist-Islamist threat to the Jewish community, but rather see anti-semitism and 'Islamaphobia' as one and the same where the 'neo Nazi right' are the common enemy. I was looking back at some old posts and I noticed this one from 2006. The Board of Deputies - still led by the clueless Vivien Wineman - have not got any better since then, while the Jewish Chronicle increasingly welcomes Israel haters to its pages and publishes articles like the one today by the mentally challenged Simon Rocker rejoicing in the fact that "Yachad, the new Israel advocacy group" has "raised over £90,000 in its first year of activity". Maybe someone will let this reporter in on the fact that Yachad's 'Israel advocacy' is, along with its sister organisation J-Street in the USA, all about advocating the gradual destruction of Israel and that the 90K raised will almost certainly be spent on University campus activities and newspaper ads that further deligitimize Israel and its supporters.

More Arab apartheid

I have written about Dubai's engrained apartheid and anti-semitism many times before (see here, here, and here for example).  Today's Jerusalem Post reports that over a dozen Israeli cardiologists who had been invited to a Dubai conference of the World Heart Federation  were denied a visa by authorities at the last minute.

If this had happened to any other national group it would have made world headlines and and led to international condemnation. But you can be absolutely sure that not a word about this incident will be said outside of Israel. And Dubai will remain a top holiday destination (even for an increasing number of British Jews) who believe the media propaganda that Dubai is an enlighted Arab Muslim country which welcomes all visitors equally.

Israel and Jew hatred in the UK

Richard Millett has an excellent account of the anti-Israel demonstration that took place yesterday in London. Note that the demonstrators are still displaying those fraudulent 'shrinking Palestine' maps that I exposed here and here.

Those demonstrating will no doubt be greatly encouraged that, on the same day, the virulent obsessive Israel hater George Galloway was elected to Parliament after winning the Bradford by-election by campaigning essentially as an Islamist. His first tweet after his victory said "Long live Palestine, Arab dignified".

Here is a man discredited in every aspect of his life, the best friend forever of the late Saddam Hussain,  and now Assad in Syria and Ahemdinejad in Iran (who actually employs him to provide propaganda for his TV station). These are tyrants who have brutally murdered  tens of thousands of their own Muslim civilians; yet Galloway won almost 100% of the Muslim vote by campaignining on a record of 'defending Muslims worldwide'.  So much for most Muslims in the UK being moderate. Being a Jew-baiter is enough for them to forgive any other transgressions. Indeed the most common comment I heard from Muslims asked why they supported Galloway was 'he stands up for the Palestinians'. He certainly won't stand up for the non-Muslims in Bradford.

How bad can Obama and his cronies get?

Boko Haram handywork: nothing to worry about here according to Obama

Boko Haram is the Nigerian branch of Al Qaeda that has been slaughtering Christians in the north of the country for two years now.  In the Hausa language, Boko Haram, translates as "Western education is sacrilege"   Their Arabic name translates as  People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad. Yet, as Sultan Knish reports today,  the US government not only refuses to designate them as a terrorist organisation, but it also rejects the idea that religion is the primary driver of their violence. The US government thinks Boko Haram will be just fine if the US gives money to address "the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the north". I thought this story had to be an early April Fool's joke especially when I discovered that the US State Dept spokeman was called Johnie Carson. But it is not; so - like most of Obama's policies - the joke is on us.


And while on the subject of how bad Obama is, here are a few things I found this week:

•  While Obama was sickeningly exploiting (and pre-judging the circumstances of) the death of black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a 'white' security guard (who is actually mixed race Hispanic) with his "if I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin' remark he was surprisingly quiet about the brutal murder of two young (white) Brits by a black 17-year-old thug Shawn Tyson in Florida (Friends of murdered British tourists attack Obama for lack of compassion after he failed to reply to THREE letters from grieving family). I reckon that if Obama had a son he'd look a lot like Shawn Tyson.
• Not just failing to support Israel with respect to Iran but continuing to sabotage any chance of a successful military operation (see John Bolton here also and a scathing attack in Israel Hayom).
• Refusing to acknowledge any part of Jerusalem as Israel (see here and here)
• Obama best friends with everyone and no-one (and people still take this jerk seriously):

• Proof that Obama's Hawaii 'birth certificate' posted on the White House website is a fraud (and still the media cover up this story):

• A full account of Obama's record on Israel (and still the Jews vote for him):

Obama is basically a racist, liar, Communist, and fraud. But above all he is simply a jerk.

Obama: hypocritical jerk

While Obama was sickeningly exploiting (and pre-judging the circumstances of) the death of black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a 'white' security guard (who is actually mixed race Hispanic) with his "if I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin' remark he was surprisingly quiet about the brutal murder of two young (white) Brits by a black 17-year-old thug Shawn Tyson in Florida (Friends of murdered British tourists attack Obama for lack of compassion after he failed to reply to THREE letters from grieving family). I reckon that if Obama had a son he'd look a lot like Shawn Tyson.

While I have nothing but contempt for British PM David Cameron, you can be sure that even he would be making a public apology to the families - and indeed the whole of America - if two American tourists were brutually murdered in the UK. In fact, I can't think of any other world leader who would act with such lack of compassion as Obama here. Now, if the murderer had been white and the victims black .....

More on Obama the jerk here.

Ten years since the Passover massacre

Elder of Ziyon notes that Hamas is today celebrating  one of the worst massacres in Israel's history - the massacre at the Park Hotel Netanya when 30 Jews - of whom 20 were older than seventy, were killed (and 140 injured, many critically) by a suicide bomber during the Passover Seder service. It is poignant to read the names of the victims.
As Elder says:

Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing any Arabs protesting against this attack, or writing anguished op-eds about how a fellow Muslim could have done such a thing. No Arab groups popped up on college campuses calling for solidarity with Jews against terror. There were no UN resolutions condemning the massacre. But there was a PA-sponsored soccer tournament in Tulkarem named after the suicide bomber.

Taking account of the relative populations of Israel and the USA this is equivalent to 1500 deaths and 70,000 injured.  If such an outrage - during a religious festival - were committed anywhere else in the world against any other group of people the event would be seared into the memory of everyone (in fact in the month 135 Israeli civilians were killed by suicide bombings - a US equivalent of 6,750 deaths - well over twice the number killed on 9/11). Yet the massacre barely received a mention in the UK media at the time, despite the fact that it was actually sanctioned by 'peace partner' Yassir Arafat (even though it was carried out by Hamas). In fact the media actually was more interested the next day in pushing news of the bogus Saudi 'peace plan' which was, cynically, made 'public' one hour after the massacre, almost certainly with American prompting as an attempt to 'restrain' the Israelis in their response.

Few people outside Israel, even Jews, know that the massacre took place. Yet, perversely, when a few days later Israelis attacked a terrorist enclave in Jenin (going hand-to-hand to avoid civilian casualties - resulting in the deaths of 23 Israelis and 53 Palestinians - of whom 48 were 'gunmen') there was condemnation from the whole world as the media became obsessed with the myth that a 'massacre' had taken place. Although the massacre myth was debunked as a hoax within a few days, most people still remember the 'Jenin massacre'. Similarly, in stark contrast to the Passover massacre,
everyone knows about "Deir Yassin" which the Palestinians (wrongly) claimed was a massacre of Arabs in 1948 and which is widely commemorated not just annually in the UK but at more or less every meeting where the Palestinians want to make a point about Israel's 'brutality'. In contrast to the zero articles in the UK media about the Passover massacre since 2002 there have been many hundreds of articles commemorating the non-massacres at Deir Yassin and Jenin. 

Evening Standard covers up motives of Islamic terrorism

The Evening Standard - now part of the anti-Israel Independent and Independent on Sunday group  produced an outrageous blood libel against Israel on 12 March stating the lie that Israelis had killed a Palestinian schoolboy. After I made a formal complaint that case is currently being dealt with by the Press Complaints Commission (I have had a response and an offer from the Editor to resolve, but have not accepted it and have made a counter proposal; once the case is resolved I will reveal some of the very interesting details involved).

Yesterday the Standard reported on the outcome of the Toulouse killer's confrontation with the Police - it was buried on page 12. I have scanned it here. Although the picture caption does state that Merah was a jihadist, the lengthy piece simply describes Merah as a "serial killer". There is not a single mention of the killer's religion, Jihadist motivation, nor the mass of Jihadist anti-Semitic statements he, and the Islamist group he was a member of, had just made. In particular they make no mention of Merah's statement that he wanted to kill Jews to 'avenge Palestinian children killed by Israel' (I wonder where he could have got that erroneous idea from?). The article also avoids telling readers that the school he targeted was a Jewish school.

There are many developments of the story about the whole change of narrative on Toulouse (Sultan Knish has a typically incisive article). Now the media is telling us that the real victims are not Jews but Muslims who 'fear a backlash', and there are the interminable reports describing an alternative reality in which there is no anti-Semitism in France and especially no Muslim anti-Semitism (why after all should the media believe what Jews who live in Toulouse say after all? and the hundreds of attacks by Muslims on Jews in the last 5 years obviosuly never really happened). But the most bizarre reporting I have seen comes from, of all places, the supposedly 'conservative, pro-Israel' Fox News, whose reporter in Toulouse (and yes he really was there) did not once refer to the fact that three tiny Jewish children had been murdered. He kept saying (and I saw him say this several different times) that 'a teacher and three students' were murdered. And, incidentally, Fox News stopped being pro-Israel more than two years ago.

There is no longer any main stream media outlet that is telling the truth. The truth is the new 'hate speech'.

19 May 2012: UPDATE ON THIS STORY HERE

Sarkozy to use Islamist terrorist attack as pretext to arrest critics of Islam

I had to do a double-take on this.

Sarkozy called Merah's killings terrorist attacks and announced a crackdown on people following extremist websites. "From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hate and violence will be punished," he said in a statement. 

The problem is that if Sarkozy and the rest of the politically correct elite are the ones who get to decide what constitutes 'extremist' and 'incitement to hatred' then among the first to be targeted will be anybody who reads blogs that highlight the problems of radical Islam. This is because all such sites (including mine - or any of those listed on the right) are classified by the liberal elite as 'extremist hate sites'. So yet again the crimes of Islamic terrorists will result directly in restrictions on the freedom of everybody and the criminalizing of opponents of Islamic terrorism.

The Toulouse killer is a Muslim terrorist so the media narrative changes again

While all the media continued yesterday to assume (and indeed hope) that the Toulouse killer was a 'white racist' I questioned the rationality of the assumption, because it was clear to me that the attacks seemed more in keeping with Islamic terrorism. This morning we hear - surprise, surprise -  that the killer is Mohammed Merah, an Islamic terrorist of Algerian origin, who claimed that the killings were in revenge for 'Israel killing Palestinian children and for French military involvement in the Middle East. 

Many media outlets carried this image from a multi-cultural rally in France yesterday. The banner reads "In France we kill blacks, Jews, and Arabs".  When we will be seeing the more accurate banner "In France Muslims kill Jews and soldiers"?

But no sooner was this announced than the media was already spinning the story in a way to suit its own narrative again. I just watched Sky News coverage and they were stressing that the killer and his family lived in a very poor housing block surrounded by wealthier neighbours, and that clearly social deprivation and poverty were a key factor. To emphasize this narrative they then interviewed a French female journalist living in London who claimed that what was terrible about the attack was that the killer was 'French' and that it was therefore 'an attack against diversity'. She said that it was all down to the racist climate in France which had been made worse by Nikolas Sarkozy in the last five years and she picked out, as an example of racist lack of tolerance, the burka ban he had introduced.

So there you have it in a nutshell. When a terrorist grabs tiny Jewish children by the hair and shoots them through the head this can only be the work of a white racist who actually hates Muslims as much as Jews (Tuesday's media headlines). But when on Wednesday we discover he is a Muslim terrorist then suddenly his actions are justified by poverty and are a natural reaction both to anti-Muslim attitudes in France and the actions of Israel against Palestinians. And of course the real victims in all of this are Muslims.

Finally, I wonder where Mohammed Merah got the idea into his head that Israel deliberately kills Palestinian children? It couldn't, by chance, have been from the western media who have been peddling these Arab lies and blood libels unquestioningly for many years now?

11.40 update: The headlines of all the usual media news suspects (BBC, Haaretz and bizarrely even the Jerusalem Post) - all of which yesterday headlined the fact that the killer was a suspected "white racist/Nazi'  - are all concealing the identify of the killer (although of course they are forced to reveal it in the actual story). In the UK today's budget will ensure that the story fails to even get much of a mention from now on, so many UK residents will forever assume that the killer was indeed a white Nazi with a hatred for Muslims.

The media response to the Toulouse killings

Today's Sun

The main stream media – which after every Islamic terrorist attack warns us not to assume that the killers were Muslims or had any connection to Islam – has been very quick to identify the Toulouse killer as a ‘right wing racist’. BBC News analyst Christian Fraser asserts:

" it is an inescapable fact that all the victims have been Jewish, black or of north African descent."

The problems with this is that it is also an inescapable fact that all the victims have been Jewish civilians or French soldiers. And all Jews and all NATO forces (which includes the French) are considered ”fair game” for every Muslim terrorist group in the world.  

See my full article on this at my new Times of Israel blog.

UPDATE: What a surprise the killer turns out to be a Muslim supremacist.

Arrested in the UK for criticising Iran

Following on from my story about the UK man imprisoned for 12 months for displaying posters that could cause offence to Muslims, comes the story of two Israeli men arrested at Heathrow after a stewardess overheard them making "inappropriate and potentially threatening comments regarding Iran" while on a BA flight from Las Vegas. News reports on the story are pretty skimpy (the few sites interested in the story seem to be anti-semitic and Jihadist sites and blogs who are typically using it to 'expose' the evil intents of Israel vis a vis Iran).   However, contrary to what was stated in the few early reports (such as the JC on and also this one in the Mail) Rod Liddle in today's Sun claims that the men were not disruptive in any way and no passengers reported any concerns about them (perhaps Sky News will get round to apologising some time for the tickertape headline "Israelis arrested on BA flight in terrorist alert" they put out when the story first broke). So it appears that a single stewardess took offence at two guys for criticising a terrorist regime that daily threatens the existence of their own country - and on this basis they were arrested and accused of being terrorists.

The UK's political leaders are continually telling Israel that the country has no right to defend itself from Iran - several have hinted that any strike on Iran would be 'illegal'. But now it appears that it is also illegal for Israeli citizens even to discuss the threat posed by Iran.

Coming soon to the UK:

• Man imprisoned for expressing support for Israel - deemed offensive to all Muslims
• Jews imprisoned for attending Holocause memorial event - deemed offensive to all Nazis. 
• Man imprisoned after telling his psychiatrist that he once had a negative though about Muslims
• Man imprisoned for displaying posters that could offend Muslims (oops already had that...)

Imprisoned in the UK for criticising Islam

The national UK media has had almost nothing to say about the astonishing case of Darren Conway who on March 6 was sentenced to a year in prison for posting 'anti-Islamic materials' in the window of his ground-floor apartment in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.  There is a very good piece by Bruce Bawer about the case in which he wonders why no information about the actual posters has been provided in any news reports. He suspects that the material is simply standard factual information about Islam and Mohammed (including the fact that, by having sex with the  9-year old Aisha, Muhammad would be classified as a pedophile in any Western society).

In order to find out exactly what the posters were I have just filed a Freedom of Information Request to the Crown Prosection Service -anyone else can do this by completing the form here (you can send it by email). The details needed for the form are no more than provided above.

Obviously I will post the response here when I get it.

Update: The Crown Prosecution Service has its own report about the case on its website here. However, it also provides no concrete details about the posters beyond the quotes of Prosecutor Judith Walker who tells us that "Although they were targeted at Muslims, they would cause offence to virtually anyone that saw them." Sounds a very grand claim.

Update 15 March 2012: Arrested in the UK for criticising Iran

Update 5 June 2012: I have had a response from The Crown Prosecution Service. They have refused the request form information about the posters on the grounds that it is 'not in the public interest'.  

London Evening Standard blood libels Israel - but gives Syrian regime murderers benefit of doubt

Blood libel - and classic Pali photo stunt

One of my previous posts about Western media reporting on Israel is typically pertinent in the way the media have handled the latest rocket barrage (nearly 200 since Friday) against Israel from Gaza  (Elder of Ziyon has been doing a great job both reporting the truth and also the media lies). But the worst example is surely in tonight's London Evening Standard - a free mass circulation paper. Despite the catastrophic impact on Israeli daily life, every one of the 21 Palestinians killed in Israel's response have been Islamic Jihad and PRC terrorists (confirmed by the terrorist organisations themselves). Yet the Standard is leading with a story - which turns out to be false - that Israel has killed a 16-year-old boy in 'school uniform'.  As Elder reports even the notoriously anti-Israel biased AFP asserts that:

acording to an AFP correspondent at the scene, there were no signs of any impact on the ground which could have been caused by a missile, with the most likely cause of his death being some kind of explosive device he was carrying

What is also fascinating is that this is by far the most extensively reported foreign news story, despite it being on a day when: an American soldier killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, there were multiple suicide bombings by Islamists killings dozens of Christians in Nigeria, a massive suicide bombing by Islamists killing 19 mourners at a funeral in Pakistan, not to mention other suicide bombings by Islamists in Pakistan and Iraq. Moreover, today in Homs Syria 45 bodies - all women and children brutually massacred have been discovered and very graphically shown elsewhere. Note that the Standard does partly 'cover' this story in a very small article underneath the large Israel blood libel article. But note two things: 1) the Standard reports 12 deaths even though the Syrian resistence claimed 45, i.e. unlike the claims of the Palestinan terrorists, it does not automatically accept whatever they say as being true; 2) the word 'murdered' is in inverted commas in the title, in stark contrast to Israel kills schoolboy in the other headline.

Is it any wonder that my daughter - who goes to a Jewish School asks me why Twitter is trending with "Israel is a terrorist nation"? (update: this is also partly due to a fraudulant UN worker tweet).

Update 14 March: This morning several major media outlets were reporting that an 8-year old Palestinian boy had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli air strike (incredibly the Jerusalem Post had this as its top story this morning). It turns out - as reported by even the notoriously anti-Israel AP - that contrary to the previous Palestinian claim lapped up without question by all news agencies: 

The boy’s relatives and witnesses later said the boy was marching in a funeral procession for a Gaza militant when he was struck in the head by an errant bullet. At the time, gunmen were firing in the air, they said.

18 May 2012: UPDATE ON THIS STORY HERE 

The Jewish Naqba and how its story is suppressed

There is a great article by Michelle Huberman "Where are the Ashkenazim?" that describes how the Ashkenazi liberal elite in Israel have continually downplayed the catastrophe that befell the Jews living in Arab lands after 1948. While the whole world has been brainwashed into accepting the narrative of the Palestinain 'naqba' - where about 600,000 Arabs fled Israel at the request of the invading Arab armies - few people are aware of the far greater number of Jews who were forcibly expelled from their homes in Arab countries.  
The article struck a special chord with me because this subject came up last September in a talk by Dr Noam Leshem who is the archetypal Israeli liberal that Michelle refers to. Leshem, who is apparently employed by BICOM to 'promote Israel' and also 'advises senior Israeli politicians',  actually presents only the standard Palestinian anti-Zionist narrative. A member of the audience asked him specifically about why the Israeli government did not make more political capital from the Jewish naqba. His response was abrupt and rude. He said something like 'that is a dead subject - there is absolutely nothing to be gained from raising it'. The problem for people like him, of course, is that it does not fit in with his narrative, so in the traditional leftist way he simply refuses to acknowledge it.

The benefits of being married to a Taliban

From today's Times' article "Burka brigade: wives take up arms for the Taleban" we have this classic:

As with nearly all Afghan women, Mahmuda's movement is severely restricted by her husband. But she says that being the wife of an insurgent has its benefits.
"They are fighters and when they come home they are tired and don't beat us".

Is Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain an anti-Semite?

For a moment imagine the following unlikely scenario:

A terrorist organisation in Sweden (that is known to include Jewish members) announces that it intends to kill as many Muslims as it can in Sweden by blowings up every mosque during Friday prayers.  The Swedish Police subsequently find the stockpile of  bombs the terrorists were planning to use and state that they intend to remotely detonate them in such a way that nobody is harmed. Although they know who the terrorists are the Police say they will not take any further action against them (after all, the Swedes are pretty tolerant like that).

Next suppose that, on hearing this news, the Israeli ambassador to the UK requests an interview with the political editor of the Sun to make his country's views about the matter clear. He says that if the Swedish authorities carry out their threat to destroy the terrorists' bombs then he will consider it as an act of war against Israel. The reason, he says, is "because it will have an impact on Israel. Israel has to safeguard its interests since it has many Jewish citizens and they would not take it lying down".

If that really happened you can be sure that the Ambassador would be univerally condemned as an anti-Muslim hatemonger and would be booted out of the country for promoting 'hate-crime'.

Well, if you replace the terrorist organisation in the story with the Iranian political elite, Muslims in Sweden for Jews in Israel, and finally the Israeli Ambassador with the Pakistani equivalent, then the story turns out to be not made up at all as you can see from today's interview in the Sun with Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan. Although the interview covers more than just his concerns about Israel and Iran, here is the relevant part:

Tough-talking Mr Hasan also declared Pakistan would have no choice but to support Iran if "aggressive" Israel attacks it. ... Mr Hasan said: "We would not like Israel to attack any country, irrespective of whether it's Iran or any nuclear country. We wouldn't like to be seen as part of Israel's campaign against any country. If Israel attacks Iran, it will have an impact on Pakistan as well. "We will have to safeguard our own interests. We also have a Shia population in Pakistan who will not take it lying down.

Since, in my hypothetical example, the Ambassador would be univerally condemned as an anti-Muslim hatemonger, can anybody explain why Wajid Shamsul Hasan has not been expelled from the UK as an anti-Semite? He has offered no reason for siding with Iran against Israel
other than a purely racial one.

Times fails to notice anti-semitism of Syrian demonstrators

One of the universally consistent features of the 'Arab spring' (be it in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria) has been that the so-called freedom fighters have dubbed the leaders they were overthrowing as Jewist/Zionist stooges. And of course the leaders they were overthrowing have called the demonstrators Jewish/Zionist stooges. The main stream media have, despite the overwhelming evidence, chosen to ignore this phenomenum completely since it does not fit easily into their pre-conceived world view.

It is now clear that similar irrational anti-semitism is also fueling the Syrian revolt. While Assad has claimed repeatedly that Zionists in league with Al Quaeda are behind the demonstrations against his regime, the demonstrators themselves have dubbed Assad as a Jewish/Zionist stooge. But the bizarre anti-semitism has been taken a step further by the Syrian demonstrators. Take a close look at the photo here from yesterday's Times. The caption says that "demonstrators show their contempt for President Assad.." because it is a large image of his face they are trampling on. But at the bottom right (enlarged) you can see part of another face they are trampling on. It is actually that of Hassan Nasrallah - head of Hezbollah - who is Assad's client in Lebanon. Since the demonstrators have drawn a Star of David on Nasrallah's head they clearly believe that he too is a Jewish/Zionist stooge. And of the course the Times makes no comment at all about this.

Colonel Kemp in Chigwell

I went to see Colonel Richard Kemp - the former Commander of the British forces in Afghanistan and now staunch supporter of Israel - speak at a synagogue in Chigwell this evening. Kemp is every bit as impressive in person as indicated by his BBC interview during Operation Cast Lead and his famous UN speech. He spoke for about 45 minutes and then answered questions for about an hour. There were plenty of new insights for me, including the extent to which Israel has provided security, military and intelligence support to the UK (but which cannot be admitted publicly by the Government because of what he sees as their blatant appeasement of Islamic extremists). When asked why he supported Israel so passionately he said (after joking about being paid by Mossad) because it was the right thing to do because his extensive professional dealings with the Israel Defence Forces - and his knowledge of similar threats faced by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - meant he KNEW that the accusations against them were false; when he heard the libellous accusations made against the IDF during Cast Lead he said that he felt compelled to counter the lies just as he would if the same lies had been made against the British Army.

Other interesting nuggets:

• When he was asked by the BBC for the interview above he said they were assuming he was going to do the standard 'blame Israel for everything' expert analysis. As you can see the airhead interviewer was completely flummoxed and taken by surprise that anybody would actually defend Israel. He has never been invited back by the BBC.
• He has been in Israel discussing a PR campaign in which he plans to help enroll military experts from around the world to share their (similar) experiences about working with the IDF and their similar opinions on the way they deal with the threats they encounter.
• With Liam Fox now forced out, the Government has lost one of the only members of the  Cabinet who understands the threat Israel faces. Indeed the rest are adopting a policy of appeasement against the Islamic threat that he compared to the 1930s appeasement of the Nazis.
• Israel has the capability to pull off a conventional military strike to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions, but that unless there was a regime change in Iran that country would never cease its ambition to obtain nucelar weapons.
• In response to my (loaded) question about his thoughts on the most incompetent politician in Israel's history (Ehud Barak) being Defence Minsiter at such a critical time, he declined to answer on 'diplomatic grounds' but it was clear that he shared my views and concerns. 
• He has been the victim of anti-semitic abuse - despite of course not being Jewish. 
• In speaking about the discredited UN Golstone Report on the Gaza war he ridiculed Col. Desmond Travers - a former senior officer in the Irish army - who was the only military expert among the four members of the Goldstone Commission. He said he found it hard to understand why the UN chose as its military expert somebody from an army that had never fought a war. Travers - whose contempt for Israel was already on the record after he had falsely accused them of killing Irish UN troops in Lebanon, apparently stated in his report that Hamas had never used mosques to store weapons. When he was asked what his evidence was for this claim he said "well I wouldn't"

Muslim Hitler worship in London

I was not actually going to post about my visit to Madame Tussaud's in London yesterday (1 Jan 2012) because I wasn't sure how much could be extrapolated from a single visit, but by a remarkable coincidence, Daphne Anson reports today on a very similar recent experience written by American Ben Shapiro.

What I saw were several different groups of Muslims (women with hijabs and men) queuing to have their photo taken with the Hitler waxwork and two of the men actually gave the Nazi salue. As it was a bank holiday (and raining heavily) it was incredibly crowded in there and I did not want to stay long. I looked at the scene around Hitler for about 3 minutes. I also saw two other European looking men have their photo taken while giving the Nazi salue, so it would be wrong to say this was a uniquely Muslim phenomenum, although these two guys seem to be doing it as a joke. In contrast the Muslims, as similarly observed by Ben Shapiro, seemed to regard Hitler is a genuinely admired leader.

Unlike Ben Shapiro I did not witness any anti-semitic scenes around the Einstein waxwork. Perhaps not many people know he was Jewish.

Balanced reporting as usual

Today Turkish airplanes killed 35 Kurdish villagers on the border with Iraq.

There have been no spontaneously arranged anti-Turk demos sympathising the plight of the stateless Kurds outside the Turkish embassy in the UK. There have been no mass demonstrations of any sort and not a word from Clinton, Obama, Hague or Cameron. There has been not one word of condemnation from the UN. In fact the story has barely been mentioned in the UK News. On Sky News it got a whole 10 seconds right at the end of the main 30-minute news, which managed to convey an impression of sympathy with Turkey for making an honest mistake.

Yet when Israel's airplanes kill three terrorists in the act of carrying out an attack against civilians, all other news is put on hold while the world unites in its condemnation of Israel. In fact, the world no longer needs incidents of Israel defending itself or even building a house in Jerusalem in order to unite in condemnation. It now has the artifically created phenomenum of 'sexism' with which to bash Israel while the rest of the Middle East burns without any concern from the West. While staying silent on the massacres in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, Hillary Clinton  has actually issued a statement of condemnation of Israel for the fact that some ultra-orthodox man refused to sit next to a woman in a bus in Jerusalem.

Isn't it nice to know that Israel is treated with the same degree of fairness and balance as all other countries.

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

The Arab world is 'electing' Islamic fundmentalist governments everywhere, Syria is burning in a civil war with over 5000 now dead, Hamas and its allies in Gaza are launching rockets now every day against Israel without fear of retribution and Hezbollah has started to do the same from Lebanon while also attacking UNIFIL troops there. Iran is threatening to close the straits of Hormuz and in addition to threatening Israel with annihiliation is also threatening its other neighbours; Egpyt, where mobs with government approval destroyed the Israeli embassy, is now allowing Hamas and Al Quaeda to operate in the Sinai (meaning that the road in Israel to Eilat is effectively closed); and of course the Palestinian Authority - which has refused all offers to return to negotations and is honouring terrorist murderers with all kinds of money and prizes while ratcheting up its hateful Israel deligitimization campaign throughout the UN and UNESCO.

None of that is an 'onstacle to peace'.  But Israel planning to build 40 new homes? This has brought world outrage and official UN condemnation:

UN: 40 new Efrat homes prejudice the peace process

Hatred for Israel reaches new levels

So now it is official.
Sarkozy to Obama talking about Israel's elected Prime Minister (not realising the microphones were still on):

"I can't bear to see him any more, he's a liar,"

Obama's response:

"You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day."

Sarkozy and Obama might try to cover their tracks by claiming that their comments show frustration with just one man, but this is actually about contempt for Israel. They would not have dreamed of making such comments about an Arab leader, let alone a supposed ally; indeed, even yesterday Obama was STILL talking about appeasing Ahmedinejad with new concessions. There is something particularly ironic about the liar claim; not just that Sarkozy and Obama are two of the biggest liars in political history - but that (as I pointed out here) Arab lies are at the root of the whole Middle East narrative, but nobody has called them to account for it. It is certainly true that Netanyahu has lied - most notably every time recently when he has stated that Obama is a friend of Israel he has lied through his teeth to cover up for Obama and he has also lied when he states publicly that France and the other EU countries can be a force for good in the Middle East.

What is also incredible about this story is a) how it was first covered up willingly by the journalists present at the request of Sarkozy and Obama. Elder of Ziyon covers this aspect well; and b) how it has been barely mentioned in the left-wing dominated Israeli press (presumably because their hatred for Netanyahu is trumped only by their love for Obama, and even they realise this story is more damaging to Obama than it is to Netanyahu).

And of course Cameron the stooge, in attempting to distance himself from the faux-pas manages to make things worse, as the report states:

David Cameron's spokesman said Mr Netanyahu was "an important partner" in Middle East issues but that Britain did not agree with him on everything. "We think Israel needs to stop settlement building and return to talks," he said. 

Nice even-handed comment that, ignoring the fact that Israel ceased all 'settlement' activity for a year but it was the Palestinians who were the ones who refused to 'return to talks'.

Perhaps we are approaching the end game now. Israel never had any real friends but at least under Bush and Blair the US and the UK were not enemies (France after 1967 always was). That has now clearly changed. None of the 'major powers' will accept a 'peace deal' that is anything less than a full Israeli surrender to every Palestinian demands, so the peace process is dead.  And Israel will certainly have to deal with Iran alone.

What the pro-Israel lobby should be telling people

The various pro-Israel groups in the UK are desperate to tell the world how the Israelis are really decent people who understand the legitimate demands of the Palestinians, who want to have a two-state solution living in peace with their neighbours blah, blah. They even run courses now in how to argue with people who say Israel is an apartheid state (the essence being that you have to ream off all kinds of facts which attempt to disprove the claim).  But why should you give credibility to a lie by even responding to it?  If a stranger told you that he wanted to kill your mother because he had heard she was actually an alien from the planet Zog, would you attempt to list off to this stranger all of the many qualities of your mother that proved she was human rather than alien? I don't think so. What you should be doing is exposing the person who made the accusation as an ignorant bigoted nutjob. It is about time that the pro-Israel groups (and the Israeli government for that matter) started to tell the narrative as it is. And that is exactly how Pat Condell tells it here.

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

I have written before about how the Palestinians receive more international aid (and by a VERY long way) than any other people in the world despite being far wealthier per capita than many other countries (including almost all of Africa and several Arab countries). I have discovered a definitive - and indisputable - measure of the relative value of Muslims around the world as rated by the Muslims in the UK. Take a look at the table here sent to donors of the charity "Muslim Hands" (reg 1105056, Head Office 148 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham). It very clearly puts a financial 'value' on Muslims in some 70 countries around the world. Although almost every country listed there has more Muslims than 'Palestine', the mandatory charity donation for 'Palestine' is £795 - three times more than the next most 'valued' country Algeria. Black Muslims in African countries - far poorer and more desperate than the Palestinians, are especially lowly valued. Malawi, which actually has nearly twice as many Muslims as 'Palestine' is worth just £35, meaning that each Palestinian Muslim is worth over 44 times more.

What is especially interesting about this is that the Charity clearly has some qualms about its Palestine 'valuation' because, unlike any other country listed, it breaks 'Palestine' into three 'sub countries', namely Palestine (Hebron), Palestine (Jersusalem), and Palestine (Gaza). Despite this the three Palestines still manage to comfortably get 1st, 2nd and 4th places in the value table. And quite why the Palestinians of Jerusalem are in there at all is especially puzzling. There are only 140,000 of them yet they are valued at a whopping £285. Although the average per capita income of a Jerusalem Muslim is about 30 times that of a Pakistani, the 174 million Pakistani Muslims are only valued at £55. Taking account of population size and per capita income that means a Palestinian in Jerusalem is valued nearly two hundred thousand times more than a Pakistani Muslim.

And to think that so many anti-Israel critics in the UK damned the 1000 to 1 Schalit deal as 'proof' that Israel valued Jewish lives so much more than Muslims.

I wonder why the Muslim world values Palestinian Muslims so far above all others?

Arab lies: the elephant in the room

I've just written the following self-explanatory letter to the Times:

Libya's acting PM Mahmoud Jibril  has continued to insist that Gaddafi was 'killed in crossfire'. The Libyans are saying the same about the death of Gaddafi's son Muatassim. Yet he was filmed after his capture in perfect health smoking a cigarette. Shortly after that, videos emerged of his slaughtered body.

No sane person mourns the murderous thug Gaddafi (although the Western leader now rejoicing his demise- Cameron, Blair, Obama, the Clintons and Sarkozi- were the very ones who for 6 years prior to the revolution told us he was fully rehabilitated and that people like me were bigoted for thinking he had not changed).

But what is interesting is that the top man in the 'new' Libya is clearly seen to be telling blatant lies and even some of the main stream media is raising eyebrows about it. What nobody is allowed to say - because they would be accused of being racists - is that telling lies is what Arabs do when they speak to the West. And this is the ultimate 'elephant in the room' of Middle East politics. When Arab leaders speak (and I am not just thinking of Assad and Ahmedinejad but they are especially good examples) almost every word they say is a lie. The entire Palestinian narrative, for example, is a lie and almost every claim ever made by Palestinian leaders against Israel is a lie. Yet the western media always accepts what they say at face value. In the light of the blatant lies now told by our 'allies' in Libya, perhaps the media will in future question what Arabs, and especially Palestinians, claim?

Hypocrisy all round

Spot the difference:

Exhibit A: 80 families - whose culture demands that they do not stay in one place for long  - live illegally on rich land for 8 years paying no taxes, doing no work, and are widely accused of harassing and stealing from their neighbours.

Exhibit B: 2000 families living legally -  indeed with the full encouragement of their government - for 35 years, on previously barren land that they developed from scratch themselves, paying taxes, working - indeed building farms, factories, greenhouses and generating work and wealth for their neighbours.

Both of these communities are forcibly removed from their homes by their own government. The United Nations, Amnesty International, and every left-wing group imaginable campaigns against these forced evictions in one case only, arguing that it is a breach of human rights.

Of course Exhibit A - the eviction of Gypsy families from Dale Farm, Essex - is the community which received the international support.
Exhibit B - the Jews of Gaza in 2005 - got none. Indeed those very same groups arguing for the 'human rights' of the Gypsies were the very ones who were demanding the eviction of the Jews.

And if you want further confirmation of the lack of irony of the Left here is a quote from Minty Challis, one of the left-wing demonstrators who went to Dale Form to support the Gypsies: "The travellers' suffering was the same as that of the Palestinians in Gaza".

It would be hard to make this stuff up, and I'm surprised nobody has picked up on both the irony and hypocrisy of the situation. But just looking through today's newspapers there are plenty more examples of the same type:

• Turkey - the country which was most opposed to Israel's attacks on Hamas to stop the rockets and terrorism from Gaza is today brutally massacring the Kurds in its own territory and across the border in neighbouring Iraq following an attack by Kurdish rebels against a Turkish army base.  The same Turks who stated that Israel had no right of self-defence when its civilians were attacked every day, is now saying it will use unprecedented force against the Kurds. And whereas the whole world - including the US - was outraged by Israel's 'disproportionate' self defence, the whole world has either stayed silent about the Turks or - as in the case of the US and UK government - has actually issued statements of support for the Turks' actions.
• Spain - the most vociferous of all the European countries in demanding that Israel make concessions to Hamas (whose charter demands the killing of every Jew in the world)  - has today announced it will refuse to negototiate with the ETA organisation even though ETA has said it has now renounced violence.
• The US, Britain, and France who all fiercely condemned the targeted killing by Israel of Hamas's arch terrorist in chief Sheikh Yassin and his successor Rantisi a few years ago, are all today congratulating themselves over the death of Gaddafi - following a targetted attack by their own forces that was followed up by a public lynching by the NATO-led 'rebels'. And remember this is the same Gadaffi who the US, Britain and France told us was completely rehabilitated (until his people rebelled) and was a person we had to respect fully. 
• Another day another massacre of peacefully demonstrating civilians by the Syrian government. And as usual not a peep from all those governments in the world who immediately condemn Israel if a single Palestinian is harmed in any way even while committing a terrorist act.

The next time Israel is dragged before the UN for censure, instead of apologising it may wish to refer to some of the above.

See also this for a different spin on this story.

The Deal

Among a number of fine articles exposing problems with the Gilad Shalit deal Sultan Knish's is the best I have read on this subject.

What the deal really means is revolving door terrorism is back. Kill Israelis and you stay in prison only long enough for other terrorists to kidnap an Israeli and win their release. Those 25 year sentences mean nothing. A life sentence doesn't mean life, it means however many years it takes the Israeli government to give in to blackmail.

Elder of Ziyon has details here and here of examples of some of  the ruthless, remorseless child killers being released. And remember these terrorists will all receive a hero's welcome. 


As more details are released the deal looks even worse than first feared. For example,the Jerusalem Post reports that while Israel agreed to refrain from ever targeting any of the released terrorists, Hamas did not agree to refrain from future kidnappings.

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

I went to the first in a series of what are billed ‘Israel Advocacy’ meetings at a Jewish community centre this evening. I understand the meeting was sponsored by BICOM (who I am sending a copy of this report). Indeed the speaker Dr Noam Leshem said at the start of his presentation that he was responsible for writing much of BICOM’s advocacy material. That is deeply troubling, because what we heard from Dr Leshem would not have been out of place at a Palestine Solidarity Committee meeting. The whole point of BICOM is that it is supposed to challenge the anti-Israel narrative that dominates the main stream media. If I had wanted to hear yet another hour about Palestinian victimhood I could have turned on the BBC or Al Jazeera. And while I consider myself knowledgeable enough  to have seen through the propaganda, there were many in the audience, who came there expecting to learn how to speak up for Israel, who would have gone away actually thinking there was no point.

Dr Leshem teaches Geography at Royal Holloway College and has a PhD about the conflicting histories of the Israel/Palestine conflict. He was born in Israel, but has presumably spent most of his academic life in the USA and the UK. He is typical of many left-wing Israelis who sees Israel as being the source of all problems in the Middle East, while Arabs have nothing to answer for.

So we certainly did not get any Israel advocacy but we did get plenty of revisionist history in which he essentially presented the Palestinian narrative of it, and he claimed that the conflict could be resolved if only the Israelis were more aware of Arab sensitivities. His central thesis (and he reminded us arrogantly several times that he had researched this for six years) was that the ‘conflict’ was simply a ‘labour’ struggle in which the Jews forced out Arab labourers from working the scarce agricultural land that was available. He even argued that land bought legally by Jews from Arab owners really belonged to the other Arabs (i.e. the non-owners) who lived on that land.

He claimed that the conflict officially started with the Arab revolt in 1935 (he conveniently ignored the many previous pogroms committed by Arabs against Jews in the 1920s including the massacre of most of the Jewish population of Hebron in 1929, but in his view of the world there was no such thing as Arab terrorism). He claimed the 1935 Arab revolt was evidence that the Arabs – and not the Jews – were the first to assert a national Palestinian identify. To support his argument he actually quoted a claim by Rashid Khalidi that the Palestinian Arabs asserted their national Palestinian identity in the early nineteenth century (failing to inform the audience that Khalidi is an extreme Palestinian propagandist who funded the Gaza flotilla ship that sailed from America). Even more outrageously (and ignoring all the evidence that the British gave the Arabs free reign to murder Jews) he claimed that the British crushed the 1935 Arab revolt with such force that it wiped out the entire (Arab) Palestinian leadership as well as all their infrastucture and funding; and that it was this act by the British which enabled the Jews to establish themselves more effectively and was the reason why the Jews were able to win the War on Independence in 1948.

Leshem spoke a lot about the need to accommodate the Palestinian 'refugees', which prompted one member of the audience to raise the issue of the 800,000 Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab lands.  He  was asked specifically about why the Israeli government did not make more political capital from the Jewish 'naqba'. His response was abrupt and rude. He said something like 'that is a dead subject - there is absolutely nothing to be gained from raising it and I advise people never to bring it up as it can only make the situation worse'.

According to Noam Leshem the Arabs and not the Jews were the first to assert a Palestinian identity. So how would he explain these posters from the 1940s?

In response to a question about why he failed to mention the religious aspect of the conflict (such as Muslim intolerance of Jews) his response was that there were fanatics in every religion and that the biggest threat to Israel came from the Jewish West Bank settlers (he gave the example of his car being petrol bombed in the West Bank while on Army reserve duty).

Most worrying of all is that, if he is telling the truth about his current activities, he has the ear of Israeli and Arab politicians at the highest level and appears to be discussing with them the forthcoming UN vote.

Whoever he is advising it should certainly not be BICOM, but it is indicative of the spinelessness of British Jewry that they can use a guy like this as one of their prominent spokesman on behalf of Israel.

World Gone Mad

The madness in the world surely cannot be better summed up than today's headlines and the reporting behind them.

The big story is that thousands of Egyptian 'democrats' have stormed and partially destroyed the Israeli embassy in Cairo. All the Israeli staff managed to get our before being killed but it is unlikely that any shall ever return to Egypt. Yet, according to BBC Radio London (the only news I listened to today) the rioters are only 'demonstrating because Israel killed 5 Egyptian policemen last month' (a complete lie and totally irrelevant but so long as it enables the BBC to create the impression that riots in Cairo directed against Jews is the fault of Israel then that is OK).

And what does the world say about it? Nothing - not one single condemnation. We know that Obama has 'spoken with Netanyahu' (probably to warn him not to do anything about it). But Obama has issued a damning condemnation of ... Israel for some kids writing graffiti on a West Bank mosque in revenge for the army destroying a Jewish outpost of three houses at Migron. The US State Departments says "Israel must arrest culprits".

And the madness is completed with this headline: G8 to extend Arab Spring financing pledge to $38 billion.

So we will can all look forward to financing the increasing Islamisation of Egypt and Tunisia (a country where anti-Semitism is also about to get a whole lot worse).

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

If aliens came down to earth this week and watched the plethora of 9/11 documentaries that have been showing in the UK (and I believe also in the US), then they would believe that it was some kind of a terrible natural disaster in which the primary victims were Muslims. A brilliant analysis by Sultan Knish explains in full how the important historical lessons have been whitewashed out, primarily so as to not upset Muslim sentiment. As he says this leads to the following kind of ramifications:

The Pew polls show a steady growth in the number those who believe that American wrongdoing led to the attacks-- from a third after the attacks, to 43 percent today. Give the enemy another decade to do its work and those numbers will be in the sixties. And their game is simple enough, remove the actual history and the images of the massacres-- and replace it with an emphasis on foreign policy. Mix in news stories about Islamophobia, stir the pot a little and you're done.

It is especially interesting to compare the 9/11 documentaries with the documentaries about the Pearl Harbour attack. Whereas the level of destruction and cost of human life were very similar, the latter documentaries focus almost entirely on the Japanese attackers and their motives and strategy. For 9/11 there apparently were no attackers with motives. The attacks simply 'happened'.

But the documentaries also reflect the very different responses to the two events. If the response to Pearl Harbour had been the same as that of 9/11, the US would have declared a 'war against fighter aircraft that have the potential to attack ships' with a clear statement that 'this in no way linked to the great nation of Japan which, like Nazi Germany, is a nation of peace'. This might  have been followed by a few sorties against Japanese fighter aircraft (and, as a token to prove there was no bias against the Japanese people, some British spitfires would also have been attacked). This would have been followed by years of appeasement of Japan and Germany, plus massive funding of 'moderate' Japanese and Nazi institutions. The media would have devoted most of its time on identifying what the US had done to invite the attacks. For example, it would no doubt have focused on the US refusal to help Germany invade Britain, thus stopping the natural hegemony of Nazi control of the whole of Europe. Indeed Britain (and Singapore) would have become the focus of hatred for provoking the Nazis (Japs) and daring to protect their right to exist. By 1945 America would have been a Japanese colony, and to this day Europe would still be under Nazi rule.

Conversely, if the response to 9/11 had been similar to the actual response to Pearl Harbour then the US would have declared war on all Islamic fundamentalists and would not have stopped until Islam was totally eradicated throughout the world as a supremacist belief. The first targets would have been Iran and Saudi Arabia. The war would only have finished with a prolonged programme of 'de-Islamification' (the de-Nazification  programme for Germany took many years to work even though the people had only been indoctrinated for 10 years. Islamists have been indoctrinating Muslims for 1300 years).

Anyway, on the subject of anniversaries of terrible events, the Jersualem Post reminds us today of an event I knew nothing about (in fact, I find it shocking that this event has simply been forgotten). In 1941  the Italian Air Force launched a bombing campaign against central Tel Aviv resulting in 137 deaths and widespread damage. Although Palestine, as it then was, was under British control and Britain was at war with Italy, there was no possible military purposes whatsoever for the attack; at the time Tel Aviv had not a single military installation and no air defences at all. There were other parts of Palestine that had British military bases, but of course what Tel Aviv had was a lot Jews trying to build their city and live their lives in peace. So I cannot imagine why that, of all places, would have been specially targeted for death and destruction .....

And finally here is a reminder of what I wrote on a previous anniversay of 9/11. As each year passes the satire looks increasingly like reality.

Postscript: Elder of Ziyon reminds us of the Palestinian celebrations that followed the 9/11 attacks  You will never see these videos again in the UK. This has been officially written out of media history. Instead, the documentaries focus on the handful of Muslim victims of 9/11 or the completely fabricated notion that there was a widespread 'anti-Muslim' reaction; and in the Hollywood films about 9/11 you see scenes of Muslims and Arabs around the world stunned, crying and praying. And Elder also has an article with an eye witness account of the celebrations in Lebanon.

Postscript 2: Although Sultan Knish's analysis suggests a kind of a universal Western strategy of deliberately downplaying the horror of terrorist attacks and ignoring the attackers and their motives this is, of course, only true when the attackers are Muslims (which admittedly they are in 99% of cases). So, for example, in the Norway attacks, the media were completely obsessed in exposing the 'far right' motives of the killer and you can be sure that in years to come the many documentaries about the Norway attack will focus entirely on the killer and not (as in 9/11) on the killer's 'right-wing' victims (who actually include notable anti-Jihadists like Robert Spencer, who the media outrageously accused of inspiring the killer).

Postscript 3: Anybody who doubts that David Cameron is the most dangerously anti-Israel Prime Minister in Britain's history should look at the speech he made today to commemorate the 9/11 attacks. As reported by the Evening Standard

The Prime Minister accepted that America, Britain and other European nations had to address Muslim grievances, including solving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since we know he believes that Israeli 'intransgence' is the only reason for lack of Arab-Israeli peace, it follows that he sees Israel as a primary cause of 9/11.  As Melanie Phillips discusses today

The problem lies at the political level. While many Tory backbenchers support Israel, the government - with some very honourable exceptions -- is hostile.

So much so that a group of Tory MPs and others in the party who are well-disposed to Israel have reportedly formed an informal group to prevent David Cameron from throwing Israel under the bus altogether.

This group has become very alarmed by the government's repeated sniping against Israel, such as Cameron's calculated gesture of hostility in stepping down as patron of the JNF.