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?

Appalling anti-Israel propaganda on Sky News today

Just sent the following self-explanatory letter to Sky News:


Dear Sky News

I have just watched a news item (Sky News at 8.00pm today) on the Israel-Palestine conflict which can only be described as pure anti-Israel propaganda. I am extremely disappointed in Sky since I expect a more balanced approach. This was one of the most biased and ill-informed pieces I have seen from Sky - it would have even have embarrassed Al-Jazeera. .

The item started with the story of Hillary Clinton at a conference in Egypt pledging some $1 billion for 'Gaza reconstruction'. The item, however, then went on to investigate the 'reasons why there was little hope of resolving the conflict'. These reasons were given as:

-"illegal settlement activity by the Israelis"
- "Israeli destruction of Palestinian houses in Jerusalem" (with the inevitable interview only of 'dispossessed Palestinians')
- "likely intransigence by the next Israeli government which 'will probably shift to the right'."

In other words only Israel was an impediment to peace. No mention at all, curiously of that rather more fundamental obstacle to peace, namely that Gaza is run by the terrorist organisation Hamas which is committed by charter to the total destruction of Israel and the murder of all Jews. Moreover, Sky News seem not to be aware that, in the last few days Hamas has relaunched its relentless rocket attacks against southern Israeli towns. These have caused direct hits, for example, on schools in Ashkelon and Sderot, but apparently Sky news does not think this worth a mention even on a 24-hour news channel. Nor was there even the slightest concern raised at why billions of dollars should be poured into Gaza while the rocket attacks were continuing, or that the notion that money poured into Gaza might itself be an obstacle to peace, given that the Palestinians clearly see it as a reward for their continued rocket attacks.

The failure to report the rocket attacks on Israel is especially reprehensible given the nature of the news item. But then of course Sky, along with other news media, also failed to report on the massive barrage of rockets that Hamas launched against Israel in December that led to Israel's retaliatory offensive. No doubt that if and when Israel responds to the current unbearable unprovoked attacks against it Sky News will again be leading all its news items with Israel's 'aggression' . And no doubt the Gazans will look forward to more billions of dollars for reconstruction without anybody questioning the morality of such largesse..

Yours

Edgar Davidson