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.

The Times uses anti-Israel terrorist supporter as Israel's spokesperson

When the Turkel report into the Mavi Marmura incident cleared Israel of any wrongdoing and put the blame firmly on Turkey (which sponsored the terrorists on board who attacked the Israelis) the world either took no notice or, if they did, called it a whitewash. The usual Israel haters demanded a UN enquiry since they know that anything sponsored by the UN has a built-in anti-Israel bias. Well, the UN's own Palmer enquiry has reached almost the same conclusions as Turkel. The Palmer report also backed Israel's legal right to impose a naval blockade on Gaza.  Yet the main-stream media has managed to ignore all of that and has chosen to focus on the one, relatively small, part of the Palmer report which is critical of Israel (it said Israeli commandos used "excessive and unacceptable force"). For example, Sky News which did not spend one second covering the recent barrage of rocket attacks against Israel or the terrorist attack last week in Tel Aviv, suddenly found room on Friday evening to focus as a main item every hour exclusively on this one negative aspect of the Palmer report.  Elder of Ziyon has highlighted that this is also exactly the stance of Amnesty International.

But, by far the worst example of this is the Times on 3 September. Ignoring completely the ongoing massacres in Syria and the current massacres of Kurds being carried out by both Turkey and Iran (which in a sane world would be the focus of international anger) the Times has chosen to dedicate the entire front page of its World News section to an article by James Hider - in Turkey of course - which castigates Israel and casts Turkey as the honourable country for expelling the Israel ambassador. But it is the last paragraph of the report which is the piece de resistance and prompted me to write the following self-explanatory letter to the Times:

Dear Sirs

James Hider's full page article "Israel isolation grows as ambassador thrown out over blockade ship raid" is one of the most ignorant and biased reports ever written in the Times.

The main findings of the Palmer report, which the article is supposed to be about, were that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was legal and that Turkey had colluded with a terrorist organisation - the IHH - to breach this legal blockade. Yet the article focuses on the one, relatively small, part of the Palmer report which is critical of Israel (it said Israeli commandos used "excessive and unacceptable force"). Having failed to either present the Israeli case or quote a single Israeli source anywhere else in the article, Hider ends with the following:

The report's finding that the blockade is legitimate was rejected by Hanin Zoabi of the Israeli parliament, who called for "those who sent the army to stop the flotilla [to] be brought before international tribunals"

What Hider fails to inform his readers is that Zoabi is an Arab member of Parliament who is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and who was actually on the Mavi Mamura with the Turkish IHH terrorists - an act which rightly got her suspended from Parliament.

Such malicious and deliberately misleading reporting is unbecoming of the Times. In fact, the article seems to be nothing more than a propaganda piece for the Turkish government.  Hider would be advised to inform readers about what is really going on in Turkey at the moment. I strongly recommend he looks at the writing of a real expert such as Barry Rubin here.

Yours Edgar Davidson

It is also interesting to note that the same edition of the Times has a lead article (page 2) about the disruption of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. The article is promisingly tagged "Disruption of a concert by Israeli musicians was not legitimate protest but bigotry". However, the main argument of the article is that the concert should not have been disrupted because the IPO is not representative of the Israeli Government - it even makes the irrelevant point that it 'was founded in 1936' , i.e. before the State of Israel was born (so we can only assume that Times would support the disruptors if, for example, the members of the IPO declared themselves to be happy with the State of Israel). Moreover, the article ploughs in with the usual caveats like "The Times has criticised Israeli policies on security and the settlements" and it bizarrely reminds readers that the Times "exposed the use of white phosphorus by the Israel Defence Force despite official denials in Gaza in 2009".  Using the white phosphorus issue to demonize Israel with is something that should have been nailed long ago. For a start white phosphorus is not an illegal weapon - it is used to create smoke or illuminate a target and has been used by American and other NATO forces; Israel did not deny its use in Gaza. So the Times is, as usual talking rubbish. But it turns out that only today the claims that had been made by Hamas (and believed by the West) that white phosphorus had caused injuries in Gaza have been proved false in the latest wikileaks material.

Israel being pounded to the delight of the Palestinians - but it's all her fault

The rocket barrage against Southern Israel continues relentlessly - another 15 rockets today causing widespread damage and also injuring a 9 month old child. Elder of Ziyon reports on how the Palestinians are rejoicing in the terror they are causing. And Israel is afraid to hit back not just because of 'world opinion' but now also for fear of upsetting the Egyptians. Yet look at what the top 'World News' headline is at this very moment on Google News:

The Palestinians have now manipulated the western media to the extent that they simply cannot lose. No amount of rockets or terrorism they commit will even be reported any more, while even if Israel, does not respond (or restricts itself as it has done the last week to targeting only terrorists in the act of firing rockets) the media will say they are causing the problems.

The time has surely come for Israel to defend its citizens once and for all. Forget 'world opinion' which will damn Israel whether it acts or does not.

Dealing with anti-semitic hatred

A powerful piece by David Keyes at Israel Hayom highlights the inevitable consequences of Israel's decision to allow Hamas to thrive on its doorstep. Nothing comparable would be allowed by any other nation on earth.

FresnoZionism provides the details of how it was Egyptian soldiers who were guilty of murdering Israeli Officer Pascal Avrahami last week, providing further proof of how logic was turned upside down by Israel's bizarre apology. As he says:

Egypt should apologize and compensate Israel for the death of Avrahami. Of course this won’t happen. The rules in the Middle East say that Israel is always wrong, that Arabs are allowed to kill Jews with impunity, and that Israel should apologize for existing.

Barry Rubin talks about the anti-semitic conspiracy theories that dominate the Arab narrative.  He writes:

Then yesterday a correspondent wrote me asking if what an Arab professor told him was true: that most Arab leaders, including Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and also Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were secretly Jewish.

Whenever a large number of Muslims feel animosity to any particular leader there is inevitably a widely-held conspiracy theory that the leader is either Jewish or funded by Israel. This is not restricted to Arabs in the Middle East. I know many supposedly intelligent Asian Muslims in the UK who, for example, are now convinced that Ghadaffi is a Jew. Three years ago I was shocked to see a documentary in which every student in the top private school in Kabul believed that George Bush was evil because he was a Jew. Yet I have since discovered that many Muslims in the UK are also convinced that Bush is a Jew.

Multicultural London 2011

Richard Millett reports on the demonstration that took place in London yesterday. It is clear that in 'multicultural' Britain the sensitivities of everyone are considered except those of Jews.

The casual anti-Israel, anti-semitism tsunami continues

While Israel is being bombarded by terrorists,  the casual world-wide anti-Israel tsunami continues, from boycotting Jewish owned chocolate shops in Australia to demonstrations in London against any attempt by Israel to stop terrorism. And you certainly cannot avoid it even if you stick to show business news. The Sunday Telegraph Magazine (that's the same Telegraph today which could not find space in its 500-odd pages for any mention of the unprecedented attacks against Israel) has a feature today on the actress Kirsten Dunst and look what is in the very first paragraph:

"The actress's latest film, Melancholia, was a favourite to win the Palme d'Or until its director Lars von Trier, joked during a press conference that he 'understood Hitler', adding, 'Israel is a pain in the ass'.

This actually happened in May (although I never read anything about it). After some google searching I discovered that von Trier was ejected from the festival, but only on account of his Hitler comments, not the fact that he had demonized an entire country.  And Dunst provides the following 'understanding' of von Trier:

"It came from a very dark and twisted sense of humour,..., obviously it is not something he actually believed".

In fact von Trier has stood by his 'Israel is a pain in the ass' comment but has half-heartedly apologised for describing himself as a Nazi. So that's all right then. And of course, the incident did not stop the Festival glorifying von Trier anyway - his film still picked up awards (including best actress for Dunst).

On a brighter note: there are a couple of showbiz people prepared to stand up for Israel (and have, of course, been accused of being loony right-wingers for doing so) in its time of need. Take a bow Glenn Beck and John Voight.

The media (and the Israeli government) have gone mad

When I reported Thursday that the media was adopting its usual anti-Israel bias in the reporting of the unprecedented terrorist attacks and subsequent rocket barrage (over 150 attacks on Southern Israel in the last 3 days  - live coverage of the continuing rocket bombardment in Israeli is here) even I did not expect the extent of how bad things would be. Take a look at today's Telegraph - the only serious newspaper in the UK that is supposedly 'sympathetic' to Israel (in fact, like the Sun, it has not been 'sympathetic' to Israel for several years now). Despite the fact that terrorists under the control of Iran are mounting an unprovoked war against Israel, the ONLY mention of Israel in its massive Sunday edition is a brief paragraph stating that Israel's 'killing of Egyptian security guards' has led to the Egyptian ambassador from Israel being recalled. No mention of the terrorist attacks; no mention of the death in Beersheba yesterday, no mention of the school destroyed or the fact that 20% of the entire Israeli population are in shelters unable to move. Nor does any of this information appear anywhere else in any Western media outlet at all (although, of course you will find plenty of mentions of Israel 'pounding Gaza', even though they are not this time - more of that below).

The incident with the Egyptians is well covered here and here. What is especially bizarre about this is that Ehud Barak - the worst politician in Israel's history - actually apologized to Egypt. Remember Barak is also the person who, before looking at the evidence, apologized for the  'killing' of Muhammed Al-dura in September 2000; although this was subsequently proved to be a hoax it directly led to a thousand Israeli civilians being murdered in the subsequent intifada and the entire Muslim world has been indoctrinated about the Al-dura myth. Barak's motives this time were the same as in 2000. He feels that apologising for something the Israelis were not responsible for is worth doing if it can 'help calm things down'.

But the ineptitude of the Israeli government extends beyond Barak. Now that it is clear the war launched last Thursday is being directed by Iran and its proxies Islamic Jihad (as opposed to Hamas) the government has decided to do nothing (presumably for fear of offending President Obama), and has abdicated from its responsibility to defend its citizens from attack. Even worse, it is actually relying on the Egyptian military to do its job for it in the Sinai now -  a move that is monumentally stupid on two accounts: 1) The Egyptians will not halt the terrorists, but will actually provide direct support to them and 2) It allows an Egyptian military presence in the Sinai, even though this breaches the conditions of the 1979 peace agreement, and hence ensures that within a short number of years Israel will be facing a Sinai war with Egypt.

These are very worrying times indeed, all the more so for the fact that Barak is in charge of Israel's defence.

Multiple terrorist attacks against Israel produce the usual media response

The multiple terrorist attacks against Southern Israel today have resulted so far in at least 8 dead Israelis, including an entire family in a car hit by an anti-tank missile. Although this is an enormous story, both because of the scale of the attacks and the fact that the terrorists came through (the now terrorist supporting) Egypt as well as Gaza, it is already clear that the Western media will be following the standard guidelines for reporting it (if they do at at all). So, for example, at 3.00pm (4 hours after the story broke) it did not appear at all on the BBC News website homepage, which listed the following items:

• A-level passes rise for 29th year
• Man arrested over phone hacking
• Man Utd to sell off stake in club
• Stock markets see further falls
• Funerals due for riot death men
• Libya rebels 'take' key refinery

Nor did the the story feature at all at that stage in Google News 'top stories'. Most revealing (albeit no longer surprising) is the fact that Haaretz (the idiotic left-wing Israel newspaper) was trying to convince readers in its first reports of the attacks (which it has now removed) that these were not terrorist attacks at all.

But at 5.45pm when Israel responded by killing the leader of the group in Gaza who  organized today's attacks, guess what news headline suddenly appeared on the BBC news home page? "Israel pounds Gaza after attacks". And Google news now had the headline (via the Guardian) "Israel launches Gaza air strikes in retaliation for Eilat attacks".

And of course, in stark contrast to the coverage of the Norway attack last month, you will certainly not be seeing in any of tomorrow's newspapers the names, let alone the life stories, of the Israeli victims.  Nor will there be either widespread condemnation of the perpetrators or of the Islamic indoctrination of anti-Semitic hatred which inspired the attacks. But no doubt there will be plenty of voices condemning Israel for daring to defend itself.

19 August update: The death toll is up to 9 from yesterday's attacks and the whole of Southern Israel is under rocket bombardment at the moment - 10 injured, for example, by rockets reaching as far north as Ashdod. Yet, true to form, the entire Western media is totally ignoring these acts of war. Not a word about yesterday's - or today's attacks - on ANY of the major TV and radio news channels this morning (I checked BBC, Sky News, LBC).

Demonsrations

Been in Israel for the past couple of weeks (hence lack of postings). Have been mingling with the demonstrators here (will post pictures etc when I return) and even joined the very big march on Saturday night (despite my severe misgivings about how this has all been controlled by hardline leftists). Very interesting to compare the peaceful nature of the demonsrators here (many of whom have genuine social grievances) with the violence now in the UK.

Norwegian hypocrisy

My sympathy at the terrible loss of life in Norway does not extend to their left-wing politicians who dominate the country's political narrative. I have just heard one of their senior government members on the BBC news claim that, with the 'possible exception of the Beslan massacre', the Norway attack was 'unprecedented because it was the only terrorist attack in history in which children were specifically targeted'.

Of course, according to most Norwegians, when Palestinians massacre Israeli children in their dozens in schools (as they did in Maalot in 1974) in their hundreds on buses (as they did during the second intifada and numerous previous occasions) at a disco, and even when they decapitate Israeli toddlers and babies as they did this year in Itamar, none of that counts as terrorism. The Norwegians are usually the first to 'explain' that the attackers had 'justified grievances'.

And let's also demolish the myth that our media and the Norwegians have been pushing, that the victims at Utoya Island were schoolchildren at a summer holiday camp. They were, in fact, mostly young adults who were all part of the Young Socialist League at a political indoctrination event. None of these people deserved to be harmed in any way, but take a look at the photo above (courtesy of the Blaze, where you can read the full story) to see the kind of 'harmless' activity they were involved with the very day before the attack. The Israeli kids who were killed in real schools, buses and discos, certainly weren't calling for the boycott and even destruction of a democratic state that they knew nothing about.

In a Europe where countries fight with themselves to be seen as the leaders in anti-Israel activism Norway reigns supreme by a long distance. And, for all its supposed tolerance of minorities, it also leads the way in classic anti-Semitism.

My thoughts go out to the Norwegian victims and their families and friends. But the Norwegian politicians can take a running jump (even more so when you see this from the Norwegian Ambassador to Israel).

NOTE: Have a look at the above story presented with a slightly different twist on my "Free Palestine Now" blog. Thanks to some timely comments on left-wing blogs my postings there have received some incredible hit statistics.