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There was a story in the Jerusalem Post recently about Israeli President Shimon Peres’s visit with the parents of Ehud and Ruth Fogel – the couple who, together with three of their children (Yoav, Elad and Hadas) was brutally murdered by terrorists in Itamar.
The words of Haim Fogel, the father of Ehud, to the Israeli President simply must be noted.
The Jerusalem Post reported the following:
“Haim Fogel, the father of the slain Ehud, said that his children had been educated with values such as love for Torah, statehood and respect for the other, but it was impossible not to notice the unfettered hatred of the other side. Politics aside, with the focus purely on education, said Fogel, children are taught hatred at school, and the upshot of that is what happened to his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.”
The story then quoted Haim, who said – amidst his grief and unimaginable anguish over the knowledge that he’ll never see his son, daughter in law, and three grandchildren again – the following:
“The murderers killed our children in the most bestial fashion.
Before concluding:
But they are not beasts. They are human beings who were taught to hate.”
I have been to Itamar, saw the haunting notice which remains on the front door of the Fogel family residence joyously announcing the birth of baby Hadas, I’ve seen the horrific crime scene photos taken after the attack, and have listened to the IDF paramedic recall in excruciating detail what he witnessed upon entering the home, and still can’t cease meditating upon the viciousness and hatred of those who would commit such an unspeakable crime against innocents.
Yet, I’m also in awe at the profound decency of a man who has every reason to succumb to the desire for revenge, and the need to dehumanize the perpetrators of this ghastly crime against those who he loved, yet – through strength, faith, and character which is almost impossible to comprehend – somehow finds the spiritual energy to not only resist this temptation, but to emphatically stress the humanity of even such morally compromised souls.
I read and re-read the words Haim uttered to the President of our nation, attesting to his courageous moral restraint, and am moved beyond words.
Fogel Family Funeral
Here is a newly translated interview with Capt Avichay Adraee on Al-Jazeera which took place during or right before Cast Lead. Unfortunately given the current situation, practically all of his points are just as relevant today as they were a few years ago.
The renowned Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini of Ma’ariv has an interesting post on his blog which can be filed under the category ‘post script to the ‘Palestine Papers’. It speaks for itself, so allow me merely to translate (from the original Hebrew) the relevant portions.
“The terror attack in Jerusalem, like the firing of the rockets from the (Gaza) Strip, returns us to the firm ground of reality. This is a reality in which there are growing signs of a compromise between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The events of the past two weeks clarify that the Palestinian front is returning to its old defining characteristics.”
“For a moment we lived with the illusion that something was happening, and maybe in the other direction. As recently as this last January, Al Jazeera and The Guardian came out with loud pronouncements concerning the most meaningful step in Palestinian history: the relinquishment of the right of return. The change, I then wrote, was most welcome. Except that this was a short-lived illusion. This is not merely due to the reality of rockets upon Ashkelon and Ashdod, the massacre in Itamar and the terror attack in Jerusalem. The story runs deeper.”
“New research by an American Christian organisation (not evangelist) examined all the 1,700 leaked papers; something which your faithful servant, despite his will, did not manage to do. The conclusion of the research is the exact opposite; that not only did the Palestinians not agree to any compromise on this subject [right of return], but they fooled everyone. False declarations of a moderateness, which I wish were true, are still far away. And so all those who found the Palestinian compromise troubling, from the Guardian to Gideon Levy (who claimed that the papers proved that the Palestinians had ‘sold their soul to the devil’), from Hamas to Al Jazeera – can all calm down. The Palestinians did not really give up.”
“But maybe yes? Surely it cannot be that the Guardian would publish a giant headline declaring that “Palestinians agreed that only 10,000 refugees could return to Israel”. This is, after all, a serious newspaper. In the same article, on the newspaper’s website, there appears a link to the Palestinian document which supposedly indicates the compromise. Just like the links on this blog. Except that following the link does not lead to any document which indicates Palestinian compromise. Nothing. I thought this must be a mistake. Mistakes are, after all, human. On this blog too there were broken links, readers complained, and the mistakes were mended. Except that it has been months since the publication. One could assume that someone pointed out to the Guardian that something was wrong. Surely I cannot be the first.”
“Caution prompted me to approach Ian Black, the Guardian’s Middle East editor. Not only does his name appear upon the specific article, but also on many reprimands of Israel in wake of the leaked papers. Even if he is not pro-Israel, Black is considered a serious journalist. He is far removed from the venomous hostility of Robert Fisk of the Independent or Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz. I asked Black: where does your amazing headline about only 10,000 refugees come from? I sent him the research which claims otherwise. I hoped that he would provide me with some proof. After all, if the information published is correct, we are talking about a historic turn-around. Black chose not to respond. I went to the trouble of looking myself and well, there is a document in which Erekat claims that the Palestinians agreed to 15,000 refugees per year, over a period of ten years, to return to Israel. There are two problems with this document. Firstly, the document is directed at the Europeans, when Netanyahu was already in power, in order to present the Palestinians as moderates. And secondly, the document contains a land mine which deals with a renewable right. And thirdly, in all the documents, at the relevant time during the negotiations, it is made clear in no uncertain terms that the right of return is a personal right ‘which is not subject to any negotiation whatsoever’, and in other documents the Palestinians even try to define the ‘absorption ability’ of Israel in a scientific manner, reaching a number of 1,016,511 refugees. Some display of moderateness.”
“The central character in the story is Erekat. He tricks everyone and becomes, wondrously, the moderate man. And so the Guardian, in another headline, which supposedly proves the previous one, announces another dramatic about-turn. Once more I approached the source and once more it turned out not to have been. ‘Palestinian negotiators accept Jewish state, papers reveal’. So where does the headline come from? Well, Erekat told Livni exactly what Abu Mazen claimed when he wanted to explain why he would not accept the demand: ‘define yourselves as you wish’. Between this play on words and the recognition of Israel as the Jewish State – the road is very long. But we can rely on the Guardian. It is obliged to present the Palestinians as moderates in order to be able to present the Israelis as intransigent.”
….
“So how and why was it possible to invent for us one of the biggest scams of the diplomatic [peace] process? Well, Al Jazeera’s aim was to embarrass the Palestinian Authority. At the Guardian the aim was to embarrass Israel. All in order to claim that the ‘papers reveal the depth of Palestinian concessions which were rejected by Israel’. The scam worked, and not only Ha’aretz joined in; I too was persuaded that we were talking about signs of change.”
“A Palestinian about-face, if it really did happen, would be worthy of all praise. There is no about-face and it is a pity that there isn’t. There is a scam and that is worthy of exposure.”
Ben Dror Yemini is an experienced political journalist and by no means a naive man, but like a considerable number of Israelis he is perhaps guilty of doing what many of us, particularly on the Left of the political map, have been doing to some extent for several years – projecting our own hopes and aspirations onto others and grasping at every straw which seems to hint that a new dawn is just around the corner. That is perhaps natural after so many years of conflict, so much bloodshed and despair, but it does not absolve us from the responsibility of proper examination of the catalysts of our raised hopes, or their source.
As for his realisation of the extent of the role played by the Guardian in the ‘Palestine Papers’ affair, and the motivations behind that – well, better late than never.
To paraphrase the British television advert for a well-known chain of opticians: ‘should have gone to CiF Watch’.
Here’s Melanie Phillips‘ interview yesterday on Israeli television, where you’ll see her doing what she does best: Speaking truthfully, fearlessly and delegitimizing the delegitimizers.
One of Israel’s diplomatic challenges in arguing their position vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is that it is difficult to explain their requirements in a pithy sound bite.
While Palestinians can simply say that “all they want” is an end to “the Occupation”, explaining the myriad of complex strategic and security implications of further territorial withdrawal simply does not lend itself to a simple slogan or set of catch phrases.
While I’ve repeatedly noted that the common assumption, that withdrawing from more land (in Judea and Samaria) would inevitably bring peace, has been contradicted by the subsequent political results, and strategic consequences, of Israel’s withdrawals from South Lebanon in 2000, and from Gaza in 2005, its vital to clearly stress the dangers Israel would face in the aftermath of a withdrawal which didn’t take this recent history (where terrorists movements, Hezbollah and Hamas respectively, filled the vacuum created by the IDF’s absence) into account.
The following video was produced by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and serves as brief yet clear primer on Israel’s vital security issues in the context of negotiations with the Palestinians over a final peace agreement.
This is cross posted at the blog, Anne’s Opinions
For a change, the Guardian has published a story which, although it is about the Middle East, does not have an Israel angle to it at all. And yet it shows up British politics at its perfidious worst. The item, on British MPs’ 107 paid visits to Middle Eastern dictatorships, was hidden away in the Guardian’s World news page, but curiously filed under the non-world title “Politics”.
It is extraordinarily revealing, and goes a long way towards explaining Britain’s hostility to Israel. Conversely it could be said that because of Britain’s hostility to Israel, Britain’s politicians are so cosy with Middle Eastern Arab dictators.
Either way it shows up British politicians in a most unflattering and unsavory light. It also shows how feeble is the famed “Israel lobby” and “Jewish influence” in Whitehall.
The most shameful of the politicians is Clare Short:
“Former international development secretary Clare Short accepted £1,580 worth of flights, hotel accommodation, food and travel expenses from al-Manar television in Lebanon in 2008. Al-Manar is described by the US government as “the media arm of the Hezbollah terrorist network“, and was classed as a specially designated terrorist entity by the US in 2006.
Short said her trip had been registered with Commons authorities and that the visit allowed her to see how reconstruction in southern Lebanon was proceeding after the country’s conflict with Israel in 2006.
“I did an interview for the TV programme and was free to express my views without censure, and I also met with senior Hezbollah officials,” she said. “I do not accept US advice on who I should speak to. UK diplomats also talk with Hezbollah. I have also met with Hamas leaders on a number of occasions as well as Fatah leaders, and the Syrian and Lebanese governments.”
On the basis of these meetings of hers with known and recognized terrorists, and defying British foreign policy, Short should have been blacklisted and even thrown out of Parliament, rather than letting her stay until her resignation in 2010. She is a disgrace to any democracy. Her attitude and statements about Israel explain her disgraceful behaviour.
Note the list of countries visited:
Trips by country
Qatar 32
Bahrain 18
Oman 16
Egypt 12
UAE 10
Saudi 8
Kuwait 4
Jordan 3
Tunisia 2
Yemen 1
Syria 1
And note which little democratic country is not mentioned at all.
Like this:
At a recent session of the UN Human Rights Council a UN-accredited NGO with terrorist affiliations (IHH) distributed a publication containing the following picture:
This image (published during the flotilla incident in June) – of a demonic Israel, with the swastika substituted for the star of David on the Israeli flag, as an octopus strangling freedom-loving innocents – was created by the notorious anti-Semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff.
Latuff is an extreme left-wing political activist who won second place in the notorious Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Competition, and is one of the more prolific anti-Israel cartoonists on the web, with a staggering amount of work dedicated to advancing explicitly anti-Semitic political imagery - and frequently illustrates comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.
(Also, of note, a regular blogger at the site, Mondoweiss, posted, in early June, the very same “Octopus” cartoon shown above.)
As we noted previously, Latuff’s work has been posted on various radical left websites and blogs, as well as several terrorist affiliated websites such as ‘The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance’ (JAMI) magazine.
So Latuff’s hateful depictions have been employed by quite a wide range of extremists: the anti-Zionist Jewish left, radical Islamist NGOs, and even publications of Islamist terrorist movements.
Latuff is also the same “artist” published by the Guardian during their “Palestine Papers” series to depict Mahmoud Abbas as a gun-toting sinister-looking Orthodox Jewish “settler”, to advance the view that Abbas was a traitor for allegedly showing a willingness to make concessions with Israel – a cartoon which reinforced the abhorrent pejorative depictions of Orthodox Jews used frequently in anti-Semitic caricatures throughout the Middle East.
Here’s Latuff’s Tweet of the cartoon:
The Guardian sure keeps very interesting company.
Aluf Benn is angry with Israel.
Benn is angry with his country over their myopia and narrow self-interest in responding to the Arab revolutions.
How angry is he with his fellow countrymen? Well, he’s at least angry enough at Israel to give him a platform at the Guardian to express his disgust.
Indeed, as Ha’aretz circulation continues to dwindle to minuscule numbers – indicating that an increasing number of Israelis no longer take their fanciful pseudo-intellectual musings seriously – we likely can expect their enfeebled political analyses to appear more often on the pages of ‘Comment is Free’.
In “Israel is blind to the Arab revolution“, CiF March 23, Aluf Benn, the Ha’aretz editor-at-large, displays an impressive ability to avoid allowing stubborn, undeniable political realities to get in the way of his puerile idealism.
Benn lectures Israeli leaders who don’t possess his sophisticated political imagination and “can not see beyond the recent escalation across the Gaza border“, and have not “reached out to the [Arab] revolutionaries, celebrating their achievement or suggesting we need to know them better…”.
Benn then diagnoses our political myopia:
“there’s a deeper motive underlying the Israeli attitude. They see their country as a western bastion, a modern democracy that is unfortunately surrounded by less developed nations.”
Is he implying that Israel’s political exceptionalism in the region is even debatable?
Ben then digs deeper at the roots of Israeli ethnocentrism:
“Beyond eating hummus in local Arab restaurants, the wider Middle Eastern culture is largely shunned by Israeli Jewish society….Israelis are so arrogant and ignorant about their vicinity that whenever we make comparisons, the benchmarks are always the US, western Europe…never Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority or even Dubai.
Then:
“This attitude leads to a policy of self-isolation from neighbouring societies.”
To argue that its Israel which isolates itself from the Arab world, and not the other way around, is a simply staggering inversion – one which, no doubt, plays well in the Shenkin St. cafes in Tel Aviv he likely frequents with Mya Guarnieri and Rachel Shabi.
There are, actually, quite a few very real reasons for Israel’s isolation in the region.
In addition to the toxic anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist incitement which dominates public discourse in the region, the Arab League still maintains a boycott of Israeli goods. While the stringency of the boycott varies according to each Arab nation, this economic warfare, which was initiated in 1945, before Israel was a state, would seem, at the very least, inconsistent with Israel’s integration into the Middle East.
Even more unneighborly, however, is the refusal by many Arab states to allow entrance to anyone who uses an Israeli passport or who has any Israeli stamp in their foreign passport.
The “neighboring” countries who, under most circumstances, don’t accept my Israeli passport include: Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Djibouti, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
So, while most Israelis would of course love to have a better relationship with its Arab neighbors, and of course hope that the political upheavals currently taking place in the region will result in a move toward Israeli-style liberal democracy, wishing for something doesn’t make it so, and many quite understandably (given the history of the region) fear the possibility that secular Arab tyrannies may be replaced by regimes influenced or dominated by Islamist movements which are hostile to Israel’s very existence.
No, Mr. Benn, it isn’t cynical to be less than enthusiastic about the potential for this “Arab Spring” to devolve into greater instability and to foment even darker political pathologies.
Its called political sobriety.
H/T Boker Tov
Rocket fire by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza continue to pound Israeli communities. By Thursday afternoon, at least 11 rockets and mortars had landed in southern Israel, the army said, two of them ploughing into Ashdod, Israel’s fifth largest city with a population of more than 200,000. For the month, some 95 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza.
Here’s a photo you’ll never see gracing the Israel section of the Guardian.
First graders in Ashkelon during rocket drill
This essay was written by Hadar Sela, and published in The Propagandist
’Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.
(Alexander Pope, Epistles to Several Persons, 1734)
What do the convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti (currently serving five life sentences), the suicide bomber who murdered nine people and wounded over 20 others at Tsrifin in 2003, the founder of the Hamas military wing Yahya (‘the engineer’) Ayash and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement have in common?
All of the above terrorists – and several more – studied at Birzeit University near Ramallah which has been under the control of the Palestinian National Authority since the mid 1990s according to the Oslo Accords.
Birzeit is notorious for its extremism and the fact that in elections for its student council, rival terror factions compete for the student vote.
“A third example of a Palestinian university where there has been major crime incitement is Birzeit University near Ramallah. At the end of 2003, elections were held for the student government council. The campaign featured models of exploding Israeli buses. In the debate, the Hamas candidate asked the Fatah candidate: “Hamas activists in this university killed 135 Zionists. How many did Fatah activists from Bir Zeit kill?” Needless to say, the “Zionists” are largely Israeli civilians”
As an American student at Birzeit noted in 2009, little has changed on that front since the end of the second Intifada.
“Today was the culmination of election season at Birzeit University, for the university’s student council. Let me first start by explaining a bit about the student council. Elections here are nothing like student government in the U.S., as students take them incredibly serious. Technically, the student council and the student unions (parties) are supposed to be about academics and the university and not about politics, but in reality they are all about politics. Each student union is directly linked to a greater political party in Palestine, for example the Islamic Bloc student union is basically Hamas, while “shabeeba” are Fatah.”
In fact, with elections – both national and local – in wider Palestinian society being something of a rarity, the annual student elections at Birzeit are often considered to be a way of testing the pulse of Palestinian political sentiment. In 2010, Hamas boycotted the student elections there, very much in the manner which it refuses to engage in the democratic process in wider society.
“This year, the Islamist bloc (an alliance between Hamas and Islamic Jihad) boycotted the March 31 elections to protest more than 70 of their members being imprisoned by the PA, a claim confirmed by independent observers. Voter turnout dropped to 57 percent, compared to 84 percent last year, when Islamists participated. In addition, some 12 percent of student voters cast void or blank ballots. The Fatah youth bloc won 31 seats in the 2010 student council elections, a leftist coalition took another 16 seats, and the Palestinian National Initiative won 3 seats, whereas in 2009 Fatah youth won 24 seats, the Islamist bloc 22 seats, the Popular Front 4 seats, and the People’s Party 1 seat. It is significant that, even though Fatah won more seats in 2010, the actual number of votes for Fatah dropped by 13 percent, even with the boycott by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are of course both proscribed terror organizations, but the fact that they run in student elections and openly operate in Birzeit University does not appear to be of concern to the Charity Commission for England and Wales, which granted charitable status to the ‘Friends of Birzeit’ association based in London. Neither does it appear to worry the chancellors of British universities such as Edinburgh and Stirling whose student associations twinned with that of Birzeit.
Read the rest of the essay, here.
Mary Jean Gardner
A British woman killed in the terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday was named as Mary Jean Gardner, who was originally from Orkney, Scotland.
She died in an ambulance on her way to the hospital.
Ms Gardner, an evangelical Christian, leaves behind her parents, who live in Orkney.
She had spent much of her life living in Togo, west Africa, where she worked as a Bible Translator. She was in Israel for six months studying Hebrew in order to go back to Togo to translate the Hebrew Bible.
Harriet Sherwood is back online to give us the benefit of her “wisdom” on the terror attack in Jerusalem.
The article is a mixture of statements of the obvious – I give you,
“… Its impact will be felt far beyond the people injured in the blast and those who witnessed the explosion….”
Well, yes…
As well as (curiously enough, given that it’s Harriet writing), a glimmer of understanding of why the IDF was engaged in acting against Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza.
She even acknowledges that Hamas was responsible for the firing of the 50 or so mortar shells into Israel (although she couches it in somewhat equivocal terms).
She goes on to refer to the pressure on Hamas to do something for the armed struggle in order to satisfy the Palestinian people, (and here, totally unwittingly, she alludes to the fantasy ideology which has driven much of Hamas’ mad and fruitless acting out, which I have discussed in-depth elsewhere on CiF Watch).
So far so mediocre and hardly her usual offensive self, but let us not forget that she writes for the Guardian and sure enough later in the article out it comes:
“…. It is far too early to say what Wednesday’s bus blast heralds. But, at the very least, it is bound to reinforce Netanyahu’s belief that Israel has “no partner for peace”, a phrase that brings bitter laughter from observers who say Israel shows little sign of wanting to make peace…. “
Pardon me?
Is Harriet seriously trying to argue that Netanyahu is WRONG to believe that Israel has no partner for peace in the PA? Dear Harriet, permit me to offer a little lesson in reality testing since you and your colleagues at the Guardian seem, (how shall I say?) somewhat deficient in this area:
You yourself admitted that there was a terrorist act in Jerusalem (OK you didn’t actually call it a “terrorist” act, unlike William Hague, the British Foreign Minister who condemned it in those terms, but you compared it to the terror attacks during the second intifada)
You then, quite correctly, named Hamas as the main culprits in the shelling of southern Israel. So far so good but hang on in, because this is where it may get difficult for you to understand:
True, Abbas condemned the massacre at Itamar, but on the day after that massacre he dedicated a town square to the memory of a suicide murderer!
Is this the action of a man who (a) tells the truth or (b) says only what he thinks his audience want to hear, and on the strength of that (c) can be trusted to mean what he says and (d) is therefore a reliable partner for peace? The man is a proven liar.
In light of the foregoing, how on earth can the Israeli government possibly believe that the PA means to make a lasting peace with Israel? How can Abbas be trusted as a partner for peace, whether in quotes or not, or whether it evokes “bitter laughter” or not from observers? It seems more and more likely that the bombers in the latest atrocity came from the West Bank, and if so they were very probably cranked up by his public adulation of terrorism!
Now, stay with me Harriet, because there’s more which underlines the nonsensical nature of what lies beneath your statement above:
Let’s go back to the Jerusalem bombing and more particularly to the Palestinian reaction to it.
So far as I am aware there have been no street celebrations or handing out candy as there was in Ramallah after the Fogel family were murdered, but Elder of Ziyon’s blog tells us the following, which ought to reinforce the belief that Israel actually has no partner for peace and which ought to convince even you:
Elder quotes from the Palestine Times which is a Hamas mouthpiece, but no matter:
…. Despite condemnation by the Fatah leadership, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and described that operation as “terrorist”, there was joy in the street despite the pain experienced in the cities of the West Bank.
Upon hearing the news of a bus bombing in Jerusalem, citizens hurried to the coffee shops to follow-up on television news channels and radio stations to track the latest developments.
Abu Mohammed from Nablus, sitting in a café, said: “By God, it’s about time for such operations, which warms our hearts and the hearts of all who [suffer] from the oppression of the occupier recently.” ……
There are those who expressed their joy of such events. Samira from Ramallah: “When I saw the breaking news on one of the satellite TV news and there was an explosion on Jerusalem, the joy made my heart stop.”
A young man recalled happy memories of Tulkarm for operations similar to what happened today…
Others Palestinian citizens went into social networking sites like Facebook and forums on the World Wide Web, to express their joy and the news firsthand….” (emphases added)
So, what do we have, Harriet?
Abbas, a confirmed liar, who condemns barbarism out of one side of his mouth whilst out of the other he praises the perpetrators of such barbarism, and also the ordinary people of the West Bank, whose opinions are, we are meant to believe, representative of the majority and who feel joy and warmth in their hearts when Israeli Jews are killed and injured.
However, you may be able to redeem yourself, Harriet.
To do so you must write an intelligent, thoughtful and analytical article, based on fact and in objective reality about why you think Netanyahu is wrong to believe that Israel has no partner for peace in the West Bank, and supply us with evidence for your conclusions rather than your own half-baked opinions.
Then, who knows, you will be entitled to call yourself journalist. Though, you may subsequently be sacked from the Guardian.
It looks like the anti-Israel blogosphere in the UK that the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ has dominated for many years is about to get a new competitor.
Arianna Huffington, the multi-millionaire who recently sold the Huffington Post – which garners over 25 million unique visitors a month and is listed by Technorati as the most popular political blog in the U.S. - to AOL for $315 million, is about to launch a UK edition of her far left behemoth.
For those unfamiliar with the Huffington Post, which I’ve been referring to as the American Guardian for some time now – due to its egregiously anti-Israel political orientation, and tolerance of anti-Semitism beneath the line - I’d suggest visiting our friends at Huffington Post Monitor and Huff-Watch.
Also see the report by CAMERA, “Has the Huffington Post become a magnet for Israel haters?“
Finally, here are a couple of Huffington Post classics.
Comparing the IHH sponsored Mavi Marmara to the 1947 ship of Holocaust refugees, The Exodus:
And, here’s the Huffington Post’s legitimization of the Israeli Organ Harvesting libel:
Like this:
A guest post by Elan Miller
First came the explosion. Then, more tellingly, the wail of the sirens. In the intervening gap of just under a minute, I stopped in my tracks, as did everyone else around. In perfect silence we listened together, hoping beyond hope that we’d heard something else.
Although I’ve been living in Israel for five and a half years, have served in the army as a combat soldier, and even been in Jerusalem at the time of other terror attacks, I still found myself shocked and indescribably raw yesterday. I had just left home to go to university (via a local synagogue so that I could pray Mincha), but as I was nearing the top of my road, I heard a distant, yet clearly very loud, explosion.
The other people around stopped in their tracks and peered down the road in the direction of the noise. Some of them immediately identified its source. “Pigu’a,” (Hebrew for terrorist attack/bombing) one or two people said after but a few seconds. Unfortunately, they were correct; it was indeed a terror attack. It’s horrible to realise that people here are so used to terrorism that they are able to so easily discern the noise made by a bomb.
Naively, I tried to convince myself that this was just another loud noise – the type that can be heard in any industrial city around the world. Someone else pointed out a crane a block away that was raising something in the air.
“I think maybe he dropped something there – that’s what the noise was.”
But the claim was contradicted seconds later by the distant wail of ambulances screeching into action. And as they got louder and ever more insistent, all doubt was removed from our minds.
I felt myself slip at once into my own world of silent depression, and simultaneously was overcome with anger and fear. My head felt heavy with the awful realisation that some unfortunate soul had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. I am sure that everyone else present felt the same way. People all around me were shocked. Although we were roughly half a kilometre away from the incident itself, everyone stopped talking. The street was eerily quiet. We only resumed to discuss in hushed tones what might have occurred.
I’m not the type to cry. I didn’t yesterday. But I feel, even now, ready to. My eyes didn’t behold the explosion or even see any smoke, but I was close enough to feel a sensation akin to taking a punch to the solar plexus. It’s horrible to think of it as such, but I have now passed through another rite of passage in Israeli life. I have now had to text my parents, and other concerned family members, to reassure them that I am alive.
Isn’t that an awful, awful reality to live in?
I continued on my way to the synagogue. The news was semi-confirmed when a concerned friend texted to ask what was happening. People on their phones sporadically filled in their fellow worshippers with more details as the minutes passed by. As the news filtered in, the injury count rose steadily from 12, to 20, upwards past 25, 30, then finally settling on somewhere between 40 and 50. And at some point, one of those injured succumbed to her injuries.
People here are tired of all the fighting. We don’t want war. We really don’t. But we are also confronted with an enemy that has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for human life.
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine called Batzion wrote a note on Facebook after the brutally savage and utterly senseless murder of five Israelis, the youngest of whom was less than six months old. She explained that:
“There is one thing you cannot contest – Israeli soldiers do not murder children, and they do not target civilians… when you try to name the good guys and the bad guys, remember this. We do not murder children in their sleep. No, the murderers of children are on the other side.”
Before anyone indignantly points out that this is an over-simplified depiction of events, please note that that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. But such a message is still relevant. Israel certainly does shoulder some of the blame for the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. No country is perfect and Israel is not an exception to that rule. Nevertheless, it is not only inaccurate, but does a grave disservice to the supposed “peace process”, if we equate Israeli actions with those of terrorists. Israel might or might not illegally occupy Arab land – and many believe that Israel’s case is actually legally sound – and it is fair to discuss whether such a policy might be helpful, but it cannot be said that this is equal to a blatantly evil act such as witnessed yesterday in Jerusalem.
Another Facebook friend, Didi, a left-wing campaigner for Palestinians, posted a quite frankly horrific status update following the attack:
“Note to Jerusalem bomber(s): Not only have you perpetrated a crime against civilians, you have also given the Status Quo Lobby a rare gift.”
On the one hand, I was hugely relieved that Didi had made an unequivocal statement against terrorism. On the other, I am deeply perturbed by the willingness to dismiss Israel’s policy of not giving land away to its enemy for free and signing a peace treaty with a people that is clearly unready for normal relations with us.
People here fervently hope for peace. But we have basic security needs and concerns. The update accused the Israeli government of exploiting terrorism for its own aims; that those who oppose making peace now are needlessly stalling for more time; that Israel is looking forward to using this as an excuse to ignore the plight of the pitiful Palestinians while we make hay.
But the truth is that terrorism isn’t an excuse; it’s the reason why we are so concerned.
Yes, it is important that we treat Palestinians with respect. But as Batzion pointed out, we have to make the distinction between the side that sees children as fair game for being killed in their sleep and the side whose army is used to attack military targets. As long as Israel has an enemy that seeks to kill civilians, we have a right to be skeptical of agreements and territorial concessions which are unlikely to actually bring peace. It would be the height of foolishness to make pretend-peace without confronting the very real differences and problems that so plague this conflict.
And first among them has to be absolute rejection of terrorism by Palestinians.
How can we expect to make peace with a people who glorify terrorism and the murder of innocents? It is not like your average Israeli doesn’t want peace. But we would be fools, nothing less than fools, if we were to ignore this stubborn reality.
Did you know that last week, a rally in Gaza attracted thousands of people to gather under one flag and demonstrate as one? No, me neither. But here’s the proof. 25,000 Gazans stood together to call for national unity. Now, if that kind of level of activism and desire is achievable, why do we not see even half as many people demonstrating against terrorism? After all, Israel regular witnesses protests against the far more contentious issue of IDF conduct against the Palestinians. Why can’t these be reciprocated?
Why do we make excuses for the continuing acceptance of terrorism against Israelis in Arab society?
No, of course not all Arabs want to see us Jews killed, but each and every Arab has a responsibility to unequivocally condemn those who do.
Without that base to build on, Israel cannot make peace, no matter how much she desperately wants to.
Not everything is in our hands.
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How low will she go? Guardian contributor Mya Guarnieri uses Nazi analogy in calling for the end of Israel
March 26, 2011 in Uncategorized | Tags: Anarchists Against the Wall, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, BDS, Comment is Free, Guardian, Mya Guarnieri, Omar Barghouti | by Adam Levick | 33 comments
Guardian contributor Mya Guarnieri’s hatred towards Israel seems to have no boundaries, and is not informed by even the most rudimentary standards of decency or proportion.
Guarnieri, whose liberal, artistic sensibilities are somehow unburdened by writing for the reactionary Islamist mouthpiece, al-Jazeera, penned a piece in favor of BDS against Israel, which again advocated for the end of the Jewish state, and likened those who are “resisting” Israel as morally comparable to those who resisted Nazi Germany.
In a piece titled “Boycotting Israel from within“, which could have been written by the master of BDS, Omar Barghouti, himself, Guarnieri reveals that her previously “naive” boycott of merely those Israeli goods produced across the green line has given way to a much bolder support for the complete boycott of all Israeli goods and a support for the Palestinian “Right of Return” – which Guarnieri openly acknowledges would lead tot her desired outcome, the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Guarnieri’s essay conjures a dark, mythical Israel, which is – quoting Jonathan Spyer’s characterization of this fantastical place, which bears no resemblance to the nation as she really is – “a place of uninterrupted darkness and horror, in which every human interaction is ugly, crude, racist, brutal.”
Indeed, Guarnieri dutifully finds an Israeli, Leehee Rothschild (an active BDS proponent who signed the letter published in the Guardian, in February, in opposition to Ian McEwan’s decision to accept the Jerusalem Prize) to legitimize her views, who decries Israel as a society which is:
Guarnieri, arguing for the demise of the very state which arduously protects her right to do, yet in a manner suggesting that she’s engaging in a true act of heroism, insidiously suggests a parallel between BDS proponents and those who resisted history’s most notorious and odious regime, by quoting an Israeli named Ronnie Barkan, a member of “Anarchists Against the Wall” (a group which refers to the IDF as a “terrorist organization”) thusly:
That Mya Guarnieri imagines herself a latter-day Hannah Senesh speaks volumes about the political pathologies, and delusions of grandeur, which informs much of the ideology of the anti-Zionist left.
That the Guardian apparently still considers her commentary on Israel – a state whose destruction she brazenly continues to advocate for – within the boundaries of acceptable liberal opinion speaks volumes on the continuing degradation of the Guardian Left.
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