“What I saw would shock those who think they know it all” he opined (using a mini-headline in red for added emphasis), to prepare us for the worst.

So what was the the shocking scene he described?  Could it be that Israelis were hurling rocks at their Palestinian neighbours, using them as target practice in drive-by shootings, breaking into Palestinian homes to lynch their children while they sleep, etc.?

No. It was that the centre of Hebron (he coyly omits to say how much) “…has been utterly emptied, its streets deserted, its shops vacant, thanks to a policy the Israeli army calls ‘sterilisation’–ensuring the area is clear and safe for Hebron’s 800 settlers”.

He goes on to lament that “in what was once a throbbing market district…..successive restrictions have been placed on Hebron’s Palestinian population”, such as roads where they are not allowed drive or “even walk”.

Added to that, horror of horrors, the graffiti daubed on shuttered shops by the ‘settlers’, and, perhaps the most shocking of all, Stars of David used to “spit in the eye of a population hounded out of their homes”. Not nice, but not life threatening.

He then invoked the wisdom of Shaul, his “kippah- wearing army reservist guide” from the NGO Breaking the Silence, (anti-Israel activists generously funded by the EU who have been criticized by Israeli police for “antagoniz[ing]…settlers [in Hebron] in the hope that the settlers will attack them.”), who conducts tours for Anglo Jewish Zionist youth leaders, and “believes that Hebron…reveals the reality of the occupation in an intense, distilled form”.

Of course, the devil is in the detail, and what Freedland omits is not mere details but, rather, essential facts, omitted  because they would expose his damning accusations for what they are.

So here  they are :

Abraham resided in Hebron when he arrived in Canaan, King David was annointed there, and Jews have lived there almost continuously throughout the Byzantine, Arab, Mameluke and Ottoman periods.

It was only in 1929, long before the creation of Israel and the “occupation”, that the city became Judenrein, following a murderous Arab pogrom in which 67 Jews were murdered, and the rest forced to flee.

After 1948, during the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank which followed Israel’s War of Independence, Jews were forbidden to live in Hebron, and, despite the terms of the Armistice Agreement, forbidden from visiting the city to pray at the Jewish holy sites there – namely, the Cave of Machpelah, burial place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rebecca and leah, the world’s most ancient Jewish site.

Even though Israel controls Hebron today, the Islamic Waqf controls the holy sites, and Jews have access to Ohel Yitzchak only 10 days a year, and visits are severely restricted to the other rooms.

It should be noted that the Jordanians together with local residents,  between 1948 and 1967, undertook a systematic campaign to obliterate evidence of the Jewish history of Hebron.  They razed the Jewish Quarter, desecrated the Jewish cemetery and built an animal pen on the ruins of Avraham Avinu synagogue.

Hebron was first called Kiryat Arba, mentioned in the bible, and today is a Jewish suburb of Hebron, the first re-established Jewish community in Judea and Samaria after the Six Day War, with some 6,000 Jews.

Today,  80% of Hebron is under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

What Freedland wilfully ignores is that without the protection of the IDF the Jewish inhabitants would be in grave danger of violent attacks from the Arab majority.

For Freedland, Jews are always the “illegal settlers”, even in cities where they’ve lived for thousands of  years.

Well done Jonathan—-your job at the Guardian is safe for a while—-your minders there will be delighted with this latest effort…you have proved yourself!

Related articles

• Jonathan Freedland’s Intifada delusions. (cifwatch.com)
• Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland is mugged by the reality of BDS movement’s malevolence (cifwatch.com)
• An open letter to Jonathan Freedland (cifwatch.com)
• The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland reconciles with the anti-Zionist left (cifwatch.com)

CiF contributor Simon Tisdall framed Dave’s comments as signalling “his kick and run diplomacy”, but obviously delighted in what he probably regards as the deserved reward for all CiF’s tireless efforts in it’s relentless campaign against the Zionist entity.

He thus writes, “David Cameron jumped into the ever-sensitive politics of the Middle East with both boots flying today, determined to call a spade a bloody shovel and Gaza a prison camp that shamed all those, principally Israel, responsible for its enduring misery.”

So there you have it, CiF’s enduring leitmotif, it’s all Israel’s fault.

Indeed, listening to Dave’s censure of Israel, a novice could be forgiven for thinking Tisdall is right.

He talked about the May 31 Israeli interception of the “aid” flotilla to Gaza being “completely unacceptable”, and that with regard to Israel’s (military, maritime) blockade, “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp”.

Note the subtle shift in language from “open prison” to “prison camp”. Observe also Dave’s complete absence of context—- no mention of Gaza’s other border with Egypt;

OR that following Israel’s unconditional 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Israel was rewarded with a huge increase in rocket and mortar attacks, aimed at her civilians;

OR that Israel has never stopped supplying Gaza with thousands of tons of humanitarian aid across its border, as well as supplying it with electricity and fuel;

OR that Israel continues to evacuate sick Palestinians for free medical treatment in its hospitals, including terrorists who are frequently to be found being treated in the same wards as their Israeli victims;

OR that it is Hamas which brutally suppresses the Gazan population, often stealing humanitarian aid and selling it, with a total disregard for human rights;

OR that billions of dollars are being lavished on Gaza, which, as well as paying for the build up of arms to “resist” Israel, provides luxuries like shopping malls and Olympic size swimming pools for its deprived ”starving” populace.  One could go on and on.

Erdogan lost no time in fulfilling his part of the self-righteous double act, and likened the behaviour of the Israeli commandos to that of Somali pirates.

Of course, our Dave insisted that he spoke as a “friend” of Israel’s (the obligatory qualification), who believes “passionately” in its right to exist in peace and security. Words really do come cheap, and one can only wonder at the rhinoceros hide of a politician who, in the words of former Israeli minister, Ephraim Sneh, portrays the “double standards of a nation which fights the Taliban, but shows its solidarity with their brothers, Hamas.”

As to his opposite number, Erdogan, who would have guessed that he leads a nation responsible for – and in complete denial over – the genocide of upwards 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, or that they invaded Northern Cyprus in 1974, or that brutally suppresses its Kurdish minority (some 14 million people) of whom some 37,000 have died since its armed struggle commenced in 1984 – in order to deny them independence.  And, let’s not forget Turkey’s appalling record of human rights abuses against its own citizens?  Even Tisdall muses on these with regard to Turkey’s would-be entry to the EU.

It also seems to be a little-known fact that Turkey has imposed a blockade against landlocked Armenia for nearly 20 years.  As a result, Armenia is in dire economic straights and is in receipt of $150 million in international aid a year – though the economic impact of the blockade has been estimated to cost the nation 5 times as much.

Isn’t it funny how when there are lucrative contracts at stake and markets to woo, morality disappears down the plughole of expediency at the speed of light?

But just like those glossy travel brochures, for Dave and his puppet master, Hague, Turkey is that lovely, exotic, indispensable country facing both east and west.

Pull the other one!

“No Israeli words can speak as loudly as the action of a large-scale pull-out from illegal West bank settlements”.

The crux of he matter for Seth, the lie repeated ad nauseam, again and again—-

“…the settlements are deemed illegal under international law…”

NO, Seth, they are not. There are volumes and tomes written which disprove this calumny, and so, to assist you I’ve summarized the essence of the matter.

Governments famously have “interests”, in this case those being the markets and oil of 1.2 billion Muslims, as opposed to the influence of just 13 million Jews world-wide, and so it is unsurprising that their interpretation of international law is somewhat elastic.

International law is crystal clear as to the status of the territories, which belong to Israel, and the reasons can be neatly summarised as follows:–

1) The “Mandate for Palestine” document, ratified  unanimously by all 51 members of the League of Nations in 1922, designated all land west of the Jordan river, Gaza, the Golan (23% of historic Palestine) to the future Jewish state, and called for “its close settlement by Jews” there. (This was after Churchill gave away the other 77% originally intended for the Jews, to the Saudi Hashemite family to create Trans Jordan, as a reward for its allegiance to Great Britain in defeating the Turks in WWI.)

This was incorporated into Article 80 of the UN Charter, and in the absence of any agreement since then, remains the legal status to the present day.

Israel is the only country to have its legitimacy confirmed by both the League of Nations, and the UN.

2) In 1970 Judge Stephen Schwebel, who headed  the International Court of Justice in the Hague, ruled that Israel had the better title to the West Bank than had Jordan, which had illegally annexed it in 1950, and then lost it in an aggressive war it waged against Israel.

Jordans’s illegal occupation of the West Bank was only recognised by Great Britain and Pakistan, but MINUS its occupation of Jerusalem.

3) Many of the “settlements” are on land  legally owned by Jews from whence they were driven in Arab riots, such as the Gush Etzion block and the Jewish Quarter in the Old city of Jerusalem. They were reclaimed by their rightful owners.

In any event, all the other settlements are on “state land” not privately owned land, on accordance with Ottoman, Mandate and Israeli law, determined by legal process.

The last point is important, and directly challenges Seth’s :–

“One fifth of built up settlement areas are constructed on privately owned Palestinian land, giving the lie to the assertion of settler leaders that their actions are entirely above-board”.

He then goes on to quote that bastion of truth, B’Tselem, giving “facts and figures” to “prove” the theft of Palestinian land. If Seth were to consult the government archives, instead of swallowing B’Tselem’s lies, he would learn of the role Plia Albeck, the distinguished lawyer, played in this. No government of whatever stripe  allowed  the construction of any settlement without her say so. She was a lawyer (with pro-Palestinian sympathies), who was an expert on what constituted “state land”, based on Mandate law, Ottoman law and Israeli law. In any event, the notion of “Palestinian land” is a nonsense, because there never has been a sovereign Palestinian entity there, ever.

The only people to have had dominion in the land are the Jews.

This is the inconvenient truth.

Bloody Sunday: Put Britain in the dock by Bernadette Devlin

Before getting to the article, here are some things we should know about Devlin:–

1) As an MP in the British parliament in 1972, she crossed the floor of the House and punched Reginald Maudling, whom she accused of lying, in a statement about Bloody Sunday.

2) She has a prison record,of which she is, no doubt proud, because of her involvement in what became known as the Bogside barricades.

3) On a visit to New York, she was given the honour of being given the keys to that city by the mayor, which she then passed on to the Black Panthers, in a deliberately provocative act against her hosts.

Devlin is given free reign by CiF, to paint the British government in the worst possible light, following the Saville enquiry into whether the 14 peaceful, unarmed demonstrators at what became known as the Bloody Sunday massacre were killed deliberately by the British government, whose “anonymous and brutalised soldiers of its alphabet army should be in the dock at the international court of justice in the Hague” and whether the “British government committed a war crime in 1972 and in so doing started a war”. The Saville inquiry took some 12 years, and cost the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds, and it was set up because the initial inquiry by Widgery was considered a whitewash.

The inquiry found that the actions of the members of the British army were “unjustified and unjustifiable”, but that is not enough for Devlin, our doughty fighter for truth and justice, who opined,”[i]f Saville has closed that route to truth and justice, the British government will consider it worth every penny ” (referring to her view that the government should itself stand in the dock at the ICJ court in the Hague).

In her conclusion, she took the irresistable opportunity to connect that “missed opportunity” of the British government’s non-appearance at the Hague to the other cause so beloved of the thugs and bullies of the IRA and Sinn Fein, namely, trying to destroy Israel. And so we get the following:

“Had the British state been speedily held to account at the Hague, things might have been different for a lot of people, not least for nine Turkish human rights activists on their way to Gaza. they might not have been so confidently slaughtered by the state of Israel”.

The next day……

Off the hook: Israel’s own Widgery inquiry into Bloody Monday by Chris Doyle

Chris Doyle serves as director of CAABU (although no mention of that anywhere in the CiF piece), the same CAABU that purports to “[p]romot[e] a positive and enlightened approach to Arab-British relations in government, parliament, the media, education and amongst the wider pubic”. In other words, blackening Israel’s name at every opportunity in the court of public opinion, as Doyle’s numerous letters to the press will attest.

Doyle is perhaps best known for advocating that the Union Jack should be replaced with something less offensive to Muslim sensibilities, the cross of St.George being a graphic reminder of the crusades.

In the Guardian’s CiF, Doyle finds himself at home in his natural habitat, and so lets rip, unlike his usual restrained style (for him) when writing to say the Times or the JC, (who stupidly publish his vile propaganda.)

And thus we get, inter alia:–

“The man who ordered the attack on the aid ship to Gaza, (Netanyahu), set up the inquiry…..has announced its outcome even before it has started”.

He describes the future inquiry as a kangaroo court, because the chairman, Jacob Turkel, has stated that holding people to account is a marginal issue.

He says that “Turkey has understandably dismissed the inquiry”, and so it cannot be valid. (The same Turkey that in the last few months has assassinated hundreds of its Kurdish “terrorists” of the PKK, including pursuing and killing them across the border into Iraq, against international law. And the same Turkey of the Armenian genocide of upwards 1.5 milion.)

He accuses two independent observers on the inquiry of bias towards Israel.

He names the Kahan Commission into the Sabra and Shatila massacres as an example of Israel’s record of investigating itself as “shockingly poor”, because after Ariel Sharon was found to have “personal responsibility”, (even though the massacre was in revenge for the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister by Muslim forces loyal to him, and no Israelis were involved in the killings), Sharon was allowed to remain a minister.

On and on and on goes his litany of hate, minus any context, such as demanding the total lifting of the Gaza blockade, without any mention of the Hamas rockets aimed at Israeli civilians, that makes it necessary to prevent the inflow of deadly weapons.

“Israel, like a spoilt child, can do as it pleases” with impunity.

And how can any decent, fair-minded person take seriously the words of a proven liar, in the pay of the Arab lobby, on a website well-known for its Judeophobia and hatred for the world’s only Jewish state?

Just to remind ourselves who Crass, oops, Chris Patten is :–

This piece, as noted by below the line commenter, TiredOldDog, can be summarised in a short sentence, “To assure world peace, the EU must make Israel surrender”.

Patten talks about the “morally appalling and politically self-defeating policy of Israel” etc etc.

As Patten is someone whose opinions carry weight in the corridors of power, I would draw his attention to the recent sequence of events which have brought us to where we are today. Let me clarify the situation for Chris Patten.

Israel unilaterally and unconditionally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, even disinterring Jewish dead from the cemetery there. All Israel asked for in return is to be left alone. Israel leaves behind infrastructure, such as homes etc, and in particular a lucrative greenhouse industry, paid for by generous US Jewish donors. These were trashed within days of the withdrawal. The withdrawal was greeted not by the Palestinians building up their infrastructure, but by terrorising Israeli civiians by raining down thousands of rockets on them, sent from Gaza. Meanwhile Israel continues to treat injured Gazans for free, evacuating them across the border to Israeli hospitals, including treating terrorists.

In 2007 Hamas takes control of Gaza in a brutal coup against the PA, in what is euphemistically described as a democratic election, in reality by threatening and terrorising those with whom they disagree with violence. Hamas controls all the hundreds of millions of dollars received in aid, as well as impounding many of the aid deliveries. Israel, meanwhile, allows across its border thousands of tons of suppies daily, including supplying Gaza with electricity, fuel etc. Gaza, meanwhile, is blockaded at Rafah on the Egyptian border.

Eventually, after years of escalating rocket and mortar attacks against Israel , ignored by the international community, Israel launches Operation Cast Lead, 2009.

During it, Hamas broke all the laws of warfare, both by targeting civilians and by using Gazans as human shields, as well as fighting often in civilian dress.

Indeed, Colonel Richard Kemp, who was British Commander of troops in Afghanistan in 2003, and senior advisor to British Intelligence said of the IDF —”the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”.

Compounded with all that, Hamas in common with the PA, and Jordan and Egypt, poisons young childrens’ minds in schools by daily pumping out hate against Jews, and against the Jewish state. Hamas even runs training summer camps in the holidays for young children, training them with guns and dressing them up as suicide bombers. Hamas declares in its Charter that its goal is the elimination of the Jewish state.

So, Mr. Patten, what don’t you understand?

Considering that Europe, far from showing courage in saving European Jewry 70 years ago, colluded in its destruction, you now are asking for it to “show courage” to destroy the only Jewish state.

Why don’t YOU show courage and demand that Hamas follows the norms of civilised behaviour, including allowing the Red Cross access to Gilad Shallit.

But that’s too hard—- much easier to constantly lay the blame at Israel’s door.

For some of the commenters, Patten did not go far enough in his condemnation of Israel, and here we have a sample of the usual hatemongers on CiF:-

I give the last word in Israel’s defence to Pulcinella:-

The first point to take issue with on Dan Rickman’s piece, is in the sub-heading itself, namely, “fundamentalist currents have moved Orthodox Judaism in the UK to the right”.

This statement represents a failure to understand what is actually happening within British Jewry, namely that there has been an upsurge of interest in authentic Judaism amongst all sections of the community and across the age divide. The core beliefs expounded by orthodox Judaism have not changed, indeed, may not change.

This upsurge is the raison d’etre for Rickman’s article, and is at the core of his annoyance—he dislikes the return to orthodox values, and dresses this up using specious arguments.

A true definition of the word “fundamentalism” is given by one dictionary as “a strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles”, which is a good starting point from which to deconstruct Rickman’s tendentious article.

As no rational person could argue against the idea that it is  bad  to adhere strictly to principles which are inherently good, Rickman’s only way forward is to undermine the principles of orthodox Judaism themselves, in order to “prove” his point.

Here, he is on dangerous ground, for anyone with any knowledge at all of the genuine article, will immediately recognise the gross inaccuracies, mischievous assertions and indeed oft-repeated, hoary old chestnuts on which he bases his ”argument”.

Let us examine some of these in more depth.

He states that orthodox Jewish “fundamentalists” essentially reject modernity and secular knowledge where it clashes with their beliefs, which are themselves based on a literalist approach to the sources (incluing Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith).

The whole point is that there is no contradiction between orthodoxy and modern scientific beliefs. Let him give but one example, but of course, he is very coy about specifics because he cannot.

The recent strictly orthodox Nobel prize winners in the science disciplines are testament to that. It is inconceivable that such people would compromise  scientific truths to accomodate their religious beliefs.

The statement that the vogue for the Intelligent Design theory has been incorporated into modern orthodox teaching is untrue, and certainly false that outreach organisations, like Aish, give seminars on it.

It has been rejected as scientifically wrong and rejected by orthodox scientific experts.

One powerful example of how orthodox rabbinic ruling has not only accomodated the most recent scientific advances as “kosher” but is actually in the forefront of liberal values, is in the realm of embryo research and cutting edge experimentation. It is deemed not only acceptable, but desirable, at a time when some atheists fear it who invoke the “slippery slope” argument.

When Rickman mentions Maimonides to try to win his case, he neglects to say that the latter, a distinguished physician of the day, himself wrestled with the apparent contradictions between the Aristotlean views and Judaism, but then held that these are dealt with by a thorough understanding of the texts, as opposed to just a superficial reading.

Neither does he mention the most important contribution that authentic Judaism bequeathed to the world, namely, that of the ethical values that make human beings into civilised beings, i.e. the laws governing the codes of behaviour that make life tolerable, indeed, even pleasant.

These values are not innate to human thinking, but had to be taught. The idea that Judaism is a fossilised faith stuck in a trough of hard-line, inflexible beliefs is the impression that Rickman wishes to foist upon his readers.

Even he must surely know that Judaism is based on the ancient tradition of the “oral law”. This means that the written law, ie. The Pentateuch, is never taken at face value, but rather viewed as a multi-dimensional expression of divine will. The Talmud, which is a commentary of the oral law, contains  volume upon volume of argument by earlier and later commentators, so that the laws we hold today are those decided by the majority of the qualified opinions of the day.

Indeed, in the tractate of Baba Kama in the Talmud, it explicitly states that it is forbidden to misrepresent Judaism, no matter how noble the intention.

The idea that orthodox Jewish “fundamentalists” essentially reject modernity and secular knowledge where it clashes with their beliefs is most obviously seen to be false is in the embodiment of the personality of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who is highly educated and widely respected both in the secular and Jewish worlds, and finds no conflict between them—just the contrary—each complements and enriches the other.

When Rickman says that Orthodox Jews continues to believe that the Torah was divinely ordained, and this is supposedly contrary to ‘evidence from modern Biblical scholarship’, he omits to say that such ‘proof’ is not exactly something one could demonstrate in a laboratory, and so will always remain questionable. In any case what harm is there if people believe that it was divinely ordained?

Finally, in his attempt to demonise orthodox Judaism as a backward, unforgiving creed, best relegated to history, he writes that

“fundamentalism encourages a totalitarian rather than a democratic mindset, which is characterised by rejection of enlightenment values, which is at the core of a wider challenge to western democratic society”.

In so doing, he wickedly draws a false equivalence between the “fundamentalism” of different faiths and creeds.

No-one could argue that, say, Buddhist fundamentalism could ever pose  a danger to anyone, which is what Rickman wishes to taint Judaism with, i.e. its  supposed threat to peace and civilised values. Let him ponder which “fundamentalism” is truly evil and a real threat to humanity, on the 8th. anniversary of 9/11, but we can wait a long time before he does, or before CiF would publish if he did.