Julie Burchill for Israel

A petition is doing the rounds seeking Ariel Sharon's support to suspend Israel's Law of Return whereby only Jews and their descendants and dependants may settle in Israel so that the non-Jewish Julie Burchill can go and live there. I don't get a chance to read Burchill's stuff these days. The last time I saw anything by her she was repeating the infamous lie about Martin Luther King denouncing anti-Zionism. It led to a correction in The Guardian.

Portrait of the peacenik as war criminal

This guy, calling for divestment from Israel's occupation, appears to support the so-called two state solution but apart from that he seems ok. He is Shamai Leibovitz, the grandson of Yeshayahu Leibovitz, winner of the Israel prize and the man, I think, who first coined the term Judeo-Nazi to describe the dominant ideology in the State of Israel following the 1967 war.

Critical but unconditional Pride in Britain

Another blogger beams with pride.

Fiddling jeopardises Israel's existence

No, not the kind of fiddling that had Rabin resigning over an illegal dollar bank account back in the 1970s and nearly saw Sharon taking an early bath (yuk) just recently. No this is the kind of fiddling that many a Jewish virtuoso has made a delight to many pairs of ears. Only this time the fiddler was Palestinian and he was forced to play his violin while soldiers at an Israeli checkpoint mocked him. Now certain Israelis are saying that the soldiers responsible should be put on trial "not for abusing Arabs but for disgracing the Holocaust". Eh? That's what Yoram Kaniuk wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth. before going on to say that since Israel uses the holocaust as an excuse to take Arab land, undermining the holocaust undermines Israel's claim to the land. So Israel can do what it likes; it can ethnically cleanse Palestine, it can enforce apartheid laws, it can engage in relentless aggression towards its neighbours, but heaven forbid Israeli soldiers from forcing Palestinians to play the fiddle. This calls into question Israel's right to exist, as if further questions were necessary.

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People - 29 November

In the UK this means, among other things, the opening of the Palestinian Trade Fair by London Mayor, Ken Livingstone and Afif Safieh, Palestine's man in London.

Letter to the NYT by Lenni Brenner

Lenni Brenner sets out some of the New York Times's. past misdemeanors (or are they felonies) before taking them to task over their support for Zionism.

Pictures of pride

Click on the headline to see the pics that make Britain grate again.

New blog

This guy was an involuntary colonial settler in the West Bank and Jerusalem until he converted to the cause of justice. Good luck with the new blog.

Aaronovitch smarts

Letter in today's Observer.

Valid questioners

What is wrong with John Pilger, Robert Fisk and Naomi Klein questioning the official explanation for something (David Aaronovitch, Comment, last week)? After the despicable manipulation of the public and media in to supporting the war in Iraq, there continue to be urgent questions left unanswered by both the US and UK governments. Is Mr Aaronovitch still smarting from asking the wrong questions before the war?

Matthew Herbert
London SW2

Chase me ladies, I'm in the family

It's not just the hacks at the Daily Mail who worry about New Labour undermining the family. Chase me ladies, etc is another blog googlebombing the Proud of Britain site. The blog also very helpfully lists those family members doing likewise.

Rafael Eitan: a real obituary

If you were sickened by the various whitewashes (like this one) of the career of racist war criminal, Raphael (Raful) Eitan then Ha'aretz's. Gideon Levy has the answer.

I'm so proud!

Check out this link to see why "I'm so proud".

Barghouti out of the race

Marwan Barghouti will not be running for the leadership of the so-called Palestinian Authority. This leaves the way clear for the colourless Mahmoud Abbas who is considered more accommodating towards the State of Israel. Sharon has promised to be helpful in the forthcoming Palestinian elections. He'll be more helpful than ever now. The article I've linked to is by The Guardian's. Conal Urquhart, but Eric Silver has run a very similar article except, where Urquhart has Barghouti (aged 43) as being "consistently ..... the second most popular leader in opinion polls, after Mr Arafat and far ahead of Mr Abbas", Silver has "27 per cent of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians choosing Mr Abbas (popularly known as Abu Mazen) as the person most capable of leading the Palestinian Authority, followed by Mr Barghouti [aged 45] with 15.2 per cent." Clearly Marwan Barghouti isn't ageing very well in his Israeli jail.

Googlebomb New Labour

A very small website - proudofbritain.net is being threatened with legal action by the New Labour establishment for spoofing a New Labour site with a similar name. The plan here is to link it in as many blogs and sites as possible so that when people google "proud of Britain" the spoof site comes in first or at least higher than New Labour's effort. Try it now.
It came in ninth when I tried it and New Labour's came in fourth. We need more links, so link.

Selective MEMRI

Hat tip (for the headline) Brian Whitaker

It appears that a Zionist organisation in America (MEMRI) is trying a new tack in silencing criticism (by Juan Cole): the so-called SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suit. These are similar to the UK's gagging writs and/or libel actions. They can be extremely costly for those on the receiving end and they often don't have to get to court in order to have the desired result of keeping certain information out of the public domain. The link in the headline here is to Juan Cole's blog where he details his accusations against MEMRI and MEMRI's response. Some blogs are urging people to contact MEMRI to try to dissuade them from this SLAPP action. I think the best thing is to visit Juan Cole and arm yourselves with counter-argument to MEMRI's diet of distortion.

MSNBC Apologises

Apparently MSNBC has apologised for racist outbursts against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims by one Don Imus. This was after a campaign organised by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The apology has been described as "lame" and "tepid" in some quarters but it's a start.

Stop jerking around

Thanks to Resolute Cynic for this spoof policy promotion at whitehouse.org. The page is funny enough on its own but it gets better when you look at the many letters from people who clearly thought that the "eradication of masturbation from American soil by the year 2005" was a serious proposal.

Not murder

Apparently shooting a confirmed innocent 13 year old school student, once to kill her, then several times to "confirm the killing", isn't murder as long as the killer is Israeli and the victim Palestinian. I would say cue the cross-fire stories but they've already tried that one and it appears there's video evidence. Here was a youngster coming home from school. The watchtower suggested her age was 10 and that she was terrified. Within minutes she was dead.

Occupation's human face

This is an interesting blog by an American soldier serving in Iraq. The guy's name is Michael Lane and he's from Tacoma, Washington. The blog is called At Ease. He links to the Progressive Blog Alliance and Naomi Klein's No Logo. He has a post complaining about Kuwait, and certain leading American politicians, exploiting Iraq, and he has a comment from his mum telling him to come home and one from his Dad telling him that Thanksgiving is on hold until he does.

Quotes on the 1967 War

With so many Zionist sites on the internet it's useful to keep reminding ourselves of the gulf between what the Zionists say about Israel's wars and what actually happened. I'll post quotes of self-exposure by Zionists every now and then about this or that war. Here are some about the war of June 1967:

Regarding any threat from Egypt, the former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was "no threat of destruction" but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could "exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies."

Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: "In June 1967, we again. had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." It's not clear why Menahem Begin was so keen on honesty in this case.*

Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan said that many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland. "They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plough some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get nervous and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us."

That's the amazing thing about Zionist propaganda. The leaders of the Zionist movement have been perfectly candid about the motives and causes of the 1967 war and yet the popular perception is still one of a plucky little Israel beseiged by aggressors.

*Comment from AJP: Do you have the date of Begin's statement? I think that it was made after the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 [It was 8/8/1982 and reported in the New York Times on 21/8/2004]. and the reason why he was being so honest was that, at the time, he was being attacked by Labour over the conduct of the war. There was a powerful feeling in Israel that, by acting as the aggressor, the IDF had lost it's "purity of arms", something Labour blamed on Begin, Sharon and Likud.
Begin was trying to point out that the attack on Lebanon was actually no different from the attack on Egypt in 1967 when that "purity" was supposedly still intact.

Eat your heart out Kilroy

If Robert Kilroy-Silk is looking to restart his TV career then maybe he should apply to MSNBC, a mainstream cable TV network in the US. Just look at this exchange between Don Imus and a colleague:

"DON IMUS: They're (the Palestinians) eating dirt and that fat pig wife of his is living in Paris.
COLLEAGUE: They're all brainwashed, though. That's what it is. And they're stupid, to begin with, but they're brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now
IMUS: Well, the problem is we have (reporter) Andrea (Mitchell) there; we don't want anything to happen to her.
COLLEAGUE: Oh, she's got to get out. Andrea, get out and then drop the bomb and kill everybody
COLLEAGUE: Look at this. Animals. Animals!

Labour MP lashes "looney" Likudnik

According to The Jewish News, Labour MP, Peter Kilfoyle, has branded one of his Zionist correspondents a "lunatic extremist..." after the man called on him to condemn a Palestinian suicide bombing rather than debate issues relating to the governance of the UK.

Margaret Hassan mystery deepens

The Independent on Sunday. poses various questions about the kidnap and (as yet unconfirmed) murder of Margaret Hassan. This really picks up on an earlier report by Robert Fisk (summarised here).

Israel tampers with corpses

Israeli soldiers are alleged to have set up the head of a Palestinian suicide bomber on a barrier, put a cigarette in its mouth and photographed soldiers posing around it. There is a message to those who send people to embark on such missions. The Israeli army doesn't get hurt here, unless, of course, soldiers get killed.

Regarding the tampering with corpses, this is an old allegation against the racist war criminals of Israel. Israel has been accused of stealing vital organs from dead Palestinians and even the UK Chief Rabbi has spoken out against Israeli soldiers posing with Palestinian corpses. He was so chastened over that he denied having said what he was recorded to have said. Let's see what he says now. My bet is nothing.

What Palestinians should do now

Ali Abinumah of Electronic Intifada rejects Vichy. Palestine in favour of a democracy for all the Palestinians in Palestine and in exile.

Democracy after Arafat by Seumas Milne

If you can only read one article today then make it this one in The Guardian.

Here's an extract:

"But, they [Bush and Blair] cautioned, progress towards a Palestinian state would only be possible if the Palestinians were prepared to embrace democracy. The fact that Arafat was elected with an overwhelming majority in internationally supervised elections, and continued to command majority support until his death, was evidently beside the point. He was the wrong kind of democratically elected leader."

Galloway anti-what?

See this article in Jewish News. It's about George Galloway having the Daily Telegraph's. barrister, James Price QC, withdraw a charge of anti-Semitism against Galloway. It looks like the barrister was lying since no evidence has been produced to show that Galloway referred to Barbara Amiel as being Jewish in a letter. Anyway, having failed to make the bogus charge of anti-Semitism stick the Jewish News has referred to George Galloway as being "virulently" anti-war. Are there degrees of anti-warness? Do we run from mildly anti-war, through very anti-war to virulently anti-war? Or are they suggesting that being anti-war is like spreading a disease? Hmm.

Deir Yassin revisited

This is a letter published in Jewish News about Deir Yassin, it is an extract from Memoir of an anti-Zionist Jew by Hanna Braun:

Early one morning in April 1948, a friend burst into my room with tears streaming down her face: "they are butchering everyone in Deir Yassin!" It took some time to sink in - we had been repeatedly told that the village's inhabitants were entirely peaceful and the senseless brutality of such slaughter was incomprehensible. Equally despicably was the parading of some of the male villagers in an open van through the streets of Jerusalem prior to being shot. Our only comfort, if such it could be called, was that the atrocity was perpetrated by the Stern gang, forerunners of "Likud". That fig leaf was torn away when, a few months later, Stern and Etzel members were incorporated into the regular army and their commanders became our officers. Complaints fell on deaf ears; we now had one state with one army, we were told. At this perilous time, everyone was needed in the defence of the fledgling state and meting out punishment would be counterproductive. Nowadays it is of course widely known that Deir Yassin happened with the full knowledge and cooperation of Ben Gurion, our first prime minister.

That summer there was a brief cease-fire and I returned to Haifa for a week. During my absence the "liberation" of Haifa and of many other towns and villages had occurred: Jaffa, Afula, Safad, Lydda and many more. We had been unaware of any of this in Jerusalem, being cut off by the siege. The inhabitants had been driven out, sometimes by straightforward attacks, at other times by different means, often by deliberately terrorising people. In Haifa, for example, Palestinian Arabs had been given 24 hours to leave; armed soldiers ensured they complied. The predominantly Arab downtown business area was cleared as well as purely residential areas: our neighbours as well as the owners of the two other Arab houses in the street shared this fate. My mother recounted the story with tears, my father with pride. The term "ethnic cleansing" was as yet unknown, it certainly was a very apt description of what was, and indeed still is, happening.

The large shops and business premises downtown were now "liberated" and in Israeli hands. Only one Arab quarter remained, as it still does today: Wadi Nisnas, a small, largely poor, ghetto-like part of Haifa. What had become of our Arab neighbours, indeed of all Haifa's large Arab population many of whose families had been settled in that city for hundreds of years? It was a nagging doubt that refused to go away.

It's Powell 2008

Colin Powell has resigned after an illustrious career as a doormat for the more favoured members of the Bush administration. Now he can go for the presidency in 2008 posing as a liberal Republican.

Where are they now?

Consider this sentence by David Aaronovitch: "It is the idea that the Jews of Israel will voluntarily. [my emphasis]give up their statehood - where no-one else in history ever has - that is so bizarre". See the word "voluntary". It's that one word that rescues the sentence from complete absurdity. Of course states (to oversimplify: power structures) don't relinquish power voluntarily; they do it grudgingly. See apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia, North Yemen, South Yemen, The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and many more. No don't see them; they've gone.

Linda Grant on a re-learning curve

Fascinating article by Linda Grant in The Guardian's. Weekend section today. On line it comes in two parts. There are a couple of points I would disagree with, eg, "Rabbi" Meir Kahane is described as a "far-right racist" whereas I would have inserted the word overt. to distinguish him from the rest of what is a far-right racist (ie Zionist) movement; and the casual dismissal of the Israeli (note not Zionist. ) left as engaging in "conspiracy" theories. But on the whole this shines a light on the various mindsets of members of the colonial settler community in Gaza. Now I was told that Linda Grant was once-upon-a-time a Trotskyist, and therefore, presumably, anti-Zionist. She first came to my attention via the Guardian. and what seemed like several articles soliciting support for Zionism. If she really was a young anti-Zionist then it appears that Linda Grant is re-learning what she used to know.

So what now, the gun or the olive branch?

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's Address to the UN General Assembly, 13 November 1974. Anniversary tomorrow.

Update - 14/11/2004 - Thanks to Stewart Rosenberger for pointing out that the choice of "weaponry" may not actually be down to the Palestinians or their leaders.

Arafat dies

Expect lots of stories on Ehud Barak's "generous offer". Israel has "Tommy" Lapid - "Justice" Minister - providing earthy "man in the street" type observations about Arafat. "Tommy"'s a spontaneous sort of a chap, a bit too spontaneous for his own good sometimes. He has likened Israel to apartheid South Africa and the Israeli army to the Nazis.

Johann Hari: a liar or a fool?

Look at this article by Johann Hari, that appeared in The Independent. today. It's one of these "was I wrong to back the war?" kind of articles. It's mostly garbled and irrelevant but I think he is trying to say that he knows that most Iraqis want the war and most Iraqis want the attack on Fallujah and this is based on the fact that the resistance do not come from the majority Shi'a community and therefore the whole of the resistance must represent a minority. Now check this quote from the article:

"Yasser (I think he's one of Hari's Iraqi friends) then offers two crucial facts. First, there hasn't been a single Shia suicide bomber in Iraq so far. That tells you something about who is trying to destroy security and why. Second, there have been just three weeks this year when there were no suicide bombs in Iraq. They were the three weeks the US forces had Fallujah surrounded. Doesn't that suggest it is the base of the Sunni resistance? Doesn't that suggest it is right to deprive them of their base by force if necessary?"


Now does Hari really not know that the first suicide bombing against the invading American forces was by a Shi'a Muslim from Najaf called Ali Hammadi al-Namani? I've had to link this to a mention of him in the Guardian. as the Independent's. article about him is only available pay-per-view. Still I'm sure Hari could have stretched to that if he wanted to get his facts right but I don't think that was on his agenda. The other thing is, which three weeks was it when there were were no suicide bombings? It wasn't these last three weeks. In case Hari doesn't know, three Black Watch soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber just recently.

So there we have it. Hari was right all along and he knows it because of "two crucial facts" which were neither crucial nor facts.

Saving Fallujah?

Street to street and house to house in Fallujah.

Iraqi government gets tough...on Iraq

From medialens:

"Today, the broadcast media announced that the long-awaited superpower assault on Fallujah - a city of 300,000 people, of whom some 30,000 are said to remain - had begun.

Remarkably, the courageous ITV News reporter, Julian Manyon, did not fall into line. On today's 12:30 Lunchtime News, Manyon said:

"We've had now, this morning, the formality - some would call it, I'm afraid, the fiction - that Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq, has given the official order to commence the operation against Fallujah. Of course in reality it is an American operation." (Manyon, ITV News, 12:30pm, November 8, 2004)

This is not the hymn sheet from which the media is supposed to be singing. Fortunately, the post-Hutton BBC is on hand to channel official propaganda with the power to reassure and bamboozle the viewing public. The BBC's lunchtime news anchor, Anna Ford, opened today's news with this solemn announcement:

"Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has said he has given American and Iraqi forces the authority to clear Fallujah of terrorists." (Ford, BBC 1, 13:00 News, November 8, 2004)"

Academic freedom threatened

Zionists are flexing their muscles on campuses in order to intimidate anyone who would criticise or expose the State of Israel. The latest victim is Joseph Massad of Columbia University and a contributor to Al-Ahram Weekly. The link above is to Al-Ahram on line though this issue now appears on other sites such as Juan Cole and Aran's Israel (sic) Peace Blog. Thanks to Mooser, Edwin and, now, Tahrir for this.

The Captain and the Kings

Israel's Tommy Lapid has said that Yasser Arafat cannot be buried in Jerusalem because it is reserved for Jewish kings. Now grand fraudsman Robert Maxwell may have been something of a bigshot but as far as I know he never rose above the rank of captain.

"So, Yasser Arafat is to be denied his wish for burial at the sacred Haram as-Sharif in Jerusalem because, according to Israeli officials, Jerusalem is reserved for 'Jewish kings' (report, November 6). Robert Maxwell, for example?
Pam Parsons
Oxford"

Oxfam supports war

A while back I wrote to Oxfam to complain that it was hypocritical of them to reject a donation from a man who said he sympathised with Palestinian suicide bombers whilst they (Oxfam) were embarking on a joint venture with Starbucks knowing that the Starbucks CEO is a Zionist and a supporter of the mass murderer Ariel Sharon. They wrote back to me saying that Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO, supports a two-state solution in Palestine and actually wants peace there. I wrote back to them saying that the war criminal Ariel Sharon makes exactly the same claim. Well I have now stumbled on a website that is dedicated to undermining boycotts of racism and imperialism and it shows that Starbucks supports the "war on terror". That war is now believed to have cost around 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives. I have written to Oxfam to get their take on this, though I must say that they ignored my last letter to them. If you are appalled at Oxfam's support for Zionism and war please complete their feedback form or email them. Thanks.

Israel is an apartheid state: Eric Silver

Well ok, he was quoting someone else but look at this:

"Stanley Lipschitz, a restaurateur, concurred: 'Arafat is the epitome of evil. He's the inventor of hijacking, [actually the first hijacking was by Israel in 1954] the father of modern-day terrorism. [I think most of the methods we associate with terrorism were pioneered by the Zionists] He has caused incredible pain and suffering to our people, but also untold damage to the Palestinian people.' [goodness what is he, a Zionist?]

South African-born. [and therefore an expert on apartheid] Mr Lipschitz was pessimistic about the prospects of a more democratic regime emerging. 'Unfortunately, the voices of reason will be battered down in a power struggle among the terrorist groups. The only chance is that eventually a reasonably benevolent strong man will take control. [Cue the imposition of Mohammed Dahlan on the Palestinians]

'Otherwise, we're going to have to continue with our unilateral withdrawals. I believe Ariel Sharon has seen the light. We have found our F W de Klerk. Where is their Mandela?'". [so there we have it, Sharon, the new De Klerk, is freeing the political prisoners, allowing the "banned people" to return to their homes and, most importantly, owning up to the fact that Israel is an apartheid state]

Now all the Palestinians (and the Israelis) need is a Mandela to lead the dismantling of this thorough-going racist system. Next up, a truth and reconciliation commission. But notice that reconciliation comes before truth in the standard formula and our Stanley Lipschitz has just put one step on that path. Thanks a million Stanley.

Rabin, Sharon and the Board of Deputies: all self-haters

I found this by way of a denunciation of me on another website. Los Angeles based "analyst", Rachel Neuwirth, has written a blow by blow list of how to spot a Jewish anti-Semite and it makes uncomfortable reading for the likes of Neville Nagler, Ariel Sharon and the standard bearers of the tradition of limb-smasher Yitzhak Rabin.

See this, my comments are in italics:

In general, the following characteristics are often indicative of Jewish anti-Semites:

- Demanding full rights for all Arabs living inside Israel while also demanding that Jews must be expelled from any area where Arabs dominate numerically and from where they attack Jews. – Arabs in Israel
just happen to live there, they haven’t gone there as an armed activist (to say the least) movement


- Willingness to use deception and disinformation in the form of outright fabrications, exaggerations and selective omissions to attack Israel and its efforts at self-defense.  Need some examples here.



- Double standards: great concern for Arab suffering
vs. minimal lip service for Jewish suffering.  Who does this? Again we need some examples.


- No attempts to show solidarity with Jewish causes and to alleviate Jewish suffering with visits to victims of terror, or to help with funds or food for hungry and unemployed Israelis. What Jewish causes?


- Minimal personal involvement with traditional Jewish religious observance. You have to be religious to be a philo-Semitic Jew? Or you have to pretend to be?

- Will arbitrarily alter Judaic teachings and practice to support their anti-Israeli political agenda.  For 2,000 years Judaism was “arbitrarily alter[ed]” until it got "corrected" by the Zionist movement



- Advocating Israeli territorial concessions regardless of any resulting danger to security needs. Rabin and Sharon are self-haters? Then I definitely don’t want to be one.

- Ignoring, minimizing or even excusing the preaching and teaching of murderous hatred towards Israel, Zionism and Jews by Arab leaders and in Arab schools. Who does this? Mind you she has got close here....Close to what she is actually getting at. She means opposition to Zionism is anti-Semitism.


- Arguing that any support for Israel is somehow disloyal and harmful to American interests. 
Not me guv’nor but even if Jews were to argue that, that would hardly be anti-Semitic.

- Citing being Jewish as conferring some type of authority to speak legitimately as Jews or on behalf of other Jews. Attempting to exploit their accident of birth for political advantage, even against fellow Jews, could be considered a form of racism. Look out Neville Nagler and the
Board of Deputies and Abe Foxman and the ADL.(part I)

- Ignoring basic Jewish concerns, such Jewish education, opposing anti-Semitism, lobbying for Jewish rights and for disadvantaged Jews. How about making assumptions as to what constitutes a "basic Jewish concern"?

- Not addressing fellow Jews in the spirit of dialogue and respect for others' views. Their 'voice' is often strident, harsh, accusatory and inciting outsiders to join in condemning Israel and Zionism, including by means of economic boycotts. Look out Neville Nagler and the Board of Deputies and Abe Foxman and the ADL.(Part II)

 

- Strongly supporting the international Left, which, in turn, supports Israel's enemies. So you have to be right-wing not to be a self-hating Jew.  This means that
most adult victims of the holocaust were self-haters.

Bin Laden gets his man

Ah well, it's all over bar the er... dumbstruckness. Bin Laden seems to have got the man he wanted back into the White House. Does it make a "dime's worth of difference"? We'll never know. Kerry will return to well deserved obscurity. But what about Nader?

Arafat praised

The more pressure that is placed on the Palestinians and Arafat, the more popular he becomes. Still this is a timely reminder that Ehud Barak's generosity wasn't much more generous than Sharon's.

Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism

I was just googling (as you do) when I stumbled on this. I think it's the same as Wikipedia. It has a passable definition and history of Zionism, but, more to the point here, of anti-Zionism. Here's a passage from it, though I don't agree entirely:

* First, while many, indeed most, self-declared anti-Semites today use the rhetoric of anti-Zionism, historically some anti-Semites were pro-Zionist. In pre-war Germany and Poland, for example, some anti-Semitic politicians advocated the emigration or expulsion of the Jews to Palestine as a solution to the "Jewish question."
* Second, some Jews are anti-Zionists. Jewish anti-Zionism exists mainly among socialist or radical Jewish intellectuals outside Israel. There is also a minority among Orthodox Jews, both inside and outside Israel, who reject Zionism as contrary to the will of God. It is true that both these groups are small and are unrepresentative of Jews [how do they know that?], but the existence of even a small minority of anti-Zionist Jews is sufficient to show that there is no necessary identification between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

I'm posting this now intending to return it to it at some point, as there seems to be much to discuss about Zionism. Of course most Zionist condemnation of anti-Zionism is plain dishonesty and misrepresentation but there are many uncommitted people who shy away from the whole Palestine question because they find it too perplexing. As I said, to be continued....

PFLP suicide bombing condemned

The PFLP has claimed responsibility for bombing civilians in a Jerusalem market. I don't know what's happened to the PFLP*. When they killed Rahavam Zeevi they won a lot of respect. What is this going to achieve except to divert headlines away from Sharon's atrocities? Does this killing of civilians advance the cause of a "democratic secular state"? The PFLP is a shadow of its former self nowadays. I remember writing to them a couple of years ago to protest a ridiculous article that suggested that the reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because Gorbachev's wife was Jewish! If Israel devotes as much time to "taking out" PFLP activists as it has to killing civilians in Gaza the PFLP will be finished in weeks, if it isn't already.

I leave the handwringing moralising about attacks like this to the hypocrites in the mainstream media. As I write this, commentators from the Telegraph to the Guardian will be using this latest suicide bomb as justification for every Zionist atrocity form Deir Yassin to Rafah. I'll stick to two political issues arising out of the suicide bombing and other terrorist actions (that is deliberately targeting civilians.) The first issue is that the only viable alterative to the State of Israel is a democratic secular state. This (as implied above) cannot be achieved by wanton attacks on innocent Jews. It is true that if you kill Israeli adults at random there's a strong chance you'll kill a war criminal but a strong chance still isn't a certainty. Such attacks drive Jews into the sectarian camp, if they're not there already. The second issue is that if you want a democratic secular state you need a democratic secular opposition. Now how do you get foot soldiers for such an opposition when you call upon teenagers to prove themselves by blowing up themselves and others? How many people would queue up to join such a group? In fairness many suicide bombers have had many innocent relatives killed or (in this latest case) maimed by the Israeli army but these actions take planning and cannot simply be attributed to the emotion of the moment. I gather that the mother of this latest bomber has condemned the PFLP for the use of one so young (16). A while back a group of Palestinians appealed to the armed groups not to carry out attacks like this in the wake of the Yassin assassination. They were right.

*I edited this post in the wake of a rather withering criticism from a Perplexed chap - see comments.