Never in the field of human conflict.....

have so many lies been told to defend the indefensible. I was reminded of one of Churchill's most famous speeches by the headline of this Ha'aretz editorial. It refers to the onward march of the boycott Israel movement in the UK and it's titled "The Battle for Britain." It shows the zionists in a blind panic over the power of truth against the nasty racist project known as the State of Israel. The zionists' panic oozes from every line. See the opener:

Britain has become in recent years the battlefield in Israel's fight for its existence as a Jewish state.

Next up we get a taste of the forthcoming hasbara campaign. Just as an aside here. Hasbara, apparently, literally means "explanation." It has a hallowed place in the zionist ideology and project because when your main allies profess values of democracy, liberty and the rule of law, support for colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing, relentless militarism and racist laws take a little bit of explaining. Hasbara serves notice on the would be zionist activist that settling in Palestine isn't enough. You have to be prepared to lie for the war criminals you have chosen to support. So here's a bit of hasbara to be getting on with:

On Wednesday, representatives of the new British University and College Union (UCU) will be meeting in Bournemouth. On the agenda is another proposal to boycott Israel's academic institutions. These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side.

Nuances lost on Brit academics? And the nuance of Hamas's unrequited ceasefire is lost on Israel's most left wing newspaper. As is the fact that the oppression of Gaza's population by Israel has intensified since the Gaza withdrawal, as Sharon promised it would.

Ha'aretz is clearly getting desperate here. They even mention that mythical creature, the Israel left

which opposes the occupation and has been working against it for years

when it wasn't supporting "putting the Palestinians on a diet" and the sheer brutality of the attack on Lebanon's civilian population.

And it gets worse:

Over the past decade, Israel has elected governments that have expressed the desire of a majority of Israelis for a bilateral solution of two states for two peoples and a withdrawal from most of the settlements. The withdrawal from Gaza was to have been the first stage. The victory of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, cut off the process.

Hmm, two lies in one short paragraph. Not bad Ha'aretz. The Gaza withdrawal was Sharon's baby. He made it clear, in so many words, that the move was "a punishment for and not a reward to the Palestinians." This wasn't reported in the Israeli left Ha'aretz but in the Israeli right, Yediot Ahranot. The Israeli left in the form of the war criminal, Shimon Peres, may have spoken of "Gaza first" but Sharon's key advisor, Dov Weisglass made it clear that what the disengagers had in mind was "Gaza last." Let's revisit what he actually said:

"The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser Dov Weisglass has told Ha'aretz.

"And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."

See the link. It's to Parapundit. See the link to Ha'aretz on the page you find. The Ha'aretz page has gone. Is this how this current editorial got it so wrong as to believe that Israel's Gaza withdrawal was a step on the road to peace? No, the writer of the editorial, in this Israeli left paper, is lying.

And so to lie number two: "The victory of Hamas....cut off the [peace] process." Leaving aside that there hasn't been a peace process, taking the attempts at establishing a Vichy regime in Palestine as "the process," it was Israel and Israel's allies that cut of even that bogus process when the resistance was elected instead of Israel's allies. And did the editorial writer expect readers not to notice that "most" of the settlements doesn't amount to all of the settlements and that what constitutes a settlement is itself open to interpretations that favour the settlers?

But let's see how the article ends:

The anti-Zionist winds blowing in Europe, mainly in academia and in Britain, strengthen the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake. The European hard left regards the Law of Return as the root of all evil; however, without acknowledging the Jewish character of the State of Israel, there is not even a basis for dialogue. British academia is in fact demanding that Israel democratically cease to exist as a Zionist entity, and that it be swallowed up in the non-democratic region in order to pander to the latest trend.

This one isn't as dishonest as the supporting ones. It's wrong but it shows a failure of understanding. The boycott movement clearly has many anti-zionists on board but it's mostly aimed at the occupation that Israel could end but hasn't ended. Also, whilst the Law of Return does lie at the heart of Israel's racist state structure, it is the denial of the right of return to Palestinians that is considered the villain of the piece/peace.

When a paper that brings us such courageous reporters and commentators as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy has to resort to this kind of dishonesty, zionism is truly on the ropes. Yes, it will go on for some time to come but the zionists are all out of arguments. They still have their killing capacity (see the side bar for updates) and no shame when it comes to hasbara but the edifice is built on sand.