Zionists and Darfur

Here's a post to the WWIV Report blog on the involvement of zionists in a campaign for Darfur:

While the debate over what to do about Darfur continues, the Sudanese government and critics of the US-based Save Darfur coalition have continued to accuse the movement (or, at least, elements of it) of having ulterior motives: namely, to benefit Israel—both by diverting attention from Israeli war crimes to those of the Khartoum regime and its supporters in the Arab world, and, more ambitiously to actually destabilize Sudan's Islamist government.

Engage and Dr Hirsh manage a mention and further to that so do I:

British anti-Zionist commentator Mark Elf of the blog Jews Sans Frontieres told WW4 REPORT: "Engage has recently turned its ire on Jews for Justice for Palestinians because of their campaigning against the occupation. Before that their targets were Jews Against Zionism and organisers of the academic boycott like Stephen and Hilary Rose. All the while the main organiser of Engage - David Hirsh - claims to be a non-zionist and yet his own position on zionist rule is indistinguishable from that of another Engage 'contributor' - John Strawson - who ran for a seat on the World Zionist Congress under the banner of Meretz."

I wasn't sure about that John Strawson chap so I asked him on the Just Peace list if he ran for the World Zionist Congress elections. He didn't answer which made me think it must be true. A google search of the words "John Srawson zionism and Meretz" seems to confirm it too.

Israel hits the hit parade

Four Israeli companies are now in the top one hundred arms dealers in the world. Here's Ha'aretz:

The companies are Israel Aircraft Industries, Rafael Arms Development Authority and Israel Military Industries.

The report, entitled "Arms without Borders", was launched as the United Nations opened its annual session on arms control, in the run up to a landmark vote at the UN to start work on an Arms Trade Treaty. It stresses that despite the lack of evidence that companies on the list violate international laws, the global arms trade encourages countries to violate human rights.

According to the report, two-thirds of weapons manufactured in Israel are designated for export.

And of course they're tried and tested.

Zionist war criminality: live the dream

I was sent this link a couple of days ago and then I got a comment linking to Finkelstein's site running the same piece.

Experience a dynamic and intensive eight day exploration of Israel's struggle for survival and security in the Middle East today.

Briefings by Mossad officials and Shin Bet commanders.

Briefing by officers in the IDF Intelligence and Operations branches.

Inside tour of the IAF unit who carries out targeted killings.

Live exhibition of penetration raids in Arab territory.

Observe a trial of Hamas terrorists in an IDF military court.

First hand tours of the Lebanese front-line military positions and the Gaza border check-points.

Inside tour of the controversial Security Fence and secret intelligence bases.

Meeting Israel's Arab agents who infiltrate the terrorist groups and provide real-time intelligence.

Briefing by Israel's war heros who saved the country.

Meetings with senior Cabinet Ministers and other key policymakers.

Small airplane tour of the Galilee, Jeep rides in the Golan hights, water activities on Lake Kinneret, a cook-out barbecue and a Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalem's Old City.

I can't be bothered to load the pictures. You'll have to go here.

House demolitions in Gaza

Conal Urquhart reports in the Guardian on Israel demolishing houses in Gaza:

It is not always possible to believe Israeli army statements, but in this case they appear to be accurate. There have been disputes between neighbours over the tunnels and in one case a gun battle between Palestinian police and a family believed to have been digging one.

Sami Shaher,46, was rebuilding his house 50 metres from the border after it was destroyed by the Israeli army in 2002. He said he received a call at 10.30pm on Wednesday from Abu Nimr. Thirty minutes later his unfinished house was blown up, leaving a crater 20 metres wide and 10 metres deep. A 14-year-old girl was killed by flying debris. There is no visible evidence of a tunnel.

No let up in Gaza

I just found this on the Finkelstein site:More here.

Finkelstein: Israel is only two wars away from complete destruction

Here's an interview with Norman Finkelstein on the Rice 'n' Peas website:

Do you believe the world is really facing a threat from radical Islamists?

The issue is not whether the world is facing threats of radical Islamists. You have radical militias in the United States. The question is, how big is the threat? And how significant is it? And, most importantly, how do you diminish it? And all the policies which have been implemented to date plainly do not have it as their main goal to diminish the threat. It’s only exacerbating the threat. The same thing with Israel. Israel, in my opinion, is only two wars away from complete destruction. This war, the red line was Haifa. It’s clear that, in the next war, Tel Aviv will be targeted and then, the war after that, it will be destroyed. But who’s causing it? Who’s creating it? Let’s be honest about that.

Rice N Peas is actually a film production company. Their site is well worth a see. Norman Finkelstein's site is here.

Linda Grant wins a prize and it's not for fiction this time

Well knock me down with a feather. Linda Grant has just been awarded a prize for her latest book.

WINNER OF THE LETTRE ULYSSES AWARD FOR THE ART OF REPORTAGE 2006

The international jury of the Lettre Ulysses Award, the only world prize for literary reportage, announced this year’s winner on September 30thth in Berlin’s TIPI Tent, in the presence of all seven finalists, the international jury of prestigious reportage writers and more than 500 international guests from the worlds of art and culture, media, politics and diplomacy.

The winners:

The first prize of 50,000 USD and a trophy designed by the Berlin artist Jakob Mattner were awarded to:

LINDA GRANT, Great Britain: The People on the Street. A Writer’s View of Israel, Virago Press, London, 2006. The British journalist and writer Linda Grant, a non-religious Diaspora Jew, travels to Tel Aviv in 2003. Her visit becomes an opportunity for a systematic and in-depth exploration of Jewish identity and its relationship with the state of Israel. Her book is a journey through an extraordinary and problematic society, through the languages and biographies of its inhabitants, their archetypes and histories, their doubts and their hopes. Observations from a troubled land that is determined to defend its existence and that is ensnared in a conflict that seems to promise tragic consequences rather than peaceful prospects.

Now in all honesty I must say that I don't like Linda Grant and I certainly don't respect her as a journalist but even I have to say mazel tov Linda! Fifty grand for zionist apologetics! I'm on the wrong side.

Nasrallah said what?

I blogged an LRB article by Charles Glass on Hizbullah a few weeks ago. Have a look at the post or the article itself here. It was about how Hizbullah had come of age over the past couple of decades. Well the article elicited an angry response in the letters page in the next edition. See this:

I do not support the terrible excesses of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, nor do I regard all criticism of Israel as an expression of anti-semitism, but Charles Glass’s defence of Hizbullah is beyond the pale (LRB, 17 August). Is Glass familiar with these statements, made by Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah? ‘If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide’ and ‘They [Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment.’ The leader of the Party of God (a grotesque conception of a political party, although that doesn’t seem to bother Glass) is not simply a resistance fighter. He is an anti-semite with fantasies of genocide. Glass makes Hizbullah sound like a rational movement that does little harm, but on the contrary does a great deal of good and learns from its mistakes. What lessons had it learned from the debacle of the 1980s when it provoked a war that has brought so much havoc to its own country, without even consulting the government in which it serves? Glass tells us that he was kidnapped by Hizbullah. Has he succumbed to Stockholm syndrome?

Eugene Goodheart
Waltham, Massachusetts

Well Charles Glass wasn't having any of that:

Eugene Goodheart asks whether I am familiar with two statements he attributes to Hizbullah’s secretary-general, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah (Letters, 7 September). Goodheart uses the inflammatory quotations to accuse Nasrallah of being ‘an anti-semite with fantasies of genocide’. If I am unfamiliar with the statements, it is because they are in all likelihood fabrications. The first (‘If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide’) was circulated widely on neo-con websites, which give as its original source an article by Badih Chayban in Beirut’s English-language Daily Star on 23 October 2002. It seems that Chayban left the Star three years ago and moved to Washington. The Star’s managing editor writes of Chayban’s article on Nasrallah, that ‘I have faith in neither the accuracy of the translation [from Arabic to English] nor the agenda of the translator [Chayban].’ The editor-in-chief and publisher of the Star, Jamil Mrowe, adds that Chayban was ‘a reporter and briefly local desk sub and certainly did not interview Nasrallah or anyone else.’ The account of Nasrallah’s speech in the Lebanese daily As Safir for the same day makes no reference to any anti-semitic comments. Goodheart’s second quotation – ‘They [the Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment’ – comes from the Israeli government’s website at http://tinyurl.com/99hyz. For the record, a Hizbullah spokeswoman, Wafa Hoteit, denies that Nasrallah made either statement.

Goodheart wonders whether, as a former captive of Hizbullah, I may have succumbed to Stockholm syndrome; may I ask in return whether he is succumbing to the disinformation that passes for scholarship and journalism in certain quarters in the United States?

Charles Glass
Paris

What's fascinating here is that these statements attributed to Nasrallah have been doing the rounds, unchallenged, for a few years now. Googling the whole sentence throws up over a hundred sites and googling chunks of it yields thousands. I can't be bothered to check right now but I'm sure there were many zionists who justified the recent Israeli onslaught against Lebanon simply by reference to these statements.

One of the sites running the first quote is Normblog. Norman Geras very helpfully provides a link to the original article. The site has been acting up today but I have seen the article and it carries no disclaimer, retraction or health warning. I've written to them suggesting that they should publish some kind of disclaimer or retraction.

Frankly when I heard about these things I just wished he hadn't said them. It now looks like my wish came true.

Engage TV?

I haven't seen this programme myself but Engage have touted it quite heavily and it includes some of their contributors so it might be fun. It's David Aaronovitch and friends in a show called No Excuses for Terror. It's hosted for now on Harry's Place but going from the comments I think it will soon be available on Google. Here are some (maybe all) of the cast:

Jon Pike, Alan Johnson, Eve Garrard, Jane Ashworth, Norman Geras, John Strawson, Shalom Lappin, amongst others.

Wot no Alf Green?

I have to put the moderator back on today because I'm away from the pc all day and I don't want the trolls taking over. Thanks for your forbearance in this matter.

Many thanks to Hulkagaard in the comments.

Oh, one more thing. Here's a curious comment to the Harry's Place post:

David Aaronovitch, whose brother played Deidre's nemesis Jon Lindsay in Corrie - "Free the Wetherfield One" - is extraordinarily sensible for a Leftie. Like Nick Cohen. Could it be because they is Jewish?

They certainly have Jewish surnames but I'm fairly certain that neither of them claim to be Jewish, in fact Nick Cohen strenuously denies it....when he's not masquerading as Baruch Spinoza that is.

War continues in Gaza

It's a bit of a one sided war of course. This report is from the BBC website:

In a village in southern Gaza, an old Palestinian woman stood surveying the wreckage of her life, and her home - bulldozed by the Israeli army.
Subhiya Mouamr pointed out her family's store of flour strewn in the rubble, and the tent she now lives in.

"We sit here - between the earth and the sky - and we survive just on what the Red Cross brings us," Subhiya Mouamr said.

"They destroyed everything."

But on that night when the Israelis came late last week, Subhiya Mouamr lost even more than her home and all that she owned.

She also lost her son and her daughter-in-law.

What happened in the village of Um al-Nasr is typical of the nature of the Israeli offensive in Gaza - which is now going into its fourth month.

Still Blair made a jolly good speech.

Arthur Neslen's Tel Aviv diary

I picked up a copy of Red Pepper on the way up to Manchester on Saturday and I was pleased to see a diary from Tel Aviv during the recent war on Lebanon by Israel. The diary was maintained by Arthur Neslen and the thing that struck me was its indictment of the zionist "left" in his August 10 report:

After five weeks of war, a bombshell has finally hit Tel Aviv. The big guns of the Israeli left have turned and hopefully not just to shoot themselves in the foot. Israel’s campaign in Lebanon is staggering from one bloody calamity to the next and the ‘Zionist left’ has decided to break ranks - and the national consensus. It was only two days ago that Yossi Beilin, the leader of the ‘far left’ Meretz party, was claiming that his group had ‘passed the test’ of Lebanon by taking a position neither for war, nor peace but both at the same time.

Other Red Pepper reports and comments on Palestine are here.

Saudi confirms contact with Israel

This report is from the Washington Post:

Saudi Arabia denied on Tuesday a newspaper report that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently held a meeting with a senior Saudi royal, calling the story fabricated.

I think that's as close as it gets to confirmation.

Better a shack in Palestine than a palace in Kuwait

Here's a letter in today's Independent criticising earlier zionist efforts in the same paper that I posted here:

Sir: Mr Daniel Naftalin (letter, 20 September) argues that your presentation of the facts of Israel's killing of Palestinian children is "a subject used throughout the years to marginalise and dehumanise Jews". He is misguided on two counts. Firstly, the photographs on your front page do show children who had been killed by Israelis. This is an incontrovertible fact and cannot be seen as being biased against Israel.

Secondly, the argument that every criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is wearing very thin indeed. It is also highly disrespectful of those Jews who suffered so much simply for being Jews. Their suffering had nothing to do with the State of Israel and should not be used to justify every argument in support of that state.

On the same day Professor Reuben suggests "if the notably underpopulated Arab states had compassion for their compatriots, every refugee could live in a palace". The arrogance of such a statement is unbelievable. I am a Palestinian. I wish to live in my homeland, on my father's land in Netanyah in Palestine. I would much rather live in a free and democratic Palestine in a small shack than in a palace in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

DR F H MIKDADI

DORCHESTER

The first letter on Israel in today's edition says that Israel wished the Palestinians well when it "withdrew" from Gaza. Strange when one recalls that Ariel Sharon called the withdrawal "a punishment and not a reward for the Palestinians." Maybe the writer didn't know he said that.

Israel-Saudi talks?

I'm seeing reports of Ehud Olmert visiting leading Saudi royals; possibly even the king himself. This is from the International Herald Tribune:

According to Yediot, the secret talks 10 days ago between Olmert and the senior Saudi official focused on Iran's nuclear program and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel and the United States say Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The Saudi peace initiative, which calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast war in exchange for normalization and relations with all Arab countries, had been rejected by Sharon outright.

But in an interview with Yediot last week, Olmert responded differently.

"I am very impressed with different processes and statements that are connected to Saudi Arabia, some that have been stated publicly and others as well. I am very impressed with King Abdullah's wisdom and sense of responsibility," Olmert was quoted as saying in Yediot.

When asked if Israel was holding secret contacts with Saudi Arabia, Olmert said: "I do not have to answer every question."

I'm guessing that Iran was more important to Saudi than the Palestinian issue but who knows?

Lenin ruined my Manchester

I had a wonderful time in Manchester yesterday. The journey up from Euston was very pleasant, in fact I bumped into Lenin - of Tomb fame. See his site for a description of the journey up. When we got off the train I was talking to a woman whose company I was quite enjoying. She wasn't with a group there and she wasn't a member of a party. We got to Albert Square which is where the march started out. Lots and lots of people but plenty of time before the march was to kick off so we went for lunch. She was into homeopathy this woman. Very stylishly dressed and intelligent sounding. She thought that the pharmaceutical industry was conspiring against homeopathy. I asked why they didn't just adopt or co-opt it. She didn't know. We finished lunch and went back out to the crowds and the march began. A helicopter flew overhead and she said she thought that it sent electro-magnetic waves to alter the mood of the crowd to suit the powers that be. If they wanted to discredit us with a riot they could do it. If they wanted us in a good peaceful (if a tad angry) mood they could do that too. A few planes flew overhead leaving vapour trails which she said was another form of crowd control. Don't get me wrong she was very pleasant. I didn't question what she was saying. I just kind of smiled and nodded. Somewhere along the route she picked up a "Time to Go" placard and kept it til the end. We got to where the speakers were speaking.

I'm terrible at reporting speeches back but I remember George Galloway wishing the Jews a happy new year. Is that Judeocentric of me to remember that? Actually, that's not fair, I do remember some others. There was a guy from the British Medical Association or the Lancet or some such who denounced the war and the lies and the accusation that the Lancet had lied about the fatalities. There was a woman conveying Hizbullah's gratitude for the support from the UK (people that is). Brian Eno made one of his understated speeches. He really conveys the indignation of the not-so-ideologically committed. My new woman friend enjoyed and applauded it all and so did I. I had a wander for some tobacco at one point and bumped into a morris dancer I recognised from Broadstairs.

Anyway, the thing drew to a close and we headed back to the train. We had a bit of time so we popped into a pub. I phoned Lenin and asked him to save us a couple of seats. I told him that the woman I was with was a bit wacky but harmless and quite pleasant. We got to the train and walked the (what seemed like) two miles from the back end to about three carriages from the front. We sat down with Lenin. The train pulled away. She started to talk about how Bush and co had staged 9/11. She said it wasn't planes at all. I just nodded and giggled a bit. I still thought she was a bit wacky but harmless and still quite pleasant. Lenin confronted her on her theory about 9/11. Would you believe Lenin actually read all the conspiracy stuff on 9/11 and all the stuff that shows it's a lot of tosh? She insisted that the Americans are shortly going to declare a world government. Lenin countered that it wasn't in their interests to have a world government. I should point out here that I wasn't listening that intently. I had parked a load of lefty papers and magazines that I bought on the way up with Lenin and I wanted to read those or maybe have a kip. I should have mentioned that for fear of missing the train in the morning I stayed up all night the night before so I was quite knackered on the way home. Finally Lenin asked her why she thought that all these conspiracies were running things when what we know is bad enough and weird enough. Ok, I'm oversimplifying because he actually subjected her to quite a thorough (I thought at the time, playful) cross-examination. She said that it all goes back to a banking cartel that overthrew Napolean back in the day. Again Lenin pointed out by reference to sources she had quoted and to corrective sources that she was talking tosh. Anyway, she said she needed to go to the buffet car and asked if we wanted anything. I said I'd have water. Lenin passed. She went.

When she went Lenin said that all conspiracy theorists are antisemitic. Eh? What's this? Remember I wasn't participating but frankly I missed the significance of the banking cartel and Napolean. But she was nice. I would have steered her on to talking about homeopathy or holistic massages, I might have even got a holistic massage but Lenin's a purist. He had to cross-examine her until she got right down to her bottom line: it's the Jews wot dunnit, it's the Jews wot do it, and it's the Jews wot are always gonna do it. But she was so pleasant. He ruined it for me. She didn't come back. I even looked for her the length of the train. I couldn't find her. I thought Lenin had driven her to suicide. I was genuinely concerned. He wasn't, he was chuffed with himself. We chatted for a while and then I went to the buffet for tea. I saw her by accident and she told me that Lenin had really upset her by doubting her after all she had read.

I went back and sat down with Lenin again. We arrived in London earlier than planned. The Jews don't control the railways then. And do you know what Lenin did? After driving a stylish and articulate (if a bit nutty) woman away from me, he asked me if I had two quid. Can you believe that guy? Asking if I had two quid. Of course I had two quid, I'm part of a banking cartel!

Nasrallah: Restore Palestine from the river to the sea

According to the Scotsman on Friday Lebanese Hisbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said that the Arab world could liberate Palestine if the will was there.

Mr Nasrallah said that the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon showed that if Arab states had the will, they could destroy Israel. "The Arab armies and Arab peoples are able not only to liberate Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In all simplicity, with decision and will they can restore Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] sea," he said.

"Decision and will?" Two things that are lacking in most, maybe all, Arab states.

More on the antisemitism gag

Here's Jonathan Cook in Counterpunch with another article on the "new antisemitism" and how it is used and has been used to stifle exposure of Israel's crimes againt its native and neighbouring populations.

The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002.

At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a "new anti-Semitism", a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US.

It was not the first time, of course, that Israel had called on American loyalists to help it out of trouble. In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein documents the advent of claims about a new anti-Semitism to Israel's lacklustre performance in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. On that occasion, it was hoped, the charge of anti-Semitism could be deployed against critics to reduce pressure on Israel to return Sinai to Egypt and negotiate with the Palestinians.

Israel alerted the world to another wave of anti-Semitism in the early 1980s, just as it came under unprecedented criticism for its invasion and occupation of Lebanon. What distinguished the new anti-Semitism from traditional anti-Jewish racism of the kind that led to Germany's death camps, said its promoters, was that this time it embraced the progressive left rather than the far right.

The fresh claims about a new anti-Semitism began life in the spring of 2002, with the English-language website of Israel's respected liberal daily newspaper, Haaretz, flagging for many months a special online supplement of articles on the "New anti-Semitism", warning that the "age-old hatred" was being revived in Europe and America. The refrain was soon taken up the Jerusalem Post, a rightwing English-language newspaper regularly used by the Israeli establishment to shore up support for its policies among Diaspora Jews.

If there's anything new in this article it is that Cook goes on to show how the antisemitism allegation is being used to drum up support for an attack on Iran.

Ready to go to time to go

Ok, I have to go in a couple of minutes to get the train to Euston to get the special train to Manchester for the Stop the War demo.

•National Demonstration Manchester

•Saturday 23 September • 1pm
•Labour Party Conference

•TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ Time to go
•DON'T ATTACK IRAN Time to go
•HANDS OFF LEBANON Time to go
•NO TRIDENT REPLACEMENT
Organised by Stop the War Coalition, CND, BMI and MAB, and supported by Islam Channel, Friends of Al Aqsa, CWU, PCS, NUJ, TGWU, RMT, BECTU, UCU

Bring the streets of Baghdad to Manchester
The United Nations has just announced that 6600 people have been killed in Iraq in the last two months. This will be much lower than the actual figure, as many deaths go unreported because of the Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.

I've been up all night because it wasn't worth going to bed by the time I got home last night/this morning. Hopefully I'll sleep on the train. There probably won't be another post here until tomorrow.

Ok, chocks away!

Alexandra Simonon: an apology

It pains me to admit it but I might owe Alexandra Simonon, of the zionist smearsite, Engage, an apology. You see some time ago I discovered that she had the same IP address as an abusive and contrary troll by the name of Alf Green. I emailed them both to see what they (or she or he) would say and I got no reply. So I ran the post headed Alf Green and Engage's Alexandra Simonon, are they by any chance related? Well of course the clear implication was that I was saying that they are one and the same person. I did say that I might be wrong but I didn't mean it because I never imagined that I could have been.

Well get this. I didn't know that Alexandra Simonon and Dr David Hirsh are an item. Yes, an item. I don't know if they are married (still less do I care) but they live together and have children. Dr Hirsh even mentioned his children in a post once before thinking better of it. I'm sure it's common knowledge among Engageniks that the two are an item but I didn't know. So that's why I feel an apology is in order. I mean Alf Green might be a pseudonym that Dr Hirsh uses to abuse critics of Israel and not a pseudonym for his partner.

The problem here is that that makes this sock-puppetry even worse. You see, Alf Green, when he isn't simply trolling to make a mockery of comment facilities (he was involved in the harrassment that led to my setting up moderating on this site), supports David Hirsh's comments on other sites and even on the Engage site. I think you'll find that Engage effectively belongs to Dr Hirsh and Ms Simonon. Alf Green has been used to support the Euston Manifesto (as did David Hirsh and Alexandra Simonon), to rebuke even Engage supporters for mild dissent from the Engage line or style and someone told me today about two forays Alf made into the hallowed ground of the Inside Higher Education website. He saw fit to comment on two posts on the academic boycott of Israel campaign. Here's the first and here's the second.

Read them and you will see all the usual misrepresentations, non sequiturs, insults, projection, etc, so loved by the Engage people. But please do read them. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find Alf. He's after David Hirsh in both cases.

Scrolling down further to the place where you can post comments you will see that you have to give your email address "for verification purposes." So what do they do to verify? Do they email commentors? If so, what did Alf do? I think we should be told because this sort of thing must surely give academia a bad name. I don't think you have to be an academic to commment on the site but I'm fairly certain that you have to exist.

So now someone using the same IP as Dr Hirsh's partner has endorsed the Euston Manifesto, rebuked dissenters on Engage, called for people to be banned from Engage when the moderators (ie Hirsh and Simonon) do that routinely anyway, supported Simonon's article on Comment is free and supported Hirsh as required. The whole thing stinks, and that's leaving aside the sheer ineptitude of these two watchdogs against "antisemitism."

The disappearing Palestinian state

Here's a Ha'aretz report on the issuing of tenders for the construction of still more settler houses in the occupied West Bank.

The government is planning to build 164 new homes in three settlements in the West Bank, despite an obligation under a U.S.-backed peace road map to halt such construction on land Palestinians seek for a state.....

The latest tender follows one published on September 4 to build 690 new homes in the settlements of Maaleh Adumim and Beitar Ilit, the largest number of housing bids for settlement building offered since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took office in May.

I remember Jonathan Freedland arguing in the Guardian that Israel's defeat in Lebanon meant that it will try that much harder to retain large swathes of the West Bank. Something like that anyway. Well, the 690 new settler houses in the article were ok'd by Olmert and Peretz before the defeat in Lebanon.