"Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you." "Opposition is True Friendship." -William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1796
The Augean Stables and The Second Draft
This blog takes its name from the Fifth Labor of Herakles, to clean the stables of Augeas, where thousands of cattle had left so much un-cleaned dung that the whole Peloponnesus smelled of it. At Second Draft, our discovery of both Pallywood and the Al-Durah Affair have led us to realize that — at least where the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned — our MSM represent a veritable Augean Stables of accumulated misreporting. We dedicate this weblog to exploring the many aspects of our MSM’s problem, not only those concerned with the Middle East problem, but more broadly with the many ways in which our media’s errors and our media’s extraordinary resistance to admitting their errors, have contributed and continue to contribute to the serious problems that plague our globe in this young 21st century.
Unfortunately, my mother passed away recently, last Friday in the early morning after a six-year battle with cancer. Her service is on Tuesday in Paris.
I know my mother was active on your website and appreciated your writing.
I know all of the regular commenters here will miss Michelle’s participation greatly, but surely not so much as her family and friends. Condolences to them, may they be spared any more sorrow for a long time
If anyone in Paris is able to attend her service, please let me know and I’ll get you in touch with her son.
As a memento of her contribution, this was her last substantive comments here:
Another consideration: it is much better to fight people who think like Hezbollah and Hamas, if you can enlist in an army whose job it is to fight them. If your main choice is to hide when you walk around with a soccer cap above the kippa and whatever tricks you can imagine or to be beaten, the choice is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
By the way, my feelers tell me that jewish intellectuals who identify to judaism are much more solid and trustable for a republican point of view than non jewish intellectuals or jewish intellectuals with no attachment to judaicity.
Adam Levick of CiFWatch has a meditation on the problem of what I’ve called “hyper-self critical Jews.” Since I’m about to participate in a panel at the YIISA Conference on global anti-Semitism at Yale University later this month, I would like to encourage readers to comment so I can incorporate some of their ideas in my presentation.
The Guardian’s anti-Israel Jews, and a letter to my teenage nephew
August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Antisemitism, Antony Lerman, Comment is Free, Guardian, Hamas, Hezbollah, Nazi Analogies, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Seth Freedman, Theobald Jew | by Adam Levick
CiF’s Jewish Israel defamers
When joining the team here at CiF Watch, and attempting to understand why Jewish writers for the Guardian are often among the most vociferous in expressing their contempt for Israel, and so willing to demonize the state’s Jewish supporters, I had to get up to speed on the term “Theobald Jew.”
I soon learned that:
According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.
The CiF contributors I refer to include Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Antony Lerman, Seth Freedman, Tony Greenstein, among others. These Jewish writers don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions. Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies - the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation. Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with.
Freedman, for instance, has suggested that Israel is a theocracy – one which is on moral par with Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. Gordon has on several occasions accused Israel of ethnic cleansing - once advancing such an ugly calumny in the radical anti-Zionist magazine, Counterpunch. Tony Greenstein has ardently defended the ugly comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, typically advanced by extremists. Richard Silverstein has called the behavior of Israelis serving in the IDF “subhuman“, and has defended Hamas from “charges” that they are an extremist movement. Naomi Klein actually accused Israel of being so cruel and sadistic as to “bury children alive in their homes.”
While, for the Guardian, employing the services of Theobald Jews serves to inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism, such Jewish writers, in return, receive the progressive and universalist credentials they so eagerly seek.
Despite the careful “he said … she said” approach of the mainstream news media about the clash along the Lebanese-Israeli border this week, events are quite clear: Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were deliberately ambushed by Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).
In an outdoor press conference held at a lookout point above the Lebanese border where the incident occurred, Ilan Diksteyn, the deputy commander of the Israeli brigade, explained what happened. The IDF had notified the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) of its intentions and complied with multiple requests to delay a routine job that should have started early in the morning and didn’t get going till midday.
According to Diksteyn, he had personally walked the border with the UNIFIL commander and identified all the trees and shrubs they intended to cut down, all approved of as being located on the Israeli side of the border by the UNIFIL commander. The key tree was some 200 meters from the Blue Line, so there was not the most remote possibility that Israel trespassed on Lebanese territory. The IDF even set out the crane without a man in it, just to demonstrate their intentions beforehand.
But no sooner did they put a man in the unit and lift him over the fence than a sniper shot and killed the commanding officer of the unit who was away from the border and observing from a distance. Despite claiming they fired first in the air, and that Israel initiated the hostilities, an LAF spokesman eventually asserted their right “to defend Lebanon’s sovereignty.”
The Israelis claim this was an ambush by units of the Lebanese Armed Forces. And as such, this was an unprecedented new level of aggression. Even the normally cautious UNIFIL, which the previous day had restricted itself to calling for calm and announcing its intention to investigate, eventually — and exceptionally — sided with Israel’s claim that the tree was on their side of the border. Even the Lebanese admit they carried out an ambush.
Here’s the article I filed with PJMedia last night. Go to the original for the links.
Israeli Officers Ambushed on Northern Border An Israeli soldier was killed, and another wounded, by Lebanese army forces in an apparently pre-planned provocation.
August 3, 2010 -
by Richard Landes
At around 1:30 pm Israel time today (August 3), an exchange of fire took place between Israeli and Lebanese forces along the border. (This map reflects the exact location of the incident.) According to Lebanese sources, the Israelis had gone over the fence and were cutting down a tree growing on Lebanese soil. Lebanese soldiers allegedly fired warning shots in the air and then at the soldiers.
Michel Suleiman, the Lebanese president, issued his own statement denouncing the clash as a violation of UN Resolution 1701 and calling on the Lebanese army to “confront any Israeli aggression, whatever the sacrifices.”
Israeli military sources assert that the work they were doing was routine; that UNIFIL was warned; and that in that place (and many other ones) the fence was deliberately placed inside of Israeli territory so that work on the other side can be conducted without trespassing into Lebanese territory.
Honest Reporting, “Special Alert: Media Collusion in Lebanon Ambush,” asks about the role of media, not merely Hizbullah journalists, but Reuters and AFP photographers, conveniently there to catch an incident that arose from routine pruning along the border.
Often when talking with uninformed but well-read people who think Israel is a neo-colonial aggressor, one finds a decided admiration for Amira Hass’ courageous work criticizing her country Israel for its mistreatment of the poor Palestinians. Here’s a rather amazing analysis of one of her articles which illustrates her modus operandi, and sheds light on how the reader of her work, as with many similar articles, gets not a distorted, but an inverted image of empirical reality.
Ha’aretz regularly reports on demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli administration and presents its readers with a grim picture of destruction and misery among the Palestinians. In fact, a reader who believes Ha’aretz’s news accounts, trusting that the newspaper actually adheres to journalistic norms of objectivity and accuracy, would be appalled by the situation described.
But Ha’aretz does not follow such journalistic norms. Take for example, Amira Hass’ July 21, 2010 report, entitled “IDF destroys West Bank village after declaring it military zone.” It provides a clear demonstration of how facts can be manipulated through distortions and omissions to present a false picture of events.
Here is a summary of Haas’ article: Israel’s civil administration demolished the homes of 120 men, women and children, who lived and worked – some for decades – in the Jordan Valley village of Farasiya. Before destroying the village, the civil administration cut off the inhabitants’ water supply and forbade the residents to use other water wells in the area belonging to the Mekorot Water Company. But this is not an accurate account of events.
First, there is no registered village in the West Bank called Farasiya. It does not appear in either the census data of the Palestinian Authority or that of the Israelis. What Hass neglected to inform readers was that this was an illegal encampment which, like dozens of illegal settlements and hundreds of illegal buildings throughout Israel, was slated for demolition.
Read the rest of the forensic demolition of this drive-by shooting that parades as “journalism.”
Picture of what Hass claims is a 10-year-old village with 55 structures including a packaging plant.
Note the 800+ Facebook recommendations to Hass’ article. This is classic red meat for the “pacifists” who demonstrate “We are Hamas.”
UPDATE: For another example of hit-and-run journalism, read this analysis of a Huffington Post article and its comments.
Byzantine politics have nothing on negotiation strategies in the Middle East between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Headlines July 29 initially announced that the Arab League — meeting in Cairo and under heavy pressure from the Obama administration — had approved Abbas’ return to direct negotiations with Israel. Comments from Jerusalem, including from Netanyahu, hailed this welcome gesture as a chance to get back on track towards a two-state solution.
All sounds good: the Obama administration applying pressure on the Arab side, the Arabs respond and move forward; Israelis welcome the move.
But to those familiar with the nature of these negotiations, none of this made any sense.
It’s time to take up Goldstone again. The Israelis have released the results of their investigation in four parts, and at some point in the not too distant future, they’ll release their final findings.
I am preparing with others a systematic study comparing Goldstone’s findings with those of the Israeli army. I’ll post up each significant incident in turn.
Right now, I want to suggest reading two pieces, one pro, one contra Goldstone. Comments welcome.
People who like to bait Jews enjoy accusing them of taking “an eye for an eye” in their fight with the Palestinians, despite its profound misunderstanding of the original source. (I argue that it’s also a indicator of equality before the law: unlike other law codes, Israelite law does not recognize aristocratic privilege in its “wergeld/manprice.”)
Here’s a good illustration of what the phrase means in reality. Nothing quite like an incident like this for clarity about the huge moral chasm that separates Israeli culture from Palestinian.
On the Monday morning of June 14, 2010, an Israeli policeman was killed and three others were injured when Palestinian terrorists opened fire at a police car near the Yehuda/West Bank settlement of Beit Hagai. The officers were making their way to Hebron from the southern city of Beersheba.
The killed officer was identified as Command Sergeant Major Yehoshua (Shuki) Sofer, 39, who had served in the Hebron region for 14 years. (YNET).
This morning, the Shin Bet cleared for publication, that the Shin Bet has arrested a Hamas cell believed to be behind the shooting attack.
The Paradox:
One of the cell’s heads said in his interrogation that just two weeks before he embarked on the attack, his six-year-old daughter was hospitalized in Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, where she had a tumor removed from her eye. The operation was funded by an Israeli organization. (YNET)
I’d love some more information here. How did this man talk about the two deeds - his and the Israeli hospital’s? (more…)
Pierre-André Taguieff sent me two links to articles that deal with the omerta of the French media about Taguieff’s book, « La nouvelle propagande anti juive ». I have already posted on this issue when Robert Redeker lost his position as book reviewer for a small Luxembourgeois paper for daring to review it favorably. Now two articles, including one in the Nouvel Observateur have taken up the cudgels for Taguieff.
Both point to Taguieff’s work on the Al Durah case as one of the main causes of the silence of the MSNM on his work. I reproduce the two passages on Al Durah below.
Note also an interesting incident in the French Senate during hearings for the new head of France2, in which a Senator put the appointee on the spot about the Al Durah story. This story is covered in still greater detail by the indefatigable Veronique Chemla in which she points out that a) the Senator in question (Plancade) gave the new head of France2 (Pflimlin) Taguieff’s book; and b) that none of the MSNM mentioned Plancade’s intervention. (HT/Eliyahu)
Par ailleurs il décrit et démontre la complicité des médias dans le processus précédent. En s’appuyant noatamment sur l’affaire Al Dourah qui lui permet de décrire par quels processus la classe médiatique, au mépris de toute déontologie, a manifesté sa solidarité avec Charles Enderlin, auteur du reportage contesté dans sa véracité (bien qu’il n’ait pas été présent au moment des faits). Israël ne pouvant être que coupable et les Palestiniens des victimes, il n’était en effet pas possible de revenir sur cette version des faits présentant les soldats israéliens comme des tueurs d’enfants palestiniens sans défense. Pourtant bien des éléments méritent qu’une enquête soit menée sur la validité de ce reportage. Ce qu’ont fait d’ailleurs des journalistes allemands demontant point par point la thèse d’Enderlin.
[Among other things he describes and demonstrates the complicity of the media in the preceding process (i.e., the alliance between the left and the islamists - rl). He emphasizes the al Durah affair to describe the way the “media class” (information professionals - rl), acting in violation of all professional ethics, showed its solidarity with Charles Enderlin, author of the contested report (even though he wasn’t present at the time of the events). Since Israel can only be guilty and the Palestinians only victims, it was impossible to revise this version of events in which the Israeli soldiers were killers of defenseless Palestinian children. And yet many aspects of the case indicate that an investigation be carried out on the validity of the report… which German journalists did, dismantling point by point Enderlin’s contentions.]
Les médias ne présenteront donc pas ce livre. Parce qu’il les met en cause et parce qu’il navigue à contre courant en démontrant que cette nouvelle propagande antijuive dont ils sont les porteurs constitue une arme de l’islamisme non pas contre Israël simplement, mais contre les démocraties. Ouvrage donc iconoclaste.
[The media will therefore not present this book. Because it questions them, and because it sails against the prevailing winds, dhowing that this new anti-Jewish propaganda of which they are the carriers constitutes an arm of Islamism not only aimed at Israel, but against democracies. Therefore, an iconoclastic work.]
Tarnero’s article is longer, published in a relatively new and iconoclastic publication, Causeur, which has taken on the Al Durah case already. Again, I only cite the segment directly concerned with Al Durah. (more…)
Lee Smith has a brilliant analysis of the way western intellectuals are drawn to terrorists like a moth to a devouring flame, a subject I recently addressed in somewhat more prosaic terms.
Why Israel’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals
By Lee Smith | Jul 14, 2010 7:00 AM | Print | Email / Share
It’s nothing new for Western intellectuals to lavish attention and admiration on the resistance forces aligned against Israel, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah or even organizations like al-Qaida that are less interested in Israel than in killing and maiming Western civilians. Last week, when CNN’s former Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted that she respected the late militant cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the cards were out on the table for all to see. But usually the pro-resistance vibe is more subtle, as when Nasr’s defenders demanded a more nuanced understanding from knee-jerk Americans who were shocked by Nasr’s support for a suicide-bomb-sanctioning man of faith. After all, Fadlallah was a relatively pro-feminist radical Islamist cleric—and if his talk about Israel was genocidal, well, that’s just part of the package when dealing with a complex place like the Middle East.
Media consumers in the United States are by now well aware that Hezbollah and Hamas provide “social services” for their communities. For the writers and television personalities who push such supposed palliatives on their audiences—“Yes, they do chant ‘kill the Jews!’ and they do act on their rhetoric, but they also educate poor kids in clean, well-lit schools (please ignore the slogans painted on the walls)”—respect for the resistance is a polite way of indicating one’s tolerance for murderous anti-Semitism. The issue is whether this attitude is in danger of seeping into the mainstream of the U.S. public. Poll numbers show that U.S. support for Israel is consistently high—in February Gallup found that a near-record 63 percent of Americans were more sympathetic to the Jewish state than to the Palestinians. But ideas can change, and it’s intellectuals who often lead the way. Remember that Israel was a popular cause among the intellectual classes until the 1967 war. It is true that the American people and the bulk of their intellectual class are far apart on the subject of Israel, but all the massive and popular evil of the last century started among a small ideological elite.
CiF Watch has an interesting piece about the experience of their fellow “media watcher” organization, The Brothers of Judea, who monitor the anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism of the Huffington Post.
The case in question concerns a certain Mya Guarnieri, who supports a one-state solution after the return of the Palestinian refugees, as the path to a “true democracy.” The contrast between Guarnieri’s inflated rhetoric and the Brother’s of Judea’s measured remarks highlights the way in which what Anthony Julius calls “scourges” - that is, Jews who believe that their higher morality impels them to engage in public whipping of Israel to drive it on the right path - lose all perspective in their obsession with Israel’s “crimes.”
Their sharp but entirely legitimate criticisms apparently did not please Ms. Guarnieri, who seems more comfortable in the position of “indignant scourge” than that of even “mildly rebuked.” So her response? I’m looking into suing you for defamation. Shades of Charles Enderlin and the Streisand effect.
In my essay on Jew-Baiting in England I redefined Islamophobe as someone who is afraid to criticize Islam. Here’s a comment someone left me at the Second Draft on that post that illustrates the dynamics I described in the essay quite vividly.
Prof. Landes,
What an ill-mannered hysteric you are! How dare you malign this fair city,our Queen and country, you impudent neocon Yank! What you call “Jew-baiting” is principled opposition to the Crimes of Israel as detailed extensively in The Goldstone Report. There are 1,000,000,000 Muslims on the planet – what would the good professor have us do – incinerate them all? As far as “proportion” goes – Israel sits at the epicenter of the world’s troubles,and its murderous racism has a much more harmful impact than do similar atrocities in a backwater like the Sudan. YOUR fantasy, Sir, is that Israel is in fact NOT doing anything except lapping buttermilk and beehiving honey. The truth is a bitter pill to swallow, and dear fellow- you’d be well-advised to pour yourself a shot of castor oil when you drop the little capsule in your already wet mouth.
For the linked version (and the place to leave comments) go to the PJMedia site. -rl
The Hidden Costs of Jew-Baiting in England
Jew-baiting has become something of a sport in England, as Brits feed the monster — radical Islam — that devours them.
July 10, 2010 - by Richard Landes
London is an amazing place, full of vitality, intensity, foreign tourists and residents, a patchwork of pluralism. Talk to the average person, and nothing seems amiss: this cab driver, having driven in London for 40 years, sees no significant change in the neighborhoods he travels through; this financier sees no signs of intimidation; this shopper, this tavern-hopper, this man on the bus, lives in an interesting and relatively normal world. A superficial walk through the [Regent’s] park gives the distinct sense of normality.
But talk to the Jews, and you get a different story. The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists held a conference here this week. The topic: Democratic and Legal Norms in an Age of Terror. Panels discussed everything from the Goldstone Report, to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, to “universal jurisdiction” (lawfare against Israelis brought in foreign courts). Here, in the Khalili Lecture Theatre of the SOAS (School for Oriental and African Studies), Jewish lawyers discussed a grim reality whose only public appearance on an everyday basis is the drumbeat of calumny that a boisterous elite — NGOs, journalists, academics — rain down on Israel.
Perhaps the most startling of the sessions concerned the BDS movement. Jonathan Rynhold, from the BESA Center at Bar Ilan, and Anthony Julius, author of Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, both presented a picture of British anti-Zionist activity whose intellectual and moral foundations were profoundly irrational, a dogmatic will to stigmatize and destroy Israel that responded to no argument about proportion (what about other places?) or reason (you make no moral demands of the Palestinians). And behind that lies a much weightier volume of negative feeling, a kind of unthinking animosity that expressed itself in its most banal form when a woman explained to Julius: “We all know why the Jews are hated: you marry among yourselves and live in ghettos like Golders Green and Vienna [sic].” In so doing, she put her finger on the most widespread subtext for hostility to Jews – “they think they’re the chosen people.”
Daniel Eilon, an English solicitor, explained to me one of the mechanisms. It isn’t real anti-Semitism. In fact, most of the stuff that comes out against Israel is intellectually hopeless — phony narratives based on fantasy “facts.” This is really just good old-fashioned Jew-baiting. It’s saying things in all righteous innocence that you know will hurt the Jews to whom you address the criticism. The problem for the Brits (and the Europeans in general), he pointed out, is that historically, there’s never been a particularly high price to pay for Jew-baiting. Now there is.
What my friend referred to with this last remark is lucidly analyzed by Robin Shepherd in his recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel. The elephant in the room, of course, is radical Islam — the people who interpret being “chosen” by Allah as a charter to dominate the world and submit everyone, willingly or not, to Islam. They’re the people no one dares bait; and they’re the folks who take full advantage of every deference to press for more. Daily aggressions from violent gangs constantly expand the territories where the Queen’s writ does not run. In tempo with the retreat of British law and enforcement, Sharia advances from internal community affairs (explicitly on the model of Jewish religious courts) towards the policing of community boundaries and claims on the state for special treatment. The British — like so many other Western nations –mainstream the extremists and marginalize the moderates. As Nick Cohen put it: “The world faces a psychotic movement and won’t admit it to themselves.” (more…)
Last week, at the death of one of Hizbullah’s spiritual mentors, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Octavia Nasr, CNN’s special consultant on Arab culture sent out a tweet expressing her sadness.
The tweet caused a great stir, especially among those familiar with both Fadlallah career and statements - he approved Palestinian “martyrdom operations” targeting civilians, denied the Holocaust, and may well have masterminded the attack on the US barracks in 1983 - and Nasr’s widespread knowledge of the issues.
This prompted a rapid apology/explanation from Nasr: I didn’t approve of his hatred of the US and Israel and approval of terrorism, but he was good on women. (Wouldn’t that be considered dual loyalty? Sure he’s a hateful guy when it comes to the US and other democracies, but hey, he was okay on the subject of my gender.)
Not surprisingly, perhaps, this is not a slip in terms of Nasr’s sympathies. Her coverage at CNN is shot through with support for Arab anti-Zionism, a support which she translated into (scarcely) impartial language. (more…)
Is it that the world doesn’t care about Jewish blood spilt? Or is it that too many like it?
For an extended treatment of this issue by someone who keeps his head level, his eye on the ball, and unfailingly finds clarity despite being surrounded by madfolk, see Robin Shepherd’s A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel. I’ll post on his chapter on Islam in Europe shortly.
There’s a silly movie about a young martial arts student whose master sent him on a quest to find a still greater master. His only clue is (it turns out) a Chinese fortune cookie factory named “Sum dom goy.”
We’re fed this inert
This lying phrase
like comfort food
as another little Palestinian boy
in trainers jeans and a white teeshirt
is gunned down by the Zionist SS
whose initials we should
- but we don’t - dumb goys -
clock in the weasel word crossfire.
Julius does a fine job of analyzing the multi-layered references to, and invocations of anti-Semitic themes here, including Paulin’s [gnostic] inside knowledge gnosis” that
I’d like to focus on the reference to dumb goys [sic]. On some level this poem is by a man who deeply resents how Jews - he thinks - dismiss him as a dumb goy. Thus they have the nerve to feed him “comfort food” about a cross-fire when (he knows) that they gunned this boy down in cold blood.
And how does he know this? Because Talal, via his useful infidel Charles Enderlin, told him so.
Now that we know that the scene was staged, how different this all appears. Paulin was fed the “comfort food” of an anti-Semitic lethal narrative about a boy gunned down in cold blood, which he (and his fellow fool, Robert Fisk who wrote a piece two days after the story broke denouncing the use of “crossfire” as a euphemism for deliberate murder), swallowed hook line and sinker.
The alleged “comfort food” Paulin rejects here - the Israeli claim that the boy died in a cross-fire, hence they did not deliberately kill an innocent boy, even if they may have killed him - is unacceptable to Paulin and Fisk because it lets Israel off the hook.
In their minds, it puts the typical dumb goy - not them! they’re way too clever - to sleep, while the evil Jewish conspiracy goes on. (Julius point out the use of the “goy” as a derogatory term by the [anti-Semite’s version of] the Elders of Zion in their infamous “Protocols.”)
How ironic that even that defensive posture of the Israelis is far from the real truth, namely that Palestinians faked this - and how many other? - lethal narratives in order to indict Israel and incite hatred. Of course if “crossfire” is unacceptable, how much the more “staged” would be to Paulin and Fisk.
The comfort food that Paulin and Fisk prefer to this weasel-word cop-out, is the far richer nourishment of blood libel, and in so doing they, like Catherine Nay, incarnate the European addiction to anything that can help them target their pathological hatred: the Jews. Like some 400 pound slob whose cholesterol is above 300, they just can’t stop popping down these delightful truffles of moral Schadenfreude that will kill them.
Some dumb goy, indeed.
I just finished attending the International Jewish Lawyers’ Conference here in London. One of the sessions was dedicated to BDS and Julius spoke about the pervasive presence of anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism in England. The discussion moved to matters of “framing,” and I suggested that British Jews might address their British brethren in terms of how by gulping down these tasty morsels of anti-Zionism they were feeding the monster that will devour them.
By and large most of the people there did not know what I was talking about, and when I specified that the monster was global Jihad, they assured me that the British public is far from feeling endangered. My sense is, reading Melanie Phillips in particular, that they misread the public and remain glued to the elites who live in la-la-land.
The following is a report “from the field” (i.e., the MSNM wars), by Michelle Schatzman about the coverage of a riot in the troubled streets of Paris itself (Zones Urbaines Sensibles - ZUS) of Paris. It illustrates the dynamics of a society in the process of decomposition, and probably sheds more light on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire than many ancient texts. What we see at work is the presence of gang culture of territorial expansion and confrontation - the Arabs and their sub-Saharan black allies - operating in an area supposedly (and previously) governed by the rule of law. In the case of the Roman Empire, it was imperial law, in 20th century France, it was democratic (isonomic) law.
The open aggression of the Arab/African street in France goes back to the last decade of the 20th century, but has become much more prominent since the first riots/demonstrations of the new millennium, those of October 6, 2000 in Paris.
This phenomenon of Muslim aggression on a civic level, which reached a momentary paroxysm in the riots of 2005, is perhaps the single most pervasive evidence that Muslims populations in Europe are grabbing power both by street violence and by taking over streets for prayer and (in practice) policing them as part of “their (Islamic) turf.” The same police-gang entente against citizens marked for dhimmitude seems to operate in England as well.
The story at Belleville seems to indicate that a) the cops are, as policy, protecting the Muslims from the law, and b) the news media does not know how to talk about this: it will name the “Chinese” (even when they’re lumping together the folks from far-east Asia), but not the Muslims or the sub-Saharan African street gangs. In the end they end up doing the same thing the police do - cover for the aggressors.
A demonstration by 8500 people, mostly from far-eastern origin, took place yesterday afternoon in Belleville, an area in the north-east of Paris.
This demonstration was organized by franco-chinese associations, and motivated by insécurité, i.e. a high level of crime, directed mainly against Chinese-looking people in the Belleville area, where this population is now residing in significant numbers. There have been several waves of immigration to France from the Far-East. The Belleville immigrants have been coming from China in the last ten years. The main other two waves are the wave which arrived in the seventies from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, at the time of the boat people, and the wave of the nineties.
The demonstration started quietly and ended in riots between some demonstrators, some non-demonstrators and the police. Eventually, the quiet was restored around 10 pm. So, we got reports in the three most important national newspapers : Libération, Le Figaro and Le Monde. In fact, Le Monde was content with a commented diaporama.
I’ve seen various items on this and couldn’t believe that it was true (or at least, that it would continue very long). It would be just too stupid and vicious…
So I want to know: Who in the Department of Homeland Security put together a set of quotes from Yousef’s book to make him look like a spy for Hamas? Either he’s a complete idiot, or he’s doing Hamas’ work. The odds stack up as follows: either someone, in good faith, completely misread the book (how did he find it without knowing what it’s about?), or someone has infiltrated Homeland Security and is working to kick Yousef out as a message to anyone else who thinks USA is safe haven from Muslim enforcers.
I hate to say it, but they’re probably both plausible. I just think it’s worth knowing which is the case.
United States looking to deport ‘Son of Hamas’ spy
By Avi Issacharoff
U.S. authorities are seeking to deport Mosab Hassan Yousef, the “Green Prince,” who reportedly worked as a Shin Bet security service agent from 1997-2007.
Yousef, who now lives in the United States, had unparalleled access to Hamas, which his father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, helped found and led in the West Bank. He first described his experiences to Haaretz earlier this year, and has since published a book, “Son of Hamas,” on the subject.
Recently, however, the Department of Homeland Security asked a California court to approve his deportation, on the grounds that he “provided material support to a [Tier 1] terrorist organization” - namely, Hamas.
The request is based on quotes from Yousef’s book, “Son of Hamas” - in which he described how he worked within Hamas to obtain information for the Shin Bet. Taken out of context, the quotes make it seem as if he worked for the group.
A San Diego immigration court is to hear the case on June 30. Yousef said he will appeal if it rules against him.
The deportation request is the Department of Homeland Security’s response to Yousef’s asylum application. Yousef, who converted to Christianity in 2005, wrote on his blog that he was stunned by the move.
“If Homeland Security cannot understand a simple situation like mine, how can they be trusted with bigger issues?” he demanded.
MK Einat Wilf (Labor ), a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, recently began collecting MKs’ signatures on a letter thanking Yousef for his contribution to Israel’s security.
