A Special Kind Of Hate

The latest from Pat Condell



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It is only been 70 years since the Holocaust and now Europeans and liberal professors and students have gone to the streets screaming:  "Jews to the Gas!"

Nothing To Do With Islam

The latest from Pat Condell


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What Happens When A Fly Falls Into A Cup Of Coffee At A Coffee Shop?

Stolen From Bare Naked Islam

The Italian throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage.

The German carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee.

The Frenchman takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.

The Chinese swats the fly and throws away the coffee.

The Russian drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge.

The Israeli sells the coffee to the Frenchman, sells the fly to the Chinese, sells the cup to the Italian, drinks a cup of tea, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.

The Palestinian blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of tea to the Palestinian.

76 Years Ago Today

It started with this:

Kristallnacht!

Followed by this:

 For 70 years we have screamed NEVER AGAIN!  Today Europeans, Muslims and Americans are screaming for Jews to be gassed.

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Given a voice loud enough how many more Jews will be murdered by the left to appease their Muslim Masters?

Boo Hoo Palestine

The latest from Pat Condell


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The biggest political con trick in history, and we fall for it again
and again.

Sweden - Ship Of Fools

The latest from Pat Condell



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The shape of things to come on planet "progressive".

Why I’m Unsubscribing To The New York Times

Copies of the New York Times sit for sale in a rack July 23, 2008 in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

I am a lifelong Democrat, a political liberal, a Reform rabbi, and for four decades, until last week, a New York Times subscriber. What drove me away was the paper’s incessant denigration of Israel, a torrent of articles, photographs, and op-ed columns that consistently present the Jewish State in the worst possible light.

This phenomenon is not new. Knowledgeable observers have long assailed the Times lack of objectivity and absence of journalistic integrity in reporting on Israel. My chronic irritation finally morphed into alienation and then to visceral disgust this summer, after Hamas renewed its terrorist assaults upon Israel and the Times launched what can only be described as a campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State.


The Middle East conflict is complex, but the root cause of Israel’s confrontation with Hamas is not. Committed by its charter to “obliterate” Israel and kill all Jews everywhere, Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Britain, and the European Union, a designation substantiated by its raining rockets down on Israel’s civilians and tunneling under its border to kill and kidnap, indisputable war crimes.
Renowned Israeli novelist, leftist, and self-declared “Israeli peacenik” Amos Oz captured the essence of the conflict in two questions he posed to a German radio audience. “What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery? What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?”

The answers are self-evident to everyone except the New York Times. Its obsessive focus is on Palestinian civilian casualties, especially children, publishing photos of their corpses and little else, as if they tell the whole story. The deaths of innocents in wartime are tragic and heartbreaking; they diminish us all. But a newspaper committed to balance and fairness would provide context and perspective. It would show traumatized Israeli children running to shelters, cowering, wetting their beds, and suffering nightmares. It would publish photos and accounts of militants launching rockets from the roofs of mosques, a church, and a media hotel, alongside schools, refugee shelters, clinics and hospitals, and of weapons concealed by Hamas in UN facilities. It would substantiate casualty figures from Hamas, which is known to have falsified them in the past, before reporting them as fact. It would highlight Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields, its urging civilians to ignore Israel’s advance warnings to depart, so that Gazans would be killed and inflict PR damage on Israel. Such a paper would cover the threats of death that inhibited reporters and photojournalists from telling the true, full story. But the Times did not.

What it did instead is revealed by a sample of headlines: “As Israel Hits Mosque and Clinic, Air Campaign’s Risks Come Home;” “Israelis Watch Bombs Drop on Gaza From Front-Row Seats;” “Questions About Tactics and Targets as Civilian Toll Climbs in Israeli Strikes;” “Foreign Correspondents in Israel Complain of Intimidation;” “Israeli Shells are Said to Hit UN School;” “Military Censorship in Israel;” “A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Renewal of War, A Family in Mourning;” “Israel’s Supporters Try to Come to Terms with the Killing of Children in Gaza;” “Israel Braces for War Crimes Inquiries on Gaza;” “Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic.”

Then there are the op-eds: “Israel’s Puppy, Tony Blair;” “Israel’s Bloody Status Quo;” “How the West Chose War in Gaza;” “Darkness Falls on Gaza;” “Israeli Self-Defense Does Not Permit Killing Civilians;” “Israel Has Overreacted to the Threats it Provoked;” “Zionism and Its Discontents;” “U.S. Should Stop Funding Israel, or Let Others Broker Peace;” “Israel’s Colonialism Must End;” “Unwavering Support of Israel Harms U.S. Interests, Encourages Extremism;” “Eight Days in Gaza: A Wartime Diary: Life and Death in the Gaza Strip.” The last column consumed nearly the entire op-ed page.

The straw that broke my subscription’s back came on Aug. 19, when Hamas violated yet another truce, sending a fusillade of rockets into Israel. The Wall Street Journal’s headline read, “Gaza Rocket Strikes End Cease Fire.” A U.S. State Department spokesperson condemned the renewed rocket fire, holding Hamas responsible for causing the ceasefire to break down. The Times headline: “Rockets From Gaza and Israeli Response Break Cease-Fire.” Seriously? A newspaper that cannot distinguish between starting a fight and defending oneself is intellectually deficient, morally obtuse, and profoundly unworthy of its readers.

I know the Times won’t miss me. The feeling is mutual.

Rabbi Richard A. Block is president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

The Real Enemy The World Sees

No Peace in the Middle East

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Published on Nov 25, 2012
Not while Hamas is around.

Paris's Kristallnacht

Whenever Israel is attacked by terrorist movements and needs to defend itself, "leftist" and Islamist organizations organize anti-Israel protests in Paris. One of the latest took place on July 13.

The event brought together between 10,000 and 30,000 people -- not surprising in a country where "leftist" and Islamist organizations are strong.

The demonstrators shouted hateful and violent slogans against Israel and held Israeli flags on which swastikas replaced the Star of David -- also not surprising. Events organized by "leftists" and by Islamists usually carry such gear.

The demonstrators also shouted purely anti-Semitic slogans; the call for "Death to Jews" was picked up by the crowd. This was the first time since the end of World War II that explicitly anti-Semitic chants were shouted by a large crowd in Paris (During a demonstration in January, protesters shouted, "Jews, France does not belong to you").
Demonstrators shouted, "Hamas will win," in support of the jihadist terrorist organization. This was also the first time that slogans openly favoring a jihadist terrorist organization were shouted by a large crowd in Paris (During earlier demonstrations, protesters shouted "Palestine will win," but did not point to Hamas).

Demonstrators also shouted slogans in favor of a man who had murdered Jewish children: "We are all Mohamed Merah." Merah shot and killed a rabbi and three Jewish children at close range in a schoolyard in Toulouse in 2012; it was the one of the most serious anti-Semitic acts committed in France since the Vichy regime. This was the first time in France that a large crowd proudly identified with a murderer of Jewish children.
The demonstration started in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris (metro station Barbès Rochechouart), close to where Islamic preachers organized street prayers a few months ago; it ended near Place de la Bastille. Dozens of windows of Jewish shops and restaurants along the route were broken and covered with yellow labels saying, "boycott Israel". This was the first time that so many Jewish shops and restaurants were attacked during a demonstration in Paris.

In addition, several hundred protesters armed with iron bars, machetes, axes and firebombs, arriving Place de la Bastille, marched to the nearby Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue on rue de la Roquette. They shouted, "Let's slay the Jews," "Hitler was right," and "Allahu Akbar".

Only six police officers were on hand, who were quickly overwhelmed. Members of Jewish defense organizations protected the 200 Jews present inside the synagogue. Even after police reinforcements arrived, the synagogue was besieged for nearly two hours. The Jews, prisoners of a potentially lethal horde, were locked inside.

An "anti-Israel" mob attempts to smash through the front gate of the Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue in Paris, July 13, 2014.

At another nearby synagogue on rue des Tournelles, rioters threw Molotov cocktails and looted the place. When the vandals continued their looting to rue des Rosiers, the heart of the Jewish quarter of Paris, the police struggled to stop them.

This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.

In an attempt to address the distress of the Jewish community, the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, denounced anti-Semitism in general terms. He said he would strengthen the protection of "places of worship," synagogues and mosques -- although no mosque was attacked.

Although the government banned the next demonstration, scheduled for July 19, it took place anyway, and soon turned into a riot.

When thousands of protesters gathered again at the Barbès Rochechouart metro station, the presence of significant police forces prevented protesters from crossing Paris. Organized groups then attacked the police by throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and by using iron bars. Shops were looted. Garbage cans were burned. Bus stations, dozens of them, and billboards were destroyed. Protesters came with pickaxes and ripped the pavement on several streets to throw chunks of asphalt.

Demonstrators tried to burn down the largest textile store in Paris, near Barbès Rochechouart, because it carries a Jewish name, Dreyfus-Marché Saint Pierre. Clashes with police near this store were particularly violent.

Witnesses spoke of the atmosphere of a civil war, and photographers spoke of a "French intifada".

The slogans shouted by the rioters were the same as the previous week: "Death to Jews" mingled with "Death to Israel" and "Long live Hamas." Many who threw stones and Molotov cocktails shouted, "Allahu Akbar," just as the attackers of the synagogue on July 13 had done.

Even though there were no synagogues or Jews nearby, and no protester shouted, "Let's slay the Jews" or "Hitler was right," what happened in Paris on July 19 was as frightful as what had happened the week before.

This was also not the first time that a district of a French city was immersed in an atmosphere of civil war. In October 2005, entire neighborhoods in the suburbs of several major cities were set on fire. In 2010, two districts of Grenoble, in southeast France, were on fire for several days. In May 2013, the Trocadéro area in Paris was ransacked, and two months later, the city of Trappes, near Versailles, experienced hours of insurrection. Dozens of cars and shops were burned. The police precinct was attacked and under siege for hours.

The riots this month were, however, the first time that demonstrations resembling a civil war were carried by people who showed an explicit hatred of Jews and who said they identified with jihadi terrorists. This was the first time that riots in France looked like an Islamic uprising.

Although the events of July 13 and 19 had the support of "leftists" organizations, the vast majority of demonstrators and rioters were Muslims. The majority of the women wore Islamic headscarves. Most men wore a keffiyeh, the checkered Arab scarf, and used it to hide their faces the way Islamists do in the Middle East.

Many protesters on July 13 and 19 came with Palestinian flags, but the flags of Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda and Islamic State [IS], also present, were proudly waved.
The day after the riots, July 20, Prime Minister Manuel Valls again denounced the "danger of anti-Semitism". July 20th was also the anniversary of the "Vel d'Hiv Round-up" -- the mass arrest of Jews in Paris in 1942 by the French police under the supervision of the Nazis. But Valls said nothing about the anti-Semitic and jihadist dimension of the riots. Some conservative politicians criticized the lack of firmness of the government. Leaders of the rightist National Front said that the government was responsible for the violence and had undermined "freedom of expression."

At the exact moment Manuel Valls spoke, rioters started to ransack the suburb with the largest Jewish population on the outskirts of Paris: Sarcelles. All the Jewish stores and many cars were wrecked or set on fire. A group shouting "Allahu Akbar" again tried to burn the town's synagogue. Again, most rioters were Muslim. Again, most shouted, "Death to the Jews."

All French politicians are ready to condemn anti-Semitism in general terms (except members of the National Front); none are ready to call the anti-Semitism that is exploding in France today by its name: Islamic anti-Semitism.

All French politicians, left or right (except members of the National Front), have the same attitude about what happened on July 13, 19 and 20. This attitude can be summed up in one sentence, used by the French President, François Hollande: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot import itself into France." No French politician would dare say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is already present in France, and that, among Muslim populations, Islamic anti-Semitism is inextricably mixed with an absolute hatred of Israel and Jews.

Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They never define Hamas as an Islamic terrorist organization. They close their eyes to the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish hate speech disseminated by the enemies of Israel in the Middle East, and to the irony that France finances that speech. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France.

The major French media have not said a word about the anti-Semitism and jihadism that permeated the protest of July 13 and the riots of July 19 and 20. All major French television reports of these events presented the protesters and rioters as people who had just wanted to support the "liberation of the Palestinian people". All reports major French television reports on Israel's war against Hamas are made ​​from the point of view of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. No report speaks of Hamas's genocidal Jew hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Journalists from major French media outlets act as if they did not know that by adopting a watered-down vision of the protesters and rioters in France, and by describing the war from the point of view of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, they are playing a dangerous game that could lead to more pogroms and even civil war.

The attitude of French politicians reflects the sorry state of French society. All the riots that erupted in France during the last decade were the result of minor incidents, but showed that France is on the verge of a large-scale explosion. French politicians want to avoid a large-scale explosion. They are scared and paralyzed.

French politicians also know that France's Muslim population now amounts to 15% of its total population and that radical Islamist organizations are particularly well established. The Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is the main French Muslim organization; it attracts tens of thousands of people in each of its annual meetings and openly lends political support to Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. French politicians do not want a confrontation with the UOIF.

French politicians also know that more than 750 neighborhoods in France are considered "no go zones" by the police, and that the authorities have lost control of them.
They also know that 70% of all inmates in the French prison system are Muslim , and that self-proclaimed imams and gang leaders have taken over many prisons. They know that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists, and that regaining control of these prisons is an almost impossible task. Mohamed Merah and Mehdi Nemmouche, the Brussels Jewish Museum killer, became jihadists while in French prisons.

French politicians know, as well, that more than 800 French Muslims are being trained in the Islamic State, in Iraq and Syria.

They know that Muslims vote. Eight million Muslims clearly have greater political weight than do four hundred thousand Jews.

The major French media are also scared and paralyzed. Criticizing radical Islam on French television is now almost impossible. Organizations fighting "Islamophobia" are extremely vigilant and extremely well funded.

Defending Israel on French television is also almost impossible. Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television. Representatives of Palestinian and "pro-Palestinian" organizations are regularly invited and can lie without ever being contradicted.

Reports on right-wing anti-Semitism are abundant. Reports on Islamic Jew-hatred are non-existent.

The Global Anti-Semitism Index recently published by the Anti Defamation League shows that 37% of the French population can be considered anti-Semitic. It is likely that the proportion of anti-Semites among French Muslims is far higher.

A poll for the BBC in 2012 showed that 75% of the French have a negative view of Israel. It is likely that the proportion among French Muslims is, again, far higher.
The prevalent sentiment among French Jews is that a page has been turned. The French Jewish philosopher Shmuel Trigano wrote on July 16th that what is happening is a sign that Jews must leave France, fast. "Recent events are likely to play the role that such events have played in the past for the Jews in many countries: a strong symbolic event gives the signal that the Jews have no future in the country that was theirs".
The prevalent sentiment among French people in general was described by a survey published in January 2014: 74% of the French declared themselves "pessimistic" or "very pessimistic" about the future of the country. 63% said they believe that Islam is "not compatible with the values ​​of a democratic society." 78% said they "distrust" all politicians. 77% said they consider that the information provided by the media is "unreliable."

The words of most of the French politicians could not have strengthened the confidence the French have in their politicians.

The behavior of most French journalists could not have increased the credibility the French have in their media.

And the events that took place in Paris on July 13, 19 and 20 could not have made the French less pessimistic and more confident about the compatibility of Islam with the values of democracy.

Most recently, on July 23, an anti-Israeli protest was organized in Paris. This time, the protest was not banned. It brought together 10,000-20,000 people. 15,000 police officers were present. Thirty socialist MPs were present among the protesters. The media said it was a "peaceful protest." People shouted, "Hamas, Jihad, Resistance." Nazi-era anti-Semitic cartoons appeared on large panels. Again, groups of protesters finished their day at the rue des Rosiers and attacked Jewish shops. Some "peaceful protest".

On July 21, Meyer Habib, a MP representing French citizens living in Israel, said that "an atmosphere of Kristallnacht" spreads over the country. Many French Jews agree.

What If Hamas Had Military Superiority?

From the Gatestone Institute

Would Hamas have tailored its air targeting to avoid as much as possible innocents from becoming casualties? Would Hamas have dropped millions of leaflets to warn civilian residents before staging bombing runs? Or made tens of thousands of phone calls telling non-combatants to flee the areas which are to be attacked, or discriminated between combatants and non-combatants in a ground war, or abided by the Geneva Conventions' rules for the treatment of prisoners of war?

Would the group have arrested the Hamas operatives who murderer Israeli civilians, or investigated "mistakes" that resulted in civilian casualties?

A children's health clinic in Ashkelon, Israel, that was hit this week by a rocket launched from Gaza. (Image source: IDF)

BR> The American media, by drawing almost exclusive attention to the wide difference in casualties between Gaza and Israel -- a disparity that did not ensue from Hamas's lack of trying -- do a disservice to humane people on the front line of a global war between Islamic extremists and liberal-democratic civilization.

The media also does not mention that Hamas leaders have set up their military headquarters beneath hospitals and established arms storerooms in homes, mosques and even in an empty UNRWA school. Journalists do not discuss the Hamas tactic of regularly mixing their operatives with the women and children of their own families. This is the intentional use of innocents as human shields and as hostages, to serve their propaganda objective of casting Israel in the role of aggressor and villain. The media networks leave this narrative to Israeli diplomats and spokespersons.

But the faint rhetorical support of an ally from U.S. leaders is cowardly and a disingenuous insult to the intelligence of the American people who are not swayed by the phony handwringing of its so-called intelligentsia.

Anti-Jewish Demonstrations

The Presbyterian Church

According to the New York Jewish Week: 

Misguided Presbyterian Vote

"By a 310-303 vote last week, a prominent American Protestant denomination made history. The Presbyterian Church, with about 1.8 million members, became the first major Christian group in this country to approve a resolution in favor of economic divestment from American businesses that make equipment that helps foster Israel’s occupation in the West Bank. 

The amount of money that the Presbyterians will withdraw from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions, $21 million, is relatively small in the world of international finance. But the message that the Presbyterian’s General Assembly sent last week in Detroit was huge: keep away from Israel."

 I am wondering if the youth of the Presbyterian Church will now be donning brown shirts, swastikas and standing in front of Jewish shops stopping people from buying there.  For there is no difference between what this church has done and Nazis.

Future Presbyterian Youth At Work!

Israel And The Kurds

And now, according to Bloomberg: 

Iraq Government Condemns Kurds for ‘Illegal’ Oil Sale to Israel

Iraq’s government condemned the country’s semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities for “illegally” selling crude oil to Israel for the fourth time.
The SCF Altai tanker carrying crude oil from the Kurdish region docked in Ashkelon, Israel, June 20, according to an e-mailed statement from the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

Why I Support Israel

By Pat Condell



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Crazy!

From Dry Bones

In response to the unfolding "Kidnapping our Boys" affair, I decided to run this golden oldie from back in 1975! It is a cartoon that I drew one year short of 40 years ago!!!

Now for your enjoyment:

Crazy by Patsy Cline



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Israel And The Rest of the World

By Dennis MacEoin

Everybody hates Israel. That is not just accepted wisdom, it is a reality that chokes all rational debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There are exceptions, of course, such as Canada, but most of Western Europe has slipped from support for Israel to support for the Palestinian cause, as if both sides might not have valid claims to the disputed land.

Most Americans are enthusiastic about Israel, but the U.S. government under Barack Obama, has, in recent years, shown increasing antagonism. Unsurprisingly, not a single Muslim nation likes Israel at all.

Many hate the Jewish state precisely because it is a Jewish state -- there seems no other reason why they might hate it. Many, in a display of true prejudice, have never even visited it.

In the world in general, and Europe in particular, anti-Semitism is growing at a rate not unlike the 1930s. It does not take much mental grip to see the link between that escalation of the "oldest hatred" and the refined political and religious rejection of Israel as the one and only state in the world that deserves to be abolished. Or, as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once put it in Farsi, "exterminated" (Umam-e Eslami bayad Isra'il-ra qal' o qam' kard: The nations of Islam must exterminate Israel.)

In a Friday sermon, former Iranian President Rafsanjani also made the statement, "If one day, a very important day of course, the Islamic world will also be equipped with the weapons available to Israel now, the imperialist strategy will reach an impasse, because the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but would only do damage to the Islamic world."[1]

While the world focuses on Israel's flaws (often imaginary), in Saudi Arabia there are special roads for non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina.

But then, one might surely ask, if everyone hates Israel, will it make the slightest difference if it actually is wiped off the face of the earth? Will it matter if another six million Jews are gassed or driven into the Mediterranean? If most of the people on the planet hate Israel and want to see a massive Palestinian state take its place, then who will weep if the Jews go and the Arabs come and take over, as so many people now say they have every right to do? Would it not be a blow for humanity, justice and people everywhere if the oppressive, violent, and apartheid Jewish state were to be removed from the earth?

Are you starting to feel a bit uneasy about this?

Some might hold back from wishing death on the Jews, but would not hesitate if someone else were to kill them. Or force them to pack their bags and leave their homes to make room for an army of Palestinian "refugees." If you hate Jews enough, nothing may seem too bad for them, and no history of pogroms and the Holocaust will be enough to dissuade you and your friends from doing it all over again, or rejoicing that someone else is doing it for you.

The treatment—or rather, mistreatment—of the Jews stands out in the modern era as the single greatest emblem of man's inhumanity to man. From the Christian (and post-Christian) West to the Islamic East, hatred of Jews has led to unfettered cruelty, and a continuing refusal to accept any form of moral or ethical constraint. However much Jews suffer, anti-Semites want them to suffer more. However far Jews might try to run, their self-appointed overlords will try to hunt them down and start the process of hate and persecution all over again. However much Jews contribute to human civilization, win Nobel prizes, develop cures for illness, create remarkable films, set up hospital units worldwide to treat the sick, irrigate the fields of the poorest farmers and change our lives for the better — the haters sneer and lie and kill Jews with the same knives; and every time a Jew is killed or wounded, dance on the same floors.

And what have the Jews ever done to deserve any of this? Are the Jews really the masterminds behind every war, every revolution, every economic disaster, every plot, even the Holocaust itself? Yes, according to anti-Semites, either the Holocaust never happened and was made up to secure Israel as a country for the Jews; or else the Jews instigated it to force other Jews to flee Europe to Mandatory Palestine, to take it over. Just read a few comments on YouTube as a measuring stick for this mental illness.

Of course, I know the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion says all this (apart from the Holocaust slurs), but the Protocols is a forgery;[2] and not just a forgery, but a cheap and shoddy product of the Tsarist secret police before World War I. Even though it is now more than a century later, some people still treat this libel as Gospel, and write comments on YouTube to prove that the Jews are the worst of mankind.

In Arab countries, after many years, the Protocols is still a bestseller. And Hitler's Mein Kampf, tagged in 2011 by Waterstone's in the UK as the "perfect Christmas present", in its electronic form is selling hand-over-fist. How hurtful -- and deeply unjust -- that is to Jews who have just made critical advances in medicine or saved a Palestinian child's life when operating in an Israeli hospital, or journeyed to Africa to teach better methods of farming, or traveled with an Israeli aid team to Haiti or the Philippines to save yet more lives.

The Jews are not the worst of mankind; they are like the rest of us, some bad, some good, and some so talented they have left indelible marks on every field of human endeavor. They have always been an underappreciated force, above all in the realm of ethics. No religion has developed in so well-structured a fashion as Judaism; its impact on Christian and Islamic ethics is well attested. Without the Jews, a major force for good and a barometer for moral concern would be taken from civilization entirely -- or is moral concern something the world would secretly rather do without?

The irony is that it is precisely these prejudiced, conniving, and racist haters of Jews -- including those who envisage the destruction of the one and only Jewish state and those who conjure up a realistic threat of a second Holocaust -- who have the arrogance to treat the Jews, including the Israelis, as if they are the most prejudiced, the most conniving, the most racist of all mankind -- and the most immoral -- and, of course, deeply inferior to Christians or Muslims.

The false piety of much Christian condemnation of Israel is matched only by the cheap moralizing of the followers of Islam in their attacks, both physical and verbal, on the Jewish state; or their failure to recognize that Jerusalem was always a Jewish city; that there were two Jewish temples there; and especially in the obsessive Palestinian refusal to recognize any part of Israel as a Jewish entity, or to make peace with Israel, or even to acknowledge that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land for three thousand years.

The loss of Israel -- engineered as it would be by a coalition of "progressive" Muslims and Western secularists, along with anti-Semitic Christians and hard-line Islamists -- would not be a victory for any of the values we hold dear. On the contrary, it would be one of the greatest disasters to befall mankind. The values we consider highest – such as peacemaking, neighborliness, cooperation, caring for the less fortunate, for those of different religions, ethnicity, and mutual defence against aggression – would start to crumble, and our sense of human progress would weaken and lose its hold on our minds and hearts. If we could do that to the Jews, a people of great deserving, who have done so much for us, what might we then do to others? For even if the Jews were gone, there would still be other, weaker people for us to persecute and eliminate.

Does such a prognosis seem inflated, even barely respectable? Israel, however, did not emerge in the way most other countries have done, as an expression of traditional boundaries, a containment of one or more specific languages, a repository of a single culture, a place determined by one king, one dominant holy man, or one parliament, or one body of laws. Of course, Israel has had several of those things, beginning with the establishment, on that same plot of land, of the oldest set of laws after Hammurabi: the Ten Commandments and the earliest set of social welfare laws.

Modern Israel had the original acclamation of much of the international community; it set up a democratic parliament, established a set of basic laws, and, when other nations let boatloads of refugees sink at sea, served the Jews as the only sanctuary, free from a persecution which still exists to this day, and, sadly, which is once again being orchestrated by people supposedly educated enough to know better.

For civilization — any civilization — to work, there must be a core set of values that crosses from one culture to another, acquiring on the way a sort of universal validity. Small differences may exist between one country and another, one language and another, and even one religion and another. With few exceptions, people who belong to Western civilization believe that it is absolutely wrong to take a human life (except in life-or-death cases or self-defense). We strongly believe in human rights even if we are not always observant of them. In general, Western countries advocate and legislate for equality between men and women, equal justice under law, an independent judiciary, and freedom of and from belief. We attempt to expunge racism in its various forms from our streets and businesses. We defend minorities, religious, political or gender-based. And free speech, we defend that too, even when it hurts us to do so.

Islamic civilization holds often starkly different values. A man's or woman's life may be taken, often by beheading or stoning, for a wide range of "sins," from heresy (really, free thinking; there, called blasphemy) to adultery to apostasy (more free thinking). A Muslim also may not be punished for killing a non-Muslim, or even another Muslim if his intent is to further the cause of Islam. Although not Islamic in any true sense, female genital mutilation and honor killings are far from uncommon. They happen in the UK and the US, mainly within Muslim communities – as well as in Muslim countries.

Perhaps Islamic civilization would find the disappearance of the Jewish state a satisfactory gift. But Western civilization might not wear this too well, except for that part occupied by those who consider themselves as members of the far left -- Stalinists, Trotskyites, anarchists and anti-Semitic Christians who believe they do the will of God, and even Quisling Jews -- when they curse Jews and boycott Israel.

When the Nazis took power, Germany seemed to be one of the most civilized countries in the world, with a rich culture, a deep grasp of academic achievement, and a growing mastery of science and technology. Within a few years, the country had been reduced to the status of the most barbaric of countries, the most abusive of human rights, perhaps the most savage political entity in history. And not many years later, Germany was in ruins, destroyed by the very totalitarianism it had used to impose itself on the rest of Europe.

Across the world, people came to condemn the great wrongs Germans had done to mankind. Germans rebuilt their nation only by rigorously excluding that tendency to totalitarianism. Yet today, young Germans march against Israel and, in fighting Israel, fight the Jews. What conceivable right do the scions of that black period and the years of wiedergutmachen [compensation] have to treat Jews as untermenschen [subhuman] once again, to march in the streets where the SS marched, to bellow as their grandfathers bellowed, Juden Raus, "Jews out" -- out of "Palestine," out of the Middle East, out of everyplace.

Whatever its detractors may say, Israel declares loudly that it is a country where the best Western values are honored, where democracy, the rule of law, the creation of new laws through an elected parliament, the fair treatment of all minorities, rights for women, for gays, for all citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are demanded. But say it is also a Jewish country based on Jewish ethics, and someone of limited intellect will come along clutching a copy of the Torah, the Talmud, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or anything else they can lay their hands on, and declaiming that they can prove Judaism is a bloodthirsty religion that has always worked to defeat and mistreat non-Jews. In the past years, I have only known a violent and angry Islam; yet the world is silent. The world excuses Islamic murder, but focuses on flaws, often imaginary, on the part of Israel.

The very establishment of a Jewish state stood for more than even its founders guessed. It was open defiance of the universal impulse to persecute and kill Jews.

Only in their Holy Land could the Jews weave their own destinies at last -- and do. Israel thrives. They have won Nobel prizes and made some of the greatest advances in science, technology, and medicine. Israelis create world-class hospitals and universities. They have written more scientific papers per capita than any other nation, and have saved children's lives – Palestinian children's lives – in a dozen operating theaters, and sent aid teams around the world to save yet more lives. Israeli "apartheid"? Far from it. All facilities and opportunities are equally open to all Israelis: Black, White, Arab, Christian, Jew -- everyone. Far more than in say, Saudi Arabia, where there are special roads for non-Muslims to ensure they cannot enter Mecca or Medina, or where a Bible is not even allowed in the country. Or all the mosques where every Friday congregants are told that Jews are the sons of pigs and apes. It would seem that is racism; that is apartheid.

What the destroyers of Israel would do is negate every one of Israel's achievements and more, and leave a hole in the world, in their own world. What, after all, would take the place of Israel? Another failed state, riven by strife, characterized by failure, poverty-stricken, dependent, just another victim of the authoritarian Arab way of governing? Is that something that will set civilization towards new horizons? It is up to us to keep the lights on, to place civilization against barbarism, to put our minds and bodies between Israel and all who mean her ill.

[1] "Iran Calls for the Destruction of Israel," Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Center for Special Studies, Special Information Bulletin, November 2003, citing Khabar TV, December 14, 2000. Cited in Joshua Teitelbaum, What Iranian Leaders Really Say About Doing Away with Israel, Jerusalem Center for Pubic Affairs.
[2] See David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, London, Jonathan Cape, 2009, pp. 22-48.

An Honest BDS Activist

Hat tip to Elder of Ziyon

Please remember this is satire!

Honest BDS Activist Lives Off Grid, Forages, Avoids Medicine

If you see a BDS activist using one of these, gently highlight the hypocrisy.

Somewhere near Beach Lake, Pennsylvania, February 15 – Oscar Thorpe is a rare specimen indeed: a political activist who completely practices what he preaches. In his case, his adherence to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel has led him to renounce all computer and telecommunications technology and advanced medical care.

Unlike the leaders of the BDS movement, the 42-year-old former marketing consultant does not own a mobile device, as the technology necessary to manufacture and use one depends heavily on Israeli-engineered or Israeli-produced components. The same holds true for a computer of any sort, which Thorpe cannot use because he would have to connect it to a power source, and the power company employs Israeli computing technology to deliver its product to customers.

“I used to own a Tandy, which would be great for my purposes, since it uses nothing Israeli,” said Thorpe. “But it’s both obsolete and kind of useless for trying to stay in contact.”

In contrast, Omar Barghouti, a leader of the BDS movement, earned his philosophy degree at none other than Tel Aviv University. Thorpe disdainfully points out that Barghouti specifically studied ethics.
Unable to maintain consistent communications with his colleagues in the BDS movement, Thorpe found out only this week about the international scuffle over Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam, and SodaStream, but was unable to fully grasp the details, since he has no idea what SodaStream means or who the actress is. He heard mention of the news item on his old transistor radio, which can be used and powered by Blessedly Israel-free AA batteries.

“I haven’t seen the inside of a movie theater since, oh, maybe 2001,” said Thorpe. “I know what Oxfam is because they’ve been around a long time and I’ve heard of them, but ‘Scarlett Johansson’ to me is just a name. What is she, Swedish?” he wondered, unaware of Ms. Johansson’s Jewish American status. Thorpe could find out more, but the public libraries in the area – in both nearby Honesdale and slightly more distant Hawley – make heavy use of Israeli technology in the computers that manage their collections.

The New Hampshire native has fashioned a serviceable crossbow that he uses to hunt rabbit, deer, and other game, and lives in an abandoned stone hut overlooking a man-made lake. “I used to go fishing there, but then I found out there’s a Zionist summer camp on the other side, I couldn’t in good conscience benefit from their maintenance of the lake,” he explained, referring to Camp Moshava, which is run by the Tel-Aviv-headquartered religious Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva.

Despite the hardships, Thorpe eschews all medical care except for basic first aid, since Israeli pharmaceutical companies produce vast amounts of the generic drugs employed by hospitals and health clinics all over the world. “Simply making an appointment to go see a doctor would mean endorsing their use of Israeli technology in the clinic management software, or the hardware in the terminals themselves,” said Thorpe. “And forget about all the imaging technology to detect abnormalities or growths.”

Thorpe hopes his principled stand will inspire others to be more consistent in their activism. “There’s nothing I’d like to see more than all my fellow BDS advocates dying of some treatable disease,” said Thorpe.

Ten Reasons Why The BDS Movement Is Immoral And Hinders Peace ~~ By Alan M. Dershowitz

From The Gatestone Institute

As a strong supporter of the two state solution and a critic of Israel's settlement policies, I am particularly appalled at efforts to impose divestment, boycotts and sanctions against Israel, and Israel alone, because BDS makes it more difficult to achieve a peaceful resolution of the Mid-East conflict that requires compromise on all sides.

The BDS movement is highly immoral, threatens the peace process and discourages the Palestinians from agreeing to any reasonable peace offer. Here are ten compelling reasons why the BDS movement is immoral and incompatible with current efforts to arrive at a compromise peace.

1. The BDS movement immorally imposes the entire blame for the continuing Israeli occupation and settlement policy on the Israelis. It refuses to acknowledge the historical reality that on at least three occasions, Israel offered to end the occupation and on all three occasions, the Palestinian leadership, supported by its people, refused to accept these offers. In 1967, I played a small role in drafting UN Security Council Resolution 242 that set out the formula for ending the occupation in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace. Israel accepted that Resolution, while the Palestinians, along with all the Arab nations, gathered in Khartoum and issued their three famous "nos:" No peace, no negotiation, no recognition. There were no efforts to boycott, sanction or divest from these Arab naysayers. In 2000-2001, Israel's liberal Prime Minister Ehud Barak, along with American President Bill Clinton, offered the Palestinians statehood, and the end of the occupation. Yasser Arafat rejected this offer—a rejection that many Arab leaders considered a crime against the Palestinian people. In 2007, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians an even better deal, an offer to which they failed to respond. There were no BDS threats against those who rejected Israel's peace offers. Now there are ongoing peace negotiations in which both parties are making offers and imposing conditions. Under these circumstances, it is immoral to impose blame only on Israel and to direct a BDS movement only against the nation state of the Jewish people, that has thrice offered to end the occupation in exchange for peace.

2. The current BDS movement, especially in Europe and on some American university campuses, emboldens the Palestinians to reject compromise solutions to the conflict. Some within the Palestinian leadership have told me that the longer they hold out against making peace, the more powerful will be the BDS movement against Israel. Why not wait until the BDS strengthens their bargaining position so that they won't have to compromise by giving up the right of return, by agreeing to a demilitarized state and by making other concessions that are necessary to peace but difficult for some Palestinians to accept? The BDS movement is making a peaceful resolution harder.

3. The BDS movement is immoral because its leaders will never be satisfied with the kind of two state solution that is acceptable to Israel. Many of its leaders do not believe in the concept of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. (The major leader of the BDS movement, Marwan Barghouti, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel's right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people even within the 1967 borders.) At bottom, therefore, the leadership of the BDS movement is opposed not only to Israel's occupation and settlement policy but to its very existence.

4. The BDS movement is immoral because it violates the core principle of human rights: namely, "the worst first." Israel is among the freest and most democratic nations in the world. It is certainly the freest and most democratic nation in the Middle East. Its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the world. They serve in the Knesset, in the Judiciary, in the Foreign Service, in the academy and in business. They are free to criticize Israel and to support its enemies. Israeli universities are hot beds of anti-Israel rhetoric, advocacy and even teaching. Israel has a superb record on women's rights, gay rights, environmental rights and other rights that barely exist in most parts of the world. Moreover, Israel's record of avoiding civilian casualties, while fighting enemies who hide their soldiers among civilians, is unparalleled in the world today. The situation on the West Bank is obviously different because of the occupation, but even the Arabs of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Tulkarim have more human and political rights than the vast majority of Arabs in the world today. Moreover, anyone—Jew, Muslim or Christian—dissatisfied with Israeli actions can express that dissatisfaction in the courts, and in the media, both at home and abroad. That freedom does not exist in any Arab country, nor in many non-Arab countries. Yet Israel is the only country in the world today being threatened with BDS. When a sanction is directed against only a state with one of the best records of human rights, and that nation happens to be the state of the Jewish people, the suspicion of bigotry must be considered.

5. The BDS movement is immoral because it would hurt the wrong people: it would hurt Palestinian workers who will lose their jobs if economic sanctions are directed against firms that employ them. It would hurt artists and academics, many of whom are the strongest voices for peace and an end to the occupation. It would hurt those suffering from illnesses all around the world who would be helped by Israeli medicine and the collaboration between Israeli scientists and other scientists. It would hurt the high tech industry around the world because Israel contributes disproportionally to the development of such life enhancing technology.

6. The BDS movement is immoral because it would encourage Iran—the world's leading facilitator of international terrorism—to unleash its surrogates, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, against Israel, in the expectation that if Israel were to respond to rocket attacks, the pressure for BDS against Israel would increase, as it did when Israel responded to thousands of rockets from Gaza in 2008-2009.

7. The BDS movement is immoral because it focuses the world's attention away from far greater injustices, including genocide. By focusing disproportionately on Israel, the human rights community pays disproportionately less attention to the other occupations, such as those by China, Russia and Turkey, and to other humanitarian disasters such as that occurring in Syria.

8. The BDS movement is immoral because it promotes false views regarding the nation state of the Jewish people, exaggerates its flaws and thereby promotes a new variation on the world's oldest prejudice, namely anti-Semitism. It is not surprising therefore that the BDS movement is featured on neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial and other overtly anti-Semitic websites and is promoted by some of the world's most notorious haters such as David Duke.

9. The BDS movement is immoral because it reflects and encourages a double standard of judgment and response regarding human rights violations. By demanding more of Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, it expects less of other states, people, cultures and religions, thereby reifying a form of colonial racism and reverse bigotry that hurts the victims of human rights violations inflicted by others.

10. The BDS movement will never achieve its goals. Neither the Israeli government nor the Israeli people will ever capitulate to the extortionate means implicit in BDS. They will not and should not make important decisions regarding national security and the safety of their citizens on the basis of immoral threats. Moreover, were Israel to compromise its security in the face of such threats, the result would be more wars, more death and more suffering.

All decent people who seek peace in the Middle East should join together in opposing the immoral BDS movement. Use your moral voices to demand that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority accept a compromise peace that assures the security of Israel and the viability of a peaceful and democratic Palestinian state. The way forward is not by immoral extortionate threats that do more harm than good, but rather by negotiations, compromise and good will.

If I Didn't Know Any Better...

I'd swear the Iranians hated Israel.

Iran: Israel is a 'Cancerous Tumor', Must be Removed